Different Shades of Green

Nostalgia

2012-01-20T11:41:00.000Z

On Wednesday morning Lawrence Booth, the editor of Wisden, tweeted (Can you imagine Norman Preston tweeting? No, neither can I.) that watching England slide in Dubai was 'just like the old times', at the same time inviting us not to 'pretend you're not feeling at least a tiny bit nostalgic'.

This struck a chord with me, and, yes, it did feel a bit nostalgic, because I remember the old times. Although this, really, wasn't much like the old times.

This wasn't Qadir in Lahore, turning it square with the worst umpires in history at his shoulder (you can say what you like about Billy B, but Shakeel Khan he ain't), or Kumble and his henchmen mopping up the prawn curry refugees at Chepauk (That was the old times. Sachin made a hundred.). This, somehow, didn't seem to quite have the essence of English humblings in Asia down pat. The stadium looked modern, antiseptic and largely deserted, and, while the Gaddafi Stadium in 1987 was equally empty, the old concrete terraces lent it an air of starkness and brutalism which 'Dubai Sports City' will never match. The air was clear and the ambience calm, with the odd desultory Barmy Army chant replacing the call of the muezzins. The smog and searing heat of old India were enviably absent with some English travellers even complaining that it was too cool in the shade.

Other things were different too. Pakistan looked a smooth, competent, resurgent unit, desperate to atone for past slights and failings. DRS mopped up any loiterers with as much finality as Shakeel and Shakoor used to, but marginally more accuracy. Saeed Ajmal looked the bowler he is - good, not great - with the modern off-spinner's facility to make the ball go in more than one direction, although often the trickery seemed to be confined to the wandering minds of England's ring-rusty batsmen.

But this is hair-splitting. The wider truth is that the game in Asia has always been different from that played in England, or in Australia, or in New Zealand, and it remains so. Pitches are slower, spinners come on earlier and bowl better, with more variation and confidence, than they will ever do again in the world's temperate zones. English teams, even one as successful as this, will always struggle to adapt, especially if they haven't quite had the practice they need and the soft, warm feeling of Christmases and weddings and being 'World No.1' hasn't quite faded. A few hours in the middle against Ajmal and Rehman ought to sort that, but most didn't make it that far, bamboozled either by Ajmal's variations, Gul's persistence or, in Pietersen's case, their own brainlessness.

This is an England team with many qualities. They could come back from this.

In the old days, though, they never did.

We Could Be Heroes

2012-01-15T17:58:00.001Z

With India again dismantled and humiliated in an away Test series, questions, changes and further problems will surely follow. Duncan Fletcher, for one, must be wondering what the hell he's got himself into.

All the greats, suddenly and not so suddenly, appear to be slipping. Tendulkar looks good but can't make a century; Dravid, last summer's form increasingly looking like a mirage, has his stumps broken almost every time he goes to the wicket; Laxman is a prisoner of his own hesitancy and Sehwag is going through one of those periods - and they've always been there - when he looks a simplistic, shallow player, without footwork or runs.

With changes now certain other questions will be prompted, the most obvious of all being to ask how a country with a population of more than a billion people, where cricket is followed with ultimate fanaticism, can't produce a better team than this.

In time, new heroes - Yadav, Kohli, perhaps Pujara and Raina - will emerge, but things, for India, may well get worse before they get better.

Australia, meanwhile, go forward. They have a bowling attack which is adhering to the basics with persistence and skill (and they haven't required much more against these opponents), they have a captain who is a magnificent batsman and is in the runs, and they have Warner.

Warner who will soon assume Sehwag's mantle - in fact perhaps he already has - as the greatest attacking opener in the world. Warner who, with insouciant logic, pointed out that there often aren't many fielders in front of the wicket in Test cricket. Warner who, as someone said on the television yesterday, is changing the game. Warner who is the first world-class cricketer to graduate to Test cricket from the game's shortest form.

Warner is this week's all-Australian hero. For English cricket, even without its national team in action, this has been a challenging week. Its hero is a man that I saw bowl with impressive pace and verve for Derbyshire last season at a time when nobody knew anything about his role in the most concerning story to hit the county game in many years.

This week's English cricket hero is Tony Palladino.

Runs and Trust

2012-01-08T16:15:00.001Z

Michael Clarke could always bat.

He could bat when he came to England with the Australian Under-19 side in 1999. He could bat when he made his Test debut in India in 2004. He could bat when he took over the captaincy of his country a year ago and he can bat now. If you wanted, you could even take his Sydney epic as evidence that he can bat. But why would you need to do that when he has proved his worth, his mettle, and his skill many times before?

Australia remains a country with a deep, knowing, vital relationship with cricket. Not as visible, or as showy, or as brash as India’s, but important nonetheless. In Australia, as in India, one of the leitmotifs of the game’s growth was the way in which it enabled a young country to show its nascent capabilities to its former colonial masters. Because of this, and because it’s just a great game, cricket remains a central part of Australia’s cultural DNA.

And Australia produces great cricketers. Among batsmen there is Trumper, there is Ponsford, and, of course, there is Bradman. There is Archie Jackson. There is Greg Chappell and Border and Ponting. There are the Waugh twins. Well, Steve, certainly. Perhaps there is Hayden. At a stretch you could possibly even consider Mike Hussey. And if you can consider Mike Hussey you can certainly consider Michael Clarke.

With the exception of Greg Chappell - a man who some of us feel doesn’t quite receive his due either - all Australia’s post-war greats have been simple, unembellished players and men, their personalities as reflective of the characteristic Australian capacity for bluntness and distaste for pretension as the way they go about building an innings.

Clarke is perceived to be different. He has tattoos, has dated models. As Mike Selvey put it so well this past week, he is ‘a smooth-skinned, bright-eyed, baby-faced fellow from the metrosexual generation’. Someone, perhaps, a little out of step with most Australians’ perceptions of themselves and how an Australian man - and especially its most senior sportsman - is supposed to be.

All this is true, but it doesn’t stop you being surprised by the way in which he has often appeared to be held in such lukewarm regard by his compatriots. For Clarke is as good, and mature, and passionate a batsman as it is possible to find on the contemporary world stage.

In traditional Australian style his batting is without artifice. Early in an innings he will be watchful, maintaining his shape, leaving when necessary, working the ball around. Once set he will look to attack, especially against spin, his decisive footwork and range of shot keeping him one step ahead of the bowler. There is little that stands out or makes him unusual, apart from the smooth edges of his technique and his calling, which is as loud and definitive and easily identifiable as you will ever hear, repeatedly reminding the watcher of his assertive commitment to the task at hand. In front of a microphone he is balanced and jauntily articulate. His love for the game, the way it lives inside him, is obvious and unaffected.

All the truly great players who made Australian cricket what it was in the last decade of the twentieth century and the first decade of the twenty-first were born well before Clarke: the Waughs in ‘65, Warne in ‘69, McGrath in ‘70, Gilchrist in ‘71, Ponting in ‘74. With the exception of Ponting all have left the stage. Now is a time of adaptation and adjustment such as Australia hasn’t known for a quarter-century

Clarke, born in 1981, is comfortably the best Australian batsman of his generation, and he, as captain, will be his country’s standard-bearer as the coming years unfold and a different, younger side seeks to regain its place at the top of the world game.

All the signs are that Clarke, orthodox but adaptable, and a more instinctively perceptive captain than his predecessor, is the right man to do this. What is more, it increasingly appears as though the Australian public know this to be so. It may, strangely, have taken 329 undefeated runs at the cradle of the Australian game to convince them, when 151 at Newlands, or 136 at Lord’s, or many other past innings, should have done just as well.

This time last year, with Ponting deposed and Australia humiliated by their oldest foe, things were very different. Clarke was captain, but he neither had runs nor trust. Now he has both.

As someone once said, form is temporary but class is permanent.

Michael Clarke could always, always, bat.

And Now the End is Near...

2011-12-31T23:25:00.000Z

As the year draws to a close, like the final overs of a Test match day ticking over as the shadows lengthen, it only remains for me to say thanks for visiting.

Memories of 2011? Steyn v Tendulkar at Cape Town, touched upon here.

Lord's, Saturday, post-lunch, described here.

Sunday afternoon at Lord's. Prior.

Dravid everywhere, but especially Trent Bridge, which prompted this.

Oh, and Tim Bresnan - as unpretentiously excellent a cricketer as England have had in years - taking his team's score past 700 for the first time since 1930 with a straight six into the Edgbaston crowd.

See you in 2012.

Reverting to Type

2011-12-29T12:18:00.003Z

After a couple of weeks with the total number of posts here standing at 666, I felt I ought to check back in.

Nothing evil seems to have happened. Apart from another lame Indian failure overseas.

India should be better than this. They have at least two - well, three actually - of the greatest batsmen in history, plus another who's eaten better Australian attacks than this for breakfast in the past. Then there's Dhoni: brazen, ingenious, competitive, talismanic. And you can add Zaheer, hugely skilled and possibly even fit, Ishant, persistently under-achieving but with much more to give, and two discoveries, Ashwin, a deliciously artful spinner who can bat, and Umesh Yadav, the latest in a long line of Indian seam hopes, and one who looks as though he might stick around.

It's hard to pin down a reason, but the really disappointing thing about India's recent serial defeats in England and Australia is the way they've carried uneasy echoes of the times when Indian sides were pushovers abroad. God knows, Australia have their problems, but, as they've shown in various locations these past few months, they compete until they drop.

They have their fair share of quality, even if, in some cases, it is ageing, and they have thrilling seam bowling promise. What they also have - and Peter Siddle, with bat and ball, embodies this - is an eyeballs-out streak of bloody-minded competitiveness which is a by- product of their entire cultural DNA. Even when they're bad, they're still pretty good (apart from when they're playing England).

Indian cricketers, raised in a gentler environment, where the pitches and bowling tend to be slower, don't quite have this. They've got nearer to it in recent years, to be sure, but old habits die hard. International cricket is a big, unforgiving place. You can't always be laying waste to the West Indies in your heartland with two spinners in the side. Sometimes you have to go to Lord's or The Oval or the MCG or the SCG and stand toe to toe.

This Australian side has many weaknesses. This Indian side has many strengths.

India should be better than this.

Shifting Sands

2011-12-13T16:32:00.002Z

For Australia, little is easy at the moment. The sands have long since closed over the era of the greats, and the side which drew another unsatisfactory two-Test 'series' with New Zealand had a strange, unbalanced look to it.

Ballast, experience and expertise (theoretically, at least) was provided by Clarke, by Ponting, by Haddin and by Hussey, but, in at least one case they're not what they were, and the side was completed by a range of inexperienced players who in some cases don't belong where they are and in others don't look as though they believe that they belong where they are.

On the face of it things don't look too bad, but this impression may be illusory. As was widely repeated yesterday, Australia have become very adept at losing matches over the past few years, and, of their recent opponents, Sri Lanka continue to struggle in the shadow of Murali's retirement, while South Africa had them 21 for 9.

If the superb Pattinson continues to look as impressive against India as he has against New Zealand, and Cummins returns, they will have an attack capable of causing problems. Consistent, big runs may not be needed and Ponting may get some more breathing space. What seems more likely, though, is that because the series is twice as long and India's batting line-up is stronger than New Zealand's (and is backed by superior spin bowling), something extra will be needed, like big runs from number four.

Australia's decline, while inevitable, has required both collective and individual psychological adjustment. For players like Pattinson and Cummins, who grew up in a time when their national side was the best on the planet, it has been necessary for them to come to terms with the way the world has changed, relish the pressure placed on their young shoulders and respond to it. They have.

For Ponting it is a little different. For all the contrary evidence provided this year by Dravid, almost two years his senior, it is probable that the great years won't return. But he will not want to reprise the ignominy of his departure from the Bellerive arena he knows so well.

He may have to be happy with a big score somewhere, and a dignified exit on his own terms.

He'll need the score, though.

Doing the Impossible

2011-12-13T15:18:00.002Z

As with most things that go on in the mad, hectic world that is twenty-first century international cricket, I simply didn't have the time to comment on Virender Sehwag's 219 at Indore last Thursday. A pre-Christmas ramble round the pubs of St.Albans and some of London's most scenic open spaces saw to that.

I didn't, of course, fail to notice.

I can't do a better job of paying tribute to Viru than The Old Batsman did here, but, as usual with Sehwag, a few things - a few simple things - stood out.

When interviewed afterwards, his words were unassuming, trite even. As with his strokes, little energy is wasted on thought or analysis, and, like any genius, Viru can no more explain what he does than teach someone else to do it. To him, the things he does aren't extraordinary because he can do them.

Sometimes they may even seem as simple to him as they appear. Us mortals will never know, but we do know that many of the things he does are, for most people, impossible. They can never truly be easy.

If they were, everyone would be doing them.

Old and New

2011-11-22T21:27:00.001Z

For all the carnage of Cape Town, perhaps the most significant of the many vignettes thrown up by the worryingly truncated series between South Africa and Australia was the partnership between Khawaja and Ponting which did most to secure Australia's victory in Johannesburg. The old and new of Australian batting, coming together in a dicey situation and playing as if their careers depended on it.

In at least one case, it probably did.

The evidence, statistical and physical, is that Ponting has been slipping for a while now, even if he claims not to realize it himself, and much about his innings of 62 carried the air of a man sliding towards a precipice and trying hard to dig his heels in.

He watched the ball like a hawk, took big strides, forward or back, to everything, while forcing his hands through the line of the ball with exaggerated care and leaving anything he didn't have to play with an emphasis which was just a little overstated for effect.

'Look at me. I could always bat and I still can. You won't see the back of me for a while yet', was what Ponting appeared to be saying.

When the dust had settled and his side's victory had been secured, he may even have found himself reflecting on the fact that batting never used to be quite such hard work. Time does that.

The left-handed Khawaja, a man at the opposite end of his career, impressed in a different way. After the outlandish praise heaped upon him in the wake of his debut innings of 37 at Sydney last January, he'd failed to build on it, and one or two people may have been wondering if he was all he was cracked up to be. At the Wanderers he was largely cool, stylish and precise in his judgement and appeared to have the valuable gift of time. He will be seen again, many times, in his baggy green.

Starting from a low base, Australia have had a good start to the English winter. The team is still wracked with apparent weaknesses: both openers look vulnerable, Harris excels both as a bowler and a collector of injuries, Johnson, with the ball anyway, may be finished. There is no decent spin to speak of. But they have Clarke, they have Khawaja and, for the time being they have Ponting.

And they fight. They always do.

Plain to See

2011-11-20T10:56:00.000Z

Another weekend, and another old cricketer leaves the crease.

However, while many of the tributes to Peter Roebuck - including, perhaps, my own - were a little equivocal as a result of the man's enigmatic nature, there has been no such doubt where Basil D'Oliveira is concerned. What D'Oliveira did, with the assistance of John Arlott and others, helped to change the face of world sport, and, perhaps, in a small way, the world itself.

For one thing, apartheid is confined to history and South Africa is an accepted member of the international sporting and political community. For another, the current England team is what it is to a large extent because of the influence of players born and brought up in South Africa.

While, as someone who remembers cricket in the seventies well, it's all too easy to feel old these days, my memory doesn't quite stretch back as far as D'Oliveira's international career. However, I was at Lord's on a gloomy midsummer evening in 1976 when D'Oliveira, at least forty-four years old and badly injured, did his level best to pull round a hopeless cause in the Benson and Hedges Cup final against Kent. Despite what my father told me, I was too young to appreciate D'Oliveira's political significance - and the man himself would have played it down anyway - but I could see that he could bat. That much was plain to see.

Cricket, like any game, has its heroes and its sacred theatres. For anyone who knows it, the county ground at Worcester is up with the greatest of them. Many exceptional players - Graveney, Hick, D'Oliveira himself - have played out their greatest days there.

This has been a long time coming, but the shadow of the cathedral will hang a little heavier when next season starts.

A Lot on His Mind (Peter Roebuck, 1956-2011)

2011-11-13T12:27:00.003Z

Unlike many of the people, such as Peter English, who have been writing so well about their memories of Peter Roebuck, I didn't know him.

But then the impression you're left with after reading the tributes that have followed his tragic death last night is that nobody really did.

I saw him around a lot, though.

My earliest memories of Roebuck come from his days as one of the younger members of the great Somerset sides of the late seventies and early eighties. A man of intellectual gifts, if not great cricketing ones, he could never have been expected to exert a major influence in a team that contained Viv Richards, Ian Botham and Joel Garner. But he was always there, striding rapidly, purposefully, across the field with the air of someone with a lot on his mind, and making his fair share of runs in a style that was functional and effective, if rarely visually pleasing.

This went on for years. As captain he survived the fallout which followed the club's decision to release Richards and Garner in 1986, and then did his best to shore up a team that wasn't what it was. In those days he really did have a lot on his mind.

