Here’s a fact for you: most left-handed batsmen are right-handed.

Okay, we haven’t actually delved into the data to uncover that, so that may not technically be a fact. We’re pretty sure it’s true though. Batting is a thing you do with both hands. Just because cricket calls one stance ‘left-handed’ and the opposite one ‘right-handed’ doesn’t mean much at all really.

No left-hand batsman has scored more Test runs than Alastair Cook. However, if you’ve seen him bowl, you’ll know that Alastair Cook is actually right-handed. (Admittedly, it isn’t entirely clear-cut from watching him bowl, but you have to assume that if he were any better with his left hand, he’d use it.)

Next on the left-handed Test runs list is Kumar Sangakkara, who is right-handed; then Brian Lara, who is right-handed; then Shivnarine Chanderpaul, who is right-handed.

The most successful left-handed Test batsman who is actually left-handed is Allan Border.

The flipside of this is that there are of course left-handed people who have batted ‘right-handed’ in Test cricket and made runs.

The team below comprises only people who are actually left-handed, which is to say we’ve gauged their handedness by their bowling arm. This is a very good but not flawless way of deducing handedness, as you’ll see.

Most of the batsmen are considered ‘right-handers’ and we’re hoping that we get lots of angry comments about this. (That’s the main reason why we didn’t include Border, if we’re honest.)

Sanath Jayasuriya

A disappointing inclusion for two reasons. (1) It now seems like Sanath might be a bit of a wrong ‘un. (2) Unlike everyone else in the top order, he did actually adopt a left-handed stance.

In our defence, we’ve previously stated our fiercely held belief that Sanath the cricketer is an entirely different bloke from Sanath the bloke who failed or refused to co-operate with an anti-corruption investigation.

Also… that cut shot.

Wilfred Rhodes

We will include Wilfred Rhodes in an XI any chance we get. Any cricketer who was picked to bat at both 1 and 11 in a Test team would be worthy of inclusion, even if he didn’t have 58 first-class hundreds and 4,204 first-class wickets to his name.

Most importantly of all, Rhodes was absolutely dynamite when we picked him in Cricket Captain 2018’s All-Time Greats mode. You can’t argue with that. Well, you can, but you should probably find something more productive to do with your time.

Denis Compton

It’s Denis Compton, isn’t it? This is an easy pick.

Did you know that as well as all the runs, Compton also took 25 Test wickets bowling left-arm wrist spin? Four more wickets without conceding another run and we could have classed him as an all-rounder according to the old ‘averages less with the ball than the bat’ criterion (Wilfred Rhodes passes that, by the way).

Michael Clarke

Bit of an arsehole, but he was Lord Megachief of Gold for 2012 so it kind of feels like we have to include him.

Averaged less with the ball than with the bat. All-rounder.

Inzamam-ul-Haq

We made Inzy one of our ‘Kings of Cricket’ for All Out Cricket a few years ago. Rebrands and domain name changes mean those words are now sadly unlinktoable, but the crux of the piece was that we loved his souplesse.

Souplesse is a cycling term which refers to the perfect pedal stroke. It’s a fluid, effortless movement with no wasted motion whatsoever.

Inzamam-ul-Haq did everything required for a perfect shot and nothing more. There was no flourish, no muscularity. Afterwards, it was almost as if nothing had happened at all. Then he’d get run out.

Garry Sobers

Garry Sobers was left-handed, so, um, that’s that really. Garry’s in.

Sarah Taylor, Ian Healy, Matt Prior, Mushfiqur Rahim, Brad Haddin, Quinton De Kock or someone

We’ve stumbled here. In large part because of the nature of the job, we couldn’t find a decent wicketkeeper who bowled with their left hand.

There are people like Adam Gilchrist who batted left-handed and bowled right-handed, but left-handed bowlers who typically wore the gloves proved impossible to identify. Best we could manage was all the people listed in the subheading above who kept wicket but never actually stooped to revealing their preferred handedness by turning their arm over. Any of these players could be left-handed. We’ve no idea.

Wasim Akram

First name on the team sheet. When you think of left-armers, you think of Wasim. Correctly.

