Column 4, 2015 – Unearthly ability

Printed in The Cricket Paper, issue 107, Friday March 6, 2015.
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Some years ago we played a Saturday league game on scruffy council pitch in the middle of a housing estate somewhere north of Salisbury. They were a side formed from several merging entities, so we knew a few faces, but hadn’t met them as a team before, and had no warning their number four would be anything special.

It was probably around three quarters of the way through his double century that we began to suspect.

We later discovered that he was a mate of a mate, roped in at the last minute. It was his first game for them – his first for anyone in a year. Since his Hampshire trials, in fact, with his flatmate, James Vince. By the time we got to the pub that evening to report back, he WAS James Vince.

That same year we played a big club who had a 19-yr-old with a chip on his shoulder. He’d been dropped from the firsts to open for the thirds. It was unclear whether he’d been dropped because he had a chip on his shoulder, or he had a chip on his shoulder because he’d been dropped. Anyway, he was cross. Cross enough, and good enough, to race to a ton, including a venomous flat six straight back over the bowler’s head and through the pub window 100 yards away like an anti-tank missile.

These instances felt iniquitous at the time, but they are part of cricket’s fabric. It is, as the cliché goes, a team game played by 11 individuals, and the colossus among the pigmies is the norm. Most teams have one guy who could easily play at a higher level, and, if he comes off, can win it on his own.

It just feels a bit unfair when they’ve literally dropped down from a higher level.

In top flight cricket, by definition, there isn’t a higher level to drop down from. And yet the casual observer of this World Cup would be forgiven for thinking that’s exactly what’s happened.

Chris Gayle’s double ton against Zimbabwe was arguably an actual different league: a second XI attack with no answers to the finest cow-corner slogger on the planet. But two others defy such convenient explanation.

Last weekend Brendon McCullum dismantled arguably the best pace attack in the world like he was the local pro bringing upstart kids down a peg or two, charging 90mph quicks from ball one and slapping them into the stands with open contempt.

And the way AB DeVilliers eviscerated the West Indies looked not so much a different level as a different game. A game where one routinely sweeps fast bowlers for six from a yard outside off. On one knee. With one hand. Without so much as a by-your-leave.

With apparent precognition and inhuman reflexes, it’s as if DeVilliers and McCullum have dropped down from The Gods XI, to show the mortals how it’s done.

And yea, they did smite them.

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Column 3, 2015 – Cricket's gateway drug

Printed in The Cricket Paper, issue 106, Friday February 27, 2015.
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Sunday 28 August 2005, 8.4 million people watched the climax of the Trent Bridge Test on Channel 4, breaking the record of 7.7 million set two weeks earlier at Old Trafford. The conclusion at The Oval dipped to 7.4. But then, it was a Monday afternoon.

Wonderful though the 2005 Ashes was, it only became part of the national conversation that summer because people watched it. Ordinary people. People who don’t follow cricket, much less have trenchant views about who should bat three or the importance of a four-seam attack. Normal people saw it, and got swept up in its drama.

For this very reason, Britain has listed ‘crown jewel’ sporting events, regulated by the government. There are currently 10 events from The Olympics to Wimbledon protected for live broadcast on free-to-air TV, and nine protected for highlights.

Around the millennium, amid howls of protest, the ECB campaigned to have cricket de-listed, so they could “negotiate a fair price”. They succeeded. That Monday afternoon at The Oval almost 10 years ago was the last live international cricket on UK free-to-air TV.

It’s no coincidence that those were the last England cricketers to transcend their sport. There were Freddies and KPs in every playground – I now play with and against them every week. The ECB argued that Murdoch’s money would fund grass-roots cricket. Others, that the next generation of kids won’t want to emulate Moeen Ali or Joe Root, for the simple reason that they won’t know who they are.

With grim inevitability, this is proving to be the case. A national playing survey published last year showed participation levels in cricket have ‘plummeted’. The ECB has pledged to reverse the decline with ‘new initiatives at grass-roots level’, presumably using some of the £70 million a year they get for making it inaccessible at grass-roots level.

In recent weeks the clamour to reinstate free-to-air cricket has grown. Bosses at Yorkshire and Surrey have been vocal about it in the wake of the success of The Big Bash, which is free-to-air in Australia, (though on Sky here,) as is most cricket.

This is complex stuff. If you can afford it, Sky’s coverage is excellent. And it’s doubtful there’s much appetite among free-to-air broadcasters for a sport that takes ages, and (a circular argument but a fair point) hardly anyone watches anymore. Where cricket is still free, it’s riddled with rampant commercialism and relentless advertising. There isn’t a simple answer. It’s not exclusively cricket’s problem either. This month BBC lost The Open to Sky. The Rugby Six Nations is up for renegotiation.

