After a 3-0 drubbing in the ODI series, Afghanistan had many things going in their favour in the first T20I. First of all, it was the format they prefer the most. Secondly, their captain Rashid Khan won an important toss and made the right decision to bowl. Then their bowlers restricted West Indies to a chaseable total of 164.
During the seventh over of the chase, Fabian Allen hobbled off the field due to what looked like a knee injury, leaving West Indies a bowler short. There was a decent amount of dew as well to make things difficult for West Indies.
Despite all this, the result didn't go in Afghanistan's favour. The West Indies seamers showed great skill with the wet ball, bowling cross-seam and using all sorts of slower balls to make the run-scoring difficult. The fact that Afghanistan didn't have a great start didn't help their cause either. With the series on the line, they need to regroup quickly.
Under Kieron Pollard, West Indies look a more determined outfit, ready to fight out for victories. Despite losing Allen and Sheldon Cottrell bowling just two overs, they still managed to bowl 20 overs. That speaks of the depth they have in the bowling department.
Apart from Evin Lewis and Pollard, their batsmen struggled to score freely, but it may not be a concern for now as they look to wrap up another series win.
Form guide
Afghanistan LLLWW (last five completed matches, most recent first)
West Indies WLLLL
In the spotlight
Rashid Khan might not have had a great year in ODIs, having taken 15 wickets at 50.60, but he is still not easy to get away in the shortest format. After going for 15 off his first over in the opening game of the series, he bounced back to concede only 19 from his next three while dismissing a set Shimron Hetmyer. Afghanistan, though, would want their captain to pick up more wickets.
Shimron Hetmyer's struggles with the bat continued. He might have the six-hitting ability but the left-hand batsman needs to work on his strike-rotation skill. During the first T20I, he was stuck on 8 off 13 balls at one stage before perishing for a run-a-ball 21. If he fails to adapt quickly, he might find it difficult to get into the XI when Nicholas Pooran returns from his ban.
Team news
There wasn't much wrong with the Afghanistan selection for the first match. What they need is better execution. Although there is a case for replacing Hazratullah Zazai with Javed Ahmadi, it won't be a surprise if they go with an unchanged XI.
Afghanistan XI (probable): 1 Hazratullah Zazai, 2 Rahmanullah Gurbaz (wk), 3 Ibrahim Zadran, 4 Asghar Afghan, 5 Najibullah Zadran, 6 Mohammad Nabi, 7 Gulbadin Naib, 8 Rashid Khan (capt), 9 Fareed Malik, 10 Naveen-ul-Haq, 11 Mujeeb Ur Rahman
In case Allen fails to recover in time for the second T20I, West Indies could replace him with another left-arm spinner Khary Pierre.
All three T20Is are to be played on the same dark-soil surface. With dew expected later in the evening, making the ball come on to the bat better and causing problems to bowlers, it should be an obvious choice to bowl first. The temperature in Lucknow is supposed to be hovering around the 22-degree Celsius mark.
During the first T20I, Walsh became the ninth player to represent two teams in T20Is. He played eight T20Is for USA earlier this year.
Since scoring an unbeaten 162 against Ireland, Zazai has managed just 146 runs at a strike rate of 120.66 in his next six innings.
Quotes
"A lot of dew [in the first T20I] but you have to practice for it. Practice bowling with a wet ball, that's what I usually do when I am at home because you may have to do so in these sort of conditions. So it's nothing new. No excuses, you just have to do what your captain asks and win games for West Indies." Kesrick Williams on how he tackles dew while bowling
Lockie Ferguson says that international cricket has had an "awesome year with fast bowlers", and that he hopes to "bring a little bit of anxiety" to England and Australia's batsmen after being named in New Zealand's squads for their upcoming Tests against those opponents.
Ferguson is in line for a Test debut, having exclusively played white-ball cricket in his international career to date, but has an impressive first-class record, with 153 wickets at an average of just 24.30 in his 42 games in the format.
"[I've] been very much focused on white-ball [cricket[ for the last year," he admitted. "I think I played three first-class games - a couple against India A - last summer, and then obviously not a lot over the winter we just had.
"I've played a lot of red-ball cricket for Auckland and some 'A' games as well, so I understand what it takes to be a fast bowler at that level, and you can't always go at 100 percent like you can in one-day and T20 - you have to pick and choose when to bowl quick spells, and that's all part of the learning process.
