James Anderson is jubliant. Photo credit: David Gray / Reuters

On Sunday, England’s Jimmy Anderson became the fourth English bowler to take 300 test wickets when he helped skittle out New Zealand.

Anderson’s bowling coach, David Saker, made a big statement: he called Anderson the most skilful bowler around. Note: not the best, but the most skilful. He meant that Anderson’s control of outswing, inswing and reverse swing across conditions is second to none.

Many would dispute that. The many who believe that Dale Steyn is the one way ahead of the pack.

One thing is undisputed though: these two pacers are head and shoulders above the rest. Here’s why:
• Their ability to get wickets across all conditions. Anderson and Steyn have both succeeded in India, no paradise for fast bowlers.
• They have the cleanest bowling actions I’ve seen in a long time. Dale Steyn is a rhythm bowler and once he’s found his groove, he doesn’t look to be exerting himself at all. Look at how his opening partner Morne Morkel strains himself to get pace and bounce. James Anderson cocks the ball by his cheek just as you’re taught in school; none of Andrew Flintoff’s flailing arms.
• They’ve managed to steer clear of injuries. One needs only look at India and Australia in recent times for cases where injuries to strike bowlers have killed the team’s chances.

It’s an intriguing exercise to look at their stats side by side.

They’re around the same age (Anderson is 30 and Steyn 29), and made their test débuts within a year of each other (Anderson, 2003, Steyn 2004). Steyn took just 61 tests to reach the 300 wicket mark, whereas Anderson took 81.

Anderson’s ability to swing the ball both ways is extremely useful and the fact that he developed it recently is commendable. His 5-52 at Galle in 2012 showed his range of skills: the first two wicket-taking balls moved away from left-handers, the third reversed into a right hander’s pads, the fourth was an off-cutter that bowled a right-hander and the fifth left the right hander. Anderson’s seam position is perhaps the best in the world and he is able to generate ferocious outswing to left-handers. In my opinion, fast bowlers like Anderson and Steyn are strike bowlers—especially in test matches—and my main interest is them getting top order wickets. Even though Anderson has bowled 700 more test overs, Steyn still has more wickets and a far better average. In fact, at 22.65, his test average is inferior only to McGrath, Ambrose, Marshall and Hadlee in the all-time highest wicket takers list.

Dale Steyn’s 7-51 at Nagpur was a master class in fast bowling in hot, dry conditions. He caused the Indian batsmen all sorts of trouble by bowling good length balls at searing pace. While Anderson is all about a controlled seam, Steyn’s main asset is much more primal: sheer speed. He is quick enough to blast through batting attacks on the subcontinent. Anderson is a thinking bowler, but when you can bowl 140kph reverse swingers, perhaps you don’t need to think too much. Steyn also has a higher percentage of wickets taken away from home. There’s no question he’s the better test bowler.

The two are much more evenly matched when it comes to ODI cricket. Interestingly though, Anderson has bowled more than twice as many balls as Steyn has.

Anderson has a marginally higher percentage of wickets taken away from home in ODIs. Though they are neck-and-neck in the 50-over game, Steyn is ahead in the shortest format. Because of the IPL, Steyn has played a lot more T20 cricket than Anderson and it shows.

It is clear that Dale Steyn is the better T20 bowler. His average in T20 Internationals is a staggering 16.64.

Dale Steyn shows off his five-wicket haul. Photo credit: Rogan Ward / Reuters

I can see where David Saker is coming from when he said James Anderson is the most skilful bowler in the world. He has worked hard to strengthen his wrists and release. And Anderson has more variation and seam control than Steyn. But is bowling quick not a skill too? Steyn is a good five miles an hour faster than Anderson and tends to swing it later. Anderson, however, is improving very fast: his test average has come down about 2 runs per year since 2007.

Overall, I would have to say that Steyn is the better bowler but Anderson is on an upward trajectory. What constitutes skill? I’ll leave to you to decide.

I love the IPL. It’s changed cricket. It’s added a new set of skills to the game and given fans a totally unique match-day experience. The influx of foreign players (and coaches – a set of people whose contribution goes largely unnoticed) has raised standards across the board. Fielding and athleticism in particular have improved massively. But I have some pet peeves – things that need to be dropped faster than Yusuf Pathan.

The Cheerleaders
I understand where the armies of marketers and brand people that drive the IPL are coming from. Sex sells and girls dressed like Britney Spears circa 1997 will get men to rear our heads. It happens in American sports – so why not here, right? I urge you, however, to watch the NBA Play-Offs going on right now. Tell me how many seconds of air-time cheerleaders get. Cheerleaders are there for fans in the stadium to ogle but they also start chants and get fans singing. They provide half-time ‘entertainment’.

Cut to the Wankhede, where after every four, “Yes Bank Maximum” or wicket the camera cuts to five excruciating seconds of white girls in hot-pants or brown girls in 9-yard saarees trying desperately to dance without sweat melting their through make-up. There is that cringe-inducing moment when the camera pans over them too long (like with fans in the crowd) and they run out of ways to pout. As if things weren’t bad enough, they’re now in the studio. I don’t know who is more embarrassed, me or them.

Commentators Talking to Players
I wonder if the player chosen to talk to the commentators as he’s fielding has picked the shortest stick in the changing room before the innings. They are professional athletes, not Reuters correspondents – let them focus on the game! I cannot remember the last time I heard anything meaningful from a player’s mouth when actively playing. When they mike-up the younger Indian guys whose first language isn’t English, it gets worse.

