I've always been a fan of Darren Gough. People who were at Sydney in January 1995, as I was, tend to be.
Nevertheless, the only reason why his return to Yorkshire as captain, announced today, didn't come as a huge surprise, was the fact that it had been widely trailed in the media.
A few weeks ago someone at Cricinfo was speculating about whether his reluctance to re-sign with Essex meant that he was about to retire.
Well, we now know different, although I'm not sure what his appointment says about Yorkshire's prospects for the forthcoming season. With Michael Lumb gone,the McGrath dispute rumbling away and people (rightly) questioning the Jacques Rudolph Kolpak deal, their re-engagement of a thirty-six year-old with a dodgy body and no captaincy experience seems just a bit desperate to me.
Thoughts, anyone?
28.2.07
22.2.07
Getting Away
Things finally are going a little bit quiet over the next couple of weeks as everybody gears up for the main event.
An ideal time to get away to London and Hertfordshire, which is what I'm doing tomorrow.
I'll be back in March with the World Cup on my mind.
An ideal time to get away to London and Hertfordshire, which is what I'm doing tomorrow.
I'll be back in March with the World Cup on my mind.
Power to Add
Among the most optimistic sides at this stage must be New Zealand, whose performances against Australia over the past couple of weeks may rank as their best in One-Day International history.
Their bowling has been steady and their fielding much improved after some shambolic showings in Australia, but it is their batting that has really stood out.
The half-discarded Craig McMillan has once more shown the type of punchy competitiveness that was once his trademark, Brendon McCullum and Peter Fulton have hit hard and long in their differing styles, and Ross Taylor has looked like New Zealand's most significant batting discovery since Fleming and Astle in the mid-nineties.
For them the Caribbean can't come soon enough.
Their bowling has been steady and their fielding much improved after some shambolic showings in Australia, but it is their batting that has really stood out.
The half-discarded Craig McMillan has once more shown the type of punchy competitiveness that was once his trademark, Brendon McCullum and Peter Fulton have hit hard and long in their differing styles, and Ross Taylor has looked like New Zealand's most significant batting discovery since Fleming and Astle in the mid-nineties.
For them the Caribbean can't come soon enough.
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.
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.
18.2.07
Compo
Nice, also, to see Nick Compton open the England A tour of Bangladesh with a century. I've yet to see much of him, but, as a Middlesex follower, I was well aware that he'd been around for a while before last season without doing anything outstanding.
In 2006 it all seemed to click into place, but when a player does that you always tend to wonder if it's a flash in the pan or a sign of evolving class.
Compton certainly has the genes, so hopefully it's the latter.
In 2006 it all seemed to click into place, but when a player does that you always tend to wonder if it's a flash in the pan or a sign of evolving class.
Compton certainly has the genes, so hopefully it's the latter.
Another Day, Another Defeat
Meanwhile, in Auckland, Australia made 336. And still lost.
The competition looks a bit hot for Austraia at the moment. Are you still managing to watch, Mr.Buchanan?
The competition looks a bit hot for Austraia at the moment. Are you still managing to watch, Mr.Buchanan?
Not Much Happening? Yeah, Right...
What was I saying?
Since I stated that there wasn't much happening around the world apart from a few ODIs I've been forcibly reminded that there's always something happening on Planet Cricket, even if you're trying to pace yourself ahead of the World Cup and you got bored of continuous one-day internationals years ago anyway.
Firstly, I caught the tail end of India's successful run chase against Sri Lanka in Vishakapatnam on Sky last night, and it reminded me that one of the wonders of the world was back where he belongs, controlling things (with some valuable assistance from another left-hander who's back after a spell away) at the heart of India's middle order.
Yuvraj Singh is - and may always remain - a fragile talent, teetering on the brink of consistency but falling back into mediocrity a little too often for comfort. But should consistency be obligatory when you can bat like that?
I've been a huge fan of Yuvraj ever since he announced himself so grandly in Kenya in the autumn of 2000. Since then he's spent more than his fair share of time on the outer because of loss of form and injury, but, as he showed against England this time last year and reinforced yesterday, when the muse is with him he's an artist of rare quality.
If he can take this form to the West Indies, India's World Cup games will really be worth watching.
