Andy is the Coach

You don't average 50 in Tests playing for a team such as Zimbabwe without a core of steel and you don't make a public stand against a murderous dictator ... without a bit of ticker, a broader view of the world - and a one-way plane ticket out. -- Mike Atherton

English cricket is finally in good hands. Andy Flower has just been announced as Team Director. Another Ashes win might be a little far-fetched, since England has been in bit of a shambles; but if Flower stays put, I wouldn't discount an Ashes in Australia itself in two years' time. What even Fletcher couldn't do, Andy will do.

First of firsts, Andy must do what he wants. He's a shy man, a man committed to perfection and expecting silently the same of others, but here he has to be assertive; he has to look widely, not even Ireland but even as far as South Africa and Namibia to recruit talent for England. Since the country cricket is only throwing up fat under-performing players, at the best only capable of playing T20, and Flintoff is aging, Strauss the captain is aging, and even the bowling doesn't have anybody real good and young. England basically need right now three things: (1) KP learns self-discipline and importance of putting team first without losing his arrogant flamboyance; (2) a good wicketkeeper-batsman (which I believe Foster can be) and a good wrist spinner; (3) Cook matures and learns patience and stamina, even after the half-centuries. It's Cook England will have to build around in the coming years; after seven years, he will be the veteran and star. Andy must recognise that and Cook, already once his Essex team-mate, should now blossom.

What Andy brings to the table needs no mention: what the players should not forget that here is the opportunity to really learn. KP might be a good adventurous player of spin, but he still is not a good player; he has the chance of going further up as a batsman with his coach now being the best ever player of spin. It's a supercharged time for England, a busy 11 weeks looming: recriminations are already ready to pop out, but most are waiting with bated breath for mistakes to creep out, for failures to slink in; for most people, expending their precious breath is more important than really thinking what's been ailing with English cricket since almost a quarter of a century. I like this England set-up: the quiet and mentally strong and perfectionist Andy Flower with a methodical and sweet captain Andy Strauss with one of the best batsmen the mercurial KP and the finest allrounder England ever produced Andrew Flintoff; throw in bravehearts Paul Collingwood and James Anderson, and you've got a good, promising stew!

White Suits: The Nexus

If the Tuskegee runners could be CDC, then there's nothing left to surprise in the US-led medical system: except that now and then we do get the glimpse of a horrible truth, a sick megaprofit industry lying behind, through films like The Constant Gardener or The Verdict, or through such reports: http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=a-medical-madoff-anesthestesiologist-faked-data

The problems are manifold, and they start with the unholy nexus between practitioners, pharma companies and researchers. From the ground level, a medical rep knows who is prescribing what and in that proportions the reward is given. In India, it could be cartels of wine, a holiday at Bangkok with 'girls', and so on; the same holiday-makers are respectable wise-looking men in white suits, who you think as God. Problems go deeper in the Western world: because of a show of concern for accountability. Hospitals could be church-run ones, or important components of medical colleges: even if something wrong is found out, the argument is why to lose years of credibility, why let the trust get eroded over 'one small thing'? After all, they easily persuade themselves, by remaining quiet we're only doing a larger good: and the perpetrator is just given a silent rap on the knuckles. One is caught, the other thousands are not.

The problem with Scott Reuben kind of fraud is that a token measure like that of Johns Hopkins (http://www.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=20601202&sid=aIvIUq6pvKS8&refer=healthcare) won't really help: Reuben hasn't taken any gift, he was just on 'research grants', paid directly to him. Payment through institution would simply mean a more rampant corruption, nothing else. What would help is that medical institutions stop the race for new breakthroughs, newer and more effective and more fast-working medicines, and stop keep getting in news and publications: there is not that much research needed.

Almost everyone does a PhD now. Research on a myriad of irrelevant topics. Of course then they come up with strange conclusions: with a motley group of 20, they even conclude that "bondage sex is good for you" or "your heart", whatever. Newspapers of a certain bias and tabloids who think everything is on a frivolous par in this world pounce upon such news items: and along with the WAG who bared it all, the pop singer who again has a paedophilia hearing, the sportstar who hit a goal yesterday, and the social worker who brought out a rally in support of some displaced community and an actress who turned vegetarian, we also have a researcher who finally brought on the benefits of some kinky activity. What kind of research are we paying funds for? What kind of education system is it that teaches men to publish, regardless of whether there's trash inside or gold, better if trash?