“How has it been playing with senior guys like ________?”

“Yeah obviously it’s been great and I’ve learned a lot.”

“What’s it like playing in such an electric atmosphere?”

“Sorry, I can’t hear you?”

“What’s it like playing in such an electric atmosphere?”

“Yeah obviously it’s amazing, it’s a dream come true.”

“You must be looking forward to the next game…”

“Yeah obviously we are looking to win every game and take the positives.”

There are clichéd sports interviews and then there are clichéd sports interviews.

The Kingfisher Jingle
Oh-la-la-la-le-NO. Just, no. It has never been catchy. The faces in the ads have gotten older but the awful jingle seems to stand the test of time, leeching life-force from the tired ambassadors who have tried their best to sing it. Please just stop.

“Divided by teams, united by the king of covert alcohol marketing”

Politics Curbing Sport
The fact that Pakistani players are absent from the IPL and Sri Lankan players aren’t allowed to play in Chennai is nothing short of a disgrace. Growing up, Waqar Younis was my favourite player. Pakistan has produced so many fantastic, exciting, match-winning cricketers; members of their 2009 World T20 winning squad would have no doubt enriched the IPL. We have a tournament without Saeed Ajmal (the best spinner in the world), Shahid Afridi (perhaps the best leg spinner in the world) and Pakistan’s formidable stable of fast bowlers. It is utterly infuriating that because of the views of some, the vast majority of cricket fans are served a tournament that’s not as good as it should be. What next, no Aussies allowed in Delhi? No Muslim players in Bangalore? Don’t laugh, it may happen.

Sports have an amazing way of bringing people together. Hearing the sound of the crowd at Eden Gardens exploding when Shoaib Akhtar got Virender Sehwag out stills gives me Goosebumps.

Useless Stats
“Wow, I can’t believe that’s the 7786^th six of the tournament,” said no one, ever.

Statistics make cricket what it is. Using numbers to back-up inklings and data to show true quality is satisfying and when well-package, can give viewers a far deeper understanding of why things unfold the way they do. I understand that the IPL and T20 cricket and new and therefore broadcasters haven’t yet been able to perfect what they show viewers.

But seriously: why include how many times a batsman has reached 30? Do they salute the crowd when they make 30s? Surely then they should say how many times they’ve made 60s? The total number of sixes hit in a tournament is the most irrelevant piece of information we’re treated to. Also, why are we shown players strike rates but not their averages? Does it not matter how long they’re in for as long as they score fast?

And let me predict the winners of Twitter battles for the next 10,000 years: CSK.

Photo Credit: Getty Images

“They wanted an Asian girl who knew about cricket.”

That’s what Isa Guha was told a week before IPL-4 kicked off. Executives at ITV, one of the UK’s largest networks, wanted a South-Asian woman to bolster their TV line-up to cover for Mandira Bedi who was on maternity leave. Guha, the former England fast bowler, who was considering doing a PhD in Australia, thought she would be called in as a pundit but they asked her to be the presenter!

She had little previous TV experience — let alone anchoring experience — but she took her chance. After a few initial wobbles, she established herself as a TV personality and went on to work with Sky Sports in the UK, TEN Sports in Dubai and now, Sony in India.

Injuries and being in and out of the side cut her playing career short. She helped the England Women’s team reach its highest point between 2008-09, winning the World Cup, World T20 and destroying Australia  – who were as dominant then in the Women’s game as they were in the Men’s – in the Ashes. She took 101 wickets in 83 ODIs and was ranked the No 1 ODI bowler in the world in 2008.

She retired in 2011 but Guha isn’t your average ex-athlete doing the rounds wherever she gets a gig: Isa Guha is a biochemistry graduate from the University College London.  As her TV career took off, she had to put plans for her PhD on hold and is instead pursuing an MPhil in Neuroscience. That’s right – Neuroscience. How many other athletes do you know with academic credentials like that?

She began playing cricket when she was eight years old, playing with her brother in their long, thin back garden. It was perfect for a bowler like her – her brother was seven years older and she never got to bat anyway! Her parents spotted her talent and took her to the local club to play with the boys. She says that at the age, the skill levels between girls and boys were about equal. Aside from cricket, she played badminton, hockey and tennis and each helped her on the cricket field; the other sports aided her with agility in the field, stamina and ball-striking respectively.

Guha was picked for Thames Valley Under-21 Ladies when she was just 11 and was fast-tracked into the England development squad when she was 12. She got her senior call-up when she was 17 in 2002 against India – all the while she was playing with boys in club level. Those are the two biggest pieces of advice she gives to aspiring young female athletes: play lots of sports and play with the boys.

She has never faced discrimination but she has had to deal with dressing room banter. She says it spurred her on. “No one likes getting out to a girl!” The gap in skill levels between male and female players isn’t that much anymore, she says. Female cricketers can bowl the same variations as the men and fielding – an aspect of the women’s game that traditionally lagged far behind the men – has improved immensely.

Female cricketers cannot bowl as fast or hit the ball as hard as the men but she says this makes the games even more exciting because not every shot will clear the boundary – there are a lot of outfield catches and close finishes in the women’s game.

