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.

End of the Road

So, after about seven weeks (I really can't be bothered to count) and goodness knows how many matches (ditto) it's all come down to Australia and Sri Lanka.

One of the few aspects of the tournament about which one can be unreservedly generous is that its best two sides have ended up in the final. And, if anyone stands a genuine chance of turning Australia over, Sri Lanka do.

That said, Australia are playing so well, are so motivated to win their third consecutive World Cup and to send Glenn McGrath, the competition's outstanding bowler, into retirement on the highest of highs, and are so collectively immune to pressure, that I'll be surprised if they fail to do so.

I hope they don't though, and I'll be backing Sanath, Mahela, Kumar, Murali and the rest all the way.

Strange Days Indeed

It was hard to decide which was the stranger and more welcome sight at Hamilton the other night - New Zealand, with Craig McMillan back to his bristlingly confident best in their middle-order, cleaning up Australia for the third time in a row, or Merv Hughes and John Buchanan watching them do it. Both looked studiedly unemotional about it but you wouldn't mind betting that their thoughts weren't a million miles from 'just how many runs do we have to make to win a game against this side?'. 148 at Wellington? Well, you couldn't expect to win with that. But their 336 at Eden Park and 346 at Seddon Park ought really to have been winning totals and would surely have been so in about 98% of the ODIs Australia have played in living memory. Which, as many people have already said, must mean that there's something been going pretty seriously wrong with their bowling.

Okay, for the West Indies they have McGrath and hopefully Lee to return, with Ponting, Gilchrist and Clarke to further bolster the batting. But McGrath's gone round the park on more than one occasion recently and Lee's fitness may well be suspect even if he makes the plane to the Caribbean. Which leaves the likes of the idiosyncratic Brad Hogg, the hot-and-cold Nathan Bracken, the raw and over-estimated Mitchell Johnson, and Shane Watson (really a batsman who can turn his arm over and none too well at that) to carry the attack. Of course, with the peerless Punter and Gilly back you have to feel that runs won't be a problem and the confidence lost in New Zealand will start to return just with their presence. But totals, however big, have to be defended, and, when bowling first, sides have to be restricted. All the signs are that this could continue to be a big issue for Australia, and it's made even more so by the fact that teams all around the world will have witnessed what New Zealand, and, before them, England, have done to Australia over the past few weeks and they'll all fancy a piece of the action themselves.

It's a trite observation to make, but defeats and confidence have a symbiotic relationship; the confidence of sides that suffer defeats goes down, while that of the sides which inflict them goes up.

The World Cup has started to look a whole lot more interesting over the last few weeks - partly because it now appears to be a more open competition and partly because it'll be instructive to see how Australia respond to circumstances which are as alien to them as winning one-day competitions is to England.

My own feeling is that Australia will - as Australian teams always do - take some beating once the business end of the World Cup comes around, but every other major ODI playing country will have their own reasons for optimism.

Always Just Enough

Glenn McGrath at Lord's, 1997
Photograph: Mark Ray (Copyright)

A routine week, encompassing another couple of England humiliations, but the retirement from Test cricket of two of the greatest bowlers of all time still hangs heavy in the air.

What to say about the two men about whom everything has been said? In the end, I think you've just got to tell it as you saw it. And what I saw was this.

Like virtually everyone else in Britain, my earliest memory of Warne dates to June 4th 1993, the day he bowled Mike Gatting at Old Trafford with that delivery. I turned on the radio to find a range of commentators talking in awed tones about a ball which had turned from outside Gatting's leg stump, gone across his body and hit the top of his off stump. Later that day I saw it on television - an astonishing delivery from a blonde kid with broad shoulders and a simple action who looked as though he could change the game for good.

In fact I'd already seen Warne play before that. Wisden reminds me that I saw him score 11 at the end of the Australian innings of 431 at Taunton a few weeks earlier, but the innings (unlike the typically rapid century which another tour rookie, Michael Slater, made on the same day) hasn't lingered in the memory. I first saw him bowl at Bristol about a week after Manchester and couldn't avoid following his progress through the England batting the rest of that dreary summer. When Graham Gooch was bowled round his legs by another vicious leg-break at Edgbaston I started to wonder if anything in cricket would ever be the same again.

