I started writing this blog in the summer of 2006, just a few months after Alastair Cook made his Test debut.
I've missed a few Tests since then. He hasn't missed any.
Amid all the plaudits, and the veiled and often not-so-veiled criticisms, heaped on Cook after his epic this week, that's something worth remembering. The last Test match played by England in which he didn't participate took place in Mumbai in March 2006. It's remembered for different reasons (the mind's eye turns readily to the desperate sight of Monty Panesar circling under the Dhoni steeplers), but, since then, whenever and wherever England have played a Test match, Cook has been there. Usually batting.
I've grappled before with the thorny question of where Cook stands in the wider lexicon of English batsmanship, and, for someone who's scored so many runs, and so many centuries, assessing him is more difficult and entails more ambivalence than it should.
You can start by doing this. Think of any English batsman. Cook has scored more runs and more centuries than anyone you can think of. Not necessarily at a better average, and sometimes against bowling attacks which don't measure up to those faced by many players of the past, but the runs still have to be scored. Cook has done this in every country and in every type of pitch, match and climatic environment.
His cardinal virtues are so widely known that they hardly need further enumeration. He has unnatural levels of patience, resilience, physical fitness and self-discipline. He never gets injured, he barely sweats, he never appears to age. These are the things which set him apart in ways that the fundamentals of his batting don't.
With the exception of yesterday, he always goes in early. He leaves. He defends. He leaves. He defends. He leaves. He drives, rarely trusting himself to push the bat all the way through the line, but covering any movement, playing impeccably straight, and with beautiful natural timing. If the bowler is then prompted to drop short he will cut, and he will pull. Then he will leave and defend some more, lumbering regular singles with a gait which can seem in keeping with his alternative existence as a farmhand. In time, the bowlers tire and the runs pile up. At the other end, batsmen, usually his shifting and uncertain cast of opening partners, come and go. It is never sexy, it is in many ways old-fashioned, but, in its own way, it is brilliant and uplifting.
Away from the crease he gives the impression of being a reserved and conventional man. The most interesting and unusual thing about him is his batting. In the age of Twenty20, where speed of scoring and six-hitting is all, his approach is different and distinctive.
Wherever you look there are players who can clear the ropes at will. Could they bat for 14 hours in one innings? Could they heck.
Of course Cook can be criticized. Anyone can, especially with the benefit of a litany of grievances which paint him as one of the bad guys in a saga that is nuanced beyond the understanding of anyone who wasn't intimately involved, and with the benefit of Twenty20 hindsight.
Too much time can be wasted trying to assess the relative merits of players with different backgrounds, different approaches, different gifts. Cook may not quite be the type of player conventionally held to be 'great', and he is certainly no genius, but what he does is so far from easy that it bestows on him a kind of greatness. Nobody else, certainly among contemporary English players can do what he does. New players come into the England side to partner Cook every few matches, and none of them can do it. You can be sure that they would like to, but they cannot. In most cases they probably can't even imagine themselves doing it.
Batting at any level of the game is a hard business. A batsman is only ever one good ball or one poor shot away from failure. This uncertainty affects bodies and minds. Try going through ten years of that at the very highest level of the game, some of which you have spent failing, and you will be a mess. To be sane, and to be capable of doing what Cook has just done, perhaps you need, as I've said before about Cook, to be doing what you were put on earth to do.
This is someone who was born to bat.
18.10.15
9.8.15
Possibly Even Better
When it comes to the England team of 2015 - the England team which ultimately regained the Ashes with ease - there are plenty of players, and themes, to talk about.
There are many questions to answer. Some are easy, others are more vexed.
Just how good could Ben Stokes go on to be? Answer: Very Good. Possibly even better than that.
How good a bowler, how good a cricketer, is Stuart Broad? Answer: Very Good.
Who is going to open with Cook in the long term? Answer: Don't Know.
Who is going to be England's next specialist spin bowler? Answer: Don't Know.
How long has Ian Bell got left? Answer: It depends, just as it always did.
Elsewhere there is greater certainty. Increasingly, it seems, there are fewer questions to answer about Joe Root. He is already very, very good, and he may possibly be even better than that.
Over the forty years or so I've been watching England, a question which has occasionally preoccupied me, even in the days when we barely had a respectable team, is when we would produce our next truly great batsman. Our Tendulkar, our Lara, our Ponting.
Gower was unique. Gower, especially in his early years, was often extraordinary. But he wasn't quite great.
Pietersen was a player of great innings, as, in his different way, is Cook. These are people who have touched rare heights, but they haven't quite made it to the summit, unless Cook is considered as an opening batsman alone.
There was a time when everyone thought Ian Bell was going to be the man. And he should have been, he really should. Bell had both the talent and the technical equipment to join the ranks of the truly great, but there has always seemed to be something missing. Something hard to define, but recognisable by its absence. Now it is clear that for all his occasional charm and elegance and undeniable quality, it will never be found.
As Bell walked away from the Trent Bridge pitch, early in the afternoon of the most one-sided day of Anglo-Australian Test cricket any of us is ever likely to see, there was something which signified this. Bell, as has almost become commonplace, had been dismissed for 1, lbw to a characteristic inswinging yorker from Mitchell Starc. As he left the field he was shaking his head and muttering to himself. In a small way these have become his trademarks. Suddenly the hazy sunlight caught the lines in his features and, for just about the first time, I realized that Ian Bell, in cricketing terms, is starting to look old. He is 33, and he will hopefully play many more fine innings (for a player of fine innings is ultimately what he has become) for England.
But he will never be truly great.
It is significant that Bell was replaced at the crease by Joe Root. Joe Root, at 24, has age on his side and he has already found the peerless consistency, weight of scoring and versatility of performance across the formats which have eluded all his peers and predecessors. The certainty of footwork, the soundness of temperament, evident from the early overs of his debut innings in Nagpur, are all there. There is a relative surfeit of elegance, but great players don't need this. Functionality and runs are what they need, and Root has both those in spades.
He can also, for good measure, bowl serviceable off-spin, and he catches everything. Although he has the sense of purpose and instinctive hardness of the natural born Yorkshire pro, he has lost none of the unfettered enjoyment of playing the game which he grew up with. He looks good, he interviews well, he is certain to be England's next captain. If you stop to think about it he feels like the most outstanding cricketer his country has unearthed in many a long year.
Of course, questions remain. How will Root deal with better bowling attacks, and with adversity? This winter, you suspect, both those will test his mettle.
What is his best position in the batting order? So far, with his compatriots in the middle order failing to match his consistency, England have sometimes seemed guilty of wishing to have him batting everywhere at once. For the time being, four seems fine, although a move to three will continue to hang in the air for as long as Ballance remains outside the team and Bell struggles for regular impact.
There is also the nagging feeling that he can't go on like this. England players don't simply go on averaging fifty.
Great players do, though.
There are many questions to answer. Some are easy, others are more vexed.
Just how good could Ben Stokes go on to be? Answer: Very Good. Possibly even better than that.
How good a bowler, how good a cricketer, is Stuart Broad? Answer: Very Good.
Who is going to open with Cook in the long term? Answer: Don't Know.
Who is going to be England's next specialist spin bowler? Answer: Don't Know.
How long has Ian Bell got left? Answer: It depends, just as it always did.
Elsewhere there is greater certainty. Increasingly, it seems, there are fewer questions to answer about Joe Root. He is already very, very good, and he may possibly be even better than that.
Over the forty years or so I've been watching England, a question which has occasionally preoccupied me, even in the days when we barely had a respectable team, is when we would produce our next truly great batsman. Our Tendulkar, our Lara, our Ponting.
Gower was unique. Gower, especially in his early years, was often extraordinary. But he wasn't quite great.
Pietersen was a player of great innings, as, in his different way, is Cook. These are people who have touched rare heights, but they haven't quite made it to the summit, unless Cook is considered as an opening batsman alone.
There was a time when everyone thought Ian Bell was going to be the man. And he should have been, he really should. Bell had both the talent and the technical equipment to join the ranks of the truly great, but there has always seemed to be something missing. Something hard to define, but recognisable by its absence. Now it is clear that for all his occasional charm and elegance and undeniable quality, it will never be found.
As Bell walked away from the Trent Bridge pitch, early in the afternoon of the most one-sided day of Anglo-Australian Test cricket any of us is ever likely to see, there was something which signified this. Bell, as has almost become commonplace, had been dismissed for 1, lbw to a characteristic inswinging yorker from Mitchell Starc. As he left the field he was shaking his head and muttering to himself. In a small way these have become his trademarks. Suddenly the hazy sunlight caught the lines in his features and, for just about the first time, I realized that Ian Bell, in cricketing terms, is starting to look old. He is 33, and he will hopefully play many more fine innings (for a player of fine innings is ultimately what he has become) for England.
But he will never be truly great.
It is significant that Bell was replaced at the crease by Joe Root. Joe Root, at 24, has age on his side and he has already found the peerless consistency, weight of scoring and versatility of performance across the formats which have eluded all his peers and predecessors. The certainty of footwork, the soundness of temperament, evident from the early overs of his debut innings in Nagpur, are all there. There is a relative surfeit of elegance, but great players don't need this. Functionality and runs are what they need, and Root has both those in spades.
He can also, for good measure, bowl serviceable off-spin, and he catches everything. Although he has the sense of purpose and instinctive hardness of the natural born Yorkshire pro, he has lost none of the unfettered enjoyment of playing the game which he grew up with. He looks good, he interviews well, he is certain to be England's next captain. If you stop to think about it he feels like the most outstanding cricketer his country has unearthed in many a long year.
Of course, questions remain. How will Root deal with better bowling attacks, and with adversity? This winter, you suspect, both those will test his mettle.
What is his best position in the batting order? So far, with his compatriots in the middle order failing to match his consistency, England have sometimes seemed guilty of wishing to have him batting everywhere at once. For the time being, four seems fine, although a move to three will continue to hang in the air for as long as Ballance remains outside the team and Bell struggles for regular impact.
There is also the nagging feeling that he can't go on like this. England players don't simply go on averaging fifty.
Great players do, though.
12.7.15
Old Pro
The Cheltenham College cricket ground is a very British type of idyll. Not the village green of a million rustic fantasies, but the epitome of the Victorian public school playing field. Flanked by the school's chapel, it is an arena born of the ideal of muscular christianity which the British, for good or ill, took to the world.
On a weekday in July, with the sun streaming from an azure sky and a light breeze taking the edge off the heat, this, for the cricket lover, is as good as it can possibly get.
And, for Gloucestershire's cast of young pros, it represents a release from the barren characterlessness of the north Bristol suburbs, a chance to play in front of a large and appreciative crowd, and, even if they do not know it, an opportunity to connect with history.
Grace played here, Hammond played here, Graveney and Procter and Zaheer played here. Hundreds of other county cricketers have played here. Christ, this is a place.
With Northants dying a prolonged but terminal death in the field in the face of a withering assault by Gloucestershire's young all-rounder Jack Taylor, it is hard, as he patrols the boundary and tries in vain to stem the flow of runs, not to contemplate the thoughts of Stephen Peters.
Stephen Peters is 36 years old now. Once upon a time, when he made a century in the final of the Under-19 World Cup in 1998, he was, briefly, a kind of star. There were expectations, ultimately unfulfilled. His long career in the game has been spent exclusively on the county circuit. For his native Essex, in the shadow of the cathedral at Worcester, and, latterly, at Wantage Road in Northampton. Somewhere along the line he has undergone the metamorphosis from promising youngster to old pro.
But, while members of the crowd have the privilege of descending into reverie, Peters is unable to do so. Having been dismissed without scoring in his side's first innings, he knows that he will be on a pair when he eventually bats again. When he does, with his side facing a deficit of 126, Gloucestershire's coltish and impressive young seamer, Craig Miles, rips one through his defences before he has had a chance to settle. He has his pair, his part in the game is done, and his side too is not long for the match. By the end of the day they have lost, badly.
Not very far away, on the other side of the Welsh border, England and Australia have spent the day locked in combat in the first of the summer's Ashes Tests. The sights, sounds, colours and throbbing intensity of a Test match are things which Peters will never know now, for it is late in his time in the game.
He has never engaged the thoughts of his country's selectors, but, for nearly twenty years, places like this, on days like this, have been his place of work. True, there have been cold days at Derby and Leicester, grey days watching the rain too, but the opportunity to play, even if just once, in a setting such as this and get paid for doing so, is a far richer experience than most of us will ever, ever have.
At the moment, such sentimentality will be far from his mind. But, in time, he will value these experiences for what they have been.
On a weekday in July, with the sun streaming from an azure sky and a light breeze taking the edge off the heat, this, for the cricket lover, is as good as it can possibly get.
And, for Gloucestershire's cast of young pros, it represents a release from the barren characterlessness of the north Bristol suburbs, a chance to play in front of a large and appreciative crowd, and, even if they do not know it, an opportunity to connect with history.
Grace played here, Hammond played here, Graveney and Procter and Zaheer played here. Hundreds of other county cricketers have played here. Christ, this is a place.
With Northants dying a prolonged but terminal death in the field in the face of a withering assault by Gloucestershire's young all-rounder Jack Taylor, it is hard, as he patrols the boundary and tries in vain to stem the flow of runs, not to contemplate the thoughts of Stephen Peters.
Stephen Peters is 36 years old now. Once upon a time, when he made a century in the final of the Under-19 World Cup in 1998, he was, briefly, a kind of star. There were expectations, ultimately unfulfilled. His long career in the game has been spent exclusively on the county circuit. For his native Essex, in the shadow of the cathedral at Worcester, and, latterly, at Wantage Road in Northampton. Somewhere along the line he has undergone the metamorphosis from promising youngster to old pro.
But, while members of the crowd have the privilege of descending into reverie, Peters is unable to do so. Having been dismissed without scoring in his side's first innings, he knows that he will be on a pair when he eventually bats again. When he does, with his side facing a deficit of 126, Gloucestershire's coltish and impressive young seamer, Craig Miles, rips one through his defences before he has had a chance to settle. He has his pair, his part in the game is done, and his side too is not long for the match. By the end of the day they have lost, badly.
Not very far away, on the other side of the Welsh border, England and Australia have spent the day locked in combat in the first of the summer's Ashes Tests. The sights, sounds, colours and throbbing intensity of a Test match are things which Peters will never know now, for it is late in his time in the game.
He has never engaged the thoughts of his country's selectors, but, for nearly twenty years, places like this, on days like this, have been his place of work. True, there have been cold days at Derby and Leicester, grey days watching the rain too, but the opportunity to play, even if just once, in a setting such as this and get paid for doing so, is a far richer experience than most of us will ever, ever have.
At the moment, such sentimentality will be far from his mind. But, in time, he will value these experiences for what they have been.
29.6.15
A Week in the Life
The fact that in certain contexts - in politics, in sport, in life itself - a week is a long time, is an old and enduring aphorism.
And, especially in the modern age, it is true, so true. Everything happens fast these days, even in cricket. Twenty20 innings are over in the blink of an eye, teams that for years have been the last word in constipated conservatism can change their very character in a few matches.
Andy Mathieson knows all about this.
On Saturday 20th June, Mathieson, a seam bowler from the North Island of New Zealand, is called into the New Zealand team for his One-Day International debut. As England chase an amended target, things go well at first - he takes the wicket of Jason Roy with his first ball in international cricket - but later they take a sharp turn for the worse. His fourth over, which turns out to be the final over of the match, is hit for 17 runs by a combination of two young Yorkshiremen, Jonny Bairstow and Adil Rashid, who are surfing the glorious wave of England's new era of limited-overs freedom. The match ends in defeat for New Zealand, and Mathieson's figures, which weren't great before he embarked on his final over, are left looking ugly. There is a wicket to cling on to, but he is left with a return of 4 overs for 40 to look back on, possibly for ever. An economy rate of 10. Not good. He is the latest person to be entrusted with the difficult job of bowling at the death as the opposition close on a total. In these situations things can go one of two ways. You can end up as a hero, or you can end up, at best, as a forgotten man.
Durham's Riverside Ground ends the day in ferment. Nothing can be heard above the noise of a crowd who, when the whole series is taken into account, can hardly believe what they have witnessed.
One week on it is Saturday 27th June, and Mathieson is opening the bowling for Sidmouth against Exeter in the Premier Division of the Devon League. On Exeter's old ground, Devon's County Ground, the ancient pavilion has been demolished to make way for a gleaming replacement, ringed by student flats. A crane dominates the skyline, the players change in prefabricated huts, and the spectators can be counted, one by one, in a few minutes. It is a humid, slightly soporific afternoon, with the morning's bright sunshine giving way to cloud. You can hear the birds singing. The players are wearing whites. Contrasts with Durham are everywhere.
Sidmouth's powerful batting line-up racks up 307 in their 50 overs. Exeter are below strength, and they are never serious contenders to win, but their chase begins with Mathieson taking the ball following an initial over of slow-medium seamers from his captain Will Murray.
