Bat and ball / Paul Moon / 14 August 2008 /

Pablo Luna - Moonlighting for Betfair. Pablo looks at cricketers not prepared to put in the hard graft on the fitness front, the most useless batsmen out there and Panesar's inability to bat or field.

When I was growing up playing sports the fat kid always got picked last and was either put behind the wickets or in goal. Today they have Game Boy or Wii. Village cricket still maintains the tradition.

With the advent of fitness coaches, dieticians, ODI and Twenty20 you would think the laggards would be exposed but there are those who fly under the radar. Our previous captain and media friendly Michael Vaughan was a coaster but miraculously he was never outed. Has anyone seen him sprint?

Biggest villain in world cricket is Chris Martin of New Zealand who shows a blatant disregard to his batting and refuses to improve this discipline. I do not understand how laziness of this magnitude is tolerated in a team game.

Talking of laziness, the gold medal award goes to Inzamam ul-Haq. He is the worst runner between wickets that ever played Test cricket. His initial footwork is fast but he has the dubious distinction of being run-out 40 times, the second highest number in ODIs (Marvan Atapattu - 41 times). The amount of singles and twos turned down would add to hundreds if not thousands of runs in his career but somehow he was beyond reproach. He should have had his butt kicked.

My team Somerset has a chump in Ian Blackwell. He has spent his whole career treating fitness with disdain, representing under-achieving on a big scale. He claimed a place in the 2003 England World Cup squad but his unwillingness to adhere to England squad's strict fitness regime meant he went nowhere! A career wasted!

Other players in this country who refuse to get fully fit include Robert Key. At one stage he weighed over 16 stone until Alec Stewart told him to sort himself out. He claims he is fit now but he is not. While he is his comfy roast beef zone he should not be considered for England. He is another talented coaster.

Lethargic Steve Harmison (huge talent) has spent most of his career doing as little as possible. He needs to bowl lots of overs. It was good seeing him apply himself at the Oval and I wonder if the penny has dropped? He has used the false pretext of injury to exempt him from training hard and because of it gets injured. What a paradox.

Cricket is made up of three disciplines, bowling, batting and fielding. You have every right to expect players to excel in at least one and be proficient in the other two. These guys are on great wages and they've got to show a professional attitude even when not playing. Unwillingness to do the hard work necessary to improve the weakest part of your game means you are a cheat and somebody else has to carry your excess baggage.

Everybody loves cult hero and comic Monty Panesar and I confess to laughing when watching him sprawl when doing some basic fielding. From England's point of view it is an indictment of the coaching set up and something that should have been eliminated from his game. To say he is unsynchronised is not an answer.

If it was just his fielding that would be one thing but his batting has gone from bad to worse. He does not understand weight transference, shows no courage and has no plan. He does not even know how to back up at the other end. He still retains all his schoolboy traits. How has this been allowed to happen over the eight years of him playing top class cricket?

There's more. Although still decent, his development has stalled. The fact that he cannot bowl an arm ball, let alone a doosra, is astonishing and no explanation has been forthcoming. He cannot grasp the value of variation and this remains the most mystifying question in world cricket today. Some say he badly needs a mentor and perhaps they are right, he needs something!

Of all the international teams playing cricket Australia does not tolerate indolent cricketers. I am trying to think of a Chris Martin type character that has played for them in recent years? Perhaps this is one reason why they remain champions? Latest ICC Champions Trophy odds: Australia [3.85] Sri Lanka [5] India [6.6] South Africa [6.6] England [9.8] Pakistan [11] New Zealand [12] and West Indies [16].

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