After he left Somerset and began captaining Devon, he made runs, took wickets and drove his players with a hardness and focus which was foreign to the minor county game. The result was a number of years of unprecedented success, the legacy of which persists to this day.

My chief memories of long days spent watching Roebuck's Devon by the sea at Sidmouth, Exmouth and Instow are of a transparently and unashamedly driven man, often fielding in unusual positions as he sought the tactical key to unlock victory, while occasionally breaking out of his carapace to lambast his players for any percieved lack of intensity or to bowl a few overs of strangely penetrative slow-medium, regularly taking wickets through sheer desire.

In an environment in which it was fashionable to drift along, he really, really cared, and he took others along for the ride. A lot of those players, waking up today around here in Devon, in south-east Wales, and in Sheffield, will be grateful that they had the chance.

In those days I also often saw him striding around the Taunton boundary on sunny midweek days. Rarely still for long, usually leaving behind an oblique comment, he gave the overwhelming impression of someone who inhabited a slightly different, more remote, place than the rest of us. This is probably why I never quite summoned the courage to speak to him.

Probably the fullest expression of Roebuck's love of cricket came on the page. Slices of Cricket, It Never Rains... and Tangled Up in White are among the finest written evocations of late twentieth century cricket from the standpoint of someone who had been both a participant and a shrewd, knowing observer.

All people ever said about Roebuck was that he was hard to fathom and that he could be difficult to get on with.

I don't know, but, when it came to cricket, he really cared.

A Sense of Unreality

2011-11-10T22:19:00.000Z

I didn't see the fall of the World Trade Center on 11th September 2001 as it happened, but people who did reported that doing so induced a sense of unreality. Many of them genuinely couldn't believe what they were seeing.

Today was a bit lke that. As I watched the Australian second innings wickets tumble in the kind of surreal freefall rarely seen away from the game's lower echelons, I briefly felt as though what I was seeing couldn't reallly be happening.

This was Australia.

Australia. The side, if not the players, who used to bestride the world, trampling all challengers underfoot.

And they were 21 for 9.

Precise reasons were hard to come by. There was some fine bowling, of course, and the pitch did its bit, but, as the cliche goes, 'it wasn't a 47 all out wicket'.

There were poor shots, from Hussey and Haddin in particular, but, more importantly, Australia, despite their fine showing in Sri Lanka, remain in an uneasy place. Watson now looks several places too high, Hughes, jumpy and staccato, still fails to convince, and Ponting may be facing the final curtain. Johnson just struggles on.

For all Clarke's class, the many qualities of Steyn, Morkel and the excellent newcomer Vernon Philander were always going to test their mettle to its limits.

They did, and they were found wanting. The game could go either way tomorrow but South Africa are favourites.

Corrupted Idealism

2011-11-03T13:14:00.001Z

For me, match fixing seemed an abstract concept until the Lord's Test between England and Pakistan in August 2010. I knew it had gone on, of course. I'd seen the fall of Cronje, and Azhar, and Salim Malik and the rest. Years ago I'd read the Qayyum Report from cover to cover and briefly wondered about the future of the game.

But, whatever the doubts, it was soon time to get back to the game. The battle between bat and ball was all that mattered, even if Pakistan were playing. Some things - such as cricket itself - just seemed too great to be corrupted, especially if you were prone to romantic idealism.

All that changed at Lord's. I saw virtually every ball (and no-ball) of that game, bought the News of the World for the one and only time in my life and then thought about what it all meant and what was likely to happen next.

Now we know.

Two and a half years for Butt, one year for Asif and six months for Amir.

Nobody should mourn Butt and Asif for a moment. Butt was a decent opening batsman and a promising captain, though, in truth, nothing above the ordinary at Test level. Asif was a really outstanding bowler, but there had been enough troubles in his career even before Lord's to show that he was never likely to fulfil his huge potential.

Amir is different. His statement of contrition and regret, though overdue, is very sad, and I hope that, one day, he can return to the game he was so very good at.

My enduring memory of those days at Lord's still has Stuart Broad and Jonathan Trott walking off on Friday evening with an unbroken stand of 244 to their names, but there is another.

Before the game started I was walking through the door which leads from the Lord's Long Room to the stairs up to the away team's dressing room when I nearly bumped into Mohammad Asif. He was tall and stick thin, with a faraway look on his face. Neither of us quite felt the need to apologize, but then I got the impression he'd barely noticed my presence.

As this shows, I really admired him, and so I readily forgave him, assuming he was thinking about the day's play and what he had to do.

That's the trouble. He was.

Other Writings

2011-10-29T15:42:00.000+01:00

Some of my time away from this blog recently has been taken up with getting things together for another website, which contains a lot of my writing which hasn't appeared on the Web before.

Among other bits and pieces are some long articles whch I wrote in the nineties and later, mostly for Richard Hill's superb Cricket Lore, together with my personal favourites from among the many thoughts I've recorded here over the past five years.

More will follow.

If anyone wants to take a look, the site can be found here.

There Was a Time

2011-10-22T16:51:00.002+01:00

There was a time, years ago, when Mark Ramprakash wasn't the cause célèbre he later became. The man who embodies both all that is good and pure and true in batting technique, but at the same time the player who, more than any other modern Englishman, represents a certain type of failure. The man who simply couldn't cope with the pressure of performing at the highest level of the game, of living up to everybody's expectations, including his own.

There was a time - such as when I first glimpsed him, scything away at Paul-Jan Bakker on a London club ground in the late eighties - when Ramprakash just used to go out and bat. His technique wasn't the thing of beauty it subsequently became, but it didn't need to be. All he needed was his eye, his footwork, his bravery and his bat. He was relatively unsophisticated, but he was also endlessly aggressive and very good.

I say this because Virat Kohli reminds me strongly of the Ramprakash that once was. Like the young Ramprakash he has a brilliant eye, an orthodox yet uncomplicated technique which works, and he approaches bowlers as though they exist only to serve up balls for him to hit to the boundary. While the statistics which accompany his embryonic Test career are anaemic, his one-day career is taking vivid shape as part of an Indian team which is attempting to create an identity which distinguishes it both from the old guard who are going or gone, and from an England tour which should have shocked it to its foundations. At the moment it is succeeding and there is little chance of mistaking England for a team which knows how to stem the flow.

Just a few short weeks ago England were humiliating India. Now, with home advantage reversed, everything is very different. At a steaming Wankhede Stadium tomorrow, a transformed Indian side will be confident of extending their series lead to 4-0.

Kohli will be more confident than most, because this, you feel, is how he is. It remains to be seen whether he can succeed where Ramprakash failed in the long game, but he will surely have further opportunities.

Rahane is deeply impressive, and the hunch is that more will be seen of Pujara before too long. Kohli, though, with equally outstanding centuries against England at venues as diverse as Cardiff and Delhi over the last five weeks, is India's real diamond.

There was a time when Ramprakash seemed to have the world at his feet. He never quite did.

Kohli really does.

Pausing to Remember

2011-10-05T20:30:00.000+01:00

Cricket is a game of pauses. Although there is always activity, there is the sense of a pause between each and every delivery. The bowler walks back to his mark, the batsman regroups and prepares for the next ball. Fielders pause too, their thoughts momentarily elsewhere.

The most noticeable, most pregnant pause of all, is the pause between a skied catch leaving the bat and it falling into the hands of a fielder who may or may not hang on to it. For those moments, everything is uncertain. Sessions, innings, games, entire series have been turned by dropped catches. The batsman knows it, the bowler knows it, the crowd know it and the fielder sure as hell knows it.

And when old cricketers die, people who saw them play - and especially so if they did so in childhood or adolescence, or they were part of a team who did something truly special - pause to remember them.

Graham Dilley was never famed as a fielder. Like many a quick bowler from the days before diving, and sliding, and all-round fitness became compulsory, and before the magnificent Jimmy Anderson showed what was possible, he just did his bit.

What he did best, and really well when everything clicked, was bowl. With his mood right and his fragile confidence bolstered, often by some powerful runs, he could be distinctly quick, with swing and sharp bounce as additional and potent extras. Like many an England player from the bad old days he never came close to fulfilling his potential, but he was admired at Canterbury, and at Worcester, and remembered with affection by all who lived through and witnessed the 1981 Headingley Test. Botham and Willis took the glory but neither of them could have done what they did without the help of Graham Roy Dilley.

A thirty year-old memory has the young Dilley, with a visorless helmet perched unsteadily on top of his blond mane, creaming Lillee and Alderman and Lawson through the covers on a grey Leeds afternoon and sharing a joke with Botham as Australia wilted and the course of history changed.

For me, though, the strongest image of all sees him the following day, steadying himself on the long-leg boundary as Rod Marsh's uncontrolled hook shot to a Willis bouncer directs the ball his way. A brief glance to check his distance from the rope, hands cupped upward, body braced to absorb the ball's impact.

Everything pauses.

Then he catches it.

He staggers back, but manages to steady himself. Marsh is out, Australia are 74 for 7 and defeat is on the cards.

He leans back and throws the ball high, high into the Yorkshire air.

Time for Lunch

2011-09-04T12:02:00.000+01:00

I've been writing this blog since July 2006. It's often been hard work but it's usually been enjoyable, and, for what it's worth, it's taken my writing and views to places and people I'd never been able to reach before. Thanks to anyone who's read anything I've written or expressed an opinion. I really appreciate your interest.

This year, though, I've found it progressively harder to be original or even to find the time to come up with anything at all. The number of comments has been down, too, and, unlike the early days, when I was content to write reams of stuff in the knowledge that it could be read around the world (even if hardly anyone was going to do so), when you get a bit longer in the tooth you require the reassurance and stimulation that regular feedback gives you.

My day job has become increasingly busy and stressful this year and this will reach a crescendo over the next few weeks, so I've decided to retreat to the metaphorical pavilion, have a bite to eat, change my shirt, have a rub down and contemplate my tactics for the rest of the day. The new ball is due in mid-afternoon and I want to be ready to take it from the umpire (I'm thinking Billy Bowden here for some reason) and fire a few out.

England will go on playing India, Sri Lanka will go on playing Australia and Zimbabwe will go on playing Pakistan. The English season will conclude. And then it will all begin again.

As someone in a film once said (and possibly Geoff Boycott too after he'd been caught behind off Eknath Solkar at Old Trafford on 8th June 1974):

I'll be back.

Time in the Sun

2011-08-26T10:01:00.004+01:00

The modern cricket world moves on quickly, and England - even if it wasn't quite the same team - were in Dublin yesterday. For them, of necessity, the recent dismantling of India lies in the past. The future is what matters.

For me, coming late to it, it's impossible to be original about the Pataudi Trophy. My take, though, is that for all England's excellence, the series lacked something.

Opposition.

After the first session of the second day at Trent Bridge all we had was a slow, inexorable, tediously smooth ride towards a 4-0 scoreline. Individual and collective achievement, yes, but no suspense. If it stayed dry, England - better, stronger, faster, more skilful and more purposeful in every area - were always going to win by a mile. For large parts of the series India were a pitiful shambles.

In some ways, the performances of two players can be viewed as a microcosm of their team's collective efforts, and of their cultures.

The rigour, precision, elegance and consistency of Ian Bell's strokeplay summed up England. A team developing some of the machine-like quality which Australia once had, while Sachin Tendulkar, deified by repeated standing ovations which eventually descended into cliche, was, for much of the series, a shadow of his usual self: uneasy, scratchily uncertain and ultimately left without answers by a superior foe.

For all the visceral thrill provided by Tim Bresnan belting the ball into the Edgbaston crowd to bring up England's first total over 700 since 1930, or the spirited combativeness of Praveen Kumar, the lasting memory of the series will be the batting of Rahul Dravid. A reminder that batting based on defence and judgement, with strokeplay of style and grace when applicable, can be as enjoyable to watch as anything else the game can produce.

Dravid has been a great player for a very long time. This, with Tendulkar struggling, was his time in the sun.

Related Pasts, Different Futures

2011-08-13T10:30:00.002+01:00

Ravi Bopara and Alastair Cook are both still young men, but they have played together for a very long time. For a string of Essex junior sides, for England Under-19s, for Essex, and for England.

Bopara's career remains in an uncertain place: inconsistent but occasionally dominant at county level, unfulfilled and flatteringly deceptive at international level. Cook is one of the most prolific batsmen in the world.

So you have to wonder what was going through each of their minds when Bopara came to the wicket yesterday afternoon, on the hiding to nothing to end them all, and with Cook already 247 not out.

Bopara doesn't appear the type of person to lack confidence or retreat in the face of others' achievements, but, this time, he could be forgiven the odd stray thought about where, in their 27th years, each of their careers is heading.

Bopara, out cheaply, will, as night follows day, return to Essex and a doubly uncertain future. Such is the stature, stability and brilliance of this England team that opportunities are not going to come along very often these next few years. And by the time one does, it is likely that someone else - Taylor, or Stokes, or Bairstow - will be chosen. There is a strong possibility that Ravi Bopara will never again bat in a Test match for England.

The way in which both men returned to the new Edgbaston dressing rooms said much for their fates. Bopara was ushered from the field by an uncertain smattering of applause, people displacing their embarassment by rummaging in bags or chatting to their neighbours. Cook, in his turn, received an unconditional standing ovation, but there was also a certain poignancy to it.

Bopara looked unemotional, but was, you suspect, quietly shattered. Cook, his iron concentration having for once slipped at the last, was more visibly disappointed, his failure to reach 300 for a brief moment all he could think about. For all his peerless appetite for batting and hatred of dismissal, Cook knows that few players get more than one chance to make a triple-hundred in Test cricket. He is certain to make many more centuries for England, but, in all probability, he won't quite pass this way again.

But at least he will be there. And soon, as England's next captain, the team will be his. For Bopara, life on the county circuit (perhaps embellished by an IPL contract and some one-day international appearances) may be all there is.

Bopara and Cook have played together for a very long time. But for the next few years they may not be seeing very much of each other.

523 and Counting

2011-08-06T16:09:00.001+01:00

There is something elemental and magnificent about huge partnerships.

I've been a personal witness to a few big ones - Adrian Dale and King Viv at Sophia Gardens, 1993, Robin Martin-Jenkins and Mark Davis at Taunton, 2002, Trott and Broad at Lord's last year - and it always seems just a little bit amazing that players can bat for so long against professional bowling and not be parted. Many components go into stands like this: skill, timing and patience of course, but also, to be sure, plenty of luck.

During the early days of this blog, in late July 2006, I wrote about the experience of following the Cricinfo commentary as Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara advanced on the world record in Colombo.

Yesterday was different. It was a busy day at work, and while I sneaked the odd glimpse at the scores from Northampton and Scarborough, events at the Rose Bowl passed me by until the day's end.

When I discovered that Michael Carberry and Neil McKenzie had put on 523 for Hampshire's third wicket, batting together through 135 overs, I reflected on the fact that it was a far cry from the days when the newly-minted pitches at the Bowl used to favour the bowlers, but I also considered the fates of the players involved.

Neil McKenzie, from the Highveld of South Africa and with his 36th birthday in clear sight, always was a good player. Reliable, unfussy, with plenty of strokes and also the broadest of dead bats when necessary (as I discovered to my cost during two of the longest days' cricket-watching of my life at Lord's in 2008). In the autumn of his career, he would have formed an ideal partner for the star of the show, Michael Carberry, a fine player from the south London suburbs whose struggles with serious illness over the last year have come close to ending his career.

Both have played Test cricket - McKenzie has 58 caps for South Africa, Carberry one for England - but both are unlikely to wear their country's colours again.

They will always, though, have Southampton.

A Moment in (Indian) Time

2011-07-31T18:49:00.002+01:00

Although a lot's happened since - time moves quickly in modern Test cricket - I couldn't shake the feeling that the immediate post-lunch session at Lord's last Saturday was worthy of some extended reflection. Here, therefore, are some words.

Lord’s Cricket Ground, London, Saturday 23rd July 2011, 1.36 p.m. (British Summer Time).

As the lunch interval draws to a close the atmosphere in the Long Room bubbles with conversation, heavy footsteps and lightly suppressed excitement. The rear of the room, where the players walk from either end on their way from the dressing rooms to the field, is segregated with a rope to prevent anyone getting too close to the combatants. Here people are required to know their place.

From the far end of the room the England team emerges, following the umpires, Asad Rauf and Billy Bowden, onto the field. Clapping, closely followed by cheers, echoes around the room, but it remains unacknowledged, if not unappreciated. The England players, most of whom are wearing dark glasses, stare straight ahead. It is a grey afternoon and a little cool for July, but, as is customary during Lord’s Tests, the crowd has eaten and drunk well. Bonhomie hangs in the air like the clouds above the ground, but the players of both sides are serious. They are at work.

At the opposite end of the room the applause from the stairs filters in. The two Indian batsmen are on their way down. They enter the room with a similar air of preoccupation, although there are discernible differences in their demeanour.

