Fine Glance

Get your priorities right, says Athers

2008-05-16T05:07:00.000-07:00

Dear, oh dear: Athers gives Vettori an absolute tooling read here

The English Game

2008-05-15T09:45:00.000-07:00

Check out my interview with Richard Bean on digyorkshire.com about his new play about cricket, The English Game, showing at West Yorkshire Playhouse, and then at theatres across the UK: read here...

Don't douse my flame

2008-04-17T09:28:00.000-07:00

My current excitement at the start of the new domestic season will soon pass; experience tells me this. Ramps, it is good to know, completed his 98th first-class century yesterday, but not too long after he’s passed his 100th, I shall have tired of trawling the on-going season averages, grown bored of reading reports on runs scored or wickets taken by players long ago proved to be insufficiently equipped to make the Test grade and simply stopped caring whom it is that is leading whichever competition I fail to recognise from all the others: there is too much domestic first-class cricket

I look forward to the new season of Test cricket, I really do, but I look forward, so much more, to playing again after so long a winter. Part of cricket's appeal is entrenched in its delicate, precarious nature; a flame of summer so easily put out by the shedding of tears that other games, other activities of the season can easily endure

Life XI

2008-04-07T08:20:00.000-07:00

Michael Henderson in the Telegraph not too many months ago, collated a list of the players he discerned most pleasing to his eye, and I've since thought that I should do something similar according to my own tastes, though with a few stipulations. My first stipulation is that I be allowed two lists: one made up of players whom I have seen play in an acceptable number of Test matches during my lifetime; a second, if I may be given poetic license, made up of those cricketers whom I wish I might have seen. The second condition - and the challenge makes the thing a little more interesting, I think - is that the players selected make up an actual team capable of making good account of itself in a Test match. I'll be including my reasons for selecting - and not selecting - players as well

So to the first list...

M. J. Slater
M.P. Vaughan (c)
B.C. Lara
S.R. Tendulkar
C.L. Hooper
M.E. Waugh
K.C. Sangakkara (wk)
A. Flintoff
S.K. Warne
A.A. Donald
C.E.L. Ambrose

But for the exclusion of Glenn McGrath, Adam Gilchrist and Murali, this could pass for a collection of the best 11 players of the past generation, but you'd be surprised how many cricketers from the generation that went before it I might have included (Robin Smith, Aravinda de Silva and Mohammad Azharuddin, for instance) despite my being a mere 26 - this XI was far more difficult to put together than I anticipated

Were it not for my desire to cushion the frenzy of Slater's hitting with the grace that Vaughan provides, Chris Gayle would most certainly have joined the New South Walean at the top of the order; but, then, Vaughan - along with Hooper and Lara - was always guaranteed to make this XI

Slater's 80 in the first Test of the 2001 Ashes at Lord's clinched his place in the side, a raging, violent display of severe hitting that made the ground ring all around with the crack of infant skulls on Trojan walls; gleam despite its awfulness

Vaughan is a batsman from another time, his classical play sonorous below the visual unmelodiousness of his synthetic peers. Overpitch anywhere around off-stump and he will create a milky way through the covers, drop it too centrally short and the audience holds dead still for the coming, immaculate pull like the anticipant audience beneath an elaborate Swiss cuckoo clock as it prepares to strike noon, waiting for the inevitable to marvellously occur

Where then Gower? Much as I would have loved to have included Gower, I simply don't remember having seen him bat, though I know that I did: Gooch's gruffly effective blacksmithery had me clutching at my throat for breath, so perhaps I did not notice Gower because, until we are starved of breath, especially as children, we rarely pay the air due heed. Moreover, it should not be forgotten that Gower prematurely retired from cricket, playing his last Test match in 1992 and publishing his post-playing autobiography whilst I was still, literally, in short trousers

Lara batted with an electricity that no contemporary could come close to matching, and a number of his innings, especially against the Australians, were the stuff of epic poetry. People with chips on their shoulders - and why Lara was so burdened with one I cannot think - are capable of frantic, unexpected emotional and physical motion, and when this is coupled with the genius that so regularly visited itself on the Trinidadian at the crease, it can make for a beautifully harrowing scene that entirely transcends sport and passes into drama

