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November 5, 2009
End tax-free benefits for county cricketers
Posted 2 days, 23 hours ago in English cricket
In the Guardian Mike Selvey tells the tale of James Seymour, a Kent cricketer of the early 20th century. Though Seymour helped Kent to four Championships, his legacy is that through his (and his lawyer's) efforts money made through a benefit were deemed tax-free. Selvey argues that while the system made sense in Seymour's time, county cricketers are now well renumerated, and that the benefit system mostly helps England's international stars, who rarely make domestic appearances. He says better insurance and pension schemes are the way forward instead of benefits.
November 4, 2009
Nothing wrong with Trott and Co. playing for England
Posted 4 days, 1 hour ago in English cricket
In the Guardian Andy Bull defends England's South African imports a week after Michael Vaughan questioned Cape Town-born Johnathan Trott's loyalty. Bull argues that over 60 players born overseas have represented England and "the fact that selection is open to anyone who cares to qualify and merits a place ought to be a reason for celebration". Some of those 60-plus players came to England when they could barely use a bat – Strauss and Prior among them. Others, like Pietersen and Trott, came later. All of them earned their place on merit. There is no need to mark a dividing line between those who arrived as children and those who made the decision later in life, just as there is no need to draw distinctions between players who have moved from Test-playing nations and those who haven't. The point is that they decided to come at all. That is sufficient commitment in itself. Regardless of where you are born, misty-eyed patriotism is not a prerequisite for selection. There are plenty of better criteria to judge a cricketer on than his place of birth or where he went to school. The runs he scores and wickets he takes are just two of them.
November 3, 2009
Cricket a bad fit for the Olympic stadium
Posted 4 days, 19 hours ago in English cricket
It is just under a thousand days until London's Olympic 80,000-seat stadium becomes filled for purpose, but what of the many thousands after that? So far, there has been talk of rugby, football and cricket teams using the venue, though in cricket's case any future relationship should be given short shrift, writes Derek Pringle in the Telegraph.
The trouble is, to cheapen maintenance costs, the Stratford stadium will be reduced to 25,000 seats once the Olympics is over. That would put its capacity behind Lord's and only marginally in front of the Oval's. Unless 50,000 spectators can be accommodated, the only reason for international cricket to be played elsewhere in the capital would be for the novelty. If you want that, far better to build a stadium with a roof to make the game weatherproof.
November 2, 2009
Graeme Swann able to laugh in face of convention
Posted 5 days, 23 hours ago in English cricket
Graeme Swann has more than 16,000 followers on Twitter, the internet's latest social networking craze, another ideal platform for his student-union wit and waspish humour. He's fast becoming a cult figure even as, at 30, his irrepressible personality matures. Speaking to the Times, Swann candidly admits he does not really do cricket at all if there is a reasonable alternative, such as loafing on the couch with a can of beer and a movie on the telly. While some players would be angered by accusations of arrogance, Swann shrugs them off with his characteristic laconic humour.
“You get pigeonholed, but if the s*** hits the fan, everyone reacts differently. If I get angry and uptight, I am rubbish. I don’t perform. If people see me having a smile on my face as not knuckling down, then more fool them because they don’t know what they are talking about.
“I have just found over the years I am my own best shrink and I know if I am doing badly. Nine times out of ten, it is about taking it too seriously. I don’t mean stop training and start having a laugh, but in your life you have to be happy."
October 30, 2009
A welcome break for KP
Posted 1 week, 1 day ago in English cricket
After three months of rest and recuperation, Kevin Pietersen will pick up a bat and try to prove his fitness for the tour of South Africa. More valuable than the physical rest for his Achilles is the mental rest he's had, watching a bit of cricket and catching up with his favourite channel, National Geographic. Alyson Rudd of the Times finds out what KP's been upto in the recent months.
Pietersen breaks with tradition. Enforced rest usually prompts sportsmen to become depressed and allow problems to fester but he turned this on its head. “Preparation is what I bank on and preparation has definitely been hampered because of external thoughts,” he said. “These last three months have cleared my brain and my thoughts.”
October 29, 2009
Harmison happy at Durham
Posted 1 week, 2 days ago in English cricket
Alan Tyers' latest entry on his hilarious blog in the Wisden Cricketer analyses why Steve Harmison signed a new four-year contract with Durham. I see my role as being to pass on what I’ve learned: how to adapt to different conditions – maybe an away dressing room that doesn’t have a DVD player for your Lovejoy boxset; how to smuggle a crate of Newcastle Brown Ale through customs at Faisalabad; how to chuck your phone away and hide in the attic when you reckon the England selectors might be calling to give you the nod.
October 28, 2009
Luke knows too much cricket isn't Wright
Posted 1 week, 3 days ago in English cricket
The Champions League, it seems, has caused quite a stir. The success of sides such as Trinidad & Tobago, New South Wales and the Cape Cobras outdid what the two English counties, Somerset and Sussex, achieved in the tournament. One likely reason, as is being muttered in hushed tones across England, is the amount of cricket those two counties played. As Lawrence Booth writes on the Wisden Cricketer website, the men who run English cricket need to address the problem soon.
The thoughts of the engaging Wright, whose career is still at the make-or-break stage, should be cut and pasted into an email to the England and Wales Cricket Board. “From the county cricket point of view, it is hard and you don’t get the time to prepare as, say, people in Australia do, to work up to a game,” he said. “You go from a four-day game and travel at night to a one-day game, and you try to differentiate between the formats. You find yourself practising the skills in the games themselves rather than having it nailed down ready to play. You almost use some of the games as practice.”
A rundown of Strauss' side
Posted 1 week, 3 days ago in English cricket
After moving to the Daily Mail from the Guardian, Lawrence Booth has started off a new weekly mail called 'Top Spin'. The first installment is out, in which Booth profiles England's players making the tour of South Africa.
Stuart Broad
The beginning of the rest of his career? Possibly, although his Ashes-winning five-for at The Brit Oval has raised the bar to an unfair degree. The talent is there, but he needs direction too. Those close to him say Broad is not the enforcer England crave: his bouncers go for too many runs. He himself nominates Glenn McGrath – the human-form-made-metronome – as his role model. But will the management listen? As for his batting, No 8 seems perfect, especially in the land of Shaun Pollock, who averaged nearly 31 in that slot.
England sleepwalking to an Alastair Cook captaincy
Posted 1 week, 3 days ago in English cricket
Maybe I am missing something – a shrewd tactical contribution from the gully, a tendency for stirring dressing-room speeches, or a deep and meaningful appreciation of the game and its place in English history, but the thought of Alastair Cook as England captain so far leaves me cold, writes David Hopps in the Guardian.
England have been blessed by three excellent captains in the past decade. Nasser Hussain was feisty, impatient, demanding. Michael Vaughan, shrewd and self-possessed, inherited a more capable side and taught England to relax and back their ability. Then came Andrew Strauss, appointed later than he should have been, and a diplomat for troubled times. Cook's qualities, outside the dressing room at least, remain a mystery. He might be vice-captain in name but it is Paul Collingwood, as senior pro and Twenty20 captain, who the media, subconsciously perhaps, assumes fulfils that role.
October 27, 2009
Less is sometimes more
Posted 1 week, 4 days ago in English cricket
My belief is that the counties should play only ten or 12 four-day games, as 16 is just too many. The basic aim has to be to allow players more time to work on their skills, writes Michael Vaughan in the Times.
Speaking of which, I would like us to have a look at allowing every county to play two four-day games per year in India around March and April. It would expose every player, not just the elite 15 who get into a national performance squad, a chance to experience those conditions and learn some of the methods required to take wickets there. It would encourage spin and real pace and the kind of skills needed at the highest level. It would be a test of the guys’ characters and I am sure there must be commercial opportunities in it as well.
Andy Bull has a similar point, but about the international schedule in his weekly Spin column on the Guardian. He also writes that while cricket administrators are wary of kowtowing to the press or yielding to player power, it's the fans who will ultimately decide how much cricket is enough. Contrary to all appearances, the ICC is not entirely incapable of learning from its mistakes. The 2011 world cup, for example, will be shorter than the moribund 2007 edition. By all of two games. Where it once had 51 fixtures it will now have 49, a reduction akin to taking your socks off when you stand on the bathroom scales. You don't cure obesity by trimming toenails. What hope have we then that they will be able to effectively tackle the single largest problem facing the game, the complete redesign and rationalisation of the international, and domestic, calendars?
