For Scotland, the independence debate is about more than the economy, stupid

Salmond and Darling will batter viewers with data in Tuesday’s TV debate, but in the end the heart will outweigh the wallet

• 
• • Chris Huhne
  • The Guardian, Sunday 3 August 2014 19.19 BST

A report from the Scottish government suggested Scots would be £1,000 a year better with independence, but a UK Treasury report suggested the opposite. Photograph: Ken Jack/Demotix/Corbis

In Scotland, if you doubted the stakes, wait for Tuesday’s ­televised independence debate between Alistair Darling and Alex ­Salmond. The race remains close, and is likely to get closer. This weekend’s Survation poll put “no” ahead by just 6%. That is uncannily close to the polls six weeks before the Quebec referendum in 1995, which the Canadian federalists won by a nail-biting 1.2%.

The downside of these two TV champions for their cause is that they are both so economic: the former UK chancellor of the exchequer against the former Royal Bank of Scotland oil economist (and a good one). The danger, as a non-economist Treasury minister once said after a mandarin’s briefing, is that the viewers will be just as confused at the end – but at a higher level.

I have been reading the Scotsman – an excellent paper – and the Glasgow Herald day after day, which has given me a sympathy for Scottish voters who must be punch-drunk from rival, largely economic claims about the future. The two campaigns recently excelled themselves by producing on the same day apparently authoritative assessments that diametrically contradicted each other.

For the unionists, a UK Treasury-sponsored report suggested that each Scot would be £1,400 a year better off in the union. For the nationalists, another report from the Scottish government suggested that Scots would be £1,000 a year better off outside it. This is bemusing enough for anyone with a background in ­economics, let alone anyone without one. It is also largely irrelevant. Both sides are deploying spurious precision for economic issues that are largely unknowable in the current state of economics.

In one of my past lives, I used to assess the strength and risks of different economies for potential international investors. “Sovereign risk”, as it is called, is an art, not a science. Politics matters as much as economics, and big or small size has both advantages and disadvantages. Scotland’s population, at 5.5 million, is similar to the 5.6 million in Denmark – a perfectly respectably sized nation that has proved to be a rich success for years. The upside of being the size of Denmark, as opposed to the size of the UK or France, is that you can be nimble in reaction to global economic shocks and opportunities. The state can help businesses adjust and respond. All the key players can meet up and reach consensus in a reasonably sized room.

This helps. Of the 10 most prosperous nations on Earth, measured in the most effective manner by the World Bank’s national income per head allowing for purchasing power, only the US is big. The next biggest countries are Sweden (9.5 million people), Switzerland (8 million), Denmark and Norway (5 million). Germany comes in at 13th, France 18th and the UK 21st.

If we take culturally similar countries that share a language, small usually trumps big. Irish income per head is now 0.5% higher than the UK’s, even after profits have been paid to foreign investors. Austria is 0.3% ahead of Germany, and Belgium is 8.7% ahead of France. One exception is that Canada is slightly poorer than the big US.

The major disadvantage of small size is that you can be buffeted by global shocks if you specialise in particular industries. Finland was hit by the collapse of the Soviet Union, because it exported so much there. Iceland and ­Ireland were particularly badly hit by the banking crisis. Big countries are naturally more diversified, and therefore less vulnerable to shocks.

If the Scots vote for independence, there may be some transitional costs where there are economies of scale with the UK – embassies and so forth. I cannot see how the Bank of England could be lender of last resort to Scottish banks after independence, so there may be losses as financial services companies prefer a London regulator and backer. This was the experience with Quebec, where the fear of independence drove Montreal-based insurers to Toronto. But the big picture suggests that these will be small and short-term effects.

Natural resources such as oil and gas matter much less than both Salmond and Darling will pretend. The truth is that rich countries do well because of their human skills and ingenuity, not their resource windfalls. Look at Switzerland. On education, Scotland’s performance in the OECD international tests of student achievement is a little better than England for reading and maths, and a little worse for science.

If Scotland goes, it will be in everyone’s interest to have a “velvet divorce”, as the separation of the Czech Republic and Slovakia was described. A nasty and messy separation would damage both sides. London will want early certainty, and for Scotland to be an EU member alongside the rest of the UK. The result on 18 September may rewrite history, but not geography. We will all still share the same island. Their mess will be ours, both sides of the border. So we will all have an interest not to make a mess.

If Scotland stays, as I hope it will, the UK will never be the same again. More fiscal powers – including the power to borrow – will provide a new impetus to decentralisation, not just to Edinburgh but to Cardiff, Manchester, Leeds and Newcastle. We will need a new constitutional settlement, and new ways, as all federal states enjoy, of legally settling differences between levels of government. These are challenges already met and mastered in Canada, Australia and elsewhere.

The main motive, if Scots opt for independence, will be their desire to shake off the incubus of English conservatism. The natural centre of gravity of Scottish politics will be more leftwing than that of the UK. Scotland could be a successful, liberal-minded and social democratic nation on the Scandinavian model. Nothing wrong with that, except for English progressives who will have to contend with a centre of gravity that has moved to the right. For England and Wales, politics will adjust. The Labour party would become more rightwing to ensure a competitive system.

