Column 11, 2014 – An underdog's chance

Printed in The Cricket Paper issue 83, Friday May 16, 2014.
[Full text below]

In the wake of the Holland debacle, the Scotland game was an absolute must win for England. They had nothing to gain, everything to lose.

The phrase ‘out of your league’ is a metaphor everyone understands when applied to hypothetical romantic liaisons, but it can also be more literal.

There are no leagues in international cricket, though we can guess how they’d stack up if there were. Division 1 would be the top eight full ICC members. Division 2 would be Zimbabwe and Bangladesh, plus a select group of ‘Associate Nations who’ve made full members look stupid’ – Ireland, Afghanistan, Holland.

Scotland would be in Division 3, with the bulk of the Associate Nations, striving for promotion to the ‘make full members look stupid’ brigade.

(The rest of the leagues would be made up of the Affiliate Nations, countries you can’t quite believe actually play cricket at all: Estonia, Morocco, Sweden, and, perhaps most improbably, The Falkland Islands.)

Anyway, Scotland were playing a side a good few leagues above them, with nothing to lose and everything to prove.

Not a dissimilar scenario, just on a different scale, to The National Village Cup, the early rounds of which are effectively a series of Heffalump traps for the better clubs to avoid.

This year we were drawn against Tichborne Park. We’ve played them before, and know them as a pleasant bunch with a lovely ground. We also know that they are much better than us. Their seconds play at our level, but their first team are Southern Premier II. Which is out of our league in a distinctly non-metaphorical way.

After a shaky start, with one opener bowled behind his legs and the other subjected to a run call that would have tested a cheetah with a launch catapult (yes, me – what gave it away?) we settled down to a respectable 150, young Ben making amends with a jug-avoiding 48.

Giant-killing possibilities didn’t even cross our minds. Until they had a bit of a wobble: a simple caught-and-bowled, a thick edge, the next guy clean bowled for a golden. At 12-3, the slightest ripple of belief could almost be felt running round their enormous outfield.

It dissipated fairly quickly, that enormous outfield put to efficient use as they knocked off the runs before drinks with a minimum of fuss and no further loss.

Scotland won’t have really thought they had a sniff, especially not when they were set 170 in 20 overs. But there can’t have been too many people, on either side, who didn’t experience a little flicker in the stomach when Michael Leask was smashing Tredwell around The Granite City on his way to 42 from 16 balls.

In both cases, at either end of cricket’s spectrum, the clear favourites prevailed comfortably, as everyone knew they would. But in both, for just the briefest of moments, it looked like it might get interesting.

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Column 10, 2014 – Antici... ...pation

Printed in The Cricket Paper issue 82, Friday May 9, 2014.
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It’s that time again. Every year it happens. The long slow build up of expectation as the cricket season approaches and the first outdoor outing looms ever larger on the horizon.

I played a few indoor games over the winter. It’s good fun, and eerily reminiscent of cricket. It even contains many of the same elements – bowling, batting, throwing, catching – but remains definitely and resolutely something else.

Indoor cricket is not cricket to the same extent that table tennis is not tennis. The extra word changes it completely.

There were winter nets, and now outdoor nets too. Outdoors feels closest, perhaps because you’re in natural light, and at the place where actual cricket happens. It smells of new grass, and you can’t help wandering over to inspect the square and speculate.

In the brief summer of Easter week, the square dried out, and the strip Derek prepared even had little cracks in it. Anticipation reached a rolling boil. Easter Sunday, our first scheduled game, it rained solidly all day. Of course it did.

The next week, after a deluge on Friday, the slate grey skies never looked like lifting and the game was called off before 11. I don’t remember an April with no cricket at all.

This week, the forecast was clear, and Saturday dawned bright and blue. I stood staring out the window, searching for the grey. There wasn’t any.

Finally, it was actually going to happen. I was so excited I nearly cleaned last year’s mud off my spikes. Instead, I worked out how long it had been. Last autumn was as wet as this spring, so our final game of 2013 was the first day of September. Over eight months. 244 days. 66.85% – just over two thirds – of a year. That’s a lot of anticipation.

We batted first and I opened. Walking out to the middle, pulling on gloves, sniffing the air, feeling the breeze, squinting at the sun, I tried to freeze the moment, frame it in my mind.

You can see where this is going, can’t you? This story can’t end well.

Even in wet outdoor nets, the ball skids on to the bat pretty quick. On early village pitches when there’s been this much rain, the ball does no such thing. Anything below express pace sticks in the surface, mooching on to the bat with all the urgency of a reluctant teenager with revision to do. I know this perfectly well. It is not new information.

I defended a few, left a few. Then I went to flick one off my pads for an easy single, and was through the shot so early that when the ball finally deigned to turn up, it was met with the full face of my outside edge and went straight up in the air for some gentle catching practice. Betrayed. I always suspected nets were a bad idea.

The first game has finally arrived. The first run will have to wait.