October 26, 2009
Flower emphasises the importance of values
Posted 1 week, 6 days ago in English cricket
Gordon Farquhar was present when the head coaches of England's cricket, football and rugby union teams- Andy Flower, Fabio Capello and Martin Johnson - joined forces to talk tactics. Read his blog on the BBC Sport.
"Keeping things in perspective is the only way to do it. Training and playing as if it's life and death, but in the real knowledge that it's not, and that there are actually more important things about," said Flower.
"You can be obsessed with your sport, and obsessed with your skill, obsessed with the art of what you do, but also realise that it's not life and death and that the love of your family, or whatever your values are, are actually more important."
October 21, 2009
Born to run: how sporting seasons determine success
Posted 2 weeks, 4 days ago in English cricket
Is life really a doddling cinch if you're born in the right place at the right time? Perhaps, but not in British sport, argues Frank Keating. After half a day's work poring over parchmenty old reference books in proving it, Keating in the Guardian says it's all down to whether your birthday falls in the football or cricket season that dictates sporting prowess.
Take Wisden's list of England's all-time top-scoring Test batsmen – from Gooch's 8,900 runs to Thorpe's 6,744 via Stewart, Gower, Boycott, Atherton, Cowdrey, Hammond, Hutton and Barrington. All but three were born during British summer time (this year from 29 March to 25 October) – Atherton (born 23 March, by less than a week), Cowdrey in December, Barrington in November. Still, seven out of 10 makes for a fairly conclusive argument. On second thoughts, make that eight out of 10, because Cowdrey was born at Ootacamund on Christmas Eve 1932 in the very middle of a literal Indian summer. In fact, make it nine out of 10 because dear Kenny B, Berkshire-born soldier's son, always told you he'd actually been conceived under the southern stars of Africa when ma and pa were garrisoning the Empire.
October 20, 2009
Less is more for international cricket
Posted 2 weeks, 4 days ago in English cricket
In the Wisden Cricketer, Kevin Mitchell calls for a reduction in the number of matches in the relentless international cricket calender. He also defends the injury-prone Andrew Flintoff's decision to retire form Tests to prolong his career.
Even those money-mad TV executives and pushers of products who see cricket as nothing more than a commercial vehicle must be a little concerned that we are all getting too much of a good thing. We’re in danger of growing fat and bored on a diet of relentless, non-stop, around-the-clock, around-the-world cricket.
Vaughan speaks his mind
Posted 2 weeks, 4 days ago in English cricket
Nearly four months after his retirement, Michael Vaughan talks to the Guardian's Andy Bull about his love of skiing, how it was an easy decision to quit once he wasn't part of the Ashes squad, dealing with the press, and realising how special the Ashes '05 win was. He also has clear ideas on how the game should be run in England. The Ashes victory this summer, he suggests, was crucial in deflecting attention away from the problems in the game, and helped brush the Stanford farrago in particular "under the carpet". "If we hadn't have won the Ashes this year we'd have seen a bit inquest into the game of cricket in this country," he says with assurance. "Now we've won the Ashes it gets smoothed over. But I'd like to see a more dynamic group of people in charge. I've always said that the game should be run by a board of eight people. They should run everything: fixtures, structures, finances. At the moment there are too many stakeholders. You're not sure who to criticise if it goes badly, you're not to sure who to praise if it goes well. Have a board of eight, ex-players, business representation, admin, media. Get them in a room and let them run the game."
October 18, 2009
Sport has nothing to do with depression
Posted 3 weeks ago in English cricket
Marcus Trescothick is not the role model for sportsmen or sportswomen who suffer from depression because sport itself has nothing to do with depression, writes James Corrigan in the Independent On Sunday.
Trescothick flew home from India last week with a "stress-related disease" and the ensuing knee-jerkery led to media outlets asking sports stars – ideally, his former team-mates – for their views. After all, they have experienced the "unique pressures" placed on our sporting heroes and are thus qualified to comment. But are they? Aren't they, in fact, the worst qualified to comment, having lived the life and, in their eyes anyway, having survived the strife? On Friday, one former footballer, speaking on one sports channel, opined: "It's especially tougher on cricketers as they are away for months at a time. No one likes being away from their loved ones. Obviously Trescothick suffers very badly in this regard." The inference was that the Somerset batsman was plagued by some intense form of homesickness. The same overture accompanied each and every report. Of course, the descriptions of Trescothick's condition had to be pithy because of space constraints. But in all the shallowness, the insult of him somehow being "weaker" was inevitably cast.
In the Observer Vic Marks writes that Trescothick has broken convention by being a top sportsman who admits to frailties.
One of the most impressive things about Marcus Trescothick over the past couple of years has been his candour. When he was being badgered by the press just before the Oval Test this August he told us about the nightmare that helped confirm his decision not to pursue any sort of fairytale return to the Test team: how he dreamed that he was unable to get his cricket kit out of his bag while the rest of the side were ready and waiting for the team photograph. He did not have to share that with us. He could have just said: "I'm not available."
October 15, 2009
Panesar's winter a beginning, not an end
Posted 3 weeks, 3 days ago in English cricket
Monty Panesar has watched his place as England's No. 1 spinner slip to Graeme Swann. Panesar was dropped from the England Test team after the first Ashes Test at Cardiff, despite his match-saving effort with the bat on a tense final evening, and has now lost his central contract. In the Guardian, Mike Selvey writes that a spell in South Africa should make Panesar a more assertive – and therefore better – cricketer.
Too many people, most with little idea of the technicalities of what he does, offer opinions and miss the essence of what he is as a bowler. His head bursts with information overload, when what is required is his game being stripped back to the bare essentials. And they are these: he has a strong action, and big hands which allow him to spin the ball prodigiously at times; he has a natural pace which is faster than many; he is capable of sustained spells of accuracy. That is a solid base of skills from which to work and expand, but first he should be encouraged to understand that essentially he is an attritional bowler, who gets wickets by persistence rather than magic deliveries. He suffers from an imperative to "make things happen" when his strength lies in the build-up of pressure.
October 14, 2009
Why England are going to ruin Stuart Broad
Posted 3 weeks, 4 days ago in English cricket
Looking at the England Test squad for the tour of South Africa, it seems the selectors are expecting Stuart Broad to take on the allrounder's role, which according to Shane Warne, in the Times, will be detrimental to his career.
The only time a team should go with five bowlers is when one of them is a genuine all-rounder. By that I mean a “Freddie” Flintoff, although he was more of a No 7 than a 6 in the order. If England don’t want to play Adil Rashid in South Africa, they have to go with Paul Collingwood at 6, Matt Prior at 7 and Broad at 8. That line-up, with Graeme Swann at 9, has depth. Moving Broad and Swann up a place alters things dramatically. For Broad, there is a massive difference between having to score runs because that is what is expected from a No 7 and supporting the others or having a hit without too much responsibility a place lower. England should look at Shaun Pollock and Wasim Akram from the recent past. They had the potential to bat at No 7, but spent a lot of their careers at 8 because they recognised bowling as their more important skill. I would put Mitchell Johnson in that category — he can really hit a clean ball — and Broad as well.
October 13, 2009
Hoggard needs to offer better value for money
Posted 3 weeks, 4 days ago in English cricket
Yorkshire have dispensed with the services of Matthew Hoggard, their swing and seam bowler who won 67 Test caps for England. Hoggard said he was "shocked and disappointed" with the decision but he'd have to be more blinkered than the average Yorkshireman not to have thought it a possibility after failing to accept the two-year contract the club offered him a few months ago, writes Derek Pringle in the Daily Telegraph.
Neither had he scotched the rumours of a move elsewhere, the classic signs of someone wanting to keep their options open. Though they may want to do exactly that, players cannot bleat about loyalty and then play the field. Player power, especially those with international reputations, has been on the rise in recent years, but you become vulnerable once your options are reduced.
Tales of Fred
Posted 3 weeks, 4 days ago in English cricket
Andrew Flintoff is in in rehab, coaching the UAE side and promoting his new autobiography. He speaks to the Guardian's Donald McRae about the pain of injuries, being left out of the side after the Pedalo incident, and losing the Ashes 5-0.
"You Google the operation and get all these examples. A lot of basketball players have had it and they're much bigger and heavier and they jump higher than me. And they've made full recoveries. So I'm confident."Did he find any nightmare hits on Google – where the operation clearly failed? Flintoff chuckles: "I didn't look at them ones." The parlous state of his knee provides a constant reminder of all the injuries Flintoff has endured. He tells a quietly affecting story of how he has sometimes been reduced to sitting on the edge of his bed and calling his wife, Rachael, so that she can help him pull on his socks and shoes. For a big man, so often described in heroic terms, he has been terribly debilitated.