In the end, it seems to me offensive on the part of both sides in the debate to concentrate so slavishly on the economics, when realistically the economic outlook cannot and should not be decisive. It is as if they have both leased their campaigns, in the old adage, to people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. It is the heart that will decide the future of our island, not the pocketbook. That is surely right.

Cronyism British Style - A depressingly British tale of friends in high places

From Ofsted and the BBC to the Lords, there’s a strong whiff of cronyism. When will we have the courage to challenge it?

• 
• • Zoe Williams
  • The Guardian, Monday 4 August 2014

Illustration by Andrzej Krauze

One crony is just a crony; it doesn’t – by my reckoning – become an “ism” until there are three. If the chairmanship of the BBC Trust hadn’t come up at the same time as the chiefdom of Ofsted, and if those two things weren’t playing out in the foreground of the peerage announcements to come this week, it might be OK, and the whole of public life wouldn’t look like it could all be such an embarrassing stitch-up. Unfortunately, the three events have come together. David Hoare is the new chief of Ofsted. Seb Coe is not the new head of the BBC Trust, but not for want of begging by the government, which changed the job requirement to make it more appealing to him. Karren Brady and Stuart Rose are reported to be lined up for ennoblement.

In fairness, appointments to the House of Lords are at least meant to be political, even if they shouldn’t, strictly speaking, be distributed on the basis of wealth. The other two posts, however, are supposed to be appointed impartially, with the emphasis on fitness for the post.

So what is David Hoare’s fitness? He is a trustee of AET academies, which is the largest chain, and also one of the worst – in the bottom quarter for results, both its disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged pupils achieving below-average GCSEs. Five schools in the chain had “unacceptable standards”, according to ministers earlier this year, though Ofsted’s verdict, due to be published last week, has been delayed. Not to worry. The other 72 schools may well have acceptable features. The Department for Education can’t see what all the fuss is about, since Hoare appears to be far less unpopular and less irrelevantly qualified than its other candidate, Carphone Warehouse founder (and Tory donor) David Ross.

For me, the main problem isn’t Ross’s relationship with the Conservative party, or even the alleged tax-avoiding practices of Ross and Hoare’s current or past business interests, though I must admit I’m not thrilled to see the highest ranks of public life wedged with people who don’t appear to understand the point of tax. No, worse than any of that is the assumption of the DfE that almost anybody will be better at running education than someone with experience of teaching.

The entry point for a significant post in the academies system is that you should never have set foot in a state classroom. God forbid that you should ever have stood at the front of one, and taught anything to anyone. In years to come, we will look back in wonder at this period, when government worshipped at the feet of industry so fervently that it thought its titans could do anything. But right now, we’re all trapped in the bowels of government delusion, and won’t see the light until Alan Sugar has been appointed chancellor of Cambridge University and Richard Branson is chief medical officer.

These are two sides of the same coin, whether you’re talking about politicians fawning over business leaders, or business leaders casting cash – or the pearls of their acumen – towards politicians. You’d think we’d be used to it, since New Labour was beset by rows such as these. Whether it looks like corruption or cronyism – is it actively bent, or does it merely stink? – depends a lot on whose side is doing the crony recruitment. But this is surely a rare point of convergence between the Morning Star and the Daily Mail: it doesn’t look very transparent or objective when politicians recruit their allies.

They give us breadheads, to run our institutions of oversight, but they also give us circuses: this is the only plausible explanation for the desperate bid to appoint Seb Coe as chair of the BBC Trust. He is a Tory and a national treasure, a man it is impossible to dislike, a recognisable face and acute businessman whose achievements are uncomplicated and demonstrable. He can run really fast, OK? In these turbulent times for the BBC, as its enemies mass on the borders of its charter (up for renewal in 2016) calling for its disintegration, that’s what we need at the helm, clearly. A man who can run incredibly fast.

In the hubbub around the job description having been rewritten to suit Coe, you may have missed the details of that rewrite: it was to reduce the time commitment that the head of the trust would have to make. This said it all about the process – first, that nobody making the appointment was really taking seriously how significant it was, and second, that Coe didn’t really want to do it. He has now come out and rejected it, as apparently have Patience Wheatcroft, Dame Marjorie Scardino, Sir Howard Stringer and Sarah Hogg.

Why candidates should be snatching their hats so energetically out of the ring is open to question. Former Labour culture secretary Tessa Jowell maintains they are put off by the high level of political meddling, but this seems to be an unlikely deterrent for those who agree with the meddlers. I can well imagine, however, that a candidate of any leaning might be put off by the sheer bungling frivolity, the sight of a government desperately grappling for a household name, a bit of borrowed popularity. Anyway, the shortlist is, for today at least, back to one: Nick Prettejohn, City grandee and former adviser to George Osborne. The circus said no, and we’re back to the breadhead.

The phrase “City grandee” cheered me up, however: remember Royal Mail, and remember that it could be worse. They didn’t have to just give these posts to their associates; they could have sold them.

To fight Britain’s privatisation dogma, Labour should look to the US military, Singapore, Taiwan...