The recent Women’s World Cup shows how far the sport as come. With some 51 million viewers, it received its highest ever TV audience. The most heartening thing was how competitive sides like Sri Lanka, South Africa and the West Indies had become – traditionally it was just England, India, Australia and New Zealand who battled between themselves.

According to Guha, the introduction of strength and conditioning coaches and men’s coaches from English county sides really catalysed the England Women’s team’s rise to the top; and the professionalizing of a semi-professional sport needs to continue.

We’re still a long way from seeing a Women’s IPL but Isa Guha is doing her bit as an advisor for the ECB and an ambassador for the game to see girls get the funding and support she got. For now though, we can enjoy a female pundit whose knowledge about the game is quietly changing perceptions about what women on Indian TV cricket coverage typically contribute

Much will be written about Sir Alex Ferguson after his retirement today. His 27 years at Manchester United made them the biggest club in England and arguably the world. In my opinion, what made him the best was how he won when, really, he didn’t have the best side. Even if he didn’t have the best players, his teams would win and win and win and wait for competitors to get complacent and slip-up. That they would peak around March, the most crucial time of the season, was testament to their fitness and his training regimes. For me, three seasons in particular highlight what made him such a ruthless winner.

Photo Credit: Phil Noble / Reuters

2002/03

Arsenal had won the league in the previous campaign and would go on to win it again the next. At the end of the 2002/03 season, five Arsenal players made it to the ‘team of the season’ yet Paul Scholes was the only United player chosen. That year, Arsenal were 8 points clear at the top of the table by March. But as Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United teams always do, they beat what was in front of them and waited for Arsenal to make a mistake.

In Thierry Henry, Arsenal had the best player in the league and finished the season top scorers. But Manchester United knew that giving themselves a chance meant keeping a mean defence. The paid an English transfer record £29.1 million for defender Rio Ferdinand and ended up conceding the fewest goals that season. Ferguson has never been afraid to bet big. Arsenal slipped and Ferguson pounced: they won 9 of their last 10 games, drawing once with Arsenal.

Key lesson: When you’re the number 2 player, focus on winning your own battles and waiting for your opponent to slip-up. If they don’t, fair enough, but if they do, then you’re right there to capitalise.

2010/11

In 2009, Cristiano Ronaldo left Manchester United and Chelsea blitzed their way to the league title. 2010/11 was to my mind, one of the least dramatic, least memorable Premier League seasons in recent times. Dimitar Berbatov was United’s and the league’s top scorer with only 20 goals. They won just four times away from home. But other teams were equally mediocre. Chelsea and Manchester City finished on a paltry 71 points: it seemed no one wanted to win the league.

Ferguson, though, did. And he instilled this drive into club captain Nemanja Vidic. The Serbian defender scored 5 crucial goals and won the player of the season award. Was it memorable? No. Did United win? Yes. That sums it up. History will remember the title, not the way it was won.

Key lesson: Winning dirty and wanting it more than your rivals. Sometimes the entire market under-performs, but you can’t let yourself get complacent. Sometimes winning is doing less bad than everyone else.

2012/13

In the drama that surrounded Manchester City’s last minute league-winning goal in the 2011/12 season, many people forgot that Manchester United only lost the title on goal difference. It was another solid but unspectacular Ferguson team that had pushed its competition till the very end. As this season began and Ferguson showed off his latest big bet, striker Robin van Persie, I still questioned whether gaping holes in his team were going to be exploited.

They still lacked the mouth-watering midfield they had in the 90s and they were conceding far too many goals. Chelsea had signed the sparkling talents of Hazard, Oscar, Marin, Moses and Ba. Manchester City still had their title winning side. But as the others floundered, van Persie kept rescuing United. Their 2-1 win at home to Arsenal summed them up: they didn’t create much but took the chances they knew they would be presented with. Quietly brilliant performances by less glamorous names like Evans, Jones and Carrick gave van Persie and Manchester United the platform to pounce.

Key lesson: Take each game/day, one at a time and be patient. You will get the opportunity to strike, you need to wait for it to come to you.

Whenever you looked at Manchester United team sheets – no matter how uninspiring they may seem compared to the nouveau-rich clubs’- you always had to consider who the 12^th name on the roster was. Alex Ferguson has consistently improved his players and gotten more out of them than was thought possible. He’s the reason why Manchester United matches are never played ‘on paper’.

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Brett Lee is one of sport’s great guys but he is not a good T20 player. In fact, given that teams have collectively spent $1.3 million on him in the IPL, he’s among the most over-rated T20 players around, with 24 wickets in 37 games and an economy rate of 7.55. Had the Kings XI Punjab and the Kolkata Knight Riders paid attention to his T20 record, they may have seen the warning signs. Jaideep Varma and Soham Sarkhel at Impact Index did just that.

In 2010, Varma, the award winning film-maker, swapped his editing kit for Excel sheets and put all his time and savings into Impact Index, an initiative that maps cricketers’ performances within formats, across their careers. By giving a player a score from 1-5 (up to 2 decimals) for his performance in a match compared to the performances of the 21 other players in that game, Impact Index can understand who actually made the most meaningful contribution. Impact Index were invited to showcase their findings at the ICC Centenary Conference in Oxford in 2009, mentioned in Wisden Almanack in 2012 (the first time an alternative stats system was mentioned in cricket’s most prestigious publication) and have now established a relationship with Cricket Australia.