October 12, 2009
What more should Owais do?
Posted 3 weeks, 5 days ago in English cricket
Rob Smyth can't understand how Owais Shah has the dropped from the one-day squad to South Africa. Smyth writes in the Wisden Cricketer that Shah has scored more runs, made more fifty-plus scores and hit more sixes than anyone else in England since Shah's recall to the one-day side in 2007. The simple fact is that, with the bat, Shah does everything England don’t do in one-day cricket. He hits sixes, huge ones too. He has a force that, at its strongest, cannot be contained, which was demonstrated only three innings ago with his match winning 98 against South Africa, when he creamed 45 from his final 20 deliveries. He milks spinners effortlessly, a traditional failing of England (If you compare the 55 matches since Shah’s recall in 2007 with the 55 matches before, opposition spinners have conceded 0.44 runs per over and 6.30 runs per wicket more), and has the confidence to confront them, as he famously did on his Test debut in Mumbai. He looks the opponent in the eye and ask them what they’ve got.
Pietersen's homecoming
Posted 3 weeks, 5 days ago in English cricket
It's easy to forget that England won the Ashes without Kevin Pietersen for the final three Tests. But England's premier batsman is getting closer to his return after a tough recovery from Achilles surgery and is on track to face South Africa, the country of his birth, in the Test series. When he announced himself with three centuries during the 2004-05 ODI series he faced a harsh reaction from the home crowd and he admits it wasn't the most pleasant experience in a wide-ranging interview with Brian Viner in the Independent.
Does he anticipate a hostile reception when, wherever it might be, he strides out for the first time? After all, in 2005 he was abused loudly and mercilessly. He smiles. "Well, Strauss is South African, [Matt] Prior is South African, so is Jonathan Trott, so it won't just be me." But he is the man those Afrikaaners in particular love to hate, isn't he? "Yeah, but I take that as a compliment, the same as Ricky Ponting does when he comes here. I enjoy it, actually. But you're right, in 2005 it was extremely abusive, and my mum and dad were very upset. Especially my mum. That doesn't bring fond memories, even though I scored three hundreds and was man of the series. But I don't expect it to be as bad this time. I think people in South Africa respect me now for what I've done."
October 11, 2009
Are Asian cricketers fully integrated in England?
Posted 3 weeks, 6 days ago in English cricket
Three of the players left out of England's squad for the tour of South Africa - Ravi Bopara, Owais Shah and Monty Panesar - have an Asian background. Is that a coincidence, asks Scyld Berry in the Sunday Telegraph. ... there may well be a lack of cultural awareness. If Asians are brought up to be deferential towards authority, a player like Panesar will be far more reluctant to question his captain's decisions about field-placing. Another factor is the soft culture that county cricket is only gradually rectifying. Panesar and Shah were not pushed hard enough to improve their fielding at an early, formative age – and the same could be said for Bopara, who could have been an outstanding fielder by now, the successor to Paul Collingwood.
Andrew Strauss - Captain sensible
Posted 4 weeks ago in English cricket
Paul Hayward talks to England captain Andrew Strauss about the victorious Ashes campaign, the disastrous ODIs that followed and the tough tour of South Africa coming up. Head to the Observer for more. Consider this, from the England captain: "I remember seeing a comment from Ricky Ponting where he said: 'I'd much rather be in my shoes than Strauss's at this stage,' and I could understand why he said that, but I was also thinking in the back of my mind: 'Well, they're in a slightly dangerous place at the moment, Australia. If we can start the game well we might surprise them.' That was the crucial part: to start the game well and exorcise those demons. "I've always felt it's a bit dangerous when everyone's telling you you're going to win the series and you're in control of events – the stuff they were telling Ponting. Subconsciously at least, there is that temptation for players to take their foot off the gas a bit or think it's already won. So I didn't mind that we were in a bit of a dogfight and had to prove ourselves because we've always played quite well in those circumstances.
October 9, 2009
The end of the road for Harmison?
Posted 4 weeks, 1 day ago in English cricket
Steve Harmison's international career may seem to have ended after his omission from the squad to tour South Africa, but Mike Selvey writes in the Guardian that England will miss his firepower. Too often the promise outweighed the performance. Yet when he got it right, when there was bounce and he found that surge to the crease, got his wrist behind the ball and bowled the natural length that comes with release at the moment of maximum acceleration of his arms, there has been no bowler of the modern era that batsmen have least liked facing.
October 8, 2009
Pick Harmison and Denly
Posted on 10/08/2009 in English cricket
Mike Selvey argues in the Guardian that Steve Harmison must be included in England's touring party to South Africa because of the extra bounce on offer in Johannesburg and Centurion. He also wants Joe Denly to be part of the squad, and Ian Bell as well. With Monty Panesar consigned, for now, to the county backwaters after the celebrity he enjoyed, the second spinner's role will probably go to Adil Rashid. But there should be caution: he is a promising bowler – allrounder indeed – but by no means ready to fulfil a frontline role. If Graeme Swann was injured, would they turn to him as the only spinner? Could he play a holding role? No one should write off Panesar just yet.
October 7, 2009
Where did it all go wrong for Monty?
Posted on 10/07/2009 in English cricket
An inspiration for England just a year ago, left-arm spinner Monty Panesar has resorted to a season in South Africa with the Highveld Lions to resurrect his career, but will he ever turn the corner? David Lloyd has the answers in Independent.
The Monty story was never blemish-free, of course. Butter-fingered fielding may have endeared him to fans around the world but being a liability in the field, and a rabbit with the bat, put even more pressure on Panesar's left-arm bowling. And when he struggled in India last December it was time to halt production of those Monty Masks, so popular on English grounds over the previous two or three summers.
October 6, 2009
The Evert effect
Posted on 10/06/2009 in English cricket
Tennis legend Chris Evert is single again, and taking a note of how the sporting performance of each man in her life has improved significantly since partnering with her, Patrick Kidd urges England board chairman Giles Clarke hook up with her in order to work wonders with English cricket. He writes in the Times:
Most noticeably, the Evert Effect worked on Jimmy Connors. Within months of them getting engaged in 1973, Connors went from being a quarter-finals-at-best competitor to winning three grand slams in a row. They broke up before getting married, but the first Mr Evert was John Lloyd, a Brit on the downslope of his career before he married Chrissie in 1979. Three months later, he reached the final of a tournament for the first time in two years and he went on to win three grand-slam doubles titles as well as getting to two singles grand-slam quarter-finals in his thirties. Then came Andy Mill, the second Mr Evert after she and Lloyd divorced in 1987. Mill had retired from Olympic skiing by the time he married Evert in 1988, but he took up fishing and went on to be regarded as one of the best fly fishermen in the world.
October 4, 2009
Talk up England and they’ll always let you down
Posted on 10/04/2009 in English cricket
Not every England supporter takes the view that following their team should involve mindless chanting and making sure that the beer consumption never dips far below an asking rate of six an over, but they at least share the belief that being barmy is a minimum requirement. In the Sunday Times, Martin Johnson says England's Champions Trophy exit was the kind of gung-ho death so redolent of the Light Brigade that the England captain’s nickname can now be officially altered from Lord Brocket to Lord Cardigan.
You could also say that reaching the semi-final was an achievement in itself, although if you believe the cliché about a good team not becoming a bad one overnight, the opposite is also true. In recent times selection, in personnel and batting order, appears to have involved heavy reliance on a pin and a blindfold, while historically, they haven’t played enough of this type of cricket to make consistently clear decisions in different situations.
In the Sunday Telegraph, Scyld Berry looks at England's probable squads for the upcoming South Africa tour and says that Owais Shah's erratic form leaves his spot under threat from Jonathan Trott. If England's selectors hold their meeting on Tuesday at Lord's, Shah might decide to use his position as a Middlesex player to rummage through the rubbish bins afterward.
The Observer's David Hopps writes that the England hierarchy believe that the side must be rigorous and decisive in what they want. Whether England have the ability to play with attacking intent remains questionable, but what is clear is that for it to have maximum chance of success the selectors must embrace the concept by choosing those most suited to it.
October 3, 2009
Collingwood milestone passes by in defeat
Posted on 10/03/2009 in Champions Trophy
Australia's emphatic nine-wicket win over England in the Champions Trophy semi-final completely overshadowed a milestone by Paul Collingwood, who equalled Alec Stewart’s record of 170 one-day appearances for England. He didn't get the chance to rejoice in the occasions and will have to make do with being an inspiration to younger allrounders like Luke Wright and Tim Bresnan, writes John Westerby in the Times.
