The year’s pick: Two great rivalries

Naturally, the problem with this is the McGrath anomaly. Bedser was, in a sense, a better bowler than most today. He was as unplayable on a damp surface as any bowler in the game’s history; in 1948, they still played county games and Tests on uncovered pitches in England.

Yet, such are today’s batting techniques that bowlers generally (other than Australian) are often inadequate to meet the needs of the challenge of bowling out teams cheaply in two innings. The question of taking 20 wickets to win a Test has become a struggle for most sides to perform.

What this does suggest is that bowling standards have generally slipped to the levels of the 1920s and 1930s when big totals were the norm in Tests or at domestic games.

The other factor of 2004 has been India’s remarkable progress, beginning 2002. It was a good sign that Australia’s bogey was at last being mastered and the verbal jousts controlled.

Yet what we need in the year ahead is more competitive cricket; someone to take on the Aussies and blow them away, knocking that smirk off the face of some of their press box posse who hang around. England’s current form in South Africa suggests they may even match Ricky Ponting’s brigade when the battle for The Ashes resumes later in the year.

Well, that’s the idle chatter doing the rounds. Ian Botham, who once turned his back on an England batting display at Lord’s in 2003 and labelled it ‘‘rubbish’’, has been mouthing off in South Africa how the Poms will dismantle their normal Po-faced image and take on the Aussies. It shouts of a rhetorical ‘If India can do it, why can’t we?’

Should Michael Vaughan succeed where Michael Atherton and Nasser Hussain failed the game might become popular in England again. Why these days shopping in a Mall or even an afternoon at greyhound racing has become more popular unless you are a card-carrying member of the Barmy Army.

Also in 2005, we can look forward to another joust in the India-Pakistan series — and wouldn’t it be nice to win that series at home. Perhaps those who labour under the misapprehension that Dada is expendable might suddenly wake up and realise that Sourav is the man who has made India a combative and competitive unit.

Hopefully we will see Irfan Pathan head the bowling averages and wickets taken in the series against Pakistan, Bhajji get his doosra sorted out and Dada join the human bazooka Virender Sehwag and the ever stylish mastermind Rahul Dravid in taking big runs off the Pakistan bowlers.

Lastly, the honour of scoring the best innings of 2004 offers a variety of choices. There is a handsome list of names to consider as well and The Wall is among them, along with Sehwag, Sachin too if you please; even Lara gatecrashes this party with that 400 against England, as does the man who reinvented the two-step waltz, Andrew Strauss.

Yet for sheer simplicity and dedication and a match-winning second innings effort, Sanath Jayasuriya’s 253 at Faisalabad last October pips Dravid and Sehwag and leaves Strauss and others wobbling in his wake.