"[Test cricket] is definitely going to be a new challenge. Obviously like in other formats, it's a step up from domestic level, and fortunately I've played quite a lot of these players before at that level, so it's not completely new. But the red ball is a whole new different beast, and it's the longer form both mentally and physically, so it's going to be a challenge."
Ferguson faces a tough challenge to break into New Zealand's side. Tim Southee, Trent Boult and Neil Wagner have formed an impressive seam-bowling trio over the past five years, and since November 2017, they have played as a triumvirate in all but one of New Zealand's home Tests.
But head coach Gary Stead has hinted at rotation over the next five Tests, given New Zealand's punishing upcoming schedule, meaning that there should be opportunities for Ferguson and Matt Henry at some stage.
"We've got three internationally-recognised, world-class bowlers who have been doing an exceptional job for us, and put us [at] No. 2 in the Test rankings," Ferguson said. "That's fantastic, and it's awesome to be in and around, and learning off those guys as well - it's just nice to rub shoulders with them.
"It's going to be a tough team to break into, but there's obviously a lot of Test cricket coming up."
Ferguson was the second leading wicket-taker at the World Cup this year, and said that international cricket has had a great year as far as fast bowling is concerned.
"I think international cricket has had quite an awesome year with fast bowlers," he said. "I know at the World Cup, earlier on perhaps they were talking about spinners being the real threat, and it was exciting for me as part of the fast-bowling fraternity to see fast bowlers at the top of [the wicket-taking] list.
"I don't think it changes at all for Test cricket: fast bowlers are going to cause problems and create a threat for batters just from pure pace. At the same time, you have to be accurate, and I guess personally that's one thing I've worked on for a long time - bowling quick, but making sure that I'm putting it where I want to put it."
Ferguson admitted that if he does play, his role - as New Zealand's fastest bowler - will involve trying "to bring a little bit of anxiety" to England's batsmen, but added that raw pace was part and parcel of playing at the top level.
"England obviously have some quick bowlers too with Jofra Archer in their lineup, and it does the same thing to both teams," he said. "That's probably the most exciting part about Test cricket - there's no limit on overs, so you know you're probably going to face [opposing quicks] at some point in time."
The first Test against England will be played at Mount Maunganui, which will be the inaugural Test at the ground, and Ferguson suggested that the wicket should be good for batting, though may offer some variable bounce.
"I haven't played there in a few years," he said, "[but] my flat-mate Henry Cooper is an ND [Northern Districts] boy, and said that it's not a bad batting track but it does go up and down a little bit. It's hard to tell at this stage - every wicket you play on in New Zealand can be different, so I'm sure we'll be turning up and assessing the conditions when we're faced with them."
Pakistanis 7 for 386 (Shafiq 101*, Masood 76, Babar 63, Bhatti 56*, Pope 5-100) v Cricket Australia XI
Asad Shafiq continued his terrific form ahead of the first Test in Brisbane with his second successive century against an inexperienced Cricket Australia XI attack in the last two-day tour game at the WACA.
On a day where four Pakistan players passed 50 against an attack with hardly any first-class experience, exciting South Australia legspinner Lloyd Pope showed his immense promise by dismissing five of Pakistan's top seven batsmen.
Pakistan were able to give all their batsmen on the tour, bar skipper Azhar Ali, a chance. Imam-ul-Haq and Abid Ali opened with Shan Masood sliding to No. 3. While Abid was dismissed for a duck, Imam made 44 and Masood backed up his half-century against Australia A on Wednesday with 76. Pope then zipped through the middle order as Haris Sohail's miserable tour continued while Mohammad Rizwan failed to convert his start and was dismissed for 22.
But Shafiq and Babar picked up where they left off against Australia A, putting together another splendid stand of 117. Babar made 63 in just 66 balls while Shafiq reached three figures later.
Kashif Bhatti made the most of the easy batting conditions late in the day and cruised to 56 not out from just 47 balls with the help of nine fours and a six.
Ben Stokes' reinstatement as England vice-captain ahead of this summer's Ashes came after he pleaded directly to Tom Harrison, the ECB chief executive, according to details in his new autobiography.