Like Collingwood, they have both begun their international careers as bits-and-pieces one-day all-rounders, players for whom neither batting nor bowling on their own would win them a place in the side, but whose overall portfolio of skills makes them so useful in a one-day team. In Collingwood’s case, his brilliant fielding has always added considerably to the package. With time and experience, Collingwood became so much more than a bits-and-pieces player, graduating to become a fully fledged Test batsman. After making his one-day debut in June 2001, his first Test cap did not come until 2½ years later – by which time he had played 25 one-day internationals - but he had learned much from his early schooling in international cricket.
In the Age Brendan McArdle writes that despite the win in the semi-final, Australia are still to recover from the Ashes loss to England. And to make matters worse, one of their key failures of the series won the ICC Cricketer of the Year award.
What made his series all the more disappointing is that he is obviously one of the stars of world cricket. It's easy to like big Mitch, and there is a distinct reluctance in cricket circles to criticise him. But the truth is, he went from being Australia's trump card to its biggest liability in the space of two months. Twenty wickets at 32 apiece looks fine on paper, but it fails to tell the tale of the lack of control he gave his captain. By the time he got to the series-decider at the Oval, Johnson was a broken man. His bouncers in the second innings were pitching just metres in front of his own foot, and his inept shot in getting out to Steve Harmison near game's end encapsulated his hangdog mindset.
October 2, 2009
A season of Ramprakash
Posted on 10/02/2009 in English cricket
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"I'm very proud of the fact that I managed to hang in there for so long"
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Mark Ramprakash had an eventful 2009 season, nearly earning a Test recall just short of turning 40. The Independent's Brian Viner interviews him at the end of the county season, asking him about the drama preceding the Oval Test, playing for Surrey, and on having a classically English technique combined with a very non-English intensity.
... when he does eventually retire, will he look back on a career unfulfilled? "I have to be very strong on that," he says. "The answer is that, given the cards I was dealt, I tried my best. I played my first Test at 21 against the West Indies, and I don't know what the selectors were hoping to get from me in a series in which even experienced players struggled, like Allan Lamb. These days, a lot of debutants come in and and do very well, because of that Team England thing. They feel like part of a team rather than a county player playing for England. Ravi Bopara played four Tests and seven one-dayers this summer without scoring a half-century. So it's a different era, but you know what, I'm very proud of the fact that I managed to hang in there for so long, and there was a period in Test cricket when it did go well for me. I topped the averages in Australia [in 1998-99] supposedly against one of the best teams in history. I don't know whether people remember those things, but they're important for me to remember."
That's tea, folks
Posted on 10/02/2009 in English cricket
In the same paper, Simon Barnes discusses the county umpires' request for longer tea breaks.
I understand that 40 overs each way makes for a long day, especially with a mere 20-minute break. But it means spectators get a lot of action, which is good. In televised matches, there will be a third umpire to make line decisions: if standing for all that time is such a fag, the team of three umps can take turns and turn about. Now, umps tend on the whole to be good eggs and their relationships with players tell us that perpetual warfare between teams and officials is not a necessary state of affairs. But they are way off the pace on the question of tea.
September 28, 2009
County Cricket 2009: an inexorable decline?
Posted on 09/28/2009 in English cricket
In the Telegraph, Steve James reviews the unfulfilling 2009 county season and comes up with his list of awards.
Quote of the Year
An unnamed county player whose face was filled with fear when I mentioned that some dinosaurs want a return to one, all-play-all division: “Our batsmen will get blown away!” he squealed. Indeed. The gap between divisions is widening. The bowling in the second tier is generally awful, not very quick either. Batsmen receive as many bouncers as you see mentions of baked beans in a cook book.
Christopher Martin-Jenkins reviews an eventful season for England, both on and off the field, which included an Ashes win, trophies and a relegation for Sussex, Andrew Flintoff's freelance ambitions, the state of the counties, and more. Read on in the Times.
There is no logic, however, in deciding to play no 50-over county matches next season, yet staging no fewer than 13 such games involving England, plus two Twenty20s and a couple more 50-over games between Pakistan and Australia.
In one way it is laudable that England should come to Pakistan’s rescue at a time of political turmoil in that country that threatens the future of cricket there. But did anyone even consider reducing England’s workload if such a gesture was to have any genuine altruism about it?
September 27, 2009
Collingwood: England's nearly man
Posted on 09/27/2009 in English cricket
When Paul Collingwood started out on his England career eight summers ago, nobody, least of all himself, would have entertained the thought that he would become England's most capped one-day cricketer. He is one player who seems to make a living out of defying critics, pulling out something special whenever the odds are stacked against him, writes Stephen Brenkley in the Independent on Sunday.
For an hour or so on Friday night Paul Collingwood was a prince of the batting arts. He danced two paces down the pitch and flicked a six over mid-wicket as if he was Sachin Tendulkar. Warmed up, he produced a cover drive for four that could have been struck by Ricky Ponting, and pulled another six which Sanath Jayasuriya might have equalled but not surpassed.
September 25, 2009
Don't rush Rashid
Posted on 09/25/2009 in English cricket
In the Times, John Westerby looks at Adil Rashid and what role he might play for England in the future.
Quite rightly, England are being careful not to rush Rashid into Test cricket. His bowling is extremely useful at county level, but he would be learning on the job if he was promoted to Test cricket too soon. When he played a first-class match against Australia for England Lions at Worcester earlier this season, he bowled too short, too often. He must be given as long as possible for his bowling to mature. Once he has been picked for the Test side, he must be given a decent run to establish himself.
September 23, 2009
Bopara and Shah need to do more
Posted on 09/23/2009 in English cricket
With the Champions Trophy and the tour of South Africa to follow, England will need to rebuild tattered reputations. However, Lawrence Booth in his blog on the Wisden Cricketer website believes England don’t have the right personnel, and the two weak links are Ravi Bopara and Owais Shah.
No one doubts Shah’s natural talent, but then no one doubted the natural talent of Mark Ramprakash and Graeme Hick. Shah’s problem now is not simply that he looks like an accident waiting to happen, but that there will be collateral damage too.
Cricket may not have mastered social networking just yet, but it doesn’t appear to be for lack of trying, says JRod in his blog on the same website.
Once upon a time when you became a fan of a cricket side on Facebook you were probably just on the site of some over-eager fanboy who treats his favourite side like a trekkie treats William Shatner’s hair. Now it is probably co-hosted by someone with the title of digital marketing consultant.
September 22, 2009
England not mentally equipped for ODIs
Posted on 09/22/2009 in English cricket
England's 1-6 embarrassment against Australia in the recent ODI series was a reflection of their inability to think on their feet, a consquence of a lack of intensity in county cricket and ordinary bowling and fielding, writes Derek Pringle in the Daily Telegraph.
England’s batsmen possess talent but appear to lack the guile required to apply it to the rapidly evolving situations you get in one-day cricket. In his book, Duncan Fletcher, England’s former coach, lamented his charges’ inability to think on their feet during matches. Test cricket’s less frenetic pace allows for a more methodical approach and has natural breaks where tactics can be rethought and re-jigged, which helps explain the marked disparity in England’s results over the short and long forms of the game.
In the Daily Telegraph, Simon Briggs wonders if it might be the last Champions Trophy and looks at the bleak outlook for England.
Mike Selvey in the Guardian wants readers to spare a thought for Andrew Strauss, who must try to reverse England's form, at 6000ft in Johannesburg, with no warm-up time and only five days after they finished the series 6-1 losers to Australia with a consolation win in Durham.
September 21, 2009
Problems aplenty for England
Posted on 09/21/2009 in English cricket
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A gruelling task ahead for Andy Flower and Andrew Strauss
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England’s shortcomings in basic one-day skills are nothing new. Poor fielding and running between the wickets may have been due to mental fatigue in the series against Australia, but they have been recurring themes over the years. A worried John Westerby has more in the Times.
The most glaring deficiency exposed by Australia has been England’s brittle middle order. In seven games, the middle order contributed only two fifties, one each from Paul Collingwood and Eoin Morgan, an unacceptable return.
After finishing a gruelling series against Australia, it will be a little more than 72 hours after touching down in South Africa that England take on Sri Lanka in their opening game of the Champions Trophy. Simon Wilde, writing in the same paper, believes the team are in dire need of rest.
Excellence not consistency is what Simon Barnes advocates as he compares England's hectic schedule from here on, with the two TV comedies, Friends and Fawlty Towers.
