One Year On, One Year In

It's exactly a year since I began writing this blog. After years of writing articles for magazines and journals I'd started to feel frustrated by the length of time it took for anything I'd written to appear in print and I felt that this format would give my work greater immediacy and the opportunity to write about whatever was in my head at the time, rather than what an editor wanted me to write about or what they were prepared to accept.

I'd spent some wonderful hours in the early part of last season watching Graeme Hick bat at Taunton and Worcester and wanted to write something about a cricketer whose career I'd been associated with since he was a youngster and who was nearly as old as me but was still performing with distinction. That piece, still one of the best things I've written, can be found here, and, a year on, Hick is still batting superbly; on Friday evening he made 110 from 49 balls in a Twenty20 game for Worcestershire against Northants.

It's been a crowded and intriguing year for world cricket. I've seen and commented upon the first forfeited Test match and all the controversy that went with it, Australia regaining the Ashes with dismissive excellence and then going on to dominate the World Cup in much the same way (although it's questionable how many people were still awake by the end to see them do it). I've also covered the shockingly sudden death of Bob Woolmer and the retirements of three of the greatest cricketers of this or any era, Brian Lara, Glenn McGrath and Shane Warne. It's been hard work at times, but I'm still enjoying it.

To my regular readers - you know who you are, even if I don't - thanks a lot for dropping by and coming back. And special thanks to Andrew Riley, Simon Orpen, Simon Hattenstone of The Guardian, Patrick Kidd of The Times, Mark Ray for the photos, Russell Degnan, Homer, and anyone else who's been kind enough to add me to their blogrolls.

The only thing that's disappointed me slightly is that thousands of people read the blog but few comment. I've gone through spells of getting reasonable numbers of comments (usually when I've written something about the Indian team) but things usually go dead again after a while. It's one of those spells at the moment.

So, if you're reading the blog and feel that you've got something to say, leave a comment. It's not difficult and I always reply.

At the last count this site had been visited by people from 62 countries, although a large proportion of those simply wanted to know about the different shades of green. To them, and the people whose searches for 'Guildford Swingers' on Google always lead them to my appreciation of Martin Bicknell, sorry I couldn't help you.

Natural Causes

It's seemed likely for some time, but Cricinfo is currently carrying a story which indicates that the Jamaican police are about to acknowledge that Bob Woolmer did, after all, die of natural causes.

As I say, things have been heading this way for a while, so it won't come as a great surprise to anyone. Of course, the effects on the Jamaican police will - should - be severe, but aside from that one can only hope that his family can reconcile themselves to the fact that there was less to his demise than was initially apparent to the police.

Things Can Only Get Better (Can They?)

Three weeks in (or is it longer?) and I'm still not totally sure what I think of the 2007 World Cup. Certain themes are starting to emerge, though, and it's hard to escape the feeling that the organisers should be a bit concerned about how things are going.

To start with, the coach of a major nation has been murdered. Hardly a great way for the tournament to get under way, and, despite the fact that the World Cup has continued (a decision I was completely in favour of, given that it's surely what Woolmer would have wanted), there can be little doubt that, ultimately, that is what the competition will be remembered for.

Also, two of the highest profile sides in the tournament were eliminated at the first hurdle. Okay, it was nobody's fault but their own, but the Super Eight would be looking a bit more interesting now if India and Pakistan were still around.

Then there's the weather. There's been a lot of rain around and this has detracted from the continuity of the tournament and the visual impression created by it. How many games so far have been played under blazing skies in front of packed houses? Not many.

Which brings me to the question of crowds. Hardly any of the matches - even those involving the West Indies - have been watched by large audiences and it's becoming clear from the media that a number of the decisions taken by the organisers, from building new stadiums in unsuitable locations downwards (coupled with the standard ICC over-regulation of spectators' habits) have created the impression that this is a competition which the people of the region aren't completely sold on. And unless the form of the West Indies improves pretty quickly, things aren't going to change.

On the field it's looking more and more as though Australia are the team to beat, with South Africa, Sri Lanka and especially New Zealand looking like the only sides that can stop them. Ireland and Bangladesh have surely come as far as they're going to, West Indies are staring down the barrel and England give the impression of limping along, untested, unproven and unconvincing, with their old nemesis Jayasuriya and friends awaiting them later this week. In some ways it's reassuring that normal service has been resumed in the one-day world - Australia on top, England faltering, and the rest somewhere in between - but it doesn't make the World Cup any more interesting.