First there is Rahul Dravid. A native of the city of Bangalore in southern India, he has played in 154 Test matches and has scored more than twelve thousand runs. In this innings he has just fifteen to his name. Before lunch he was settling in at the crease, but now he needs to do so again. He is a slim, serious man with distant eyes which carry the memories of thousands of hours at the crease. On the dusty, unforgiving grounds of his homeland, on the palm-fringed greens of the West Indian islands and of Sri Lanka, on the fast tracks of Australia, where players’ reflexes are tested to their very limits. This, batting, is what he does.

Following a few steps behind is Sachin Tendulkar. He has spent the majority of his life playing cricket for a living and has played in more Test matches, with more runs and centuries, than anyone else in the history of cricket. He is a small, stocky man, carrying a little surplus weight. An infant prodigy on the edge of middle age. His body language is more private, less optimistic, than Dravid’s. It is possible that he is already feeling the effects of the virus which will keep him away from the ground on the following day, but it is more likely that his hunched shoulders and downward gaze simply reflect the fact that he is his country’s most famous man and he has spent much of his life away from the cricket field trying to make himself anonymous. As usual the ground should bring him a sense of sanctuary and freedom, although he will need runs to feel fully at ease. At the moment he has made just ten, and he is playing at a ground where, unusually, he has never known success.

James Anderson, with the Lord’s pavilion behind him, takes the ball. Tendulkar is facing, and he guides the first ball between the slips and gully for four. The stroke is controlled but there is still a slight air of uneasiness about him. He is searching for the warm embrace of form and it is elusive. Off the fourth ball of the over Tendulkar strokes the ball through the leg side for another four. It is an easy shot for a player of his ability, but it is played with a style and timing which causes the crowd’s collective pulse rate to briefly quicken. While the majority of the crowd are supporting England, many of them would love to see Tendulkar make his one hundredth century in international cricket, and their hopes, seduced by weeks of media coverage, are hostage to the progress of his innings. In the next over, bowled from the Nursery End by Chris Tremlett, Tendulkar hits the ball on the up through the covers for four. The feeling of impermanence begins to fade a little.

At the other end Dravid is the epitome of polished control. His stance is compact, his eyes level, his strokeplay measured and decisive. He picks up a boundary off Tremlett and then three in an over off Anderson.

The players meet in the middle of the pitch at the end of each over. Dravid is expressive and relatively animated, his raised arm describing the path of the swinging ball. Tendulkar is still restrained, absorbing what his partner has to say. These men have batted together through many of the world’s summers, and, as in any relationship which has lasted for years, there are times when no words are necessary. In the modern vogue they touch gloves as they part. When they began batting together some fifteen years ago, batsmen didn’t do this, but Dravid and Tendulkar have not gained their immense reputations by being unable to embrace the game’s changing conventions.

Graeme Swann replaces Anderson at the Pavilion End. His first over is steady, tight, conceding just a single to Dravid. At the other end Tremlett is starting to develop an aggressive rhythm, pounding his feet into the dry turf and grunting as he delivers the ball. Tendulkar remains a little circumspect and tentative, and Dravid paints an emphatic contrast with his partner when he elegantly strokes Swann through the covers for four in his second over to raise his score to 42.

Strauss rings the changes once more, bringing Stuart Broad on to replace Tremlett. Tendulkar, now on 34, is able to leave two of the over’s first three deliveries, but the fourth is straighter and slightly full, drawing him into a firm-footed drive. The ball barely swings, but it holds its own and takes the edge of Tendulkar’s bat. Graeme Swann drops to one knee and takes a low catch at second slip with some ease.

As the England players celebrate, Tendulkar returns slowly to the pavilion. His head is held high, but this is partly because he spends the early stages of his walk looking to the heavens, regretting his shot. It is uncommon for Tendulkar to be defeated by a bowler but it has happened here and his highest score at Lord’s remains a meagre 37. As he returns to the pavilion he receives his second standing ovation of the day. The crowd know that there is a possibility that he will never again bat at Lord’s in a Test match, although it seems more probable that he will have a second opportunity in this game.

The forty-eight minutes between the end of the lunch interval and Tendulkar’s dismissal has been an interlude, a departure from reality. The conjunction at the wicket of two great players whose careers are nearer to their conclusion than their commencement, but who are still very far from batting from memory.

After Tendulkar has gone, and the applause has died down, India bat for most of the rest of the day without notable fluency or permanence. Dravid, though, is an exception to this. Before the day’s end he reaches his thirty-third Test century, and, when the Indian innings closes on 286 with him undefeated on 103, he receives his own standing ovation.

It is something that he will remember for the rest of his life.

Lessons from a Master

2011-07-30T20:25:00.000+01:00

The phrase 'Master Batsman' is an old one. But it is one which you rarely hear these days, possibly because there are few players in the modern game to whom it can be accurately and satisfactorily applied.

It conjures a vision of completeness, of finely-honed technique - both in the matter of defensive and attacking strokes - allied to patience and the priceless ability to see and grasp an opportunity in an instant. To repel good bowling for over after over, and then, when the bowler drops short or full, drill the ball to the boundary without missing a beat.

And then re-mark your guard with the type of nonchalance that can break strong bowlers' hearts.

Rahul Dravid is a master batsman.

Prior Refinements

2011-07-26T18:37:00.000+01:00

Five compelling days at Lord's are hard to distill down to an individual, coherent memory, because there was so much to enjoy. Pietersen's unusual but ultimately commanding double century, Dravid and Tendulkar batting together after lunch on Saturday and briefly threatening to produce something to match the breathless hype, the resurgence of Stuart Broad, the skilled swing bowling of Praveen Kumar and Jimmy Anderson.

But, in my dotage, I suspect I'll settle for Sunday. Sunshine which sharpened to brilliant evening light, a packed, enthralled, crowd, and the sublime batting of Matthew Prior, surely now the finest wicket-keeper batsman in the world.

In many ways there's little that is sophisticated or unusual about what Prior does, but he does it with such style and composure, and, yes, intelligence, that you long to watch him again and again.

And, as you do, you notice refinements which aren't immediately apparent, such as the way in which, confronted with a deep off side field designed to neutralize his greatest area of strength, he is able to manipulate the ball into gaps by subtly twisting his shoulders and hands as he plays his shot. Singles become twos, the fielders tire, and, when the ball is really struck, boundaries come like candy from kids. If the bowler becomes fed up with being punished on the off and straightens his line, runs are seamlessly collected through and over the leg side.

At times like these the greatest cricketer in the world can only stand and watch, impotent.

Strange Days Indeed

2011-07-22T22:51:00.001+01:00

It'll be a while before we know whether Kevin Pietersen's strange double century was the landmark innings which it might just prove to be.

Why strange?

Well, because, for the first 130 or so runs Pietersen was unusually patient, but also scratchy and, at times, hesitant. He gave the impression of a man whose determination to eschew risks and headstrong strokes was taking him away from form rather than towards it. Things only really changed after he passed 150 and he chased down his double with the assurance and haste of a man realising he is allowed to go back to doing what he is best at.

Schizophrenic the innings may have been, but it will be a surprise if it doesn't spell danger for the bowling attacks of the world. After a long period of under-achievement, KP is back in what players sometimes call 'the zone'.

Tomorrow we will see a player who entered 'the zone' in November 1989, aged sixteen, and has never left.

England to Win

2011-07-19T22:45:00.000+01:00

My most vivid memories of the last fifteen years of England-India Tests at Lord's (much of which I've been lucky enough to see live) begin with Tendulkar's early dismissal by Chris Lewis in 1996 and the way in which the debutants, Dravid and Ganguly, dominated the rest of the day, laying potent markers down for the future.

Then there was Sehwag in 2002, unfamiliar, flashy, apparently impermanent, but also giving notice of his potential with a rapid 84 before Ashley Giles snared him.

And then 2007. Rain a constant threat, but a gradually evolving match which was drawn with India nine down in enveloping gloom. On the Sunday afternoon I took a photograph of Tendulkar returning to the pavilion after he was dismissed by Monty Panesar (above). I felt the moment was worth recording because I never thought he'd be back. I'm glad I was wrong, and I look forward to savouring a similar moment or two this week, when the air of finality will be all the greater.

As to the result of the match and the series, much will depend on the weather over the next month and how England bowl. If conditions remain helpful and England - especially Anderson and Tremlett - perform as they can, India will struggle. If the sun begins shining and the wickets flatten out, things will be closer. But the Indian attack can't be discounted. Zaheer is short of practice but will surely come good at some stage, Ishant looks back to his best and Praveen Kumar looks as though he could swing it anywhere.

For me, though, it is England to win.

My train for London leaves in the morning.

'Whatever knowledge and experience I have gained...'

2011-07-16T12:09:00.001+01:00

The recent Test series between the West Indies and India passed without comment here. I saw bits and pieces of each of the games but rarely enough to hold the attention. The largely deserted stands at Sabina Park and the Kensington Oval were unbelievably depressing, although the third game in Dominica showed the value of taking Test cricket to grounds, and countries, where it hasn't been before.

Both sides had their issues. India weakened by injuries and the need for players to rest but struggling through; West Indies in the same position they've been for years. A general dearth of quality but the constant hope that better lies around the corner. For the moment hope lies with the gradual progress of Ravi Rampaul and the arrival of Kirk Edwards and Devendra Bishoo.

The same spectre - that of the inevitable retirement of senior players - hangs over both teams. In the case of the West Indies, as his thirty-seventh birthday looms, Shivnarine Chanderpaul is bound to be the focus of their concerns. In the final years of a career that has been as testing and stressful, but still as brilliant, as they come, it is easy to wonder how long he can, or will want, to go on. A part of their side since 1994, and now their most capped player, it seems hard to imagine the West Indies without Shiv.

Welcome reassurance was provided by what he said in an interview conducted in the glowing aftermath of his second innings century in Dominica, an innings which he felt was among his best:

'High point? I'm still looking for it. There is still more to come. Whatever knowledge and experience I have gained I would like to pass it on and help the other members of the team with their game.'

We look forward to seeing him try.

Different Questions

2011-07-09T15:56:00.004+01:00

Sometime in the early years of this century - 2002, I think - I was driving with a friend to a rugby match in the Midlands. We spent much of our time talking about cricket, and I wondered aloud who the next 'truly great' English batsman would be.

At the time, with the England of Fletcher and Hussain just starting to emerge from years of disorganisation and inconsistency, the obvious choice, in retrospect, would have been Michael Vaughan. However, although I hadn't seen him play, I had already absorbed the hype which surrounded Ian Bell and suggested that he was the one.

Alastair Cook's name never entered my head. I knew of him but his first-class debut was still for the future and he was just too young to be a contender.

Scroll forward a few years, and, with Bell still flattering to deceive, Cook is an England player, and one or two images from his early Test career remain in the mind. The first comes from the initial stages of his first Test innings at Nagpur. Irfan Pathan drops short and Cook creams him through midwicket in a languid, dismissive manner which signifies a rare combination of talent and temperamental impregnability. He goes on to reach 60 and then passes a hundred in the second innings.

A few months later I'm at Lord's watching him play his first Test innings in England, batting at three after Strauss and Trescothick. With Cook past fifty, one of the Sri Lankan seamers, Maharoof or Kulasekara, drops short. With a field athlete's sureness of foot, Cook rocks back and caresses the ball through mid-on for four. It is a stroke which speaks of heady ability and resonates a sense of belonging. It appears obvious to me that he will be at the heart of the England team for years and years to come.

He has, of course. But, as for everybody, the game has become harder, more testing. By late in the English summer of 2010 his foothold in the side is loosening. He has problems around off-stump and he is regarded solely as a Test player. It is assumed that he cannot play one-day cricket.

He battles his way to a century in defeat at The Oval, then goes to Australia and makes 766 runs in the series as England humiliate Australia. When Andrew Strauss decides to retire from one-day cricket, Cook is appointed captain. Still, though, the runs come, and with a previously undiscerned fluency. Different questions begin to be asked. Instead of whether he is worth his place in the team, people wonder how just how good he is.

Cook is no genius in the manner of a Lara, or a Tendulkar, or a Ponting. And, among his England contemporaries, both Bell and Pietersen are blessed with greater gifts. He can be stylish and pleasing to the eye, but he relies more for his runs on patience which is unusual by modern standards and a mind which overcomes perceived obstacles as if they don't exist.

As I've written before, there is a quality that is at once both utilitarian and natural about Cook. While there are players who make the game look easier, there are few who give a stronger impression that it is what they were put on earth to do.

In the widest sense of the term he isn't a truly great player, but, as we enter the taut second half of England's summer, he currently looks as good, perhaps better, as anyone they have had in a very long time.

Cook is still only 26 years old. He, and his England side, will have many more days in the sun.

All You Need to Know

2011-06-26T11:27:00.000+01:00

As the Twenty20 games come thick and fast in England it's hard to keep up with who's doing what to whom. In fact, you soon give up trying.

But certain things catch the eye. Hampshire's James Vince is just 20, and the main thing everyone knows about him is that his batting style is reminiscent of Michael Vaughan.

This is true, but there's a bit more to him than that. While James Taylor, slightly older, and Ben Stokes, a little younger, have taken the majority of the attention this season, Vince has been jogging along quietly in the background.

There are no guarantees, but Vince's back foot offside play during his innings of 52 against Essex at Chelmsford last week told you all you needed to know.

He will go far.

Old Certainties

2011-06-26T10:54:00.000+01:00

In case anyone had failed to notice, many of the old certainties of cricket have gone for good these past few years. At one time, at this stage of the year, English cricket was all there was. And that meant a timelessly unchanging calendar in which there were five or six Tests a summer and the one at Lord's was always second. Tests abroad were only played in the winter months.

Now, though, things are different. Tests and ODIs are played all over the globe all the time. Twenty20 tournaments come thick and fast. The impression you're often left with is of a game that's trying to eat itself.

But one of the good things about this is that if you've got time on your hands on a June evening you can watch an innings like the one Rahul Dravid played in Kingston a few days ago. As usual, Siddhartha Vaidyanathan's masterly piece captures the essence of an innings which was dripping with resonances.

As Siddhartha says, the innings carried echoes of some of Dravid's greatest days, the most resounding being the twin top-scores of 81 and 68 which took India to a victory of similar proportions on their previous visit to Sabina Park in 2006. Last week's innings was classic Dravid: watchful, technically assured, patient to the point of cliché, but never pedantic in the manner of a Boycott or Kallis. A chance to score - as when one of the seamers drifted towards leg stump - was rarely missed and the runs were collected with the type of counter-intuitive flourish familiar to all who have been watching Dravid for years.

For a long time now there's been a feeling - expressed here more than once - that the age-related decline of India's greatest contemporary batsmen was inevitable, and, of course, one day it will happen. But there is no sign that it is happening yet.

Dravid and Tendulkar, both 38, and Laxman, 36, await England next month. As in all of life, there are few certainties, but one thing here is certain: England's bowlers, so inconsistent and profligate against Sri Lanka, will need to up their game.

Natural Selection

2011-06-11T07:42:00.000+01:00

Simon Katich isn't the first player to find his career slipping away in the aftermath of an injury, or at the age of thirty-five, and he won't be the last. But what made the formal acknowledgement that his time in the Australian team was up so much more interesting was the manner in which he gave vent to his feelings in a way which so many players never give themselves the satisfaction of doing.

Katich laid things on the line in a measured, cutting way. Full of barbs, but never emotional, the feeling was that he was only saying what many another player was thinking. Stuart Clark, for one, and surely Nathan Hauritz too.

Selecting cricket teams at international level is a difficult and thankless job. Everyone thinks that they can do it better than you and you will rarely be congratulated when you get things right, only castigated when you get them wrong.

England's slightly uneasy performance at Lord's - frequently erratic bowling and a conservative declaration - showed that they're far from the finished article, but, as the current jargon goes, they're in a much 'better place' than Australia. One of the main reasons for that is consistent, loyal selection.

Whatever the merits of the dropping of Katich, Australia's selectors have been struggling for a while now. As I wrote in late December, just after the Melbourne Test:

'There are deluded people who think that Steve Smith is a Test match number six batsman, or that Ryan Harris is a number eight, or that Xavier Doherty and Michael Beer are better cricketers than Nathan Hauritz. This was a team which used to set the standards for the whole world. At times these past few weeks they have been a shambles'.

Katich has gone, but Hussey and Ponting, both older, fight on. With little in the way of really outstanding talent coming through, Australia have much to do to get anywhere near their previous pre-eminence.

We, and Simon Katich, will be watching them closely over the next year.

Throwing the Bat

2011-06-08T13:47:00.001+01:00

As someone who started throwing bats long before Matthew Prior was born* and who has also been known to utter the occasional audible oath after being dismissed, I can claim, to some small extent, to know how he felt yesterday.