All sporting administrators must be forced to watch one of those American “comedy” programmes that lasted for several thousand episodes. Let them watch all 236 episodes of Friends, or maybe all 273 of Cheers. And after that, they must see all 12 of Fawlty Towers. The difference between quantity and quality may then become apparent.
England against Australia is special but counting the recently-concluded series, the two sides will play 24 ODIs in England up to 2013 - with Australia touring every year between now and then, except in 2011 when England go there. Jonathan Agnew has more on the overkill in his column on the BBC Sport website.
The England and Wales Cricket Board says this is a means of taking cricket around the country, but in fact it is flogging international cricket to what is now approaching an irresponsible degree.
Stephen Brenkley in the Independent, takes a look at England's heroes and zeroes during their disastrous ODI campaign against Australia.
September 20, 2009
England's one-day flops reach a new low
Posted on 09/20/2009 in English cricket
A 7-0 whitewash looms for England, and the torment may still continue for a short while longer if they carry forward their form to the Champions Trophy. The saving grace? They could be home within a week if they lose their group games, writes Vic Marks in the Observer. The turnover in personnel since that day at The Oval is really hurting England.
We have been reminded that 50-over cricket requires as many skills that are relevant to Test cricket as to Twenty20. There is a need to build an innings and to survive against attacking bowlers like Brett Lee and Mitchell Johnson. We are pining for Jonathan Trott and – this is a fine indication of how reputations can blossom when a player is out of the team – Ian Bell. Kevin Pietersen would be handy as well.
When England should ideally be resting, they're flying to South Africa to take on Sri Lanka in within 72 hours, with barely enough time to acclimatise. The ECB should take some blame for this brutal fixture congestion because have so often put a love of money ahead of the requirements of the players, writes Simon Wilde in the Sunday Times.
Further humiliation may follow over the next few months in South Africa. England had been hoping Kevin Pietersen would be fit to rejoin them for the full tour of South Africa after Achilles tendon surgery but there are fears he may struggle to make the start on November 1. The medical staff overseeing Pietersen’s rehab insist he is on course to leave with the rest of the party.
In the Independent, Stephen Brenkley writes that England are responsible for their own downfall because they keep messing around with their batting order.
There are 13 one-day internationals in England next summer. It is understood that queues will not be forming around the block to attend, though it might get interesting if England lose the first 12.
September 19, 2009
Ashes hero no more?
Posted on 09/19/2009 in English cricket
As England battle to stave off an unprecedented 7-0 whitewash, Simon Briggs wonders in the Daily Telegraph whether any England captain has been heckled by fans so soon after winning the Ashes as Andrew Strauss has. It is not only the England players who have been denied the chance to enjoy their Test victory. It is the fans too. The end result is that a man who has just delivered one of the greatest solo performances in Ashes history finds himself being jeered. It is hardly Strauss's fault that county cricket is so inept at developing one-day talent.
Does it matter Freddie has gone freelance?
Posted on 09/19/2009 in English cricket
Barney Ronay writes in the Guardian that Andrew Flintoff doesn't really matter anymore because Flintoff "just isn't going to do anything important any more".
For Flintoff these are the Road Runner years, a fascinating period in any celebrity sportsman's life where it's clear, but only at a distance, that you've already gone skittering out over the edge of the cliff, legs pumping, held up by fame-momentum and an invisible cavalcade of agents, hangers-on, miracle oven-cleaner adverts, new tattoos and the remembered gleam of a tarnished potency.
Flintoff is currently in Dubai undergoing rehab and has been accompanied by his wife and kids. Allison Pearson in the Daily Mail interviews him.
He says Rachael is the more driven one. When they met at Edgbaston, she already had a company, supplying promotional staff, that she had started at the age of 19. Did she think you were a bit laid-back? 'Probably still does,' he grins. I get the impression Rachael relishes the couple's fame more than her husband. She complained that he chucked an invitation to meet Donatella Versace in the bin. 'I'd sooner go see me mates,' says an unrepentant Freddie.
September 18, 2009
Flintoff needs to put his body first
Posted on 09/18/2009 in English cricket
Andrew Flintoff may have rejected his England contract since it would not allow him to take part in a reality television show where he would have to bungee jump but he cannot be criticised for his decision when the ECB repeatedly put England first and his body second, writes Simon Wilde in the Times.
As long ago as 2002, he was made to bowl countless Test match overs despite the onset of a double hernia. The upshot was that he was not fit for the Ashes tour that followed. Four years later in India, he was press-ganged into service as an emergency captain and told that his reward would be that he in all probability miss the birth of his second child. He responded to the crisis magnificently, leading England to an unexpected 1-1 draw before racing home to belatedly meet his new daughter. The following winter, Flintoff was again back as stand-in leader, even though he was not long recovered from major ankle surgery. He hobbled, plainly and painfully, through a disastrous Ashes tour and did not play Test cricket again for almost 18 months.
September 17, 2009
England and Flintoff can coexist
Posted on 09/17/2009 in English cricket
Mike Atherton in the Times writes that there should be no problem with Andrew Flintoff's decision, provided he is available whenever England want him.
As long as Flintoff is fit and able, Flower should continue to pick him and England will continue to pay him a match fee for his services (nor should they be churlish and refuse him a No Objection Certificate for the IPL). Flower should expect the kind of commitment that he would expect from any other non-contracted player receiving a match fee; that is to say, he should expect Flintoff to pitch up for training days before a match and he should expect him to abide by team regulations within the period of that match.
Flower needs to make it absolutely clear that as soon as his expectations and Flintoff’s diverge, or as soon as Flintoff puts any other team before England, then Flintoff will never play for England again. Simple.
In the Guardian, Mike Selvey agrees that Flintoff cannot cherry-pick which games he wants to play.
Flintoff is not the centre of the England cricket solar system, with all else revolving around him. He appears to be wanting to dictate the terms on which he will provide his services, but he will find that in Flower there is someone used to dealing with a dictator far more malevolent than either Chandler or Flintoff. It is some while since England regarded an appearance by Flintoff as anything other than a bonus. They do not plan around him and are quite used to life without him. Just as long as there is no conflict, there is no reason to suppose that the two parties, England and Flintoff, cannot coexist harmoniously.
A short and funny post on the Reverse swing manifesto blog makes the case against Flintoff going freelance.
September 16, 2009
A long winter looms for England
Posted on 09/16/2009 in English cricket
Lawrence Booth writes in the Wisden Cricketer that England's batsmen need to make more centuries if they are to pose a challenge in South Africa. The England batting has made only two hundreds in the five Ashes Tests and five ODIs so far. The problem is not that England players can’t score runs. Look at the scores between 50 and 74 in the Ashes. There were 24 of them, of which 16 belonged to England. The problem is that no one is doing what Ricky Ponting did last night and deciding to win the game by themselves. Would Ponting try a reverse-sweep on 35, as Strauss did yesterday? Or try to reverse-paddle a second successive delivery, as Eoin Morgan did to his cost?
The pitfalls of a freelance Freddie
Posted on 09/16/2009 in English cricket
Andrew Flintoff's rejection of an England contract and his decision to become a freelance player is a worrying move, writes David Hopps in the Guardian.
His decision leaves a lot of questions unanswered. If Flower wants a week's get-together at Loughborough ahead of a one-day series, will Flintoff feel obliged to attend? If England do not monitor his form and fitness, who does?
It might be natural for golfers or tennis players to travel the world on an individualistic search for personal fulfillment. But cricket demands a compromise between individual ambitions and team demands. Any perception that Flintoff had won special privileges would not rest easily in any dressing room.
Prem Panicker, in his blog Smoke Signals, says that Flintoff's decision comes as a consequence of the behaviour of national boards, especially some of the irrational decisions they have made with regards to scheduling. Flintoff, he writes, may have started a trend that could challenge the monopoly held by national boards over their players by way of contracts.
In the Wisden Cricketer, Edward Craig is not concerned that Flintoff has abandoned England for more lucrative options, but is ticked off that Flintoff is pretending he's going freelance for the good of his cricket. Rubbish. He’s doing it for his bank balance. I don’t mind this, he has as much right as any professional in any industry to pursue lucrative opportunities especially as time runs out. But at least be honest about it and don’t pretend that it is for the good of the country. He goes on to have a patronising and unnecessary swipe at the England team management: “At this stage of my career I don’t think I need to be told when to play and when to rest.” Watching the Ashes, this is precisely what he needed.