One can only hope that things will get better.

They need to.

Murder

I've just got up on a grey Friday morning in south-west England to hear that Bob Woolmer was murdered.

Shocking, but it had been hinted at for a few days so it didn't come as a complete surprise.

All that can be said at this stage is that one hopes that those responsible are caught quickly and that some of the theories being peddled about match fixing and the involvement of members of the Pakistan team turn out to be groundless.

In the meantime, the World Cup continues.

Some Things Are Best Not Talked About...

With so many theories doing the rounds (many of them 'conspiracy theories') about the death of Bob Woolmer, I've decided that I'm not going to comment any further about it until some solid facts emerge.

It seems to me that this by Sambit Bal is of far greater interest just at the moment.

Whether Woolmer died of natural causes (which still seems the most probable option), was murdered or committed suicide, Bal's criticisms of where world cricket is at right now demand consideration and reaction from those who run the game.

Paying Tribute

The tributes and valedictions for Bob Woolmer roll in. As usual, Osman Samiuddin strikes just the right note with a mixture of reminiscence and respect.

Bob Woolmer (1948-2007)

It's been quite a busy day. I've just heard on the radio that Bob Woolmer has died, rendering what I wrote this morning completely meaningless, and Pakistan's exit from the World Cup utterly irrelevant.

He was a very good player, who made the first complete Test century I saw live, for England against Australia at Lord's in 1977, and a great coach, whose influence will be remembered with gratitude in many parts of the cricket world.

At Canterbury, where he played all his county cricket for Kent, at Edgbaston, where he coached Warwickshire to a raft of trophies, in Pakistan, and perhaps most of all in South Africa, where he made his home and went from coaching club cricketers in Cape Town to making the national side what it became in the era of Cronje, Rhodes and Donald.

More later, I'm sure.

No Gambling Allowed

Elsewhere, Pakistan are gone already, undermined by their weakened side, a lost toss on a sporting pitch, and the fighting Irish.

They've done some very good things under Bob Woolmer, but all good things come to an end.

And, for those in charge of Pakistan cricket, it happens with a thundering inevitability.

Bob Woolmer still in charge of Pakistan in a few months' time?

You wouldn't bet on it.

The Appeal

Until it ceased publication a couple of years ago I was a regular contributor to a magazine called Cricket Lore. Sometime in 2001 or 2002, the editor, Richard Hill, wrote to me and a number of the other writers to ask us to produce a piece of writing which summarized how we came to love cricket, to be called 'The Appeal'. In the autumn of 2002 - with Michael Vaughan's 197 at Trent Bridge, and the reception it received, still at the forefront of my mind - I wrote this.

For one reason or another, though, Richard never got round to publishing it, so it's appearing in print here for the first time. To me some of it now appears a bit dated, but it's generally a faithful reflection of what cricket means to me.


In adulthood, you somehow expect to recover from all this.
You assume that, as youthful zeal fades, the grim drudgery
of daily life will supersede all such nonsense. But it doesn’t
happen. Your obsession remains as vivid as ever. For once
cricket has claimed you, it never lets you go.

Marcus Berkmann, Rain Men - The Madness of Cricket
(London, 1995)

Berkmann was right. Cricket claimed me sometime in the early seventies, and I’ve never yet managed to kick the habit. Not that I’ve ever really tried.

I can’t really say how it all began. Like most addicts, I suspect, I simply can’t remember a time when I wasn’t interested in cricket. If I try a little harder I can recall going out into the back garden and attempting to bowl in the manner of Gary Sobers (using my left hand for added authenticity, which, for an overwhelmingly right-sided person, wasn’t easy) because my father and elder brother had told me that I had been watching (for this was 1973) the greatest player of them all. I can also remember getting up at strange hours of the night for the first (but hardly the last) time to listen to radio commentaries from Australia in the winter of ‘74-75 and Lillee and Thomson scampering runs in the Lord’s twilight as the first World Cup Final drew to a close. By the time the West Indian summer of 1976 began with us in our new home a few streets away, cricket had become an integral aspect of the fabric of my life. It’s difficult to pinpoint what it was that I liked about cricket then, but it seems logical that the things I like about cricket now are the same things that got me hooked on cricket then.

