Column 16, 2014 – Lord's vs Lounge

Printed in The Cricket Paper issue 88, Friday June 20, 2014.
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I love Lord’s. I love the buildings, the history, the look of the grass, the uniquely joyful sound of 20,000 people engaged in polite conversation. Is there a better place to watch cricket?

Well there’s really only one other contender. Thomas Lord’s place has to battle it out with my place. The home of cricket, vs the home of me.

Like most people these days, my home has a dirty great HD TV with a 1080p picture and 5.1 Dolby digital stereo. It has a large comfy sofa, which I’m confident would be worth well under £75 on the open market, and a fridge full of beer which is not only cold, but actually tastes like beer, and cost really quite significantly less than £4.60 a pint. It also boasts a choice of toilets with dry floors and no queues.

Last Friday I had the best seats I’ve ever had at Lord’s, (though my actual seat was wet and sticky, because the first thing I did was spill Champagne all over myself, but that’s beside the point,) right under the media spaceship, behind the bowler’s arm. The best possible view.

Except when something happens.

When something happens, there is little doubt that the best seat in the house is actually in your house.

At home I have Hawkeye, Hotspot, Snicko, super slow-mo replays – all the toys. On my sofa, I will scrutinise a contentious moment with all the veracity of any third umpire.

When Silva nicked Broad to Prior, there was some debate about whether it carried. But I only know this because I have since watched the highlights. At the ground, all you got was a five minute delay while people in the crowd asked each other if they had any idea what was going on, until the big screens dotted around the place finally sprang into action with six helpful letters: NOT OUT.

Quite why those at the ground are denied what those on their sofas are privy to is beyond me. Another of the modern game’s inexplicable foibles.

But never mind all that. I went to Lord’s with two old school friends I don’t see nearly enough anymore. One flew over from Ireland for the day, the other had a stand up fight with his boss about taking the day off. Without the pull of a Lord’s Test, at least one, possibly all three of us would have found it all too easy to cry off. But Lord’s is special, and we weren’t going to miss it.

We had a fantastic day, full of beer and news and cheese and wine, which just happened to have the magnificent backdrop of Root making a double ton and England declaring for 575 on a perfectly sun-kissed afternoon.

In terms of watching cricket – really watching it – telly may have the edge. In terms of enjoying cricket – really enjoying it – there’s just no contest. Lord’s wins hands down.

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Column 15, 2014 – The Butler Incident

Printed in The Cricket Paper issue 87, Friday June 13, 2014.
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England’s indignation at ‘The Butler Incident’ at Edgbaston last week feels a little bit like Australia’s indignation at ‘The Broad Happening’ at Trent Bridge last summer – an appeal of ‘Foul Play!’ directed at The Spirit of Cricket itself. That nebulous, indefinable arbiter of fairness which causes such consternation in the game at all levels.

The situation is muddied here by the difference between the Laws of Cricket, which govern us all from village green upwards, and the ICC playing conditions, which govern internationals.

Spot the difference: MCC Law 42.15 “The bowler is permitted, before entering his delivery stride, to attempt to run out the non-striker.” ICC playing condition 42.11 “The bowler is permitted, before releasing the ball and provided he has not completed his usual delivery swing, to attempt to run out the non-striker.”

Senanayake’s front foot had landed before he turned round and knocked the bails off. In a one day game for club or county, Butler would not have been out.

That in itself is daft. Why are they different? Anyone think of a reason? I’d love to hear it.

Despite this pointless ambiguity, the ruling on the main issue is very clear. If the non-striker is out of his ground and the bowler legally breaks the wicket, he’s out. There really isn’t a lot to argue about.

Except some people think that to enforce this rule is the depraved act of a dishonourable lowlife, a crime against the game, worthy only of contempt. There’s no shortage of this opinion among cricket’s retired professional classes. Though some might say that grizzled ex-pros who think nicking off and not walking is an inalienable right, are perhaps not best placed to pontificate on the game’s ethics.

I nearly didn’t write about this, because pretty much everyone has already pronounced their considered opinion on it, one way or the other.

But then I hit upon a new angle: the unconsidered opinion. The uncluttered perspective. The pure judgement of the unbiased witness, unclouded by prior knowledge, unencumbered by the baggage of tradition.