State-owned enterprises can be successful, as some unlikely global examples prove

• 
• • Ha-Joon Chang
  • The Guardian, Thursday 31 July 2014 18.23 BST

A Honeywell computer under the control of Michael Caine In the 1967 film Billion Dollar Brain. It was used to connect to the Arpanet – developed by the US military as a precursor of the internet.. Photograph: Snap/Rex Features

Since Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979 the UK has led the world in privatisation. The Conservative government sold off state-owned enterprises throughout the 1980s and the 1990s – electricity, oil, gas, rail, airline, airports, telecommunications, water, steel, coal, you name it. In the worldwide fever for selling off state assets that gripped those decades, the rest of the world looked up to Britain as the guiding example.

Privatisation was halted under Labour. However, the belief in the superiority of the private sector was such that, when it brought the rail infrastructure back under state control in 2002 following a series of rail disasters, Labour made sure it did not take the form of re-nationalisation – at least in legal terms. Network Rail, the owner and operator of the rail infrastructure, was set up as a private company, although on a not-for-profit basis and without shareholders.

When the coalition came to power in 2010, it resumed the privatisation drive with gusto. It privatised Royal Mail – the “crown jewels” that even Thatcher balked at selling. However, in recent months the tide has started to turn, albeit slowly.

Even while planning to sell off almost every remaining state-owned enterprise, from plasma supply to helicopter search and rescue, the coalition has had to make an embarrassing climbdown over its plan to privatise student loans. More importantly, in the past few months the Royal Mail sell-off has been fiercely criticised. Moya Greene, its chief executive, has questioned the viability of its universal service obligation. Abandoning this would mean that customers who live in less accessible or sparsely populated – and thus less profitable – areas wouldn’t get their letters delivered, or would have to pay more for them: the end of the postal service as we know it.

In the meantime, the Labour party has made the lack of competition and the suspected collusion in the privatised energy industry a key issue in its promise to “fix broken markets”, and has caught voters’ attention by announcing its intention to partially reverse rail privatisation. Although its fear of being branded anti-business has prevented it from proposing outright renationalisation of the railways – despite the support for such a move from most of the electorate – it has declared that if it wins the 2015 general election it will “reverse the presumption against the public sector”, and let state operators bid for rail franchises.

However, if it is really to overturn the privatisation dogma, Labour should do more than reverse the presumption against the public sector: it should tell people that the public sector is often more efficient than the private sector.

Even while there are many examples of inefficient state enterprises from all over the world, including the UK, there have been many successful such businesses throughout the history of capitalism. In the early days of their industrialisation, 19th-century Germany and Japan set up state-run “model factories” in order to kickstart new industries such as steel and shipbuilding, which the private sector considered too risky to invest in. For half a century after the second world war, several European countries used state businesses to develop technologically advanced industries: France is the best-known example, with household names like Thomson (now Thales), Alcatel, Renault and Saint-Gobain. Austria, Finland and Norway also had technologically dynamic state-run enterprises.

The most dramatic example, however, is Singapore. The country is usually known for its free trade policy and welcoming attitude towards foreign investments, but it has the most heavily state-owned economy, except for some oil states. State-owned enterprises produce 22% of Singapore’s national output, operating in a whole range of industries – not just the “usual suspects” of airline, telecommunications and electricity, but also semiconductors, engineering and shipping; and its housing and development board supplies 85% of the country’s homes. Taiwan, another east Asian “miracle” economy, also has a very large state-run sector, accounting for 16% of national output.

Posco, the state-owned steel company in my native South Korea, was initially set up against World Bank advice but is now one of the biggest steel companies in the world. (It was privatised in 2001, but for political reasons rather than poor performance.) In Brazil, Embraer – the third largest civilian aircraft manufacturer in the world – was initially developed under state control; and the country’s state-owned oil company, Petrobras, is the world leader in deep-sea drilling.

Arguably the most successful state enterprise in human history, however, is the United States military, which has almost single-handedly established the modern information economy. The development of the computer was initially funded by the US army; the country’s navy financed the research that created the semiconductor; and the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency developed the Arpanet, the precursor of the internet.

When people realise that the history of capitalism is full of highly successful state enterprises, the rush for ever more privatisation can be halted. If the Labour party puts forward this case, it will not only gain popularity in the run-up to next year’s general election – it would also be doing something of lasting benefit for Britain.

On Sledging - Anderson England's guilty pleasure

There is an uncomfortable recognition that the beauty of James Anderson's cricket comes with a professionalism that has been taken to the limits but weak umpiring has to share the blame

David Hopps in Cricinfo

As James Anderson prepares to face an ICC enquiry into his alleged misconduct during the Trent Bridge Test, it is hard to suppress a feeling of frustration about how this wonderful fast bowler has been allowed to become England's guilty pleasure.

Anderson is close to the apex of a fulfilling career, only 12 more wickets needed to draw equal with Ian Botham as England's leading Test wicket-taker. He is championed in England as a true craftsman among fast bowlers, a manipulator of a cricket ball who deserves to stand alongside the best.

