Texas billionaire Allen Stanford is ready to bankroll an ECB Twenty20 tournament © Cricinfo Ltd

A Welshman is due to take over as president and a black South African as CEO. Meetings of the ICC Chief Executives' Committee and the ICC Board are scheduled to run until July 4. With proceedings about to begin, the gathering remains a man short. Butter-mountain-sized mounds of Kentish pasties, ostrich pies, wombat burgers, rhubarb-flavour rotis and cherry-topped chapatis are being consumed with much relish and chutney, and no patriotism or partiality whatsoever. But patience is wearing thinner than Harbhajan Singh’s list of alibis for what the more patriotic and/or diplomatic call “inappropriate behaviour”. Just inside the door, unnoticed by most and ignored by the rest, lurks a lone protestor in a cable-knit V-neck sweater, holding a placard that reads “ICC – Idiotic, Corrupt, Crap”.

Then, as watches are consulted, heads are shaken, tuts are exchanged and formal introductions are about to be made, the missing delegate is shepherded into the room under blanket and armed guard.

(For legal reasons, any vague, distant or mildly plausible relationship between persons alive, dead or in purgatory quoted in the following unedited transcript is strictly coincidental.)

England and Wales Delegate (sneering and swigging a magnum of Majestic Wine’s finest and cheapest Chilean): The Honourable Member for Zimbabwe, I presume. These Arabs will do anything to get a Twenty20 international staged here.

Australia Delegate (chucking a tin of XXXX at the England and Wales Delegate and hitting the coffee machine): Don’t be so sure, you posh public schoolie pie-chucking Pommy bustard. Could be the former CEO. Go Malcy baby! Teach those curry-eaters a thing or two about political principles.

India Delegate (throwing a paper planer with an extremely sharp nose towards his Australian counterpart, who fails to get out of the way in time): You mean, like being kind to your local aborigine? That Aussie sneak. Good bloody riddance. Typical old world. They ran the game - the game we invented please note - for 200-odd years but that wasn’t enough, was it? They still can’t accept it’s our turn to call the shots and make all the dosh.

The latecomer takes the seat allotted the purported Zimbabwe Delegate but refuses to remove the blanket.

Pakistan Delegate (wearing “I Love Sachin” t-shirt and crossing fingers behind his back): Hear bloody hear!

Sri Lanka Delegate (wearing “I Love Darrell” t-shirt): Ditto to the power of n. To infinity and beyond.

Bangladesh Delegate (wearing a “Greed Is Not Good” t-shirt): I strongly suspect, unless I’m very much mistaken, that I concur with the Honourable Members for India, Pakistan and Sri Lanka.

Pakistan Delegate (whispering a shade too audibly to Sri Lanka Delegate): Shut up, you fool. You wanna make them think we’re all Buzz Lightyears and Woody the Cowboys? If you’re going to get all clever and Pixar, think Ratatouille and embrace rat-like cunning, for gawd’s sake. (Turning to the Bangladesh Delegate) As for you Bangas, keep it short, eh? Children should be seen and not heard.

Continue reading "The Spirit of Cricket 2008"

	Andrew Flintoff has recovered from his latest career-threatening ankle operation © Getty Images

(With thanks, and profuse apologies, to Rodgers and Hammerstein)

How do you solve a problem like Andrew Flintoff? How do you catch a cloud and pin it down? Such is the knotty problem that the new England selectorial team, under lone survivor Geoff Miller, will be attempting to unravel this summer. Good luck, lads.

The headline news is that The Artist Alternately And Affectionately Known As Freddie, The Fredster, Fab Freddie, Mr InFredible and sundry other nicknames has recovered from his latest career-threatening ankle operation. He is acquiring match fitness with Lancashire and says he is eager to return to the international fray. Over the coming days, as they sit down to select a squad for next week’s first Test against New Zealand, Miller and his compadres will decide whether he knows what’s best for him.

As a noted, successful and highly amusing after-dinner speaker, Miller has spent the past two decades regaling folk with his fact-meets-fictional stories of the icons he played alongside in the 1970s and 1980s – Ian Botham, Derek Randall, Mike Brearley and so on. More than most, he will recognise the need to give individuals their head.

But will Miller, Ashley Giles and James Whittaker, none of them lovers of orthodoxy, act on the proposal of Michael Vaughan, who believes Flintoff should return next Thursday, for his first Test since January 2007? Perhaps the question should be rephrased. Should they pick him?