My wife, as I may have mentioned, does not like cricket. She views it primarily as my feeble excuse to avoid weekend family time and dog walking. Her brain, usually sharp and analytical, instantly switches off when it comes to cricket. She is stubbornly ignorant of the rules.

I showed her ‘The Butler Incident’. This was her response: “So if he goes past that white line and the bowler-man hits the sticks with the ball, he’s out, is that right? Well he’s out then. How could he not be out? Of course he is. What’s all the fuss about?”

She paused, as if thinking deeply on some overlooked subtlety, before adding: “If you’re watching the rest of this, I’m off to bed.”

So there it is. If we don’t like it, we’d better change it, because as it stands, it’s pretty cut and dried.

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Column 14, 2014 – Let me tell you a story...

Printed in The Cricket Paper issue 86, Friday June 6, 2014.
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A couple of summers ago I was having a beer in Salisbury with a few cricket buddies. The New Inn has an outside fire pit, sort of a cross between an open fire and a bonfire, which lends conversations around it an appealing, ‘gather round’ storyteller type vibe. Anyway we were talking cricket, inevitably, when someone from outside our little party chimed in with a cricket story of their own.

It turns out that The New Inn runs a friendly cricket team, and the story he was telling concerned the derring-do of some young Aussie kid who was over for the season. This kid was contracted to South Wilts, and was casting around for any cricket at all when he wasn’t engaged with them. So he’d turned out for the pub.

We all leaned in around the fire to hear the tall tales of houses being cleared, and the look on old whasisname’s face when he stuck one in the field beyond the river, etc. The conclusion of this story was that apparently this kid was playing the T20s for Hampshire.

What did you say his name was? Greg something? No: Glen. Glen Something.

A month or so later we were at the Rose Bowl to witness Glen Something – tall and whip-thin, looking hungover and in need of a shave and a square meal – get out cheaply and have his off-breaks tonked all over Hedge End.

Another maybe-kid found wanting at the next level up? Well, hang on. Don’t go to the bar yet. The story’s about to get good.

In February last year, he’d just got out for a golden duck and was busy kicking the furniture at the back of the changing room, when Michael Clarke broke the news to Glenn Maxwell that he’d topped the IPL auction at $1m, making him the most expensive cricketer in the world. Within the month he’d made his Test debut for Australia.

Fast forward a year and he still looks like a skinny kid who doesn’t get enough sleep.

But he also looks like world cricket’s form batsman. Inventive flips, outrageous scoops and reverse whatevers, effortless drives and monstrous cow corner smashes translate regularly into thirty-ball fifties or fifty-ball nineties. Despite the fizzle rather than bang he went out on, he was this year’s highlight of cricket’s own highlights package: the Indian Premier League. Few currently would bet against him following Warner’s career path from T20 upstart to destructive Test staple.

He still looks like he likes a beer, too, and could probably spin the tallest of tales around that storyteller’s campfire.

And now the IPL has crashed down from its manic sugar high, ‘Maxi’ is on his way back to play the T20s for Hampshire again. I might have to pop down for one or two, see if he can’t do better than last time. I reckon he just might.

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Column 13, 2014 – Bowlers who bat

Printed in The Cricket Paper issue 85, Friday May 30, 2014.
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Since the seventies, Major League Baseball has had a ‘designated hitter’ rule, allowing a player picked for his batting to bat in place of one picked for his pitching.

Fortunately for all concerned, cricket entertains no such nonsense.

The game’s structure means not everyone has to bowl, but everyone does have to bat. A player in the side for his batting will not be forced to embarrass himself in front of a global TV audience doing something he’s not as good at as many amateurs.

Whereas those picked for their skill with the ball will inevitably be required to show off their batting chops, or lack thereof.

Favourite of this column Chris Martin, as he so often does, provides a wonderful example. No, not Gwyneth Paltrow’s estranged corporate rock warbler, the other one. Chris Martin was a rangy workhorse with a distinctive skip into the crease, whose 233 scalps made him New Zealand’s fourth highest Test wicket-taker of all time. Far more entertainingly, he was an absolutely dreadful batsman. In 103 innings he accrued 123 runs, 36 ducks, and an average of 2.37, only made that respectable by 51 not-outs.