In the 2013 home Ashes, the highlights beat the live show. Channel 5’s highlights were seen by 1.5 million, while just 1.3 million watched live on Sky.

So ITV’s daily World Cup highlights are very welcome. And while 10.30pm is not exactly kid-friendly, the door is at least ajar for that all-important audience – the one that doesn’t yet know it’s the audience.

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Column 2, 2015 – Unintended consequences

Printed in The Cricket Paper, issue 105, Friday February 20, 2015.
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My favourite umpiring conundrums are satisfying because they’re ultimately logical. They work out – there is justice, a correct answer.

The last ball of a match. The batting team are nine down, scores are level. The bowling team need a wicket or a dot, the batting team need one run.

Pretty good, right? This is edge of your seat stuff, even before the batsman is stumped off a wide.

So. What happens? Quite a head scratcher, isn’t it?

The answer is simple chronology. A wide cannot be called until it passes the batsman, and as such might not be called until after the stumping has occurred. But once called it is deemed to have been a wide from the moment of delivery, so the extra run is credited before the wicket and the batting team win.

Simple, eh? Straightforward, logical, understandable.

Now. Let’s turn our attention to the last ball of the England v Australia game last Saturday.

England were nine down. James Taylor was given out LBW by the on-field umpire, which was overturned on review by the third umpire. During the kerfuffle, Taylor and Jimmy Anderson attempted a leg bye and Jimmy was out of his ground when the wicket was broken. After the Taylor decision was reversed, Jimmy was given out, run out.

Now, that is a genuinely dreadful decision. I mean truly, embarrassingly, are-you-seriously-professional-umpires bad. That ball could not have been more dead. It was an ex-ball, nailed to the proverbial perch.

The ICC later issued an acknowledgement (not an apology) that “the game ended incorrectly and an error was made.”

ICC Playing Conditions, Appendix 6, DRS, rule 3.6 a) states “If… an original decision of ‘Out’ is changed to ‘Not Out’, then the ball is still deemed to have become dead when the original decision was made (as per Law 23.1(a)(iii)). The batting side, while benefiting from the reversal of the dismissal, will not benefit from any runs that may subsequently have accrued from the delivery had the on-field umpire originally made a ‘Not Out’ decision.”

Clearly the umpires were wrong. But just as clearly, that DRS rule needs a bit of work, doesn’t it?

Last Saturday, England’s position was hopeless. The umpires not knowing the rules did not alter the result, it just denied Taylor his ton, stranding him on 98.

But let’s imagine for a moment a less hopeless situation. Get back on the edge of your seat.

Nine down. One behind. Last ball. The batsman is struck on the pad and the ball races away for four leg byes – the batting team win! But the bowling side appeal for LBW – it’s given! Then overturned on review! The batsman is not out, but the leg byes don’t count because the ball is retrospectively dead – the bowling side win!

Is that really how we want the World Cup Final decided? I think someone might need to take a long hard look at Appendix 6, rule 3.6 a).

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Column 1, 2015 – Phil Hughes

Printed in The Cricket Paper, issue 104, Friday February 13, 2015.
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The Cricket World Cup starts tomorrow, and cricket’s oldest foes meet in Melbourne. One name will not be on Australia’s team sheet, but will be on everyone’s mind.

It’s two and a half months since cricket changed more profoundly than any new rule, format or TV rights deal will ever change it.

A man was killed. He wasn’t a soldier or a test pilot, living with death every day. He wasn’t a racing driver or a mountain climber, who accept the possibility that one day their sport might exact the ultimate price. Phillip Hughes was a cricketer, killed playing cricket. People don’t die playing cricket.

Death is part of life, and youth cut down in its prime, its potential forever unfulfilled, is never less than tragic. But this one we felt particularly keenly. People don’t die playing cricket.

How decent a guy he was or how good a player he was should have no bearing on how we feel about a 25 year old killed at the crease. And yet it does. Hughes was an unorthodox swashbuckler of a batsman, and by all accounts attacked the rest of his life with similar zest.

The cricket world – fans, players, media, administrators – has never felt more united to me than it did that week. The game’s vibrant and highly engaged twitter community, whose default mode is sarcastic snark, perhaps epitomised the depth of feeling. #putoutyourbats was a poignant and understated expression of solidarity, mourning and respect from all corners of the globe. Google it if you didn’t see it. You won’t be sorry you did.