I love the physical beauty and vivid visual dynamics of the game. The balanced tempo of any good first-class match - the sense of rhythm, comprising history and mystery and latent expectation, which keeps you watching, ball after ball, session after session, day after day. Season after season.

As time moved on I started to play seriously, encouraged by my father, who’d seen Compton and Edrich batting together, and my brother, who once bowled a whole side out on his own, hitting the stumps on nine occasions. A bit of fine-tuning was provided by my friend Gary’s father, who’d played for the Club Cricket Conference and had been on the fringes of the Buckinghamshire side in the sixties. He knew what he was doing, even if I didn’t, and some of his guidance certainly rubbed off, though I didn’t appreciate it at the time. I joined Sunbury Cricket Club, on London’s south-western fringes, a club with an exceptional colts section which has since set Richard Johnson and David Nash on their way to the county game. These days, when I’m watching Johnson bowl at Taunton, my mind often drifts back to those days, as it always did with Graham Rose who was nearer me in age and once came to the club with a Middlesex junior side. Could I have done what they did? Well, no, actually. I was - and remain - a player whose enthusiasm and appetite for the game compensates for a moderate ration of ability. I played in the school team, which was quite successful for a while, and also made the district schools’ side. Some of my friends got into the county side as well but I was never that good. A few runs here, a wicket or two (or five) there, the odd catch. That was cricket for me as the seventies ended - minibus trips to away games all over south London and Surrey, roughly equal helpings of celebration and commiseration, a developing awareness of the game’s wider resonances. And, of course, I was still watching the game at the highest level. Between 1976 and 1981 I attended all the major limited-over finals at Lord’s, including the 1979 World Cup Final, and several Tests at both Lord’s and The Oval. These are some of the things which I saw during those years:

Thomson and Lillee in their pomp, 1975. The young Michael Holding turning within a few yards of the pavilion ropes at Lord’s in 1976 and embarking on the most beautiful and artistic bowling action I’d ever seen. Procter, Richards, Collis King and Gooch infusing Lord’s finals with their coruscating skills and dominant personalities. Gavaskar stroking the England bowling all over The Oval as I sat transfixed in front of the television one late summer day in 1979.

Of course, for an infatuated teenage cricket follower, 1981 was the season which topped the lot. I’m sure many new converts to cricket were won that summer and if I hadn’t already been hopelessly devoted to the game, 1981 would have confirmed the extent of my obsession. But I already knew what I liked about the game and, if I’d bothered to think too far into the future, I would have felt that my views weren’t going to change.

They did, though. I continued to play the game, but as adulthood approached I found that I wasn’t quite as successful as I used to be. I was playing with men rather than boys and I wasn’t sure whether I liked it or not. So, as the eighties wore on, I gradually played less and watched more. The Tests came thick and fast and I started to watch county cricket with seriousness and passion. In comparison with the long, barren period which was to follow, these were rich years. England maintained some of the veneer of success which had been established during the Brearley years, culminating in the dismantling of Australia at home in 1985, the year in which I did my A-levels and enjoyed a long summer off before going to university. University came and went, punctuated by days at the cricket, and, in 1990, I found myself in Brighton to see Middlesex claim the championship. I’d become fond of Gatting’s Middlesex side, but, within a few months, I was living in Devon. More than a decade on, I’m still here. These days I can usually be found in the Ian Botham Stand at Taunton, and occasionally at Tests at Lord’s, The Oval or Trent Bridge. Also, after several years of inactivity on the field, I began playing again in 1996. Village cricket in Devon is far from the cricket environment I grew up in and I haven’t achieved much but it’s a decision I’ve never regretted.

When you watch a huge amount of cricket it can all start to blend together and you can find yourself wondering what you’ve been left with. In my case it’s a kaleidoscope of random memories; unconnected but often conjoined by events and the passage of time. The young Steve Rhodes keeping to Richard Illingworth in the New Road shadows, 1988; Bob Woolmer and Keith Piper conferring in the nets at Coventry, 1992; Dave Richardson and Paul Adams driving England to distraction at Newlands, 1996; Shoaib Akhtar bowling to Sherwin Campbell at Bristol in the World Cup, 1999.