Continue reading "The Trouble With Freddie"

	Sachin Tendulkar could not bring "The Lord" to play for the Mumbai Indians © EMPICS

Sachin Tendulkar may be a demigod in India, but not everyone is in awe of his aura or susceptible to his charms. Try as he might, he could not persuade Alistair Brown to join the Indian Premier League. And thereby hangs a somewhat tragic tale. Out of respect to those who died in Bhopal, Auschwitz and Galle, I would normally resist the word “tragedy” in relating any story that does not involve a fatality, but Brown’s tale seems in keeping with the Shakespearian sense of the word.

In Tuesday’s edition of the Times, “The Lord”, as Brown of Surrey has long been belovedly known at The Oval, revealed that he had not only rejected Tendulkar’s entreaties on behalf of Mumbai Indians, but also those of his erstwhile county colleague, Harbhajan Singh, who phoned him shortly before pre-season training began, urging him to reconsider. After all, a three-and-a-half-year deal was on the table. “They were talking telephone numbers,” divulged a still-disbelieving Brown, whose appetite for chewing up and spitting out bowlers in double-quick time is matched only by his modesty. The main reason, he insisted, was a sense of loyalty.

“I’ve been at The Oval for 20 years and they’ve been the best 20 years of my life,” he told reporter Patrick Kidd. “The club have been incredibly good to me and, having signed a one-year contract, I didn’t feel it was quite right to turn round and say: ‘Let’s tear that up and do something different. I want to go out to India because there’s a lot of money up for grabs.’” Cynics may be disarmed to know that after the Wisden Cricketer ran a piece about Brown by Hugh Massingberd in its “My Favourite Cricketer” section last year, the subject rang the magazine asking for the author’s phone number. To convey his thanks, embarrassment and heartfelt appreciation.

Continue reading "Taking The Lord’s name in vain"

	Could Ajantha Mendis be the next great spinner for Sri Lanka? © AFP

Until now, given the recent stumbles of Danish Kaneria and the apparent failure of several young Australian twirlers to live up to their billing, detecting the seeds of a new generation of spinners worthy of following the holy trinity of Warne, Murali and Kumble has been a troubling and deflating quest. Whisper it softly, but on the evidence of his international debut in Port-of-Spain today, however chastening his team’s astonishing defeat may have been, this wide-eyed 23-year-old member of the Sri Lankan army could well emerge as the leader of the new pack.

Friends in Colombo had warned me that something special was on the horizon, trumpeting Mendis as the owner of the freakiest fingers since Jack Iverson. They weren’t exaggerating by much. Googlies, leggies, offies and flippers all eased effortlessly from that precociously adaptable right hand, facilitated by three distinct modes of release – barely discernible to the devoted couch potato and leaving the batsmen groping and clueless.

The ball that bamboozled and lbw-ed Chris Gayle, just as the West Indies captain was threatening to turn a tricky chase into a jaunt, was a worthy calling card. The one that curved in and straightened to take off stump was utterly wasted on Darren Sammy. No less impressive was the way Mendis held his nerve after Jerome Taylor clouted him for six, tossing the next ball up in similar fashion and reaping the reward of an outfield catch.

With the game reeling groggily as the implications of the IPL set traditionalists against innovators, old world against new, Shivnarine Chanderpaul’s improbable boundaries off the fifth and last balls of the final over in Trinidad were a profoundly welcome shot in the arm, a reminder that sport is more about drama and improbability than dollars and nonsense. The advent of Mendis could be that and much, much more.

	Virender Sehwag pulverised the South African attack in Chennai © AFP

Yes, it induced awe, albeit not exactly shock. After all, Virender Sehwag’s stupendous one-man-band of a show in Chennai was hardly the first time he has cocked a snook at contemporary wisdom. Given that his last 10 Test centuries have all exceeded 150, nobody, not even Adam Gilchrist, has so consistently belied the theory that aggression militates against substance. How can you play the way he does, with such scant regard for protocol or respect for the tried and trusted means of acquisition, and rack up such immense scores? Luck, certainly, had nothing whatever to do with it.

In joining Don Bradman and Brian Lara as international cricket’s only double triple-centurions – and, even more remarkably, becoming the only opener to repeat such a feat – Sehwag, having spent a year on the sidelines, his career in the longer format apparently done and dusted, has completed one of the most gobsmacking comebacks in Test history. But let’s not get carried away. Please.

“Great” is an oft-abused word, one that ranks right up there with “fantastic” as the most distorted of the age: a not-so shining example of how a word in everyday speech does not necessarily translate to print. Greatness is also unquantifiable. Not that that stops us trying to quantify it, or lazily using it as a label when common or garden superlatives seem insufficient. Whatever happened to the likes of “tremendous”, “terrific” or “astounding”, to name but three alternatives? To my way of thinking, greatness is defined as much by durability as quality: will we still be agog at a goal/movie/song/statesman 20 years hence? Context, as ever, is all.

Continue reading "The greatest insignificant innings"