Column 7, 2014 – Leggie theory

Printed in The Cricket Paper issue 79, Friday April 18, 2014. [Full text below]

I was never quick enough, even as a kid, to bowl seam effectively. I needed to do something with it, and my fingers just won’t do the offy thing. So I became a leggie.

It’s not the most sensible decision. Legspin is often described as cricket’s most difficult art. Sometimes I think maybe I do it so I’ll have an excuse when it all goes horribly wrong.

Attempting to flick the ball with your wrist, roughly perpendicular to the direction of travel, means accuracy in both line and length is, let’s be honest, rather less than guaranteed.

The googly – one of my favourite words as well as one of my favourite things – flips the ball out of the back of the hand. So really not that much more likely to be accurate.

Get it right of course, and it’s tremendous. There are few things more satisfying than a batsman propping forward to defend a ball on a good length and it spitting past his outside edge. Or backing away to cut an innocuous looking wide leg break, only for it to turn the other way and bowl him through the gate.

The bane of the leggie can be summed up in two words: Shane Warne. He was so ridiculously good, so unreasonably accurate, that whenever anyone now comes across a leggie, even in village cricket, they’re disappointed if you don’t drift it a foot, land it on a sixpence and then rip it two feet back. “Leggies can turn it on anything, can’t they?” That guy has a lot to answer for.

But recently, we’ve seen a mini leggie resurgence.

The West Indian Samuel Badree is a leggie of such chutzpah, that he opens the bowling and bowls through in T20s. This is a high risk strategy, but he excels at it. If the opening bowler’s job in T20 is to not let the big hitters hit big, he was the best opening bowler in the WT20 by a country mile.

Also at the WT20, India’s Amit Mishra was a joy. He is not afraid to float the ball up, and occasionally he mixes all four of the magic ingredients – flight, drift, turn and bounce – to dramatic and always watchable effect. It will be fascinating to see how he gets on in English conditions this summer.

Scott Borthwick is an interesting prospect for England, front of the queue after Swann’s departure. It remains to be seen if he keeps that place at the start of the summer, against some of the least helpful conditions and best players of spin in the world.

And some might be worried to see the potential successor to Warne emerge in the confident and self-assured shape of the 20 year old James Muirhead, who’s not afraid to toss it up and rips it almost sideways.

But to me this is far from worrying. As a lover of cricket’s dark art, they are all welcome prospects, wherever they’re from.

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Column 6, 2014 – Embracing the inner Eeyore

Printed in The Cricket Paper issue 78, Friday April 11, 2014. [Full text below]

The general demeanour of the English cricket fan is one of weary pessimism.

Our default setting is put-upon gloom. Struggling through, staggering on regardless, stoically accepting our lot.

Much of this, for anyone past their mid-twenties, is due to just how spectacularly depressing England were to follow for most of the latter part of the twentieth century.

Whether we were being routinely humbled in the Ashes, or almost literally murdered by the West Indies in their pomp, the English cricket fan knew what to expect, and came to accept it. Almost to enjoy it.

There is a certain I-told-you-so satisfaction to be had in keeping desperate vigil over yet another spineless collapse. We became a nation of cricketing Eeyores, wallowing in our own self perpetuating misery.

A lot of it is also down to the weather. The home of cricket (by which I mean England, though by dint of being in it, Lord’s is far from immune) is cursed with such dreadful conditions for the game, that it’s only sensible to expect the worst.

For devotees of a pursuit that becomes miserable in light mizzle, and impossible in anything heavier, it’s only self defence to be predisposed to pessimism in a climate which excels at both.

The first day of the 2014 first class season last weekend took place under slate grey skies and persistent drizzle. At Trent Bridge play got underway under lights, and at Hove under both lights and umbrellas. It was delayed for rain at The Oval, and just down the road from me at The Rose Bowl, Hampshire abandoned the morning for an early lunch, before abandoning the day mid afternoon at 30-3.

Recently, 30-3 has been another cause for pessimism.

The scoreline became a recurring theme through last summer’s home Ashes series, and many of us embraced our inner Eeyore despite the flattering 3-1 win, resigned to the early signs of a return to the status quo.

Because in recent years, England have been really rather good. Winning more often than losing, and even occasionally clinging on for unlikely draws.

But were we ever really comfortable with it? It’s often said that English teams – all sport, not just cricket – don’t like being favourites. We prefer scrapping from a position of weakness, ideally one of our own making. Much though in these T20 days we may rail against it, we are not a naturally brash people, given to the strutting arrogance of the sure winner. The plucky underdog is much more us.