On television, Mathieson's pace looked relatively benign. Here, at a much lower level of the game, it appears razor sharp, and he extracts bounce from a batsmen's track. When the Exeter batsmen have to play, they tend to play late, and in a hurry. But they don't have to play enough, and Mathieson's first spell is negotiated with relative comfort. Later, as Exeter's innings fades, he returns. Exeter's impressive fifteen year-old, Tom Lammonby, handles him without undue trouble, and he remains wicketless until he shatters the stumps of Exeter's number ten with the game's final ball, securing victory for his side by 129 runs.
For Mathieson it has been a quiet afternoon. He has not batted, and he has taken just one wicket and a single sharp catch in the deep, which, with the anticipation and sense of gathering danger which is second nature to one who has played at a higher level, he has made look easy.
This has been an unusually varied interlude in a jobbing cricketer's career. Two weeks running he has bowled the final ball of a match, but they have been worlds apart in setting, in relative importance, and in result. One has extended him to the furthest limits of his abilities and emotions; the other has been a subdued return to normality.
Who knows if the opportunity to repeat his experience at Durham will ever come again? If it does not, there is little need to worry. He is what he is, and what he will always be. There are plenty of people around with no One-Day International wickets, and nobody will ever be able to take Roy's scalp away from him.
A week in cricket can seem like a very long time.
And, especially in the modern age, it is true, so true. Everything happens fast these days, even in cricket. Twenty20 innings are over in the blink of an eye, teams that for years have been the last word in constipated conservatism can change their very character in a few matches.
Andy Mathieson knows all about this.
On Saturday 20th June, Mathieson, a seam bowler from the North Island of New Zealand, is called into the New Zealand team for his One-Day International debut. As England chase an amended target, things go well at first - he takes the wicket of Jason Roy with his first ball in international cricket - but later they take a sharp turn for the worse. His fourth over, which turns out to be the final over of the match, is hit for 17 runs by a combination of two young Yorkshiremen, Jonny Bairstow and Adil Rashid, who are surfing the glorious wave of England's new era of limited-overs freedom. The match ends in defeat for New Zealand, and Mathieson's figures, which weren't great before he embarked on his final over, are left looking ugly. There is a wicket to cling on to, but he is left with a return of 4 overs for 40 to look back on, possibly for ever. An economy rate of 10. Not good. He is the latest person to be entrusted with the difficult job of bowling at the death as the opposition close on a total. In these situations things can go one of two ways. You can end up as a hero, or you can end up, at best, as a forgotten man.
Durham's Riverside Ground ends the day in ferment. Nothing can be heard above the noise of a crowd who, when the whole series is taken into account, can hardly believe what they have witnessed.
One week on it is Saturday 27th June, and Mathieson is opening the bowling for Sidmouth against Exeter in the Premier Division of the Devon League. On Exeter's old ground, Devon's County Ground, the ancient pavilion has been demolished to make way for a gleaming replacement, ringed by student flats. A crane dominates the skyline, the players change in prefabricated huts, and the spectators can be counted, one by one, in a few minutes. It is a humid, slightly soporific afternoon, with the morning's bright sunshine giving way to cloud. You can hear the birds singing. The players are wearing whites. Contrasts with Durham are everywhere.
Sidmouth's powerful batting line-up racks up 307 in their 50 overs. Exeter are below strength, and they are never serious contenders to win, but their chase begins with Mathieson taking the ball following an initial over of slow-medium seamers from his captain Will Murray.
On television, Mathieson's pace looked relatively benign. Here, at a much lower level of the game, it appears razor sharp, and he extracts bounce from a batsmen's track. When the Exeter batsmen have to play, they tend to play late, and in a hurry. But they don't have to play enough, and Mathieson's first spell is negotiated with relative comfort. Later, as Exeter's innings fades, he returns. Exeter's impressive fifteen year-old, Tom Lammonby, handles him without undue trouble, and he remains wicketless until he shatters the stumps of Exeter's number ten with the game's final ball, securing victory for his side by 129 runs.
For Mathieson it has been a quiet afternoon. He has not batted, and he has taken just one wicket and a single sharp catch in the deep, which, with the anticipation and sense of gathering danger which is second nature to one who has played at a higher level, he has made look easy.
This has been an unusually varied interlude in a jobbing cricketer's career. Two weeks running he has bowled the final ball of a match, but they have been worlds apart in setting, in relative importance, and in result. One has extended him to the furthest limits of his abilities and emotions; the other has been a subdued return to normality.
Who knows if the opportunity to repeat his experience at Durham will ever come again? If it does not, there is little need to worry. He is what he is, and what he will always be. There are plenty of people around with no One-Day International wickets, and nobody will ever be able to take Roy's scalp away from him.
A week in cricket can seem like a very long time.
13.6.15
Sense of Loss
When cricketers retire because of injury, there is always a sense of loss. This is true even when the departures of the two England wicket-keepers who have left the game's stage in the last ten days were very far from unexpected.
With Craig Kieswetter, there is a sense of loss born of what might have been. In the case of Matthew Prior there is a sense of losing what actually was, even if the sad reality is that it was long, long gone.
On the broad acres of his adopted home ground at Taunton, the young Kieswetter stood out in ways that were never shrouded in subtlety or mystery. He always looked the part, standing with unfeigned comfort and self-possession at the root of the cordon, usually with Marcus and James Hildreth by his side. For a few seasons, for those of us who inhabit the Hill, or the Botham Stand, or even the one named after Marcus himself, there was comfort and familiarity in that. He used to vie with Jos Buttler for the gloves, and circumstances dictated that it was Somerset's very own world-beater who left. Craig was never quite going to be a world-beater, but he could keep alright, and would have got better as time passed. And he could really bat. The one-day arena saw him at his best, but the essentials of his game were the same whatever the context. To take just one, there was his characteristic off-drive, played with a distinctive flourish and the timing and withering power of one brought up on the type of track that encourages, indeed demands, virile, punishing strokeplay.
A South African hard wicket player.
If this evokes a stereotype then it isn't appropriate. There was also an intrinsic subtlety and wristiness to his shots, while away from the arena he always seemed a balanced and understated character. You can bet that he would have played for Somerset long into the future. Perhaps England too, with the glorious rebirth of the national side's one-day cricket which the last week has seen suiting him down to the ground. It may or may not have happened, but Craig would have welcomed the chance to make it so.
A lasting memory, from a season or two back, sees me passing him as he came away from the Millichamp and Hall bat workshop that lies behind the Ondaatje Pavilion at Taunton. He had a clutch of brand new, logoless bats under his arm. The tools of his trade. Some of those probably never struck a ball in anger, and now they never will.
Unlike Craig Kieswetter, Matt Prior fulfilled his potential everywhere but in the one-day arena. During his, and England's, greatest recent days I saw a lot of Prior at Lord's, including both his Test centuries there. One, against the West Indies on debut, felt like snatching candy from kids, the other, against India in 2011, when he and Stuart Broad took the game away from England's opponents on a crystal blue Sunday afternoon, still feels to me like a matchlessly evocative summation of all that Flower and Strauss's England were. Prior the batsman was a focal part of that time, bounding onto the pitch, sweatbands on wrists, with endless confidence, aggression and damaging intent. Quick singles to start, always challenging the field, then, as bowlers tired and dropped short, there would be cuts and pulls. Overpitch and it would be one of the most powerful and reliable cover-drives in world cricket.
In those days, when Matt Prior was at the wicket, everything felt right.
Lord's against India was where it all ended for Prior too. An injury-ravaged performance in defeat, capped by a witless stroke and a proud, defiant exit. Watching him walk through the Long Room that day last July, head held high and expression fixed, there was a strong sense of an era ending.
A true sense of loss.
With Craig Kieswetter, there is a sense of loss born of what might have been. In the case of Matthew Prior there is a sense of losing what actually was, even if the sad reality is that it was long, long gone.
On the broad acres of his adopted home ground at Taunton, the young Kieswetter stood out in ways that were never shrouded in subtlety or mystery. He always looked the part, standing with unfeigned comfort and self-possession at the root of the cordon, usually with Marcus and James Hildreth by his side. For a few seasons, for those of us who inhabit the Hill, or the Botham Stand, or even the one named after Marcus himself, there was comfort and familiarity in that. He used to vie with Jos Buttler for the gloves, and circumstances dictated that it was Somerset's very own world-beater who left. Craig was never quite going to be a world-beater, but he could keep alright, and would have got better as time passed. And he could really bat. The one-day arena saw him at his best, but the essentials of his game were the same whatever the context. To take just one, there was his characteristic off-drive, played with a distinctive flourish and the timing and withering power of one brought up on the type of track that encourages, indeed demands, virile, punishing strokeplay.
A South African hard wicket player.
If this evokes a stereotype then it isn't appropriate. There was also an intrinsic subtlety and wristiness to his shots, while away from the arena he always seemed a balanced and understated character. You can bet that he would have played for Somerset long into the future. Perhaps England too, with the glorious rebirth of the national side's one-day cricket which the last week has seen suiting him down to the ground. It may or may not have happened, but Craig would have welcomed the chance to make it so.
A lasting memory, from a season or two back, sees me passing him as he came away from the Millichamp and Hall bat workshop that lies behind the Ondaatje Pavilion at Taunton. He had a clutch of brand new, logoless bats under his arm. The tools of his trade. Some of those probably never struck a ball in anger, and now they never will.
Unlike Craig Kieswetter, Matt Prior fulfilled his potential everywhere but in the one-day arena. During his, and England's, greatest recent days I saw a lot of Prior at Lord's, including both his Test centuries there. One, against the West Indies on debut, felt like snatching candy from kids, the other, against India in 2011, when he and Stuart Broad took the game away from England's opponents on a crystal blue Sunday afternoon, still feels to me like a matchlessly evocative summation of all that Flower and Strauss's England were. Prior the batsman was a focal part of that time, bounding onto the pitch, sweatbands on wrists, with endless confidence, aggression and damaging intent. Quick singles to start, always challenging the field, then, as bowlers tired and dropped short, there would be cuts and pulls. Overpitch and it would be one of the most powerful and reliable cover-drives in world cricket.
In those days, when Matt Prior was at the wicket, everything felt right.
Lord's against India was where it all ended for Prior too. An injury-ravaged performance in defeat, capped by a witless stroke and a proud, defiant exit. Watching him walk through the Long Room that day last July, head held high and expression fixed, there was a strong sense of an era ending.
A true sense of loss.
11.4.15
Richie Benaud (1930-2015)
Deaths come in different ways. Some are sudden, unexpected; others come after a long, slow fade from life's prime.
In keeping with the measured laconicism which was an intrinsic element of his unchallenged status as cricket's voice, conscience and heartbeat for more years than most of us have been alive, Richie Benaud's passing was one of the latter. He'd suffered a car accident in Sydney in October 2013, and, as the months afterwards passed, the intermittent reports on his health painted a picture of decline in the face of a cancer which was probably the legacy of long years spent in the burning sun of the world's Test match arenas. Benaud died yesterday in the country where he was born, which he represented, and in which he became a genuinely iconic figure, but the influence and legacy of his life extended far beyond the shores of Australia.
To anyone who grew up in England at any time from the middle of the 1960s onwards and who was interested in cricket, Richie Benaud didn't just represent or evoke the game. As in his home country, he was cricket.
Benaud never again commentated in England after the Oval Test of September 2005. After that, coverage of cricket in England became restricted to satellite television and Benaud wanted no part of it. So, at a time when English cricket is mired in one of its regular bouts of angst about the pitiful state of its representative team, its hopeless, befuddled administrators and its declining number of participants, the memory of Benaud in his glory years is, at one and the same time, a memory of a simpler era. A time when televised cricket meant turning on BBC 1 at 11.25, Soul Limbo and Peter West, Benaud and Jim Laker, and not an advert in sight. As I approach my fifties I like to think that I am resistant to reflex sentimentality about my youth, and in so many ways cricket is more varied, more colourful and more entertaining than it was then, but, as in many areas of life, there is a yearning for the ephemeral, ungraspable memory of those experiences which made us what we are. If you have spent what now seems like your entire life obsessed with cricket, the death of someone who exemplified and defined the game as you fell under its spell is sure to hit you hard.
Two memories of Benaud's life and commentating times: In the first I am eleven years old. It is a sunlit June day, with bottomless blue skies. I have walked home from school and turned on the television. I cannot, of course, remember if I knew that there was cricket on, but, as the set, our first colour television and some five years old at the time, warms into life I can at once discern the sound of a throbbing, excited crowd. Hampshire are playing Gloucestershire at Southampton's Northlands Road ground in the semi-final of the Benson and Hedges Cup. The first thing I see is a blonde fast bowler charge towards the wicket, sweat flying from his brow and his white shirt unbuttoned almost to the waist. I think I know that this is Mike Procter, but I have no idea that at this precise moment, he is seeking to complete a hat-trick. As his yorker disturbs the stumps of Hampshire's John Rice with a mixture of precision and inevitability, Richie Benaud's voice surges upwards with an air of barely controlled excitement, his normal wry detachment momentarily and involuntarily abandoned.
38 long years later, when Benaud dies, this is one of the moments that is replayed and replayed on the television news. It is both a replay of an essential chapter in the Benaud legend and a fundamental part of my childhood.
On 12th September 2005 I am at The Oval, in south London. It is again sunny, and a batsman is again bowled. This time it is Kevin Pietersen, who has scored 158 to take England to the brink of regaining the Ashes. Benaud's final spell of commentary concludes with Pietersen's dismissal. The ground rises, not just to salute Pietersen's achievement but also Benaud. The Australian players, about to become the first team from their country to lose a Test series against England for almost two decades, break from their drinks to applaud Benaud. This signifies what he has meant to cricket.
The last half-year has been, to put it mildly, a mixed period for Australian cricket. A Test series win and a World Cup triumph, bookended by the deaths of Philip Hughes and Richie Benaud, one tragically unexpected and one sadly inevitable. The response to both, though, has shown the vitality and fundamental dignity of the game, both in Australia and around the world.
It is far from an exaggeration to say that Richie Benaud was one of the most significant figures in all the game's long history. When someone like that dies, especially during a period where there is - as there always is - anxiety about the game's turbulent present and uncertain future, the temptation is to suggest that nothing will ever be the same. This is true, of course, for we shall never hear Benaud at the microphone again, but, as the World Cup showed, the game will continue to thrill, fascinate and entertain.
Benaud, never a rose-tinted nostalgist, would agree. Memories of Benaud will sustain all of us long into the future, but it is best if they are viewed as examples of the game's endless possibilities, not as signifiers of a lost past.
RIP.
In keeping with the measured laconicism which was an intrinsic element of his unchallenged status as cricket's voice, conscience and heartbeat for more years than most of us have been alive, Richie Benaud's passing was one of the latter. He'd suffered a car accident in Sydney in October 2013, and, as the months afterwards passed, the intermittent reports on his health painted a picture of decline in the face of a cancer which was probably the legacy of long years spent in the burning sun of the world's Test match arenas. Benaud died yesterday in the country where he was born, which he represented, and in which he became a genuinely iconic figure, but the influence and legacy of his life extended far beyond the shores of Australia.
To anyone who grew up in England at any time from the middle of the 1960s onwards and who was interested in cricket, Richie Benaud didn't just represent or evoke the game. As in his home country, he was cricket.
Benaud never again commentated in England after the Oval Test of September 2005. After that, coverage of cricket in England became restricted to satellite television and Benaud wanted no part of it. So, at a time when English cricket is mired in one of its regular bouts of angst about the pitiful state of its representative team, its hopeless, befuddled administrators and its declining number of participants, the memory of Benaud in his glory years is, at one and the same time, a memory of a simpler era. A time when televised cricket meant turning on BBC 1 at 11.25, Soul Limbo and Peter West, Benaud and Jim Laker, and not an advert in sight. As I approach my fifties I like to think that I am resistant to reflex sentimentality about my youth, and in so many ways cricket is more varied, more colourful and more entertaining than it was then, but, as in many areas of life, there is a yearning for the ephemeral, ungraspable memory of those experiences which made us what we are. If you have spent what now seems like your entire life obsessed with cricket, the death of someone who exemplified and defined the game as you fell under its spell is sure to hit you hard.
Two memories of Benaud's life and commentating times: In the first I am eleven years old. It is a sunlit June day, with bottomless blue skies. I have walked home from school and turned on the television. I cannot, of course, remember if I knew that there was cricket on, but, as the set, our first colour television and some five years old at the time, warms into life I can at once discern the sound of a throbbing, excited crowd. Hampshire are playing Gloucestershire at Southampton's Northlands Road ground in the semi-final of the Benson and Hedges Cup. The first thing I see is a blonde fast bowler charge towards the wicket, sweat flying from his brow and his white shirt unbuttoned almost to the waist. I think I know that this is Mike Procter, but I have no idea that at this precise moment, he is seeking to complete a hat-trick. As his yorker disturbs the stumps of Hampshire's John Rice with a mixture of precision and inevitability, Richie Benaud's voice surges upwards with an air of barely controlled excitement, his normal wry detachment momentarily and involuntarily abandoned.
38 long years later, when Benaud dies, this is one of the moments that is replayed and replayed on the television news. It is both a replay of an essential chapter in the Benaud legend and a fundamental part of my childhood.