Stokes, who was stripped of the role in the wake of the incident outside a Bristol nightclub two years ago, missed England's tour of Australia in 2017-18 as he awaited police charges following his arrest.
However, going into this summer's Ashes, and with his stock in the side restored following a series of eye-catching performances, both in the field and in training, Stokes decided he had "nothing to lose" in sending a text message to the ECB chief asking to be made Joe Root's deputy once again.
"It means a lot to me to be Joe's second-hand man so to get it taken away was obviously disappointing," Stokes wrote in his book, On Fire.
"I felt I'd been in the team for a good period and playing some good cricket, so I thought to myself 'this is probably the best time to put myself out there and ask someone the question that I probably wouldn't naturally do'.
"It's one of the biggest series a cricketer gets to play in so I thought 'I have nothing to lose here'. I gave it a go and thankfully it worked. On the day I got told I was vice-captain, it was a really good day."
Harrison's willingness to trust Stokes in a position of responsibility again perhaps stems from his comments soon after the Bristol incident, when he declared his desire to see England's star player "rehabilitated in the field".
The restored responsibility clearly had the desired effect for Stokes, whose century in the third Test at Headingley was hailed as one of the greatest Test innings of all time after England chased a stiff target of 359 to pull off a remarkable one-wicket win.
In spite of his desire for greater responsibility within the team, Stokes is adamant that he wants to be Root's right-hand man, rather than a captaincy rival - as he showed in the wake of England's series-squaring win at The Oval when he threw his weight squarely behind Root's leadership while accepting his Man of the Series award.
"It [the England captaincy] is not an aspiration for me, currently," Stokes said in a subsequent interview with The Times "It's not something that I could ever say no to and it would be a great honour to be asked to do it, but right now it's not an aspiration.
"Joe Root is England captain and there is no one else better in the country to do the job. You could never say no to it, though. I hope it doesn't happen and I hope Joe doesn't lose it. I've got a very close relationship with Joe on and off the field and I could see the strain he was under."
The man who made way for Stokes as vice-captain was Jos Buttler, who also performs the same role to Eoin Morgan in the white-ball squad. However, he did not seem to be put out by the demotion when quizzed on the subject earlier this year.
"When I did it last summer … they said to me in time they'd like Ben to do the role again when he can, so I was very aware that was the situation and natural thing to happen," he said. "I'm delighted for Ben to be reinstated as vice-captain and it doesn't really change a lot for me: I'm always willing to offer advice and I'm there if Joe wants to talk to me, as are a lot of other players in the team as well who aren't vice-captain. It doesn't change a lot."
Arthur has not signed a contract with Sri Lanka Cricket so far, but board officials have expressed confidence that Arthur will take up the role before Sri Lanka's forthcoming Test tour of Pakistan, which begins on December 11. SLC has been searching for a new coach since the end of the World Cup, and had approached several high-profile names, including former England batting coach Mark Ramprakash. But they now believe Arthur is the man to take the team forward.
"We are having discussions with Mickey," SLC CEO Ashley de Silva said. "We think we will be able to reach an agreement."
Arthur has coached South Africa and Australia in the past, but it was his results with Pakistan between 2016 and 2019 that really impressed SLC, de Silva said.
"He had won the 2017 Champions Trophy with Pakistan, and had also taken Pakistan to the No. 1 spot in T20s. He's a well-known coach and he's been around for a while," he said.
Arthur was Pakistan's coach until the end of the World Cup, and had expressed dismay at being let go from that role after the tournament this year. During his time with Pakistan, he is understood to have struck up a good working relationship with Steve Rixon, who is also the current fielding coach in Sri Lanka's ranks.
Hathurusingha, who as of now still has a contract with SLC that takes him up to December 2020, is still believed to be drawing a board salary, however. SLC decided to suspend Hathurusingha from his role in August this year, but the contract is understood to be so strong, that they have had trouble sacking him without having to pay a substantial severance package.
SLC charged that Hathurusingha had several major shortcomings during his tenure, including failing to get along with some senior players, and had even gone as far as to schedule an inquiry, which Hathurusingha was asked to attend. Despite all this, the legal standoff continues.
If Arthur comes aboard as Sri Lanka coach he will be the 11th coach of the men's team, including interim appointments, since 2011. Both previous coaches - Graeme Ford and Hathurusingha - were put under pressure to end their tenures long before their contracts expired.