Currently, a fast-bowler who has taken a flurry of wickets in seamer-friendly conditions in a dead-rubber (where all bowlers have prospered) will look much better on paper than a bowler who has taken a few key wickets on a dust-bowl in a high-scoring game to win a final for his team. The comparison is not fair. “A 5^th test 4^th innings 78* may be a far more important performance than a 1^st test 1^st innings 200* but guess who the stats will crown?” says Varma. It is only in cricket fans’ memories that ‘clutch’ players are remembered – until now. By indexing performances against others’ in individual matches and then averaging them out over a career, one can make a fairer assessment of who has had the most significant impact on matches and series. For example, Rahul Dravid – not Sachin Tendulkar – is India’s highest Impact test cricketer because he’s contributed more series-defining performances than anyone else in the history of test cricket. Dravid has the highest rate of converting series-defining opportunities: 35% (the average rate in Test cricket history is 12%). Smarter numbers tell a richer story.

The result is that when a batsman walks out to the middle and his Impact is shown to be 3.54, for example, you know exactly where he stands compared to his partner and the player he’s replacing. In a world of largely meaningless stats (“this is the highest 8^th wicket partnership by an Indian pair at the Kensington Oval”), a player’s Impact simplifies things for the viewer. Calculating the Indices was anything but simple: Varma and Sarkhel along with IT-partners, Innosolv, in Bangalore sifted through every single game that every single player has played, calculated a mean contribution and then the player’s contribution against it. Their findings gave us information that simple averages cannot.

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For example, Impact Index is able to measure a player’s performance under pressure by calculating how many wickets had fallen when the player came in and how many runs the players then scored compared to others in the batting line up. Impact Index predicted New Zealand would beat South Africa and reach the semi-finals in the 2011 World Cup, simply because the Kiwis were statistically much better under pressure and the Proteas batting line-up are very weak once wickets begin to fall. When Sehwag and Sachin got out cheaply in the final, most of us thought our chances were near-finished but the pair are actually the weakest chasers in the top 7; Virat Kohli and Gautam Gambhir in contrast are the Highest Impact Chasers in the history of ODI cricket.

We can go one level further: the data shows that one of the most under-rated batsmen in the IPL is Ambati Rayudu. At 1.52, his batting impact is in the top 15 of all IPL batsmen but he’s never been picked for India’s T20 side. His Pressure Impact is 0.11, the same as Chris Gayle, and his Partnership Building Impact is 0.14, level with MS Dhoni.

Farveez Maharoof is the most under-rated IPL bowler: he is #4 on the IPL bowling list with an Impact of 1.56, ahead of Ravi Ashwin! He’s played just 20 matches but has a Wicket-Tally Impact of 1.66, ahead of Dale Steyn’s 1.36.

We must be cautious because the numbers are a guideline – using them to predict results gives you a 75-80% success rate. Varma wants the numbers used in three ways:

• Helping national teams select promising youth players – something they have consulted the Aussies on. “Cricket Australia have found the team from Impact index very helpful in challenging our thinking in 2012” said Pat Howard, General Manager, Cricket Australia.
• Aiding IPL teams during the 2014 auction when a fresh bidding cycle will begin. With many contracted players up for grabs, teams can use Impact Index to highlight bargains and steer clear of overvalued stars. (As Lawrence Booth, editor of Wisden Almanack says, “Impact Index is the closest cricket has come to its own Moneyball moment.”)
• Adding value to TV coverage by giving viewers and presenters insightful data. On one hand making following cricket much more accessible for the casual fan, on another giving material to former players and other experts to make more informed observations.

Indeed, it’s not about being 100% right in one’s predictions. In the same way in which Opta Stats are revolutionizing the way football is being analysed in Europe, Impact Index has the ability to add real value to cricket in India. For example, a football commentator can no longer afford to say “this player is generally a poor long passer” because a second later, OptaJoe will tell 381,881 twitter followers that “the player actually has an 87% pass completion for passes over 30 yards, the 2^nd highest in the league”. With all the numbers that surround cricket, we can only hope to see the same level of insight because the teams, the fans and the IPL itself stand to benefit.

The charismatic billionaire bought another charismatic billionaire, Bernie Ecclestone’s, 66% share of London football club Queens Park Rangers in August 2011 for some £35m. He has been hugely successful in growing his low-cost airline, Air Asia, which he is now bringing to India along with Indian partners, the Tatas. He has Indian partners in London in the form of the Mittal family (Amit Bhatia, Lakshmi Mittal’s son-in-law sits on the board) but that’s where the similarities end. Together, the owners have loaned the club some £90m but QPR made a loss of £23m this year. QPR sit second from bottom of the Premier League and are 7 points behind the teams above them. If they finish in the bottom three they will be relegated and it could have disastrous long term effects for the 130 year old club. For 2011-12 expenditure on player wages equaled 91% of revenues and will rise even further this season. For a team with a tiny 18,000-seater stadium, their wage bill is simply too high.