On 12th September 2005 I am at The Oval, in south London. It is again sunny, and a batsman is again bowled. This time it is Kevin Pietersen, who has scored 158 to take England to the brink of regaining the Ashes. Benaud's final spell of commentary concludes with Pietersen's dismissal. The ground rises, not just to salute Pietersen's achievement but also Benaud. The Australian players, about to become the first team from their country to lose a Test series against England for almost two decades, break from their drinks to applaud Benaud. This signifies what he has meant to cricket.
The last half-year has been, to put it mildly, a mixed period for Australian cricket. A Test series win and a World Cup triumph, bookended by the deaths of Philip Hughes and Richie Benaud, one tragically unexpected and one sadly inevitable. The response to both, though, has shown the vitality and fundamental dignity of the game, both in Australia and around the world.
It is far from an exaggeration to say that Richie Benaud was one of the most significant figures in all the game's long history. When someone like that dies, especially during a period where there is - as there always is - anxiety about the game's turbulent present and uncertain future, the temptation is to suggest that nothing will ever be the same. This is true, of course, for we shall never hear Benaud at the microphone again, but, as the World Cup showed, the game will continue to thrill, fascinate and entertain.
Benaud, never a rose-tinted nostalgist, would agree. Memories of Benaud will sustain all of us long into the future, but it is best if they are viewed as examples of the game's endless possibilities, not as signifiers of a lost past.
RIP.
5.4.15
Vettori
Last week a cricketer retired. This happens all the time.
Some go when it's not what people expect - or when, as the old, somewhat trite, advice goes, people are still asking 'why?' instead of 'why not?' - others go when they have no choice, when thier virtues are starting to be forgotten as a result of their inability to face up to the future. You could perhaps put Ricky Ponting in the first category, and Sachin Tendulkar in the second, although Ponting had his share of moments when the leaving became inevitable. Even now, with years having passed, the vision persists of him face forward in the Adelaide dirt, his stumps rearranged by another ageing great. When things like that happen, retirement is the only way to go.
As in so many things, Daniel Vettori didn't fit any of the obvious templates. Over recent years, as injuries took their toll on a body that had spent half its time on earth playing international cricket, you could be forgiven for thinking that he'd slipped away quietly. As New Zealand's cricket has been transformed over the last few years, the days when he was the fulcrum of a struggling side have faded into the background, but the closing weeks of his career, with all that they meant for New Zealand as a cricket country, were a fitting and memorable way to go.
As with Ponting and anyone else, visions will persist. In Vettori's case, from his very last weeks it will be the sight of him jumping off the ground with perfect timing and catching a ball with his left hand as it heads inexorably for the Cake Tin crowd, but this, brilliant and remarkable as it was, will never capture the essence of a cricketer, who, in New Zealand terms, ranks with the very best.
No, with Vettori the sights to fix in the mind's eye include that of a gangling, floppy-haired teenager with long hair taking his first steps in international cricket against England in 1997. This is about how long his career was: the grainy video on YouTube, with the England of Caddick, Croft and Tufnell in their MCC sweaters against the New Zealand of Blair Pocock and Heath Davis, fixes the match in an era that might as well be prehistoric. Then there is Vettori the batsman, bottom-handed, rigid, consistently looking overmatched, but counter-intuitively capable, with all the temperamental soundness, courage and timing you could want. And Vettori the bowler, with the perfect pivot, the control of flight and pace, the under-recognized subtlety. 4,000 Test runs at 30 and 362 wickets say that he could play, really play.
But perhaps most of all, the thing to take away is that, as Brydon Coverdale said last week in a fine distillation of his career, 'soft-spoken and unfailingly polite, Vettori is the very essence of what New Zealand cricket has become'. In the immature and mean-spirited universe occupied by Brad Haddin and his apologists, virtues such as playing the game in the right spirit count for little. Success justifies everything. The New Zealand which goes on from here - not the New Zealand of Vettori, but the New Zealand of McCullum, of Boult, of Guptill, of Southee, of BJ Watling - will, I am sure, continue to show that playing the game with passion and with flair does not have to mean playing with disrespect.
Perhaps it is a failing in me, perhaps it is the effect of getting older and growing softer, but I hate, really hate, what Haddin did. This is not a partisan issue. I detest Jimmy Anderson's tedious, shallow, false, aggression too.
For Vettori's virtues, read New Zealand's. International cricket need not be a war zone. There are enough of those around the world already.
Some go when it's not what people expect - or when, as the old, somewhat trite, advice goes, people are still asking 'why?' instead of 'why not?' - others go when they have no choice, when thier virtues are starting to be forgotten as a result of their inability to face up to the future. You could perhaps put Ricky Ponting in the first category, and Sachin Tendulkar in the second, although Ponting had his share of moments when the leaving became inevitable. Even now, with years having passed, the vision persists of him face forward in the Adelaide dirt, his stumps rearranged by another ageing great. When things like that happen, retirement is the only way to go.
As in so many things, Daniel Vettori didn't fit any of the obvious templates. Over recent years, as injuries took their toll on a body that had spent half its time on earth playing international cricket, you could be forgiven for thinking that he'd slipped away quietly. As New Zealand's cricket has been transformed over the last few years, the days when he was the fulcrum of a struggling side have faded into the background, but the closing weeks of his career, with all that they meant for New Zealand as a cricket country, were a fitting and memorable way to go.
As with Ponting and anyone else, visions will persist. In Vettori's case, from his very last weeks it will be the sight of him jumping off the ground with perfect timing and catching a ball with his left hand as it heads inexorably for the Cake Tin crowd, but this, brilliant and remarkable as it was, will never capture the essence of a cricketer, who, in New Zealand terms, ranks with the very best.
No, with Vettori the sights to fix in the mind's eye include that of a gangling, floppy-haired teenager with long hair taking his first steps in international cricket against England in 1997. This is about how long his career was: the grainy video on YouTube, with the England of Caddick, Croft and Tufnell in their MCC sweaters against the New Zealand of Blair Pocock and Heath Davis, fixes the match in an era that might as well be prehistoric. Then there is Vettori the batsman, bottom-handed, rigid, consistently looking overmatched, but counter-intuitively capable, with all the temperamental soundness, courage and timing you could want. And Vettori the bowler, with the perfect pivot, the control of flight and pace, the under-recognized subtlety. 4,000 Test runs at 30 and 362 wickets say that he could play, really play.
But perhaps most of all, the thing to take away is that, as Brydon Coverdale said last week in a fine distillation of his career, 'soft-spoken and unfailingly polite, Vettori is the very essence of what New Zealand cricket has become'. In the immature and mean-spirited universe occupied by Brad Haddin and his apologists, virtues such as playing the game in the right spirit count for little. Success justifies everything. The New Zealand which goes on from here - not the New Zealand of Vettori, but the New Zealand of McCullum, of Boult, of Guptill, of Southee, of BJ Watling - will, I am sure, continue to show that playing the game with passion and with flair does not have to mean playing with disrespect.
Perhaps it is a failing in me, perhaps it is the effect of getting older and growing softer, but I hate, really hate, what Haddin did. This is not a partisan issue. I detest Jimmy Anderson's tedious, shallow, false, aggression too.
For Vettori's virtues, read New Zealand's. International cricket need not be a war zone. There are enough of those around the world already.
28.3.15
Cricket Country
After more than a month of hard labour - early, early mornings, snatched sessions in front of the highlights, fast forwarding through the introductory guff from Ward or Gower and that dog, that bloody infuriating dog - memories of the 2015 World Cup are hard to categorize.
For sure though, for all that the time difference and the need to earn a living and be vaguely awake while doing so has meant that the amount of live cricket I've seen has been limited, memories there are, and most of them revolve around New Zealand.
Not just the New Zealand of McCullum, batting and captaining like there's no tomorrow, or Guptill, with his signature orthodoxy and power, or Boult, hooping it with pace and control, but the New Zealand of Dunedin, of Hamilton, of Napier, of Nelson. Intimate, verdant grounds, where you didn't need to be there, or even be within 12,000 miles, to feel the extent of the country's new-found love for the game.
Orange shirts everywhere, people realizing, sometimes for the first time, that the country's sporting fabric, even its wider identity, need not just be about fifteen men with a white fern on their chests. England humiliated, Australia and South Africa defeated with late sixes. Crowds, with Tuesday at Eden Park the apogee, going utterly, wonderfully, mad.
The New Zealand of 2015 looks like the cricket country many of us would like England to be, both on and off the field.
Australia is different. Grounds are characterless and monolithic, success is expected, players and commentators grate. As a neutral approaching the final, little time needs to be wasted in deciding who to support.
Can New Zealand, this time away from the comforts of home, make one last push?
This time tomorrow all the questions will have been answered.
For sure though, for all that the time difference and the need to earn a living and be vaguely awake while doing so has meant that the amount of live cricket I've seen has been limited, memories there are, and most of them revolve around New Zealand.
Not just the New Zealand of McCullum, batting and captaining like there's no tomorrow, or Guptill, with his signature orthodoxy and power, or Boult, hooping it with pace and control, but the New Zealand of Dunedin, of Hamilton, of Napier, of Nelson. Intimate, verdant grounds, where you didn't need to be there, or even be within 12,000 miles, to feel the extent of the country's new-found love for the game.
Orange shirts everywhere, people realizing, sometimes for the first time, that the country's sporting fabric, even its wider identity, need not just be about fifteen men with a white fern on their chests. England humiliated, Australia and South Africa defeated with late sixes. Crowds, with Tuesday at Eden Park the apogee, going utterly, wonderfully, mad.
The New Zealand of 2015 looks like the cricket country many of us would like England to be, both on and off the field.
Australia is different. Grounds are characterless and monolithic, success is expected, players and commentators grate. As a neutral approaching the final, little time needs to be wasted in deciding who to support.
Can New Zealand, this time away from the comforts of home, make one last push?
This time tomorrow all the questions will have been answered.
22.2.15
How to Do It (and how not to)
One of the more salient aspects of England's defeat to New Zealand was that, even in the alternative universe in which England win games like that, you simply couldn't imagine them doing it in that way.
Why?
McCullum, that's why.
Or, more precisely, the type of cricketing culture which McCullum represents. A culture in which flamboyance, optimism and spontaneity are embraced. Alright, McCullum may be a one-off, or near enough (this, perhaps, may have been how Shane Warne would have captained Australia had he been given the opportunity), but the way in which he was prepared to attack, attack and then attack some more, simply threw the pedestrian, conformist, tactically bewildered nature of the England team's collective mentality into sharper relief.
Tim Southee is maturing into the world-class bowler he always threatened to become, and his work at the Cake Tin was devastating. But England have, and have had, outstanding bowlers too. On another day, in another time, Jimmy Anderson could have bowled like that. Even - though in the light of his brainless performance in Wellington this appears to be stretching credibility - Stuart Broad could have done the same. But you know, you just know, that a captain like Cook, or Strauss, or probably Morgan, wouldn't have backed his bowler in the way McCullum instinctively did. McCullum's tactics were innovative in that they went against what has become ingrained thinking about how one-day innings should be conducted, especially in (or by) England, but they weren't used in a self-conscious or hesitant way. They were simply what he felt to be the best way to win the match. It's been said many times - though more, one suspects, in stands and commentary boxes than on the pitches of the international world - that the best way to slow a side's scoring rate down is to take wickets. But how many captains will actively try to do that? How many bowlers would love to feel the type of confidence in them which such an approach represents?
There has to be a touch of arrogance in it, sure - 'you're pissing on this lot, just keep bowling' was what McCullum was saying to Southee - which goes against the natural English instinct too, but it sure as hell beats putting the field back and brining on someone to bowl darts hook when you have a side on the slide. Okay, it could all have gone wrong, but on this day you knew it wouldn't. This was a rapidly improving side, brimming with confidence and feeding off home advantage, against a team that have long since forgotten (if they ever knew) how to play one-day cricket.
English cricket has been mired in ponderous, hubristic conservatism for as long as you care to recall. Though he was complicit in his own downfall and there are a myriad nuanced complexities to it that most of us will never know about, this is what fed the long-term distrust of the greatest batting genius England have ever had. This is what fed the retention of Alastair Cook as one-day captain long beyond the point where his position had become untenable. This is what fed England's part in the carve-up of international cricket by the 'big three' (the idea of England being part of a big anything in cricket terms just seems mad). And this is what fed the rejection of a different type of domestic Twenty20 competition when the chance was there. Possibly most damagingly of all, this is what feeds the underlying feeling that, because England can still win the odd Test series, and people actually turn up in numbers to watch it, that continually failing in one-day cricket doesn't really matter.
McCullum can bat, too.
Why?
McCullum, that's why.
Or, more precisely, the type of cricketing culture which McCullum represents. A culture in which flamboyance, optimism and spontaneity are embraced. Alright, McCullum may be a one-off, or near enough (this, perhaps, may have been how Shane Warne would have captained Australia had he been given the opportunity), but the way in which he was prepared to attack, attack and then attack some more, simply threw the pedestrian, conformist, tactically bewildered nature of the England team's collective mentality into sharper relief.
Tim Southee is maturing into the world-class bowler he always threatened to become, and his work at the Cake Tin was devastating. But England have, and have had, outstanding bowlers too. On another day, in another time, Jimmy Anderson could have bowled like that. Even - though in the light of his brainless performance in Wellington this appears to be stretching credibility - Stuart Broad could have done the same. But you know, you just know, that a captain like Cook, or Strauss, or probably Morgan, wouldn't have backed his bowler in the way McCullum instinctively did. McCullum's tactics were innovative in that they went against what has become ingrained thinking about how one-day innings should be conducted, especially in (or by) England, but they weren't used in a self-conscious or hesitant way. They were simply what he felt to be the best way to win the match. It's been said many times - though more, one suspects, in stands and commentary boxes than on the pitches of the international world - that the best way to slow a side's scoring rate down is to take wickets. But how many captains will actively try to do that? How many bowlers would love to feel the type of confidence in them which such an approach represents?
There has to be a touch of arrogance in it, sure - 'you're pissing on this lot, just keep bowling' was what McCullum was saying to Southee - which goes against the natural English instinct too, but it sure as hell beats putting the field back and brining on someone to bowl darts hook when you have a side on the slide. Okay, it could all have gone wrong, but on this day you knew it wouldn't. This was a rapidly improving side, brimming with confidence and feeding off home advantage, against a team that have long since forgotten (if they ever knew) how to play one-day cricket.
English cricket has been mired in ponderous, hubristic conservatism for as long as you care to recall. Though he was complicit in his own downfall and there are a myriad nuanced complexities to it that most of us will never know about, this is what fed the long-term distrust of the greatest batting genius England have ever had. This is what fed the retention of Alastair Cook as one-day captain long beyond the point where his position had become untenable. This is what fed England's part in the carve-up of international cricket by the 'big three' (the idea of England being part of a big anything in cricket terms just seems mad). And this is what fed the rejection of a different type of domestic Twenty20 competition when the chance was there. Possibly most damagingly of all, this is what feeds the underlying feeling that, because England can still win the odd Test series, and people actually turn up in numbers to watch it, that continually failing in one-day cricket doesn't really matter.
McCullum can bat, too.
27.11.14
Playing Hard Ball
I don't really play cricket anymore. The last time I did, in 2011, I batted for quite a long time and then couldn't move properly for several weeks. Not for the first time, my back had gone.
I never say I've retired though. Once I could have been a contender, and I could be again, in my mind anyway.
My brother, though he is nearly ten years older than me, still plays village cricket in Derbyshire. Earlier this year, in the summer, I visited him and spotted a ball - a brand new cherry red ball - lying around in his house. Prompted by me, we went outside on to a large grass area near his house and threw it to each other. We weren't far apart and we didn't throw it very hard.
I grew up with cricket balls. Back when I was young they hadn't invented the sort of soft balls I see kids playing with on the Taunton outfield. There were tennis balls, which we tended to play with in the garden to avoid breakages, and there were what were then called composition balls, which, in truth, weren't much softer than the real thing. They were just cheaper and less responsive.
When I was younger, cricket balls and their hardness never really concerned me. Many's the time, as a dour front-foot prodder of an opening bat, I returned home with garish bruises on my thighs, and my stomach, and one time a pain in my hip bone that took half a year to subside. This time, though, I was struck (both literally and metaphorically) by just how hard a cricket ball is. In comparison with the ball used in virtually any other game, cricket balls are stupidly hard. Dangerously hard. Get hit by one in the wrong place and you could get badly hurt.
I made the comment, only partly in jest, that if someone invented cricket today and made the ball as hard as that, the game would be banned for Health and Safety reasons.
I grew up with other things too. I am old enough to remember Thomson and Lillee terrorising England's batsmen, and I am old enough to remember Michael Holding bowling to the helmetless Brian Close and John Edrich at Old Trafford. I am old enough to remember Peter Lever hitting Ewan Chatfield on the head. I also remember reading that one of Jeff Thomson's mates - Martin Bedkober he was called - had died after being hit in the chest by a cricket ball.