And yet, this faith in his bowling purity sits uneasily with a sullied reputation; a player now well known to all but the most casual follower of the game as one of the most ingrained sledgers around and, a natural development, who allegedly has now tipped over into the pushing of Ravindra Jadeja as well. It does not take long to find an opponent, or a past opponent, who says there is nobody worse - even if they then admit it is a crowded field. It should never have come to this.

This then is England's guilty pleasure: on one side, the shy craftsman who became one of the finest fast bowlers in the world; on the other, the Burnley Lip, whose abuse of opponents has been incessant for many years. Many in the game will tell you it doesn't matter a jot. It does. Cricket has a problem - and it needs to deal with it before everybody starts to grow Luis Suarez fangs.

It is important to observe - and his captain, Alastair Cook, was shrewd enough to do so from the start - that the ICC code of conduct commissioner, Gordon Lewis, a retired Australian judge, has been appointed to judge one specific incident at Trent Bridge, about which the details remain at issue, and not to pass opinion on a verbally-strewn career.

The ICC's judgment, in the simplest terms, will determine whether Anderson is banned from his home Test at Old Trafford next week, and perhaps for the rest of the series. For many, that outcome is all that matters. It might swing a Test series towards India in the process, although the suggestion that this is India's reasoning is overly cynical.

This is not a tactic; this is a campaign. And once Lewis makes his ruling, we will wait to discover if it is the first campaign of many or if Anderson is to be its sole victim. A trophy killing for India's mantelpiece.

Anderson's fate will be determined on whether video evidence really does exist - India say so, but they might be bluffing - and on the dubious testimony of witnesses about Who Pushed Who When, Who Said What To Whom, all of which tittle-tattle should be enough to make Lewis wonder whether he should be doing better things with his life.

Cricket's fate will take longer to determine. What we may also be experiencing is the start of India agitation against persistent on-field abuse, a habit resented for its disrespect and occasionally because of its implied threat of physical violence. The reality is that only India is empowered to change the nature of the game - to say "we will not play this way". What is less unclear is whether it has the will to try to transform the way the game is played - or whether perhaps Lewis' ruling will carry wider encouragement for cricket to clean up its act.

We may know a lot more about the repercussions by Christmas. If India, and in particular their captain MS Dhoni, have taken a stand against what they regard as Anderson's excess, how will they respond when India pitch up for a Test series in Australia? They have acted independently of the umpires and match referees once. If Lewis rules in their favour, will they feel obliged to do it again?

If Mitchell Johnson snarls from underneath his vaudevillian moustache, will India be consistent and immediately lay a charge with the ICC? If David Warner yaps like a dog for much of a session, as he once stupidly did to irritate Faf du Plessis, will another charge be laid? If Shane Watson adds some sly words of his own, will three Australians be in the dock?

	Was Ajinkya Rahane's melodramatic response at the end of day four a sign of India's zero tolerance approach to verbal abuse? © Getty Images  Enlarge

Anderson's alleged push of Jadeja is presented as the catalyst for the complaint, but it was his reputation as a serial sledger that made Dhoni so anxious to pursue it. Anderson was charged because he has form - the alleged push was just a chance to get even. And physical contact, incidentally, is not necessarily needed to win a case. There is plenty in the ICC Code of Conduct that pretends to punish verbal abuse. It is just that nobody ever presses charges.

While England is invited to regard Anderson as a guilty pleasure, international umpires and the ICC must be feeling nervous. If India is embarking upon an attempted clean up, the umpires will need to intervene in a manner they have not seen fit to do for years. If they do, it will be long overdue. What we have at the moment is a sham.

So much in cricket is disingenuous. The Spirit of Cricket has become a widely-ridiculed moral salad dressing on a game where umpires allow verbal aggression to go unchecked in the misguided belief that they are permitting the vital confrontational elements that enhance the game at the highest level. As long as the invective isn't aimed at them, as long as nobody actually makes physical contact, they are only concerned with ensuring the public does not know too much.

Most of us - at whatever level we play the game - relish a clever sledge, most of us permit a physically-straining fast bowler a display of frustration, most of us don't mind a bit of backchat, but umpires have utterly failed in their duty to check the incessant boorish behaviour that has now become regarded as just a daily reality. Where were they when Anderson indulged in his 30-metre rant at Jadeja as the players walked off for tea? Where is the dividing line? Is everything acceptable unless you actually push someone? It is time we were honestly told.

Instead, we have Anderson, the essentially gentle guy trying to play tough; the diffident figure who has been told by coaches to become more aggressive; the man who could barely spit out a sentence in press conferences at the start of his career, transformed into a venomous on-field malcontent; a natural leader of no-one proudly bowling more Test overs than anyone in the world as he forever strives to be the Leader of the Attack; a talented, likeable lad who has been gradually lulled by this failure of umpires and administrators to rule and has developed, in his immense desire to win Tests for England, into a twisted, nastier on-field personality than he really is.

Considering all the jokes about his grumpiness - his best mate, Graeme Swann, loves to joke that it takes a couple of beers to cheer him up - this role play does not seem to have made him very happy.