However, since, depending on which of the equally ludicrous ECB press releases you might choose to believe, he either threw his gloves across the dressing room or 'placed' his bat on a bench, following which it mysteriously smashed the window, I'd advise him just to give his bat a good chuck next time, while making sure no team-mates or windows are within harm's way.

Of course, I don't believe the press releases and know full well that's probably what he did anyway, only without thinking about the possible consequences. Which is really not very sensible, both because someone could have got hurt and because it detracts from his batting in the first innings, which was, once again, pugilistic, stylish and deeply effective.

We want, and need, to see more.

* Any members of my school under-12 team who happen to be reading might remember having to duck as my gloves and bat flew in their direction after my debut golden duck, batting at three, on the playing fields of Beverley School, New Malden, Surrey, in 1978.

I know now that I shouldn't have done it, but it sure felt good at the time...

No Surplus Aggression

2011-05-31T22:38:00.000+01:00

There were many great things about England's win over Sri Lanka yesterday afternoon, but comfortably the best, in my view, was the sight of Chris Tremlett leading the attack with confidence and potency.

Typecast earlier in his career as an injury-prone, under-committed enigma, it took more than three years and a change of counties for him to find his way back into a side for which he'd performed with plenty of credit in 2007. And, over the last six months, he's really made the most of his second coming.

There's an indefinable reserve and diffidence about Tremlett - the type of characteristics which can lead the sceptical to wonder about the intensity of his desire - but these are hard to discern when he's letting the ball go. Then you just see a natural, uncomplicated, orthodox action, plenty of pace and guaranteed, natural bounce. No surplus aggression is required.

This England team is going to take some stopping. Sri Lanka are powerless to resist and India will have their work cut out too. One thing looks increasingly certain: they'll have Chris Tremlett to contend with.

Fantasy World

2011-05-29T12:19:00.001+01:00

With England engaged in an insipid, rain-ruined first Test of the summer, one of the more eye-catching stories of the last week was that of Adrian Shankar, the former Cambridge University captain, who was recently signed by Worcestershire only to be released after barely more than a fortnight amid allegations that he had exaggerated his experience and falsified his age in order to gain a contract.

Leaving aside what this says about Worcestershire's competence and gullibility off the field (and they're not too crash hot on it at the moment either), the strange demise of Shankar led me to recall the case of the late Barbadian Donald Weekes, whom Wisden, never a publication too wedded to hyperbole, described in his obituary as 'a yarn-spinner of international calibre'. Among other things, Weekes claimed to have scored 700 not out in a single innings, and was lavishly profiled in The Cricketer in 1975, an article which made quite an impression on me as a kid and continued to do so until Philip Bailey (now Wisden's Chief Statistician) informed me about twelve years later that it was a load of rubbish.

I noticed Shankar's name when Worcestershire signed him; partly because they'd unwisely made great play of signing someone who had never been much good, but also because I once met a member of his family.

During a rain break at Lord's a few years ago I got chatting to a couple of blokes from Bedford in the Warner Stand. One of them claimed to be Adrian Shankar's father, and I don't see any reason why he would have been lying. Looking back, he seemed more proud of the fact that his son had been to Cambridge than that, as has repeatedly been mentioned over the last few days, he'd played in the same school side as Alastair Cook, even though (before he started knocking years off his age) he was several years older. He probably knew his son's main claim to fame in the future would revolve around someone he'd played with.

Sporting success carries great currency among men. People look up to you. It might, perhaps indirectly, get you girls. Anyone can make anything up, but, in the end, you always get found out, and you end up where you deserve. Where your talent, and all the other ingredients that go to make a player, take you.

Adrian Shankar will never play county cricket again. Alastair Cook has made seventeen Test centuries.

In the Wings

2011-05-22T10:37:00.000+01:00

It's been re-stated many a time, here and elsewhere, but strength of temperament is vital to success in all top-level sport.

Perhaps the key virtue of Eoin Morgan - and he has many - is his strength of character, embodied in his priceless ability to deliver when success is vital and definitive.

After an uneven winter in Australia and India, during which his previously burgeoning reputation lost some of its lustre, the fact that Morgan, at short order, was able to make an ultimately imperious 193 while the presumed favourite for the spare England place, Ravi Bopara, was scratching his way to a mere 17, underlined this once again.

This season will see important changes to the make-up of England's side, and it's consistent and simply right that Morgan gets first go. Further opportunities for Bopara may come if others can be as convinced as him of his abilities, while Hildreth, James Taylor (of whom more soon) and perhaps even Samit Patel also wait in the wings.

In the meantime, England Lions have a game to win today.

They Never Come Back. Or Do They?

2011-05-19T20:38:00.002+01:00

His career pre-dates this blog by years but I always rated Martin Crowe. A technically adroit and run-hungry presence in the New Zealand team which started to take on the world on level terms in the eighties before falling back towards earth in the nineties.

Now, as Cricinfo reports, he's planning a comeback to club, and, potentially, first-class cricket, at the age of 48.

In many ways this chimes with Crowe's character. He always was a questing, restless soul, never shy of a theory or opinion, and the way his quotes read in the piece his 'comeback' appears to be as much a quasi-scientific experiment to see what level of cricket a man of his age can reach as a way for him to keep fit and fill his waking hours.

At one time, not so very long ago, it wasn't uncommon for players to play well into their forties, but, with the advances in fitness which have swept the game in recent years, those days have gone.

This is not to say that Crowe can't succeed. He could really bat, and who's to say that first-class cricket will be beyond him if he can make runs at club level? The fielding and running, given his long history of knee trouble, will prove very difficult, though, and I won't be surprised if I never hear of this again.

Those of us whose fortieth birthdays lie well in the past are bound to follow his progress closely. We could find ourselves thinking it could be us.

There's one problem. You need to have been able to do it in the first place.

Seve (1957-2011)

2011-05-08T10:59:00.007+01:00

This blog rarely strays far from cricket. Not because I don't have other sporting interests - as anyone who knows me will tell you, I really do - but there simply isn't time to pass a considered opinion on everything that's going on out there. At times, though, you have to break with tradition.

I've never played golf seriously. Just a few chips, slashes and puts here and there, and my career never really recovered from the time I shanked a ball through my Dad's greenhouse in 1982. I was a teenager then and I had friends who played the game. One of them became very good and later captained Cambridge University (using his spare time to become a brain surgeon). Short of things to do in the school holidays (perhaps the cricket wasn't on TV that day) I used to walk the fairways with them. This rapidly developed into an armchair golf habit which became quite serious for a year or two and took me to professional tournaments. The European Open at Sunningdale here, the Bob Hope British Classic at Moor Park there, the Ryder Cup at Walton Heath in the far-off days when the USA only had to turn up to win. I even made the last two days of the Open at Troon, crouching in the middle of the fairway with hundreds of others as Tom Watson received the Claret Jug.

Each year between 1981 and 1984 I went to at least one day of the World Matchplay Championship at Wentworth. In those days, on that course, there was one player who stood head and shoulders above all the rest, and that was Severiano Ballesteros. The great thing about going to golf was how close you could get to the players. Within whispering distance at the side of the green you could feel the full force of his charismatic personality and try to read every nuance of his usually volcanic expression. The message you got, loud and clear, was that playing golf for money was a serious business. There rarely seemed much lightness of spirit around when Seve was playing but that didn't matter at all. What mattered, what you took away and held for nearly thirty years, were his shots.

One year, somewhere around the middle of the West Course, on a long hole (the 12th, I think) with a row of trees across the fairway, Ballesteros played a drive that still sticks in my mind's eye. It left the club like an exocet missile, climbing to a fixed height and maintaining its trajectory as though guided by a laser. But it was swerving and turning in the air at the same time like a great bowler's inswinger. It passed through the top of the trees (in truth this was probably a mistake but to our impressionable eyes it just looked spectacular) before curving back the other way - outswing - and coming to rest in the middle of the fairway. It looked and felt like a trick shot. But that was how good Ballesteros was. His mastery was so complete that he looked as though he was showing off when all he was doing was playing the game as he could. At the time there was literally no better player in the whole world.

As a player Ballesteros faded early as back injuries took their toll. The seniors' circuit wasn't for him. But everyone who was there in his greatest days needed no reminding of how good he was.

Yesterday, at the Spanish Open, the course fell silent. José Mariá Olazábal, Ballesteros's protégé and no stranger to serious health or form problems himself, was in tears.

Many of us with no intimate connection with him felt the same, for the times you saw a sportsman of real genius - George Best, or Roger Federer, or, in my case, Brian Lara or Seve - at their very best, stay with you for ever.

Class Act

2011-05-04T21:38:00.002+01:00

On a slate grey Taunton day when April's summer seemed to have given way to a chilly early autumn, batting was often hard work. An attack comprising Damien Wright, Alan Richardson, Jack Shantry and Gareth Andrew will never scare anybody, but they all obtained movement from a track which gave them just enough assistance.

Despite his double century at the Rose Bowl, Trescothick looked cautious, scratchy and impermanent, and only two Somerset batsmen made a lasting impression prior to some late hitting from Peter Trego.

Nick Compton battled hard for 57, occasionally freeing himself to hit some powerful pulls in an effort to erase the memory of his guilt for the mix-up which saw James Hildreth run out without facing a ball in the morning.

The class act of the day, though, was Craig Kieswetter. There was poise, control and easy, assured power in everything he did, with forward defensives carrying to the boundary on at least two occasions and three huge, dismissive sixes.

His keeping is a work in progress and there will be plenty of faster and more potent bowling for him to deal with when he returns to international cricket, but the evidence of this innings was thrillingly persuasive.

This is a very substantial cricketer indeed.

In Confidence

2011-04-29T12:42:00.005+01:00

In the week when Yorkshire's Barney Gibson became the youngest player ever to play first-class cricket in England, thanks to Andy Bull, who wrote this thought-provoking piece and The Old Batsman, who got here first, my thoughts turned to a player who was once a prodigy.

On county grounds in the early season - even when the weather makes it seem like high summer - people talk about players. Who's showing early season form? Who'll make the step up? What happened to...?

Walking round the boundary at Derby last weekend I heard people talking about how Nottinghamshire were doing at Headingley. Comments came and went, but my ears pricked up when someone mentioned Bilal Shafayat. Nobody seemed to know what he was doing. All that was certain was that his county career, which once seemed the epitome of promise, had come to a premature halt. Whether it was the end of everything, well, no-one knew.

Many people's only memory of Shafayat will be of him coming on to the field in the final stages of the first Ashes Test at Cardiff in 2009, but I remember him from way back, pummelling some helpless fifteen year-old bowlers in the company of Andrew Gale in 1999. Gale looked the steadier of the two, but Shafayat's talent was obvious and apparently unstoppable. He had the basics down pat and he guided and punched the ball with power and flexibility, like a young Mohammad Yousuf. As Andy Bull mentions, he was playing for Notts within two years and later excelled in an England Under-19 side which wasn't short of potential. The breakthrough never really happened, though, and perhaps, now, it never will.

Shafayat's comments to Bull betray an admirable self-awareness and honesty. The observation that cricket is 'a mental game' might appear commonplace and trite, but God it's true. Pure talent will lead you so far, but, as the variables of capricious pitches and opposition bowlers take hold, if the runs don't come, the pressure increases and the confidence goes. It takes a strong person to overcome that, especially if you've never really known what failure is. When the effortless average of seventy or eighty you had as a kid when it didn't really matter becomes a careworn twenty-seven and the game is your job, the spiral of self-doubt and failure can be hard to escape, especially if you haven't experienced true success at that level.

Confidence plays a vital role in sporting achievement. And under-performance in cricket, where the numbers, ultimately, don't lie, saps the confidence more than anything. In less precise games you can kid yourself. In cricket you can't.

Things can change. Until a couple of weeks ago Warwickshire's Varun Chopra was another under-achiever with a promising junior career behind him. Now he has two first-class double-centuries. When the failures return - as, for him, they have already - he has runs in the memory to fall back on. He knows what he is capable of.

Things wil be harder for Shafayat. The security of the county contract and its embellishments have gone for now, but, as Bull says, and Shafayat's words emphasize, he has faith and optimism.

'God willing, everything will work out...I am sure there is a lot more to come.'

Let's hope so.

Two to Follow

2011-04-11T13:55:00.000+01:00

With the county season under way - in the type of weather which probably won't be seen again for months - players are immediately stepping forward to show their hands.

It's well-known that the England selectors are partial to the odd player born outside the UK, and, while they've tended to come from South Africa rather than New Zealand in recent years, it's been obvious for a while that Ben Stokes has something, and his six cheap wickets and a brutal century for Durham at the Rose Bowl over the weekend underlined his potential. I think it's probably too early to regard him as a serious contender for the England side, but he's on the radar, and he won't be going away anytime soon.

Adil Rashid is better known. His eleven wickets for Yorkshire in their crushing away win over Worcestershire may have indicated that he's taken a few steps forward since last season - and his experiences playing for South Australia won't have done him any harm - but he'll need a lot more of the same to convince the selectors that he's worth a punt. Especially as Graeme Swann is one of the first names on the England team-sheet and they're not exactly lacking in seam-bowling strength either.

Isn't it great to have a decent English leggie to keep an eye on, though?

The Soft Warm Radiance of Money

2011-04-10T13:25:00.001+01:00

It's been a busy, though hardly stressful, time. Shuffling paper in a cool, dark room before emerging into the glorious April sunshine during the working week. Tramping the beautiful streets of Bath in similar weather yesterday, with a rugby match mixed in.

Such pleasures have prevented me from commenting until now on the issue of the moment in cricket. Not the IPL, or even the County Championship, but the ICC's crass and morally dubious decision to remove the incentive of qualification for the 2015 World Cup from its associate members.

All decisions like this show is that, as in so many areas of life, bureaucrats, administrators and climbers of the greasy pole in the world of cricket have a consistent ability to suck the life out of anything that is working well or is being appreciated and enjoyed by millions, just because money and vested interests decree that change is necessary.

The old aphorism which states that people who wish to be elected to political office should be automatically barred from standing for election never seemed more appropriate. This decision shows that those in charge of the world game simply don't understand that unpredictability and the triumph of the underdog are what gives sport of all kinds its lasting appeal.

It might not fit with your profit forecasts but that's tough. If you don't like it, get out. When sport sacrifices romance and uncertainty and instinctive brilliance in favour of the balance sheet (and tries to fix the market in which that balance sheet exists), it ceases to have meaning. The Pakistan Three know all about that, and the ICC wasn't slow to sort them out.

Persuading people who have played the game at the highest level to follow Anil Kumble and move into the corridors of power rather than the less accountable and better paid environments of the world's commentary boxes might just help, but it will never be easy to do. Here again, money talks.

This can be fought. Sign the petition here.

Fulfilled Expectations

2011-04-03T17:17:00.001+01:00

It's not easy to be original or profound about what happened yesterday.

I'll settle for saying that India's win was the culmination of a lot of work, by Gary Kirsten and his players, to change them from being a side that tended to crumble under duress to one that was able to withstand the crushing pressure of the expectations of a billion breathless people and ease their way to victory from a difficult position.

Central to this were the coolness, bravado and power of Dhoni - who receives his due praise at greater length elsewhere - and Gambhir, who showed again, despite his ill-judged dismissal, that he will be one of the players to carry the baton on after Tendulkar, Dravid and Laxman have gone.

Another will be Virat Kohli, who's rightly winning plaudits for the modesty and timing of his words, but bats with a hard-edged fluency and style which should take him a long way.

I go back a long way with Indian cricket. To the 1979 England tour, in fact, and I remember the 1983 final well. But I haven't lived the years of expectation and frustration like many an Indian has.

This, by Siddhartha Vaidyanathan, sums up what yesterday meant from a young Indian's perspective.

And it's a bloody great piece of writing.

Photo Opportunity

2011-04-02T20:20:00.000+01:00

Indian cricket's greatest day since 1983 seems like an opportune moment to return the photograph which used to appear at the top of this page until the autumn of 2009 to its rightful place.

It was taken at the old Wankhede Stadium by my friend Mark Ray in February 2001. Ten years on Warne has gone, but Sachin, a World Cup winner's medal now safely in his possession, seems destined to go on and on.

Here's looking forward to seeing him on English soil again in a few months' time.

The End of the Road for England

2011-03-28T16:00:00.002+01:00

In a low-key press conference at Lord's this morning, attended only by a few ECB employees with little else to do, some bloggers trying to make up for the absence of the regular press pack in the Indian sub-continent and a man who'd only come to service the air conditioning, Hugh Morris, the Managing Director of England Cricket, made the momentous announcement that the England team is going to retire from all one-day international cricket.

'There has been general agreement that this winter's tough schedule has put a huge amount of strain on our players, and this was reflected in our poor showing at the World Cup. As there's no chance of the amount of international cricket ever being reduced, we have decided that the team should retire from one-day cricket so that it can concentrate on the five-day game.'