I knew then that cricket balls could kill you, but somehow it didn't really enter my thinking again until this morning, 39 years on, when I heard that Phillip Hughes had died.
Other people had things like this, but they always recovered. Chatfield was nearly killed - his heart stopped - but years later he was still tirelessly running in for the best side that New Zealand ever had. Phil Simmons almost went the same way at Bristol but still had a Test career ahead of him. Michael Schumacher, Jules Bianchi. Nobody knows what state they are in, but they are still alive. It was only boxers who died.
Until today.
Cricket has had days like this before. On hearing the news my mind instantly went back to the time I woke up on a similarly dark November morning and heard that Malcolm Marshall had died. And, later, I thought of the time that I was listening to TMS and heard Christopher Martin-Jenkins say that Ben Hollioake had been killed in a car crash.
This morning seemed a little different, though. Marshall had cancer; car crashes happen all the time, to all kinds of people. An international cricketer had never been killed by a ball before.
Now cricket has Twitter. People from all over the world post messages, montages, pictures, say profound things, say stupid things, say insensitive things. But the feeling is of a community coming together. The world is full of people who know nothing of cricket, and people who think they know enough of cricket to say that they dislike it. But for those of us who are left, no game engenders such loyalty and love, both for the sport itself and for the people who play it.
I hardly saw Phil Hughes bat live. Just his two Lord's Tests, in 2009 and 2013, when he failed as his homespun New South Wales country boy's technique was badly exposed. But I had seen him enough on TV and I had seen enough of his statistics to know that he would probably have come good in time. People always say things like this, but it is true to say that his best years were ahead of him. He was a contender.
Sadly, another thing being middle-aged teaches you is that 25 is no kind of age to die.
I never say I've retired though. Once I could have been a contender, and I could be again, in my mind anyway.
My brother, though he is nearly ten years older than me, still plays village cricket in Derbyshire. Earlier this year, in the summer, I visited him and spotted a ball - a brand new cherry red ball - lying around in his house. Prompted by me, we went outside on to a large grass area near his house and threw it to each other. We weren't far apart and we didn't throw it very hard.
I grew up with cricket balls. Back when I was young they hadn't invented the sort of soft balls I see kids playing with on the Taunton outfield. There were tennis balls, which we tended to play with in the garden to avoid breakages, and there were what were then called composition balls, which, in truth, weren't much softer than the real thing. They were just cheaper and less responsive.
When I was younger, cricket balls and their hardness never really concerned me. Many's the time, as a dour front-foot prodder of an opening bat, I returned home with garish bruises on my thighs, and my stomach, and one time a pain in my hip bone that took half a year to subside. This time, though, I was struck (both literally and metaphorically) by just how hard a cricket ball is. In comparison with the ball used in virtually any other game, cricket balls are stupidly hard. Dangerously hard. Get hit by one in the wrong place and you could get badly hurt.
I made the comment, only partly in jest, that if someone invented cricket today and made the ball as hard as that, the game would be banned for Health and Safety reasons.
I grew up with other things too. I am old enough to remember Thomson and Lillee terrorising England's batsmen, and I am old enough to remember Michael Holding bowling to the helmetless Brian Close and John Edrich at Old Trafford. I am old enough to remember Peter Lever hitting Ewan Chatfield on the head. I also remember reading that one of Jeff Thomson's mates - Martin Bedkober he was called - had died after being hit in the chest by a cricket ball.
I knew then that cricket balls could kill you, but somehow it didn't really enter my thinking again until this morning, 39 years on, when I heard that Phillip Hughes had died.
Other people had things like this, but they always recovered. Chatfield was nearly killed - his heart stopped - but years later he was still tirelessly running in for the best side that New Zealand ever had. Phil Simmons almost went the same way at Bristol but still had a Test career ahead of him. Michael Schumacher, Jules Bianchi. Nobody knows what state they are in, but they are still alive. It was only boxers who died.
Until today.
Cricket has had days like this before. On hearing the news my mind instantly went back to the time I woke up on a similarly dark November morning and heard that Malcolm Marshall had died. And, later, I thought of the time that I was listening to TMS and heard Christopher Martin-Jenkins say that Ben Hollioake had been killed in a car crash.
This morning seemed a little different, though. Marshall had cancer; car crashes happen all the time, to all kinds of people. An international cricketer had never been killed by a ball before.
Now cricket has Twitter. People from all over the world post messages, montages, pictures, say profound things, say stupid things, say insensitive things. But the feeling is of a community coming together. The world is full of people who know nothing of cricket, and people who think they know enough of cricket to say that they dislike it. But for those of us who are left, no game engenders such loyalty and love, both for the sport itself and for the people who play it.
I hardly saw Phil Hughes bat live. Just his two Lord's Tests, in 2009 and 2013, when he failed as his homespun New South Wales country boy's technique was badly exposed. But I had seen him enough on TV and I had seen enough of his statistics to know that he would probably have come good in time. People always say things like this, but it is true to say that his best years were ahead of him. He was a contender.
Sadly, another thing being middle-aged teaches you is that 25 is no kind of age to die.
12.10.14
The Age of Pietersen
As Kevin Pietersen himself has said in the past few days: 'How did it come to this?'
When Kevin Pietersen made his debut for England in a one-day international against Zimbabwe in Harare in November 2004, Twitter was something birds did.
How did we end up with England's most-capped cricketer arguing via the radio with a bloke from the East Midlands who just happens to know a few England players, about who had access to a Twitter account that was, when all has been said, a parody?
It is squalid, and it is pointless, but it is more than that. As others better qualified to comment than me have said, it is sad. Sad that an era in which the England cricket team were really successful - as we have seen and been told they were far from popular, but they did win matches, and series, and played some great cricket in their way - will, at least for a time, be recalled as an era which ended in dispute and recrimination, claim and counter-claim.
The truth according to Pietersen, or the truth according to Graeme Swann.
What actually happened, or 'the greatest work of fiction since Jules Verne'.
Unless you were there, you will never know.
We are only days into this but it already seems as though all that can be said has been said. Of course, this is never true. There is always more. In this sort of stupid, childish situation, someone will always want to have the last word.
Something which I haven't seen said yet is that 'it was always going to end in tears'. But you can be sure that someone, somewhere, will be thinking that, and saying it. And, as with many people you met around the grounds of England during the age of Pietersen and who would tell you for nothing why they didn't like him, or didn't trust him, they will be spectacularly wrong. Because, for a long time, for all Pietersen's unorthodoxy and flamboyance and apparent immodesty, it did work.
Christ, it worked. 8,000 Test runs at 47, with 23 centuries, say that it worked.
For a long time there were no tears, except, perhaps, the tears of joy which may have been shed by people who saw an England batsman doing things which they never thought they'd see.
These days few people remember the Norwich Union League, but a fair few Somerset fans will recall the time in 2002 when Pietersen took their county for two centuries in two days, one at Trent Bridge and one at Taunton. 269 runs off 201 balls, with 25 fours and 10 sixes. This, it seemed, was a player.
Then there were the ODI tons in South Africa; a time which gave new meaning to the phrase 'batting under pressure'. Then the Test debut at Lord's, head hung low on a gloomy last afternoon as the England lower-order disintegrated around him. Then, seven epoch-making weeks later, the last day at The Oval. Opening out against Lee after lunch, Tait scrambling in the dirt at fine leg, ticking off the overs to safety with Giles, the crowd going wild as they embraced a future most didn't expect and rejected a past many couldn't remember.
Then more great times at Lord's. For some reason I have a particular memory of being in the Long Room when Pietersen returned after scoring a second innings 134 against India in 2007. The members applaud him to the rafters and Pietersen, who walks with his customary upright stride and air of detachment, smiles slightly, his mask of coolness temporarily lost. You sense that it has occurred to him that he has been accepted. Things ran like this for a long time - through the captaincy, through the first Moores era and into that of Flower - there were detractors, of course, in many cases people who couldn't see past the accent and the tattoos, but there were just as many of us who saw him for what he was: a player of genius, playing for a country which doesn't really do players of genius.
For many, 2012 was a watershed, but still we had Headingley and Mumbai, two of the greatest innings ever played by an England batsman.
Many people have written about what it was like to grow up following England in the barren nineties. Those of us who are a little older can remember the Brearley era, and 1981, and 1985, and Botham and Gower, so the success enjoyed by England in recent years hasn't seemed quite so unusual. But, for all the relative joylessness, and the surplus aggression, the years between the regaining of the Ashes in 2009 and the end of it all in Australia in the winter of 2013-14 have been sweet ones. Of course, it has been just as much the age of Cook, or of Swann, or of Prior, or of Flower, but such is the nature of the English cultural psyche, whereby genius - and especially genius combined with outspokenness - is innately mistrusted, the greatest thing about them was the fact that we, England, had a batsman who, on his day, could frighten any team in the world.
Now this is gone for good. Whatever Pietersen may say - and, as an intelligent man, you have to doubt whether he really believes it - it is over. He will never play for England again in any form of the game.
So it is best to recall the Age of Pietersen for what it was. Because, for all kinds of complicated reasons, it will be a very long time before anything like it ever comes again.
When Kevin Pietersen made his debut for England in a one-day international against Zimbabwe in Harare in November 2004, Twitter was something birds did.
How did we end up with England's most-capped cricketer arguing via the radio with a bloke from the East Midlands who just happens to know a few England players, about who had access to a Twitter account that was, when all has been said, a parody?
It is squalid, and it is pointless, but it is more than that. As others better qualified to comment than me have said, it is sad. Sad that an era in which the England cricket team were really successful - as we have seen and been told they were far from popular, but they did win matches, and series, and played some great cricket in their way - will, at least for a time, be recalled as an era which ended in dispute and recrimination, claim and counter-claim.
The truth according to Pietersen, or the truth according to Graeme Swann.
What actually happened, or 'the greatest work of fiction since Jules Verne'.
Unless you were there, you will never know.
We are only days into this but it already seems as though all that can be said has been said. Of course, this is never true. There is always more. In this sort of stupid, childish situation, someone will always want to have the last word.
Something which I haven't seen said yet is that 'it was always going to end in tears'. But you can be sure that someone, somewhere, will be thinking that, and saying it. And, as with many people you met around the grounds of England during the age of Pietersen and who would tell you for nothing why they didn't like him, or didn't trust him, they will be spectacularly wrong. Because, for a long time, for all Pietersen's unorthodoxy and flamboyance and apparent immodesty, it did work.
Christ, it worked. 8,000 Test runs at 47, with 23 centuries, say that it worked.
For a long time there were no tears, except, perhaps, the tears of joy which may have been shed by people who saw an England batsman doing things which they never thought they'd see.
These days few people remember the Norwich Union League, but a fair few Somerset fans will recall the time in 2002 when Pietersen took their county for two centuries in two days, one at Trent Bridge and one at Taunton. 269 runs off 201 balls, with 25 fours and 10 sixes. This, it seemed, was a player.
Then there were the ODI tons in South Africa; a time which gave new meaning to the phrase 'batting under pressure'. Then the Test debut at Lord's, head hung low on a gloomy last afternoon as the England lower-order disintegrated around him. Then, seven epoch-making weeks later, the last day at The Oval. Opening out against Lee after lunch, Tait scrambling in the dirt at fine leg, ticking off the overs to safety with Giles, the crowd going wild as they embraced a future most didn't expect and rejected a past many couldn't remember.
Then more great times at Lord's. For some reason I have a particular memory of being in the Long Room when Pietersen returned after scoring a second innings 134 against India in 2007. The members applaud him to the rafters and Pietersen, who walks with his customary upright stride and air of detachment, smiles slightly, his mask of coolness temporarily lost. You sense that it has occurred to him that he has been accepted. Things ran like this for a long time - through the captaincy, through the first Moores era and into that of Flower - there were detractors, of course, in many cases people who couldn't see past the accent and the tattoos, but there were just as many of us who saw him for what he was: a player of genius, playing for a country which doesn't really do players of genius.
For many, 2012 was a watershed, but still we had Headingley and Mumbai, two of the greatest innings ever played by an England batsman.
Many people have written about what it was like to grow up following England in the barren nineties. Those of us who are a little older can remember the Brearley era, and 1981, and 1985, and Botham and Gower, so the success enjoyed by England in recent years hasn't seemed quite so unusual. But, for all the relative joylessness, and the surplus aggression, the years between the regaining of the Ashes in 2009 and the end of it all in Australia in the winter of 2013-14 have been sweet ones. Of course, it has been just as much the age of Cook, or of Swann, or of Prior, or of Flower, but such is the nature of the English cultural psyche, whereby genius - and especially genius combined with outspokenness - is innately mistrusted, the greatest thing about them was the fact that we, England, had a batsman who, on his day, could frighten any team in the world.
Now this is gone for good. Whatever Pietersen may say - and, as an intelligent man, you have to doubt whether he really believes it - it is over. He will never play for England again in any form of the game.
So it is best to recall the Age of Pietersen for what it was. Because, for all kinds of complicated reasons, it will be a very long time before anything like it ever comes again.
17.8.14
Starting Out
In early 2013, I was fortunate enough to receive an invitation to the annual Wisden dinner, held at Lord's each April to celebrate the publication of the most famous annual publication in the sporting world.
I wrote about it here.
The people around my table in the Long Room that evening included Mike Selvey (who was frustratingly out of easy conversational reach) and the ageless Wisden Middlesex correspondent and sometime radio commentator Norman de Mesquita, who is now, sadly, no longer with us.
At the far end of the table was a young man from Taunton, sitting with his father. Tom Abell, who was there to receive the Schools' Cricketer of the Year award, was polite and quietly impressive company. After he'd received his leather-bound Wisden from David Gower the talk was of his degree at Exeter University, his ambitions for the future and anecdotes from his father's playing days, which coincided with various teams and players of my own acquaintance. At the end of the evening I advised him to savour the moment, as it was something which, in years to come, he would look back on with affection, even if it didn't seem such a big deal at the time.
Sixteen months later I am at the County Ground at Taunton as Tom Abell makes his debut in first-class cricket for Somerset against Warwickshire. This time there is more distance between us: I am in the Ian Botham Stand and he is on the pitch.
After winning the toss his Somerset team bowls and he fields. He takes two catches, one to remove the centurion Ian Westwood late on the first day, and another to end the Warwickshire first innings, early on the second morning. He performs these duties competently, but it is no more than we should expect from a professional cricketer. A sterner test seems certain to come when he is required to bat, and so it proves. Abell, in at 4, comes to the wicket after Johann Myburgh is dismissed, and Somerset are 55 for 2. As Myburgh is out to the last ball of an over from Richard Jones, Abell has the temporary sanctuary of the non-striker's end to collect his thoughts, but any reverie he experiences is abruptly shattered as Nick Compton edges the second ball of the next over, bowled by Oliver Hannon-Dalby, into his stumps. Somerset are 55 for 3, and both batsmen are yet to face a ball. One of them, Tom Abell himself, has still to face a ball in first-class cricket.
From here, assisted by the experience of James Hildreth (although, given Hildreth's shaky form, it is hard to discern which is the experienced man and which the rookie), Abell slowly finds his feet, picking up runs on either side of the wicket with nudges and glances and covering up when required, his bat as straight as a die. He receives his fair share of short stuff, but, unlike his senior partner, he is never drawn towards recklessness. He ducks, he weaves and he leaves with the maturity and patience of the old pro that he is not.
As wickets continue to fall, Abell silently and unspokenly mutates into the senior partner. As Alex Barrow, Peter Trego and Craig Overton come to the wicket, he is the one who does the talking, focusing on the uncertainties of the situation and emphasizing the way they should play. When they each depart, he is still there, defending the good balls with efficiency of technique and economy of effort, and dealing with the rare bad ones with the sort of timing which can surprise and unsettle even experienced fielders. An example of this comes when he forces Jeetan Patel towards Jonathan Trott, who is fielding at mid on. As the ball comes towards him, Trott moves slowly, feeling that he has it covered. However, as the ball reaches him it is clear that it has much more pace on it than he first thought and he is forced into a late, scrambling dive. It is too late, though, and the ball is past him and into the boards.
On another occasion, Patel bowls a rare long hop and Abell is quick to abandon his circumspection. His bat comes down somewhere in the hinterland between a square cut and a back foot drive and the ball races to the fence like a shot from a gun. The thought starts to intrude that not only is this uncommonly assured batting for an inexperienced player, it is, in its adaptability and recognition of opportunity, batting of quite high class.
When Lewis Gregory comes to the crease the tempo rises, and Abell finds himself drawn in. In part this is an unconscious effect of the freedom and aggression of Gregory's strokeplay, but also the fact that Abell has realized that making runs in professional cricket is something he can do. They put on 84 in an hour, saving the follow-on, before Gregory is caught in the deep attempting another pull into the crowd. Soon after, the players leave the field because of bad light with Abell on 73, but within a short time they are back and Abell, with the impassive maturity he has shown throughout his four hours at the crease, continues to collect runs, assisted by the flamboyance of Alphonso Thomas and George Dockrell.