So in many ways England’s return to their bad old ways over this winter of discontent feels like a kind of homecoming.

The most surprising thing about being pummelled by the Dutch as a parting gift after crashing out of a World Cup at the earliest opportunity was just how few of us found it the least bit surprising. We were, once again, pessimistic enough to expect it.

How’ve you been, Eeyore? We missed you.

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Column 5, 2014 - They need to talk about Kevin

Printed in The Cricket Paper issue 77, Friday April 4, 2014. [Full text below]

So then. Is now a good time to talk about Kevin?

As an England cricket fan, I’m still annoyed about the whole Kevin Pietersen saga.

I’m surmising – which is all anyone can do with the almost total absence of facts – that the ECB has decided to put all its eggs in Cook’s basket, and Cook has decided that KP is too risky to have around all those delicate eggs.

Is it personal? Do they just not like each other? What exactly is the ‘disruption’ KP is accused of? What is it he does (sorry: did) that the massed ranks of blue tracksuited doctors, psychologists, mentors, coaches and managers cannot contain?

I’d love to know. I think we all would.

Judging by the burnt bridges and acrimonious dressing rooms strewn in his wake, he’s clearly not an easy guy to get on with.

Text-Gate was perhaps unforgivable, but forgiven he was. And let’s not forget that it was Cook, in taking over from Strauss (who you sense would not have had him back, and perhaps even walked prematurely to facilitate his return), who was instrumental in his ‘reintegration’.

To volte-face and give up now and have everyone sign confidentiality agreements like squabbling Hollywood divorcees just seems ridiculous.

Ridiculous or not, they’re sticking to it. “English supporters must move on. There isn’t going to be any going back, that’s for sure,” says ECB chairman Giles Clarke.

Helpful. So what about the new coach? It’s rumoured that top candidate Gary Kirsten turned the job down flat because Pietersen (The £880k captain of the IPL side Kirsten coaches) would be off limits. What if Cook doesn’t regain form with the bat and is himself replaced? Is KP still banned? What about the captain after that? The coach after that?

It’s a bizarre situation.

Cards on the table: I’ve never been a fan of KP the bloke. He does not top my ‘cricketers-I’d-love-to-have-a-beer-and-a-chat-with’ list. But when he lets his bat do the talking, few can match him.

His destruction of Dale Steyn at Headingly, on the brink of the Text-Gate scandal in 2012, is a perfect illustration.

Steyn was the number one fast bowler in the world, and that afternoon Pietersen made him look like a third change medium pacer in a Sunday friendly. He flayed him over cover, ambled casually down the track and biffed him back over his head, and slogged him through cow corner like an impish schoolboy ignoring his coach’s instructions to play straight. But the moment he owned that exchange was the shot that followed, an exaggerated forward defensive with that characteristic big stride, which seemed to say to Steyn: “I could have hit that anywhere I wanted. I chose not to.” It was the most sarcastic cricket shot I’ve ever seen. Patronising and supremely arrogant, it was the very definition of letting your bat do the talking.

There is no one else in English cricket whose bat has that breadth of vocabulary, and I for one will miss it.

And I think we deserve to know why.

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Column 4, 2014 - An extra little zing

Printed in The Cricket Paper issue 76, Friday March 28, 2014. [Full text below]

Every other week it seems, some new thing is introduced to cricket to tweak it just a little bit, primp it or rejig it in some way. The game is constantly changing by tiny increments. We just can’t leave it alone.

Sometimes this is bad, sometimes it’s good.

Helmets changed the game, probably for the better. Enormous bats are changing the game. I’m not sure that is better. Having two new balls has changed ODIs. I’m pretty sure that isn’t better.

Hawk-Eye, Hot Spot, DRS and all that, well, I remain unconvinced. What I am convinced about though, is that umpires calling for TV reviews on every single run out, and us watching half a dozen slow-motion replays of batsmen out by a yard from four different angles, has definitely not enhanced cricket as a spectacle.

What has? Well, I don’t know when it was that boundaries started creeping in from the hoardings, but it was definitely a good thing. The kind of fully committed athletic boundary fielding now common in all forms of the game wouldn’t be possible without it. And those squishy Toblerone-like advertising ‘boundary sponges’ provide a similar satisfaction to knocking over walls made of colourful toy bricks. They’re not only safer to slide into, they look great while you’re doing it. They have, I would say, improved cricket as a spectacle.