I instantly liked the look of Rhodes and thought he’d be the England wicket-keeper for years. I got that one wrong, but years later, when I finally saw England play abroad, he was wearing the gloves. When England crumbled in the shadow of Table Mountain, Woolmer was in charge of the South African side. I never thought I’d see a quicker bowler than Thomson or Holding. More than twenty years passed before Shoaib emerged, but he was quicker than anything else I’d ever seen. In 1987 I was at Lord’s when the entire ground stood to mark the conclusion of Sunil Gavaskar’s career; in the summer of 2002 I was again privileged to be present as the Nottingham crowd rose to acclaim Michael Vaughan’s 197. The applause spanned the years and reminded me of the essential humanity of cricket.

So, in cricket, as in life, what goes around tends to come around. And in cricket you can enjoy it again and again.

Come and Get Me

An interesting interview in The Times with Bob Woolmer, who appears to indicate that the ECB only have to ask him to take over as coach after the World Cup and he'll be there. He also, predictably, says all the right things about England's team selection in Australia.

It remains to be seen whether there'll be a vacancy but there seems to be an increasing unanimity of opinion about England's need for a fresh coaching perspective and it seems to me that Woolmer would provide this at least as well as anyone else who might come into consideration.

If I was David Collier I'd dig out his number and give him a call.

Praise be to Allah (and Bob Woolmer)

Leaving the Ashes to one side for a further minute, one of the most interesting features of international cricket over the past year has been the way in which the man formerly known as Yousuf Youhana has gone from being a very capable international batsman, but one who'd never really pulled up any trees, to being the most formidable damn run-machine on the planet (with the possible exception of Ricky Ponting).

After his outstanding exploits in England last summer, Mohammad Yousuf has simply gone on churning out the runs in his graceful, understated, but largely unstoppable way, to the point where, today, he passed Viv Richards' record for the most Test runs made in a calendar year, which had stood since 1976. Richards made 1710, Yousuf has made 1788.

Yousuf doesn't bowl, tends to struggle in the field and doesn't say much. When he does talk it's usually just to thank Allah for his munificence. On this occasion he went slightly further, publicly thanking Bob Woolmer for his influence on his glorious journey.

It's nice to see one English coach is doing something right...

Disorientation

Falling asleep in front of the Ten O'Clock News is probably one of the first signs of getting old. It still doesn't happen to me that often but it induces a level of disorientation that is often surprising. That's made even worse when you wake up to see an ICC Match Referee (in this case Ranjan Madugalle) passing judgement on the events of a Test match. What? Cricket on the Ten O'Clock News? Have England regained the Ashes or something?

Nothing that exciting, but The Oval, August 17th-20th 2006, was, as we know, no ordinary Test match.

Without going into everything again, I think the ICC got it about right. It was clearly felt that there was no visible evidence of tampering to the ball, and that Hair (and Doctrove don't forget) were mistaken. That's fine. But, as big Darrell apparently said yesterday, '…I know that if I make any mistake when I umpire, I make it in good faith'.

While Madugalle's statement (available on the ICC website here) clearly implies that he did not believe that the actions of Hair and Doctrove were either 'perverse...or involved bad faith' and emphasizes that it was '...no part of his [Inzamam ul-Haq's] defence to these charges to suggest that any of Mr.Hair's decisions were taken in bad faith or dishonestly', there are many in the Asian cricket firmament who take a different view. One of those is of course Shaharyar Khan, the PCB chairman and an annoyingly self-righteous presence throughout, who persists in maintaining that Pakistan's whole stance on the issue has been vindicated.

Well, not exactly, since Inzamam was found guilty of 'bringing the game into disrepute', in case you hadn't noticed. This was also about right as teams can't be allowed to refuse to play if they don't agree with an umpire's decision. That way anarchy lies.

Amid so much hot air, the sanest voice of reason belonged to Bob Woolmer, who reiterated his view that Law 42.3 urgently requires reform. How, in all logic, can polishing be allowed while virtually any other means of altering the condition of the ball is expressly prohibited?

In many ways, the most interesting and sensible clauses of Madugalle's judgement are the final ones, which state that:

'This was an unprecedented situation. If (one hopes not) such a situation were to recur in international cricket, I would hope and expect:

(1). The Umpires would do everything possible to try to defuse tensions in the dressing-room by explaining that a team is entitled to raise any grievance through the ICC but that it is not in their interests, or in the interests of the game, for the team to interrupt play.