Martin was unusually bad, but he’s just an extreme example of Test cricket’s most thrilling spectacle: ordinary, just-like-us batsmen facing world-class attacks.

Who can forget Jimmy Anderson and Monty Pannesar, both excellent bowlers, one an ordinary bat, the other a few grades below ordinary, blocking out the end of the first Ashes Test in 2009? It was genuine edge-of-your-seat stuff, a by-the-fingernails draw that those who don’t understand cricket cannot grasp the appeal of.

For me it’s when cricket trumps all other sport. Bowler vs bowler is a contest of skill vs heart. Flintoff and Harmison with the ball vs Kasprowicz and Lee with the bat: perhaps the game’s most epic battle. And Graham Onions surviving a brutal onslaught from Morne Morkel in Cape Town was more memorable than a hundred efficient wins.

So you can see why England have been guilty in the past of picking bowlers for their batting. It’s understandable, but never a good idea. When it comes to Tests, you want your best bowlers. Let the batsmen get the runs.

But if you find a genuinely good bowler who also knows which way up the bat goes? Well, that’s a different story.

Chris Jordan has been demonstrating for some time now that he’s an accurate, mid-eighties quick with a tasty bouncer. In the truncated Scotland ODI, the last ball of the innings – the only one he faced – was nonchalantly dispatched onto the pavilion roof. Last Thursday he did that to the best death bowler in the world to cap 38 off 13 balls. He has yet to be tested at the highest level trying to preserve his wicket rather than smash sixes, but I have a feeling he’ll get his chance.

He bowls pretty well. But excitingly, Chris Jordan can bat.

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Column 12, 2014 – The family game

Printed in The Cricket Paper issue 84, Friday May 23, 2014.
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The first week of the Hampshire Cricket League was pretty much washed away. Our game was one of the last called off, and the local rag turned up, desperate for something – anything – for the first official day of the league cricket season.

The resultant picture, cajoled out of us on our sodden square before we trudged off for an afternoon of reluctant shopping or DIY or some other ignominy, exposed something about our demographic we mostly tend to ignore. But there it was staring back at us from the back page, thrown suddenly into sharp relief: it’s just possible we may not be in our prime.

The prime of your sporting years is 25-40. Guess how many of us there are in that age bracket? That’s right. None at all. Not one.

Sachin Tendulkar retired at 40, and he was about as late as it gets. A legend with 100 international hundreds, and still many thought he’d outstayed his welcome. Two other recent legends, Ponting and Kallis, were both 38. Mark Ramprakash managed to hold out till 42, domestic cricket being more forgiving than the world stage.

Bowlers tend to go earlier, the stress on the body a little more telling. McGrath and Warne were 36 and 37 when they strolled off into the Sidney sunset together for the final time.

Part timers, really. Last year we had to persuade Al, an off-spinner in his fifties (and a character generally known as anything other than ‘retiring’) that he still had a good decade left in him.

Because village cricket is almost exclusively contested by +40s and -25s. And it’s not just us. Most clubs we know are in similar straits. There may be a few, but they are the exceptions, when you’d have thought they’d be the rules.

Why this should be is not entirely clear. The almost complete absence of cricket in state schools surely can’t help, but doesn’t account for the -25s, who are to be found in healthy numbers at most clubs.

It must, I can only conclude, simply be the call of the family, the growing necessity of two working parents meaning most men in the prime of their cricketing lives are required around the nest at weekends. (For more on this, see my book, which derives its title from my wife’s attitude to cricket.) Good for families, perhaps. Bad for cricket, definitely.

Anyway. It turns out, this time of year is an excellent time to encounter any side relying on players in their early twenties, before they’re overwhelmed by the pull of the nappy.

We finally played our first league match on Saturday and won at a canter by eight wickets in half the overs. Bramshaw II were largely over 50 or under 18, but in a month’s time they’ll be bolstered with half a dozen 20-somethings back from university, and they’ll be a very different proposition indeed.

Like most things in cricket, it’s all about timing.

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Column 11, 2014 – An underdog's chance

Printed in The Cricket Paper issue 83, Friday May 16, 2014.
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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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