Which brings me to my favourite innovation of recent times, and one I’m delighted to see making its ICC debut at the World T20 – the crazy light-up bails.

First seen, by me at any rate, during the 2012 Aussie domestic T20 tournament The Big Bash, the bails are called Zings. They have movement sensors in the spigots which detect when they’re dislodged, and trigger the LEDs.

They look fantastic. They add drama and a sort of kitsch glamour to stumpings and run outs, and a spectacular firework quality to being bowled. I don’t see a downside at all. They look great, and they might occasionally be helpful in tight decisions.

Obviously, I needed some.

After a bit of digging I wrote to the Australian company (www.zings.biz) that makes them, asking if they were planning to make them commercially available. The ones on the telly send a signal to the stumps within 1/1000th of a second, which then light up as well, and cost $40k a set. Obviously that’s slightly over the top for village cricket, but how about just the movement-sensitive bails, without the radio tech?

The postage took a month and was almost as much as the bails, and they got stopped by customs on the way in and slapped with VAT and a handling charge, but I don’t care.

Murky midweek games at Damerham this summer will be lit up by the bright flashing lights of what might be (I’m not sure, but I wouldn’t be surprised) the first set of Zings in England. Roll on the gloomy evenings.

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Column 3, 2014 - Mental disintegration

Printed in The Cricket Paper issue 75, Friday March 21, 2014. [Full text below]

Michael Vaughan, writing in The Telegraph in the UK and The Age in Australia this week, thinks he’s been taken for a ride. Trescothic (‘depression’) was ill, whereas Trott (‘burn-out’) “did a runner”.

Vaughan says he feels “conned”. Trott’s was not a mental problem, he declares, but a cricketing one. “We were allowed to believe he was struggling with a serious mental health issue and treated him with sensitivity and sympathy.” Which Michael clearly feels he doesn’t deserve.

Andy Flower, a man always notable for his careful choice of words, referred to the reason for Jonathon Trott’s premature departure from Australia as a “stress related condition”.

That is deliberately vague. It’s a term that could encompass irritable bowels, a Reggie Perrin style midlife crisis, or full-on manic episodes. It could even, I think, be successfully argued that Ben Stokes’ wrist, which he broke punching a locker in frustration, is a stress related condition.

I’m not being flippant. I’m trying to illustrate that these are very blurry lines in a very large, very grey area. I for one am not at all sure of the distinction between stress, nerves, anxiety, burn-out and depression. Though as I understand it, burn-out is by definition related to stress, whereas depression is often completely unconnected to it.

All of them seem more prevalent in contemporary society, though figures are very hard to come by, skewed by a diagnosis rate that’s gone through the roof. It’s certainly become an important industry for Big Pharma, which cynics might suggest is not necessarily above persuading people that ordinary and understandable lows are chemical imbalances which need treating with drugs. Valium and Prozac did not become household names by accident.

Theories for the increase include too little and too much exercise, too little and too much free time, heavy metal toxicity, and the inexorable rise of consumerism and junk food.

I’ve no idea what causes it. But I know it’s real. In the last few years several of my close family and friends have suffered from one form or another of “stress related condition”.

Some were treated with drugs, some with psychiatrists, some simply with time, all with sensitivity and sympathy. Every single one of the episodes was scary and disorienting for the people around them, and completely overwhelming for the people concerned. Normally buoyant, energetic people, crippled by feelings beyond their control.

Cricket is a game with a significant mental aspect. Much of what is done tactically is designed to deliberately deceive, unsettle and destabilise an opponent; to sew doubt in their mind. Especially at the very highest level. Steve Waugh famously rechristened sledging ‘mental disintegration’.

Can it be surprising if people occasionally fall victim to these plans? And if they do, are they just losers? Undeserving of our understanding, or even a backward glance?

I don’t know what went on in Jonathon Trott’s head, but whatever it was I believe it was genuine, beyond his control, and absolutely deserving of sensitivity and sympathy.

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Column 2, 2014 - Sucking the joy

Printed in The Cricket Paper issue 74, Friday March 14, 2014. [Full text below]

Cricket is supposed to be fun. Professional sport, lest those who run it forget, is entertainment. They’re in showbiz.

Of course, entertainment is often more fun when you take it seriously. But there’s taking it seriously and there’s treating it like mergers and acquisitions. If you forget or ignore why people like it, all you’re left with is suits and corporate lingo.

Recently cricket has been subsumed by the language of the boardroom, a sort of ‘smartest guys in the room’ mentality apparently designed to suck the joy out of it, and get as far away as possible from the fact that they’re talking about grown men hitting a leather ball with a wooden bat.