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Column 9, 2014 – Bring back the ginger genius

Printed in The Cricket Paper issue 81, Friday May 2, 2014.
[Full text below]

Next month England will pick a Test side to replace the one broken, humiliated and generally kicked around the gutter in Sydney.

So despite the almost exclusively dreary weather, this has been one of the most interesting starts to the County Championship in years, because the door to the national side, for the first time in ages, is wide open.

Cook, Bell, Broad and Anderson you’d think are nailed on, barring injury. Of the next generation, it’s relatively safe to assume that Root and Stokes are in, and Buttler will get his chance with the gloves if Prior doesn’t step up. The last quick’s spot will probably go to Jordan, Mills, Finn or Onions.

The batting spots are harder to call. And there are three of them.

There’s no shortage of strong cases. Compton, Carberry, Bopara, Ballance and half a dozen others are looking to add to their Test cap collection. Ali, Robson and Vince are heading up the queue to start one.

But for me there is one name leading the chasing pack by some margin. I’ll be disappointed if England’s middle order doesn’t feature more ginger than just the fiery Stokes come June.

Eoin Morgan made his first big splash in 2010, when he steered England home in Bangladesh with an assured hundred, becoming in the process the first ever player to score international centuries for two different nations.

But that’s not what stood out about him. We’ve become quite blasé about reverse sweeps and all the rest of it, but when you see Morgan and all his busy, breathtaking chicanery at its best, it looks so easy and natural you wonder why everyone doesn’t do it. Until you remember that most simply can’t.

And he can do it under pressure. He’s an aggressive middle order finisher who scores quickly and destroys conventional fields. Pietersen’s natural successor. And only 27.

In Test cricket he seems to have been hobbled. Impossible to be sure, but it’s almost as if he’s been told – or felt compelled – to abandon his natural game and play like a classicist. If England are serious about a fresh approach, giving Morgan his head would be an excellent place to start.

And there is another reason to get him back in the fold: he’s a natural captain.

He’s impressed whenever he’s deputised for an injured Cook or Broad in the short forms. Broad has helpfully reminded everyone of late how tough it is for bowlers to captain themselves, and Morgan clearly has a fine cricket brain, and is imaginative and inventive in ways that neither of the incumbents have demonstrated.

I’m a big fan of Alastair Cook the opener, not so much of Alastair Cook the captain. It’s often said that the best argument for Cook’s captaincy is the lack of viable alternatives. Well guided, Morgan could be that alternative. And maybe Cook could go back to averaging 125 against Australia.

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Column 8, 2014 – New era?

Printed in The Cricket Paper issue 80, Friday April 25, 2014. [Full text below]

As a member of the cricketing public – someone with no more access to inside information than anyone else on the outside – my impression of England cricket management is of an entrenched, old school, jobs-for-the-boys club where the most important qualification is the right tie. It has one eye on the purse-strings, one eye on an early G&T, and its back to the future.

I’d dearly like this impression to be wrong, but the announcement that Peter ‘Moorsey’ Moores will have a second crack at the England head coach job does little to dispel it.

Through Flower’s retirement, Pietersen’s exile and Cook’s cementing as the one solid foundation block for The New England to be built upon, there was much talk of starting afresh, a new era, a clean break.

The impression this gave was an exciting one. A shiny new set-up, sparkling with innovative approaches and contemporary ideas; a modern-era powerhouse, fizzing with energy, bursting with untapped potential.

Moores represents the precise opposite of a new era – namely the old era. Last time he had the job, Moores was Flower’s boss. They come from the same school of analytical, stat driven, attritional cricket. Laptops, spreadsheets, gyms, and quinoa.

They are similarly in thrall to corporate flummery. Moores is a past master of being on the same page, singing from the same hymn sheet, cultures, consultants, advisors and support staff. Team England is a brand to be honed by values and soundbites. They want their cricketers to ‘execute their skillsets’ and ‘express themselves on the field’.

And crucially they share an attitude to the elephant in the room. Moores famously fell out with Pietersen before it was quite so fashionable to do so, in the process of losing this job the first time around. Though he maintains “I never fell out with Kevin, Kevin fell out with me,” his return effectively guarantees that KP will not get one.

Cook says Flower will have no influence on the rebuilding of the national team, though he has been using him as an advisor on captaincy since he retired, and will continue to do so. Moores also says he’ll use Flower as a sounding board.

Well pardon my pedantry, but that sounds a teensy bit like a position of influence to me.

From the shortlist they were working from, Moores may have been the best option. (Though Downton’s objection to Giles’ lack of experience is eyebrow-raising, from a man with such depth of experience in running the national side that six months ago he was a stockbroker.)

I just think they were working from the wrong shortlist.

I have nothing against Peter Moores. I’m sure he’s a lovely chap who is kind to children and animals. I’m also sure his intentions are honourable, and as an England cricket fan I wish him all the luck and success in the world.

But the ‘clean break’ and ‘fresh start’ and ‘new era’ we were promised, he very definitely is not.

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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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