Tendulkar I nearly did not include, and that you may find surprising, for he has set the canon for modern batsmanship. There is something about being told that someone's brilliance is unquestionable that riles, and were it not for the memory of his thrice successively whipping Hoggard for four through midwicket from balls swinging out through the corridor of uncertainty, he might not have made this side, for in the same innings, he was praised with such typically vigorous sycophancy for a hideous aerial inside-out drive that plopped down just beyond mid-off that I came very near to smashing the gogglebox. Not Tendulkar's fault that we should be prevented a fair chance to publicly assess him for ourselves without being accused of iconoclasm, but I consider him in the way that one might Mozart: all too perfect. Still, some men and women cry for Mozart. I'll not let my own blind-spot keep the greatest player since Sir Vivian Richards from this list

And what of Richards? Footage from his pomp acts as indomitable evidence of his arresting, fierce luminosity, but though I greatly admired the batting I was privileged enough to see as a boy, I was conscious, even then, of a sense that I was watching in action an old warrior whose status as a great was already sealed, and whose vitality at the wicket was not as it would have been four or so years previous; so for that reason, I feel I can cannot here include him

Coming in at 5, though, is a batsman that some feel might have succeeded Richards as Caribbean Master- Blaster-in-chief had he not so underachieved, but then Carl Hooper's bearish frame belied an inherent grace, his driving, in particular, lissom as the turn of a noble Florentian girl's delicately sleeved wrist at dance. If it is at all true that he’d require waking just as he was due out to bat, I like to fancy that he was woken from flightful, embroidered dreams, rich as mediaeval tapestry, whose river-carried narratives he played out abstractly at the wicket

Mark Waugh at 6? Well, I confess that, such is my distaste for his supposed off-field conduct that I allowed myself to first select the similar Damien Martyn ahead of him and then to consider Mahela Jayawardene as my 6, before coming to my senses and realising that, fine as those players have both been, I would be including either of them ahead of Waugh only to spite him. I'd suggest that his far more palatable twin was the better player, but though Steve was a significantly more attractive player than he is given credit for, Mark batted with an entrancing natural glamour that yet yielded huge numbers of runs and saw him finish with an average of over 40 in an epoch of great bowling

As should be patently clear by now, I am given to favour the aesthetic over the muscular - haughty as that sounds - and it is Sangakkara's cultured strokemaking and lithe movement that see him picked ahead of Gilchrist, though the recently retired Australian is the greatest wicket-keeping batsmen there has ever been, and one of history's most destructive batsmen also. Though itself ocassionaly robust, Sangakkara's easy strokemaking seems as if cultivated amongst the vellum of some Oxbridge library and relaxedly practiced in the holidays along the marbled white corridors of shaded Eastern palaces

Flintoff may seem like an obvious choice, and some may begin to wonder why there are no Pakistan cricketers in this team, but I must tell you that Saaed Anwar - about as good a timer of the ball as I've ever seen - was seriously considered for an opening booth and that Abdul Razzaq only missed out on the all-rounder spot here occupied by Flintoff by just a whisker. It is not, actually, for his brutish willow-wielding that Freddy is included here, for although that can stir to the umpteenth degree, it can be frustrating in equal measure: it is thanks to the game-altering rumble of energy - like the beating pulse of a powerful sea, to slightly borrow from Kipling - that his bowling can swirl up that he finds a place among players far more artistic than himself. Oh, I've never liked Botham, great cricketer though he most certainly was

I first became consciously convinced of Shane Warne’s actual greatness, though my subconcsious had long, long accepted it as a given, during the short, extra special spell he bowled at Trescothick and - more pointedly - Strauss on the evening of the 2nd day of the 2nd Test at Edgbaston in 2005

It is not merely that he bowled Strauss with a delivery as unplayable as the one he had so long ago famously bowled Gatting with, it is that Warne had managed, against reason, to turn the game on its psychological axis by adopting an attitude that suggested that it was actually England that were under the cosh, not the Australian side that rationality told us had the odds so heavily stacked against it. It seemed certain – absolutely certain - that Warne was going to get a wicket that evening through his sheer force of will and unmatchable skill, and when he did so with quite such an incredible ball, the players padding up in the England dressing room must have begun to fear, as I was doing at the point, that he might take 4 or 5 more that evening if granted the time, therefore single-handedly putting his country, improbably, in a position to win a game accepted wisdom told us Australia could not plausibly win. As it was, Lee (completely innocuous on the 2nd evening) was inspired to take 4 wickets the next day in helping Warne bowl England out for a poor 182 and then play a huge part in almost winning the game with the bat in partnership with Warne and then Kasprowizc, but I truly do believe that England would have won that game at a canter had it not been for the pressing apprehension conjured in their minds by one extraordinary cricketer during the dying light of a Birmingham day