The editor of Wisden Cricketer also has similar sentiments about Freddie turning down the contract. His comment about wanting to learn about different cricketing cultures (”how they go about their cricket”) is particularly disingenuous. Could he not have done a bit of learning during his 11 years as an England Test cricketer? Seems a bit pointless finding out all about it now.
Verily, we remember Verity
Posted on 09/16/2009 in English cricket
Paul Weaver in the Guardian takes a look at the 70th anniversary of a historically significant county match.
The cricketers of Sussex and Yorkshire and their supporters, preoccupied by worries of relegation as they enter today's crucial championship match at Hove, may not notice the elderly man in their midst who links them to a legend. Douglas Verity is 76 now, so was only six years old when his father Hedley, one of England's greatest cricketers, played his final game before going to war. He would not return.
When Germany invaded Poland on 1 September 1939 county cricket was immediately cancelled as everyone prepared for war – except at Hove, where Sussex were playing Yorkshire. Rob Boddie, the librarian at Sussex who has organised a special exhibition at the ground in memory of Verity and the others, takes up the story.
"Yorkshire wired their captain, Brian Sellers, to suggest that the game be called off. It is to his and the Yorkshire players' immense credit that Sellers wired back to say that as it was a benefit match for Jim Parks the players would like to continue and that is what was agreed."
September 15, 2009
Do not fear Freddie the freelancer
Posted on 09/15/2009 in English cricket
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Where are you going Freddie?
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Andrew Flintoff was recently offered an incremental contract by the ECB but could reject it in favour of going freelance. As a freelancer, playing all IPL matches for the Chennai Super Kings, Flintoff could earn a million dollars a year, considerably more than what he'd earn if he stayed with England. But a lot of the star's earning power via endorsements is contingent on his being an international player. On cricket365.com Alan Tyers writes that England fans should say to Flintoff: thanks for all that you've done, now go off and earn your money as you see fit.
There will no doubt be plenty of people who will thunder that it is a disgrace anyone could even consider playing for Twenty20 franchises when there is a chance of an England cap on offer. To them I would say: it's only the England ODI side. A lot of people would pay good money NOT to be in the England ODI side at the moment, given the utter mediocrity and the endless slog of meaningless fixtures. If, for example, the ECB are trying to promote an ODI against West Indies with a weakened XI while Flintoff is simultaneously off earning a crust with the Durban Ringbinders or whoever, then they are indeed going to have problems. But maybe that is not the end of the world: if they can't sell the ODIs, maybe we will stop having so bloody many of them.
In defence of the one-day international
Posted on 09/15/2009 in English cricket
The general consensus is the England-Australia series has been a poor advertisement for 50-over cricket. Matthew Hayden in the Independent writes that the series has been too long but ODIs still have their place and the format should not be tinkered with.
It's ridiculous that England and Australia are engaged in a seven-match one-day series. It is not what this summer needed or deserved. But two caveats. It's fine for us to walk around and run down these one-dayers because, ultimately, there are so many of them and we're on the road and see them every day. Well, tell that to these spectators who are filling grounds. It is their only day at the cricket, so that must be borne in mind.
And say that it's too many to Ravi Bopara, who's trying to get back into form, or to Adil Rashid, the young all-rounder, desperately trying to get back into England's side regularly. You can learn a lot and you have to keep this in perspective. Playing one-day cricket for your country is a wonderful experience.
Simon Barnes in the Times argues that the problem with ODIs is that the players have worked it out and teams form a sort of non-aggressive pact during the middle 25 overs of an innings.
As a result, now that 50 overs is the standard format for a one-day international, we have a period between the end of the fifteenth over and the start of the 41st in which the batters tip and tap their way on in nudged and nurdled singles that the fielding side are perfectly happy to concede.
Back in the Independent, Stephen Brenkley writes that of much greater concern than England being 4-0 down is the increasing uncertainty over the immediate playing futures of Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff.
In the Times, Rick Broadbent gets Michael Vaughan's opinion on the current stage of England's team.
With three dead rubbers to look forward to, the Guardian's Rob Smyth suggests the itinerary could have been fixed so that England and Australia played their Twenty20s and ODIs before the Ashes begun.
September 14, 2009
Strauss on captaincy
Posted on 09/14/2009 in English cricket
The Daily Telegraph is running extracts from Andrew Strauss's new autobiography Testing time. In today's extract, Strauss talks about the pressures of being England captain, and details how he got to be at the helm of the England side early this year after the tussle between Kevin Pietersen and Peter Moores. ... my biggest priority was to find out how the players viewed what had gone on between Moores and Pietersen. The newspapers had made out there was a big division between the players, with some supporting the coach, some the captain. My impression, however, was that they did not want to be involved in this personality clash; and that the most extreme positions were taken up by Moores and Pietersen, while the players were somewhere in the middle. The first thing I did was ring up every player to find out how he felt, did he feel let down, what were we doing right as a side and what badly. And a general theme quickly became apparent: the players wanted to move on and get England back to winning.
September 13, 2009
Dangers behind Durham’s dominance
Posted on 09/13/2009 in English cricket
As a relatively new club going from strength to strength, down-to-earth Durham are unlikely to slide quickly like other counties in the past. But for Durham to have suddenly stretched so far ahead of the field must trigger some alarm bells around the rest of the country. Their path to victory time around was made easier because of the fall in standard among the other counties, writes Tim Wellock in the Northern Echo.
Durham’s success is wonderful for the North-East, of course, but it should be remembered that the last county to dominate to this extent were Surrey. Ten years ago they finished 57 points clear at the top, and look where they are now.
September 12, 2009
A never-ending one-day series
Posted on 09/12/2009 in English cricket
The English media have never really warmed to the ongoing seven-ODI series between England and Australia. Ahead of the fourth match, Barney Ronay asks in the Guardian whether the series will ever end. He also writes that England's poor starts so far have been due to their openers' confusion over whether to "go aerial" or to "get the pace of the pitch". It's often Owais Shah who gets fingered as the real villain here, chiefly because at the crease he wears at all times the tortured facial expression of the final nonspecific bad guy gunned down in the warehouse shoot-out scene in a Mel Gibson cop movie – the one who sweats a lot and fidgets and hides behind an oil drum and eventually gets the drop on Mel, but when the gunshot comes Mel is somehow still standing and instead it's Shah who slumps to the floor because Mel's fatter/older/more ethnic partner has parked the car and come wheezing up in time to solemnly splatter him in the back of the head.
September 10, 2009
Not enough one-day internationals?
Posted on 09/10/2009 in English cricket
The current one-day series between England and Australia has been a tedious appendage to the Ashes, writes Mike Selvey in the Guardian. However, he also argues that England are so poor at the format because they've actually played too little ODI cricket over the years.
There has been limited-overs cricket played here at first-class level since 1963 and England have yet to win a major trophy. It does not stack up. But experience at county level does not translate into experience at international level. Put simply, almost all other international teams have played more one-day cricket. Whether the benchmark for an established player is 30 games or 50, the fact is that England cricketers have been deprived of competition. This latest series is what you get if that is the road you take.
When it comes to real experience, England are near the bottom of the heap. In the list of the most capped one-day players, Alec Stewart, top of the England roll with 170 caps, is 81st. So there will not really be much to shout about when Paul Collingwood, in all probability, goes past him but stops some way short of Sanath Jayasuriya's 436 appearances. Generally, English players play too much domestic one-day cricket and not enough international.
In the Times, Mike Atherton is frustrated by the myopia of cricket administrators, "who continue to believe that piling games high and cheap will not detract from their quality". And so, to keep himself amused during a dull series, he has come up with his all-time England one-day international XI.
September 8, 2009
England's ailing batting line-up
Posted on 09/08/2009 in English cricket
Lawrence Booth, in his final blog of The Spin in the Guardian, analyses England's batting line-up and its disappointing performance in the ODI series so far. He calls for Adil Rashid's inclusion in the third ODI and backs Jonathan Trott to get a game in place of Owais Shah.
How Andrew Strauss must be tearing out his hair, still sticky, no doubt, with Ashes bubbly. His mantra since he took over in January has been one of personal responsibility: assess the situation and act accordingly. This has been mocked by those who point out, reasonably enough, that statements of the bleeding obvious should not be worshipped as timeless verities. Yet the principle has clearly not sunk in.
Also in the Guardian, Paul Weaver wonders what's wrong with Owais Shah.
