ICC World Cup

And it seems KP hasn't given up hope of a recall, as two of his betes noires - Cook and  Clarke -head for the exit.

Pietersen has tweeted tonight: <Great news that @eoin16 is new England 1-day captain. Top player, leader and bloke. Hope I get to play for him.>

And the Guardian's excellent Barney Ronay on the pathetic, pusilanimous nature of the buffoons who run English cricket and the disaster called Downton  in particular:

"The whole affair is a case of incoherent management – loyalty mixed with blindness to the facts – by the ECB and the head coaching triumvirate of the past year and half: Andy Flower, Ashley Giles and Peter Moores. Really there are two ways of looking at the so far disastrous tenure of Paul Downton. Either Downton inherited an impossible situation and has done what he can with it. Or he inherited a difficult situation and has made a series of peculiar, reactive decisions ever since. Either way, if your interest is purely in England’s fortunes at the 50-over World Cup, it was patently a huge error not to move Cook on last February, around the time Pietersen was sacked for “failing to support” him adequately in Australia."

Just posting this as a reference guide for watchers of wally's "boor fest". These are the finally announced squads of all competing nations. None of them, so far as I know, are pseudonyms for Kevin "give me a game" Pietersen.

AFGHANISTAN
Afsar Zazai (wk), Aftab Alam, Asghar Stanekzai, Dawlat Zadran, Gulbadin Naib, Hamid Hassan, Javed Ahmadi, Merwais Ashraf, Mohammad Nabi (capt), Najibullah Zadran, Nasir Jamal, Nawroz Mangal, Samiullah Shinwari, Shapoor Zadran, Usman Ghani.

AUSTRALIA
George Bailey, Michael Clarke (capt), Patrick Cummins, Xavier Doherty, James Faulkner, Aaron Finch, Brad Haddin (wk), Josh Hazlewood, Mitchell Johnson, Mitchell Marsh, Glenn Maxwell, Steve Smith, Mitchell Starc, David Warner, Shane Watson.

BANGLADESH
Al-Amin Hossain, Anamul Haque, Arafat Sunny, Mahmudullah, Mashrafe Mortaza (capt), Mominul Haque, Mushfiqur Rahim (wk), Nasir Hossain, Rubel Hossain, Sabbir Rahman, Shakib Al Hasan, Soumya Sarkar, Taijul Islam, Tamim Iqbal, Taskin Ahmed.

ENGLAND
Moeen Ali, James Anderson, Gary Ballance, Ian Bell, Ravi Bopara, Stuart Broad, Jos Buttler (wk), Steven Finn, Alex Hales, Chris Jordan, Eoin Morgan (capt), Joe Root, James Taylor, James Tredwell, Chris Woakes.

INDIA
Ravichandran Ashwin, Stuart Binny, Shikhar Dhawan, MS Dhoni (capt & wk), Ravindra Jadeja, Virat Kohli, Bhuvneshwar Kumar, Akshar Patel, Ajinkya Rahane, Suresh Raina, Ambati Rayudu, Mohammed Shami, Ishant Sharma, Rohit Sharma, Umesh Yadav.

IRELAND
Andrew Balbirnie, Peter Chase, Alex Cusack, George Dockrell, Ed Joyce, Andrew McBrine, John Mooney, Tim Murtagh, Kevin O'Brien, Niall O'Brien (wk), William Porterfield (capt), Paul Stirling, Stuart Thompson, Gary Wilson (wk), Craig Young.

NEW ZEALAND
Brendon McCullum (captain), Corey Anderson, Trent Boult, Grant Elliott, Martin Guptill, Tom Latham, Mitchell McClenaghan, Nathan McCullum, Kyle Mills, Adam Milne, Luke Ronchi (wkt), Tim Southee, Ross Taylor, Daniel Vettori, Kane Williamson.

PAKISTAN
Ahmed Shehzad, Ehsan Adil, Haris Sohail, Junaid Khan, Misbah-ul-Haq (capt), Mohammad Hafeez, Mohammad Irfan, Sarfraz Ahmed (wk), Shahid Afridi, Sohaib Maqsood, Sohail Khan, Umar Akmal, Wahab Riaz, Yasir Shah, Younus Khan.

SCOTLAND
Richie Berrington, Kyle Coetzer (vice-capt), Freddie Coleman, Matthew Cross (wk), Josh Davey, Alasdair Evans, Hamish Gardiner, Majid Haq, Michael Leask, Matt Machan, Calum MacLeod, Preston Mommsen (capt), Safyaan Sharif, Rob Taylor, Iain Wardlaw.

SOUTH AFRICA
Kyle Abbott, Hashim Amla, Farhaan Behardien, Quinton de Kock (wk), AB de Villiers (capt & wk), JP Duminy, Faf du Plessis, David Miller, Morne Morkel, Wayne Parnell, Aaron Phangiso, Vernon Philander, Rilee Rossouw, Dale Steyn, Imran Tahir

SRI LANKA
Dinesh Chandimal (wk), Tillakaratne Dilshan, Rangana Herath, Mahela Jayawardene, Dimuth Karunaratne, Nuwan Kulasekara, Suranga Lakmal, Lasith Malinga (subject to fitness), Angelo Mathews (capt), Jeevan Mendis, Thisara Perera, Dhammika Prasad, Kumar Sangakkara (wk), Sachithra Senanayake, Lahiru Thirimanne.