'In making this announcement now we are showing what a caring and sympathetic employer we are. We have protected our over-worked players from another major source of stress. It won't be necessary for Paul Collingwood or Andrew Strauss to agonize about whether or not they should play on as we've helpfully taken the decision for them. The same goes for the younger lads, although some of them - sorry, Luke - would never have been seen again in blue pyjamas anyway'.

'We've had a forty year career in the one-day game and it's high time we cut down on our commitments so that we can prolong our Test career a bit. Without this we would probably have given up on Test cricket sooner rather than later, but this should enable us to retain the Ashes on another couple of occasions before retiring from the game completely and taking up a position in the Sky Sports commentary box'.

Borrowed Time, Glorious Memories

2011-03-26T13:14:00.000Z

These days one-day internationals are played anywhere and everywhere, throughout the globe, on an almost daily basis. Few mean much. But when two teams with the historic baggage of Australia and India clash, as they did before a cacophonous Motera crowd on Thursday, things happen which you can't help getting excited about and reflecting upon later.

For all India's ultimate success - and any innings in which the sainted Yuvraj plays a pivotal role is music to this Englishman's ears - it was again Ricky Ponting who held the attention in the way he so often has during the period in which his team's decline has moved from the marginal to the terminal.

For too long now Ponting has been living on borrowed time and glorious memories. As his team were crushed by England he came across as a man who hadn't quite grasped the fact that his powers were waning, but now things seem crucially different. For all that he could never say it you get the distinct feeling that he knows that the final curtain may be about to fall. In press conferences the familiar furrowed brow has often been replaced by a relaxed grin, and in the middle extra care is taken in the knowledge that it's all just a little harder than it used to be and there will not be many more opportunities to do what he does best.

When you're only 36 - still, as someone living in a developed country in the twenty-first century, a young man - this realisation must be hard to take. Especially when Sachin, more than eighteen months older, still appears to embody the iron invulnerability of the great player.

Ponting has always shown the maker's name early on but on Thursday this seemed clearer than ever. Play straight, accumulate, try to take sting out of the opposition and their myriad support, and cash in later.

Ultimately the Australian total wasn't good enough to prevent another brick falling from what once seemed an impregnable wall. For them a new era of austerity has long been under way, and it remains to be seen what part Ponting will play in it.

Once again, though, Ponting, at Ahmedabad on 24th March 2011, proved that the greats make their own rules

Grace and Pace

2011-03-14T07:43:00.001Z

Thirty years ago today, on 14th March 1981, at the Kensington Oval in Bridgetown, Barbados, the over of all fast bowling overs was bowled by Michael Holding to Geoff Boycott.

England, one down in the series after a heavy defeat in Trinidad and a cancelled game in Guyana, had bowled West Indies out for 265. There seemed to be hope. Within a few overs, though, their first innings was in ruins and another heavy defeat lay ahead.

I remember it well. A cool, grey Saturday afternoon in London, the customary crackly TMS transmission and Tony Cozier going noisily mad as first Boycott and then Mike Gatting were swiftly dismissed to leave England rocking.

With the passage of time and Holding safely ensconced behind a Sky microphone you don't hear so much about it these days, but in the years afterwards that over attained the status of legend. There were no highlights on TV apart from a minute or two on the news each evening, and I hadn't managed to convince my parents to buy a video recorder. I was out that night and so didn't actually see it until years later.

In an age in which raw speed of the type Holding purveyed is increasingly rare, watching the man who combined grace and pace in the most complete way possible is like a window on another world. What really stands out is the smoothness and rhythm of Holding's approach to the wicket. As I said about David Gower a while ago, there's simply nobody like him around now.

Boycott, whose stumps were shattered by the final ball of the over, was, for once, almost lost for words. But less is sometimes more, and, as he said in In The Fast Lane:

'It was a bit rapid, to say the least'.

Fading Motivation

2011-03-13T11:48:00.000Z

With time fading for England in the World Cup in a familiar manner, it's impossible to be certain about what's behind their rank inconsistency. However, as it can't be attributed to lack of technical ability, or, these days, to one-day international inexperience, I fall firmly within the camp which - as Simon Hughes exemplified in the Telegraph last week - puts the variable nature of their form down to the brutal and unforgiving nature of their recent itinerary.

You will never get any of them to admit it in public, but, for those players involved, the summit of their winter's achievements - in some cases of their entire careers - came in Sydney on 7th January. Perhaps uniquely now, Test cricket, especially against Australia, means more to the average English player (and follower), than a one-day international competition ever will, even if it's the World Cup. And if you've only spent a handful of days at home since the autumn, the type of iron motivation you need when the likes of Ireland and Bangladesh come gunning for you is going to be even harder to summon.

However, as both the Indian and South African games showed, even a weary and reduced team can produce the goods when it's really threatened, so, with one qualifying game to go, salvation and a passage to the quarters is well within their grasp.

Unlike Ireland, though, they might want to think about how they bowl to Kieron Pollard...

An Englishman in Nagpur

2011-03-13T11:47:00.000Z

The shocking form of Jimmy Anderson and the more prolonged decline of Kevin Pietersen may be symptomatic of their reduced levels of desire, although it seems certain, at least in Pietersen's case, that there's something more complex going on. This is something to be examined at greater length another day.

One Englishman at the World Cup who certainly won't be struggling for motivation is Ian Gould. After a long career in the English county game, Gould failed to make an impression as a coach and said a while back that becoming a first-class umpire was the best thing he'd ever done. He's a sharp, proficient official with a businesslike but avuncular manner that seems to create a good rapport with all the players he comes into contact with.

Yesterday he was standing at square leg as Sachin Tendulkar sent one of the most sublime straight drives that even he has surely ever hit back past Morne Morkel to move from 14 to 18.

Even from the viewpoint of a gorgeous Spring morning in England, it would have been a privilege just to be at Nagpur. To be on the field and play a part, when your playing days are far behind you, must be just about as good as it gets.

Happy Birthday

2011-03-03T13:53:00.000Z

Andrew Strauss was 34 years old yesterday. I hope he lives to celebrate many more birthdays. One drawback: For the rest of his days, once a year on March 2nd, he'll think of Bangalore and a big Irish bloke with funny hair hitting his team all over the place.

Happy birthday, mate.

Keep Calm and Carry On

2011-02-28T13:56:00.000Z

One of the chief qualities of limited-over cricket is the way in which it compresses and intensifies the pressures which the participants are under, while one of Andrew Strauss's impeccable strengths is the ability to look calm in the field when all logic would suggest that his head should be about to explode. Take yesterday: The greatest batsman the world's seen in many a generation going well on a Bangalore shirtfront with a potent range of supporting actors at the other end, and the job of trying to stem the flow of runs is down to you and your bowlers. That, in a cricket context, is real pressure, but with Strauss it rarely - if ever - shows.

Then, just when you might fancy sitting with a towel on your head for a couple of hours, no such luck. A twenty minute break and it's down to you to mastermind the chase: All but seven an over under lights, with a partisan crowd willing you to fail. So you make a superb 158, the only fault being the fact that you don't quite stick around long enough to assure the victory which should really have been your ultimate reward.

It's difficult to be sure who will take most from yesterday's epic. England should have won and still have form and selection concerns, India's bowling and fielding doesn't look what it needs to be. But, with weeks and weeks to go, there's plenty of time for teams to find form, lose it and find it again. And it still might not be enough.

We rarely use the word 'great' around here, but what we can definitely take away from yesterday is that Andrew Strauss is a very, very, good cricketer indeed, and not just in the game's longer forms.

It's a pretty safe bet that he'll need to show how just how good again if England are still going to be in with a shout when April comes around.

A General Air of Predictability

2011-02-24T11:10:00.000Z

From a distance the World Cup so far has seemed like a succession of fairly predictable non-contests, although, as far as the 'debate' about Associate Members' participation in future tournaments is concerned, I'm happy to come down on the side of what their players think. And the majority seem to prefer the experience of being there and getting beaten to not being there and hence not having the opportunity to win. The ICC, in their wisdom (of course, I use the word satirically), have clearly forgetten all about the past successes of Kenya and Ireland. For all that it may seem like the future, increased Associate participation in future World Twenty20s is a poor substitute, always assuming ODIs in their current format remain a central part of the game.

An exception to the general air of predictability was England's relatively shaky win over the Netherlands. While all the Dutch players deserve huge credit, it applies especially to Ryan ten Doeschate, because to be your side's best player and the focus of everyone's expectations and then deliver the goods in such coruscating fashion takes real strength of temperament. Jonathan Agnew, with a lack of awareness of the county game that is typical if understandable, described ten Doeschate as a 'journeyman'. As more than a few Essex fans will tell you, he's a good bit more than that.

As for England, well, they were shambolic at times, but, at the tail-end of a winter itinerary like they've had, where's the surprise in that? Most of them are probably either knackered or sick of cricket or both. Add some ring-rustiness, poor form, experimentation and subsconscious complacency, and you have a recipe for problems.

They'll need to be a bit better on Sunday.

(Not) Being There

2011-02-20T23:15:00.000Z

A nice piece from Siddhartha Vaidyanathan's excellent, varied blog.

This must strike a chord with anyone who's ever struggled to follow cricket as they go about the rest of their crowded lives. It certainly did with me.

With all the major cricket events of my lifetime I can instinctively remember where I was. And, while there are many exceptions - The Oval, 12th September 2005, Shane Warne's hat-trick in Melbourne, the Broad-Trott stand, Michael Vaughan's 197 at Trent Bridge - more often than not I wasn't there.

I was often in front of a TV set, which is the next best thing, but I've frequently been in all kinds of other places - exam rooms, weddings (not my own), hospitals, trains, planes and automobiles. For the last twenty years, during which period I've had a full-time job which only occasionally allows me to listen to the radio, I've mostly been at work, at least in body.

Apologies to anyone with whom I've had a work-related discussion while my mind was elsewhere. And equal apologies to my colleagues for the odd disappearing act down the years. As Brian Lara was gaining on 365 at St.John's in April 1994, I retreated to the toilet with a radio and nobody knew where I was for about half an hour.

As you get older it gets harder and harder both to follow the cricket exclusively and to convince people who don't know or care about the game that you have as much interest as they do in what's going outside the Test match bubble.

But I like it that way.

Giving it the Big Build Up

2011-02-19T07:54:00.004Z

Tweets and blogposts from people employed in the heart of the cricket media are usually good reading. It's what they're there for after all. This week I've had the pleasure of knowing that Jonathan Agnew, Michael Vaughan and Patrick Kidd (of the Times and The Questing Vole) have all been on their way to the World Cup and have now successfully arrived.

I've been watching my letter box intently for the last few weeks in the hope that some kind soul would be prepared to pay for me to go to the competition and send me some tickets to the sub-continent. Sadly, it hasn't happened. Instead I'm going to be spending the duration of the tournament in England, relying on Sky to keep me in touch with events in the east.

There are compensations, though. For me this is still very much the rugby season, and there are plenty of big games coming up, both for the club I follow (the major success story of the English season) and in the Six Nations. I'm happy to be at home for these. Also, I experienced a deep frisson of world-weariness when Ricky Ponting said something the other day about having to play well 'over the next six weeks'.

Six weeks?! Well, I knew that the mistakes of the last World Cup were going to be repeated this time, but with so much interesting Test cricket going on over recent months I hadn't been thinking about it too much and it's hardly as if the world hasn't already got enough ODIs going on to last an epoch.

I'm sorry to sound so negative, and I'm happy to admit that my views would probably be different if I was fortunate enough to be there.

I gather it all starts in half an hour, so I'd better go and turn on the TV...

Trevor Bailey (1923-2011)

2011-02-12T07:37:00.001Z

I was surprised by how sad the death of Trevor Bailey on Thursday made me feel. He was just a couple of years older than my own father, and the circumstances in which he died were tragic. But I think the strength of my feelings had as much to do with the fact that another key element of a central part of my childhood, adolescence and cricket-infected maturity had gone for good.

Despite his illustrious playing career, as The Old Batsman says, those of us in our forties and below knew Bailey only as a radio summariser. If you grew up in Britain in the 1970s, the 1980s or the 1990s and were interested in cricket, you will have listened to Test Match Special. In fact there's every chance that you will have listened to it for hours and hours and hours.

And this will mean that you will have become very familiar with Bailey's particular brand of acerbic perspicacity, individualistic, clipped delivery and precise, orthodox vocabulary. At times he could appear pompous and slightly deficient in the humour department, but, having had the pleasure of meeting him during an England supporters' tour to South Africa in the mid-nineties (when, for a range of reasons, a good sense of humour was required), I know that this impression was illusory. He was a genial and tolerant man, who, in a cricket sense, had really been around the block but wore his vast experience and knowledge lightly.

Like everything, TMS has changed and evolved. In some senses for the better, in others for the worse. But the loss of Bailey, following Arlott, Johnston, Trueman and Frindall, means that one more link with what many regard as the programme's golden age has been lost.

No Backward Glances

2011-02-06T11:19:00.001Z

With the dust still settling, this probably isn't the time or place for a homily on the verdicts handed down to the Pakistan Three.

However, a couple of things require comment. Firstly, the strong implication in Osman Samiuddin's Cricinfo report that the tribunal would have preferred to hand down more lenient sentences, and then the sense of injured pride embodied by Amir's statements - such as 'two no-balls should not be five years' punishment' - both of which tend to indicate that both the accused and those judging them still don't quite appreciate the seriousness of what went on at Lord's last August.

The fact that it was 'only' two no-balls (if that's all it was) is irrelevant. Players deliberately under-performed as a result of outside influence. They cheated their fellow players, they cheated the spectators and they cheated the integrity of the game. They weren't the first, sadly they probably won't be the last, but they deserve everything they've got.

As this shows, I thought Mohammad Asif was a genuinely outstanding bowler who could have been great. In all probability, though, his career at the highest level is now over, and nobody who cares for the game should shed a single tear or cast him a backward glance. The same - apart, of course, from the possibility of greatness - goes for Salman Butt.

Mohammad Amir, who will only be 23 when his ban finishes, may yet have the opportunity to fulfil his huge potential.

Let's leave it there for now.

As Mad as O'Keefe, as Good as Trott

2011-02-05T13:09:00.002Z

One of the only entertaining aspects of the deathless one-day series between England and Australia (for anyone who's fallen asleep, it's still going on but mercifully ends tomorrow) has been the commentary of the one and only Kerry O'Keefe. I've heard snatches of him before, but the fact that TMS has taken the ABC coverage wholesale has brought his genius to a wider audience.

With O'Keefe you get some of the most bizarre comments you'll ever hear, delivered with the wit and timing of a superb natural comedian, but mixed in with the stuff that makes you laugh are shafts of observation which make you sit up and think, even if he's not saying anything that's unusual or extraordinary. An example of this came the other day, when O'Keefe described Jonathan Trott as 'the best leg-side player to come to Australia in the last twenty years'.

This was noteworthy, not because it isn't true but because it still seems a little strange that people who have really seen some cricket are saying such things about Jonathan Trott. Yes, that's Jonathan Trott. Plays for Warwickshire, rising 30, losing his hair, with a perpetual scowl on his face and a batting style which even his best friend wouldn't write home about. But currently the owner of some of the best damn batting stats on the planet and a man who looks as sure of his place as anyone in an England side which is as stable as they come (in Test cricket, anyway).

Before Trott came into the England team in the late summer of 2009 I'd seen bits and pieces of him on TV. At times he looked quite classy, but he never seemed to have that many runs to show for it, and it's hard to assess people's temperaments on the basis of a truncated innings in a county hit-and-giggle game. He made runs here and there for the Lions, but if anyone had told you that two years on he'd be up there with the world's greatest run-machines, you'd have thought they were as mad as Kerry O'Keefe.

Trott, though, is tough. His unemotional demeanour reflects both his upbringing in a country where cricket is taken a bit more seriously than in England, and the fact that he has had to fight every step of the way to establish himself in an England side to which many people felt he didn't belong. Like Marcus Trescothick and Michael Vaughan before him, this is a man who breathes more easily in the rarefied air of Test cricket than the safer surroundings of the county game. In a country which has had more than its fair share of players who have done things the other way round - at least one of whom also began life in Africa - such players are like gold dust.

Late in a long winter, two English batsman stand out. Alastair Cook, who had the good sense to get out of Australia before a constant diet of limited-over cricket started to sap his will to live, and Jonathan Trott. Both could be flashier and more elegant, but both hate, really hate, getting out.

To use the oldest phrase in the book of timeless cricket cliches, it's not how, but how many.

And Jonathan Trott is currently making as many runs as anyone, anywhere.

Decisions, Decisions

2011-01-23T10:13:00.000Z

Andy Flower is an outstanding cricket coach. Well-organized, tough, uncompromising, but flexible and sensitive when he feels he needs to be. The latter quality is underplayed but it was evident in the way he spoke about Samit Patel.