It was in the latter stages of Allan Donald's career that I first heard him interviewed, and when I finally did so, I near executed a backward flip over my sofa such was my shock that somebody I so feared for his exploits on the field could be quite so warmly courteous and genial off it. Even before the Atherton incident that experienced the same perverse, terrifying thrill from watching him bowl as one does from watching, say, that blood-chilling crab walk up the stairs in the director's cut of The Exorcist or from bloody-mindedly provoking ghosts during the day that you will rue coming to you with malicious intent in the sleepless night of echoing, isolated boarding school corridors. It has been said of Evelyn Waugh that he had a limitless capacity for indignation and though I did not think of Donald in such articulate terms then, 'indignant' is the adjective I attach to Donald's bowling now: woe betide any that tempt the lick of Waugh's ferocious nib; woe betide any that triggers the nuclear explosion of Donald's bright white wrath

Curtly Ambrose's silent force expanded the length of my supposedly formative years but it was not until I had the pleasure of watching him at close quarters bowl seven or eight overs of unerring accuracy at Hampshire during his last tour of England that I actually began to fathom how very, very good the bowler my generation had so unthinkingly admired really was. The bouncers and abyssal stares we had so enjoyed had by this time disappeared from his weaponry, yet that same still sharkish ruthlessness - soundless, efficient, lethal - remained, ensuring kill after pitiless kill

That frightful bounder

2008-04-04T06:50:00.000-07:00

I've been somewhat busy with planning for the new financial year, new work developments and what-not over the past week or two, so I've not been able to muster the enthusiasm to furnish you any pearls of cricketing wisdom (read: self-important drivel)

So what's happened during my time away

Well, Sehwag cracked another triple hundred in what transpired to be the most absurd draw played out on a quite ridiculously flat wicket in the first Test at Chennai ( South Africa are now giving India a frightful pasting in the 2nd Test on a sporting wicket at Ahmedabad), Sri Lanka posted their first win in the Caribbean but appeared to be in the soup in their first innings of the 2nd Test at Port of Spain until the elements hauled 'em out, Rana Naved has been allowed by the Pakistani cricket authorities to sign for Yorkshire after all and, most interesting of all, comic villain Shoaib Akhtar seems to have thrown down his last thunderbolt in international cricket

It is Shoaib I want to focus on, as I haven't had occasion to watch any play lately

It took me years to warm at all to the Rawalpindi Express, for the most part because I am suspicious not of extreme pace in itself, but of the idiot consensus that sheer speed is an end in itself. Moreover, he's more than a little obnoxious, isn't he, and barely does our once fair game (now so greatly tarnished) credit but I must say that my attitude toward him was considerably thawed by a ferociously hostile spell he bowled at Hayden in the 2004-5 series in Oz. Damned if I can tell you which particular session of which day of which Test it actually took place in but, my, I enjoyed it - enjoyed it more than any other spell of bowling I can remember, may the devil take me if it's not true

Remember, 'twas about the time our Antipodean friends were licking all comers left, right and centre (incredible that we beat them the next English summer, really), with that confounded Hayden at the centre of it all, laying waste to bowling attacks across the globe and I, for one, was infernal sick of it, I tell ye; infernal sick

So who should come along to wipe the leer off his over-sized face with a few volleys across the bows but that scoundrel Shoaib

No word of a lie, he fair set out to do bloody murder unto Hayden that day, dastardly daring the fellow to take a heave at anything around his chops, throwing his flopping locks back with a wicked, booming guffaw each time the horror-stricken Hayden stumbled about himself wondering where the deuce the ball had gone, as rocket after rocket passed his ear. The damn fool even took one to the helmet, if memory doesn't fail me, and only Lucifer knows how the Australian survived the blow, for Shoaib was verily in cahoots with Aeolus that day - mighty Ares, too - and would surely have killed a lesser batsman; but that's the thing itself, yer see: Hayden was on top of the world, strutting about the place like Agamemnon, and good old Shoaiby, that impudent soul, decided upon bringing him down a peg or two and he jolly well gave him what-for, didn't he? For that - and that alone - I'm sad to see the lad go, but go he finally must, the bounder

Onward!

