Print Wrap: Daily dose of headlines
Every morning Cricketnirvana brings you a roundup of headlines from the leading national dailies across the cricketing nations. Here's what some of the newspapers are talking about…
Haddin steels himself for return
Australia’s first choice wicketkeeper Brad Haddin is raring to make a comeback after recuperating from a broken finger, writes Australian daily, The Age...
A refreshed Brad Haddin returns to first-class cricket today with metal works resembling a door-hinge built into his surgically repaired finger and a strong feeling that his injury-enforced break might have been a blessing in disguise.
Haddin is also planning a foray into the Indian Premier League next year, with several franchises expressing interest in the Australian wicketkeeper-batsman and Mumbai considered the most likely to secure his services.
In the meantime, Haddin's clear focus is the first Test of the Australian summer against the West Indies from November 26, a goal that made him baulk at rushing his recovery to join the one-day team in India when his replacement, Tim Paine, became the third Australian gloveman in as many months to break a finger in the line of duty.
Instead, Graham Manou went to the subcontinent while Haddin played in a Ford Ranger Cup game for NSW on Sunday and will test out the hand in a Sheffield Shield game against WA at the SCG from today.
''The plan was always to be right for the first Test,'' Haddin told The Age yesterday.
''I was a little bit nervous going into the [one-day] game because I wasn't sure how it was going to respond but it's come through well, which is a good sign. I hadn't played cricket for 11 weeks. It's been a frustrating break but I think it will freshen me up, especially with all the cricket the boys have been playing and the way blokes are going down at the moment, it might work out to be a bit of godsend.''
Haddin broke the ring finger on his left hand during the warm-up for the third Ashes Test at Edgbaston, paving the way for Manou to debut, but carried the injury through the last two Tests.
The tough 32-year-old expressed no regrets about playing through the pain, which he knew could make the injury worse, and in the early stages of his recovery from the operation struggled to change the nappy of his 13-month-old son, Zac, let alone grip a cricket bat.
''Probably playing in that fifth Test did a lot more damage, but that was a choice I made. I knew the consequences,'' Haddin said. ''Once I went on the field I was passed 100 per cent fit, I didn't look for any sympathy or anything like that. I'd like to say no, [that given his time again] I'd take the three weeks and let it recover, but it was a massive series and, yeah, as silly as it sounds, I would do exactly the same again.''
By the end of the Ashes, Haddin's finger was broken in six or seven places.
''I'm not sure of the last count, but it went into the joint, which is a problem. It had started to take the tendon away a little bit and if the tendon ruptures you're in trouble, but the surgery was a massive success,'' he said.
''The best way to explain it is it looks like a door hinge when it opens up; there's two plates in there and five screws holding the plates together … Now I've just got to get the movement back in that top joint. I've got about between 45 and 50 degrees in there now, which is good, it's functional, and yesterday there were no ill-effects 'keeping. I'm looking to play the four-day game and give it a real test….''
South Africa will be our biggest test, says Strauss
English newspaper, The Independent presents the views of England captain Andrew Strauss, who feels his team will have to play their best cricket ever to beat South Africa at home.
Andrew Strauss has played in two Ashes-winning sides, taken a telling role in a series triumph in South Africa and revelled in whitewashing West Indies, but to return home from South Africa in January clutching the Basil D'Oliveira Trophy will require a level of performance higher still according to the England captain.
Strauss's squad arrived in South Africa on Sunday and held their first training session in Bloemfontein yesterday as they prepare for the opening match of the tour, a 50-over contest against the Diamond Eagles on Friday. Ahead lie two Twenty20 internationals, five one-dayers and then four Tests either side of Christmas which Strauss believes presents the greatest challenge of his five years in the England side.
"We will have to play better than we have played, certainly in my time as an England player," said Strauss. "That's a bit of a step up for us. We are all aware at this stage of our development we are not the finished product by any means. That [winning the series] would be an incredible achievement – beating the No 1 side in the world at home, that's as hard as it can get."
Strauss scored three hundreds in five Tests during England's last tour of South Africa in 2004-05 to set up a series win that was to prove an important stepping stone en route to winning the Ashes. This time it is the other way round, as are the rankings.
"As a group we understand the extent and the challenge that this tour sets us," said Strauss, who leads England abroad for the second time following last winter's defeat in the Caribbean. "This is an opportunity for us to see where we are as a side and also to make some steps forward in terms of becoming more consistent and more able to deal with the best sides in the world on a consistent basis…."