As England celebrated an overwhelming victory at the Ageas Bowl, Anderson's hugs with his team-mates seemed slightly troubled. A few minutes later, he was collecting another magnum of champagne, another man-of-the-match award logged. He had produced his finest all-round performance for a year, a display summoned out of adversity, adversity not just for himself, but for his captain, Alastair Cook, and indeed the entire England Test set-up.

	While we cherish Anderson's skill, we prefer to be spared a truth. The abuse has become the sourness we would rather not recognise

It was a pleasure to see Anderson and Stuart Broad remembering once again how to play with joy - "play with the happiness of your first Test," the coach, Peter Moores had urged them as he sought to arrest England's worst run for 20 years, and England's senior players, as one, had released the yoke from their back. England kept their lips buttoned - and won by a country mile.

But on the one occasion that Anderson allowed himself some backchat - a sentence or two to Ajinkya Rahaneat the end of the fourth day - the response from Rahane was so melodramatic that India's zero tolerance policy was abundantly clear. Was this personal animosity, a tactical manoeuvre ahead of the hearing or further proof a long-term attempt to change the nature of the game?

Anderson's post-match interviews, as ever, were conducted in that vulnerable, polite, halting style. It is the Anderson that England wish to celebrate: the self-effacing, bashful sportsman who has succeeded in a physically-demanding, confrontational job. We would rather dwell on his 371 Test wickets and not wonder about his tally of C words when the game gets tough.

His newly-adopted beard looks like a defence mechanism against the uproar surrounding him. When he was asked after the match if he was confident about the outcome of the hearing, his "don't know" response sounded abashed. There was no petulant strut, no words of defiance, just a world-class player trapped in a behavioural mode that might be about to bring suspension.

While we cherish Anderson's skill, we prefer to be spared this truth. The abuse has become the sourness we would rather not recognise: the stain on the luxury, hand-woven carpet; the dodgy financial dealings that produce the beautiful marina; the uncomfortable recognition that the beauty of Anderson's cricket comes with a professionalism that has been taken to the limits. The alleged push has finally forced us to take notice.

We all know this: fans, team-mates, opponents, former players, umpires, administrators, all playing our part in this endless charade.

The ECB defends Anderson because it wants to win the series and protect its players; no thoughts here - not publicly anyway - of the wider picture. The ICC just bleats that the authority of the enquiry has been compromised because both Dhoni and Cook have passed comment on the situation, more concerned with systems and processes than the long-term health of the game.

Meanwhile, James Anderson, is hung out to dry.

And nobody is imposing, for all of us to see, the behavioural standards by which the game should be run.

An Ode to Pankaj Singh or The woeful world of Pankaj Singh

Jarrod Kimber in Cricinfo

Lawrence Booth, editor of Wisden, met Pankaj Singh in a lift. They talked about Pankaj's day, which turned into Pankaj's luck. It was exactly the sort of conversation you would expect from any bowler in the world when talking about a wicketless day. At the end, Pankaj left Booth with the words: "That is cricket".

****

There is a ball that Pankaj Singh bowled in the IPL that hit the pitch and cleared the keeper's head. That is a combination of pace and bounce. He also has swing. Lovely curling outswing that he can maintain even with an older ball. Then there is his offcutter. That makes him a bowler who can move the ball both ways, get bounce and bowl in the mid-80s mph.

His action is uncomplicated and rugged. His body seems to have been chipped from solid stone. His wrist position at release is good. He has got a smart bowling brain. He works with his captain on his fields. He works batsmen out. He bowls to plans. He is willing to do grunt work.

This is an international bowler. And for the last ten years he has been a domestic bowler. This Test may send him back there.

****

If you were playing Indian Quick Bowler Bingo, Pankaj would go close to completing your sheet. He played U-19 cricket for India, went to the MRF pace factory, was a quick bowler, became a slower swing bowler, played one ODI, toured Australia without bowling a ball and then went about playing some IPL.

Pankaj is not a good IPL bowler. He averages 33 with the ball; he goes at over 8 an over. When you YouTube an Indian bowler's name, you generally just find clips of them disappearing into riotous, crowds. Pankaj has a large selection of them. It's not his format. So there is no hype for him.

Between his tour of Australia and this tour, India have used roughly 43 million other fast bowlers. Despite the fact that year after year Pankaj is near the top of the wicket-takers list in first-class cricket. Despite the fact that he has helped Rajasthan win the Ranji Trophy. Despite the fact he is obviously just a really good cricketer.

His one ODI game was in the Zimbabwean Triangular series of 2010, which was a tournament so useless, relocated witnesses running from the mob could have sat openly in the stands and not been found. His first ball almost took the edge of Upal Tharanga. But he ended with no wickets that day as well. He disappeared off India's radar so completely that he might as well have been in a witness relocation programme.

****

Cricket Journalists ooze cynicism from every single pore of their being. It's the first thing you're asked about when you apply for the job. So it's rare that they get behind someone with match figures of 0 for 179. Usually that would invoke snide remarks, casual jokes and general chuckles. Something about Pankaj meant they didn't do that.