2008-03-26T05:25:00.000-07:00

Michael Vaughan is quite right: England may have shown considerable backbone and no little skill in coming back from 1-0 down to win the series in NZ, but England will have to get much, much better if they are to avoid taking a shellacking off of big boys like the Saffers

There are so many positives to take out of the last two Tests - Siders, a mature Monty (with an arm-ball), Broaders far exceeding expectations, Straussy, KP and Bell back in the runs, Ambrose doing ok (that's a big thing) - that it's a shame to dwell on any negative aspects, but Vaughan's lack of form is something of a concern to me

Don't get me wrong, Vaughan is a fine, fine player and his cover-drive is one of the most blessed sights in cricket, but he made bugger-all runs in this series and these days lets too much go through the gate or else edges balls that he really shouldn't be. If it's just that his technique that's slipped a little, then he can iron things out, but if judgement is the isue, that's worrying, because picking length and playing the right stroke to it has always been Vaughan's biggest strength. Aggers doesn't seem to think that moving to 3 would make much difference, but I'm not so sure. Admittedly, he's played the majority of his best cricket as an opener, but he's looked, of late, too uncertain a starter (no shame in it, as Ponting, Butcher and Lara will testify) to open the innings and maybe it's time he dropped to 3, and stayed there. Providing we trust Strauss to partner Cook, that is

Elsewhere, the Tresco question, mercifully, has been answered, Broad is beginning to look the business (the consensus had been that he was shite) and could provide some sort of cover for Flintoff should the big man not, heaven forbid, make it back and I think that Hoggy should come back in place of 'Sprayer' Anderson, certainly for the early part of the summer. And Harmison? Does he really, really want to play cricket for England? 'cos 'e's looked as though he don't. Make up your mind, old boy, and put us all out of our misery, there's a good chap

So, the XI that won the last two Tests should splatter NZ in conditions over 'ere, but will those same players have enough to beat Smith and his charmless lot? We shall see

An exciting summer lies in store (if ever it gets here)

Not many of them left now

2008-03-18T04:26:00.000-07:00

I, of course, never got to see him play, but that is no reason not to do Bill Brown, that doughty Invincible, the honour of mentioning his passing

Clichéd as it may sound, Brown was always regarded as a true gentleman of the game, a self-effacing character more inclined to praise illustrious colleagues like The Don, McCabe and Keith Miller than brag about his own achievements with the bat, but it was he more often than not, in partnership with Bradman's near bête noire Jack Fingleton, that provided the platform for those player's unsurpassable achievements. Not one to throw the bat, he did what openeners are supposed to do: blunt the attack and stay at the crease until at least lunchtime on the 1st day

Finishing his Test career with nigh-on 1600 runs from 22 matches at an average of over 46, Australia won 14 of the Tests he played in and he himself was voted Wisden cricketer of the year in 1939 after scoring over 500 runs at an average of over 70 during the Ashes tour of '38, a tour which saw him post 133 at Trent Bridge and 206 at Lord's. Put it this way: only Bradman, of the tourists, outdid him in that series

Rest in peace, good sir

Wrap it up

2008-03-17T04:43:00.000-07:00

Blimey. Made hard work of that, didn't they? Still, a win's a win and, boy (seems I've been posessed by the Griegster), did they need one

What's required now is a definite decision on Strauss's place, significant runs from the top-order (Vaughan and KP could both really do with big scores - a century from each would be nice, if that's not asking too much) and, it almost goes without saying, a spot of catching practice. Had England not made such arses of themselves in the field, they might not have needed to play on the 5th day

Napier's may be a flat track, but with Siders bowling out of his skin and Jimmy A and Broaders coming along nicely, England's attack should again have too much for NZ's weak batting line-up, whilst it's unlikely that England's batsman of class will again fail to score heavily against a very friendly Black Cap bowling line-up

The momentum's now with England and I should be very surprised if they did not now wrap up their first series win away from Blighty for, like, er, a hundred million years. Mind, it is England we're on about...

Rana-way

2008-03-11T08:43:00.000-07:00

Now this 'breaking news' I will comment on

Yorkshire, it seems, have all but lost their two overseas players for the season, with Pakistan pace bowler Rana Naved-ul-Hasan facing an immediate ban from county cricket after taking part in the unsanctioned Indian Cricket League and South African quick Morne Morkel - signed as cover for Rana Naved - joining the ICC-endorsed IPL, which runs from April 18th-June 1st

Yorkshire, then, are without an overseas player, and time is running out for them to acquire one (or one that's any good, at any rate)

The ECB (having taken an age to clarify things) have explained that anyone playing in the ICL will not be allowed to play in England:

'A cricketer wot 'as played in an un-auuuu-fo-rised event in the 12 months leadin' ap ta April Fool's wiwall not bloody well qualify for registration (wiv a coun'y)'

Rana has a 2-year contract at Headingley Carnegie, but a 3-year one with the ICL (which looks like a distinctly unglamorous competition to me, even with old man Lara's involvement). Yorkshire had warned the follically challenged Rana that, should he play in the ICL, then he could blu-dy well forgit abou' pleyin' fer Yourk-sher, so we can be pretty certain that his Yorkshire career is over before he's bowled a not particularly quick one (duly twatted through the covers) in anger for the county. A lucky escape for Yorkshire, too, if the fellow's previous record in county cricket is anything to go by

Now, that one had been on the cards for a while, but the Morkel situation has come out of the blue. The second set of IPL auctions today saw him snapped up for $60,000 by Jaipur, the side that also chucked a load of cash at Hampshire's 'Aussie Freddy Flintoff' (in that he has blonde hair and so very rarely plays Test cricket for his country, not because he's actually anywhere near as good as Mark Ealham, let alone the Flintster) and Dimitri Mascarenhas

So, Morkel'll miss the beginning of the season playing IPL cricket and then miss the rest of it when he joins up with the South African tourists, whom look likely to club the Vaughan era to a bloody end come late-summer. What will Yourk-sher do? The suspense, I fear, might well kill me

A cheap one in the KPs

2008-03-11T05:34:00.000-07:00

Ha! One half-decent Test match performance and who does Chris Martin think he is? Joel bleedin' Garner?

http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/england/7289560.stm/

Ruffled KP with a short one, did you? KP's own brand of chat gets on my nerves but Chris Martin thinking that he can get to a cricketer with more ability than the whole NZ side put together? Incredible hubris from a man that would struggle to get a bowl with my own beloved, and truly awful, Druids CC (for whom I am yet to take 5 wickets in a match, or score a ton). Pietersen's just not playing all that well, Martin: his unconfident showing and early dismissal in the 2nd innings had almost nowt to do wit' thee, in the grand scheme of things

Do what you do best, FIGJAM, and make him go fetch (just don't tell to do so: funny as it is, we really shouldn't approve of that sort of thing, tee hee)

Enter own expletive

2008-03-10T08:23:00.000-07:00

A calamitous weekend for English rugby; perhaps an even worse one for English cricket

I'm not going to bang on - you've probably read everything you need to in the broadsheets (tabloid readers, you know where the door is) - but how did the tourists actually manage that?

Sort yourselves out, England; Sideshow and Monty aside, you're a disgrace

2008-03-07T06:06:00.000-08:00

It seems cricket journalists, followers (one doesn't support, or become a fan of, a cricket team) and even ex-players (too many of whom are clogging up broadsheet columns with their 2nd rate prose these days for my liking) have become so accustomed to this 4 or 5 runs per over malarkey that they've forgotten that, occasionally, sides have to bat in the way that England did yesterday

The England batsmen's relative circumspection was, most likely, symptomatic of the combination of a lack of batting time and confidence but the circumstances - if not the wicket, really, which is actually just very slow rather than hazardous - perhaps called for caution. It is vital that England do not get off to a losing start in this series and yesterday's performance ensured, in all likelihood, that they won't

Vettori and Patel are highly economical and wily bowlers; whilst England may have played to their tune yesterday, the important thing is that Pietersen and co properly applied themselves and didn't get themselves out cheaply. Many is the time we have cursed and sworn at KP for not occupying the crease for long enough, but he yesterday showed admirable maturity and technique in not, in his own words, 'doing something stupid'

Mind you, I don't think I'm alone in hoping that England don't bat the same way in Wellingon and Napier - unless circumstances again call for it, that is...

- - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - - -

On something of a finishing note, or relevant afterthought, let me share one of my very favourite cricketing stories, concerning a day's play at Old Trafford way back when, told to Martin Johnson of the Telegraph by his grandfather: ‘E, it were great, lad: when I fell asleep, Barrington were 4 not out, and when I awoke two hour later wit no break in’t play, he were still 4 not out’

Ho, ho, ho - made me chuckle, anyway

Quite Harmless

2008-03-06T02:37:00.000-08:00

Mmm, New Zealand don't seem to be crumbling as easily as many of us thought they would; they don't seem to be crumbling at all, in fact. Which, of course, makes for good Test cricket (don't you loathe completely one-sided cricket?)