It was obvious that England wanted to pick Patel for the World Cup. As Flower said, 'all we were saying was 'get into reasonable shape'. It didn't have to be perfect. In fact, all we wanted to see was an improvement...'.

The fact that Patel will be at home in Nottingham when the World Cup starts, is, therefore, nobody's fault but his own.

I've written about Patel and his fitness issues before here, but I'm less sympathetic now. It's clear that the management were prepared to cut him a small amount of slack but he simply didn't want to do the work.

But, as The Old Batsman says, the inability, or unwillingness, of certain players to conform can be symptomatic of a less tangible fear of exposure at the highest level of the game. In the days when the England team was rubbish and county cricket was a cuddly oasis of mediocrity, the county game was full of players like that. Times have changed now, and Patel, for sure, knows it.

Flower also knows stuff. Like the fact that when you're doing his job you have tricky, sometimes ruthless, calls to make. The decision to replace Davies with Prior was one such, and, while it didn't look too bad when it was made, it's not looking quite so sound now.

Kumble

2011-01-19T13:46:00.000Z

Having put it to one side a few days ago, I've finally got round to reading this by Siddhartha Vaidyanathan, about Anil Kumble.

The story which opens it is another brick in the wall of tales of Kumble's legendary modesty, and the later stuff about bowlers' tactics offers a valuable glimpse into the mind which made him such a terrific bowler.

Many in the Anglo-Australian cricketing world have probably forgotten about Kumble already, but, in an understated way, he was something very special.

Faint Praise Be Damned

2011-01-16T22:11:00.000Z

When I wrote about the sense of underachievement that attached itself to Shane Watson during the Test series, I didn't necessarily mean to damn him with faint praise. As part of the uncertain batting efforts of a poor side, his muscular if unconsummated fifties were valuable as far as they went.

More was needed though, and today he provided it, with a one-day innings for the ages.

Of course, facing a denuded England attack in the artificial environment of a one-day international on a benign MCG pitch isn't the same as doing the hard yards against Jimmy Anderson armed with a red ball, but you still have to make the runs.

In a changed Australian landscape this is a player of quality and high importance, somewhere near peak form, fitness and performance. The more complex and troubling demands of Test cricket can wait awhile.

A Long Road Ahead

2011-01-09T13:28:00.000Z

In many ways Shane Watson is representative of the difficulties faced by his side, the only diference being that he was (at least while he lasted) in something resembling decent form.

Talented, sincere and competitive, but also lacking in concentration, fitness, and, when it comes to running between the wickets, basic technique, he's made a decent fist of filling one of the openers' berths in the Australian side over the last eighteen months. One's suspicion is, though, that his natural home lies further down the order and that he ought to be bowling more, and with more intent, than he currently does. Given his history of injuries, this is partially understandable, but, watching him over the last couple of Tests, it was hard not to think of him as a player who simply isn't achieving anything like his potential and wouldn't be worth a place in the England side.

He's not alone.

Everyone knew before the series started that Australia were in decline. This impression was confirmed and hastened by some strange decisions by their selectors and the confidence, virility and power of England. For now Watson himself, Khawaja, Hussey, Clarke (who, let no-one forget, is a superb batsman) and possibly Ponting offer the nucleus of a batting order, but Hussey and Ponting will soon be gone for good and the bowling cupboard looks bare. Some extra work on fielding, fitness and running is essential.

All the things that are being said about Australia now used to be said about England. For them it's been a long road back, starting with the appointment of Duncan Fletcher as coach in 1999 and the subsequent adoption of central contracts.

For Australia it will be no different.

The Best of Times

2011-01-08T13:46:00.003Z

For virtually anyone associated with the England cricket team, and especially the young men talented and fortunate enough to play for it, the 43 days between 25th November 2010 and 7th January 2011 will have been among the best times they will ever know on a cricket field.

For some among them those times have been better - or more memorable for different reasons - even than that.

To many, Alastair Cook seemed destined by virtue of his hesitancy and looseness to be Mitchell Johnson's fall guy. He leaves Australian shores an unlikely hero - still young, undemonstrative, slightly coy - but with a counter-intuitive stamina and toughness which nailed the Australian coffin shut. He may never quite pass this way again, but simply to watch the shape of his body as he defended the ball in Sydney was to see a man at ease, doing what he was put on earth to do.

Ian Bell is a man who, after years of wondering, knows his limitations. He knows that when it comes to batting he has no limitations. With Cook the lingering feeling is that he has surpassed himself in recent weeks, but with Bell there is the certain knowledge that there is much more to come.

Watching Bell these days can be an almost epiphanic experience. This was never true of Paul Collingwood, but few England players have ever made as much of their talent, responded as well to adversity or fielded with as much versatlity and athleticism. His vital role in the development of what could be England's side of sides should never be forgotten.

In a similar way to Ian Bell, James Anderson is now a mature man of high skill who knows his own game and his own mind. And, as with Bell, this should be no more than the beginning.

In 1956, John Arlott, looking back to 1947, wrote of a 'fair-haired, athletic-looking young man with a sweeping run-up and a high, easy, natural delivery-swing. It was as exciting a spell of bowling as I have ever watched and in the poverty of our post-war game, the man responsible for it was a heady promise of resurgent greatness in English cricket'. The man Arlott was writing about was Chris Tremlett's grandfather Maurice, and, at the start of the second decade of the 21st century, his late-flowering grandson exemplifies the future promise of another England side in a similar way.

These have been the best of times. But, for Strauss's England, there will be many more.

Punch Drunk

2011-01-06T14:34:00.001Z

The Sydney Test will end later today. England will win.

But at least the game will be allowed to reach its natural conclusion.

If this was a boxing match they would have stopped it by now.

Vying for Superiority

2011-01-04T22:18:00.001Z

Going back to work in January is never great. It's even less enjoyable when it means you have to forsake the TV for the Cricinfo commentary on one of the best day's cricket of the winter.

With Australia and England vying for superiority in Sydney, South Africa and India produced a minor classic at Newlands.

Tendulkar we know to be one of the greatest batsmen of all time. But a few people, especially, perhaps, in England, may not yet have quite realised what a magnificent fast bowler Dale Steyn is.

But not so good that Harbhajan Singh can't drive him for one of the purest straight sixes you could ever see.

With, respectively, two and three days to go, each match is beautifully poised.

Clutching at Straws

2011-01-03T21:52:00.003Z

One of the central thrusts of the media coverage of the Ashes series is the way in which Australia, with all their obvious problems, are seen as the 'new England'. In other words they resemble the England team of the mid-1990s, with a glaring void in ability, leadership and selection. Whenever a straw comes along, however flimsy, it is clutched for dear life.

This was exemplified today by the response to Usman Khawaja's undeniably promising maiden innings in Test cricket. Such seems to be the shock at seeing Australia's Test number three perform with a modicum of composure and class that even writers as good as Christian Ryan are treating him like some sort of messiah. If ever there's an example of how far Australia have fallen and how poorly Ponting was playing, this is it.

With the game in Australia apparently going to hell in a handcart as a result of the rising tide of obesity, the nation's kids' obsession with computer games and the popularity and financial muscle of Australian Rules Football, it's seemingly the sole responsibility of a 24 year-old Muslim to single-handedly rescue his adopted nation from the wolves.

Get real. He's made 37 runs in his Test career.

Ring Out The Old

2010-12-31T23:19:00.000Z

Best wishes for 2011 to all my regular readers and anyone else who's dropping by.

Having enjoyed The Old Batsman's take on the year's best innings, I've been mulling over what I've seen.

The innings I can't get out of my head is Jonathan Trott's 184 in the final Test against Pakistan, which I watched from the Warner Stand. Deliberate no-balls or not, he came in on as difficult a batting morning as you'll ever see at Lord's with more than a few people still wondering if he was the best England could do at number three. Hours later he left the field with Stuart Broad to a standing ovation. Just before he went up the pavilion steps he raised his bat and looked back towards the Grandstand with a broad smile on his face. He belonged.

This is what I wrote at the time.

The End of the Beginning

2010-12-29T21:25:00.002Z

While England's success in Australia hasn't been especially surprising, the same can't be said of the way in which it has been achieved. Leaving aside Perth as an exception which proves the rule (that England are the better team), Adelaide and Melbourne have seen England dismantle and humiliate Australia in ways that would have been completely implausible just a few short years ago.

They have been assisted by Australia's timidity and confusion, both on the field and in the selection rooms, where there are deluded people who think that Steve Smith is a Test match number six batsman, or that Ryan Harris is a number eight, or that Xavier Doherty and Michael Beer are better cricketers than Nathan Hauritz. This was a team which used to set the standards for the whole world. At times these past few weeks they have been a shambles.

And, as Andrew Strauss made certain to acknowledge in his post-victory interviews, much of England's achievement can be attributed to that satisfyingly familiar cliche, the 'team effort', to which everybody contributed. This is broadly true, but some players contributed more than others.

Paul Collingwood has many virtues, but these cannot obscure the fact that he is the only one of England's specialist batsmen who has failed even to make a single half-century, and much of the time he has batted with the elegance and sure footedness of an inebriated man trying to walk across an ice rink. Not that you ever went to him for elegance - just resolution, unquenchable spirit and the best damn catching ever seen in an England shirt - but this must have been one of the last great days he will ever know in England whites.

Today has been a clammy, foggy day in the English Midlands and Stuart Broad's thoughts will, of course, have strayed far from his
Nottingham home. Unlike Collingwood, though, he will have further opportunities to be part of triumphs such as this, for the England team forged by Strauss and Flower will have many more days like these before they're done.

Two contrasting players. One old, one young. One in Australia, one at home. One at the beginning of the end, the other at the end of the beginning.

Now that the MCG cheers have faded, a penny for their thoughts tonight.

Confronting Mortality

2010-12-27T22:28:00.001Z

There are aspects of all our lives which we know we're good at. And there are things we think we're good at, but which, in fact, we can't do as well as we think we can. And, eventually, our capabilities are changed and diminished by the vagaries of time, age and misfortune.

Ricky Ponting knows he's a great batsman and has probably always fancied himself as a pretty good captain too. He would be unlikely to admit that it was his good fortune to find himself in charge of a team which, at its best, could make anyone associated with it look good. The innate psyche of a great sportsman will always be reluctant to admit to inadequacies and failures. You don't spend 152 Test matches breaking the best bowlers of your generation by having a clear sense of your own weaknesses.

Eventually, though, everyone has to confront their mortality. In Ponting's case, the runs have dried up, his team is a pale shadow of what it was and a permanent reputation as the man who lost three Ashes series is staring him in the face.

Bearing all that in mind, as well as the fact that he's got a long list of previous convictions, it's no wonder he gave Aleem Dar an extended piece of his mind earlier today. This is not to excuse it. He got off lightly, but this was a man simply raging against a dying of the light over which he has little control.

When Ponting turned his attention to Pietersen, the batsman's face signified a mixture of astonishment and humour, but no real concern. He knows that he will still be playing Test cricket long after Ponting has gone.

Ricky Ponting's Barmy Army

2010-12-26T20:23:00.005Z

These are confusing, possibly distressing, times for the Australian cricket follower. If you are one you would have to be in your early thirties, at the very least, to have any conscious memory of a time when your national side was as poor as it is now, and, even if you're older and were around in the days of Murray Bennett and Andrew Hilditch (I wonder what happened to him?), there's a good chance that you've forgotten what it's like to see your side repeatedly humiliated at home by superior opponents. The fact that the team raised your hopes by beating the very same opponents with ease in the previous match probably just serves to increase the feeling of disorientation.

And it's no better for the players. The last time this sort of thing was going on Punter was playing for Mowbray under-10s and Steve Smith and Philip Hughes hadn't even made their debuts in the human race.

So what, as a spectator, when your flagging, toothless team needs your support more than ever, do you do?

Well, if the first day at the MCG is anything to go by, you decide before tea that you can't take any more and you simply walk out of the ground.

Real Test Match Batting

2010-12-22T22:34:00.002Z

In a week when England bit the Perth dust again, the one and only Sachin reached a milestone which once would never have seemed possible and another all-time great, Jacques Kallis, reached his first double-century in Test cricket, it could have been difficult to decide what to write about.

But to me the biggest story in the cricket world these past few weeks has been the form of Mike Hussey. A man who had been virtually written off as an international batsman but who has kept his team in the series with as measured a display of batting technique as you could ever hope to see.

Technical rigour, patience and stamina are unfashionable virtues these days. Relentless innovation and the hitting of boundaries can often seem to be all that matters as the more impulsive charms of the shortened forms of the game engage the senses of its newer acolytes more rapidly than Test cricket can. But this, from Hussey, has been real Test match batting: the advance selection of an appropriate gameplan, the persistence to see it through to its conclusion, and the shotmaking skill to bend England's often naive bowlers to his will.

At 35 Hussey is no tyro. But, while he is only a few months younger than Ponting, he belongs to a different generation of Australian cricketer. The generation who could never break into the Test side during the glory years and who instead were forced to earn their living abroad. While Hussey's basic skills were forged on the quick tracks of Western Australia they were polished on the English county circuit; at Wantage Road in Northampton, in the shadow of the Jessop Stand at Bristol, and at the Riverside. Holding poor sides together and piling up huge scores.

Hussey's batting over the past few weeks has been that of a man reluctant to give up something which he had to wait a long time to achieve. England have yet to discover an effective way of attacking him, but, with the series in the balance and Melbourne almost upon us, they need to do so soon.

Because, given the chance, he will bat, and bat, and bat.

A Chill Wind

2010-12-17T14:59:00.002Z

There's something supremely enjoyable and evocative about listening to Test Match Special as you walk through your home town in a snowstorm, with the pale light of a freezing December morning slowly making itself felt and the cold stinging your face like a sharp catch stings the hands. Christopher Martin-Jenkins, sheltering from the Perth heat, dutifully said something about welcoming listeners waking up on 'a frosty morning in England', but round my way it was a bit more severe than that.

Things were similar in another part of the WACA. A few hours before, a chill went through an England dressing room which has barely missed a beat since Brisbane, as Mitchell Johnson finally remembered what he was supposed to be good at. Six rapid victims later and match and series had taken on a different hue. A few of us - a bit like it used to be with snow itself in the days when English winter after English winter would go by without a hint of the stuff - had forgotten in three weeks that Australians could actually play cricket.

The characteristically fluent 62 which Johnson made on the first day was vital. An interview with him in the last Wisden Cricketer revealed him to be sensitive about his failures in England in 2009 and the type of player whose confidence needs regular regeneration. While the nets with Troy Cooley will have assisted with the mechanics of his technique, the reminder of his capabilities and the justification of his place which his runs gave him will have helped him to conquer his anxieties and bowl as he did.

England will need a supreme effort tomorrow to haul themselves back into the game, but this is not to say that all the Australians have left their demons behind. While his team suddenly look stronger on the back of a good day, the future for Ponting still looks clouded with an uncertainty which only a series victory and major runs will dispel.

Start the Car

2010-12-08T19:00:00.008Z

The world of cricket was rocked to its foundations this afternoon when, with just 35 overs gone in the third Ashes Test at the WACA ground in Perth, Western Australia, the 41 year-old international poker player and cosmetic dentistry model, Shane Warne, made a shock decision to come out of retirement.

Although there had been calls for Warne to rejoin the Australian side after their humiliating defeat in the second Test at Adelaide, he had given no indication that he was prepared to make a comeback. However, with England on 242 without loss, and both Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook choosing to bat right-handed in order to combat what Strauss later described as 'the mind-numbing tedium of scoring huge totals very quickly against people who can't bowl', Warne could take no more.

Warne, who has been working for Sky Television, suddenly stood up in the commentary box, removed his jacket, handed it to his co-commentator, the former England captain Mike Atherton, and said, simply, 'Hold that, Athers, I won't be long'.

Warne strode out to the middle, grabbed the worn Kookaburra from a startled Ricky 'Punter' Ponting and began setting an eccentric attacking field which included seven close fielders. The sense of expectation throughout the cricket world was palpable, but Warne's first delivery in Test cricket for almost four years proved to be a disappointment. It failed to spin and was very short, inviting the wide-eyed Strauss to pull it ferociously. The ball cleared the boundary by some 50 metres and was seen on TV to be heading towards a dark haired man with numerous tattoos and a strong resemblance to the discarded Australian player Mitchell Johnson. Johnson was on his ninth beer of the day, but interrupted his thirst-quenching routine to make an unavailing attempt to catch the ball, which rebounded from his right hand and nearly hit the former Test cricketers Ian Botham and Ian Chappell, who, in accordance with time-honoured cricket tradition, were fighting each other in the corner of the bar.

Warne threw his hands in the air in disgust and was heard to mutter something about Australian fielding not being 'what it used to be in the days of the great David Boon'. 'And Boonie could drink. If Johnson could hold his grog he would have caught that no worries'.

Warne returned to the commentary box, arriving just in time to hear David Lloyd deliver an uncomplimentary dissection of his bowling which concluded with the familiar but meaningless phrase 'start the car'.