Once Abell reaches the nineties it is possible to sense the tension among the crowd, which, as the autumnal evening closes in, barely numbers three figures. To the left of where we are sitting, in the Old Pavilion, which has just weeks to go before demolition, there is a hill named after Harold Gimblett, a local folk-hero and the last Somerset-born batsman to make a century in his first innings in the County Championship.
Just as people are starting to believe, Abell turns a ball from Patel into the hands of William Porterfield at short midwicket. Abell has spent the afternoon dealing easily with such deliveries, but perhaps this one has stopped a little on him, or perhaps he has gone a little hard at the ball as the tension of the approaching landmark starts to weigh on his mind.
We will never know. As Abell, the last man to be dismissed in Somerset's first innings, walks towards the Andy Caddick Pavilion with 95 to his name, several of the Warwickshire players shake his hand. Some of these men, like Rikki Clarke, have been around, and they know that they have seen something which speaks of high promise for the future.
Nothing, though, is ever assured. Should Abell think that it is, he need only ask his erstwhile partner James Hildreth, who knows all about the way in which early promise and recognition can slip through the fingers before you really know what has happened.
Like everyone else who has ever batted for a living, Abell faces an uncertain future. There will be many cheap dismissals at the hands of skilled bowlers and errant umpires, but there will also be times, such as yesterday, when almost everything goes right.
This was only the start.
I wrote about it here.
The people around my table in the Long Room that evening included Mike Selvey (who was frustratingly out of easy conversational reach) and the ageless Wisden Middlesex correspondent and sometime radio commentator Norman de Mesquita, who is now, sadly, no longer with us.
At the far end of the table was a young man from Taunton, sitting with his father. Tom Abell, who was there to receive the Schools' Cricketer of the Year award, was polite and quietly impressive company. After he'd received his leather-bound Wisden from David Gower the talk was of his degree at Exeter University, his ambitions for the future and anecdotes from his father's playing days, which coincided with various teams and players of my own acquaintance. At the end of the evening I advised him to savour the moment, as it was something which, in years to come, he would look back on with affection, even if it didn't seem such a big deal at the time.
Sixteen months later I am at the County Ground at Taunton as Tom Abell makes his debut in first-class cricket for Somerset against Warwickshire. This time there is more distance between us: I am in the Ian Botham Stand and he is on the pitch.
After winning the toss his Somerset team bowls and he fields. He takes two catches, one to remove the centurion Ian Westwood late on the first day, and another to end the Warwickshire first innings, early on the second morning. He performs these duties competently, but it is no more than we should expect from a professional cricketer. A sterner test seems certain to come when he is required to bat, and so it proves. Abell, in at 4, comes to the wicket after Johann Myburgh is dismissed, and Somerset are 55 for 2. As Myburgh is out to the last ball of an over from Richard Jones, Abell has the temporary sanctuary of the non-striker's end to collect his thoughts, but any reverie he experiences is abruptly shattered as Nick Compton edges the second ball of the next over, bowled by Oliver Hannon-Dalby, into his stumps. Somerset are 55 for 3, and both batsmen are yet to face a ball. One of them, Tom Abell himself, has still to face a ball in first-class cricket.
From here, assisted by the experience of James Hildreth (although, given Hildreth's shaky form, it is hard to discern which is the experienced man and which the rookie), Abell slowly finds his feet, picking up runs on either side of the wicket with nudges and glances and covering up when required, his bat as straight as a die. He receives his fair share of short stuff, but, unlike his senior partner, he is never drawn towards recklessness. He ducks, he weaves and he leaves with the maturity and patience of the old pro that he is not.
As wickets continue to fall, Abell silently and unspokenly mutates into the senior partner. As Alex Barrow, Peter Trego and Craig Overton come to the wicket, he is the one who does the talking, focusing on the uncertainties of the situation and emphasizing the way they should play. When they each depart, he is still there, defending the good balls with efficiency of technique and economy of effort, and dealing with the rare bad ones with the sort of timing which can surprise and unsettle even experienced fielders. An example of this comes when he forces Jeetan Patel towards Jonathan Trott, who is fielding at mid on. As the ball comes towards him, Trott moves slowly, feeling that he has it covered. However, as the ball reaches him it is clear that it has much more pace on it than he first thought and he is forced into a late, scrambling dive. It is too late, though, and the ball is past him and into the boards.
On another occasion, Patel bowls a rare long hop and Abell is quick to abandon his circumspection. His bat comes down somewhere in the hinterland between a square cut and a back foot drive and the ball races to the fence like a shot from a gun. The thought starts to intrude that not only is this uncommonly assured batting for an inexperienced player, it is, in its adaptability and recognition of opportunity, batting of quite high class.
When Lewis Gregory comes to the crease the tempo rises, and Abell finds himself drawn in. In part this is an unconscious effect of the freedom and aggression of Gregory's strokeplay, but also the fact that Abell has realized that making runs in professional cricket is something he can do. They put on 84 in an hour, saving the follow-on, before Gregory is caught in the deep attempting another pull into the crowd. Soon after, the players leave the field because of bad light with Abell on 73, but within a short time they are back and Abell, with the impassive maturity he has shown throughout his four hours at the crease, continues to collect runs, assisted by the flamboyance of Alphonso Thomas and George Dockrell.
Once Abell reaches the nineties it is possible to sense the tension among the crowd, which, as the autumnal evening closes in, barely numbers three figures. To the left of where we are sitting, in the Old Pavilion, which has just weeks to go before demolition, there is a hill named after Harold Gimblett, a local folk-hero and the last Somerset-born batsman to make a century in his first innings in the County Championship.
Just as people are starting to believe, Abell turns a ball from Patel into the hands of William Porterfield at short midwicket. Abell has spent the afternoon dealing easily with such deliveries, but perhaps this one has stopped a little on him, or perhaps he has gone a little hard at the ball as the tension of the approaching landmark starts to weigh on his mind.
We will never know. As Abell, the last man to be dismissed in Somerset's first innings, walks towards the Andy Caddick Pavilion with 95 to his name, several of the Warwickshire players shake his hand. Some of these men, like Rikki Clarke, have been around, and they know that they have seen something which speaks of high promise for the future.
Nothing, though, is ever assured. Should Abell think that it is, he need only ask his erstwhile partner James Hildreth, who knows all about the way in which early promise and recognition can slip through the fingers before you really know what has happened.
Like everyone else who has ever batted for a living, Abell faces an uncertain future. There will be many cheap dismissals at the hands of skilled bowlers and errant umpires, but there will also be times, such as yesterday, when almost everything goes right.
This was only the start.
31.7.14
Retirement
The old shibboleth which has it that there are only two certainties in life - death and taxes - missed one out. Or at least one that presents itself at the end of most working lives.
Retirement.
In cricket, as in most professional sports, retirement comes early. A cricketer departs the stage just as his peers are getting into their stride; he is required to pick up the pieces of his life - often an abruptly terminated adolescence - at just the time his school and university mates will be sorting theirs out.
Professional sport gives you the chance to do many things which most people will rarely, if ever, experience: you can earn your living - and by most people's standards it is a very good living - by doing something you love and would happily do for nothing; you will have regular opportunities to perform in front of crowds of people who will hang on your every action and applaud, even idolise, you if you do what you do well; you can travel the world (or at least the United Kingdom) and stay in the best hotels, with someone else picking up the tab. And in most cases you will do all this before you are thirty-five years old.
The payback is that you then have to start living your life all over again in the knowledge that nothing you do again will ever be so much fun.
In cricket, like life, retirements come and go. Some, such as that of Jacques Kallis, attract world-wide attention. Others, such as that of David John Grimwood Sales, who also announced his retirement this week, resonate a little less. Unless you've followed county cricket closely these past twenty years or so you may not have heard of David Sales. I have, though, and these are some fragments of his story.
David Sales grew up in Surrey. In his very early, and so talented, years, it seemed obvious that he would become a Brown Cap, but something I once knew about but which is now lost in the mists of time, went wrong, and he fetched up at Northampton. At Wantage Road. A venue never prominent in an England selector's diary, then or now. But it fitted Sales, and things started to happen.
70 not out in a Sunday League game at Chelmsford, aged 16, 1994. 210 not out in a championship match at Kidderminster, aged 18, 1996. 303 not out on his home ground, aged 21, 1999. 276, again at Northampton, in the first home championship match of 2000.
Sales could bat. This much was obvious, but, for all the scores, and despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that in these years England were a poor, turbulent, often rudderless side, he never seemed to be talked about too much as a potential international. Consistency was a problem, but what really set him back was the knee injury he suffered while playing beach volleyball on the England A tour of the West Indies in early 2001. It cost him a tour, and the whole of the following season, at a time in his career, anyone's career, when lost momentum can do terrible damage. He returned in 2002 but a season's average of 25 saw him fall back into the pack. Despite 7000 runs at 50 over the next six English seasons, double centuries scattered around like confetti on a windy day, he never left it.
In these lost years Wantage Road was a long way from my regular beat too and Northants never seemed to be on TV very much, so, in my mind's eye Sales remained an uncomplicated seventeen year-old in an England under-19 shirt on a clear blue day at Taunton in the summer of 1995, holding his own as he vied for attention with the likes of Trescothick, Flintoff and Alex Tudor, who charged in from the Old Pavilion End like our very own Walsh or Ambrose. In the seasons afterwards he often felt like a mirage: that player who once promised so much but who seemed destined to play his days out under leaden skies in soulless midlands towns. No matter how many runs he made, the vacancies weren't there, or, if they were, the selectors weren't looking in his direction.
Sales returned to my consciousness when he made a fine 70 against Middlesex at Southgate in a 40 over play-off game, late in the 2007 season. This was the Sales of legend: uncomplicated, technically sound, powerful and indefinably classy. But it wasn't enough. It never would be.
As with most players who were never given the opportunity to sample even the briefest taste of the international game, it's impossible to define or classify the reasons why with any certainty. A lack of form here, a lack of opportunity there. Injuries. Where they played. Everyone knows that historically it's been harder to get noticed by the selectors if you play for one of a number of counties. Broadly speaking these are those on the western fringes of the English first-class game - Glamorgan, Gloucestershire, Somerset - and the unfashionable counties of the East Midlands - Leicestershire, Derbyshire, Northamptonshire.
Ask Don Shepherd, ask Alan Jones, ask Peter Trego, ask David Sales.
Other counties have players like this too. Once upon a time Hampshire had Peter Sainsbury; in Sales' own era Lancashire have had Glen Chapple.
If Sales, as he once seemed destined to, had spent his career at The Oval, he would probably have played for England.
Success at the highest level, or even having the chance to show what you can do, isn't everything, though. The county game, with its cultural richness, its history and its folklore, is a pretty good arena in which to spend the short years between apprenticeship and retirement.
There was a time when everything about David Sales - the prodigy's upbringing, the irresistible strokeplay and the massive scores - suggested that he would grace Test cricket. That he never did does not diminish Test cricket and it does not diminish him.
As he said this week: 'I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my career...and whilst disappointed that I didn’t play at the very highest level, I will look back with pride at my achievements.'
Retirement.
In cricket, as in most professional sports, retirement comes early. A cricketer departs the stage just as his peers are getting into their stride; he is required to pick up the pieces of his life - often an abruptly terminated adolescence - at just the time his school and university mates will be sorting theirs out.
Professional sport gives you the chance to do many things which most people will rarely, if ever, experience: you can earn your living - and by most people's standards it is a very good living - by doing something you love and would happily do for nothing; you will have regular opportunities to perform in front of crowds of people who will hang on your every action and applaud, even idolise, you if you do what you do well; you can travel the world (or at least the United Kingdom) and stay in the best hotels, with someone else picking up the tab. And in most cases you will do all this before you are thirty-five years old.
The payback is that you then have to start living your life all over again in the knowledge that nothing you do again will ever be so much fun.
In cricket, like life, retirements come and go. Some, such as that of Jacques Kallis, attract world-wide attention. Others, such as that of David John Grimwood Sales, who also announced his retirement this week, resonate a little less. Unless you've followed county cricket closely these past twenty years or so you may not have heard of David Sales. I have, though, and these are some fragments of his story.
David Sales grew up in Surrey. In his very early, and so talented, years, it seemed obvious that he would become a Brown Cap, but something I once knew about but which is now lost in the mists of time, went wrong, and he fetched up at Northampton. At Wantage Road. A venue never prominent in an England selector's diary, then or now. But it fitted Sales, and things started to happen.
70 not out in a Sunday League game at Chelmsford, aged 16, 1994. 210 not out in a championship match at Kidderminster, aged 18, 1996. 303 not out on his home ground, aged 21, 1999. 276, again at Northampton, in the first home championship match of 2000.
Sales could bat. This much was obvious, but, for all the scores, and despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that in these years England were a poor, turbulent, often rudderless side, he never seemed to be talked about too much as a potential international. Consistency was a problem, but what really set him back was the knee injury he suffered while playing beach volleyball on the England A tour of the West Indies in early 2001. It cost him a tour, and the whole of the following season, at a time in his career, anyone's career, when lost momentum can do terrible damage. He returned in 2002 but a season's average of 25 saw him fall back into the pack. Despite 7000 runs at 50 over the next six English seasons, double centuries scattered around like confetti on a windy day, he never left it.
In these lost years Wantage Road was a long way from my regular beat too and Northants never seemed to be on TV very much, so, in my mind's eye Sales remained an uncomplicated seventeen year-old in an England under-19 shirt on a clear blue day at Taunton in the summer of 1995, holding his own as he vied for attention with the likes of Trescothick, Flintoff and Alex Tudor, who charged in from the Old Pavilion End like our very own Walsh or Ambrose. In the seasons afterwards he often felt like a mirage: that player who once promised so much but who seemed destined to play his days out under leaden skies in soulless midlands towns. No matter how many runs he made, the vacancies weren't there, or, if they were, the selectors weren't looking in his direction.
Sales returned to my consciousness when he made a fine 70 against Middlesex at Southgate in a 40 over play-off game, late in the 2007 season. This was the Sales of legend: uncomplicated, technically sound, powerful and indefinably classy. But it wasn't enough. It never would be.
As with most players who were never given the opportunity to sample even the briefest taste of the international game, it's impossible to define or classify the reasons why with any certainty. A lack of form here, a lack of opportunity there. Injuries. Where they played. Everyone knows that historically it's been harder to get noticed by the selectors if you play for one of a number of counties. Broadly speaking these are those on the western fringes of the English first-class game - Glamorgan, Gloucestershire, Somerset - and the unfashionable counties of the East Midlands - Leicestershire, Derbyshire, Northamptonshire.
Ask Don Shepherd, ask Alan Jones, ask Peter Trego, ask David Sales.
Other counties have players like this too. Once upon a time Hampshire had Peter Sainsbury; in Sales' own era Lancashire have had Glen Chapple.
If Sales, as he once seemed destined to, had spent his career at The Oval, he would probably have played for England.
Success at the highest level, or even having the chance to show what you can do, isn't everything, though. The county game, with its cultural richness, its history and its folklore, is a pretty good arena in which to spend the short years between apprenticeship and retirement.
There was a time when everything about David Sales - the prodigy's upbringing, the irresistible strokeplay and the massive scores - suggested that he would grace Test cricket. That he never did does not diminish Test cricket and it does not diminish him.
As he said this week: 'I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my career...and whilst disappointed that I didn’t play at the very highest level, I will look back with pride at my achievements.'
22.7.14
Antidote to Madness
When people make definitive statements about places, or about books, or about people, there is always room for doubt, for contrary opinion.
Some you take, others you leave. Some you agree with, others you dismiss.
When people, as people often do, say that Lord's is 'the greatest cricket ground in the world', I tend to agree (Although that other familiar cliché 'the Home of Cricket' I'm less sure about. The Home of Cricket these days surely lies, literally or metaphorically, somewhere in India.).
I've been going to Lord's since the summer when Sunny Gavaskar batted through sixty overs for 36 not out. Today the ground, and the game, and the Indian cricket psyche, are very different. But they still fascinate and compel.
Friday 18th July 2014 is the hottest day of the British year. The mercury is in the low thirties - Lord's is a Fahrenheit sort of place, you feel, but these twenty-first century days Celsius is king - and, in the early afternoon, with the sky a deep and bottomless shade of blue, the fading vapour trails left by soaring aircraft traverse the sky. They, and the outside world they represent, seem abstract and separate, as they always do when cricket, even slow Test cricket, captures the attention.
The game is an antidote to the madness of the world.
Late the previous afternoon the news comes via Twitter that a civil airliner has been blown out of the sky over the Ukraine, probably by a ground-to-air missile. Then there is Gaza, where defenceless people are killed on a daily basis. Syria, where much the same thing has been happening for more than three years, has been temporarily relegated from the front pages, but it will, as surely as night follows day, return. These are examples of the lunatic chaos of a world in which millions of people have more important things on their mind - simple survival will do - than the outcome of a bat and ball game.
At Lord's, though, things are different, especially in the old Victorian pavilion and the adjacent Warner Stand. The talk is of the lives of sons, of daughters, of former pupils, of the price of London property, which, it seems, is rising faster than the shade temperature. In certain conversations there are deaths and serious, painful injuries, but these are the result of leisure time accidents, suffered while hiking, or skiing, or playing rugby; not of unavoidable exposure to terrorism or war.