Since I stated that there wasn't much happening around the world apart from a few ODIs I've been forcibly reminded that there's always something happening on Planet Cricket, even if you're trying to pace yourself ahead of the World Cup and you got bored of continuous one-day internationals years ago anyway.
Firstly, I caught the tail end of India's successful run chase against Sri Lanka in Vishakapatnam on Sky last night, and it reminded me that one of the wonders of the world was back where he belongs, controlling things (with some valuable assistance from another left-hander who's back after a spell away) at the heart of India's middle order.
Yuvraj Singh is - and may always remain - a fragile talent, teetering on the brink of consistency but falling back into mediocrity a little too often for comfort. But should consistency be obligatory when you can bat like that?
I've been a huge fan of Yuvraj ever since he announced himself so grandly in Kenya in the autumn of 2000. Since then he's spent more than his fair share of time on the outer because of loss of form and injury, but, as he showed against England this time last year and reinforced yesterday, when the muse is with him he's an artist of rare quality.
If he can take this form to the West Indies, India's World Cup games will really be worth watching.
17.2.07
Ennui
I'm afraid that what I said the other day about there being very little happening in the cricket world at the moment apart from a few ODIs reflected my overwhelming sense of ennui about the eternal, unstoppable caravan that is modern one-day international cricket. It's not the form of the game itself (though I'd take Test cricket any day), just the amount of it being played.
That said, I'll take as much interest in the World Cup as the next man, and one of the most interesting and enjoyable results of the ODI week came yesterday in Wellington, with Australia crashing to their latest heavy defeat, this time at the hands of New Zealand.
Much as I admire them, it's great to see Buchanan's Australia experiencing a different side to life at the top, and one can only hope that their confidence is being sapped so much that they won't be able to regain it in time for the main event.
You wouldn't bet on it, though.
That said, I'll take as much interest in the World Cup as the next man, and one of the most interesting and enjoyable results of the ODI week came yesterday in Wellington, with Australia crashing to their latest heavy defeat, this time at the hands of New Zealand.
Much as I admire them, it's great to see Buchanan's Australia experiencing a different side to life at the top, and one can only hope that their confidence is being sapped so much that they won't be able to regain it in time for the main event.
You wouldn't bet on it, though.
15.2.07
At Last...
A week with not much going on. Just ODIs in India and South Africa and the announcement of World Cup squads, most of which were fairly predictable.
England's was, although most of the media comment had fancied Mal Loye to be included, rather than Ravinder Bopara.
I think Bopara was the right choice as he's one for the future with plenty of time on his side. Loye looked very useful at times in Australia but he didn't manage to pass fifty, and his international career may well have finished almost as quickly as it started.
He'll doubtless be left wishing he could have been picked earlier, but he'll at least be able to look back for ever on his part in the winning of a one-day trophy abroad.
And how many England players can say that?
England's was, although most of the media comment had fancied Mal Loye to be included, rather than Ravinder Bopara.
I think Bopara was the right choice as he's one for the future with plenty of time on his side. Loye looked very useful at times in Australia but he didn't manage to pass fifty, and his international career may well have finished almost as quickly as it started.
He'll doubtless be left wishing he could have been picked earlier, but he'll at least be able to look back for ever on his part in the winning of a one-day trophy abroad.
And how many England players can say that?
11.2.07
Were You Watching, John Buchanan?
I had a lot of sympathy with Tim de Lisle's piece on Cricinfo during last week, but the fact is that if the CB Series hadn't been so ridiculously long, England wouldn't have had the chance to come back and win it.
Now, though, they can go to the West Indies with a bit of confidence, and if you'd suggested that in Adelaide on January 26th, medical assistance would have been summoned.
As for Australia, the rare experience of losing three consecutive ODIs will probably stand them in good stead for the World Cup, and, for this reason, one can only hope that the competition provided by England in the last three games was to John Buchanan's satisfaction.
Now, though, they can go to the West Indies with a bit of confidence, and if you'd suggested that in Adelaide on January 26th, medical assistance would have been summoned.
As for Australia, the rare experience of losing three consecutive ODIs will probably stand them in good stead for the World Cup, and, for this reason, one can only hope that the competition provided by England in the last three games was to John Buchanan's satisfaction.