At close of play England were 654 for 2 off 90 overs, with their coach, Andy Flower, expressing some discontent with the way they had 'let their advantage slip' after tea.

Don't do it, Warnie.

A Full House of Negatives

2010-12-04T21:11:00.004Z

Whatever happens as this game plays out, things look truly grim for Australia. Grim in a way they haven't against England for a quarter of a century.

One of my favourite memories from the summer before I went to university is the day Gooch and Gower flogged a pallid Australian attack all over Kennington. Today, with the hapless Xavier Doherty playing the part of Murray Bennett, and Shane Watson as Simon O'Donnell, Cook, Trott and Pietersen did much the same.

For the majority of the twenty-five years which have elapsed since that day, the Australian cricket team has had it all. It still has, only now it is a full house of negatives: a threadbare, poorly selected attack; batsmen who are ageing, or lack form, or both; fielders who cannot take catches which should be routine at Test level.

It's still possible, given the benign pitch and the possibility of rain later in the game, for Australia to escape defeat in Adelaide, but the psychological damage being done here is huge.

Australia's glory years were really over as soon as all the greats had retired, but full confirmation of what this has meant on the pitch has taken a while longer to come.

Now, though, it is over. And there is nothing that anyone - least of all Ponting - can do about it.

All You Need to Know

2010-12-03T16:43:00.000Z

Ricky Ponting comes to the crease. He has won the toss for his side and chosen to bat, but, in the first over of the match, they have already lost a wicket and are yet to score a single run.

Jimmy Anderson pitches the ball up, compelling Ponting to play forward. He does so, hurriedly, and the ball moves just enough to take the outside edge of his bat. Graeme Swann, at second slip, makes a difficult catch look profoundly easy.

This single delivery, one of 521 bowled in the day, tells you all you need to know about the relative strengths of the two sides.

God, England look good.

Don't Believe The Hype

2010-11-30T13:52:00.002Z

I don't usually bother reading the British tabloids. They're occasionally amusing - sometimes intentionally, sometimes unwittingly - but what they write rarely bears much relation to the real world.

So I had to laugh when I happened to catch part of the sports slot on BBC Breakfast this morning and Chris Hollins showed the back pages of various papers to the camera.

One (I think it was The Sun but I couldn't swear to it) appeared to be describing Alastair Cook's innings (which deserves credit for being made, initially, under huge pressure, but which ended as an exercise in filling his boots against a poor attack on a bland pitch) as 'The Greatest Innings Ever'. There was no question mark.

Er, not quite, lads, in fact not even close to the top 50. But thanks for the laugh.

Hard to Love

2010-11-28T16:56:00.004Z

I began writing here in 2006, just a few months after Alastair Cook came into the England team, and, in the first few years I was writing, I mentioned him a lot.

Over the last couple of years I haven't written about him so often, as for much of that time he's been battling a range of technical demons and his runs haven't been as plentiful or consistent as they were in his early days.

He's a player, and person, of contradictions. Still young, boyishly good-looking, often uncertain of manner, but with an old pro's patience, steely determination and hatred of getting out.

He can be hard to love, but when he plays like that it's not hard to see why his record's so good.

Tomorrow morning he and his partner, Jonathan Trott, can take the game right away from Australia.

Deja Vu

2010-11-27T11:07:00.000Z

As Hussey and Haddin took the game away from England in the small hours of this morning, it was Michael Vaughan, on TMS, who first mentioned the feeling of deja vu. This was roughly thirty seconds after I and millions of other English cricket followers had thought it. As the crowd noise rose and the scoreboard started to revolve at a pace which England could do nothing to contain, the only thing that could be thought was that it was just like every other Ashes series in Australia that you could really remember.

I deliberately didn't comment here yesterday as I wanted to see how many Hussey finished up with, but his batting on the second day was a timely reminder that while advancing age always affects people in ways that can't be easily felt or defined, it doesn't always whither the way in which they do their job. Hussey has always been a pleasingly compact and technically sure player, and here his fortitude under pressure, judgement and footwork were of a calibre which it's hard to see anyone on the England side, with the possible exception of Ian Bell, who's in the best form of his entire career, matching.

Now, though, at least two of them will have to if England are to avoid defeat. The pitch could be a lot worse and the Australian attack could be a lot better.

But it will be tough.

Welcome to Australia, Welcome to Sleep Deprivation

2010-11-25T10:01:00.001Z

The start of Ashes series can be captivating, exciting and emotional. This can lead to a strange type of nostalgic reflectiveness.

As I climbed into bed this morning, three overs in, Strauss already gone and CMJ broadcasting to the world, I found myself thinking about the fact that I'd been doing this sort of thing since before anyone from either side was born. When England pitched up at Brisbane to be sacrificed to Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson in November 1974, satellite television hadn't been invented and radios were still sometimes called transistors. I loved it. Still do.

Conclusion: I started bloody young, I'm getting older, and it's a good job I wasn't playing. There are many reasons for this - not least the fact that I'm not a very good cricketer - but also the awareness that too much emotion can affect the way you play.

It's hard to say whether this was a factor in what was, for England, a poor day, but if anyone had become even slightly carried away with the favourable predictions and lavish publicity, today's events will have brought them sharply back to earth.

Australian sides come, and Australian sides go, but they always, always, compete very hard. Today Peter Siddle was the embodiment of this attitude - fast, direct, immune to pressure and frequently successful. No matter what you have going for you (and England are currently very fortunate to have Ian Bell), going to Australia and winning Test matches is never easy.

Judgement is suspended until both sides have batted once, but, with one day gone, Australia hold the aces.

On The Edge

2010-11-21T16:40:00.000Z

There's currently a lot - and I mean a lot - of writing about the series in the English media. Most of it tells you things you already knew, or things you didn't want to know, or draws conclusions you could reach yourself if your life wasn't so crowded that a man can make 333 in a Test match (and another can make 278 not out a few days later) and you can barely find the time to think, let alone write, about it.

This, by David Hopps, is different and brilliant.

There's a very real feeling that Ponting stands on the edge, and the ground underneath his feet, in the shape of the Australian cricket system, is less firm than it's been for many years.

Such was the evidence of Hobart, where, if you looked past the sublime quality of Ian Bell, the Australian second team fielded some decent players. But in amongst them were a good few - chiefly Mark Cameron and Steven O'Keefe - whose levels of experience, when set against their ages (rising 30 and 26 respectively), were pitiful.

With everything changing, it may be that what was once held to be one of Australia's strengths - the lack of a professional career structure and the seamless relationship between club and first-class cricket - has now become a weakness.

Similar But Different

2010-11-21T16:02:00.003Z

It's always risky to draw inferences and parallels from phoney wars, but over the past week I've found myself thinking about the months leading up to the Rugby Union World Cup in the English autumn of 2003.

Clive Woodward's side was the best in the world and had laid many a marker down over the preceding years. The passage of time was against them but all that remained was for them to win the biggest prize in the game in the backyard of the world champions. In those days I had real faith and throughout that summer was telling anyone who would listen that they would do it. They did, but it was the final act of a team which rapidly broke up and cast the side into a period of headlong decline from which they've only really started to emerge in the last six months.

Flower's England is similar - tough, talented, highly professional, increasingly ruthless - but different in that they are a less dominant force on the world stage. But they are also younger and will not break up once the impending contest is over, victorious or otherwise. On this occasion it is their opponents, and their captain in particular, who are feeling the chill winds of change.

This time I haven't felt the same type of faith. Years of humiliation and defeat on the cricket ovals of Australia have a tendency to sap the confidence, and, unlike the players, I've been there before (in mind and spirit, if not body), time and time again.

I still say that it will be close, but one's feeling, as the cold and gloom of an impending English winter draws down, is that this England team has what is required - as much skill as their opponents and as much, if not more, confidence - to do the job.

The first few days in Brisbane will be telling.

On Its Knees

2010-11-11T06:54:00.001Z

The first time that virtually anyone in this country became aware of Zulqarnain Haider was when he came into the Pakistan side for the first time for the second Test against England at Edgbaston in August. After a first innings golden duck and a lucky first ball escape second time round, he made a resourceful and gutsy 88 in the second innings to prolong Pakistan's ultimately forlorn fight for survival.

This was clearly a cricketer of some substance, and, while we don't yet know the truth behind his flight from Dubai, it was repulsive and revealing that a representative of the Pakistan authorities condemned him as strongly as he did yesterday.

Yes, he chose not to inform the team management of his concerns before he fled, but that was a choice he was perfectly entitled to make.

With attitudes like that, no wonder cricket in Pakistan is on its knees.

The Right to Review

2010-11-09T14:37:00.000Z

Although they ultimately lacked the power to drive home their advantage, it was a significant achievement for New Zealand to push India as far as they did in Ahmedabad.

The Black Caps came straight from an unprecedented 4-0 ODI series defeat by Bangladesh (which I never found the time to write about when it happened, so belated credit to the Tigers) while India were sharpening their claws by winnning both their Tests against Australia.

For all Harbhajan's deserved maiden century, the most significant moments of the final day were the two transparently incorrect lbw decisions given by Steve Davis which put Dan Vettori - a man who's done most things - on the verge of what would have been one of the hollowest Test hat-tricks of them all.

It was a pity, because Davis has always looked to me to be an excellent umpire, but it threw into sharp relief the fact that we still have certain series being played without any form of Decision Review System while in others it increasingly appears to be working as its proponents intended. With India still choosing to lag behind the thinking of most other countries on this issue, it's salutary to think of what might have happened if they had lost the game as a result of those decisions, something which could also easily have happened in the first Test against Australia.

It would be interesting to know what VVS thinks, but, then again, it was only a (very) dodgy lbw decision and he's already passed three figures sixteen times in Test cricket.

If the rumours doing the rounds have anything in them, Zulqarnain Haider had a bit more to worry about.

Never a Truer Word

2010-11-07T12:06:00.000Z

Thanks also to Andy Bull for having spotted and pointed up this apposite quotation (hidden away at the end of the column) from Dan Vettori, speaking about Sachin Tendulkar:

"He has been in form longer than some of our guys have been alive."

As Andy says:

Dan Vettori wasn't even joking. Sachin Tendulkar made his Test debut on 15 November 1989. New Zealand's Kane Williamson was born on 8 August 1990.

And, as I write, he has a Test debut century under his belt and New Zealand, against every set of odds you can think of, have India on the ropes.

You simply have to love Test cricket.

Looking Forward, Looking Back

2010-11-07T11:52:00.000Z

As autumn sets in in England and everyone's attention turns to what is and isn't happening and what might or might not happen in any one of a number of cricket-related locations around the globe, sometimes it can be educative and not a little perplexing to turn one's mind back to events and people which everyone seems to have forgotten about in a world which turns too fast for its own good.

Andy Bull's columns in The Guardian are often wry and well-crafted, and are encapsulated in The Spin a weekly e-mail to which I subscribe. When this dropped into my inbox last week it really made me think.

At a time when one of the key off-field sub-plots involves what will happen to the Pakistan Three, it was a timely reminder of the fact that other people have drenched cricket in disrepute many times before.

At times the whole Stanford debacle seems like a bad dream. I wonder if Giles Clarke feels the same?

Time Passing

2010-10-30T16:14:00.000+01:00

Talking of the phoney war, it was great to listen to Michael Vaughan, Gladstone Small and Allan Lamb reminiscing about past Ashes series on the radio during the week.

The fact that, prior to their triumphant Test series in 1986-87, Mike Gatting's side only had three things wrong with them* has passed into English cricket folklore. So it was great to hear from Small that there were reasons for this. From the sound of it the side spent most of the first few weeks of the tour enjoying themselves, only putting their minds to the main objective of the trip the night before the Brisbane Test, which they went on to win handsomely. The clear implication was that the odd alcoholic drink was consumed.

This time, unlike the last time they were in Australia, England have the opportunity to prepare properly. But I suspect their methods of refreshment might be a little different.

Such is the passing of time and the change of eras.

* According to Martin Johnson, writing in The Independent, England's only faults at the time were that 'they can't bat, they can't bowl and they can't field'.

Desire

2010-10-30T15:41:00.000+01:00

Of course, in this time of phoney war, the headline focuses on what he said about the possible outcome of the Ashes series, but this interview with Sachin Tendulkar by the outstanding Donald McRae is much more interesting and wide-ranging than it appears at first.

Among many nuggets is the following:

'I'm really focusing now on how I can get to the next level as a batsman. How can I get even more competitive? How can I get even more consistent? How can I get better?'.

As McRae says, he speaks with the aspiration and focus of a young professional, and, such is Tendulkar's famed modesty and lack of artifice, I've got no doubt that the comment faithfully reflects where he stands in his twenty-first year as a Test cricketer and his thirty-eighth on earth.

Of course, as a player ages, everything depends upon his physical faculties, and, good as the signs are, no-one can say how long Tendulkar's body will last. But the desire to go on and on is clearly there.

We haven't seen anywhere near the last of this great batsman.

Let's Get Ready to Rumble

2010-10-17T07:30:00.004+01:00

The news that Jimmy Anderson cracked a rib during England's 'boot camp' about a month ago was as depressing as it was belated.

It's about time the sainted Mr. Flower realised that:

A. There's no need for England to imitate what Australia do any more. Australia aren't very good.

B. Cricketers training for cricket by doing other sports they're no good at - football, boxing - tend to get injured. Best just to leave them playing cricket.

C. Players who've been playing and travelling together for months on end don't need to 'bond'. They need to bond with their friends and family instead.

D. If you do insist on cricketers fighting each other, think about matching people according to height and weight. According to a good source (Michael Vaughan) Anderson was boxing Chris Tremlett, who, for all his famed lack of aggression, is a huge bloke.

No wonder someone got hurt.

When the Music Stops

2010-10-13T14:59:00.004+01:00

Ricky Thomas Ponting is, in more ways than you can count, a typical Australian Test cricketer. Indeed, he embodies the emotional makeup of virtually any successful professional sportsman. He doesn't do sentiment, or regret, or wistfulness. Such feelings are the privilege of the retired player, who can afford to look back at his career in anger, sorrow or pride with the certain knowledge that it can't blunt the sharpness of the competitive response that's vital for survival at the highest level of the game.

But Ponting wouldn't be human if he didn't reflect a little on the way things have changed for Australia in recent times. This is a man who's played nearly all his career in a team without peer; for much of that time he has been its leader and its best batsman. Now, as the autumn of his own great career draws in, he finds himself in charge of a team which just can't do what it used to. He knows it, his team-mates know it, and now other teams know it too.

Ponting said back in the English summer that he was relishing the different challenges that captaining a lesser side presented. I've no doubt he meant what he said at the time, but that was before they were beaten by Pakistan at Headingley; their two recent defeats, the second ultimately comfortable, to India have nailed the coffin lid shut on the invincible years. The music has stopped, and Ponting is still holding the parcel. The only trouble is that he doesn't know what to do with it.

While the batting is still respectable, it is far, far more vulnerable than it ever used to be, and his attack is too dependent on a spinner he doesn't trust and a quickie so erratic that it would be a shock if he really trusted himself. For all the optimism, promise and doggedness of Watson, George and Hilfenhaus, they're just not good enough to carry an attack, especially in unfamiliar conditions. There are alternatives - Bollinger, Siddle, Lee, Smith - but nobody capable of intimidating opponents with their sheer excellence in the way that was second nature to Warne and McGrath.

For me the outcome of the Ashes series still appears magnificently uncertain. Home advantage will tell, and, as everyone knows, Australians are never beaten. England's batting is a concern, but they will have seen nothing whatever to worry them over the past two weeks.

For every uncertainty, though, there is a certainty. While today's outstanding innings was Cheteshwar Pujara's first fifty for India, it sure as hell won't be his last.

The Art of Cricket

2010-10-08T17:54:00.000+01:00

I've always followed the county game closely.

Every season new names come along. They make a few runs or take a few wickets, and you notice them. Sometimes they go on to great things in the game, at others they fade from view and you forget all about them, perhaps occasionally wondering what happened to them when you flick through an old Wisden and their name catches your eye.

So it is with Elliott Wilson.

In 1999, Wilson, an opening batsman, broke into the Worcestershire side, making his maiden century against Middlesex at Worcester as the season's end approached. He followed this with two further tons in 2000, and, if the world wasn't quite at his feet, a career seeing off the new ball in the shadow of Worcester Cathedral beckoned (and that, my friends, strikes me as a pretty great way to earn your living).

Then it all went wrong. Wilson, in Australia to spend the winter playing grade cricket, sustained severe damage to his back as a result of a badly-administered injection. There were serious complications and he never played first-class cricket again.

Elliott Wilson is now an artist, and the gallery on his website reflects the depth and diversity of his talent.