Wasim Akram took four hat tricks in international cricket. In March 1999, Sri Lanka were on the receiving end of two in a little over a week. Wasim Akram is a man who can talk about his international hat tricks and have a favourite.

Wasim was a bowling attack in his own right: a new ball bowler, a reverse swing master, a line and length seam bowler and a flat track innovator. He found angles no-one knew existed. He could basically do anything.

Mitchell Johnson or Darren Gough

We imagine you’ve some questions about this selection.

Most of you will be thinking that Johnson bowled with his left-arm and Gough bowled with his right, so why the hell is the Yorkshireman even mentioned? You are absolutely correct. Johnson did indeed bowl with his left arm. But here’s a video of him playing tennis right-handed.

If we’re defining handedness by bowling arm, let’s go with Johnson. However, if we’re going to consider him right-handed on the basis of tennis and autographs, that opens the door for Gough, who plays darts and signs autographs left-handed.

Gough would certainly bring something a little different to the attack.

Derek Underwood or Mitchell Starc

Derek Underwood is one of those cricketers who gets talked about far less than seems fair, given his record.

Deadly played 86 Tests and took 297 wickets at 25.83. That’s a broadly similar record to Bob Willis (90 Tests and 325 wickets at 25.20) in pretty much exactly the same era, yet you almost certainly know a great deal more about Willis than you do about Underwood.

Despite this, we’ve only got Underwood down as a second spinner, which would arguably be an unnecessary role in a side that also contains Rhodes and the multi-faceted Sobers – even if he was a very, very different brand of spinner.

If we were to opt for another pace bowler instead, we’re having Mitchell Starc because he bowls at the stumps as fast as he can and that’s an approach we just fundamentally like.

Rangana Herath

Herath Mudiyanselage Rangana Keerthi Bandara Herath (yes, his name is Herath Herath) seemingly spent 95 per cent of his career only a match or two away from retirement. This stopgap veteran status persisted long enough for him to snare 433 wickets, which is an insanely large number. It’s actually more than Wasim Akram, which is a fact we can’t really wrap our head around.

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2 minute read

If there is one thing Australians love, it is to constantly, endlessly debate the exact whereabouts of ‘the line’ until all you can do is start trying to claw your own face off, shouting, “When will it end? When will it EVER END?!”

Last we knew, everything was fine because Tim Paine had revealed: “We know what’s right and what’s wrong, so it’s pretty simple.”

But Michael Clarke – in many ways the spiritual father of the line – does not think it’s simple. Bobbing to the surface again like a greasy, buoyant turd, he fired off a whole series of nonsense quotes this week in a bid to make things less simple.

The thrust of Clarke’s position is that the team needs to, “play tough Australian cricket.” An expert on the unique characteristics of the Australian genome, he added: “Whether we like it or not, that’s in our blood.”

Clarke cited David Warner as an example. He said he always liked having him in the team because he was aggressive. He added: “In saying that, there was always a line. He knew that. We had a number of conversations one-on-one about that line he couldn’t overstep.”

(Clarke also said, “David Warner gives it to certain blokes on the field because he wants them to give it to him when he’s batting. It’s like a turn on” – which is pretty funny when you take it out of context.)

Clearly Clarke is essentially thrashing around in muddy waters, shouting, “Look at me! Look at me! I’m covered in mud.”

Clarke’s old friend Simon Katich spotted this and (correctly) pointed out: “Once again we find someone missing the point. What’s been forgotten in all of this is we blatantly cheated.”

Paine (who we now always think of as Mr Shake Hands Man because he’s asked his team to respectfully shake hands with the opposition at the start of every series) responded to Clarke’s comments by drawing a subtle distinction between ‘trying to be liked’ and ‘acting like massive wankers’.

Alas, it was to no avail. All the latest round of Australian navel-gazing has achieved is that once again no-one knows where the damn line is (the slippery, weaselly bastard).

Summing up the confusion, Justin Langer said: “I’m not sure what people want from us. We can’t confuse the messages. On the one hand, we’re too aggressive and probably stepped over the line. Now we’re getting called tame.”