His one-day career is still in danger of stalling, just as his Test career did after an eye-catching debut brought only five further appearances. The trouble with Shah is that his fielding is ordinary, his running calamitous and his batting, though often brilliant, does not win enough matches. As one former England player said yesterday: "They like Owais because he hits the balls in unusual areas. Unfortunately his mind is in unusual areas too."
September 7, 2009
One-dayers need a new ingredient
Posted on 09/07/2009 in English cricket
Stephen Brenkley writes in the Independent that one-day cricket needs something to spice it up, as the game has become predictable and formulaic.
It is the manner in which the players approach the game. Between roughly the 20th over and the 40th in most innings of one-day internationals the game is put in a kind of suspended animation in which the bowlers bowl and the batsmen bat, but only way, as if by unspoken agreement.
Defensive fields are set, runs are nurdled and squeezed rather than struck, it is risk-free on both sides. Anything beyond is a bonus. Things start to happen again in the 40th over. It was like that at Lord's again yesterday. Australia, having reach 75 for three off 20 overs, were 169 for six from 40 and then added 80 in the final 10. Perfectly innocent Sunday afternoon slumbers were disturbed all round the ground.
Michael Henderson in the Daily Telegraph argues that the England v Australia one-day series serves no purpose.
Be honest now: what was the last one-day international you can recall? Outside the World Cup (and the last one, in the Caribbean two years ago, was possibly the biggest balls-up in the history of international sport), how many one-day matches linger in the mind for longer than a day?
September 6, 2009
Watch out for Rashid
Posted on 09/06/2009 in English cricket
Adil Rashid's statistics from England's loss in the first ODI against Australia may not be earth shattering but the way he went about his game with his disciplined bowling and measured batting bodes well for English cricket, writes Stephen Brenkley in the Independent on Sunday.
Rashid will be important for what he represents, of course, a kid of Asian background born in Bradford. He and Ravi Bopara, from the other end of the country, can be seminal figures in the development and evolution of Asian cricketers in the England team. Nasser Hussain, the finest of all England captains in the past 20 years, led the way, but things can be expected to change rapidly in the next decade.
Rashid is an unusual talent and has already achieved much by sealing his place as a regular in the Yorkshire side, says Vic Marks in the Observer. He also compares him to Monty Panesar, who he writes is a more mechanical bowler while Rashid is driven mainly by instinct.
The odds are that Rashid will replace Panesar in the Test squad this winter. It is certain that he will have more of a role in one-day cricket. He will experience similar pressures. Panesar was flavour of the month for a while for feature writers and was consequently endowed with qualities he did not possess. Now everyone seems to have lost interest.
Scyld Berry, writing in the Telegraph, tracks Rashid's journey from his time growing up in Bradford to becoming just the second regular legspinner to play for Yorkshire.
September 4, 2009
Silly walks and silly warm-ups
Posted on 09/04/2009 in English cricket
Joe Denly's injury while warming up with a football match has raised the ire of Mike Atherton, who writes in the Times that such warm-ups are a waste of time.
Football itself is not the issue - although plenty wonder why cricketers prepare for a day's work playing with their feet and not their hands - nor is preparation or practice, two essential ingredients of success. What irritates players of a certain vintage is the ridiculous warm-up routines that they go through on the morning of a match that have gained universal currency and are nothing more than an exercise in job justification for the ever-growing backroom staff.
Next time you are at a first-class game, check out the playing area before the start of play. More cones than the M1. These have been assiduously placed by a jobsworth and, once the pretty pattern is complete, players are forced to go through a variety of silly games. Over the past few years I have watched wheelbarrow racing, “the ministry of funny walks” racing, as well as football, tag rugby, volleyball and American football.
In his blog at the Times, Patrick Kidd considers some of the other potential sports England could use as warm-up activities, including bear-wrestling and cheerleading.
Stephen Brenkley in the Independent writes that the one-day series itself is the perfect warm-up - for the Champions Trophy.
The one-dayers also give England the chance to begin to develop their own brand of limited-overs cricket looking ahead to the 2011 World Cup, argues Duncan Fletcher in the Guardian.
September 1, 2009
Sidebottom back in the swing
Posted on 09/01/2009 in English cricket
Like his father Arnie, who appeared once during the Ashes series of 1985, there was the fear that Ryan Sidebottom would end up in the 'one-Test wonder' club, having been handed his cap in 2001 when Pakistan were visiting. However, David Lloyd, writing in the Independent, believes the fast bowler may be on the way up again after a strong showing in the first Twenty20 against Australia.
August 31, 2009
What makes Flintoff great?
Posted on 08/31/2009 in English cricket
There's been much debate over whether Andrew Flintoff can be called a great player. He may not have statistics or longevity on his side but Simon Barnes feels it is perfectly possible to achieve greatness without either and points to Bob Beamon, Roger Bannister, Jesse Owens and Mark Spitz who achieved greatness through a flash, an hour or a week of magic. He writes in the Times:
Flintoff was great for a couple of months. In those two months, in the summer of 2005, England beat an Australia side packed full of indisputably great players, regaining the Ashes after 16 years. Flintoff was the inspiration, the deal-breaker, the match-winner and the series-winner. In this brief, enchanted period he was genuinely great, and if the rest of his career has failed to measure up, then it was much the same with Beamon.
July 26, 2009
Does England need a new, bigger cricket stadium?
Posted on 07/26/2009 in English cricket
The crowds are flocking to the grounds for the Ashes, paying as much as 70 pounds for a seat. Jamie Jackson writes in the Observer that even the biggest of England's cricket grounds, Lord's, has only a capacity of 28,000 - less than a third of the likes of the Melbourne Cricket Ground and the Eden Gardens in Kolkata. He examines whether having a newer, larger stadium - or using London's Olympic stadium for cricket - would allow more people to watch the game and at more affordable prices.
July 22, 2009
Why third man has its point
Posted on 07/22/2009 in English cricket
Third man. It's the place where duffers and donkeys field, but a lonely life on the boundary has its uses, writes Rob Bagchi on his Guardian blog. And it's high time England reinvigorated the lost art of fielding at third man.
Third man and its more threatening but now rarely seen relative, the fly slip, are so unfashionable that sides seem prepared to leak scores of runs there rather than plug the gap. Perhaps not stationing a man down there is designed to encourage the streaky shot, and the cheap boundaries conceded there are a quid pro quo for the edge to slip the captain hopes will eventually materialise. But it seems obvious that if the bowler's plan of attack is to hit that famous corridor outside off-stump the penalties can quickly outweigh the rewards.
July 19, 2009
Cricket at its purest is only found in Scotland
Posted on 07/19/2009 in English cricket
In the summer of 1977, Kevin McKenna formally became a Scottish aficionado of the England Test cricket team. Stories of the little urn and Geoffrey Boycott's blunt, cussed approach had their say on the writer's mind, but then reality kicked in and the inevitable question had to be asked: why are Scotland shite at cricket too? Read on in the Observer.
July 16, 2009
Farewell Freddie
Posted on 07/16/2009 in English cricket
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With a cricket bat and ball in his hand, Flintoff represents everything that is good in Test cricket, says Derek Pringle
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Uncertainty seemed to be surrounding every match for which Andrew Flintoff was selected. But with the announcement of his impending retirement, the allrounder, his team-mates and the England management know precisely where they stand in the longer term. However, Mike Selvey in his blog on the Guardian website believes Flintoff would be determined to leave Test cricket as a wounded hero, not a spent force.
If once he was the hub of the side, he has long since been the cherry on top of the cake instead. He and his employers will have thought long and hard about whether such an early statement of intent will channel public interest away from the series and into a valedictory tour around the country. The sort of attention heaped on Steve Waugh when he played his last series is not the kind of diversion that this summer needs.
The allrounder captured the nation's spirit in his battles with Australia and became a totemic figure, leading Paul Hayward in his blog on the Guardian website to call him a hero measured by Ashes Test combat.
The shots from four years ago remain hypnotic. They depict a kind of insurrection, with Flintoff at its head. He is consumed by the task. It becomes him. His exultation at claiming an Australian wicket expressed large chunks of the national character. The wired-up-monster-face was catharsis after all the whippings Australia had given England.
Flintoff's way of playing the game and his innate understanding of its eternal verities transcended boundaries of class and creed. Stephen Brenkley in the Independent recalls one of the most iconic of all sporting images, of all human images, which had Flintoff bending a gracious knee to console the Australian, Brett Lee, who was on his knees, immediately after the end of the Second Test at Edgbaston in 2005.
A player might have had his fifteen minutes of fame, and words can do justice to the deed, but over a lengthy career, good players produce good numbers. And so it is with numbers that one must judge Flintoff for those will not change even as legend grows, writes Harsha Bhogle in the Indian Express.