What, though, is going on with Harmison and Hoggard? Aye, the Seddon Park wicket at Hamilton is hardly conducive to express bowling - not something you're going to get from Hoggy on any wicket - but both were treated with complete distain in New Zealand's first innings

Being naturally inclined towards the aesthetic, Harmison's action has always made me cringe, but at his best, when he's aggressively confident and getting that steepling bounce, he can be unplayable

Oh, the criticism he's taken from the TMS team during the first two days - all of it very just

Gus Fraser, for instance, couldn't understand why, even when Harmy was bowling yorkers, the ball was reaching batsman at nigh on the 'pace' that Gus himself used to bowl at. Fraser conceded that the very best seam bowlers of the last 20 years - McGrath, Pollock, Walsh and Ambrose - had all bowled at around about 78-82 miles per hour, but they, all four, could put the ball on a six-pence and move it both ways off the seam, none of which Harmison is capable of doing. Even when bowling at a greatly reduced speed, Harmison still can't consistently put it where he wants it nor get great movement off the pitch

Boycs got stuck in, too, claiming that he's only rarely been anything other than middling to poor in the past 3 years, whilst Aggers - or was it CMJ? - claimed that a Harmison over is typically a mixed bag made up of very good and very bad deliveries

To put my thruppence worth in, I can understand that Harmy's diminished confidence is having an adverse effect on his bowling and that he probably can't take the risk of really letting fly, but he has to keep thinking. Why, when Ross Taylor has - whilst on a growingly anxious 98 - in one over failed on three successive occasions to pierce the off-side field with drives from full-pitched bowling, then give him a short one that he can easily pull away to reach his hundred? Brainless cricket, I'm afraid

Hoggy? Well, there's no nip in his bowling and the conditions aren't helping him to swing the ball, so he must concentrate on length - which he has - and on line: which he hasn't, giving the New Zealand bowlers plenty of width to make hay from. Not good

It's early days, but with New Zealand scoring nearly 500 and with an opener and nightwatchman already out, England might be in a struggle to avoid defeat here

What the bloody IPL?

2008-02-29T07:40:00.000-08:00

I've been rather quiet about the whole IPL thing - in fact, I've been rather quiet in general this week, and I'm sorry for that, dear, loyal reader (yes, I think I'm probably correct in addressing you in the singular), but I've had stuff to do - and that's mainly because I can't be bothered to get bogged down in financial questions (those that know me will vouch for my inability to count past 10) and moral glue

One great positive of this whole thing, for me, is that we'll be seeing a great many more West Indian players playing county cricket this season than we have done for many a year

With many superstars unable to join counties due to their IPL commitments, it gives Windies quicks like Fidel Edwards, Pedro Collins and Jermaine Lawson the chance to properly get to grips with awkward English conditions, as well as learn the lessons that the county game has to teach them - all invaluable stuff that they can use, hopefully, to catapult the Windies side into becoming a respectable international side at the very least

You'll notice that I haven't made mention of Shiv Chanderpaul's signing up for a 2nd season with Durham, and that's because he is already an astoundingly good player: the player of 2007 and, for my money, one good enough to walk into any side in the world

Wavell Hinds at Derbyshire? Well, that whirlwind Chris Gayle is still in need of a partner at the top of the Windies order and we only hope that Hinds can become more nimble at the crease and not merely plonk his big right boot straight down the wicket at anything that pitches in his half and take a swish at it. Problem is, in signing a Kolpak deal, he might well have signed away his international career anyway

Keep an eye on that Lawson chap this season: now 26, it seemed for all the world as though he'd gone the way of Franklin Rose, Nixon McLean and those myriad other poor coves charged with picking up the mantle left by Walsh and Ambrose, but he could be on his way back. That's great, because he's infinitely more talented than McLean and Rose and looked extremely promising when first he burst onto the scene: anyone remember his 7 for 78 against the Aussies at Antigua in '03? I bet you do. Well, if his action is indeed now sorted, there could be more great things to come from the rapid Jamaican

Edwards and Collins? Capable of swinging the ball at frightening pace, Edwards needs to get out the habit of getting carried away with the short ball, whilst Collins has talent but, like Hinds, may have scuppered his Windies future by signing as a Kolpak player. All's the pity, because the pair could yet develop a good new-ball partnership for the West Indies

It's a shame, too, that the boy Best has signed up to play Disney cricket instead of getting his career proper back on track with a spell at a county

