Blackie

As I've touched on before here, one of the drawbacks of having a life to lead away from writing about cricket - a life with its bereavements, and funerals, and work demands which, sadly, don't involve writing about cricket - is that those people for whom writing about cricket is work tend to find the time to write about people, and issues, well before you do. They also do the job better, by and large, but so it goes. An example of this is Andy Bull's excellent piece about Ian Blackwell, which couldn't do anything other than touch a chord with me.

As time passes, even if, as he hopes, he's seen around the counties in an umpire's coat, people outside the broad acres of Somerset will mostly forget about Ian Blackwell. In many cases, I'm sure, they already have. Ian Blackwell? That porky bloke who hung around the England one-day side for a while, clubbed a few boundaries here and there but mostly got out quickly, bowled a few overs occasionally notable for parsimony but rarely for penetration, and lumbered about in the field.

Oh, him.

But for people such as myself, who watched him play for Somerset at Taunton in his glory years, the memories will be much less marginal. For to be at Taunton - perhaps in the front seats of the Ian Botham Stand, which catch the sun from early morning, in those largely forgotten days when England still had summer weather - when Blackie walked to the wicket from the Colin Atkinson Pavilion was to be touched by a very individual, parochial, vulnerable type of brilliance.

There was never anything very elegant, or refined, or polished, about Blackie. Although many tried to make him conform to the fitness-conscious stereotype of the modern professional cricketer, he never quite managed it. Like Colin Milburn or John Jameson before him, or Samit Patel or Mark Cosgrove after him, Blackie was more interested in hitting the cover off the ball. Ultimately, as Andy Bull records, his indolence was too much for Justin Langer and the parting of the ways came. For me, and, I'm sure, more than a few others, the County Ground has never quite been the same again.

Blackie did his fair share of bowling, where economy of effort was all and 398 first-class wickets tell the tale of a decent operator, and tended to graze in the field. But he could catch, of course, and throw the ball miles, sometimes even over the top of the stumps. Batting, though, was really his thing.

Although he was brought up in north Debyshire there was always something of the rustic Westcountryman about Blackie. Taunton was his adopted home, and, with his parents always around as they were, it never felt anything but right. As he padded to the crease, his sleeper of a bat by his side, you could fondly imagine that he carried echoes of the way Ian Botham used to do the same. Without the same self-regard and flamboyance, sure, but with just the same murderous intent.

His ability to guide the ball to the Taunton ropes with a sweetly-timed off-drive or a robust leg-side punch, or, when his shoulders really came into play, deposit it into the St.James's Street car park or the Tone, got him noticed by England. In his second ODI he made a powerful, rapid 82 against India on a steamy Colombo evening; he was always ruddy-faced but after that knock he looked as though he was about to explode. But he never built on it. At international level he came to be regarded as a bowler who could bat a bit, but that was so, so wrong. At the very top level his statuesque footwork and relative immobility always undermined him, but at county level he was a rough-hewn gem.

Perhaps the most thought-provoking aspect of Bull's piece is the photo above it, taken at Nagpur in March 2006. Blackie receives his first and only England Test cap from his captain Andrew Flintoff, with his fellow debutants Monty Panesar and Alastair Cook alongside him. Typically Monty looks happy but a little diffident, perhaps unsure of his ability to fulfil the trust placed in him by the selectors. Equally characteristically, Cook looks self-assured, pleased, but without elation. For him this was always going to happen. Blackie just beams. He is simply overjoyed to be there, perhaps unable to believe his luck. He knows the moment may not last, and he is determined to enjoy it while he can. In the game that follows, Cook scores 60 and 104 not out and Panesar gets Tendulkar out. Blackie makes just four and bowls seven insipid overs for twenty-eight runs. For his fellows the rest is history, but he is never asked back.

But for Blackie there is little sadness. There are 11,000 first-class runs at a shade under 40. There are Championship titles in the colours of Durham and Warwickshire. And, at Taunton, as the ground continues to change, there is lasting hero worship.

There are some things fitness can't buy.

In the Wings

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.

Decisions, Decisions

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.

The Fat End of the Wedge

One of the players whom Flower may have to deal with - or not - is Samit Patel, who, after being dropped from the England ODI squad because he failed to maintain what were deemed to be the required fitness levels, is now trying to make up lost ground, something which was covered in the Daily Mail during the week.

Personally I rate Patel and wonder, from the vantage point of someone who could do to shed a few pounds but whose skills are strictly village, whether the insistence on optimum levels of fitness isn't just a little overdone.

In the last year I and other Somerset followers have seen one of our best and most popular players, Ian Blackwell, forced out of our one-day side and then the club itself as a result of his captain's slavish insistence on particular levels of fitness, and a certain Jesse Ryder hasn't been doing too badly recently, despite the type of figure barely seen in the international game since Colin Milburn's Test career was prematurely ended in the late sixties.

Okay, I'll accept that in the interests of team harmony (and to keep the fitness trainers in a job) players like Patel need to put the same type of work in as anyone else, but my feeling would be that if they're still clocking in a few pounds over they might need to be cut a bit of slack.

Because, in the end, in cricket, it's the numbers that matter, and, at the moment, those of Ryder don't look too shabby.

In the Swing

A nice post by Mark over at The Reverse Swing Manifesto.

I agree with Mark's views on Vaughan. I should think that the decision to renew his England contract probably went through on the nod as those responsible wouldn't have been able to get their heads round the idea of cutting Vaughan out of the charmed circle and would have been concerned that to do so would have been seen to have sent a message that his career at the highest level was finished.

Yet that need not have been the case. If he made a shedload of runs for Yorkshire he'd have been worthy of a recall to the side, although probably not until next season, as he's running out of time to do anything this year. His big problem is that he's never made a shedload of runs for Yorkshire; he didn't do so when he was young and fresh, so he's going to find it even harder at 34 and with a dodgy knee.

As it is, the selectors are probably dead set on taking him to India, regardless of whether he's made any runs or not. Which I'm not sure is right, as it adds further weight to the justifiable allegations of cosiness which have been directed at the side this year. I'd rather see Joe Denly there.

I also agree with Mark that it might not be a bad thing if Samit Patel started to put some pressure on Monty next season; in all but very helpful conditions you might not lose too much in the bowling stakes and you'd gain a huge amount in fielding and batting terms. Not very likely, though.

As for the Stanford squad (and the game), well, I couldn't care less.

Stacking up

The reasons why it could go wrong have been well aired, but I'm happy to see KP as captain. In fact I have a suspicion that if he's allowed to grow into the role he may do very well. The biggest imponderable of all is the question of whether it'll have a negative effect on his batting, and England, who already rely on him to an unsettling degree, can't afford that.

I was also pleased to see Samit Patel's name in the one-day squad. He's a player who's impressed throughout the England age-groups and has steadily found his feet in the Notts side with some good performances in both one and four-day cricket. A glance at his profile on Cricinfo indicates that his stats stack up pretty well.

When I've seen him play he's tended to look a bit rotund but I think I read somewhere that he's worked hard on his fitness, so hopefully, if he gets to play, he won't be exposed in the field.

He does like to hit the ball hard, though, and you can always do with more of that.