The clock is ticking – less than 10 days to go till the start of the ashes

Adnrew Straus vs Ricky Ponting…

It’s too tough to call, but what we do know is there will be no Michael Vaughan, a chance of England playing 2 spinners, and it all begins on 8th July at 10am at Cardiff.

I’ll keep it short. Read it in the paper and it looks like a hilariously funny blog with the talk about John “Bhooka Naan” Buchanan coach of the Kolkata Knight Riders among others.
Nobody seems to know who the source of the stories is but all will be revealed sooner or later. In the meantime here’s the link:

fakeiplplayer.blogspot.com
and here is a link to the guardian’s article on the blog

Yesterday, the first test England vs West Indies ended with a dramatic result in Sabina Park as Jerome Taylor and Sulieman Benn routed England for just 51. Both ended with 8 wickets in the match, but it was Taylor who finished with Man of the Match for his 5 wickets in the second innings and devastating figures of:
9 – 4 – 11- 5

England leave Kingston in tatters, shell-shocked, with new captain Andrew Strauss, and no official coach.
Changes will be in order for the 2nd Test which starts on Friday, but all is not well in the England camp.

Meanwhile things are rosy in Chris Gayle’s West Indian dressing room:

Following the resignation of both Peter Moores (and Kevin Pieterson) this month I have resisted the urge to post anything until the dust settled a little bit more.
I was very curious about his appointment nearly 2 years ago and posted an entry on Peter Moores

However, when I heard that Peter Moores was also going to be paid off to compensate for his contract not being completed I started thinking about the bigger picture – how much money has been spent on England sports coaches over the last say 10 years?

Sven-Göran Eriksson
Football manager Jan 2001 – Jan 2006. Salary £4.5 million – total £22.5 million
Steve Mclaren
Football manager 1st August 2006 – 22nd November 2007. Salary £3 million plus £5 million break clause payoff – total £8 million+
Andy Robinson
Head Rugby Coach October 2004 – November 2006. Salary £330,000 – total £700,000
Duncan Fletcher
Head Cricket Coach 2000-2007. Salary £350,000 plus 1 year break clause payoff – total £2.8 million
Peter Moores
Head Cricket Coach April 2007- Jan 2009. Salary £250,000 plus 1 year break clause payoff – total £710,000

This totals nearly £35 million though it is clear to see that the football coaches are earning a vast amount more money than their cricket and rugby counterparts. We also see that sacking a coach can be very costly if a payoff is involved

What links my last post to this post is that they are both about what is happening now and what happened 22 years ago.
This year Venice has had the worst floods since 1986
Tomorrow is the final day of a test match that reminds me of one of the most famous tests in 1986

So, the 1st test between India and England is at the MA Chidambaram Stadium
Chepauk, Chennai, India and sees the match finely balanced with India being set 387 to win and approx 120 overs to do it in. With 90 overs remaining they have 256 more runs to score and 9 wickets in hand. If they achieve it, it will be the highest total on this ground scored to win a test match – the current highest for a side batting last and winning is 155 in 2001.
An interesting match in itself, however the match I want to look at happened in 1986, though again we have a similarity, because like the 2001 match it was Australia vs India.
Back then, the city of Chennai was known as Madras, and in September was to become the stage of one of the greatest games of cricket.
Part of the reason for it’s greatness is it is the 2nd of only two international tied tests. Note this is not a drawn match, as tied refers to both sides scoring identical scores and losing all 20 wickets over the course of 5 days.
Both sides were full of greats:
David Boon, Dean Jones, Allan Border, Steve Waugh, Sunil Gavaskar, Mohinder Armanath, Mohammad Azharuddin, Ravi Shastri, Kapil Dev, Craig McDermott, the list goes on.

The scorecard is available here – on it’s own does not tell the full story, but is essential to follow.

The Wisden Almanack article on the match details some of the finer points which I will attempt to summarise (though you need to create an account to read it).

Winning the toss, Australia batted first and scored 574 for 7 declared in the first innings over 3 days thanks to 122 by David Boon, 210 by Dean Jones (playing in only his 3rd test match) and 106 by captain Allan Border. Jones had to have treatment for exhaustion, nausea and cramps after his 8 hour innings which was the highest by an Australian in india. The humid weather conditions made the innings even more impressive – reports state that it was 40 degC in the middle and 80% humidity. This was Australia’s highest total in india, setting a good platform. The pitch favoured the spinners, with Yadav, Maninder Singh and Shastri bowling over 135 overs between them (of the 170 overs delivered). Yadav and Shastri took 5 of the 7 wickets to fall.