Tony Fernandes (right) poses with English footballer Anton Ferdinand (left) during the launching ceremony of an AirAsia aircraft. Photo Credit: Bazuki Muhammad / Reuters

The hands-on Malaysian, who is chairman of the club, regularly attends matches and genuinely seems passionate about his football team but has financed many baffling pieces of business. Though his Twitter feed is confident, he must be desperate for a strong finish to the season. Harry Redknapp is currently the club’s manager and has a mixed record when it comes to keeping clubs in the Premier League; though he’s managed to pull off a ‘great escape’ with Portsmouth when it seemed they were doomed to go to the 2^nd division (and win the FA Cup), he brought in too many players the small club simply couldn’t afford and when they got relegated the following season, they had to go into administration. They still haven’t recovered. Portsmouth went into administration for a second time and were relegated to the 3^rd tier of English football in 2012. They serve as a reminder to all English clubs of what foolhardy transfer dealing can do to a team.

QPR are in danger of going down the same road. Under Fernandes, QPR have gone through three managers in two years and have spent exorbitant sums of money to bring old, above-average players to a struggling club. Premier League clubs can afford to pay players hundreds of thousands of pounds a week because of the huge income they generate through TV revenue. If they drop into the 2^nd tier though, the parachute payments are considerably smaller and teams often have to sell the core of their playing squad just to make ends meet. Since 2011 QPR have been the busiest team in top division as far as players transfers go, bringing in a whopping 27 new players. Here’s the worrying thing: the average age of those players is 27.

Players like Park Ji-Sung (31), Jose Bosingwa (29), Tal Ben-Haim (30), Andy Johnson (31), Ryan Nelsen (34), Djibril Cisse (29), Bobby Zamora (30) and Robert Green (32) are experienced Premier league players who have had reasonably successful careers with bigger clubs. They seem like panic-buys, brought in to steady a ship. The problem is they’re not that good any more. As players get older, they demand higher wages. When players sign from big clubs (especially to smaller teams), they demand high wages. Fernandes has taken a huge gamble and the signings of Christopher Samba and Loic Remy for £20.5m in January 2013 (who will together cost the club a ludicrous £180,000 a week) sum up this risk. He has invested in hugely overvalued assets that are only going to depreciate and committed vast sums to financing them – money the club doesn’t have. He will have to bank-roll the team like Roman Abramovich did with Chelsea but if QPR get relegated – which they now look likely to do – he will be left with a business that is bleeding money.

Last season they pulled off a series of stunning results to stay up but this year they are a long way from safety. QPR have seven league games left and they have to take each, one at a time. Their home game against Wigan this weekend is a classic ‘relegation 6-pointer’ where a win could see them reel in a direct rival. Fernandes will need his well-paid veterans to earn their wages.

Betrayal. Shock. Anger. Those were the emotions that Panayiotis Onisiforou and his family felt when the government announced their bank accounts would be frozen over the long weekend in late March. The 27 year old owns and runs a small bakery with his wife in Cyprus’ third largest city, Larnaca, on the south of the island. The recent government plans for generating funds from depositors’ savings led to widespread panic across Cyprus and indeed Europe. While much of the global media focus has been on wealthy foreign investors, the economic upheaval that Cyprus (and his city in particular) has seen is a time for uncertainty, resentment and soul-searching for average Cypriots.

Depositors queue up outside Laiki Bank as withdrawals were limited to €300 or Rs. 20,813 per day. Image Courtesy: Bogdan Cristel / Reuters

He was one of the huge Greek-Cypriot contingent in London and one summer when visiting his grandparents’ family home in Cyprus, couldn’t leave the Mediterranean island. “It’s a laid-back lifestyle where people don’t bother you. The weather is great and the people are friendly. It felt like home.” he says in his (still English) accent. After completing his compulsory military service and trying his hand as a professional footballer, Onisiforou opened his bakery in 2010 because he felt it was a good time. Tourism was booming and the Mediterranean lifestyle on the beautiful cliffs and beaches were too good to pass up.

There was a lot of foreign money in the economy thanks to the real estate bubble and because of the inflated banking sector, credit was easy to come by. Cyprus’ national debt is just €15bn but its banks hold €64.8bn in deposits of which some €25bn are held by foreigners. To give you a sense of bubble’s scale, his parent’s 3 bedroom house in the centre of Larnaca cost €30,000 in 2002 and by the end of the decade, the 900 sq ft property was valued at €180,000. Now however, it would fetch just €100,000.

The mood is understandably gloomy and people’s lives have changed over the last year. Ordinary citizens feel that Cyprus’ new President Nicos Anastasiades, who had said he would not to conduct the ‘haircut’ on savings banks has gone back on his word. They feel an uneasy tension with the EU: on one hand they are angry at being dictated to but on the other, memories of the 1974 war with Turkey are still fresh in the national psyche and EU membership guarantees them protection. Onisiforou’s father, was in the war, says, “Last Monday was a national holiday when everyone is usually out. This year people stayed at home and it felt like 1974 again. There was the same tension in the air but this time, mixed with a sense of disappointment.”

What will actually happen to depositors’ money is unclear and would have far-reaching implications for the very foundations of the EU itself. The free-movement of capital is one of the institution’s principals and if money is “locked” into the economy, it could set a perilous precedent for the likes of Italy, Spain, Portugal and Greece and lead to new EU legislation. Cypriots feel they are being made an example of; a small economy used as a guinea-pig to show other teetering economies what they could face if they don’t adhere to the EU’s austerity demands.