Gould Will Live

2010-10-06T13:52:00.002+01:00

Ian Gould is a friendly, avuncular man. I've been watching him around cricket for more than thirty years and he's always been like that. He likes a joke, and, despite the odd recent howler (of which more below), he can umpire bloody well. Players like him, and he's been one of the best recent additions to the ICC Elite Panel.

However, while allowing for his obvious and unquestioned impartiality, he would barely be human if he didn't feel a small hint of reflex pleasure when India flopped over the line yesterday. If they'd lost after he wrongly sent Ishant on his way then he would really have needed his sense of humour to deal with some of the stick that would have come his way.

He, and India, and Ishant, and the glorious Laxman, live to fight another day.

Ifs and Butts

2010-09-26T12:10:00.001+01:00

When English cricket summers end I usually experience a feeling of disappointment and regret. Not this time.

Not just because of what's gone on in the past month, but also because this has been a messy, badly constructed season. England switching formats and opponents as frequently as Eoin Morgan switches hands. A needlessly divided and therefore denuded County Championship, a Twenty20 tournament expanded to the point of meaninglessness and another competition of a length, as Neil Kinnock said twenty-five years ago this coming week, 'irrelevant to the real needs'. For someone who loves the game but has an increasing number of competing demands on his time, it is becoming harder and harder to follow what is going on, let alone write about it. But the love will endure. It always does.

Talking of irrelevancies, a final word on Ijaz Butt, who's been making all the headlines this past week and will probably find himself on the receiving end of a writ before long. It would be interesting to know what the Pakistan players think of him, given that his statement simultaneously undermined the diligent efforts of the Pakistan team (especially the outstanding Umar Gul) and gave extra motivation to their opponents. Not much, I would guess.

England go to Australia in good shape. For the first time in many years they have the world's leading current spin bowler in their ranks, and they have a decent - I wouldn't put it any more strongly than that - chance of retaining the Ashes. I'll be with them in spirit, if not in person.

With or without the shadow of corruption, the endless carousel that is modern international cricket never stops (which, of course, is part of the problem), and Australia are now in India for a short series which will supply some further pointers as to what may happen in November and December.

See you soon.

The Glorious Uncertainty of the Unrefined Talent

2010-09-19T16:51:00.001+01:00

My first clear memory of Andrew Flintoff dates back to a Test match between England and India at Lord's in 1996. David Lloyd, then the England coach, had invited the likely lad from Lancashire to act as his country's Twelfth Man. I stood and watched for a while at the gap between the Allen Stand and the pavilion and soon became aware of a looming presence next to me, blotting out the light. I'd seen his picture so knew when I looked up that I was literally being overshadowed by Andrew Flintoff. Despite regular exposure to the behemoths turned out by the professional Rugby Union academies, he remains one of the biggest eighteen year-olds I've ever seen.

Just two years later he was in the England side; raw, over-promoted, destined to take a very long time to rise and an equally long one to fall. But for a relatively short time his best was as good as anyone's around, and my favourite memories all come from that brief heyday between 2003 and 2006: Dispatching South Africa in an ODI uniform at Edgbaston in partnership with Michael Vaughan, July 2003, one sublime cover-drive instantly awakening memories of Ian Botham; raging against the dying of the light at Lord's and The Oval, same summer; repeatedly turning games in partnership with Geraint Jones, a contrasting man if ever there was, but someone he always seemed to bat well with, in 2004 and 2005; that over to Ponting and a wealth of other moments from the summer the Ashes came back.

Other than in one specific area of his game - his bowling in one-day cricket - Andrew Flintoff wasn't a truly great cricketer. Simply a very good one whose greatest individual Test series happened to coincide with what was perhaps the greatest Test series of all. But, to the average English cricket follower, his huge popularity owed far more to his image as an outwardly unsophisticated, often gauche everyman who embodied and fulfilled people's hopes while retaining an endearing sense of vulnerability. The British tend to be wary of self-conscious sporting excellence, preferring those who succeed in spite of themselves and who routinely appear to be only a step away from failure. The glorious uncertainty of the unrefined talent.

One image to leave: It is September 2003. Makhaya Ntini bowls, and the coiled, vengeful power of Flintoff's drive lofts the ball upwards, seemingly destined for space. It only makes it as far as the upper tier of the Oval pavilion but no matter. This is something we've waited since 1985 to see. It is special, he is special, and we want more.

Flintoff's future also has more than a tinge of uncertainty about it. But he, and we, will always have his past.

Seeing is Believing

2010-09-19T15:42:00.000+01:00

A recurrent theme in the first few years of this blog was the discrepancy between Ian Bell's transparently exceptional batting ability and his failure to establish himself in the England team. I well remember writing a sentence which began 'if Ian Bell ever realizes how good he could be...'.

Over the last year the disconnect between potential and performance has become less noticeable, largely as a result of his batting in South Africa last winter. After an injury-interrupted home season, his return to the Test side for the start of the forthcoming Ashes series appears a formality. At last, in his 29th year, there are signs that he's finally started to really believe in himself. And there's plenty to believe in.

Yesterday evening, as Bell steered Warwickshire to victory against Somerset in the final of the Clydesdale Bank 40 at a floodlit Lord's, he put together an innings which served both as reminder and confirmation of what he is capable of. Mark Turner is a journeyman seam bowler. He's just been released by Somerset and is joining Derbyshire, the team cricketers join when they can't go anywhere else. So, when he came on to bowl the 38th over of the Warwickshire innings with Bell facing, things didn't look good. Six balls later, with Bell having creamed Turner for twenty runs and the Warwickshire win assured, things looked even worse.

But, in fairness, it probably wouldn't have made much difference who was bowling. Bell was playing with such a potent mix of command, assurance and even, whisper it, arrogance, that many another more talented bowler would have gone precisely the same way. It looked to me suspiciously like the work of a player who finally knows how good he is, and that, my friends, is very good indeed.

Of course, attempting to hold together the England batting in the febrile cauldron of the Gabba, or amid the brutal partisanship of the MCG, is a different thing. We will see, but the signs are good.

The 'CB40' feels like an unloved competition, and Ian Bell has frequently appeared an unloved batsman. Defending his corner against the doubters has often been difficult; more than once I've given up and embraced the majority opinion.

Ian Bell won't be giving up any time soon. Last night he showed the British cricket community what he can do, but it's time he showed the world.

To Tweet or Not to Tweet

2010-09-06T14:52:00.001+01:00

I tried 'Tweeting' for a few months late last year and early this. I tried to be the Tweeter with the fewest followers in the world until the pointlessness of it all became clear and I gave up participation in favour of seeing what people more famous and interesting than me had to say about their lives.

Most of the people I follow are involved with cricket in some way, and are well-known. Graeme Swann's Tweets are ebullient and slightly childish. David Lloyd's reflect his humour and wide range of passions. Jimmy Anderson's tend towards the dull and worthy, but are notably well structured and punctuated. It's clear, unlike some, that he went to school. Agnew's reflect a life so utterly wonderful that he must wake up every day thanking some higher authority (the BBC Appointments Board, I suppose) for its munificence. Michael Vaughan is a late adopter who shows promise.

Something worth keeping in mind, though, is that if you put something on Twitter, more or less anyone, anywhere, can see it. And if they don't see it for themselves, someone will tell them about it.

If someone's responsible for selecting a cricket team that you'd like to play in, it's best only to refer to them as a c**t (or even a k**t) or a w****r in private. People generally don't like that sort of thing, and if you give them another reason not to select you, well, as good old Devon Malcolm apparently once said, 'you guys are history'.

Don't expect a call anytime soon , Dimitri.

On Reflection

2010-08-31T18:12:00.001+01:00

It's hard to believe that it's barely been three days since the only story in town broke. It already seems like weeks, but the dust has barely settled.

The best moment I've had over the last few days was reading on Cricinfo yesterday - while loitering around Horse Guards Parade, of all places - that the ICC has scope for leniency when it comes to the imposition of suspensions for activities such as 'spot-fixing', and that, should it come to it, they'll be able to take into account Mohammad Amir's youth and possible naivete, which may mean that he could end up with a ban of 'only' five years rather than something much longer. Immediately after the event I got caught up in the prevailing mood which seemed to be suggesting that a life ban was the only acceptable outcome, and the thought of that happening to Amir was starting to genuinely upset me.

So, the future may not be quite as bleak for Amir as it may seem. Or, then again, it might.

Salman Butt and Mohammad Asif appear different. They've been around for long enough to really know the implications of what they were doing, and for all my deep admiration for Asif's bowling, if it's shown that they were complicit in this I'll be happy to see them both out of the game for good.

History Repeated as Tragedy

2010-08-29T22:31:00.002+01:00

On a grey, slightly chilly, autumnal morning, Lord's, on this of all days, was a strange place to be. The air of confusion, regret and uncertainty was tangible, and more MCC members were reading the News of the World than can ever have been the case before. Buying it felt a little dirty, but it had to be done.

Although Umar Akmal finally showed his true colours, defeat came quickly, but the ramifications of what may have been done in the course of that defeat will take a lot longer to play out. On the face of it, the evidence is strong, and, if it's as solid as it appears, the ICC will need to hit this one hard to stand any chance of rolling back what may, in the Indian sub-continent at least, be a rising tide of corruption.

No matter the lifelines it's thrown, it seems as though Pakistan cricket will always find a way to drag itself back into the mire. But, as it sinks, individual images linger.

From Lord's I'll go with the haunted, shuffling figure of Mohammad Yousuf, dismissed twice in an afternoon on Saturday and looking for all the world like a shattered man. This was someone who lived and played through the last great series of Pakistani match-fixing scandals, and, in retrospect, you have to wonder whether his crushed demeanour reflected the fact that he had discovered that history was repeating itself.

And then you had Mohammad Amir, striding off after succumbing to Graeme Swann for his second duck of the game. If things go badly for him it may be the last thing he ever does on a Test match field.

For Test cricket to lose a player of his staggering ability so soon would be little short of tragic, and, for his career to end prematurely would be unutterably sad. This time, though, people really need to hang for this, and if the case against Amir and others is proved, there should be no coming back.

We move on. Or we try to. This, like a partnership between Jonathan Trott and Stuart Broad, will run and run and run.

A Sense of Belonging

2010-08-27T22:32:00.003+01:00

Until today there was an uncertainty about Jonathan Trott's status in the England side. Of course, there was a nerveless maiden century in the deciding Test of an Ashes series, and a double century at Lord's, and a record-breaking ODI partnership, but there was also the timewasting fussiness of his guard-taking ritual, more than a hint of strokelessness under pressure and an innate lack of charisma and batting elegance. Earlier in the season it began to look as though many in the media wanted him to fail, simply so as the sainted Eoin Morgan could be welcomed into the Test side.

Today, though, he resoundingly came of age with a truly magnificent combination of patience, technical rigour and impeccable shot selection; as good a century as has been made in England colours in the past couple of decades.

And Stuart Broad, for once rejecting hubris in favour of simply showing what he can do with a bat in his hand, was equally impressive.

As the runs mounted, their body language between overs reflected the way in which their partnership moved from uncertainty to realisation to fulfilment. By the end they were pumping each other's hands like long-lost friends, and they resume tomorrow at 11 requiring a further three runs to break a record which has stood for 79 years.

If Jonathan Trott lives to be 79 he'll never play better.

This is a player who really belongs.

(Raining) Cats and Dogs

2010-08-25T19:25:00.002+01:00

I'm in London for the Test, just down the road from Lord's. It's raining cats and dogs. Even with the famed Lord's drainage, early play tomorrow looks a tall order indeed.

If I was Graeme Swann I'd probably tweet about it. And if I was him I'd be staying in a better hotel.

Solidarity

2010-08-19T13:43:00.000+01:00

International cricket - all international sport, in fact - is a cloistered world, inhabited by privileged people. People, on both sides of the boundary and touchline, with the talent and good fortune to be able to earn what, by most people's standards, are huge riches, while doing something they'd happily do for nothing if their lives had turned out differently. Not that everything (unless, perhaps, you're a member of the media) is wine and roses; playing professional sport well requires a high level of discipline and far more hard work than many people realize.

Perhaps it's because of this - the fact that their own lives are so pleasurable and absorbing - that people in sport often seem so unaware of what's going on in the outside world.

Like my fellow blogger at the idiosyncratic and excellent Down at Third Man, I've been surprised and concerned (to put it mildly) that there's been very little mention of the Pakistan floods during the media coverage of the Test series. Pakistan is nothing if not a country at the heart of the world cricket community, and one which required a huge amount of solidarity and support from the rest of that community even before the latest disaster came its way. Now it needs even more.

As I type, TMS is doing its bit to redress the balance by interviewing James Caan, who's heading a fundraising campaign on behalf of the British Pakistan Foundation and is about to travel to Pakistan, but much more can, and should surely, be done.

Watch this space, and, in the meantime, visit Third Man's Facebook page here.

Chaos Theory

2010-08-16T16:05:00.000+01:00

More often than not Twenty20 finals day ends in thinly-veiled chaos.

Saturday was one of those days. It ended at nearly 11 p.m. with the faintly surreal sight of a middle-aged man with a pot of paint and a big stick emerging into the glare of the Rose Bowl floodlights to paint a couple of white lines on a strip of turf as many thousands of cricket fans laughed, drank, cheered and looked at their watches. Oh, and wondered who out of Hampshire and Somerset would end up winning the thing.

The cricket wasn't bad either, with Jos Buttler showing a wider audience the virtues which those of us who inhabit Gimblett's Hill at Taunton have known about for a while. A technique both unfussy and innovative, backed by the iron temperament of the natural finisher. No sooner has the world started to recognize the remarkable ability and potential of Eoin Morgan than someone else comes along with many of the same qualities.

And then there were two of the most naturally rhythmical left-arm spinners you could ever wish to see. For once, though, Murali Kartik was put in the shade by Hampshire's highly-impressive 19 year-old from the Isle of Wight, Danny Briggs. In a snatched post-victory interview Briggs said something along the lines of 'I didn't know this many people watched cricket'.

You'd better get used to it, Danny, because, where you might be heading, they assuredly do.

Rebuilding Respect

2010-08-09T13:44:00.001+01:00

Regardless of what happens now - and as I write England are well on the way to victory - there was, in a counter-intuitive, old-fashioned, slightly grim way, something uplifting about yesterday afternoon's proceedings at Edgbaston.

After their shambolic displays with the bat and in the field on Friday and Saturday, and with Graeme Swann wheeling away with a venom few in the current international game can match, Pakistan needed something different, both to preserve their own credibility and to revive a series which was beginning to look like a barely-twitching corpse a matter of days after it had started.

The combative, brave and occasionally stylish batting of Zulqarnain Haider, Mohammad Aamer and Saeed Ajmal, did just that, providing a template for their supposed superiors at the top of the order (although much of the devil seemed to have gone both from the pitch and England's bowling by the afternoon) and showing that all is not lost. On a ground that currently resembles a building site, this was the brick-by-brick rebuilding of Pakistan's self-respect.

God, they need to learn how to catch, though.

The More Things Change...

2010-08-02T15:50:00.002+01:00

In a performance which, in the field anyway, went beyond the realms of mere competence and into those of outright brilliance, James Anderson was England's stand-out player.

It was time. He's had an uneasy few months in the one-day game, omitted entirely from the T20 triumph in the Caribbean and intermittently expensive in the ODIs against Australia and Bangladesh. But he remains a bowler of talent, ingenuity and skill, best suited to the rhythms and attacking imperatives of the five-day game, especially when the conditions weigh as heavily in his favour as they did at the weekend.

As Vic Marks has written, he's the best exponent of genuine swing England have had since the heyday of the young Ian Botham, who, for anyone too young to remember him at his best, could really, really bowl. From visual memory (no speed guns then), Botham wasn't as quick as Anderson usually is, although, when riled by a batsman, an umpire, an Australian or any combination thereof (which was often) he could really charge in. Though attacking by nature Botham at his best probably had a slightly more consistent command of line and length than Anderson, reflective of the era in which he played and a parsimonious Westcountry cricket education at the hands of Tom Cartwright.

Plus ca Change. For Ian Botham at Lord's, June 1978, knocking over a range of hapless Pakistani batsmen like so many skittles, read Anderson at Trent Bridge, August 2010.

But sterner challenges, presented by the batsmen, pitches, cricket balls and climate of Australia, lie ahead.

Go Back To What You First Thought Of. And Ignore It.

2010-08-01T16:40:00.000+01:00

On balance, it's probably a good thing that I didn't write what I was thinking of writing before the Trent Bridge Test began, namely that Jimmy Anderson 'needed a big performance'. I've learnt from experience that the immutable Law of Sod as applied to blogging means that as soon as you write something like that it's rendered redundant by events which, in retrospect, have a terrible inevitability about them.

With this in mind, I won't be writing anything similar about Kevin Pietersen (for a week or two, anyway).

I'm not too sure about the Pakistan team, though. They, with bat and in the field at least, are really struggling. And I'm not sure that they're capable of proving me wrong.