In reply, India lost wickets and were struggling at 65-3, 142-4, and 206-5.
The follow on target was 375 and looked a long way off, but thanks to a century from captail Kapil Dev they surpassed it and got to 397 before being dismissed. Australian off spinner Greg Matthews took his first 5 wicket haul in a test match. Their other spinner Ray Bright took 2 wickets also.

Australia had a lead of 177 with less than 2 days to go there was not much time to force a result. Ending day 4 on 170/5 again the spinners had taken the wickets, this time Shastri and Maninder Singh shared the 5 between them.

Border decided to gamble the following morning setting India 348 to win in 87 overs

The scoring rate had been high throughout the game
Aus 1st inns: 3.36
Ind 1st inns: 4.42
Aus 2nd inns 3.46

348 in 87 required 4 runs per over exactly and had been done by India before when they scored 406 to beat the West Indies in 1977. In that match they did have 147 overs to do it. In addition, Sunil Gavaskar and Mohinder Armanath were part of that winning team. So, coupled with playing at home, hopes would’ve been high especially since the popularity of one day cricket batsmen had learnt how to score at over 4 runs per over on a regular basis.

There were no hundreds this time, but Gavaskar lead the way with a anchoring innings of 90
Armanath hit a similarly paced 51 as was Azharuddin’s 42
Going to tea at 190 for 2,
CS Pandit upped the scoring with a run a ball 39
Shastri hit 48 off 40 balls but lost Cheetan Sharma for 23 with 18 needed off the last 5 overs

The damage was again done by the spinners Matthews and Bright

India got to 344 for 9 with 8 balls remaining.
Shastri was in with the last man Maninder Singh
Going into the final over with Shastri on strike…
He hit a 2 and a single leaving the scores tied with Maninder on strike and 4 balls remaining

At 5.18 pm after defending the first ball was defended Matthews had Maninder Singh adjudged lbw to collect his 2nd 5 wicket haul and 10 wickets in the match. The match was tied and the 30,000 supporters there would talk about it for the rest of their lives.

Dean Jones (210) and Kapil Dev (119) were awarded the man of the match awards though Matthew’s profile suggests he shared much of the plaudits for the “match-winning” figures:
68.1 overs, 10 maidens 10 for 249

Matthews never performed bowled anywhere near as well in a test again with those two 5 wicket hauls remaining the only ones in his 33 test match career. He finished averaging 48 with the ball and 41 with the bat. His profile also says that while every other player sweated profusely during the match, he wore a wooly jumper throughout

It’s morning at Headingly on Friday 18th July and the question on who will make way for the fit & in form Andrew Flintoff is the question on everyone’s mind. This is soon answered but immediately becomes old news as Geoff Miller, national selector, delivered a a crurve ball (or should i say googly). This is because Ryan Sidebottom was forced to pull out because of a side strain.

His replacement was named as Darren Pattinson… photo below:

At which point everyone apart from those who have been following Nottinghamshire’s season this year was baffled, as Pattinson has only played 11 matches at first class level (6 of which have been in the UK).
The Times is asking Who is Darren Pattinson?

In summary, he was born in Grimsby, moved to Australia, played club cricket for Dandenong (in Melbourne) and made his debut for Victoria in November 2006. Recommended by a fellow australian playing county cricket in the UK, he signed a 2 year contract with Notts starting this season. He has taken 29 wickets costing an average of 20.86 each so far. In the time before making his debut in Australia he found work as a roof tiler.

He was included almost certainly unnoticed in England’s 30 man Champions Trophy squad of players

The question remains though why such an inexperienced player has been picked at international level. England captain Michael Vaughan said he’d only seen him play once and that was in a Twenty 20 match.

The last time I can remember anything remotely like this happening is when Fidel Edwards was picked for the 2nd test at Kingston vs Sri Lanka in 2003 having played only 1 first class match. The Jamaican Observer was asking “Fidel Who? Not Castro?”
They had to eat their words because Edwards took 5-36 in the first innings. He was slightly overshadowed by Corey Collymore who took 7-57 in the second inning which earned him the man of the match as West Indies won the match and 2 match series 1-0.