Russian oligarchs may be feeling the heat as many use the island as a tax-haven, but the Eurozone crisis and the recent banking crisis have affected local people’s everyday lives to a much greater degree. For example, many workers have and will lose their jobs as the government goes about downsizing the bloated banking sector. It will add to the unemployment that stands at 14% as an inevitable recession follows the recent €10bn EU bail-out. One of Onisiforou’s close friends, a graphic designer, will most likely lose her job as the company will not longer he able to extend its line of credit; the ‘haircut’ will affect those outside the finance industry too. Companies are also having trouble accessing their bank accounts – everyone is waiting to see who will lose what.

Food security, according to Onisiforou will not be as big an issue as it is in Greece, for example, because many families grow their own vegetables. “It common for every family to have a lemon tree and go either hunting or fishing” he says, “There is a culture of always having food on the table.” He worries that many young people will leave the country and join or rejoin large communities in London, New York or Sydney. He and his wife have had to think twice about starting a family, though with their business providing them stable income (they weren’t directly affected by the bank account freezing as cash inflows sustained them for the last fortnight) they are committed to staying in Larnaca for now. Onisiforou is optimistic: he sees no reason why Cyprus cannot overcome the crisis like Iceland did in 2008. He draws parallels between the two small, island nations with banks too large for their own good.

Average people are disconcerted because, like with previous disasters, it is hard to assign blame to one person. The Turkish invasion of Cyprus in 1974, The Helios Airways plane crash that killed all 121 passengers in 2005, the Zygi naval base explosion in 2011 and the 2013 banking crisis all have one thing in common: no one has been brought to justice. “If I open a bakery and run it into the ground then I take the blame. The Cypriot people have to look at the economy in the same way. It’s the people who run the economy, not just one individual” he says. There is greed, negligence, corruption and a lack of accountability that has disenchanted the easy-going islanders.

After the extraordinary events of yesterday, when Shane Watson, James Pattinson, Usman Khawaja and Mitchell Johnson were dropped for the third test for failing to “do their homework”, a number of important questions need to be answered.

Scraping the Barrel: Who is going to play for Australia?

Tim Wimborne / Reuters

Make no mistake, this disciplinary action could not have come at a worse time for the Aussies. Mohali, India’s fastest and most seamer-friendly wicket, is exactly where the likes of James Pattinson, Mitchell Johnson and Shane Watson would have fancied their chances against India’s younger batsmen. Pattinson, in particular, has bowled his heart out and toiled hard during long spells thus far.

He’s impressed Indian fans with his pace and has been the pick of Australia’s quicks; their stable of fast bowlers now boasts only Peter Siddle and Mitchell Starc. The other big miss will be Matthew Wade, who is out through injury. The wicket-keeper scores quickly and has made a good impression as a classic counter-attacking number 7. Australia will have no choice but to go in with 3 spinners and Steve Smith may make his debut in the series – he’s played just 5 test matches and averages 28 with the bat and 73 with the ball.

Probable team: Cowan, Warner, Hughes, Clarke (c), Henriques, Haddin (wk), Smith, Maxwell, Lyon, Siddle, Starc.

It is perhaps the weakest test team Australia has put out in living memory and it will be up to Michael Clarke to anchor the innings with the impressive Henriques. David Warner has scored 59, 23, 6 and 26 so far – Australia will need the explosive opener to find form.

Who should open for India?

Rupak De Chowdhuri / Reuters

The Australian crisis has shifted the focus somewhat from another high profiling axing: Virender Sehwag’s spot at opener is up for grabs. It’s a two way battle between Shikhar Dhawan and Ajinkya Rahane, both yet to play test cricket for India. Dhawan, 28, has a first class average of 45 but Rahane, 24, averages a whopping 62. Both were fantastic in the last IPL and ended 3^rd and 4^th highest run scorers respectively. Rahane has played more ODIs and T20Is for India and this may be the best time for the composed Mumbai batsman to make his debut. He hit the most 4s in IPL 5 and his unbeaten 103 against the Royal Challengers Bangalore was a stand-out innings.

There is a certain calm about him that may just lend itself to test cricket and at 24, he’s at the right age for India to take a long term bet on. Runs against the Aussies will stand him in good stead for the tour of South Africa, against the best seam bowling attack in the world – it is unlikely Sehwag will open there either.

Wasim Jaffer is another player will also feel the door is open for him. The experienced right-hander has played 31 tests for India, scoring 5 hundreds and 11 half-centuries however at the age of 35, time is not on his side and the Indian management should look to give a promising youngster a good stint.

Is it over the class of 2009?

The 7^th of April 2009 saw India win the 3 match test series in New Zealand and celebrate deservedly. They had won in overcast, blustery, swinging conditions against a Kiwi side much stronger than today’s. Indians fan were beginning to get used to winning test matches away from home. The class of 2009 were ranked #1 in the world and had just come off a series win in England. It boasted Harbhajan Singh, then ranked the world’s #1 spinner, Zaheer Khan who could make the ball move both ways in any conditions and an opening pair of Gambhir and Sehwag who were quite simply devastating. In Ishant Sharma, Indian fans thought we had a genuine strike bowler for the next decade, who could win us matches like Dale Steyn does today.

The old boys in the middle order were enjoying swansongs and all was well for India’s test team.

The XI that won in New Zealand were: Gambhir, Sehwag, Dravid, Tendulkar, Laxman, Yuvraj Singh, Dhoni, Harbhajan Singh, Zaheer, Ishant Sharma, Munaf Patel.