The next time Warne faced England, in late 1994, I arrived in Melbourne with everyone talking about his bowling in Brisbane. When he went on to take a hat-trick at the MCG, it looked as though the game was up for England for the next twelve years. And they didn't even have Glenn McGrath.

McGrath had played at the 'Gabba but went wicketless and sat out the series until the final Test in Perth, leaving the dismantling of England to Warne, Craig McDermott (so good then), a young Victorian swing bowler called Damien Fleming, and Warne's brother in spinning arms, Tim May. A few months later, as Australia hastened the end of the West Indian empire in the Caribbean, McGrath arrived four-square in the world cricket consciousness; an Australian country boy, stick-thin but with a relentless line and length, plenty of verbal aggression and a wicked bouncer.

And so it went until the other week. A few failures and many, many triumphs. More wickets than virtually anybody else. By the time the close came at Sydney their bodies and actions were creaking but the fundamentals of their bowling were largely undiminished. Land the ball on a good line and length often enough (like almost every ball) and you'll get people out. It doesn't matter what you do with it. Warne did more with it than virtually anyone else ever has, McGrath did appreciably less but always just enough.

By the end Warne was getting wickets through sheer force of personality rather than technical skill, but some of McGrath's last wickets in Test cricket (I'm thinking of Cook, past a hundred and late in the day at Perth, and Collingwood in the first innings at Sydney) were straight echoes of his very greatest days. Draw the batsman half-forward around off-stump and force him to play. Hit the seam and get it to move away. Take the edge and wait for the keeper to catch it. Celebrate.

We'll be seeing more of McGrath over the next few weeks in Australia and then as he returns to the Caribbean for the World Cup. For those of us in the UK it should be possible to see Warne plying his trade on Hampshire's behalf for the next couple of English seasons, although one has to wonder if his motivation and his body will last that long.

It's a tricky and often tedious drive from here in Devon to the Rose Bowl in Southampton (and last time I went I got lost on the way back).

I reckon I might take it this season, though, because, once Warne's gone, nothing will ever really be the same again.

Giving It All Away

Shane Warne with Sachin Tendulkar, Wankhede Stadium, Mumbai, February 2001

Photograph: Mark Ray (Copyright)

Despite my slightly cynical words earlier in the week, the sight of Warne and McGrath coming off the field together at the conclusion of the England second innings was definitely one of those moments in time which will linger in the memory. It was also good to see Justin Langer being applauded to the wicket by the England players as he came out with Hayden to knock the runs off.

After the victory was secured it all got a bit much, but, for the three men leaving the stage in the Sydney sunshine, it was the way they would have wanted to go.

It's one of the many unimpeachable beauties of cricket that it usually handles the passing of its greatest figures with dignity and style.

This was no exception.

End of an Era (Part Two)

Have just got up and discovered that Glenn McGrath has indeed retired (or will do so after the World Cup).

The instant thoughts are that Lee and Clark have got some stepping up to do and it's a pity England won't get the chance to play Australia without Warne and McGrath until 2009.

In the meantime, what's the SCG going to be like at the end of the Fifth Test?

Rage, Rage Against The Dying Of The Light

Apart from Cook's maiden Ashes hundred, the signature themes of the day included another excellent contribution from Ian Bell (although one which, as usual on this tour, ended too soon), some typically ordinary captaincy from Ponting (excessive reliance on Warne and a lack of faith in Stuart Clark) and a late burst from McGrath which brought Australia decisively back into the game.

I don't know how familiar McGrath is with the writings of Dylan Thomas, but one of his most famous lines could have been written with his current situation in mind.