However, the differences between Edwards and Pattinson are numerous
Edwards was 21 when he was selected – Pattinson is 29
Edwards was selected by the West Indies captain Brian Lara after he faced him in the nets between the 1st & 2nd tests
No one questioned whether Edwards would play for the West Indies if he put in performances – Pattinson is only confirmed to be in the UK for 2 years.
Edwards has a unique action and regularly bowls at 90 mph. Pattinson has a good but ordinary action and bowls at 80-85 mph.

I’m still baffled and with England losing the 2nd test yesterday questions will be asked as to why someone who has played so few matches was chosen over someone from the academy (youth) or those who have been performing for their county and has international experience.

The Oval Cricket Ground has had it’s fair share of controversy the last few years:

In 2005, England reclaimed the ashes in unusual circumstances when they drew the test match – the batsmen accepted the light on the final day such that they could not return to the field. The match was ended with the umpires ceremoniously removing the bails. If it was not to be a decisive moment of a series like the ashes it would not have warranted such a ceremony.

In 2006, Daryl Hair made the headlines in Pakistan’s tour of England where he accused the team of ball tampering. The outcome was the Pakistan team refusing to return to the pitch and for the first time in the history of the game, the match was defaulted to England. In a similar way, the bails were removed.

2007 was fairly uneventful, but 2008 gave us another story…

England vs New Zealand in the 4th ODi out of 5 last wednesday (25th June)
Chasing under 250, New Zealand are only just keeping up with the run rate as last remaining batsmen Grant Elliot drops the ball from Ryan Sidebottom by his feet. Sidebottom goes for the ball and there’s a nasty collision. Elliot falls, Bell picks up the ball, throws it to Pieteerson by the stumps who runs Elliot out.
Elliot hobbles off the pitch and is given out, and a whole uproar breaks out in the NZ dressing room. England lose the match in the end in a last ball cliff hanger. Collingwood apologises afterwards and the media lets loose.
At this point i will simply say make up your own mind:

link to the youtube video

To me I think the laws of the game are very clear with 2 exceptions
Apart from them, they say Elliot is out and Collingwood was right

The exceptions?
Firstly, the spirit of cricket – this is the prequel to the laws of the game, and are cricket’s way of saying you should show sportsmanship. Fair enough I say, but I still say tough luck in this instance.
Secondly, Law 23.3 & 42.5
Law 23.3 relates to when the ball is dead. Sub section (b) ii) says that when a player or umpire is injured the umpire should call dead ball.
Again, this is where if the umpire felt that the collision should’ve halted play he should’ve called dead ball. Instead he opted for the soft option and asked collingwood if he was sure he wanted to uphold the appeal. I’m sorry, but that doesn’t cut the mustard and isn’t the way to umpire.
Next, Law 42.5 which relates to obstruction of the batsman. This is the only law which could possibly save Elliot from dismissal. The laws are formatted such that it is up to the batsman to get from one end of the pitch to the other unless he is deliberately obstructed. Clearly this was not the case in this instance, and i would go so far as to say that both batsmen tried to get in the way of either the ball or the bowler or both. Why else would all 3 be running on the same side of the wicket. Elliot should’ve run down the left hand side since his partner was running down the other. But wait, that would’ve meant he couldn’t get in between the ball and the stumps if he did that! But that’s ok, and apparently in keeping with the spirit of the game
You’d never guess that i was a bowler when I played the game – and of course one who begrudges how it seems to be a batsman’s game (Twenty 20, fielding restrictions, limited short balls, powerplays etc etc.)

Enough of my cynical talking, but I will leave you with one last clip to get you thinking from December 2006 between Sri Lanka and New Zealand. The number 11 batsman Mutthiah Muralitharan and Kumar Sangakarra completed a single which got Sangakarra to 100. Murali walks out of his crease to congratulate Sangakarra. Unwittingly, the ball is still on it’s way back and Brendon McCullum runs Murali out. Spirit of Cricket New Zealand?

Murali Run Out

Make up your own mind, but I say while the spirit of cricket lives there should still be some degree of common sense and responsibility.