A (brief) rant

2008-02-22T03:34:00.000-08:00

Just a quick one, but what's this nonsense about 'old fashioned' line-and-length taking wickets? Bowling line-and-length does result in bowlers getting wickets, but there's nothing 'old fashioned' about it - 'twas always so and shall forever be

Forgive me

2008-02-20T07:15:00.000-08:00

We are wont, some of us, to view cricketers from before our own lifetimes through an intoxicating, part-delusional nostalgia that bathes mythologised figures in a far softer light than they might well have been seen in by their own contemporaries

Lord Cowdrey, for instance, the consummate latter-day gentleman-cricketer to a sentimentalist of the game born long after his pomp, was castigated by many of his own generation - by veterans and war widows in particular - for citing a foot injury as his reason for not taking up National Service after Oxford, a foot injury yet not severe enough to preclude him from playing cricket quite brilliantly for over 30 years

Yet a graceful apparition does he remain

When Compton died, my school's pavilion took on a far more golden glow for my knowing that he had raised his bat to the admiring straw hats on the steps leading up to it on his way back from a dash at the wicket and then taken tea inside with adoring young lords and sons of lords, exempt from boundaries of class

Care I that he had four wives?

I see Hendren's smile though never I saw his face, melt at the imagined peak of Spooner's cap and shudder afore Spofforth charging in

I am pressed down, unable to breathe at St John's Wood, though were I to die there, I would have no place among its dead

Cursed work

2008-02-20T02:34:00.000-08:00

Responsible fellow that I am, I took to my bed early last night in order that I might feel fresh as a daisy for my real work come morning, thereby missing what was, by all accounts, a quite spectacular game of cricket http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/england/7250928.stm

I can't very well give contemporaneous comment on a game I haven't seen, can I?

Shut up, Warney

2008-02-18T07:58:00.000-08:00

I'm far from alone in holding Shane Warne in the very highest esteem as a cricketer - who could argue with his inclusion in Wisden's list of the 5 greatest cricketers of the 20th Century - but don't you just wish he'd keep it schtum sometimes?

There's no doubt that the man has an excellent tactical cricket brain and, had it not been for his, let's say, questionable off-field behaviour, he might well have captained Australia instead of Ricky Ponting, but he does litter the Press with rubbish, doesn't he?

First, there was his unnecessary comparison of a young Phil Mustard with the world's greatest ever 'keeper-batsmen, then his very odd list in the Times of the 50 best cricketers he had played with and against (in itself a very good thing, but 'Shreck' Lehmann ahead of Steve Waugh? Jamie Siddons - an excellent player, but one without a Test cap to his name - in the top 50? Do me a favour) and, now, his utterly gratuitous attack on England's international set-up and its supposed pre-occupation with the Ashes
http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/7251026.stm

That England are languishing a long way behind Australia is indisputable, but that all Warney can 'hear is excuses' for England's poor form since the summer of 2005? What rot (or alternative vernacular term). England's premier strike bowler has fully accepted that his form hasn't been up to scratch and quietly gone off to make amends, England have recruited a new bowling coach to help put some venom - and direction - back into their attack and at no point have Peter Moores, Michael Vaughan, Paul Collingwood, nor even the departed Duncan Fletcher, been heard to whinge about the major losses to injury (or other ailment) of their most experienced opening batsman, their talismanic all-rounder or their best exponent of fast reverse-swing bowling, three huge cogs in England's success prior to, and during, the 2005 Ashes

The fact is that England have 'just got on with it' and not always been up to scratch - no-one in England would refute that

'They get too wrapped up in the Ashes'? Well, why not set your standards against the best side in the world? We did whilst the Windies were blowing all comers away and I'm sure the current, ambitious Indian side looks to Australia as its standard, too. We - you and me - may care greatly for Ashes tradition but the current English professional, I'd venture, does not: all the England international set-up and its players should be thinking about, if we're to be pragmatic about it, is 'how can we become as consistently excellent as the Aussies' and then apply their findings to all their cricket up to, during and beyond the Ashes. So yeah, we are pre-occupied with the Ashes

Can I borrow the brain you use when your off the field, Shane? I'm building an...