During the hour before lunch in the Warner Stand the incessant chatter is punctuated by the sound of corks being forcibly expelled from champagne bottles. Such is their velocity, many of these end up on the beautifully manicured turf, which can often look more like a carpet than something composed of living, growing, grass. And, on a Sunday, when the pavilion fills with a younger class of member, with their pristine yellow passes and their sharp dress sense, the prevailing sensation for the older member is that of a friendless outsider at a public school reunion.
Lord's, with its hotchpotch of ancient and modern buildings, is a very different place from virtually any other cricket ground in the world. And, despite the heat, for the Indian players, brought up on the parched dustbowls of Uttar Pradesh or the cramped suburban fields of Greater Mumbai, that difference must seem especially pronounced.
But it is also welcome and inspirational. At different points in a match which remains even and compellingly contested until lunch on the last day, we are treated to the beautiful yet combative neatness of the Mumbaikar Ajinkya Rahane, and the versatility of Uttar Pradesh's Bhuvneshwar Kumar, a man who knows he can bowl but is finding out at international level that he also has an unsuspected gift for batting. Ishant Sharma, a man who has always looked to have the potential to take on the world but has rarely hinted at consistency, supplies the coup de grâce.
On the English side there are only poignancies and uncertainties and regrets. As the match hurtles to its conclusion on Monday afternoon, Matt Prior and Joe Root are both dismissed pulling the ball to deep fielders placed specifically for such errant shots. It is a kind of collective madness, based on the confidence deficit which repeated failure to win brings, and the uncertainty of the confused mind, brought low by injury and defeat.
As he leaves the field and walks slowly through the Long Room, Prior holds his head high. Although he surely knows, as we do, that not only has he played a poor shot but that it may be the last thing he ever does in an England shirt, he shows little remorse. He is the old warrior leaving the stage. Root, by contrast, can barely drag himself off the field, such is his obvious regret. For all his runs, Root is still a young pro who has yet to learn to guard his emotions. He wears his heart on his sleeve.
A short while later, with the game over and Alastair Cook, a drowning man clinging desperately to a sinking ship, answering Michael Atherton's questions with the same bland assurances we have heard so often before, the eye turns to Paul Downton, standing on his own, close to the pavilion gate. He looks around him with unfeigned seriousness, but you sense that he isn't seeing or hearing much.
He is wondering what on earth he has got himself into.
Some you take, others you leave. Some you agree with, others you dismiss.
When people, as people often do, say that Lord's is 'the greatest cricket ground in the world', I tend to agree (Although that other familiar cliché 'the Home of Cricket' I'm less sure about. The Home of Cricket these days surely lies, literally or metaphorically, somewhere in India.).
I've been going to Lord's since the summer when Sunny Gavaskar batted through sixty overs for 36 not out. Today the ground, and the game, and the Indian cricket psyche, are very different. But they still fascinate and compel.
Friday 18th July 2014 is the hottest day of the British year. The mercury is in the low thirties - Lord's is a Fahrenheit sort of place, you feel, but these twenty-first century days Celsius is king - and, in the early afternoon, with the sky a deep and bottomless shade of blue, the fading vapour trails left by soaring aircraft traverse the sky. They, and the outside world they represent, seem abstract and separate, as they always do when cricket, even slow Test cricket, captures the attention.
The game is an antidote to the madness of the world.
Late the previous afternoon the news comes via Twitter that a civil airliner has been blown out of the sky over the Ukraine, probably by a ground-to-air missile. Then there is Gaza, where defenceless people are killed on a daily basis. Syria, where much the same thing has been happening for more than three years, has been temporarily relegated from the front pages, but it will, as surely as night follows day, return. These are examples of the lunatic chaos of a world in which millions of people have more important things on their mind - simple survival will do - than the outcome of a bat and ball game.
At Lord's, though, things are different, especially in the old Victorian pavilion and the adjacent Warner Stand. The talk is of the lives of sons, of daughters, of former pupils, of the price of London property, which, it seems, is rising faster than the shade temperature. In certain conversations there are deaths and serious, painful injuries, but these are the result of leisure time accidents, suffered while hiking, or skiing, or playing rugby; not of unavoidable exposure to terrorism or war.
During the hour before lunch in the Warner Stand the incessant chatter is punctuated by the sound of corks being forcibly expelled from champagne bottles. Such is their velocity, many of these end up on the beautifully manicured turf, which can often look more like a carpet than something composed of living, growing, grass. And, on a Sunday, when the pavilion fills with a younger class of member, with their pristine yellow passes and their sharp dress sense, the prevailing sensation for the older member is that of a friendless outsider at a public school reunion.
Lord's, with its hotchpotch of ancient and modern buildings, is a very different place from virtually any other cricket ground in the world. And, despite the heat, for the Indian players, brought up on the parched dustbowls of Uttar Pradesh or the cramped suburban fields of Greater Mumbai, that difference must seem especially pronounced.
But it is also welcome and inspirational. At different points in a match which remains even and compellingly contested until lunch on the last day, we are treated to the beautiful yet combative neatness of the Mumbaikar Ajinkya Rahane, and the versatility of Uttar Pradesh's Bhuvneshwar Kumar, a man who knows he can bowl but is finding out at international level that he also has an unsuspected gift for batting. Ishant Sharma, a man who has always looked to have the potential to take on the world but has rarely hinted at consistency, supplies the coup de grâce.
On the English side there are only poignancies and uncertainties and regrets. As the match hurtles to its conclusion on Monday afternoon, Matt Prior and Joe Root are both dismissed pulling the ball to deep fielders placed specifically for such errant shots. It is a kind of collective madness, based on the confidence deficit which repeated failure to win brings, and the uncertainty of the confused mind, brought low by injury and defeat.
As he leaves the field and walks slowly through the Long Room, Prior holds his head high. Although he surely knows, as we do, that not only has he played a poor shot but that it may be the last thing he ever does in an England shirt, he shows little remorse. He is the old warrior leaving the stage. Root, by contrast, can barely drag himself off the field, such is his obvious regret. For all his runs, Root is still a young pro who has yet to learn to guard his emotions. He wears his heart on his sleeve.
A short while later, with the game over and Alastair Cook, a drowning man clinging desperately to a sinking ship, answering Michael Atherton's questions with the same bland assurances we have heard so often before, the eye turns to Paul Downton, standing on his own, close to the pavilion gate. He looks around him with unfeigned seriousness, but you sense that he isn't seeing or hearing much.
He is wondering what on earth he has got himself into.
5.7.14
Local Boy Made Good
I wrote this last week for the Somerset supporters' site The Incider, where it appeared under the title 'Jos Comes Home'.
It is Sunday morning on the County Ground in Taunton, in England's lush south-west. The sky is an anaemic shade of grey, and, although the weather forecast is good, light rain begins to fall. As it does, the players of Somerset and Lancashire go through the elaborate warm-up routines which distinguish the modern professional cricketer from his predecessors. Some run after a football as a means of shedding Saturday night's sleep from their eyes, while others work on specific skills. They bat, they bowl, they catch, they field.
As the rain begins to get heavier, the players drift without purpose towards the Andy Caddick Pavilion. It is starting to look as though play will not start on time, and there seems little need to go through the motions. It is time for rest and contemplation. The toss, and play, will come later.
A young man with light brown hair, sharp, expressive eyes and the lithe, muscular build of the natural athlete moves among the Somerset players. His white T-shirt, bearing a time-honoured red rose, distinguishes him from his former colleagues. A glance here, a chat there, a hug, followed by a roar of laughter, somewhere else. This, if ever there was, is a local boy made good.
When Jos Buttler left Somerset to play for Lancashire at the end of the 2013 season, there was no animosity. Everyone, from the players who shared his hopes, fears and triumphs at the closest of quarters, to the rootless drinkers who occupy the Old Pavilion bar from start to stumps every day, knew that it was just business. In time, he would be back, and he would be welcomed. This is that time.
Eventually the rain clears and the toss is made. Buttler's county captain, Glen Chapple, chooses to bat. Chapple has pounded the county beat with unrecognized distinction since Buttler was a young child, and he grew into the professional game at a time when Taunton pitches were synonymous with runs.
He chooses to bat.
Times have changed, though, and modern Taunton pitches offer help to bowlers who know what to do. The Somerset attack is aware of this, and all of them, from the ageing but eternally competitive Alfonso Thomas, through the coolly flamboyant Peter Trego, to the young Devonian confrères Lewis Gregory and Craig Overton, make the ball bounce and move. Batting is difficult.
Mid-afternoon, 47 overs gone, Steven Croft plays a poorly-judged slash at a ball from the young Irish spinner George Dockrell and is caught behind It is time for Buttler, batting at six, to come to the crease.
The Taunton crowd is knowledgeable and loyal. It is customary for Somerset players to be greeted with warm applause but this courtesy does not always extend to the opposition.
When Buttler emerges on to the playing surface, things are different. The applause builds in rhythm and volume to the point where the announcement of his name is hard to hear. But it is, of course, unnecessary. Everyone here knows who Jos Buttler is, and what he has done.
For a brief moment there is the feeling that Buttler might, like Bradman in 1948, be applauded all the way to the middle, but, as he reaches the edge of the square and confers with Paul Horton, who has been batting since the start of the innings, the applause begins to die away. Normality reintrudes, but the thought occurs that Buttler, although he is simply a young man doing his job, would need to have a heart of stone not to have been moved by his reception.
Buttler's innings is an uneasy affair. As ever, he wants to dominate, but he is forced on to the defensive by the sluggishness of the pitch and the accuracy of his former team-mates. There are hints of his characteristic fluency of timing, but he finds the fielder too often, and even his two sixes are not quite struck with his usual robust clarity. At one point Thomas makes as if to Mankad Buttler, before embracing him to show that he wasn't serious. The crowd laughs along, but Buttler doesn't crack a smile. He was unhappy about what happened to him at Edgbaston and he is well aware that he needs to concentrate harder, both when backing up and when facing. This is especially true today, but, when he has made 18, Gregory gets one through his defence and shatters his stumps. The cheers of the crowd are even louder than the applause he received on the way to the wicket.
Jos Buttler knows what it is to walk through the Long Room at Lord's with the cheers of the crowd ringing in his ears, and, before he is done with the game, he will know what it is to be applauded from the field at many another of the world's great arenas. For all his quietly-spoken modesty he is still at an age where action and achievement are everything and nostalgic reflection is for the future. Sport as a job demands that.
However, we that have been around for longer and have never had to depend on the bounce of a ball for our living can reflect on the significance of what we have seen. It has been a demonstration of the common humanity which, particularly at the heart of the county game, still suffuses cricket.
One day Jos Buttler will do the same.
It is Sunday morning on the County Ground in Taunton, in England's lush south-west. The sky is an anaemic shade of grey, and, although the weather forecast is good, light rain begins to fall. As it does, the players of Somerset and Lancashire go through the elaborate warm-up routines which distinguish the modern professional cricketer from his predecessors. Some run after a football as a means of shedding Saturday night's sleep from their eyes, while others work on specific skills. They bat, they bowl, they catch, they field.
As the rain begins to get heavier, the players drift without purpose towards the Andy Caddick Pavilion. It is starting to look as though play will not start on time, and there seems little need to go through the motions. It is time for rest and contemplation. The toss, and play, will come later.
A young man with light brown hair, sharp, expressive eyes and the lithe, muscular build of the natural athlete moves among the Somerset players. His white T-shirt, bearing a time-honoured red rose, distinguishes him from his former colleagues. A glance here, a chat there, a hug, followed by a roar of laughter, somewhere else. This, if ever there was, is a local boy made good.
When Jos Buttler left Somerset to play for Lancashire at the end of the 2013 season, there was no animosity. Everyone, from the players who shared his hopes, fears and triumphs at the closest of quarters, to the rootless drinkers who occupy the Old Pavilion bar from start to stumps every day, knew that it was just business. In time, he would be back, and he would be welcomed. This is that time.
Eventually the rain clears and the toss is made. Buttler's county captain, Glen Chapple, chooses to bat. Chapple has pounded the county beat with unrecognized distinction since Buttler was a young child, and he grew into the professional game at a time when Taunton pitches were synonymous with runs.
He chooses to bat.
Times have changed, though, and modern Taunton pitches offer help to bowlers who know what to do. The Somerset attack is aware of this, and all of them, from the ageing but eternally competitive Alfonso Thomas, through the coolly flamboyant Peter Trego, to the young Devonian confrères Lewis Gregory and Craig Overton, make the ball bounce and move. Batting is difficult.
Mid-afternoon, 47 overs gone, Steven Croft plays a poorly-judged slash at a ball from the young Irish spinner George Dockrell and is caught behind It is time for Buttler, batting at six, to come to the crease.
The Taunton crowd is knowledgeable and loyal. It is customary for Somerset players to be greeted with warm applause but this courtesy does not always extend to the opposition.
When Buttler emerges on to the playing surface, things are different. The applause builds in rhythm and volume to the point where the announcement of his name is hard to hear. But it is, of course, unnecessary. Everyone here knows who Jos Buttler is, and what he has done.
For a brief moment there is the feeling that Buttler might, like Bradman in 1948, be applauded all the way to the middle, but, as he reaches the edge of the square and confers with Paul Horton, who has been batting since the start of the innings, the applause begins to die away. Normality reintrudes, but the thought occurs that Buttler, although he is simply a young man doing his job, would need to have a heart of stone not to have been moved by his reception.
Buttler's innings is an uneasy affair. As ever, he wants to dominate, but he is forced on to the defensive by the sluggishness of the pitch and the accuracy of his former team-mates. There are hints of his characteristic fluency of timing, but he finds the fielder too often, and even his two sixes are not quite struck with his usual robust clarity. At one point Thomas makes as if to Mankad Buttler, before embracing him to show that he wasn't serious. The crowd laughs along, but Buttler doesn't crack a smile. He was unhappy about what happened to him at Edgbaston and he is well aware that he needs to concentrate harder, both when backing up and when facing. This is especially true today, but, when he has made 18, Gregory gets one through his defence and shatters his stumps. The cheers of the crowd are even louder than the applause he received on the way to the wicket.
Jos Buttler knows what it is to walk through the Long Room at Lord's with the cheers of the crowd ringing in his ears, and, before he is done with the game, he will know what it is to be applauded from the field at many another of the world's great arenas. For all his quietly-spoken modesty he is still at an age where action and achievement are everything and nostalgic reflection is for the future. Sport as a job demands that.
However, we that have been around for longer and have never had to depend on the bounce of a ball for our living can reflect on the significance of what we have seen. It has been a demonstration of the common humanity which, particularly at the heart of the county game, still suffuses cricket.
One day Jos Buttler will do the same.
22.6.14
A Very English Batsman
Despite his Australian upbringing (and the fact that he was crassly written off as a 'poor man's Nick Compton' by Bob Willis after his first Test appearance), Sam Robson cuts a figure which seems far from out of place at the top of the English order, with the result that he already radiates a curious sense of belonging.
With his pale, pinched features, his diffident seriousness, his hunched, mildly idiosyncratic, ball-sniffing method, and his steadiness of tempo, Robson seems a world away from the popular notion - fed with relish these past couple of years by another Sydneysider - of the gum-chewing, Baggy Green wearing, top-order slasher, bristling with confrontational aggression. If you want to fall back on Aussie stereotypes from a dimmer past, years before Robson was even a glimmer in his now well-recognized father's eye, he's a good deal more Bill Lawry than Keith Stackpole, let alone David Warner. He bats as if he was brought up on the capricious surfaces of his adopted county, with their boundary roads and their exhaust infused atmospheres, rather than the true surfaces of the Australian world city where he grew up.
In this he fits. English cricket has always subsisted on an underlying conservatism of method, a mistrust of the unusual, a reluctance to embrace and celebrate genius. With Pietersen - a foreign-born and raised player whose contradictory nature and self-celebrated brilliance always ran counter to this - cast to the winds, there is a sense that, even though three of its newest recruits were born abroad, that the English side is retreating towards that which it knows best and feels most comfortable with. This may not, of course, be an entirely good thing.
Although sterner tests await, Gary Ballance has looked well-organised and temperamentally sound at three, replicating much of Jonathan Trott's calmness and resilience without his obsessive ritualism and sense of restrained, scowling anxiety, while Moeen Ali has exuded languid class at six, although each of his dismissals so far has raised questions. Chris Jordan has the air of a gifted and versatile operator, if one who still doesn't quite grasp the limitations of his technique or the limits of his potential. Joe Root, back in the side after a year of being messed around, accumulates with the unpretentiousness assurance of one who, for all his lack of distinctive elegance, knows that he can perform at the highest level and isn't afraid of being seen to enjoy the experience.
And then there is Robson's more experienced opening partner. With Cook we have been this way before, and, in the end, he always comes good. And, on account of his much-derided captaincy, the end for him will be further away than for many others, which, in its turn, reinforces the impression of a team which is rebuilding by retreating to the mode which it knows best, new players from around the globe or not.