Match: England vs Sri Lanka 1st of 3 Test matches, day 2
Location: Asgiriya Stadium, Kandy, Sri Lanka

A nation will have to wait until the morning for the record to be broken, but on day 2, Mutthiah Muralidharan took 4 English wickets to finish the day with 708 career test wickets equalling the world record that he briefly held in 2004 when he overtook Courtney Walsh’s then record of 519

Shane Warne had a purple patch where he overtook Murali and extended his lead before finally retiring in January 2007

Fast forward to now where Murali has now equalled Shane Warne’s record and with England resuming tomorrow at 186/6 it’s a case of when rather than if Murali will get to 709 and beyond.

What he will achieve in the long run is anyone’s guess. Shane Warne thought Murali would take 1000 before the end of his career, but that is for the future

Apologies for the pun, but I was watching Starship Troopers the other day and you’ll see the link further down

The reason I haven’t been posting much is because of the Cricket World Cup 2007
England have been knocked out and we are into the final week of the competition
The four semi finalists are:
Australia, Sri Lanka, New Zealand and South Africa

And with the end of any teams progression we get the resignations of captains and coaches. The following have resigned/retired as at the end of the competition:
The Indian coach, Greg Chappell
Pakistan’s captain Inzamam-ul-Haq
West Indies’ captain Brian Lara
Bangladesh’s coach Dav Whatmore
Ireland’s coach Adrian Birrell
Australia’s coach John Buchannan
and finally England’s coach Duncan Fletcher

There may be more to follow before the end of the competition (and I may have missed some of the others)

India have appointed Ravi Shastri as their new coach
Pakistan have announced Shoaib Malik as their new captain
Ireland’s new coach is former West Indian allrounder Phil Simmons
West Indies are playing their final match today with Brian Lara, so yet to announce their new Captain

England have announced Peter Moores as their new coach initially as “caretaker coach”, though he may take on the job in the long run
The rumour that Tom Moody, currently coaching Sri Lanka (who has married an english woman and coached england county side worcestershire) may want to take up the challenge is unconfirmed but likely to be one of the reasons Peter Moores is a caretaker for the moment
Dav Whatmore has expressed an interest in the India job
Greg Chappell is apparently still going to work with Indian cricket but with the academies
The other coach around is John Wright from New Zealand, who used to coach India. It’s believed that he will look to coach his home country once John Bracewell steps down.
The West Indies coach, Bennet King, may yet decide to move on
And of course with Bob Woolmer’s death, Pakistan have yet to announce a successor.

Teams looking for new coaches will likely consider Some of those available in addition to those currently in the academies.

So, it’s all change at the top, and I’d like to go back to the title of this piece, Peter Moores – who is he?

He beat Tom Moody to the job of Coach of the National Academy in Loughborough in 2005
Before that he coached the England A team for their 2000-01 winter tour
At the same time he was coaching Sussex County Cricket club in the summer from 1998 to 2003
He played most of his cricket at Sussex (captain in 1997), but also played for Worcestershire and had a season at Orange Free State in South Africa
As a player he was a wicket-keeper batsmen who scored over 7000 first class runs at an average a shade over 24
Highest score of 185: one of his 7 hundreds (he also score 31 fifties)
502 catches and 44 stumpings
In one day cricket he scored over 2500 at 17.7 including 8 fifties. 225 catches and 32 stumpings.
As a coach he comes with a fantastic reputation of getting the best out of players. However, he has limited international experience, but has been responsible for the rise of some of the more recent English players such as Monty Panesar, Jamie Dalrymple, Ed Joyce, Sajid Mahmood and Stuart Broad

There are two reasons as I see it for this interim coach arrangement
1) The England Cricket Board (ECB) is keen to see who else is available yet at the same time ensuring they have a coach for this summer’s test series. Moores is already employed by the ECB so he could return to the Academy if they didn’t decide to appoint him in the long run
2) The Schofield Review of England’s disastrous Ashes tour is due in May and there could be a change in structure and personnel in the ECB

It now appears that the ECB have appointed Moores as permanent coach, but this decision is now being criticised based on how quickly the appointment was made after Fletcher’s resignation

It has been over a week since Bob Woolmer, the coach of the Pakistan cricket team was declared dead after being found unconscious in his hotel room on 18th March in Kingston, Jamaica during the ICC Cricket World Cup 2007.