Torturous opening

2008-02-15T04:42:00.001-08:00

It's early days for Phil Mustard, of course, and all followers of English cricket are by now, surely, sick of seeing 'keepers chopped and changed so indelicately (although I, personally, was delighted to see both Geraint Jones and, in particular, that witless chunterer Prior dropped), but England's OD side desperately needs someone to fill, or at least, part-fill Trescothick's boots at the the top of the order

Cook is batting wonderfully well - the failure in today's victory is a mere blip for a good player developing into a very fine one - but he needs a bit of a hand. I've no objection to there being a biffer at the top of the order, but it's just not happened for anybody since Trescothick's self-imposed exile (to which nobody can have any exception, sad loss though he is to international cricket)

Mustard will, hopefully, come good but has been little more than execrable thus far in this series, stupidly getting himself run out cheaply (the 7th England run out of this series, the morons) today after previous failures with the bat in this series - a premature introduction to international cricket can, as his captain at Durham forewarned, 'crucify you'

Fitting finale

2008-02-15T04:14:00.001-08:00

Not to state the bleedin' obvious or anything, but rather fitting that Adam Gilchrist should score a hundred in his final game of international cricket at his home ground, the WACA, innit?http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/7246330.stm

One rather wonders why he doesn't just hand the gloves to someone else and continue as a batsman, but hey-ho, it's his choice. Nothing much left for him to achieve, anyway. Bloody Aussie...

Cricket in the blood?

2008-02-14T08:43:00.000-08:00

Is cricket in the blood? I was much surprised to read today that Michael Vaughan is a descendant - not all that directly, granted, but a descendant nevertheless - of the well-respected Lancashire batsman Ernest Tyldesley and his far more illustrious brother, Johnny, with whom the former often suffered unfair comparison

Should I have been surprised that England’s languid, richly gifted captain and opener – who bats, for all the world, in a manner utterly out of keeping with the stolid tradition of Yorkshire batsmanship (but that’s probably because he was born in Eccles) – was born out of great cricketing stock? Probably not

Silk purse from a sow's ear

2008-02-14T03:21:00.000-08:00

Let's be brutally honest, world-, even Test-, class New Zealand cricketers have been at something of a premium in the past decade or so - Shane Bond, yes; Chris Cairns, certainly; Fleming, probably - which just goes to show quite how hugely influential the soon-to-be retired Stephen Fleming has been in his country's cricketing fortunes over the past decade

A fine, elegant strokemaker, Fleming has surpassed every national record as a batsmen in both forms of the international game, but it is his record as captain that marks him out as one of the three greats of New Zealand cricketing history

80 Tests as captain, 28 wins - that's an astonishing 35% winning ratio; a fine ratio for any Test captain, an absolutely incredible one for any captain regularly forced to open the bowling with the likes of Chris Martin or expect limited - by Test standard - batsmen to build big totals against superior attacks

The '99 series 2-1 loss to Fleming's New Zealand is much talked about here in England - locals drinking at The Chelsea Ram were utterly indignant to find England's cricketers enjoying a right jolly old knees-up immediately following their dreadful performance in the lost 4th and final Test at the Oval - but New Zealand's greatest triumph under Fleming wasn't actually a triumph at all: but it might as well have been (and very nearly was)

To pop over to Australia, to take on the side that had absolutely tooled England, in England, the previous summer and to draw 0-0 in a 3-match rubber - and very nearly win the final Test at Perth - was a remarkable achievement and had many asking the question whether any captain of the modern era had captained a country as skilfully. His targeting of the, by then, 36 year-old Waugh twins with the short ball to successfully exploit their slowing reflexes alone marks him out as a great strategist

That's his record as Test captain (you'll find that this author maintains that, as important as ODIs are, they'll never hold the lustre of a Test match), so what of his record as One Day captain?

The fact that NZ became one of the most feared One Day sides in the world even before the emergence of Shane Bond and the substantial number of devastating hitters that later came along again shows not just how wily a tactical captain Fleming was, but also how good he was at getting the best out of a unit of cricketers. Fleming was disappointed, at the end of his OD career, not to have taken NZ to a World Cup final and well he might have been, because, had he done so, nobody would have been greatly surprised. The single Champions Trophy, as fine an achievement as that was, barely does Fleming's brilliancy as a One Day captain sufficient justice

We have seen the likes of B.C. Lara, J.L. Langer, S.K. Warne, G.D. McGrath, S.M. Pollock and, most recently, A.C. Gilchrist, depart the Test stage in this past 18 months and although S.P. Fleming - as graceful and ocasionally brilliant, even steely, a batsman as he could be - will never be ranked among them as an individual player, his contribution to cricket as a captain - let us not forget his efforts at Nottinghamshire, either - mark him out as one of the greats of the modern game

We should wish him only the very best