Cries of "Get Pankaj on", "Give Pankaj a bowl", "Come on Pankaj" were heard as Pankaj thudded around the outfield. Sure, they still laughed when he fell over fielding the simplest ball. But no one thought he deserved the worst figures ever by a debutant. No one thought he hadn't been unlucky. No one wanted the loveable lug to fail.

Even on Twitter where snark is king, people just seemed to feel sorry for him.

"@reverse_sweeper Please, someone give Pankaj a hug. Is there a backroom guy for that?"

"‪@SpiceBoxofEarth Would be a real shame if Pankaj Singh was judged on just his figures alone. This has been a very decent debut. "

"Yogesh ‏@YOGESHBOND The Oscar for making the unluckiest debut ever in tests goes to pankaj singh.. This guy needs a jaadu ki jhappi.. #UnluckyPankaj "

"Mark Pougatch ‏@markpougatch I'm not alone am I in really wanting Pankaj Singh to get a wicket?"

He is the MHMOTS (Most huggable man of the series).

****

A right arm bowler coming around the wicket to a left hand batsman that can take the ball away is quite a skill. Few can do it. Pankaj can. He angles the ball in, Cook pushes at it as it seams away. His pace and bounce ensure it carries to slip. But Jadeja doesn't take it.

Later Dhoni will try one of his leg slip traps to Ballance. To help make it work, Pankaj bowls the perfect inswinger on middle stump which Ballance gets enough bat on for it just to drop short of leg slip.

At the 80 over mark, Pankaj is promoted to new ball bowler status. Reward for being the best bowler of the day. Then he placed a ball on leg stump. Every single batsman in the world knew that meant it was slipping down leg. But it didn't slip down, it didn't even straighten, it came back towards middle. It was the ball swing bowlers wet dream over. It could not have been more perfect.

Pankaj appealed.

He appealed like he was trying to feed his family, his village, and every single person he had ever met. It was about as emotive as a human being could be. It was the closest any human being had ever been to making themselves explode. He wanted a wicket, he deserved a wicket, every single molecule that went into this impressive chunk of cricketer pleaded for a wicket.

Not out.

****

Rohit Sharma got a wicket with a ball that missed the bat. Moeen Ali got one from a half tracker. And Ravi Jadeja, the man who cost Pankaj a wicket, and perhaps India a Test, took one with a half tracker down the legside that if you received it in the nets you would catch it and throw it back.

****

Pankaj did not bowl overs full of the sweetest peaches at all times, he also bowled poorly. He couldn't group the ball together enough. He got tired. And when England attacked he didn't seem to have many answers.

The worst was Buttler. Buttler 'Bryce McGained' Pankaj. In five balls he took 20 runs. Pankaj probably won't remember much more than a front leg clearing and a bat flying through. But the 20 runs in that over in England's first innings was the 20 runs that helped him fly past Sohail Khan and Bryce McGain as the worst-ever bowling figures by a debutant in Test cricket history.

If he was unlucky not to get a wicket, then we need a new word to describe that achievement.

****

There are many small things to like about Pankaj. On day one, it was his nipples. Which were probably the best seam bowling nipples seen in England's South. He is also an unusually violent ball shiner. His throwing style is more like that of the local butcher playing a club game that a professional athlete. He doesn't stop balls in the field as much as runs along beside them. His shirt is often untucked. He is an older player who has earned his position through deeds. His running often makes it look like his shoulders are too big for him to stay upright. And he bats like a proper 1930s tailender.

Pankaj is part of a small club of cricketers who have been stumped facing a seamer with the keeper standing back. It happened because he wanted to sledge Ajit Agarkar for bouncing him. You have to commend him for standing up for himself against a senior player like Agarkar. You have to laugh at him for getting stumped while he did it.

When Pankaj was asked what he would do with a million dollars, he said he would build schools, improve infrastructure and find jobs for his village. In almost every way he is a thoroughly lovable big lump of lad who has spent years trying to make it.

****

There is brief excitement in the eyes of Pankaj as he sees another ball take the outside of Cook's bat. The ball flies in the air towards a well set double gully trap. Had Mohammed Shami bowled the ball, it could have probably nestled into the hands of one of them. But this is Pankaj, so the excitement quickly becomes pain, then acceptance.

For a few seconds, he stares in the direction of the ball, even though it has been returned. He waits for Dhoni to say something, but nothing comes. Then he turns, a turn so heavy you can hear it from 100 metres away, and he gingerly walks back to the umpire, Rod Tucker, who is smiling sympathetically. It is the smile of a man who spent 103 first-class matches bowling luckless spells. Tucker says something and gives his cap back.

Pankaj walks alone towards the boundary. None of his team mates go over, the time for encouragement has passed. They know he has probably bowled his last ball this match, and possibly the last of his entire Test career. He fields one more ball, and then walks off the ground to get some treatment. No one claps, no one pats him on the back, he just moves through the few spectators and support staff, three stairs at a time.

Just as he is about to disappear into the changeroom, he takes off his cap and slams it on his leg.

That is cricket.

