Missing, in action

Sorry not to have posted for a while. Baseball season is approaching, and I've been doing sabermetrics in that field, instead of the more needful realm of cricket, where we hear a lot of unsabermetric nonsense still. I'm nearing the end of the preseason baseball work, so I should resume posting here with more frequency.

I'll start with a post based on watching the first day's play of the Third Test between the West Indies and England. Some comments by Michael Holding really 'got my goat'. He was complaining, towards the end of the day's play, that Edwards and Powell and Taylor hadn't bowled enough overs.

I'm still in two minds about Chris Gayle's captaincy. I've already characterized him privately as the anti-Nasser Hussain. Nasser, God bless him, was a fidgety captain in the field. If something wasn't succeeding the way he anticipated, he'd tinker with it, even though it wasn't necessarily failing. Often, he'd make matters worse. Gayle, by contrast, is possibly too laid back. Sometimes he should press a little more.

It's pretty clear that there is little in the pitch for the bowlers. So what's the point of sending your quicks out there to toil in the midday heat for little or no reward? Far better to bring on the spinners. If there's nothing there for your chaps on the first day, chances are there won't be much for their chaps later on. We know that in baseball pitchers can be driven into injury by overwork, and I'm fairly confident based on limited work I have done that the same applies to bowlers. Gayle was being pretty shrewd. He spared his best bowlers needless work, and possibly ensured they are less likely to suffer injury.

On other point, Holding said that Pietersen was capable of destroying an attack, where Strauss wasn't. Excuse me? Strauss had just batted all day, taking more than 270 deliveries, and scored over 150. Think about that - 270 deliveries is over 40 overs. That's seeing off two bowlers, bowling all day, without giving up a wicket. And then they have to come back and bowl the next day, when they won't be as fresh.

I shouldn't have taken a break. There's such a lot of nonsense being spoken.