Dear Australia: THERE IS NO LINE. YOU’RE LOOKING FOR SOMETHING THAT DOESN’T EXIST. DIFFERENT PEOPLE HAVE DIFFERENT IDEAS ABOUT WHAT IS ACCEPTABLE – THAT’S THE PROBLEM.

(Also, as a quick steer, the sandpaper thing crossed pretty much everyone’s line.)

< 1 minute readEngland’s players have been treated to an afternoon of Beefy rest day anecdotes, while Michael Clarke’s babbling on about ‘the line’ for the billionth time (“I think everyone knows where the line is,” he said this week – if not, we certainly know where we can hear about it). It’s pretty clear that no-one’s got anything left to say ahead of this Ashes series. We need some new source material. We need some cricket.

You get the impression that a few things need to go England’s way for them to win the series. Actually, that’s a mindless thing to say. Of course things need to go their way for them to win. That’s what winning involves. What we mean is that a few things need to go unexpectedly their way. If everyone on both sides performs roughly as you’d expect, Australia would win.

But this is the essence of sport. All that’s gone before is just history. Averages measure the past, they don’t predict the future. Shan Masood has just made his first Test hundred in the fourth innings to help Pakistan make 382 to win. That was far from a likely outcome.

The only people who truly have any idea how things are going to go are the experts.

2 minute read

Michael Clarke has launched an astonishing broadside against his team-mate Steven Smith ahead of this summer’s Ashes series. The Australian captain claims that Smith will struggle to make any sort of impact this summer despite now being ranked the best Test batsman in the world.

Responding to Graeme Swann’s assertion that Smith might get found out in English conditions, Clarke said simply: “We will find out in five Test matches’ time whether Steve Smith is good enough to have success over here.”

A hundred in any of the first four Test matches would surely prove Smith’s credentials, so it is striking that the Australian captain does not think the matter will be resolved before the end of the series. Clearly, he is expecting few runs from the team’s new number three prior to the fifth Test and presumably not even then.

Smith has not commented publically, but will doubtless be horrified to learn that his captain has such little faith in him. Alternatively, he may see Clarke’s words as merely the latest salvo in the proxy war for control of the Australia team. Clarke, threatened by Smith’s recent success and his status as heir apparent, may be trying to undermine his rival to firm up his own position.

Either way, the Australia camp is in obvious disarray with the cracks destined to widen like those in the Waca pitch on which they won’t be playing.

With suspicions that Chris Rogers and Brad Haddin may be suffering from senility amongst other age-related illnesses, things currently look bleak for the tourists and there are also rumours that Darren Lehmann spat on a penguin while at London Zoo this week, raising the possibility that the coach may come under fire for his boorish behaviour.

< 1 minute read

It’s possible that we jumped the gun in saying that we might not see much more of Michael Clarke. We’ve reached this conclusion on the basis that he made a hundred as recently as today.

Watching Clarke teeter and gallumph about, it’s clear that the spirit is willing but the tendons are inflamed, but you can get a long way with spirit – just ask Steve Smith.

We’ve previously said that at some point we’ll come to terms with Steve Smith’s run-scoring. We’re not sure we’re quite there yet, but a good innings is at least no longer a surprise. In fact, we’ve reached a point where we’re faintly outraged when he’s omitted from the Australia side. He pretty much always scores runs and he tends to do so in the right sort of manner for the situation as well.

Good cricketer. Weird batsman, weirder bowler, but good cricketer.

3 minute readIt may feel like Australia lost the series against Pakistan 4-0, but actually it was only two. No matter how you play, you can’t lose more than two matches when you only play two.

This has allowed Michael Clarke to somewhat disingenuously plead that his captaincy shouldn’t be judged on the basis of two Tests. People will be quick to draw his attention to last year’s 4-0 defeat to India, which is perhaps what he wants as such talk distracts from his batting form.

The truth is that Clarke’s got away with a 2-0 defeat. He can pretend that Australia might have bounced back were they playing a third Test, but history tends to suggest that learning is more than outweighed by the negative effects of reacting whenever Australia start losing.

“We’re learning,” they say. “Look!”

But changing isn’t the same as improving.

The captain’s view

Ricky Ponting’s main redeeming feature as a captain was that he was plain-speaking. He always erred on the side of blunt honesty and had an unusual predilection for answering the questions asked of him.