This grates a little. England may be more stable sans KP and ultimately - although one's hunch is that it will be a long time - they may become as successful as they were with him. But it will also be a long time before they will excite in the same way.
For all that Robson appears to fit his role like a glove, he will never set many pulses racing. For that we may have to wait in hope for a player who was born in the county which Robson has adopted.
But Alex Hales still isn't deemed good enough for England's fifty over side, which, if you stop to think about it, says quite a lot.
With his pale, pinched features, his diffident seriousness, his hunched, mildly idiosyncratic, ball-sniffing method, and his steadiness of tempo, Robson seems a world away from the popular notion - fed with relish these past couple of years by another Sydneysider - of the gum-chewing, Baggy Green wearing, top-order slasher, bristling with confrontational aggression. If you want to fall back on Aussie stereotypes from a dimmer past, years before Robson was even a glimmer in his now well-recognized father's eye, he's a good deal more Bill Lawry than Keith Stackpole, let alone David Warner. He bats as if he was brought up on the capricious surfaces of his adopted county, with their boundary roads and their exhaust infused atmospheres, rather than the true surfaces of the Australian world city where he grew up.
In this he fits. English cricket has always subsisted on an underlying conservatism of method, a mistrust of the unusual, a reluctance to embrace and celebrate genius. With Pietersen - a foreign-born and raised player whose contradictory nature and self-celebrated brilliance always ran counter to this - cast to the winds, there is a sense that, even though three of its newest recruits were born abroad, that the English side is retreating towards that which it knows best and feels most comfortable with. This may not, of course, be an entirely good thing.
Although sterner tests await, Gary Ballance has looked well-organised and temperamentally sound at three, replicating much of Jonathan Trott's calmness and resilience without his obsessive ritualism and sense of restrained, scowling anxiety, while Moeen Ali has exuded languid class at six, although each of his dismissals so far has raised questions. Chris Jordan has the air of a gifted and versatile operator, if one who still doesn't quite grasp the limitations of his technique or the limits of his potential. Joe Root, back in the side after a year of being messed around, accumulates with the unpretentiousness assurance of one who, for all his lack of distinctive elegance, knows that he can perform at the highest level and isn't afraid of being seen to enjoy the experience.
And then there is Robson's more experienced opening partner. With Cook we have been this way before, and, in the end, he always comes good. And, on account of his much-derided captaincy, the end for him will be further away than for many others, which, in its turn, reinforces the impression of a team which is rebuilding by retreating to the mode which it knows best, new players from around the globe or not.
This grates a little. England may be more stable sans KP and ultimately - although one's hunch is that it will be a long time - they may become as successful as they were with him. But it will also be a long time before they will excite in the same way.
For all that Robson appears to fit his role like a glove, he will never set many pulses racing. For that we may have to wait in hope for a player who was born in the county which Robson has adopted.
But Alex Hales still isn't deemed good enough for England's fifty over side, which, if you stop to think about it, says quite a lot.
26.4.14
Wisden
I recently wrote a review of the 2014 Wisden for John Fuller's excellent Cricket Yorkshire website.
For anyone who didn't see it there, here it is:
There is a conception of the world – chiefly a certain kind of south of England, middle-class conception of the world, but a conception of the world nonetheless – which tells us that one of the first signs of the coming of spring in England is the publication of a squat hardback book with a chocolate cover, housed in a yellow dust jacket.
I'm not sure that this is true any more, if indeed it ever was. Over its many years on the bookshelves of the world, Wisden has been admired, it has been revered, it has increasingly been fetishised. It has even, in some cases, been read. However, when all has been said, it is simply a book about cricket.
Wisden's chief virtue, though, in both physical and psychological terms, is as a source of stability in a changing world. Since Wisden first appeared in 1864 (with its scorecards, of course, but also with its rules of Knur and Spell, and its concordance of the canals of Britain and Ireland, and its lists of the winners of classic horse races), the game of cricket has evolved through the legalisation of overarm bowling, the development of Test cricket, Bodyline, the World Cup, and, most recently and probably most significantly, Twenty20. It is easy to know when these things happened, because it is in Wisden (pages 1529 to 1532, since you ask).
The world has moved on too. Global wars have come and gone and technology has burgeoned to a degree which old John Wisden, sitting in his shop near Leicester Square stroking his whiskers, could only have dreamed of: photography, telephones, moving pictures, ultimately television and, most recently and probably most significantly, the World Wide Web.
The contemporary world of cricket is circumscribed by many of these things. Wherever you look it is on television, though you may have to pay extra to watch it. Where it is played live, people photograph it, they film it, they write about it. Increasingly this is not for newspapers; it is for websites and for blogs, or, in a more abbreviated form, on Twitter.
This is the world into which Wisden emerges every April. Because of people's awareness of the way in which the world has changed, its annual appearance is increasingly seen as a test; a test of format, a test of style, a test of relevance.
How, then, does Wisden shape up?
Over recent years, especially under the editorship of Lawrence Booth, Wisden has changed. In years gone by, while there were always feature articles in Wisden, the writing was rarely as good as it is now, and its primary function was at least as much as a document of record – history, statistics, laws – as a mirror on the world game. Aspects of it were absurdly cumbersome and archaic – until quite recently, its coverage of overseas cricket was a year behind – but now, largely thanks to Booth and his predecessors Scyld Berry and Matthew Engel, it occupies a distinctively independent niche, somewhere between cricket's traditional media arena of newspapers, magazines and ghosted autobiographies, and the wide world of the Web, with all its opportunities, triumphs and flaws. Of course, the statistics and the history are still there, but the real strengths of modern Wisden lie in the quality of its writing and its images, and the pungency of its comment.
Booth is a skilled, and, from personal experience, distinctively courteous editor, but he is also a sharp and distinguished writer. In his editor's notes, he takes aim at the way in which India, England and Australia conspired in early 2014 to alter the ICC's governance structures to ensure that they would receive a larger share of international cricket's income. It is obvious that Booth views the much maligned BCCI as the leading villains of the piece, but the smaller boards fail to escape censure for their response to the proposals and the ICC, of course, gets it in the neck. Booth's criticism focuses on its vacillation over the semi-mythical World Test Championship – if you ever see this take place, let me know – and what it says about the unhealthy relationship between world cricket's governing body and that of the country in which the game is most popular. Further on in the book, cricket's greatest contemporary writer, Gideon Haigh, delves deeper into the 'carve-up of world cricket' with characteristically forensic scepticism. In the scepticism at least, as Haigh makes clear, he is not alone. With admirable balance, Wisden allows Giles Clarke right of reply; he puts the ICC's side of the case well, but ultimately fails to convince.
We will hear much more about this.
Elsewhere in his notes, Booth broadly concurs with the England management's decision to terminate Kevin Pietersen's tenure in the England team, dutifully covers England's era-defining defeat in Australia and pays tribute to Andy Flower and the man who, perhaps more than any other, ultimately did for him and his team, Mitchell Johnson. To lighten the gloom (from the viewpoint of an England supporter), the achievements of England's women's team, twice Ashes winners over the past year, are given their due, and Booth pays a short but sweet tribute to the departed Sachin Tendulkar, while politely acknowledging his doubts about the manner and location of his departure. The continued absence of Test cricket from terrestrial television in Britain is also mentioned. And, quite rightly in my view, not in an approving way.
The rest of the book's Comment section contains a range of contributions which, while all interesting and well-written, do not quite match the standard of some of the landmark articles which Wisden has carried in recent years such as Christian Ryan's truly remarkable Jeff Thomson is annoyed from 2013, or Peter Gibbs' sublime and resonant memoir of Sydney Barnes (2012).
But this is a matter of personal taste; from this year's book I particularly liked Martin Crowe's Time to smell the roses, which is a timely counterpoint to what might be seen (from the game's fringes, or 'the outer' as Australians used to say) as prevailing professional opinion about sledging. There is little doubt that Crowe's call for cricket to rediscover the virtues of competitiveness without vitriolic personal abuse will receive much approval from those of us who feel that the amount of unnecessary verbal interaction between bowlers, fielders and batsmen has demeaned the game and the reputations of many of its leading protagonists for too many years already. Crowe also, intriguingly, describes Michael Clarke as 'a gentle, misunderstood man'. Well, misunderstood, perhaps.
Sachin Tendulkar is the almanack's cover star, and he is also the subject of a perceptive and finely-crafted tribute by Tunku Varadarajan which pays welcome attention to the man beyond the arena, and a further piece by his former Test match colleague Aakash Chopra, which describes what it was like both to play with him and to mix with him off the field. Tendulkar, as he always does, emerges with shining credit from both, and leaves one with the thought that if more international cricketers had his level of humility the problems described by Crowe would be substantially alleviated.
As anyone reading this will probably know by now, the Five Cricketers of the Year are Shikhar Dhawan, Charlotte Edwards, Ryan Harris, Chris Rogers and Joe Root, while the leading cricketer in the world is named – and it is hard to argue against unvarnished greatness – as Dale Steyn.
This year's five feels like a low-key selection, and, as such, perhaps reflects the fact that the English summer of 2013 wasn't, in strictly cricketing terms, all it was cracked up to be. The (male) Ashes series was disappointingly one-sided and relatively pedestrian, and, unlike many previous years, none of the candidates absolutely demanded inclusion. That said, Dhawan deserves it for his brilliance, Root for achievement and potential, Harris and Rogers for persistence and Edwards for brilliance, achievement and persistence.
Indeed, the selection of Edwards (and a fine feature article by Tanya Aldred) emphasizes another of the virtues of the modern Wisden. It is inclusive, and it is democratic. Another aspect of this is the writing competition, inaugurated by Booth in 2012 in order to open up the possibility of publication in the almanack to a wider range of writers, and won in its second year by Liam Cromar, with a clever Shakespearean take on the old game of hypothetical team selection.
Over recent years Wisden has become notable for the quality of its photographs. This year is no different, even if the monochrome pictures which precede each of the book's sections aren't quite as outstanding as in 2013. An exception to this is the picture of Ricky Ponting, batting for Surrey against Sussex at Arundel, which appears before the section on English domestic cricket. Ponting, with head level and still, awaits the ball in a manner prescribed by any textbook; the majority of the crowd and the umpire watch his every move, knowing they are witnessing the last days of a great player, but far away, on the grass bank to Ponting's leg-side, a solitary spectator stands with his back to the cricket and gazes into the rural distance. It is about the importance of everything and nothing.
Elsewhere there is a range of outstanding pictures of both Ashes series, and the winner and runners-up in the Wisden-MCC photography competition. The winner, by Atul Kamble, shows Tendulkar emerging from the Wankhede Stadium dressing room to resume his final innings in Test cricket. The picture carries echoes of a Renaissance painting, the arms of Tendulkar's worshippers raised as if in supplication (although, in reality, each one holds a digital device), with the man himself bathed in sunlight from the back of the stand as he looks into it to atune his eyes. It captures a singular moment; if it had been taken a split-second earlier or later, it would not be the picture it is. This picture is so astonishingly brilliant that it would be entirely justified to buy Wisden 2014 for it and it alone.
There is a pithy and well-timed appreciation of Graeme Swann by Vic Marks – just in case anyone has forgotten how important he was to England and how difficult he will be to replace – and a moving interview with Mark Boucher about his leaving of the game and his battle to regain the sight in his left eye. If you are a wicketkeeper and you read this, you will never again stand up to the bowling without wearing a helmet.
The obituaries, as always, are beautifully judged and written. I have long held the view that the best way to learn about a cricket personality is to read their Wisden obituary (if they're dead, of course). Nothing changes.
However, more generally, as has been said, these are changing times. Wisden has reacted to them. The laws were dropped in 2012 and the records section is now much nearer to the back of the book than it used to be. While it is usefully arranged, there is little if anything in this which cannot be found online, and it is out of date as soon as it is drafted. To take an especially telling recent example, no mention is made of the re-writing of New Zealand's Test record book by Brendon McCullum and BJ Watling; that will have to wait until next year.
Now in its 152nd year, Wisden endures. It still has its importance and its gravitas and its detail; most importantly it has its writing and its photography. It also, in a way it never used to, has humour. The final page of the book carries an 'index of unusual occurrences' which contains such entries as 'county player injured by medicine ball' and 'batsman dislocates shoulder celebrating hundred'.
Whether you start reading it from the back or the front, Wisden, as a result of skilful adaptation to a changing environment, is still as relevant as it ever was.
Perhaps, after all, it is a sign of spring.
For anyone who didn't see it there, here it is:
There is a conception of the world – chiefly a certain kind of south of England, middle-class conception of the world, but a conception of the world nonetheless – which tells us that one of the first signs of the coming of spring in England is the publication of a squat hardback book with a chocolate cover, housed in a yellow dust jacket.
I'm not sure that this is true any more, if indeed it ever was. Over its many years on the bookshelves of the world, Wisden has been admired, it has been revered, it has increasingly been fetishised. It has even, in some cases, been read. However, when all has been said, it is simply a book about cricket.
Wisden's chief virtue, though, in both physical and psychological terms, is as a source of stability in a changing world. Since Wisden first appeared in 1864 (with its scorecards, of course, but also with its rules of Knur and Spell, and its concordance of the canals of Britain and Ireland, and its lists of the winners of classic horse races), the game of cricket has evolved through the legalisation of overarm bowling, the development of Test cricket, Bodyline, the World Cup, and, most recently and probably most significantly, Twenty20. It is easy to know when these things happened, because it is in Wisden (pages 1529 to 1532, since you ask).
The world has moved on too. Global wars have come and gone and technology has burgeoned to a degree which old John Wisden, sitting in his shop near Leicester Square stroking his whiskers, could only have dreamed of: photography, telephones, moving pictures, ultimately television and, most recently and probably most significantly, the World Wide Web.
The contemporary world of cricket is circumscribed by many of these things. Wherever you look it is on television, though you may have to pay extra to watch it. Where it is played live, people photograph it, they film it, they write about it. Increasingly this is not for newspapers; it is for websites and for blogs, or, in a more abbreviated form, on Twitter.
This is the world into which Wisden emerges every April. Because of people's awareness of the way in which the world has changed, its annual appearance is increasingly seen as a test; a test of format, a test of style, a test of relevance.
How, then, does Wisden shape up?
Over recent years, especially under the editorship of Lawrence Booth, Wisden has changed. In years gone by, while there were always feature articles in Wisden, the writing was rarely as good as it is now, and its primary function was at least as much as a document of record – history, statistics, laws – as a mirror on the world game. Aspects of it were absurdly cumbersome and archaic – until quite recently, its coverage of overseas cricket was a year behind – but now, largely thanks to Booth and his predecessors Scyld Berry and Matthew Engel, it occupies a distinctively independent niche, somewhere between cricket's traditional media arena of newspapers, magazines and ghosted autobiographies, and the wide world of the Web, with all its opportunities, triumphs and flaws. Of course, the statistics and the history are still there, but the real strengths of modern Wisden lie in the quality of its writing and its images, and the pungency of its comment.
Booth is a skilled, and, from personal experience, distinctively courteous editor, but he is also a sharp and distinguished writer. In his editor's notes, he takes aim at the way in which India, England and Australia conspired in early 2014 to alter the ICC's governance structures to ensure that they would receive a larger share of international cricket's income. It is obvious that Booth views the much maligned BCCI as the leading villains of the piece, but the smaller boards fail to escape censure for their response to the proposals and the ICC, of course, gets it in the neck. Booth's criticism focuses on its vacillation over the semi-mythical World Test Championship – if you ever see this take place, let me know – and what it says about the unhealthy relationship between world cricket's governing body and that of the country in which the game is most popular. Further on in the book, cricket's greatest contemporary writer, Gideon Haigh, delves deeper into the 'carve-up of world cricket' with characteristically forensic scepticism. In the scepticism at least, as Haigh makes clear, he is not alone. With admirable balance, Wisden allows Giles Clarke right of reply; he puts the ICC's side of the case well, but ultimately fails to convince.
We will hear much more about this.
Elsewhere in his notes, Booth broadly concurs with the England management's decision to terminate Kevin Pietersen's tenure in the England team, dutifully covers England's era-defining defeat in Australia and pays tribute to Andy Flower and the man who, perhaps more than any other, ultimately did for him and his team, Mitchell Johnson. To lighten the gloom (from the viewpoint of an England supporter), the achievements of England's women's team, twice Ashes winners over the past year, are given their due, and Booth pays a short but sweet tribute to the departed Sachin Tendulkar, while politely acknowledging his doubts about the manner and location of his departure. The continued absence of Test cricket from terrestrial television in Britain is also mentioned. And, quite rightly in my view, not in an approving way.
The rest of the book's Comment section contains a range of contributions which, while all interesting and well-written, do not quite match the standard of some of the landmark articles which Wisden has carried in recent years such as Christian Ryan's truly remarkable Jeff Thomson is annoyed from 2013, or Peter Gibbs' sublime and resonant memoir of Sydney Barnes (2012).