Initially, his death was thought to be from natural causes – he was 58 years old (which is not old these days but not young), always slightly portly, suffering from a medical condition and had type II diabetes.
However, when the post mortem proved inconclusive, the investigation stepped up a level, and his death was considered “suspicious” by the police.
This proved to be the correct line of thought, as on the same day police confirmed Bob Woolmer had been murdered

It is quite scary, because the first person I phoned was my friend Sham, and one of the first things I suggested was the possibility of underhand dealings. This was dismissed by my dad as stirring things, but it looks like my suspicions were valid.
Cricket was again making International headlines and for the wrong reasons

The History

Robert Andrew Woolmer was born in Kanpur, Uttar Pradesh, India on 14th May 1948. He moved to England as a child, and played county cricket for Kent from 1968 to 1984 scoring over 15,000 runs and taking 420 wickets at first class level. He played 19 test matches and 6 One Day Internationals for England. He saved England against the might of Lillee and Thompson’s pace bowling scoring 149 (one of his 3 test centuries), battling for 8 1/2 hours.
He was one of Wisden’s Five Cricketers of the Year in 1976.
However, like many others of that time, he chose Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket over England to earn his living in 1977, thus shortening his playing career. He did return in 1981 but that winter chose to go on the rebel tour to South Africa (who were banned from international cricket following because of Apartheid).

Woolmer settled in South Africa, married and fathered 2 children. He continued to be involved in sport, having already done coaching at a school in Kent as a physical education teacher (aged 22), after becoming a qualified coach in 1968.
He coached a coloured Hockey team and the Avendale Cricket Club in Athlone, Cape Town before returning to England in 1987 to coach County Cricket teams. The most recent being his stint at Warwickshire between 1991 and 1994.
He was an innovative coach, choosing to use computers and video footage where it had not been used before. He encouraged the use of the sweep and reverse sweep shots. Fitness and fielding were vital to one day cricket, and it was in these fields where he made Warwickshire a very tough team to beat even though only their 1 overseas player was regularly playing international cricket. They won the Natwest Trophy in 1993 and 3 of the 4 available trophies in 1994.

From this success he was offered the position of coach of the South African national cricket team, following their return to international cricket in 1991 with the abolition of apartheid & Nelson Mandela’s new ANC government.
Woolmer hastened their return, and within 2 years they were competing with the very best teams in the world. This was impressive, since they had been banned from international cricket for 21 years.
The team that toured England in 1994 with Woolmer as coach made big names of Allan Donald, Shaun Pollock, Jonathan ‘Jonty’ Rhodes, Wessel ‘Hansie’ Cronje, and Gary Kirsten. South Africa soon overtook all but Australia in the international team ranking to become 2nd in the world.
Woolmer remained coach until 1999, and was hotly tipped to take over as coach of England to replace David Lloyd. But he declined for various reasons, and instead took up a position as Head of Performance at the ICC where he promoted associate member nations to improve the standard of cricket in countries such as Ireland, Kenya, Nepal, Scotland, USA, Bermuda, Bangladesh, UAE to name but a few.
His contract had not finished when in 2004 he was approached by the Pakistan Cricket board to coach the national team amidst a down in form and problematic team selection. Woolmer relished the challenge, and the ICC agreed to release him from their contract to pursue this.
He had moderate success in what is well known to be the most difficult side to coach.
On 17th March 2007 Pakistan made a shock exit from the Cricket World Cup losing to Ireland in the group stage. On the same day, India lost to Bangladesh putting their World Cup future in doubt.
Woolmer said in the press conference “It’s only a game” and that he would sleep on his coaching future as his contract renewal would be discussed at the end of the world cup. Being knocked out so early it would be unlikely for it to be renewed, and sources also claimed he had decided to call it quits after the competition.
The next morning, at 10:45am in room 374 of the Pegasus hotel, Bob Woolmer was found unconscious, he was taken to the nearby University Hospital and shortly pronounced dead.

The cricket world was in shock, and the pakistan team were struck a double blow when 3 days later it would be confirmed that their coach was murdered, and his death was caused by asphyxiation following strangulation. There was also suspicion that he was drugged/poisoned.
Players, Administrators, friends and fans across the world have paid tribute, and many matches since the news have been played with black armbands worn in respect.
Allan Donald, who probably knew Woolmer best, called for the tournament to be called off. But this opinion has not been supported by others
The Bob Woolmer Academy is due to be built in Nelspruit, South Africa despite his death.