Gayle back at helm of full-strength Windies squad
The Sydney Morning Herald, another Australian paper reported about Chris Gayle’s re-appointment as West Indies captain for their up-coming Test series against Australia.
Chris Gayle has been reinstated as West Indies captain to lead a full-strength squad for the three-test tour of Australia.
The 30-year-old Jamaican was appointed yesterday after he and other leading players withdrew from a home series against Bangladesh in July and the Champions Trophy in September due to a long-standing contract conflict with the West Indies Cricket Board.
Only four players that made themselves available during the strike action - allrounder Darren Sammy, batsman Travis Dowlin and fast bowlers Kemar Roach and Gavin Tonge - were selected for the tour to Australia starting on November 18.
Gayle, who has played 82 tests, is set to open the batting with 19-year-old Adrian Barath, the only player in the squad without international experience.
Barath, from Trinidad & Tobago, had been chosen in a 13-man squad for the Test series against Bangladesh before the dispute between WICB and the West Indies Players' Association.
Jerome Taylor returns to lead the pace attack, and will be aided by Ravi Rampaul, Roach and Tonge.
Taylor's usual new ball partner, Fidel Edwards, has been forced to miss the series after injuring his knee while playing for Deccan Chargers during last month's Champions League in India.
Shivnarine Chanerpaul, Ramnaresh Sarwan and allrounder Dwayne Bravo are also back from strike action.
Australian-born Brendan Nash will return home for the first time as a West Indies player since making his debut 18 months ago….
Can Jonathan Trott be 'English' if he's never read Viz?
One more English daily, The Telegraph, talks about the increasing presence of South Africa born cricketers in the England national team…
Jonathan Trott has an English father and British passport. He lives in England with his English wife and says he is 100 per cent committed to playing cricket for England, which, judging by first impressions, he’s very good at. One thing nags at me though. Does Trott ‘get’ Graeme Swann?
Swann, the England spinner who’d happily swap his cricket career for a gig on Never Mind the Buzzcocks, joked this week that he’d rather read Viz than analyse videos of the opposition. Typical Swann, we giggled. But the gag raised a serious question: does Trott, his England team-mate, know what Viz is?
Perhaps he does. Perhaps the adventures of Sid The Sexist and the Fat Slags were required reading at Rondebosch Boys High in Cape Town, where Trott spent his teenage years. Unlikely though.
Trott says he feels English, but like Kevin Pietersen, he only moved to England as a professional in his early twenties. Clearly, he is English enough to play for England. But culturally, he’ll always be South African. Because you can change your national allegiances, and even change your accent (though Trott hasn’t). But you can’t change your upbringing. You don’t become a different person by working overseas in your twenties, any expat will tell you that.
Thus you can have two passports, but only one sense of humour. Or, if you’re South African, no sense of humour (that’s a joke, fellas). Even if Swann leant Trott his Viz annual, I doubt he’d find it funny. And that’s not only because his mental age is significantly older than Swann’s (14).
Does any of this matter, though? Not to the players. Cricketers are generally too obsessed by their own insecurities to care about much else, and sports teams are always made up of disparate individuals, cricket teams especially. Even in the modern era, the England team has largely consisted of working-class northern bowlers and posh southern batsmen. They are team-mates, not real mates, and the differences extend beyond accents. I doubt Andrew Strauss read much Viz at Radley College, for example.
Strauss, also born in South Africa, made a stern defence of Trott this week, saying: “The selectors sit down and pick the best 15 England qualified players. The fact some of them have been born out of these shores is of no consequence.”
Michael Vaughan begs to differ though. And it’s clear that Vaughan’s recent criticism of Trott was a wider dig at the way English cricket, both at county and Test level, is becoming less English.
I guess the whole thing boils down to representation, and whether or not we want England’s cricketers to represent ‘us’. Indeed, it affects whether we actually refer to the team as ‘we’ (”why haven’t we declared?”) or the less representative ‘they’.
This is entirely unscientific, but personally, I’m still more likely to use ‘we’ when discussing England’s cricket team than when talking about John Terry, Ashley Cole and the rest of England’s football team. They are definitely a ‘they’.
But England’s ‘we’ status will be tested this winter, particularly when Pietersen and Trott, those two sons of South Africa, are batting together for England against the country – and the culture – that created them. I’ve got nothing against either individual. And if you’re picking ringers you might as well pick good ones.
But it’s ultimately a numbers game. With one South African in the team, England were still ‘we’. But with two South Africans in the team? Three? Four? Eleven?