Now that Virender Sehwag has been dropped, only a  few faces remain from that side and two of them (Harbhajan Singh and Sachin Tendulkar) will soon be on their way to retirement. It’s only a matter of time. Ishant Sharma has flattered to deceive and is only in the side because India’s other quicks are injured. MS Dhoni is the new generation’s only long-term link to the best Indian side in years. Since Sourav Ganguly retired, Indian cricket had to ask itself how it planned to transition.

Looking at players like Kohli, Pujara, Ashwin, Ojha and even Jadeja and Bhuvneshwar Kumar, it seems as if India has identified a bunch of athletic, competitive players who are able to spend long hours at the crease and in the field. If – and now more likely, when – India win this series, we may catch a glimpse of the core of India’s next great test match side. One can’t help but feel that a summer of county cricket would do all of them a world of good, but that ship it seems, has sailed. What they need to do is focus on winning in Mohali and Delhi thereafter. You can only beat what’s out in front of you.

Photo by: Reuters

There are talented athletes and there are winners. Across all sports, the will of winners to overcome adversity – whether it’s personal pain or professional injury – is constant. Jeev Milkha Singh, after a bright start to his golf career, faced a string of injury set-backs and subsequent poor performances between 2001-2004. It cost him his Japanese Tour card. Yet here is he now, winning events on European Tour.

“In the last 8-9 years, almost 20 Indians have won in Asia. We are now used to the grass, the greens and the conditions” says Joy Chakravarty, a senior golf journalist and close friend to Jeev, “Winning at links golf in Europe is a totally different animal. On Monday you can have wind speeds of 40mph and the next day will see a 20mph breeze from the opposite direction. You have to take into account the cold, wet conditions to truly understand how tough it is to win in Europe.”

So what changed? Well, his swing.

Singh says the 2012 Scottish Open win was a high point for him because he overcame the recurring ligament injuries that had held him back for most of his career. At the last hole, he wasn’t in great shape on his approach shot so he adapted. He pushed the ball further back in his stance, cocked back his usual unusual swing and punched a rasping low shot beneath the swirling wind that landed softly on the damp green.

What any golf fans who have watched Jeev Milkha Singh play will instantly tell you is how radically unconventional his swing is. When you see him tee-off on a big drive, he stands upright, swings with minimal hip rotation and brings his hands down from the inside. It doesn’t look like a ‘normal’ golf swing – especially when you compare it with someone like Ernie Els.

Look at how tall he stands and how little he bends his knees. When he takes his swing back, rather than pointing towards the target, the club head tilts away to the left. To put it bluntly, the club sits more \ than |. Even on the down swing, most players’ hips will have turned 45˚ towards the target from the square starting position, but Jeev’s hips haven’t turned much at all. You can see for yourself about 10 seconds into this video.

And now compare this to Rory McIlroy’s swing in slow motion (about 49 seconds into this video) – said to be the simplest, cleanest in the game today.

There’s a reason this 4 second video has 500,000 videos. Rory McIlroy hitting a driver is ear-candy just as much as it is eye-candy.

Fellow golfer Amritinder Singh has been Jeev’s friend since the age of 5 and is now an advisor who helps him with his swing for 16 weeks a year. “His swing before 1999 was totally different. The club positions were on line, parallel on top and pointing towards the target like you’re generally taught,” says Amritinder, “After his injury he got into bad habits with his swing to protect his wrist. For him to change totally and return to original swing was impossible. I helped him tailor a swing within the framework of what he was comfortable with.”

As Jeev’s game started improving, he began to trust more and more in his former room-mate’s advice. “You can take the club back whichever way you want but the club head should be square to the target and square at impact,” said the great Johnny Miller, who told Jeev that he had the squarest club head at impact he’d ever seen. As a youngster, his friends would drop golf balls anywhere near his planted feet and with the talent he had, he could clip them without readjusting his position. But a champion is more than talent.

Jeev Mikha Singh is not the only pro-golfer with an unconventional swing borne through injury. Jim Furyk was the 2010 PGA Tour Player of the year and has a swing plane even crazier than Jeev’s.

Look at how Furyk’s hands drop as he begins his down swing and just how far his hips have turned. Strange? Yes. Successful? Oh yes. Jim Furyk won the 2003 US Open.

After the injuries and the lows of the early 2000s, people had written off Jeev Milkha Singh but he responded as his father, Mikha Singh (perhaps India’s greatest runner) had taught him: simplify and persevere. While other pro’s have all manner of shots in their bag, Singh uses only his trusted fade shot, that curves gently from left to right. He took to yoga and stretching to preserve his body and cut down on hard weight training at the gym. He modeled his new style after his golfing hero Fred Couples: relaxed and laid back, come bogey or birdie. At the top level of golf, everyone has the talent; it’s a mental game.

Everyone plays football. Lionel Messi is playing something else right now. Every week he gives football fans something new to coo and fawn over. His close control while running at speed is something only his prodigiously gifted Barcelona team-mate, Andrés Iniesta, can better. The general public have begun to ask what football fans have been asking for while: is he the greatest footballer of all time?

Photo Credit : Paul Hanna / Reuters

A couple of weeks ago, Messi scored his 86th of the year, surpassing Gerd Müller’s record for the most goals scored for club and country in a single calendar year (the German ‘hitman‘, scored 85 goals in 60 games in 1978). The Argentinean ‘flea‘ has since scored 5 more to take his tally for the year to 91. A new record and a new benchmark for everyone else.