A problem lies also outside of the immediate medical framework: the publishing world. Publishers want anything: anything which libraries lap up, and which is written by someone cited a lot, and with a very good 'About the Author' to write on the blurb. As long as that need is getting served, they will take anything. To fool you into believing that they are conscientious guardians of information, they will set up an elaborate peer review system. A blind process. They will find out through contacts or just a Google search (horrible!) some names who seem to have worked or know something about that particular stream, and contact those with offers of reviewing. Very few reviewers do their job: for others, it's simply different things. From as bad as maybe greedy even about the honorarium payment, to reading greedily the manuscripts so that they can 'learn' of latest advances and pinch later for their own dream manuscripts, to simply feeling good about themselves without thinking are they really qualified or not, knowledgeable enough or not. Why was Scott Reuben's false data not caught in peer review? Or maybe someone did question, but the publisher just wants a minimum number of favourable peer reviews, doesn't it? And then it can go gung-ho.

The whole problem is that we laid down frameworks and systems and policies so that we can use them as checklists and be right: we can come to each position and then check against those and see oh whether we are safe. But what is really happening is this: we start by ticking off the items in the checklist. We start with "can we be safe here?" and then we just somehow manipulate the thing to be safe on the checklist: the checklist has become the god. Because we're no longer interested in what we started for, why we started for, we have forgotten our burning ideals of youth and childhood and everything: we just want more impact factor, more citations, more awards, more honor, more medicines, more billions of dollars that help elect in more and more presidents, more big brands and bigger diseases!

Irish cricket goes ahead

Eoin Morgan's call-up for England duty sets not a bad, but a good example: well, judging previous ones like Joyce, not a precedent of course. Yes, Ireland's loss, that too in the midst of the World Cup qualifiers, but Ireland is anyway going to win the tournament, as long as they have the O'Brien brothers. What's good is that England is more and more looking Ireland as the goldmine: and this gives a superb incentive for players in Ireland to not remain amateurish but to improve their game; once on the international firmament, there's no limit to the money and fame they would enjoy, not to speak of some quality games they would experience. And this slowly leads us to a team full of good players: England can't and won't take all, so slowly Ireland comes into its own and sooner than later becomes a full Test-playing nation in its own right (which it anyway should have done much ahead of Bangladesh, but unfortunately it's the crowds in B'desh which bring in the money).

To compare it with Zimbabwe would be amiss: Zimbabwe couldn't benefit from similar poachings mainly because of two issues. One, Zimbabwe was not the '19th county' for England: it didn't have any kind of development system in place, and still doesn't have. To have someone like the Flower brothers still come out was more fluke rather than any credit to the country's cricket board. Two, there was always the issue of 'home': most in Zimbabwe stayed there and loved the land, loved their country, some the old Rhodesia, some the new Zimbabwe, but anyhow for them playing for England was unthinkable, and of course not at all an incentive.

Even if it soon becomes the most boring and dustbin-consigned format in cricket, what T20 is sure to do is one thing: bring the best from anywhere in the world on one podium, reward them, and in short bring cricket more towards being a club game than one played between nations most times on dead pitches.

England must curb Pietersen

Kevin Pietersen is proving to be more mercurial than Brian Charles Lara ever did, and even a more destructive influence on his team. A fine talent, ruined by his own inordinate ambitions! Cricket can even tolerate that combination, but not with selfishness combined that Pietersen has shown more than once: not the best of times to raise an outcry of fatigue while eager to become captain of Bangalore.

What English cricket admins must do now is to nip the flower in the bud: else they could have the same problems on their hands that West Indies suffered under all those years with Lara. Flintoff will retire soon, and England must begin a culture of disciplined high-performance cricket: not whims and fancies of talented individuals. Cricket is a team sport, and while it still depends largely on individual performances, but what matters more is the team morale and spirit. An influence like Pietersen can only be described as corrosive: he would do well to take a leaf from, if no one else, Flintoff: humble and quietly being a vital part of England rather than talking big, delivering little and in fits.