Emerging Themes, Changing Times

Three days down in Adelaide and certain themes are emerging. Australia had a better day on Sunday, with Ponting and Hussey again knitting their reply together, but Hayden and Martyn both failed, as did Langer the previous evening. This, together with the hammering which Warne and McGrath took at the hands of Pietersen and Collingwood, has started to get the world's hacks and bloggers questioning whether this is the beginning of the end for this great Australian team.

I think some of the comments, especially those directed at the bowlers, are premature, but they do highlight the fact that, slowly, inexorably, the times are changing for Australia. I didn't see many people questioning McGrath after he took 6 for 50 in Brisbane, and he's clearly not fully fit in the current game. I think there's probably still plenty of bowling in both him and Warne and some runs in the side's senior batsmen. Where things are on the turn is that, in this match, each of them has come up against a younger opponent with too much vitality and commitment (Flintoff), skill and persistence (Hoggard) and sheer effervescent genius (Pietersen) for them to handle. In itself it's a sign of how quickly and effectively England have turned things round after the Gabba and of how difficult a transition Australia are going to have to go through over the next few years. Warne is clearly irreplaceable and so to is McGrath (though Stuart Clark and perhaps Mitchell Johnson will try). In the batting ranks Phil Jaques will be one new opener and Hussey could move up the order, Michael Clarke may consolidate his position in the middle order (perhaps starting tomorrow), but there are few other candidates demanding immediate inclusion. Some dark days lie ahead.

This Test still seems most likely to be drawn and Australia to go to Perth one up. The series, though, has started to have a much more even feel to it, and, if England could manage to pull off a win, they would hold a considerable advantage going into the remaining games.

Maybe it won't be over by Christmas after all...

Fallout

My first reaction, when hearing the news yesterday morning that Shoaib Akhtar and Mohammad Asif had failed drug tests, was 'What?!!'. Then, when good old Malcolm Speed gave his first reaction to the latest drama to confront both Pakistan cricket and the wider world game and pointed out that the drugs involved were not recreational but 'performance enhancing', my first reaction was 'Performance enhancing? You mean someone's invented an illicit substance that helps you bowl a good line and length? Give me some of it now and the village batsmen of Devon will have to watch out next season.'

Of course, the truth was somewhat different.

Nobody has come up with an easy route to the seam bowler's penetrative nirvana of a tight off-stump line and just enough pace, deviation and bounce to trouble any batsman. All you can do is find yourself a body and an action like Glenn McGrath's and work like hell. Then you might just get somewhere.

And, even, if there were such a drug, there's no evidence to support the idea that Asif would need it. At times, after regaining his fitness for the latter stages of Pakistan's tour of England in the late summer of 2006, he looked for all the world like one of the most skilled young bowlers to hit the international scene in many years. Line and length, plus enough pace, movement and bounce to trouble virtually anyone.

As for Shoaib, like Asif he hardly needs any drugs to improve his bowling. He has as much if not more raw speed than anyone else who's ever laced up a bowling boot and the ability to land it in the right place as much as necessary. His only problems have usually been his head and his body. Which is where we came in.

It soon became clear that both Shoaib and Asif had tested positive for Nandrolone, a substance which, as those in the know queued up to tell us yesterday, enables players to train harder and recover from injury quicker than would otherwise be the case. Both players were injured for the majority of the England tour, before making late recoveries, so are we to suppose that they might not have recovered so quickly and made those comebacks if they hadn't been taking something they shouldn't have?

Who knows? It's been stressed ever since that the players' 'B' samples have yet to be tested but these rarely contradict the results of the initial tests, so it looks as though we have another 'cricket crisis' on our hands. The talk is of two-year bans, and, when Shane Warne got a year for taking a diuretic given to him by his mum, that's probably about right.

Shoaib has protested his innocence but everybody who's ever tested positive for any substance in any sport has done that. Which doesn't mean that he's guilty, merely that we need to ignore what both he and the media are saying until the second samples have been tested.

Just when Speed thought he'd managed to shift the fallout from The Oval off his desk another pile of dirty linen has been deposited there.

And, for once, Darrell Hair's nowhere to be seen...