Opaque media releases designed to say nothing of value, obfuscation and misdirection, bland party-line press conferences full of platitudes and positives disguising the iron fist of ruthless commercial decision making.

Take the ICC’s recent coup, or ‘board meeting’ as they prefer to call it, in which the ‘Big Three’ of England, India and Australia effectively assumed control of the world game. There was a sinister Orwellian insistence that agreement to the proposals was unanimous. To channel Douglas Adams for a moment, this was obviously some strange usage of the word “unanimous” that I wasn’t previously aware of.

Bangladesh were threatened that India would pull out of the Asia Cup and World T20, South Africa simply that they’d be stranded with no one to play. In this way, the other members it seems were effectively bullied into acquiescence, press-ganged into a new world order with the kind of behaviour you might have hoped would be left in the playground: my ball, my bat, if you want to play, do as I say. Unanimous.

And it’s not just the global power struggles. Look at the clinical excision of Kevin Pietersen, and the absolute information vacuum surrounding it, again packaged as “unanimous”. This is not the behaviour of people who wear tracksuits to work. It’s the behaviour of people who wear thousand pound suits to work.

Cricket has embraced the politician’s skill of answering the question you want to answer, rather than the one you’re asked. It doesn’t matter who’s right – certainly not who’s best at cricket – the winners are the ones who are best at arguing. The ones with the best lawyers.

On the eve of the World T20, let’s remember that all sport at its core is a meritocracy: money, class, race and status bow to talent, ability, and Lady Luck. Cricket especially is full of stories confirming the if-you’re-good-enough-you’re-in principle. Afghanistan is an inspiring recent example of sport showing politics what success looks like.

The World T20 is the youngest and most exuberant of ICC events. I hope, I really hope, that for three weeks in Bangladesh cricket leaves the lawyers at home and remembers how thrilling it can be, how valuable it is, how much joy it can bring. I hope it remembers to have fun.

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Column 1, 2014 - The McCullum column

Printed in The Cricket Paper issue 73, Friday March 7, 2014. [Full text below]

I’ve been lucky enough to be in New Zealand for the last month. (Yeah, it was amazing, thanks. You should SO go. You’d love it.)

When the trip was first mooted, over a year ago, India had a three Test tour of NZ scheduled for February, and it looked like I’d get to the Basin Reserve. I’ve always wanted to go there. It’s a proper old school Test ground, with those grassy banks purpose built for indolent lounging.

But by the end of last summer The ODI junkies at the BCCI had swapped the third Test for a few more one-dayers, and the new schedule meant we’d be down in the South Island by the time the Test got to ‘Welly’.

So India’s insatiable ODI habit denied me my foreign Test fix before I’d set foot in NZ.

I’m not bitter, but the Wellington Test the BCCI made me miss was one of the greats of the modern age, breaking record after record and churning out an endless stream of stats. ‘The highest sixth wicket partnership in Test history’ is probably the pick of the records, and my favourite of the stats is Ishant Sharma recording his career best figures of 6-51 and his worst of 0-164 in the same match.

And, like all great matches, even as the geeks salivated over the stats, they all agreed they did not tell the whole story. Because the story was Brendan McCullum.

McCullum is a likeable cricketer. An unorthodox, attacking captain, his media persona is excessively polite and softly spoken, but he looks like a tattooed working class hardman whose pint you would go out of your way not to spill. He usually bats with the casual backstreet brutality his looks suggest, but not this time. This time he batted with the measured, thoughtful determination his voice suggests.

I was 500 miles south of Wellington in a café in Te Anau when, visibly exhausted but still running threes, with an injured back, knee and shoulder, after two days and ten minutes at the crease, he became the 24th player – and the very first Kiwi – to bring up a Test triple century. There was an extended Indian family watching it on the TV in the café, shaking their heads with the wearied resignation of England fans watching Amla.

He had come in to bat with his side three down and 200 behind. Now they were 400 ahead, and offering a defiantly raised mid-digit to the misguided notion of a two-tiered Test system.

Cricket in New Zealand plays a distant second fiddle to the national obsession of rugby, (even the Basin Reserve is on Rugby Street) much as it does to football in England. So it was great to see McCullum and his team dominating both front and back pages of the NZ press for all the right reasons the following day, under chest-thumping headlines like CAPTAIN FANTASTIC.

As it so often does from such epic draws, cricket emerged victorious.

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