But this is a matter of personal taste; from this year's book I particularly liked Martin Crowe's Time to smell the roses, which is a timely counterpoint to what might be seen (from the game's fringes, or 'the outer' as Australians used to say) as prevailing professional opinion about sledging. There is little doubt that Crowe's call for cricket to rediscover the virtues of competitiveness without vitriolic personal abuse will receive much approval from those of us who feel that the amount of unnecessary verbal interaction between bowlers, fielders and batsmen has demeaned the game and the reputations of many of its leading protagonists for too many years already. Crowe also, intriguingly, describes Michael Clarke as 'a gentle, misunderstood man'. Well, misunderstood, perhaps.
Sachin Tendulkar is the almanack's cover star, and he is also the subject of a perceptive and finely-crafted tribute by Tunku Varadarajan which pays welcome attention to the man beyond the arena, and a further piece by his former Test match colleague Aakash Chopra, which describes what it was like both to play with him and to mix with him off the field. Tendulkar, as he always does, emerges with shining credit from both, and leaves one with the thought that if more international cricketers had his level of humility the problems described by Crowe would be substantially alleviated.
As anyone reading this will probably know by now, the Five Cricketers of the Year are Shikhar Dhawan, Charlotte Edwards, Ryan Harris, Chris Rogers and Joe Root, while the leading cricketer in the world is named – and it is hard to argue against unvarnished greatness – as Dale Steyn.
This year's five feels like a low-key selection, and, as such, perhaps reflects the fact that the English summer of 2013 wasn't, in strictly cricketing terms, all it was cracked up to be. The (male) Ashes series was disappointingly one-sided and relatively pedestrian, and, unlike many previous years, none of the candidates absolutely demanded inclusion. That said, Dhawan deserves it for his brilliance, Root for achievement and potential, Harris and Rogers for persistence and Edwards for brilliance, achievement and persistence.
Indeed, the selection of Edwards (and a fine feature article by Tanya Aldred) emphasizes another of the virtues of the modern Wisden. It is inclusive, and it is democratic. Another aspect of this is the writing competition, inaugurated by Booth in 2012 in order to open up the possibility of publication in the almanack to a wider range of writers, and won in its second year by Liam Cromar, with a clever Shakespearean take on the old game of hypothetical team selection.
Over recent years Wisden has become notable for the quality of its photographs. This year is no different, even if the monochrome pictures which precede each of the book's sections aren't quite as outstanding as in 2013. An exception to this is the picture of Ricky Ponting, batting for Surrey against Sussex at Arundel, which appears before the section on English domestic cricket. Ponting, with head level and still, awaits the ball in a manner prescribed by any textbook; the majority of the crowd and the umpire watch his every move, knowing they are witnessing the last days of a great player, but far away, on the grass bank to Ponting's leg-side, a solitary spectator stands with his back to the cricket and gazes into the rural distance. It is about the importance of everything and nothing.
Elsewhere there is a range of outstanding pictures of both Ashes series, and the winner and runners-up in the Wisden-MCC photography competition. The winner, by Atul Kamble, shows Tendulkar emerging from the Wankhede Stadium dressing room to resume his final innings in Test cricket. The picture carries echoes of a Renaissance painting, the arms of Tendulkar's worshippers raised as if in supplication (although, in reality, each one holds a digital device), with the man himself bathed in sunlight from the back of the stand as he looks into it to atune his eyes. It captures a singular moment; if it had been taken a split-second earlier or later, it would not be the picture it is. This picture is so astonishingly brilliant that it would be entirely justified to buy Wisden 2014 for it and it alone.
There is a pithy and well-timed appreciation of Graeme Swann by Vic Marks – just in case anyone has forgotten how important he was to England and how difficult he will be to replace – and a moving interview with Mark Boucher about his leaving of the game and his battle to regain the sight in his left eye. If you are a wicketkeeper and you read this, you will never again stand up to the bowling without wearing a helmet.
The obituaries, as always, are beautifully judged and written. I have long held the view that the best way to learn about a cricket personality is to read their Wisden obituary (if they're dead, of course). Nothing changes.
However, more generally, as has been said, these are changing times. Wisden has reacted to them. The laws were dropped in 2012 and the records section is now much nearer to the back of the book than it used to be. While it is usefully arranged, there is little if anything in this which cannot be found online, and it is out of date as soon as it is drafted. To take an especially telling recent example, no mention is made of the re-writing of New Zealand's Test record book by Brendon McCullum and BJ Watling; that will have to wait until next year.
Now in its 152nd year, Wisden endures. It still has its importance and its gravitas and its detail; most importantly it has its writing and its photography. It also, in a way it never used to, has humour. The final page of the book carries an 'index of unusual occurrences' which contains such entries as 'county player injured by medicine ball' and 'batsman dislocates shoulder celebrating hundred'.
Whether you start reading it from the back or the front, Wisden, as a result of skilful adaptation to a changing environment, is still as relevant as it ever was.
Perhaps, after all, it is a sign of spring.
19.4.14
The Tension of Expectation
It is a sunny afternoon at the County Ground in Taunton, and the April sky is a crystal shade of blue.
Away from the breeze it feels moderately warm. Jackets and jumpers are shed and the atmosphere feels somnolent as the Somerset openers begin their reply to Yorkshire's first innings total of 450.
However, though the crowd is quiet as lunchtime fades into mid-afternoon on the game's second day, the cricket is compelling. The Somerset openers represent both ends of the professional batsmen's spectrum: one is Chris Jones, 23 years old and with a century against Australia but little else to show for his nascent career. He needs time at the wicket, and runs, to begin the journey from promising youngster to seasoned batsman, and to justify the faith of himself and others. His partner is Marcus Trescothick. He is 38 and has been around the professional game since his partner was in short trousers. He also needs time at the wicket, and runs, to prove to others - and, though you should whisper it, to himself - that he can still perform as he used to. There is expectation, but there is also uncertainty and unspoken tension. This could go either way.
In the first over of the innings, bowled by Ryan Sidebottom, Trescothick eases away two boundaries. The second is an on drive which leaves the mid-on fielder scrambling fruitlessly for balance. I always used to say (still do, in fact) that you always knew when Marcus was playing well as he would usually get an off drive away early between the bowler and mid-off and that the timing and pace would, if his touch was right, always beat the fielder. This is that in mirror image. The ball is full and covers middle and leg, so Trescothick uses just a bit more left hand to guide it wide of the fielder, who has no chance of stopping it.
The fours are applauded, of course, but the crowd is barely more animated. There is suppressed recognition that Marcus looks good. Perhaps better than he looked in the whole of the 2013 season, which was his worst since before he became an England player. The tension of concern gives way to the tension of expectation, and of hope. These people have watched Marcus since he was the same age as Jones, and younger, they have known his triumphs and his setbacks, both on the field and off it. They are desperate for him to succeed.
Jones looks solid and fluent too, but his innings doesn't carry the same level of importance to others. For him there will, at whatever level of the game he finds himself, be many more opportunities. Trescothick doesn't have the same sort of time on his side.
In the sixth over Trescothick drives Sidebottom's partner Jack Brooks through the covers. He doesn't quite time it to perfection, and the bat turns slightly in his hands, but the ball easily runs to the boundary. Trescothick's call is loud and decisive. You can tell from its volume and tone that he feels as though he's starting to see it well. Expectation levels are raised again.
In the eleventh Sidebottom again strays towards the leg-side and Trescothick glances him to fine-leg for four. The stroke is wristier than is common from Trescothick, and so the ball travels finer. This is good.
The tension eases, slightly.
The very next ball, though, it is over. The delivery is full, and Trescothick plays over it. His stumps are broken.
It's one of the old truisms of batting that being dismissed is like dying. It can happen slowly, or it can happen suddenly, but it can happen at any time. The only advantage to batting is that after each death you can return for another go.
As you get older, though, it gets harder. More doubts enter minds, more questions are asked. One of the central ones, sometimes unspoken, sometimes not, is the question of when a poor run of form becomes a terminal decline. This is the question which hangs over every innings Trescothick plays now.
Last Monday there were hints, just hints, of old glories.
Tomorrow, far to the north in County Durham, it all begins again.
Away from the breeze it feels moderately warm. Jackets and jumpers are shed and the atmosphere feels somnolent as the Somerset openers begin their reply to Yorkshire's first innings total of 450.
However, though the crowd is quiet as lunchtime fades into mid-afternoon on the game's second day, the cricket is compelling. The Somerset openers represent both ends of the professional batsmen's spectrum: one is Chris Jones, 23 years old and with a century against Australia but little else to show for his nascent career. He needs time at the wicket, and runs, to begin the journey from promising youngster to seasoned batsman, and to justify the faith of himself and others. His partner is Marcus Trescothick. He is 38 and has been around the professional game since his partner was in short trousers. He also needs time at the wicket, and runs, to prove to others - and, though you should whisper it, to himself - that he can still perform as he used to. There is expectation, but there is also uncertainty and unspoken tension. This could go either way.
In the first over of the innings, bowled by Ryan Sidebottom, Trescothick eases away two boundaries. The second is an on drive which leaves the mid-on fielder scrambling fruitlessly for balance. I always used to say (still do, in fact) that you always knew when Marcus was playing well as he would usually get an off drive away early between the bowler and mid-off and that the timing and pace would, if his touch was right, always beat the fielder. This is that in mirror image. The ball is full and covers middle and leg, so Trescothick uses just a bit more left hand to guide it wide of the fielder, who has no chance of stopping it.
The fours are applauded, of course, but the crowd is barely more animated. There is suppressed recognition that Marcus looks good. Perhaps better than he looked in the whole of the 2013 season, which was his worst since before he became an England player. The tension of concern gives way to the tension of expectation, and of hope. These people have watched Marcus since he was the same age as Jones, and younger, they have known his triumphs and his setbacks, both on the field and off it. They are desperate for him to succeed.
Jones looks solid and fluent too, but his innings doesn't carry the same level of importance to others. For him there will, at whatever level of the game he finds himself, be many more opportunities. Trescothick doesn't have the same sort of time on his side.
In the sixth over Trescothick drives Sidebottom's partner Jack Brooks through the covers. He doesn't quite time it to perfection, and the bat turns slightly in his hands, but the ball easily runs to the boundary. Trescothick's call is loud and decisive. You can tell from its volume and tone that he feels as though he's starting to see it well. Expectation levels are raised again.
In the eleventh Sidebottom again strays towards the leg-side and Trescothick glances him to fine-leg for four. The stroke is wristier than is common from Trescothick, and so the ball travels finer. This is good.
The tension eases, slightly.
The very next ball, though, it is over. The delivery is full, and Trescothick plays over it. His stumps are broken.
It's one of the old truisms of batting that being dismissed is like dying. It can happen slowly, or it can happen suddenly, but it can happen at any time. The only advantage to batting is that after each death you can return for another go.
As you get older, though, it gets harder. More doubts enter minds, more questions are asked. One of the central ones, sometimes unspoken, sometimes not, is the question of when a poor run of form becomes a terminal decline. This is the question which hangs over every innings Trescothick plays now.
Last Monday there were hints, just hints, of old glories.
Tomorrow, far to the north in County Durham, it all begins again.
6.4.14
Just Another Victim
Michael Carberry's interview with the peerless Donald McRae for The Guardian last week was both refreshing and concerning.
Refreshing in that Carberry, perhaps feeling that his brief England career is over, was happy to disregard the modern convention that no England cricketer should ever, on any account, say anything controversial, heartfelt, spontaneous or interesting when conversing with somebody from the media.
Carberry is clearly unhappy with the way he's been treated, and he gave it both barrels. This is a great thing, and we could do with more of it.
Not that we're likely to get it. Carberry's goose was probably cooked as an international player before last weekend - he's well past thirty and probably didn't quite show enough in Australia to make him worth persisting with - but if it wasn't you can be fairly sure it is now. The precise identity of England's next coach is still a mystery but you can be sure that, certainly if it's Ashley Giles, his comments won't have passed unnoticed.
The tales of Carberry being left high and dry, unsure of where he stands with England, were unwelcome but far from unusual. Back in the old days, this was how everybody felt. For a while, though, it seemed as though England had moved on. England under Flower, under Strauss, won Test matches, won whole series, won the Ashes. This winter more or less everything associated with England's flimsy house of cards has come crashing down, and, if it ever really improved, communication with players has gone down with it.
Something I found especially depressing was Carberry's revelation that his request that his mother be his invited guest for the Melbourne Test was turned down by the ECB on the grounds that it is apparently 'policy' only to pay for wives, girlfriends (or male partners, presumably) and children. For Carberry to be treated in this way comes uncomfortably close to discrimination, and reveals that the ECB's commitment to player welfare is both poorly developed and inflexibly applied.
Michael Carberry is a player who has been through a lot in his career - changes of county, a battle to establish himself as a first-class cricketer, let alone an international one, serious illness - but, like Andy Flower, and Kevin Pietersen, and, as likely as not, Monty Panesar, he is just another victim of perhaps the worst period English cricket has ever known.
Unlike one or two of the others, Carberry has had his say already. And it's clear that, for all the defeats and for all that it may have ended too soon, Michael Carberry relished playing Test cricket:
"It was the ultimate test. Everything was ramped up tenfold, the intensity, the cricket, the way Australia played. Mentally, every innings was a challenge. But I thrived on that challenge. Walking out to bat and Johnson and Harris are flying in? I like that and I like big crowds. It heightens all your senses. You definitely feel alive. In county cricket you very rarely get those experiences."
The Rose Bowl on a grey Tuesday will never quite seem the same again.
Refreshing in that Carberry, perhaps feeling that his brief England career is over, was happy to disregard the modern convention that no England cricketer should ever, on any account, say anything controversial, heartfelt, spontaneous or interesting when conversing with somebody from the media.
Carberry is clearly unhappy with the way he's been treated, and he gave it both barrels. This is a great thing, and we could do with more of it.
Not that we're likely to get it. Carberry's goose was probably cooked as an international player before last weekend - he's well past thirty and probably didn't quite show enough in Australia to make him worth persisting with - but if it wasn't you can be fairly sure it is now. The precise identity of England's next coach is still a mystery but you can be sure that, certainly if it's Ashley Giles, his comments won't have passed unnoticed.
The tales of Carberry being left high and dry, unsure of where he stands with England, were unwelcome but far from unusual. Back in the old days, this was how everybody felt. For a while, though, it seemed as though England had moved on. England under Flower, under Strauss, won Test matches, won whole series, won the Ashes. This winter more or less everything associated with England's flimsy house of cards has come crashing down, and, if it ever really improved, communication with players has gone down with it.
Something I found especially depressing was Carberry's revelation that his request that his mother be his invited guest for the Melbourne Test was turned down by the ECB on the grounds that it is apparently 'policy' only to pay for wives, girlfriends (or male partners, presumably) and children. For Carberry to be treated in this way comes uncomfortably close to discrimination, and reveals that the ECB's commitment to player welfare is both poorly developed and inflexibly applied.
Michael Carberry is a player who has been through a lot in his career - changes of county, a battle to establish himself as a first-class cricketer, let alone an international one, serious illness - but, like Andy Flower, and Kevin Pietersen, and, as likely as not, Monty Panesar, he is just another victim of perhaps the worst period English cricket has ever known.
Unlike one or two of the others, Carberry has had his say already. And it's clear that, for all the defeats and for all that it may have ended too soon, Michael Carberry relished playing Test cricket:
"It was the ultimate test. Everything was ramped up tenfold, the intensity, the cricket, the way Australia played. Mentally, every innings was a challenge. But I thrived on that challenge. Walking out to bat and Johnson and Harris are flying in? I like that and I like big crowds. It heightens all your senses. You definitely feel alive. In county cricket you very rarely get those experiences."
The Rose Bowl on a grey Tuesday will never quite seem the same again.
8.3.14
Gravitas
It already feels late to be writing about Graeme Smith. Most of what needed to be said - and this, in truth, wasn't a player to inspire great literature - has been said. Best and most comprehensively of all by Jarrod Kimber here.
Time is short, and so one memory from the mind's eye will suffice.
It is a sunlit Lord's evening, 3rd August 2003. South Africa are about to defeat England. Graeme Smith, 22 years old and South Africa's captain, stands with his hands on the shoulders of Makhaya Ntini. Ntini has taken nine wickets in the game; he will take ten. Smith himself has scored 259.
Smith fixes Ntini with an unwavering gaze and speaks quietly, assuring him, reassuring him, that victory is about to be theirs. Its significance could go unstated, but Smith recognizes the importance of the moment and seizes it.
It is a gesture which speaks of gravitas and maturity.
This is a man destined to captain his country for a very long time.
Time is short, and so one memory from the mind's eye will suffice.
It is a sunlit Lord's evening, 3rd August 2003. South Africa are about to defeat England. Graeme Smith, 22 years old and South Africa's captain, stands with his hands on the shoulders of Makhaya Ntini. Ntini has taken nine wickets in the game; he will take ten. Smith himself has scored 259.
Smith fixes Ntini with an unwavering gaze and speaks quietly, assuring him, reassuring him, that victory is about to be theirs. Its significance could go unstated, but Smith recognizes the importance of the moment and seizes it.
It is a gesture which speaks of gravitas and maturity.
This is a man destined to captain his country for a very long time.
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