However, this all begs the question, who would want to murder Bob Woolmer and why? Which leads to…

…The Controversies

I’ve glossed over these in the history, as it is probably better to group them together in their own section.
1. Match Fixing

The first was probably the match fixing scandal in 2000
It rocked South African and International cricket when the South African captain, Hansie Cronje confessed in April 2000 that he had accepted money to either fix matches and/or ensure bowlers gave away a certain number of runs or that batsmen scored less than a certain amount. The news coming from Cronje, a devout christian and follower of the What Would Jesus Do (WWJD) movement was a shock the world over. Working with the authorities, many players were banned, including Cronje himself. The bookmakers are thought to largely remain at large around the world. As a consequence of the scandal, the ICC set up an anti corruption unit to ensure it never happens again and that match results are not compromised.
Several matches not involving South Africa are largely thought to have been fixed, often involving India and Pakistan, where there is a lot of money to be made from gambling. Some of the bookmakers involved with Cronje were from India and Pakistan.
The group B match between Pakistan and Bangladesh in the 1999 World Cup in England is thought to have been fixed for Bangladesh to win. Pakistan had qualified for the next stage regardless of the result. With Bangladesh winning, their promotion to playing international test cricket was speeded up significantly.
Was the match between Pakistan and Ireland a fix? Did Bob Woolmer find out about it when he shouldn’t have known?

2. Drug Taking

In November 2006, just before the ICC Champions Trophy, the Pakistan Team management, allegedly led by Bob Woolmer enforced a mandatory drugs test on all their players. Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammed Asif, the two key Opening bowlers tested positive for Nandrolone, an Anabolic Steroid banned by the World Anti Doping Agency (WADA) and the International Olympic Committee (IOC). Following the tests they were pulled from the Champions Trophy squads and hauled over for disciplining. Shoaib was banned for 2 years and Asif for one year… but they both contested the ban claiming they had taken it accidentally in herbel supplements from a Hakim and that they were unaware of the substances they were taking. The appeal was heard, and a month later, the bans were removed and both players were available for selection.
The true story is probably that Bob Woolmer and his coaching staff in addition to the players were well aware of what they were taking. The ICC competitions have much more stringent rules than other tournaments. Rather than having any of their important players caught in a random drugs test during the competition, the management took it on themselves to test everyone and deal without involving the ICC. Once the players were disciplined, they could then appeal and the punishment could be reduced or even reversed.
This did not go down well with the authorities, and the ICC and WADA will probably review their policies to prevent teams and cricket boards from doing this in the future.

3. Ball Tampering… and Darryl Hair

The Summer before the drugs was the debacle in England at the end of the 4th Test
For the first time in the history of test cricket a match was awarded because a side refused to take the field. I was at the ground that day at the Oval.
Daryl Hair, a controversial umpire for which I could write an entire blog entry on what he’s done in his career to stir & muddy the waters, accused the pakistan team of tampering with the ball. Ball tampering is banned under the laws of cricket under law 42 subsection 3.
The Pakistan captain, Inzamam-ul-Haq was horrified, so too was Bob Woolmer. When the team were due to resume after the break for tea, the team staged a sit in.
Daryl hair played the scenario by the book and went out to the middle with the England batsmen, waited 10 minutes, removed the bails and led the batsmen off. In doing this, he was calling the game off and awarding it to England.
15 minutes later, the entire Pakistan team came out, but this time the Umpires refused to play.
The whole scenario was a debacle, of which didn’t improve when Daryl hair trying to blackmail the ICC to be silenced.
There was a hearing which concluded there was no ball tampering, the pakistan captain was disciplined and Daryl Hair has been removed from the elite panel of umpires, and will more than likely not umpire an international game again.

4. The Book
The final controversy was not in the news until after Woolmer died, because the day after his death, the 600 page manuscript of the book he had been writing with co-author and sports scientist, Tim Noakes. In an article in the guardian and on the radio, Noakes has repeatedly stated that the word “match fixing” is not mentioned in the manuscript and there is nothing that would ‘blow the lid’ and could provoke someone to murder Bob Woolmer.
Noakes said:

There is absolutely no truth in that story, besides, how could anyone know what’s in the book, nobody in Pakistan could possibly have seen it. The only secret Bob was revealing in the book was how to coach cricketers properly