Argentina defaults as debt talks break down

Finance minister Axel Kicillof said Argentina would not be held to ransom by bondholders demanding to be paid in full

• Julia Kollewe and Graeme Wearden
• theguardian.com, Thursday 31 July 2014 11.25 BST

Argentina's economy minister Axel Kicillof speaks to the media at a press conference in New York July 30, 2014. Photograph: CARLO ALLEGRI/REUTERS

Argentina has fallen into default for the second time since 2001 after last-minute talks with "vulture" bondholders in New York failed to produce a deal overnight.

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At a dramatic press conference in New York on Wednesday night, Argentinian finance minister Axel Kicillof declared that Argentina would not be held to ransom by the holdout bondholders, who are demanding to be paid in full on debt which the country defaulted on in 2001.

Kicillof said: "We're not going to sign an agreement that jeopardises the future of all Argentines. Argentines can remain calm because tomorrow will just be another day and the world will keep on spinning."

Shortly before the deadline, Daniel Pollack, the court-appointed mediator, confirmed that the talks had broken down. "Unfortunately, no agreement was reached and the Republic of Argentina will imminently be in default."

Earlier, the credit rating firm Standard & Poor's declared that Argentina was now in "selective default". The default comes two months after a US court ruled that Argentina must pay the holdout bondholders in full, saddling it with a bill of more than $1.5bn.

The vast majority (more than 90% of bondholders) agreed to restructure debts in 2005 and 2010, taking a big "haircut" – a reduction of more than 70% in the value of their investments in return for regular interest payments.

Argentina's last default, in late 2001, came after a major political and economic crisis; scores were killed in riots, and both the president and the economy minister resigned. But there was little sign of a panic in global financial markets this time, as the default was widely expected. However, it could add more pain for Argentinians, with the economy already in recession.

Pollack said: "The full consequences of default are not predictable, but they certainly are not positive."

The holdouts – branded "vulture funds" by Argentinian president Cristina Fernández de Kirchner – are US hedge funds spearheaded by the billionaire Paul Singer's NML Capital, an affiliate of Elliott Management, and Aurelius Capital Management.

Steve Ellis, portfolio manager at Fidelity emerging market debt fund, said: "We expect contagion to other markets to be fairly limited. This is a highly technical legal case and a selective default.

"Argentina was isolated from international capital markets for years so we don't expect the default to distort any global capital flows. However, there will be remaining risks around a longer term default which would have negative impacts on the Argentine economy. At this stage, the market will likely price in a delay of payments should the government continue to deposit coupon payments until they can reach a deal with the holdouts in 2015."

Intervention, evasion, destabilisation by Security Council members

Brahma Chellaney in The Hindu

If Libya, Syria and Iraq are coming undone and Ukraine has been gravely destabilised, it is the result of interventions by big powers that claim to be international law enforcers when, in reality, they are lawbreakers

Big powers over the years have targeted specific regimes by arming rebel groups with lethal weapons, thereby destabilising some states and contributing to the rise of dangerous extremists and terrorists. The destabilisation of Ukraine, Syria, Iraq and Libya, among other states, is a result of such continuing geopolitical games.

It is the local people who get killed, maimed and uprooted by the interventions of major powers and their regional proxies. Yet those who play such games assume a moral posture to rationalise their interventionist policies and evade responsibility for the consequences of their actions. Indeed, they paint their interference in the affairs of other sovereign states as aimed at fighting the “bad” guys.

Cold War echo

Take the blame game over the downing of Flight MH 17, which was shot down by a surface-to-air missile (SAM), allegedly fired by eastern Ukraine’s Russian-speaking separatists, a number of whom have clearly been trained and armed by Russia. Russia’s aid to the separatists and Washington’s security assistance to the government in Kiev, including providing vital intelligence and sending American military advisers to Ukraine, is redolent of the pattern that prevailed during the Cold War, when the two opposing blocs waged proxy battles in countries elsewhere.

Today, with the Ukrainian military shelling rebel-held cities and Russia massing heavy weapons and troops along the frontier, the crisis threatens to escalate to a direct U.S.-Russia confrontation, especially if Moscow directly intervenes in eastern Ukraine in response to the worsening humanitarian crisis there. The United Nations says the fighting in eastern Ukraine has uprooted more than 230,000 residents. Over 27,000 of them have taken sanctuary in Russia.

After the MH 17 crash, U.S. President Barack Obama was quick to hold Russia and its President, Vladimir Putin, guilty in the global court of opinion over the downing and to spotlight Russian aid to the separatists. Through sanctions and diplomacy, Mr. Obama has steadily ratcheted up pressure on Mr. Putin to stop assisting the rebels. Yet, Mr. Obama has had no compunction in gravely destabilising Syria through continuing covert aid to “moderate” militants there. The aid is being channelled through the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) and the jihad-bankrolling oil sheikhdoms.

Regime-change strategy

Mr. Obama set out on the mission of regime change in Syria by seizing the opportunity that opened up in 2011, when popular protests broke out in some cities against President Bashar al-Assad’s autocratic rule. The detention and torture of a group of schoolchildren, who had been caught scribbling anti-government graffiti in the city of Deraa, led to protests and demands for political reforms and a series of events that rapidly triggered an armed insurrection with external assistance.