But there is quite some distance between being open and honest as an international cricket captain and being open and honest as a columnist. The former is like being the least annoying daytime Radio 1 DJ. You’re the least bad of a group that’s pretty much defined by one negative characteristic.

It is therefore no surprise to see that Ponting’s first column for Cricinfo is fairly banal. He still knows those involved, so his criticism is qualified and weak. You have to read between the lines a bit and magnify some of what he’s saying to interpret his true meaning.

When Ponting says that “a lot of what I saw was a bit frenetic, a bit fast,” then maybe – just maybe – he’s talking about Australia’s number three reverse sweeping his way to 37 off 28 balls in a match in which the opposition’s just posted 570-6 with one guy making a double hundred.

Glenn Maxwell at three – but what would have been next?

The selection of Glenn Maxwell to bat at number three might rank as one of the greatest cricketing decisions of all time. In this context, we’re using ‘greatest’ to mean ‘inexplicable and hilarious’.

But all we can think about is what might have happened next.

If this series had run on, who knows where Australia might have ended up. If you’re picking Maxwell at three by the second Test, what do you do when you’ve lost four on the bounce? The team physio, Alex Kontouris, must have harboured serious hopes of opening the bowling if there had been such a match.

Playing a five Test series when all you can do is lose is like being asked to build an elaborate timber framed home when the only tools you’ve got are a spoon and a spatula. It’s a painful, humiliating farce, but every day you have to turn up for work and do your best and then explain your progress to the client afterwards.

If you ever have to go through this, the after-effects are huge. There’s no hiding place. You had ample opportunities to do a good job so if all you managed was abject failure, you have to answer for that. By slinking off after two Tests, the Australian team has minimised the damage.

The moral of the story

Your averages, captain, coaches and players can probably survive incompetence over a relatively short series, so if you’re going to be rubbish against someone, make sure it’s Pakistan, Sri Lanka, New Zealand or someone.

2 minute read

One of the most annoying things about the Australian cricket team is not its verbal aggression but the players’ relentless self-righteousness about it.

Here’s a quote from Michael Clarke that you’ll feel like you’ve read a thousand times before.

“I think we play our cricket hard on the field but I think as Australians we understand and respect there’s a line you can’t cross.”

What Clarke doesn’t get is that what he perceives to be ‘the line’ might not necessarily be the line to everyone else in the world. Who made you King of the Line, Michael? Why do you get to decide what does and doesn’t go?

He reminds us of one of those strong-willed but stupid kids who’s forever changing the rules of whatever game he’s playing so that he always wins. He’s trying to enjoy his victories, but all the other kids are sort of rolling their eyes and thinking maybe they should go and do something else now.

In the same interview, Clarke also says that he himself has crossed the line twice in the last year.

Actually, he says he ‘made no bones about’ the incident with James Anderson and that what he said ‘wasn’t appropriate’. However, a second later he’s going on about the importance of going close to the line, but not crossing it. He then appears to imply that this incident and a similar one with Dale Steyn fall under the heading ‘Australians playing cricket extremely fairly’.

Maybe it’s just that Clarke has a different definition of ‘the line’. In his world, you can cross the acceptable/unacceptable threshold with impunity. What he’s talking about is the line that separates ‘not stabbing someone in the eye with the scorer’s pencil’ from ‘stabbing someone in the eye with the scorer’s pencil’.

< 1 minute read

Legal documents associated with Mickey Arthur’s ludicrous AUD 4 million compensation claim against Cricket Australia are said to detail deeply felt emnity between Michael Clarke and Shane Watson. This is, apparently, news.

A fairly large proportion of the Australian population has always hated Michael Clarke, seeing him as an image-conscious metrosexual who’s been given an easy ride. An even greater proportion of the Australian population hates Shane Watson for being an image-conscious metrosexual who whinges a lot, throws away promising starts and who is forever getting injured. Being as both Clarke and Watson are Australians, OF COURSE each is going to hate the other.

It’s basic statistics. Chances are most of Clarke and Watson’s team-mates hate both of them. Why wouldn’t you? The rest of us do.