10.2.07
Hair Brained
Unlike many people I had some sympathy with Darrell Hair at the time of The Oval controversy last summer, believing that, however clumsily he did so (and he sure was clumsy), he was only applying the laws of cricket.
However, his decision to to sue the PCB and the ICC for alleged racial discrimination seems to be taking things a bit far, although, as a final comment from me, it does seem a pity that an umpire as good as Hair has effectively been banished from the international game purely because several countries have developed a dislike for him, while an umpire as consistently poor as Daryl Harper somehow remains a member of the ICC Elite Panel.
However, his decision to to sue the PCB and the ICC for alleged racial discrimination seems to be taking things a bit far, although, as a final comment from me, it does seem a pity that an umpire as good as Hair has effectively been banished from the international game purely because several countries have developed a dislike for him, while an umpire as consistently poor as Daryl Harper somehow remains a member of the ICC Elite Panel.
Riding for a Fall
With his spare frame, angular features and portentous manner, John Buchanan has always appeared to be a somewhat mysterious and singular figure alongside the greater spontaneity of most of his players.
But he's always been prone to pronouncements which betray more than a hint of arrogance and it seemed to me, when he apparently stated a few weeks ago that Australia weren't going to be provided with sufficient competition by England and New Zealand and would be better off preparing for the World Cup by playing amongst themselves, that he was again riding for a fall.
Well that's two wins out of two against your boys for England, Mr.Buchanan, and if they make it three tomorrow you can ride off in the direction of the West Indies and then into the sunset with a bit to think about.
Such as, whatever you're thinking, it's sometimes best to keep your mouth shut.
But he's always been prone to pronouncements which betray more than a hint of arrogance and it seemed to me, when he apparently stated a few weeks ago that Australia weren't going to be provided with sufficient competition by England and New Zealand and would be better off preparing for the World Cup by playing amongst themselves, that he was again riding for a fall.
Well that's two wins out of two against your boys for England, Mr.Buchanan, and if they make it three tomorrow you can ride off in the direction of the West Indies and then into the sunset with a bit to think about.
Such as, whatever you're thinking, it's sometimes best to keep your mouth shut.
Crackpot No More
I had more than a few doubts when he was called up (I seem to recall - not for the first time - using the word 'crackpot' to describe the England selectors), but it's been apparent that Paul Nixon, with his energy, vocal volubility and good technique behind the stumps, as well as a few runs here and there, has contributed significantly to England's relative renaissance these past two weeks.
Of course, at 36, his tenure in the side cannot, indeed should not, be long, but it looks increasingly as though the Jones/Read era has ended.
Much will depend on how well he maintains his form during the World Cup (and how Davies fares in Bangladesh), but don't be surprised if, come mid-May, Nixon is lining up at Lord's for his Test debut.
Of course, at 36, his tenure in the side cannot, indeed should not, be long, but it looks increasingly as though the Jones/Read era has ended.
Much will depend on how well he maintains his form during the World Cup (and how Davies fares in Bangladesh), but don't be surprised if, come mid-May, Nixon is lining up at Lord's for his Test debut.
Dauntless
So, with three ODI wins out of three, two against Australia, everything is right with England again. Well, hardly, but their performances in the last few matches of the Commonwealth Bank Series have emphasized the potency of the collective confidence which always stems from the making of individual centuries and the winning of matches. To beat Australia is one thing (and something which England have managed rarely enough in the one-day arena over the past decade), but to do so from 15 for 3 chasing 252 is another matter entirely. This was a team which has accrued enough resilience over a relatively short period of time to be able to take whatever Australia could throw at them and return to finish on top.
Of course, with his magnificent fielding and another dauntless hundred, Paul Collingwood was England's talisman. He's looking more and more like a player whose qualities and achievements (and, more particularly, the circumstances and manner of them) should resonate down the ages. I can only talk of the last thirty years, but I'm quite clear in my own mind that he's by far the best all-round fielder England have possessed in that time, and he must surely be one of the toughest and most self-assured players English cricket has ever produced. After what has been, the Brisbane and Adelaide Tests aside, a poor tour for him, to recapture his lost form with consecutive centuries in high-pressure situations has been a remarkable achievement, but, with hindsight, we shouldn't have expected anything less.