It’s not just the number of goals he’s scored, but the finesse and effortlessness with which he scores goals that takes your breath away. It’s reached a stage where if you give him the ball inside the box, he will hit the target and, chances are, the shot will curl into the far corner. He’s made those dribble-and-finish goals that used to make fans ooh and aah the done thing. Watching his 91 goals this past year are ten minutes well spent.

Messi is one of the most ubiquitously loved athletes on the planet because of his attitude, his commitment, his sportsmanship and his modesty. He has won over neutral fans like no other; even Real Madrid fans will grudging accept his quality in spite of their own talisman, Cristiano Ronaldo, providing Messi admirable competition season after season.

Speaking of Ronaldo brings me to the main point of this post.

Recently, there has been a slightly worrying trend. Fans have begun to castigate Ronaldo for what they perceive as his arrogance, poor attitude and cheating, and contrasting him—unfavourably—with Messi on those counts.

Myopia is a condition most of us football fans suffer from when it comes to assessing players. I love Messi as much as anyone, but it’s time to take off our rose-tinted glasses. One must be consistent in what one praises or condemns.

Lionel Messi is no angel. He is emotional like you and I, and he has the same flaws as any footballer. He takes after his legendary Argentinian spiritual forebear, Diego Maradona, in many ways. His jinking runs and sublime left-footed curlers are reminiscent of the controversial, stocky, curly-haired star of the 80s. But he also shares a more sinister trait: he has scored with his hand and claimed it. Against local rivals Espanyol in the 2006/07 season, he gave us his rendition of the ‘Hand of God.’

He was young, he was naive and it was a big game but he still cheated. And celebrated. It was bad sportsmanship but a year later he did something that is frowned upon even outside the football pitch: he spat at his opponent. The Málaga player, Duda, had his back turned and Messi fired off a different kind of shot.

That night, like in most games he plays, his opponents kicked him and kicked him and kicked him some more. The pitch was totally water-logged and his ankles were bruised from being battered unceremoniously by defenders. But he got up and got on with it like he usually does. Then his emotions got the better of him and he made a mistake; one I’m sure he regrets. Spitting at an opponent usually gets a lot of media attention but this incident was not really covered by the press as much as other infamous liquid projectiles. For instance, Messi’s former coach at Barcelona, Frank Rijkaard, is regularly reminded of this crime. Few teams have systematically tried to bring down Messi more than Jose Mourinho’s Real Madrid. You can begrudge Lionel some frustration after the scissor tackles and covert elbows he gets during El Clásico matches between Spain’s two most successful teams. You struggle, though, to forgive behaviour like this.

Is Messi the first player to smash the ball into spectators? No. In fact Rio Ferdinand infamously smashed a ball into his own fans at Old Trafford in frustration. In Messi’s case, the hostile fans had been booing, swearing and snarling at him all game. Players get angry. They make mistakes. Actions like these, from little Lionel, do not however fit the image of the perfect, angelic role model that is often projected on to him! We judge his goal-scoring by the standards by which we evaluate his contemporaries, so we must judge his faults by the same measure.

When it comes to one of modern football’s darker aspects, we must be clear: Messi has dived. He is not a ‘diver‘—whatever that means—but has collapsed theatrically to the turf on more than one occasion. He is famous for staying on his feet even after atrocious challenges rain down on him from talentless cloggers who want to scythe him down. On one level it’s understandable that once or twice, he wants to go to ground a little easy, when he sees a crunching tackle coming in that may or may not win the ball but which will definitely hurt him. The sad thing is that even football’s most praised ambassador is guilty of committing a crime for which lesser players are permanently branded villains.

Messi dives—but then most players these days do. It is more a reflection of the game today than of his integrity as a player. As sports fans, we suspend reality for a while and pour all our joy into our heroes without considering all the facts or facets of their character. The double-standards that are often thrown around when the inevitable comparisons between Lionel Messi and Cristiano Ronaldo are made are seldom examined. It is fair to prefer Messi as a player because of his footballing abilities, but it is totally unfair to disregard Ronaldo because of his footballing sins. When people say they “I hate Cristiano Ronaldo“, it’s always interesting to ask why. One often finds the reasons are shallow and allegations about the Portuguese goal machine’s character can be leveled at pretty much every footballer today, Messi included.

This curious ‘two-party system’ has led to the general feeling that as a football fan you have to choose between liking Messi or liking Ronaldo, an absurd and tiring fallacy. Every week one scores a brilliant goal only for the other to better it. Ronaldo broke the record for most goals scored in the Spanish league in a season and Messi smashed it. There was a time where the two of them were arguably on par with each other. Now however, Messi has reached a new level of performance and Ronaldo, Iniesta and indeed the rest of the world, have been left in his wake. One should enjoy Messi for his football and Ronaldo for his. One should be able to enjoy their vastly different styles and applaud the new heights to which Messi, Ronaldo and Iniesta have raised the sport. As fans we mustn’t lose ourselves in Messi-mania. He is human.

Messi is what people want football to be: skill that triumphs over brawn, modesty that smothers arrogance, finesse that trumps power, attack that beats defence. Perhaps that is why all of us turn a blind eye to the messiah’s sins.

PS. Just today, Sky Sports released a wonderful 22 minute documentary on Messi’s footballing upbringing in Barcelona and the incredible year he’s had. Enjoy!