Twitter was not all that was elevated by the tragedy.

Australia’s captain Michael Clarke, besides being prodigiously gifted, has always come across as a bit brash, a bit pleased with himself. A modern celebrity, with all the trimmings – supermodel on his arm; supercar on his drive – a shallow, showy metrosexual.

I don’t recall ever having my impression of a public figure so quickly and comprehensively reversed.

From his statement on behalf of Hughes’ family at the hospital, to the Cricket Australia press conference, to publicly supporting Sean Abbott (who bowled the fatal bouncer) with the words “when you feel like getting back on the horse mate, I promise I will be the first to strap on the pads and go stand up the end of the net to hit them back at you,” to the heartbreaking eulogy at the funeral, he was a model of articulate dignity. He did his country, his sport, and his best mate proud.

If Hughes has a legacy, I hope it’s that. Cricket rallied because of his death. It gained perspective. It remembered that it’s just a game, and yet the game is what’s important. Clarke concluded his eulogy: “We must cherish it. We must learn from it... And we must play on.” If we’re lucky, perhaps the game will manage to retain that sentiment in Hughes’ memory. For while it has indeed played on, cricket will never forget Phillip Hughes.

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Column 31, 2014 – Fantasy XIs: TMS vs Sky

Printed in The Cricket Paper issue 103, Friday October 3, 2014.
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As this is the last Cricket Paper of the year, I thought a bit of end of term fun would be in order. You know, like when they used to let you bring games in on the last day.

A popular game among cricketers and cricket fans, is fantasy elevens. There are many variations. You can have All Time XIs (Ashes are a favourite, of course), Now vs Then (21st vs 20th century), or for the seriously advanced, Alphabetical XIs. You get the idea. Current and all time World XIs are a good place to start.

You can do it with club cricket too. What if all our local villages were merged into a superclub, with A, B, C & D teams. What would that look like? Which one would I get into?! Or make an XI out of your league, taking the one really good player most teams have and making a side out of them. What a team that’d be. What league would THEY play in?

Anyway. Way back when sitting around in the pub garden talking cricket drivel was what I did every Saturday evening, (ie a few weeks ago, before the end of the season,) we fell to discussing, not for the last time I’m sure, the relative merits of BBC TMS, and Sky TV. I think it’s fair to say that we have rarely been better served in terms of technical and first hand knowledge in our comm boxes. Certainly the character and rich texture of non-ex-international contributors is sorely lacking (the likes of Arlott, Jonners and CMJ are simply yet to be replaced; it is currently a fort held solely by Blowers) but in terms of know-how, there’s no shortage.

So Fantasy XIs, who would win? That would be two pretty decent sides, wouldn’t it?

Lets start with the top order. TMS has Boycott, Vaughan (c) and Ed Smith. Not to be sniffed at. Sky has an embarrassment of riches: Hussain, Atherton, Gower, Nick Knight, and recently Strauss, as well. Who are they going to drop?!

They also have Bumble and Ian Ward down the order, and of course Beefy, who’s opening the bowling with either Holding or Willis, with Paul Allott second change, and not a bad spin option in the shape of a certain Shane Warne (c).

The TMS spin department is not too shabby either, with Swanny, Tuffers and Vic Marks all vying for a spot. The pace attack is less contested. Harmison’s in as a frequent contributor. Simon Hughes is there, but Gus Fraser is too busy selecting to help Aggers out with the new ball, so Isa Guha steps in with some solid medium pace.

What TMS have in that middle order though, is the guv’nor. Alec Stewart (wk). Ah! There it is, the ace up the sleeve, Sky are doomed – they haven’t got a keeper! Who’s gonna keep to Holding having never done it before?!

See you next term.

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Column 30, 2014 – Top bants

Printed in The Cricket Paper issue 102, Friday September 26, 2014.
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The Andrew Gale racism accusation has thrust player banter once again into the spotlight. The OED defines banter as ‘the playful and friendly exchange of teasing remarks’. The word had its time in the sun a few decades ago, but is now among the most irritating in the language, along with its own abbreviated form ‘bants’, largely due to its adoption by teenagers to mean ‘hijinks’, or any kind of boisterous schadenfreude they deem ‘top bants’.

Banter has a lot to answer for, and cricket is sorely afflicted. Sledging, some say, is part of the game. This I am prepared to accept on the condition – and it’s a non-negotiable condition – that it is funny.