(2). The Umpires and other officials should do everything possible to ensure the resumption of play. And they should not return to the field of play and then declare the match to be forfeited unless and until they are absolutely sure that the team is refusing to play the rest of the match. All other options should first be exhausted, involving discussions with the team captains and management.'

There is a clear implication here that Madugalle feels that Hair and Doctrove abandoned the match prematurely, and possibly also that Mike Procter, the Match Referee, did not do enough to try to defuse the crisis.

It also emerged from the hearing that Doctrove initially favoured a more moderate approach, advocating that he and Hair should spend a few further overs observing what was happening and trying to see if they could positively identify the 'culprit' before changing the ball. If that course of action had been followed and no culprit had been found, it is of course possible that the decision to change the ball may not ultimately have been taken and all this could have been avoided. One's feeling, though, is that Hair was dead set on changing the ball and awarding the penalty runs from the time of his first suspicions, so it would probably all have happened anyway.

We'll never know, though, so let's move on.

As The World Turns

It seems these days as though on any given day there's usually at least a couple of Test matches going on somewhere around the world. We've just seen Sri Lanka defeat South Africa by one wicket in what was obviously a thrilling finish, and England draw away to a much more comfortable win over Pakistan.

I didn't see much of either game (well, I didn't see any of the Sri Lankan one) so it's difficult to comment in depth, but it's enough to say that I've always regarded Mahela Jayawardene as a truly special batsman and it's been good to have his greatness confirmed these past few months.

It's also true to say that I couldn't stand Dean Jones as a commentator - something to do with his excessive mateyness and his inability to say anything remotely original - and I won't lose any sleep if he's never heard from again after his, er, 'clumsy' remark during the Colombo game.

Back in Leeds (I can't quite bring myself to refer to the ground as 'Headingley Carnegie'), England were excellent, while Pakistan were very disappointing, capitulating lamely to an England side that played increasingly tight and powerful cricket on either side of the Pennines.

Prior to the series much was made of the influence of Woolmer's coaching, his relationship with Inzamam and the players' discovery and re-discovery of Islamic devotion in turning the Pakistan side from a perennially inconsistent blend of disparate talents and personalities into a lean and mean unit that was good enough to challenge the world's best. While there appeared to be something in this during the last English winter, especially in the home series victory over England, they have fallen away badly on this tour, something which they, and their many followers, must feel very uncomfortable about.

True, they have been denied the services of Shoaib Akhtar, the vaunted Mohammad Asif and the Hove favourite Rana Naved-ul-Hasan by injury, but, unlike England, who, since Lord's, seem to have drawn strength from the absence of Flintoff (and Vaughan and Giles), Pakistan have withered. They have frequently appeared little more than a three man team, relying almost completely on Mohammad Yousuf, Inzamam and Younis Khan (who didn't even play at Lord's), with no opening pair, a pronounced tendency to drop catches and run each other out, and a range of mediocre bowlers (although we all know what Kaneria is capable of and I maintain that much more will be seen and heard of Umar Gul). All in all, in the last two Tests, much of their cricket has bordered on the shambolic.

England's progress must be set against Pakistan's decline, but there can be no doubt that England have rediscovered an intensity and bite to their game which largely went missing in the first six months after The Ashes were regained.

While life is certainly easier when you're playing at home and have a new player who's better than the hitherto established one whom he's replaced (and no prizes for guessing who I'm talking about), England have shown a desire and mental toughness which has been absent from Pakistan's displays.

Strauss must take much of the credit for this - Fletcher has rightly praised his mental strength, as evidenced by his centuries at Lord's and Leeds and his increasingly assured captaincy - but we've also started to glimpse a little of what Saj Mahmood could be capable of, both with the ball and in the field, where his first innings run out of Younis set the tone for some bristling English out-cricket.

I've already said enough about Harmison and Panesar, Bell, Cook and Collingwood, so the final word on Headingley has to go with Chris Read. As I said after his recall here, I was pleased that he'd been picked again but was concerned about how he would cope with such an intensely pressurized situation. I needn't have worried. He appeared to keep flawlessly, and, after some early luck, batted just about as well as could be expected in both innings. I'm still not convinced that Jones won't be back for Brisbane but Chris has at least given himself a fighting chance.

It's all he ever wanted, and with Fletcher even starting to praise Panesar, you never know where it could lead...