It's all too easy to do, but I, for one, will never doubt Colly again.
Of course, with his magnificent fielding and another dauntless hundred, Paul Collingwood was England's talisman. He's looking more and more like a player whose qualities and achievements (and, more particularly, the circumstances and manner of them) should resonate down the ages. I can only talk of the last thirty years, but I'm quite clear in my own mind that he's by far the best all-round fielder England have possessed in that time, and he must surely be one of the toughest and most self-assured players English cricket has ever produced. After what has been, the Brisbane and Adelaide Tests aside, a poor tour for him, to recapture his lost form with consecutive centuries in high-pressure situations has been a remarkable achievement, but, with hindsight, we shouldn't have expected anything less.
It's all too easy to do, but I, for one, will never doubt Colly again.
7.2.07
Heartening and Impressive
It was difficult to decide what was most heartening and impressive about England's second ODI win in as many games. The partnership between Andrew Strauss and Paul Collingwood, which signalled their own return to form and stabilised the England innings at a vital time, the lower-order runs from Jamie Dalrymple and Liam Plunkett which took them to a winning score, Vaughan's customary coolness under pressure, or the simple fact that from a position of relative weakness with ten overs to go they managed to win the game at all.
Well, it was all pretty good, and a timely reminder that this might not be such a bad combination of players after all, and maybe, just maybe, they're capable of winning a few more one-day matches when it counts, starting with the finals against Australia later this week. Maybe so, maybe not, but at least the Canada and Kenya games in the World Cup don't loom quite so large now.
A key factor in the victory over New Zealand was that for the second game in a row one of England's top order converted a fifty into a century, and Collingwood deserves the highest possible praise for kicking against weeks of failure going all the way back to the Adelaide Test and making some serious runs at the time when they were most needed. Not that anything less should have been expected from a player whose coolness and toughness of mentality ought to be talked about with reverence long after he's moved on.
In the wider context of the series and the future, it's good to see Stuart Broad called up again, if much less so to see Chris Tremlett and Jon Lewis on the way home.
Broad is unquestionably the future, and Tremlett could be as well, although it's getting to the stage where you have to start wondering if his fragile body will ever be up to the rigours of international cricket.
Well, it was all pretty good, and a timely reminder that this might not be such a bad combination of players after all, and maybe, just maybe, they're capable of winning a few more one-day matches when it counts, starting with the finals against Australia later this week. Maybe so, maybe not, but at least the Canada and Kenya games in the World Cup don't loom quite so large now.
A key factor in the victory over New Zealand was that for the second game in a row one of England's top order converted a fifty into a century, and Collingwood deserves the highest possible praise for kicking against weeks of failure going all the way back to the Adelaide Test and making some serious runs at the time when they were most needed. Not that anything less should have been expected from a player whose coolness and toughness of mentality ought to be talked about with reverence long after he's moved on.
In the wider context of the series and the future, it's good to see Stuart Broad called up again, if much less so to see Chris Tremlett and Jon Lewis on the way home.
Broad is unquestionably the future, and Tremlett could be as well, although it's getting to the stage where you have to start wondering if his fragile body will ever be up to the rigours of international cricket.
5.2.07
Sure Footed
So Mumbai - with the unfamiliar assistance of Sachin Tendulkar - won the Ranji Trophy, beating Sourav Ganguly's Bengal in the final by 132 runs. No doubt my friends on the Indian blog scene will be covering the match in detail, but I'll content myself with this link to an interesting piece on Cricinfo about the promising Bengal seam bowler, Ranadeb Bose, a man who apparently claims never to have bowled a no-ball in any form of cricket.
2.2.07
An Unfamiliar Feeling
I saw a fair amount of England's first ODI win over Australia in Australia since January 1999 on either side of a brief trip into the gorgeous Exe Valley for a pre-arranged, work-related, meeting.
It looked as though they were good value for it, and it was especially pleasurable to see Ed Joyce confirm the improvement he'd shown in the last game against New Zealand and go on to get a hundred. I've seen him make good runs for Middlesex on a number of occasions and have a high regard for his abilities, but I was beginning to doubt him earlier in the series when he was repeatedly getting out for low scores in the middle-order and his body language seemed to betray his dwindling confidence.