South African batsman Daryl Cullinan is perhaps best remembered as Shane Warne’s bunny. He once arrived at the crease to Warne gloating that he’d been waiting two years for another chance to humiliate him, to which Cullinan deliciously shot back: “Looks like you spent them eating.”

Portliness is often at the heart of a good sledge. My brother-in-law once shouted from square-leg as I walked out to bat, “He’s wearing a stomach pad!” which had the whole field in stitches, including me. He was later delighted when I admitted that trying to think up a suitable riposte was consuming most of my concentration when I spooned one up in the air, so his sledge was directly responsible for my dismissal.

This kind of sledging seems to have gone out of fashion these days, in favour of brainless abuse.

“Get ready for a broken f***ing arm,” was Michael Clarke’s welcome to Jimmy Anderson last winter. Top bants, Michael. An army of ICC lawyers proved unable to determine what Jimmy himself said to Ravi Jadeja this summer, but we can be fairly confident it wasn’t a playful and friendly exchange of teasing remarks.

We once played a much higher league side in a knockout cup, where they spent our whole innings telling each of our batsmen in turn what effing c-words we were. We found it rather baffling. Seven leagues above us, yet the manifest superiority of their cricket was apparently insufficient.

If you strip the Andrew Gale / Ashwell Prince exchange of anything that might be considered racist (ie where they were telling each other to go) it amounts simply to this: Prince: “F*** off.” Gale: “You f*** off, you f***er.” Top bants indeed. Devastating repartee. Like having Oscar Wilde and Mark Twain out there.

It’s not racist, it’s just abuse. It’s pathetic, the kind of playground name-calling that gets 15-year-olds detention. It’s embarrassing not because it’s racist but because it’s just so base, so charmless, so utterly devoid of wit or imagination.

In my view the ECB is wrong to pursue Gale for racism. But if its intention is to draw attention to and stamp out such indefensible, boorish, sub-prison-yard ‘banter’, then for once the ECB has my full-throated support.

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Column 29, 2014 – Chucked out

Printed in The Cricket Paper issue 101, Friday September 19, 2014.
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NOTE: The Paper prints 'per cent'. This is wrong: it's degrees.
It's right in the full text below.

On 26 August 1862 at The Oval, Edgar Willsher was no-balled for an illegal bowling action. In the ensuing hoo-ha, WG Grace said he could see no alternative than to change the laws to accommodate Willsher’s action. The game must adapt, change was inevitable. What was Willsher’s controversial new action? He bowled overarm.

The rules, clearly, did indeed change to allow overarm bowling. As a footnote, following the infamous Chappel brothers incident in 1981, they changed again to outlaw underam bowling.

The point is, the game evolves. And that evolution is driven by those who play it at the highest level.

Last week Saeed Ajmal, the number one bowler in the world, was banned by the ICC for an illegal action.

Today’s Law 24.3 states that: “…once the bowler’s arm has reached the level of the shoulder in the delivery swing, the elbow joint is not straightened partially or completely from that point until the ball has left the hand…”

That Law is useless. Extensive research around the turn of the last century suggested that over 99% of all bowlers, amateur and professional, contravene Law 24.3 with every ball they bowl. The vast majority of people are physically incapable of bowling without straightening their arm.

The ICC playing conditions (why not the actual Laws?) were changed in 2000 to allow a straightening of 5° for spinners, 7.5° for medium pacers and 10° for fast bowlers. This proved unenforceable. In 2004 a panel of former Test players and biomechanical experts recommended a flat rate of 15° tolerable ‘elbow extension’ be used to define the difference between bowling and throwing. It is still in use today.

Indulge this apparent non-sequitur for a moment. I remember a real lightbulb moment whilst learning to read and write music. It’s so long ago that it seems like somebody else’s memory, but it was a realisation that instantly inverted what I was struggling with, and all its daunting complexity suddenly made sense: music theory exists because of music, not the other way around. Imagine! Its purpose is not to confuse and infuriate music students, as I was hitherto convinced, but a valiant and inevitably flawed attempt to describe something indescribable.

Is there something similar going on with the illegal action conundrum? Are we allowing the theorists to get in the way of the virtuosos? 15° is an arbitrary figure applied by rule makers – theorists. It is only definitive because they say it is.

Saeed Ajmal is one of the most watchable cricketers in the world game. He makes it more thrilling and less predictable, and consistently tests the skill of the best batsman in the world.

Ajmal’s average elbow flex when tested was completely unacceptable under the current rules. But whether it’s a change in the rules, a change in Ajmal, or some sort of compromise, I can’t escape the conviction that the game must accommodate him somehow. It is poorer for his exclusion.

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