British Athletics League for men and the UK Women’s League merge to form joint league for 2020 summer season
British club athletics has entered a new era with the creation of the National Athletics League for both men and women athletes, writes Tom Pollak.
Two Scottish clubs – the women’s only Edinburgh AC and the men’s only Glasgow City AC – have also decided to merge, with a new name and kit and they will be among the 16 teams in the Premiership division of the new league next summer.
Croydon Harriers have decided to withdraw from the league, however, with their place likely to be taken by Yate & District.
A meeting in Birmingham earlier this month which agreed to the new league lasted around two hours and set up an interim committee consisting of representatives of the two former leagues to make decisions about the new league until the half-yearly general meeting in February which is expected to elect a new set of officers.
Top of the agenda for members of the interim committee will be to agree fixtures for the 40 clubs in the three “round robin” divisions.
Dates for the matches are the weekends of May 1-2, June 13-14 and July 4-5. There will be six separate matches across the two days and the final round, across the first weekend in August, will involve all 40 National League clubs.
Despite the reluctance of some clubs for the joint league, acting secretary Simon Fennell said: “Everyone is keen to make it work.”
Before the inaugural meeting of the National Athletics League separate meetings were held in different rooms of the same hotel to wind up the men’s British Athletics League and UK Women’s League and transfer their assets to the new National League. Voting was 23-7 to close down the BAL while there was just one vote against ending the UKWL.
Lyn Orbell, chair of the UKWAL, said: “The UKWAL are pleased to be forming a joint National League with the BAL. The new National Athletics League brings the senior clubs into line with the rest of the Leagues in the country allowing the younger athletes who have competed in mixed teams for a few years to aspire to becoming part of their new NAL.”
Dean Hardman, chair of BAL, added: “It has been clear for some time now that athletes and, increasingly, clubs themselves wanted a senior league competition that sees men and women compete alongside each other as teammates. While we are immensely proud of what the BAL and UKWAL have provided over the last five decades, we look forward with optimism to an even better future.”
The UKWL was formed in 1975 whereas the BAL was created in 1969 and has been celebrating its 50th anniversary this year. Opponents of the merger argue it will result in a lowering of standards for Britain’s top clubs.
As England aim for back-to-back wins over France on Saturday at Exeter's Sandy Park, the hosts of the second of three autumn internationals hope it will be a showcase for their own ambitions for a top women's side.
Exeter have enterprising plans to join the Premier 15s - England's elite domestic women's league - next season, and Saturday's game is a chance to market the club to potential new players.
"It's a great showpiece for us to be able to show players that this is what we can have, this is what we want to build for in the future, this is what we want and you could be playing out there next season," Amy Garnett, one of Exeter's newly appointed women's coaches, told BBC Sport.
Exeter seems to have an appetite for all rugby right now - the men's team have reached the last four Premiership finals and have added Scotland star Stuart Hogg to their squad as they aim for success at home and in Europe.
Sandy Park hosted the Red Roses' 55-0 Six Nations win over Italy in March in front of 10,545 fans - a record for a non-World Cup women's England home game. The club hopes that is a strong signal that there will be a good market for a women's side playing under the Chiefs banner.
Exeter are spending £500,000 to set the team up and anticipate a further outlay of between £1m and £1.5m if the side is awarded a place in the new structure.
"Behind the scenes we're just trying to build the best product we can here, and by building that best product that's going to bring the players in and attract them," added Garnett.
"We can get all the strength and conditioning in place, the analysis, the nutrition, skills sessions, that full-time programme that we're building towards, and hopefully that will attract the players.
"With the England game they get to see that and what other opportunities are available to them."
But Garnett and Exeter's ambitions are not simply just to have a women's team. They want to emulate the pathway on the men's side which has seen players including Henry Slade, Jack Nowell and Luke Cowan-Dickie progress from youngsters in the Chiefs set-up to World Cup finalists with England.
"We've got the rugby academy at Exeter College, and we've got probably one of the best programmes in the country at Exeter University," noted the former England hooker.
"I coach at the college, I coach at the university and we're looking to use that as a pathway going through; that's really important, it's what the Chiefs is all about.
"You see players like Jack Nowell and Luke Cowan-Dickie come through that system. That's exactly what we want to do, to bring that local product through and get them to pull on a Chiefs shirt and ideally pull on an international shirt."