Mal Loye assisted him well at the top of the order, Belly played his usual quality cameo (when will he really cash in?) and there was plenty of good bowling (chiefly from Liam Plunkett) and sharp fielding.
More of the same, please.
It looked as though they were good value for it, and it was especially pleasurable to see Ed Joyce confirm the improvement he'd shown in the last game against New Zealand and go on to get a hundred. I've seen him make good runs for Middlesex on a number of occasions and have a high regard for his abilities, but I was beginning to doubt him earlier in the series when he was repeatedly getting out for low scores in the middle-order and his body language seemed to betray his dwindling confidence.
Mal Loye assisted him well at the top of the order, Belly played his usual quality cameo (when will he really cash in?) and there was plenty of good bowling (chiefly from Liam Plunkett) and sharp fielding.
More of the same, please.
31.1.07
Purity of Method
At the end of a Test series I always enjoy looking at the marks out of ten and the performance summaries given to individual players by Cricinfo. In my experience they're usually pretty hard to disagree with but they can be thought-provoking.
Earlier in the week Andrew McGlashan's assessment of the players on show in the South Africa-Pakistan series caught my eye. I didn't see much of the series and I hadn't taken in quite how important Jacques Kallis had been to South Africa. But then, I thought, Jacques Kallis is always important to South Africa. How could a player that good be anything else?
Which, in turn, sent my mind spinning on one of those rollercoaster journeys through the years, taking in the time I tried to shield myself from the vicious Cape Town sun as Kallis bowled for the first time in Test cricket, that ODI innings at the Oval just after he'd lost his father, bowling out England at Headingley in 2003, and piling on the runs during England's last tour of South Africa but being criticized for being too slow and one-dimensional.
The stats say it all.
8,400 Test runs at 55 with 24 centuries, 213 wickets and 105 catches. The figures of a truly great player, and, in South African terms, one fit to sit just behind Pollock and Richards as a batsman and Procter as an all-rounder.
In the wider world I don't think Kallis has yet received the praise his skills and achievements deserve; batsmen who place efficiency and purity of method above more ostentatious qualities rarely do, and he's taken the ball so irregularly in recent years that many have forgotten how well he can bowl when the muse is with him and conditions are right. But purely as a batsman I think he's just about the most perfect technician I've ever seen; perhaps even more accomplished than Gavaskar, Dravid or Martin Crowe.
To see some of his straight-drives on the last day at Newlands, his spiritual home since he was a teenager, was to witness a player at the peak of his powers, confident of his capabilities and at one with his environment.
Never flashy and not too stylish.
Just very, very good.
Earlier in the week Andrew McGlashan's assessment of the players on show in the South Africa-Pakistan series caught my eye. I didn't see much of the series and I hadn't taken in quite how important Jacques Kallis had been to South Africa. But then, I thought, Jacques Kallis is always important to South Africa. How could a player that good be anything else?
Which, in turn, sent my mind spinning on one of those rollercoaster journeys through the years, taking in the time I tried to shield myself from the vicious Cape Town sun as Kallis bowled for the first time in Test cricket, that ODI innings at the Oval just after he'd lost his father, bowling out England at Headingley in 2003, and piling on the runs during England's last tour of South Africa but being criticized for being too slow and one-dimensional.
The stats say it all.
8,400 Test runs at 55 with 24 centuries, 213 wickets and 105 catches. The figures of a truly great player, and, in South African terms, one fit to sit just behind Pollock and Richards as a batsman and Procter as an all-rounder.
In the wider world I don't think Kallis has yet received the praise his skills and achievements deserve; batsmen who place efficiency and purity of method above more ostentatious qualities rarely do, and he's taken the ball so irregularly in recent years that many have forgotten how well he can bowl when the muse is with him and conditions are right. But purely as a batsman I think he's just about the most perfect technician I've ever seen; perhaps even more accomplished than Gavaskar, Dravid or Martin Crowe.
To see some of his straight-drives on the last day at Newlands, his spiritual home since he was a teenager, was to witness a player at the peak of his powers, confident of his capabilities and at one with his environment.
Never flashy and not too stylish.
Just very, very good.
