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21 December 2005.
I'm not the first to say it and I won't be the last, but the biggest problem facing England cricket is spin bowling. Not just the dearth of promising young spinners in county cricket. Nor the regularity with which slow bowlers of ability disappear off the map (the name Chris Schofield, among others, springs to mind). Nor even the hapless inability of english batsmen to counter even spinners of moderate quality.
These things are all part of the problem, but underlying them is the sobering knowledge that the chances of anything changing are infinitely small.
Until all levels of English cricket, from schools right up to county level, start to take action to reinvigorate the dying art of slow bowling, England will never produce a truly great side. This is demonstrated by the English team's troubles abroad, and especially on the subcontinent. In recent times, England have faired OK in seam-friendly countries such as South Africa and the West Indies. But they consistently struggle on the dry pitches of the subcontinent, where the batsmen look all at sea and the slow bowlers, with the exception of Ashley Giles, have been almost totally ineffective.
In the long-term interests of the English game, it's time to prepare spin-friendly wickets at home. There will be a steep learning curve while both bowlers and batsmen struggle to adapt, but in the end it's the only way forward.
20 December 2005.
England got stuffed at cricket again yesterday by Pakistan.
Along with the game, they lost the five-match series, the home side's win in Rawalpindi giving them an unassailable 3-1 lead.
At the moment they look like a team who burned themselves out with the monumental effort that was needed to beat Australiain last summer's Ashes series. Trescothick has gone back to dangling his bat at wide ones. Fatherhood has given Strauss something more important to think about than scoring centuries. While Vaughan has hardly scored a run when it mattered for years, and Bell, the one batsman who came to terms with Pakistan, can hardly get a one-day game. As for the bowlers, they look barren and devoid of ideas on flat pitches. Only James Anderson looks consistently like taking wickets - and he couldn't get a game in the Tests. He put his feet up while the toothless attack went all around the park.
And then there's Flintoff. Flintoff, the Leviathan who tore the Ashes fom Australia almost single handedly, might literally take years to recover from that herculean effort.
I can't help wondering what effect winning the Ashes has had on Duncan Fletcher. Let's face it, this was unquestionably the biggest moment of his career - as player or coach - too. Winning the County Championship as Glamorgan coach hardly compares, so I'm not surprised that he seems to have taken his eye off the ball during the current tour.
One example of this is the persistent selection of Geraint Jones behind the stumps. I've nothing against Jones, he's a top man and a better than half decent player. But Adam Gilchrist he isn't. I realize that comparisons with the Australian keeper are unfair, as he really is one of a kind. Nonetheless, it's clear that England have set out to find a batsman who can be trained to keep wicket, and have ended up with a player who, for all his qualities, can do neither to the required standard at test level. I've no problem with Fletcher having stuck his neck out over Jones, he was obviously good enough to deserve a run in the side. I also fully support the most vital innovation of Fletcher's - consistency of selection. However, there does also come a point where a player has to be realistically assessed in the cold light of day, and replaced if necessary. Fletcher has already demonstrated his willingness to be ruthless when required - witness the dropping of Rob Key (who ironically was starting to find his feet in the test side, and made some important contributions in South Africa before being discarded). But he seems to have a blind spot where Jones the Wicket Keeper is concerned. It's almost as though Jones has come to symbolize the validity of Fletcher's judgement: once he admits he was wrong about that, the whole house of cards could come crashing down. So he ends up looking like the only person in the world who can't see the blindingly obvious: that Jones is a lovely chap who suffers from manifestly fragile confidence, and has neither the ability nor the temperament to succeed in one of the most demanding roles in cricket.
Fletcher needn't worry. His reputation is already assured. Bringing back the Ashes was worth a decade of defeats on the subcontinent. So let England lose to Pakistan, and India in the new year too, just as long as Fletcher, Vaughan and Freddie get it right again in time for Australia in 2006.
06 December 2005.
The throbbing in my ear is back.
It started a couple of months ago, then disappeared completely for a few weeks, but now it's returned, along with a slight tingle in the left side of my face some of the time. It disturbs me irrationally. I'm sure it's only because my ears are full of wax, or I have some sinus infection or something. There's no pain, just this intermittent throb that sounds kind of like my pulse or heart, although it can be very erratic.
So this morning I decided to have a google around for ear throbbing type symptoms, and the first site I hit, the sufferer turns out to have a brain tumour. Fantastic.
It's like reading one of those old Pears Cyclopedias, full of lists of symptoms for mysterious diseases like scurvy and pleurisy that nobody seems to get any more.
I've always strongly believed that anything explicitly to do with 'health', by which I mean things like doctors, hospitals, prescription drugs, crystal healers etc., are best avoided whenever possible. However, with my advancing years (I was 40 this year) I've found myself starting to re-evaluate this opinion. These days I would go even further and say that avoidance is no longer enough: all these things, and especially health discussion web sites, should be BANNED by LAW. In my view there's no justification for the continued existence of anything which can, in a single instant, transform mild concern over an ear infection into raging TERROR at the probability of imminent death.
05 December 2005.
I've been using some fantastic css & web development resources while developing the new site layout. Here are some that might be of interest:
- CSS Zen Garden
Fantastic resource showcasing some inspiring css layout. - A List Apart
Indispensible online periodical for web developers. - Petr Stanicek (Pixy)
Petr is Czech and the English version of his site doesn't contain a huge amount of content. Nonetheless, big respect goes out to him for the css layout that inspired the 3-column design of the silicon web site. And if you know the language you could always load the Czech version. - Search engine optimization forum
If you have a question about optimizing your site for search engines, especially Google, the amazing people ate SEO probably know the answer.
04 December 2005.
I've made over the old web site at last. The old thing was looking so last generation, and the content was years old.
The new version makes extensive use of css to create a three column layout with no tables or absolute positioning. I haven't had a proper chance to test this for cross-platform compatibility yet, but it seems to hold up in Firefox and IE6.
Drop me a line if it doesn't work properly in your browser, I'd love to know. I suppose I should be more committed, but there are always so many better things to do than testing browsers to see how brutally they break css layout techniques.