Video assistant refereeing (VAR) was never a bulletproof, consensus innovation to begin with. Some opposed it on philosophical grounds, some because they did not fully understand it (and still don't) and others because they thought it would be unworkable. Still, by the time the Premier League introduced VAR for this season, it was already a working reality in 15 top-tier leagues around the world. Public opinion had shifted somewhat, mostly after its success at the 2018 World Cup in Russia and the latter stages of the Champions League last season. Of course, there would be teething problems, but it was time to bring England's top flight into step with the rest of the world, and the game would benefit in the long run.
Why are we talking about VAR, and not the football, after a thrilling top-of-the-table clash between Liverpool and Manchester City?
The answer, fundamentally, lies in the first sentence of this piece -- it was implemented in a way that lay somewhere between ill-advised and ham-fisted -- and a range of cultural and extraneous factors only exacerbated the situation.
The problems with implementation
The Premier League, through something called the Professional Game Match Officials Limited (PGMOL, the body that trains and supplies match officials and runs VAR) and its managing director, Mike Riley, opted to do things differently from the rest of the world. They decided there would be no on-field reviews (OFRs: when the referee consults a pitchside monitor on the advice of the VAR) and that there would be a "high bar" for VAR to intervene in the first place.
There was logic to it: They were invested in preserving the flow of the game. The "high bar" would not only ensure that the most egregious errors see VAR intervene, thereby saving time, but also eliminate the need for OFRs. The thinking was that if the errors were clear and obvious, surely the referee would agree and not need to look at the monitor.
This was a crucial mistake. Not just because it is a wrong approach, as we'll soon discover, but because it had never been done this way. Not in the 10,000 competitive games around the globe in which VAR had been used, and not in the past two seasons of testing in England. In other words, the authorities were flying blind to the possible pitfalls and fans, players and managers who had experienced VAR in other competitions -- even if only from a distance -- were unfamiliar with the approach. What is the "high bar" all about, for example? Why did VAR intervene in some cases and not in others? Moreover, despite efforts at communication, the lack of real-time information to spectators both at home and in grounds only added to the confusion.
In the first nine weeks of the season, VAR predominantly got involved in objective decisions such as offside (more on that later), as if it were fearful of contradicting any officiating decision. Then, after pressure and criticism from media and clubs, it went the other way, only to somewhat stabilise last week. Excluding offside or encroachment decisions, which are objective, there have been 16 VAR overturns this season and half of them came in Week 10 or Week 11 of the campaign.
The reality is that subjective decisions are just that: They can be interpreted different ways. And that is why not having the on-pitch referee take another look, either to reconfirm and perhaps reassure, is simply silly. It is not a case of "re-refereeing" or, to use a legal analogy, "double jeopardy." Rather, it is reopening a case because you have additional evidence provided by cameras.
The other major criticism concerns offside, which has led to frame rates, Roberto Firmino's armpit and John Lundstram's big toe entering the public consciousness. Here, you have some sympathy for PGMOL. The Laws of the Game are what they are -- Riley did not write them -- and have been such for the past 15 years: Any part of the body with which you can score a goal can make you offside. People's inability to grasp this, coupled with their inability to understand that footballers are three-dimensional objects and therefore lines drawn on their two-dimensional screens will not be straight, have wreaked havoc.
That said, VAR has done itself no favours with the speed of offside decisions, which have been slower than they need to be. Case in point: Lundstram's offside, which negated a Sheffield United goal against Tottenham. It took more than three minutes to come to a decision. That has much to do with dexterity and experience in calibrating the imaging equipment to reflect the three dimensions.
In time, you hope that aspect of the system will improve. As one former match official told me: "VAR is like a Ferrari. You need to know how to drive it to get the best out of it. Not everybody has the experience or ability to do it and certainly not straight away."
England's exceptionalism a factor?
In the United Kingdom, Parliament is opened by someone known as the Lady or Gentleman Usher of the Black Rod (currently it's a lady and yes, she carries a big, black stick), who first has the door to the room slammed in her face and then bangs on it three times to open the session. Chuck in the monarchy, driving on the opposite side of the road and the fact that, until recently, most pubs had to close at 11 o'clock (and many still choose to do so) and, yeah, this is a place that values its past.