UNITED ARAB EMIRATES
Shahzad, Khurram Khan, Krishna Karate, Manjula Guruge, Mohammed Tauqir (capt), Muhammad Naveed, Nasir Aziz, Roshan Mustafa, Saqlain Haider, Shaiman Anwar, Swapnil Patil.

WEST INDIES
Sulieman Benn, Darren Bravo, Jonathan Carter, Sheldon Cottrell, Chris Gayle, Jason Holder (capt), Sunil Narine, Denesh Ramdin (wk), Kemar Roach, Andre Russell, Darren Sammy, Marlon Samuels, Lendl Simmons, Dwayne Smith, Jerome Taylor.

ZIMBABWE
Regis Chakabva (wk), Tendai Chatara, Chamu Chibhabha, Elton Chigumbura (capt), Craig Ervine, Tafadzwa Kamungozi, Hamilton Masakadza, Stuart Matsikenyeri, Solomon Mire, Tawanda Mupariwa, Tinashe Panyangara, Sikandar Raza, Brendan Taylor (wk), Prosper Utseya, Sean Williams.

Sorry to disappopint you, fb, but the headline  'ICC plans World Cup clampdown' is rather misleading.

Here's what Richardson actually said: "Over the last three or four months you have seen 12 code of conduct charges laid against people for disrespectful behaviour on the field. For the World Cup it will be no different."

So as far as the ICC  is concerned they clamped down months ago (although you can be excused if you didn't notice)  and the world cup will be no different from what we've seen on the field all autumn/winter.

To be fair, the one thing  on which the ICC  genuinely  seems to have "clamped down" is slow over rates, with  (ex) Captain Cook getting a one match ban and now George Bailey facing the same. For me, slow over rates are a far more serious issue as it directly affects the enjoyment of the spectator in a way that the comical sledging of Warner and Kohli and the argy bargy handbags between Anderson and Jadeja does not.

The opening paragraph of the article looks pretty clear to me:

"Cricket authorities are actively debating whether it is time for more stringent rulings about on-field confrontations, amid concerns among some players that the current ICC system is providing scant deterrent to those who visibly "cross the line" in trying to press an advantage for their team." 

As soon as a game's organising authority strikes up a banner for its "involvement" in an issue and proclaims that it is considering regulating some aspect of behaviour, as opposed to practice process, then two things become clear: the "initiative" will be well-intentioned but misapplied and will only make things worse; and the normal structure of on-field behaviour management has broken down and needs to be re-established by the people responsible for it in the first place. That is, by the players, their captains and the umpires.

In this case, as always, a great deal of mischief has been done by the media in fostering a story with predictable plot-lines, one about ever-growing aggression and linking it with any other issues that seem to indicate anarchic or disruptive attittudes. At the same time the media plays up the other side of the story by championing "plucky individualism" and "players who break the mould", thus having it both ways by building up the heroic nature of a rebellious character as some sort of individualist, then pulling them down quickly by saying that their individualism has gone too far. Its an old story, but it works every time.

But in this case something has to happen quickly to defuse the ICC from instituting some silly nonsense such as red and yellow cards, or creating sin-bins or any other idea beloved to the chair-polishers and committee men. Cricket needs to start by being honest with itself and each team captain, and his coach, have to look at the way they approach every game and say "Is this reasonable? Do we actually lose some concetration and make ourselves more vulnerable when we overreact?"

Bowlers stamp and swear and glower and mutter; its in their nature as the underdogs in a world increasingly dominated by the almighty bat. Some batsmen like to chatter and some of them play to the gallery. That too is in their nature, and the cult of showbiz personality wilfully encourages the mundane to aspire to the idosyncrasies of the genius individualist.

Fielders and wicketkeepers have the least excuse and the biggest mouths. They have a boring existence and seem to need to justify their presence, the hours of comparative inactivity followed by that one blinding instant of make or break, and then back to ther recoiling of the spring. And yet they can encourage their own side and contribute to the crowd's enjoyment with cries of "through to the tail now" as second-wicket down comes to the crease.

Balance and perspective are hard things to reach in the middle of a tensely-fought sporting contest, where performance depends on harnessing adrenaline and using the surge to overcome. But that is what marks out the good captain, who senses that his bowlers are losing their length and effectiveness because they are getting too furious with the batsmen who sledges back, who can see that his star wicket-keeper is more concerned with coming out with snide quips than getting into position for a stumping or a take, and who can see that his field is losing its shape because too many close fielders want a part of the action up round the bat.

Umpires have lost a lot of credibility over the will-they/won't they implementation of DRS, the relinquishment of their judgment in determining a throw, and the political implications of their management of the ball since the days of Darrell Hair. All of these things have contributed to the umpire voluntarily abdicating from the role of policeman/wise uncle, and perhaps they are afraid to reimpose their authority. But that is needed too.

Lastly, the coaches should consider the longer term aspects of the ways they encourage their teams to behave and how that may affect their audience. If the ICC want to do something useful it should look at reinforcing these messages to captains, umpires and coaches, reminding them that they have the responsibility themselves and telling them to use it for the better enjoyment of the game.