28.1.07
Another Day, Another Game, Another Retirement
I haven't posted anything original for a few days and already the ever-evolving cricket world has moved on. England have subsided to their worst defeat of even this dreadful tour, West Indies have knocked off a cool 270 to beat India in Chennai, South Africa have completed their second 2-1 series win in a matter of weeks, and New Zealand, without the retired Nathan Astle, have pushed Australia all the way, losing by just eight runs amid a welter of typically powerful strokes from the bat of Jacob Oram.
I've only managed to see isolated bits of all the games, but while I have no doubt that England are still trying their damnedest, it's obvious, not least to Michael Vaughan, that their collective confidence level has hit rock bottom, and, with New Zealand's surely going in the opposite direction after their gallant showing today in Perth, it's becoming increasingly hard to see England getting anything out of the CB Series, while the World Cup, which follows hard on its heels, is a long-lost cause. They had little or no prospect of winning the thing even before the events of the past few weeks. Now even Kenya and Canada must be rubbing their hands and fancying their chances.
South Africa will be happy with their latest series victory, Pakistan, of course, less so. In the end it was fitting and unsurprising that South Africa's two soundest batsmen, Jacques Kallis, to whom unwavering technical probity is second nature, and the rock-solid Ashwell Prince, perhaps the most improved international batsman in the world over the past year, should have seen them almost to victory. Pakistan were ultimately let down by a lack of effective support for the virile excellence of Mohammad Asif and the effervescent aggression of Danish Kaneria. With Shoaib and Umar Gul gone, only Mohammad Sami could offer anything in the way of experience, but the chances of the under-achiever's under-achiever translating his experience into wickets on the scorecard when they were most needed were always remote.
New Zealand have always relied on a stable coterie of senior players to see them right at the top level, and Astle had occupied a seat at their top table for more than a decade. His sudden retirement apparently came as a surprise, but, with his once infallible eye starting to fade a little, he perhaps saw the writing on the wall a little earlier than some of his compatriots. Although I always enjoyed watching him bat on TV, I can't remember seeing him make many runs in the flesh, so the most vivid image of his career in my mind will remain that of Andy Caddick and his England fielders craning their necks upwards to see the ball hurtling out of Lancaster Park, seemingly destined for orbit after one of the purest and most reverberatingly powerful lofted drives ever played.
There's more at Mike on Cricket.
I've only managed to see isolated bits of all the games, but while I have no doubt that England are still trying their damnedest, it's obvious, not least to Michael Vaughan, that their collective confidence level has hit rock bottom, and, with New Zealand's surely going in the opposite direction after their gallant showing today in Perth, it's becoming increasingly hard to see England getting anything out of the CB Series, while the World Cup, which follows hard on its heels, is a long-lost cause. They had little or no prospect of winning the thing even before the events of the past few weeks. Now even Kenya and Canada must be rubbing their hands and fancying their chances.
South Africa will be happy with their latest series victory, Pakistan, of course, less so. In the end it was fitting and unsurprising that South Africa's two soundest batsmen, Jacques Kallis, to whom unwavering technical probity is second nature, and the rock-solid Ashwell Prince, perhaps the most improved international batsman in the world over the past year, should have seen them almost to victory. Pakistan were ultimately let down by a lack of effective support for the virile excellence of Mohammad Asif and the effervescent aggression of Danish Kaneria. With Shoaib and Umar Gul gone, only Mohammad Sami could offer anything in the way of experience, but the chances of the under-achiever's under-achiever translating his experience into wickets on the scorecard when they were most needed were always remote.
New Zealand have always relied on a stable coterie of senior players to see them right at the top level, and Astle had occupied a seat at their top table for more than a decade. His sudden retirement apparently came as a surprise, but, with his once infallible eye starting to fade a little, he perhaps saw the writing on the wall a little earlier than some of his compatriots. Although I always enjoyed watching him bat on TV, I can't remember seeing him make many runs in the flesh, so the most vivid image of his career in my mind will remain that of Andy Caddick and his England fielders craning their necks upwards to see the ball hurtling out of Lancaster Park, seemingly destined for orbit after one of the purest and most reverberatingly powerful lofted drives ever played.
There's more at Mike on Cricket.
25.1.07
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.
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.
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