From bases in Turkey and Jordan, the rebels — with the clandestine assistance of the U.S., Britain and France — established a Free Syrian Army, launching attacks on government forces. Washington and its allies simultaneously mounted an intense information war demonising Mr. Assad and encouraging officers and soldiers to desert the Syrian military and join the Free Syrian Army.

Read: On Syria, Russia awaits chance to say ‘I told you so’

It is clear three years later that their regime-change strategy has backfired: Not only has it failed to oust Mr. Assad, it has turned Syria into a failed state and led to the rise of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant — a brutal, medieval organisation seeking to establish a caliphate across the Middle East and beyond. With radical jihadists now dominating the scene, the Free Syrian Army has become a marginal force, despite the CIA continuing to train and arm its members in Jordan.

Had Mr. Obama, British Prime Minister David Cameron and French President François Hollande not embarked on this strategy — which helped instil the spirit of jihad against the Assad regime and opened the gates to petrodollar-financed weapons to Syrian jihadists — would murderous Islamists be in control of much of northern Syria today? It was this control that served as the staging ground for the rapid advance of the Islamic State of Iraq and the Levant into Iraq. This group now is in a position to potentially use water as a weapon through its control of the upstream areas along the Euphrates and Tigris rivers in Syria and Iraq, including important dams.

By inadvertently turning Syria into another Afghanistan — and a threat to regional and international security — the interveners failed to heed the lessons from the CIA’s funnelling of arms to the Afghan mujahideen (or self-proclaimed “holy warriors” of Islam) in the 1980s. The funnelling of arms — partly financed by Saudi Arabia and some other oil sheikhdoms — was a multibillion-dollar operation against the Soviet forces in Afghanistan that gave rise to al-Qaeda and monsters like Osama bin Laden and Mullah Mohammad Omar, chief of the Taliban who remains holed up in Pakistan. It ranked as the largest covert operation in the CIA’s history.

 Now, consider a different case where a regime-change strategy spearheaded by the U.S., Britain and France succeeded — Libya. The ouster of Col. Muammar Qadhafi’s government through U.S.-led aerial bombardment in 2011, however, ended up fomenting endless conflict, bloodletting and chaos in Libya.

The virtual crumbling of the Libyan state, more ominously, has had major international implications — from the cross-border leakage of shoulder-fired SAMs from the Qadhafi-built arsenal, including to Syrian jihadists, to the flow of other Libyan weapons to al-Qaeda-linked groups in the arid lands near the Sahara desert known as the Sahel region. Nigeria’s Boko Haram extremists have also tapped the Libyan arms bazaar.

The weapons that Qatar and, on a smaller scale, the United Arab Emirates shipped to Libyan rebels with U.S. approval, including machine guns, automatic rifles and ammunition, have not only destabilised Libya but also undermined security in Mali, Niger and Chad. These weapons had been handed out like candy to foment the uprising against Qadhafi.

There cannot be better proof of how the toppling of Qadhafi has boomeranged than the fact that the U.S., whose ambassador was killed in a 2012 militant attack in Benghazi, the supposed capital of the Libyan “revolution,” has now shut its embassy in Tripoli, citing increasing lawlessness. The predawn evacuation of its entire embassy staff to Tunisia, with U.S. warplanes providing air cover, represented a public admission of defeat.

The plain truth is that it is easier for outside forces to topple or undermine a regime than to build stability and security in the targeted country. With neighbourhoods becoming battlefields, Iraq, Syria and Libya are coming undone. Another disintegrating state is Afghanistan, where Mr. Obama is seeking to end the longest war in American history.

Marginalisation of U.N.

Such is the United Nations’ marginalisation in international relations that it is becoming irrelevant to the raging conflicts. To make matters worse, the U.N. Security Council’s five permanent members, although tasked by the U.N. Charter to preserve international peace and security, have helped spark or fuel regional conflicts and aided the rise of insurgent groups through their interventionist and arms-transfer policies. These five powers — all nuclear-armed — account for more than 80 per cent of the world’s official exports of conventional weapons and most of the unofficial transfers. Chinese arms, for example, have proliferated to a number of guerrilla groups active in Africa and Asia, including insurgents in India’s northeast.

The only mechanism to enforce international law is the Security Council. Yet, its permanent members have repeatedly demonstrated that great powers use, not respect, international law. They have a long history of ignoring international rules when these conflict with their plans. In other words, the international law enforcers are the leading lawbreakers.

Mr. Obama, in toppling Qadhafi through the use of air power, and Mr. Putin, in annexing Crimea, paradoxically cited the same moral principle that has no force in international law — “responsibility to protect.” Indeed, the transition from the 20th to the 21st centuries heralded the open flouting of international law, as represented by the bombing of Serbia, the separation of Kosovo from Serbia, and the invasions of Afghanistan and Iraq. Against this background, it is scarcely a surprise that, despite the continuing rhetoric of a rules-based international order, the world is witnessing the triumph of brute force in the 21st century.

If the Security Council is to act more responsibly, its permanent members must look honestly at what they are doing to undermine international peace and security. This can happen only if the Council’s permanent membership is enlarged and the veto power abolished to make decision-making in that body truly democratic.