Just because one person’s a bit of an arse, it doesn’t mean they’re necessarily going to be great mates with other arses. In reality, people are generally most irritated by the negative qualities in others that they themselves possess. Clarke and Watson share plenty of irritating qualities with which to rub each other up the wrong way.

< 1 minute read

One answer would be ‘because Michael Clarke’s injured’. If you’re wondering what’s wrong with Clarke, a Cricket Australia spokesman said:

“Michael Clarke has had his right hamstring assessed by team medical staff following the game and the team physiotherapist has confirmed that Michael has stiffness in the right hamstring.”

There’s a joke in there somewhere. Something like: “How many Australian medical professionals does it take to diagnose a stiff hamstring when someone complains that their hamstring feels stiff?”

Anyway, this isn’t the point. The point is that Shane Watson will become captain. We’ve said before that we have no real clue about captaincy. It’s a management job really and thankfully most of the tasks involved aren’t televised. We’re therefore somewhat in the dark about players’ suitability for the job.

But still. Shane Watson? Captains should be strong and resilient, yet Watson can’t even bear to retain his own body hair. Maybe that’s right though. Maybe Watson truly is the embodiment of contemporary Australia: Blonde, metrosexual, fragile, no longer troubling the speed gun and not especially good at Test cricket.

3 minute readWe know. Sickening, isn’t it?

If you don’t already know, Lord Megachief of Gold is the highest award in cricket. Each year, we name someone winner based on some stuff. After weighing up said stuff, it turned out Michael Clarke was the winner. We were less than impressed by this, but the more we thought about it, the more we decided it wasn’t quite as bad as having both legs blown off by a landmine.

Michael Clarke the batsman

Let’s start with some boring statistics, the value of which we can all pointlessly argue about in the comments. In 2012, Michael Clarke scored 1,595 Test runs at an average of 106.33 with five hundreds.

He scored the majority of these runs in Australia and a large proportion in a few huge innings, but Clarke’s job is to score lots of runs and in 2012, he scored lots of runs.

Against India at the Sydney Cricket Ground, he arrived at the crease with the score reading 37-3 and proceeded to score 329 not out. Against the same opposition in Adelaide, he arrived at 84-3 and scored 210. India were thrashed by Australia in that series, but that doesn’t devalue Clarke’s achievements. He was contributing to that thrashing more than anyone.

On tour in the West Indies, he only managed one fifty in what was a fairly low-scoring series, but he did take 5-86 in Dominica.

Against South Africa, he scored 259 not out after arriving at 40-3 and then made 230 in his very next innings after arriving at 55-3. He then finished the year with another hundred against Sri Lanka, although 117-3 was positive luxury compared to what he’d been used to.

This is a tale of making huge hundreds when the top three have been crap.

Michael Clarke the captain

Michael Clarke was once named ‘cricketer most likely to make people wince and who they would also like to slap and then push away’ three years in a row. That is a FACT. (That is not a fact.)

Then, just before he was named Australia captain, a load of surveys were carried out to find out how Australians felt about this development. The aim wasn’t to find out whether he was a popular choice or not; it was to establish just how much people hated him. The answer was ‘a lot’.

Yet look at him now – some people actually quite like him and he is generally considered to be a pretty damn fine captain. We won’t claim to know how good his captaincy really is, but we do consider him an interesting captain and that’s probably more important to us.

In Bridgetown, he declared with a first innings deficit. Australia were nine down, so that wasn’t really amazingly bold, but it was interesting. He didn’t try and eke out 20 more runs via his tail-enders. He got on with the game. Australia then beat the Windies and the light in the final session of day five.

Against Sri Lanka, he gave his wicketkeeper an over. The value of this might be questionable, but again, it’s interesting. There’s nowt wrong with a mischievous bowling change. It’s not like he had Matthew Wade bowl eight overs with a ring of defensive fielders. He was just trying something.

Conclusion

In a team short of half-decent batsmen, Michael Clarke batted for several men. In a team which frequently lacked fit fast bowlers and with no real spinner to speak of, he engineered Test wins as captain. He also seemed genuinely enthusiastic about Test cricket and we can’t help but feel a certain degree of warmth to someone like that.

Congratulations, Michael. You are Lord Megachief of Gold 2012.