It's not that the country is necessarily slow to change; in fact, it has been on the cutting edge of innovation in many sectors. It's just that when change is forced -- or it feels as if it's being forced -- from the outside, the powers that be tend to stiffen up. But when change comes from within, it's readily embraced. Football, one of the country's greatest exports, is a mirror of this.
From having names and numbers on shirts to slick production values for televised games, from analytics to all-seater grounds, from attracting and encouraging foreign ownership to marketing the game globally, the Premier League has been innovative. Yet this is also the country where, until the mid-1990s, you were allowed only two substitutes on the bench in the FA Cup, where squad rotation was seen as a weird foreign influence and where the 4-4-2 formation was so entrenched they even named a magazine after it -- fans also booed Sir Alex Ferguson for abandoning it.
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Hislop: VAR has become a 'monstrosity' in Premier League
After a day of more VAR controversy, Shaka Hislop says the way it's been implemented in England is "not working."
The simple fact of the matter is that VAR -- and the new interpretations of the handball rule (more of which later) -- did not originate in the Sceptred Isle and as such, it was always going to be viewed with a degree of wariness by a big chunk of the public. Not everybody was as extreme as former Queens Park Rangers boss Ian Holloway -- "I think that's people telling us what we should do with our game ... you cannot have someone telling us how to do our own game" -- but it fit the narrative of outside institutions meddling in domestic matters. Never mind the fact that half the votes on the International Football Association Board, which instituted VAR and is responsible for the Laws of the Game and their interpretation, come from the four United Kingdom associations. Or that the technical director of IFAB, David Elleray, isn't just English but uber-English, who spent most of his refereeing career moonlighting in various roles at the Harrow School, which counts Sir Winston Churchill as its most prominent alumnus (Jawaharlal Nehru, too, if you're keeping score at home).
The term "island mentality" gets thrown around way too much and often unfairly. But there is more than a touch of it in English football's attitude toward VAR.
Recent rule changes didn't help
In an effort to standardize officiating around the world, IFAB decided to tweak a number of laws and their interpretations last year, with the changes coming into effect July 1: just in time for the introduction of VAR to the Premier League. That would prove to be a double whammy as the changes became conflated with VAR itself in a vicious cycle which left some of the commentariat dazed and confused.
The most significant, at least as far as English football was concerned, were the guidelines on handballs. Different countries had long used different, de facto standards in determining a deliberate handball. Spain, for example, was notoriously strict compared to England, which meant that La Liga officials awarded penalties for handling that Premier League officials would have laughed off. The new guidelines still leave room for discretion (i.e., "common sense") but are stricter than to what English clubs were accustomed.
Strictly speaking, this is not a VAR issue, but it has inevitably been conflated, not least because the review system gets used to adjudicate handballs. For rank-and-file fans and the punditocracy, it sometimes felt as too much change in one go, with critics of the tweaks to the handball rule directing their anger at VAR and turning it into collateral damage.
Media and fan perception is a problem
The 2018 World Cup was the first with VAR, and by all accounts, it was a rip-roaring success. But while it helped build support in England, showing how the system can work, it proved to be a double-edged sword because it set unattainable standards. Folks compared the version seen in Russia with what they witness every week in the Premier League and realize the latter is a comparative dud.
It's not hard to see why. The World Cup featured the best referees, hand-picked from around the world; the Premier League is, for all intents and purposes, limited to a smaller English and Welsh pool of officials. VAR is an aid to match officials; if they are good, they will need less help and flaws will not be as noticeable. The other obvious point is that a World Cup encompasses 64 games, and we've had nearly four times as many in the Premier League already. It is harder to be consistently good over time, and screw-ups stand out far more than the many games in which VAR gets used without incident.
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Ian Darke's plan to fix VAR in the Premier League
Ian Darke can't understand why Premier League referees haven't used the pitch-side monitors once this season.
The Premier League might be the most customer-facing football competition, at least in terms of reacting to what customers want (I mean fans, but here they are primarily customers). This can be good in some ways, but it also means fretting continuously about how certain media and pundits will react. Certain tropes, like "being robbed of the spontaneous joy of celebration" -- this is foolish: Fans and players can celebrate twice, once when it goes in and once when ref approves it -- and "match-going fans confused as to what's going on" -- doubly foolish: If a goal has been scored or a foul has been committed in the box, there is a good chance VAR is reviewing it ... unless you've been living under a rock, you ought to know this -- take on outsized importance. Throw in the fact that many ex-pros turned pundits are not well versed in VAR (or the handball rule) and you get instant magnification of conventional wisdom: VAR was good at the World Cup, but it's bad now.
You can add two other factors. One is the power vacuum at the top of the Premier League since Richard Scudamore's departure as executive chairman. A canny, veteran operative, Scudamore knew how to keep clubs and media singing from the same hymn sheet for two decades. His replacement, Richard Masters, got the job only in October after months as the interim boss while the organization tried (and failed) to hire a more high-profile replacement. Not surprisingly, he's found it challenging to keep his ducks in a row.
The other issue is the proliferation of former match officials in the media, many of whom either worked for or with Riley. Referees are a peculiar bunch whose competitive careers peak in their mid-40s. Several have turned into professional snipers since retiring, whether to draw attention because they are now on the outside or to settle old scores.
The simplest way to fix VAR in England
This genie isn't going back in the bottle. It's one thing to philosophize about a post-VAR Premier League that looks like the pre-VAR era, but the next time a team is relegated because of a blown call or a cup won thanks to a wantonly offside goal, the hounds of hell will be unleashed.
There are immediate changes that would help relieve this. A summary of the conversations between referee and VAR released in real time might quash some of the speculation that sometimes makes the man in the video booth look blind or incompetent. Replays in grounds help, too, and because not every club has big screens, some creative thinking might help: How about allowing those on the stadium Wi-Fi to see the VAR decision with a little explainer?
Beyond that, the easiest decision is also the most logical: Bring the Premier League's version of VAR in line with the rest of the world. First and foremost, that means having OFRs so at the very least the referee -- the person who represents authority -- can "own" decisions, whether it means correcting himself or overruling VAR.
The rest will come in time. Fans and pundits will be educated. Referees' dialogue with VARs will become more efficient and to the point. Because officiating and VAR are two related, but distinct, skill sets, in a few years we might have a wholly different class of VARs: guys who might not have the personality or fitness to be top-flight referees but are eagle-eyed and dexterous enough to handle the replay angles and imaging software.
Right now, to go back to the Ferrari analogy, the Premier League feels like Ferris Bueller borrowing Cameron's dad's vintage Ferrari. With a bit of patience and some serious work, they might yet learn to drive it properly, but only if they have the humility to learn from the rest of the world.
Queensland 183 and 306 (Steketee 52, Peirson 51*, Pattinson 4-66) beat Victoria 9 for 300 dec and 130 (Swepson 3-17) by 59 runs
Queensland legspinner Mitchell Swepson bowled the Bulls to a dramatic last-gasp victory after a calamitous collapse from Victoria on the final day at the MCG.
The home side needed 190 from 75 overs for their first win of the season but were bowled out for 130 with just seven balls left in the day.
Victoria's last pair of Chris Tremain and Jon Holland had to survive 59 deliveries in the fading light after the chase was aborted in the last session. Tremain did an outstanding job facing 82 balls for 18 not out while Holland absorbed 27 balls without scoring. But Swepson, who had already pinned Sam Harper and Peter Siddle lbw earlier in the day, slid a fuller ball through the defence of Holland and umpire Shawn Craig raised his finger to raucous celebration from Queensland.
The umpires had played a significant part in the fourth innings. Victoria started their chase well reaching 41 without loss but lost two wickets in two overs. The second, Eamonn Vines, was given out caught down the leg side when the ball came off his armpit with his gloves raised high above his head.
Siddle was unimpressed with his lbw decision suggesting he had hit it, but Queensland were mystified shortly after when Tremain was claimed at second slip off Blake Edwards. The visitors were adamant it came straight off the outside edge but the umpire was certain it came off the back pad.
Queensland's quicks applied pressure all day with all four claiming important breakthroughs at various stages before Swepson finished the job.
The bowlers also made major contributions with the bat in the third innings to set up the win. Mark Steketee made his just second first-class half-century and Jimmy Peirson made an excellent unbeaten 51 to extend the lead to 189. James Pattinson bowled with pace early on the final day to claim two wickets to finish with four for the innings.
But Victoria remain winless while Queensland vault to second on the table.
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