Flintoff was Ian Botham's heir in more ways than one but never quite matched the England fans' unrealistic expectations. His talent at times seemed super-human, but he was, in fact, just as flawed as the rest of us, writes Andy Bull in his blog on the Guardian website.
It was not enough because in his finest moments Flintoff displayed an extravagance of talent that seemed almost limitless. He was a creation from a comic book. The man who marked his highest score in Test cricket by hitting a six straight to his father in the second tier of the stands at Edgbaston. As Graham Gooch asked Ian Botham when he took his record-equalling 355th Test wicket with his first ball back from a ban: "Who writes your scripts?"
Six months ago, Botham had a chat with Flintoff and said if the allrounder could get the Ashes out of the way and give it one last push through the pain barrier, he should then consider leaving Test cricket behind. And though quitting the five-day game was a tough call, Botham believes it was the right one. Read his piece in the Daily Mirror.
Malcolm Conn, writing in the Australian, fears more and more of the best players, like Flintoff, will come to the conclusion quickly that there are vast amounts of money to be made, and grief to be avoided, by quitting Test cricket and playing the short forms of the game.
It is unlikely that the next generation will follow Shane Warne's lead of giving away one-day cricket to concentrate on Test matches. Comparatively speaking, there appears to be little money or glory compared to the riches on offer in the IPL.
We can only thank Freddie for his body-breaking efforts, and hope that Test cricket's next big England hero is not another generation away. The most traditional form of the game may not be able to wait that long.
Stephen Brenkley in the Independent has a similar belief that life will go on for the allrounder in the lucrative embrace of the IPL.
The normality, the lack of pretension, the accessibility is why people love Flintoff and why people are prepared to forgive the foibles. Their heads might say that they want single-minded hyper-professionals, but their hearts say it's guys like him in whom they can invest their dreams. Read on in John Stern's blog on the Wisden Cricketer website.
Flintoff's decision could enable him to play in the 2015 World Cup but Paul Weaver in his Guardian blog suggests that the search is on for the new Freddie.
The mystery to most people is that Flintoff's marvellous and wholehearted bowling has rarely been rewarded with a bagful of wickets. Derek Pringle cannot count the number of times he felt that Flintoff deserved five or six wickets yet only had one or two to his name. Was that bad luck or not? The debate continues in his column in the Independent.
Former England captain Mike Atherton is surprised by the timing of Flintoff's announcement, quite opposite to Graham Gooch's thoughts. Richard Bright strings together a few reactions from former players in the Daily Telegraph.
In fact, Atherton predicts a postmodern twist to the allrounder's career story after his announcement in his column in the Times.
Nick Hoult presents a list of five highs and lows for the allrounder in Daily Telegraph.
July 1, 2009
One rule for one, one for Fred?
Posted on 07/01/2009 in English cricket
Andrew Flintoff's dodgy alarm clock has given the England management a difficult few days ahead of the Ashes after the allrounder missed the bus during their team-bonding trip to Belgium to view the war graves. It led to Andrew Strauss being asked how they are going to deal with Flintoff and both he and Hugh Morris were on the defensive. In the Daily Mail, Paul Newman says that the ECB could soon be in a tough situation.
To let himself and England down when the team were supposed to be opening their eyes to the wider world and learning about those who gave their lives for the country seems particularly crass. This is a big test for the Strauss-Flower regime. They have made an excellent impression as a partnership capable of lifting England from the depths to become credible Ashes challengers.
But they cannot allow Flintoff to be bigger than the team, not when they have won more Tests without him than with him in the last four years. And not when his lack of Test hundreds and five-fors make it hard to still think of him as the irreplaceable all-rounder that he has always been considered.
In the Times, Mike Atherton says that although the issue may soon be forgotten if Flintoff and England perform well, it was very bad timing.
If it does emerge that Flintoff was drinking, Morris will be made to look both foolish and economical with the truth. Thanks, Fred.
Andrew Strauss didn't need it. Attempting to deflect criticism away from his all-rounder, he was forced to concede that what Morris called an “alarm clock issue” is not specific to Flintoff. The team, Strauss said, have a timekeeping issue generally. Ravi Bopara is known to have missed a team meeting this summer, but from what Strauss said yesterday, it is a more widespread challenge for his team to defeat. After that, the Aussies should be a cinch.
Who's the better leader?
Posted on 07/01/2009 in English cricket
Was Michael Vaughan a better captain than Ray Illingworth, whose 12 England victories trail behind his total but who won them when the pickings were not so easy from emerging nations such as Bangladesh and Zimbabwe and when the West Indies at their mightiest ruled the game?
Was he better than May, who retained his talent as the most stylish of batsmen even when saddled with responsibility?
Was he better than Mike Brearley, whose 18 triumphs in 31 Tests, including seven series successes, notably the Botham Ashes of 1981, gives him a win ratio of 58%?
Frank Malley writing in the Independent has his reasons to believe the comparisons are futile.
Generations from now, Michael Vaughan's place in English cricketing history will be defined by the epic, and frenetic 2005 Ashes series. He was much more than the magician who turned Andrew Flintoff into a national hero that summer, the senior role model brave enough to let the then rookie Kevin Pietersen bat with unbridled exuberance, and the mentor who encouraged Simon Jones to produce swinging exocets that defied the laws of physics. Oliver Brett has more in his blog on the BBC website.
June 29, 2009
Stumps drawn for a truly great captain
Posted on 06/29/2009 in English cricket
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O captain, my captain!
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Michael Vaughan was a superb batsman but his finest talent was as a leader. His success as England captain had much more to it than mere figures. He was shrewd, innovative and tough as Yorkshire oak. He embodied the characteristic ingredients of England's captains from the county, Stanley Jackson, Len Hutton, Ray Illingworth – all of whom, like him, led teams that won the Ashes. Stephen Brenkley takes a look back at Vaughan's career in the Independent.
The pictures that will endure are the lovely cover drive, sometimes off one knee, and the front foot pull, as assertive as it was thrilling. His batting was splendid and frequently a thing of beauty but when they remember England captains, well then they will be really talking.
The public saw one side only to Vaughan: a batsman who could cover-drive and pull like a dream, and a tactically astute leader who brought the best out of his players. Duncan Fletcher, the former England coach, writing in the Guardian, believes what they didn't see was the gutsy fighter who could score 177 with a busted knee, as he did in Adelaide in 2002-03, or the burning desire which once made Vaughan furious with Fletcher when told that he couldn't play in a one-dayer at Bristol against the Australia because of a serious finger injury.
The truth was Vaughan radiated calm. It was one of his greatest strengths. But beneath that veneer – one I believe is crucial for any international cricket captain – was a toughness that few of his team-mates could match...I knew then he was the kind of guy I'd go to war with.
If the decision to prolong Vaughan's involvement can be seen now for what it was, then Vaughan himself should be spared from criticism because the timing and manner of a player's departure are for him and him alone, and self-delusion is a central requirement for all top-class sportsmen, writes Michael Atherton in the Times.
Vaughan's hopes for a fitting final act were encouraged by the selectors, who granted him a central contract last September. That decision can now be seen as either hopelessly deluded or as the gift of a bunch of sentimentalists happy to splurge other people's money. Either way, it was not a good one.
In the Daily Telegraph, Geoffrey Boycott ranks Vaughan alongside Mike Brearley, because they were both charming people on the surface, but underneath they were as tough as old boots.
Vaughan treated people as grown-ups, and made allowances for the fact that Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff needed to be given attacking licence. In this, he was different from Peter Moores, the England coach for his last 18 Tests in charge. The pair of them were never going to gel because Moores was so dogmatic in the way he handled players.
It may well be a career in the media or coaching after Vaughan decided to end a career that stretched 16 years. Nick Hoult and Paul Bolton have more in the same paper.
On the Sky Sports website Nasser Hussain says Vaughan commanded respect, and deserved to. Hussain claims that if one were to make a template for an international batsman then they should turn to Vaughan and the same goes for an international captain.
June 27, 2009
The cricket I grew up watching has ended
Posted on 06/27/2009 in English cricket
Noted British journalist Simon Heffer says, in the Daily Telegraph, that he could attempt to get his children interested in the new form of cricket if he wished to be cruel to them. Heffer believes watching cricket causes one to scrutinise life more exactly and that the guardians of our game – men in blazers in committee rooms – are not necessarily always well suited to the job.
Years ago, before everyone wore helmets and pyjamas, I used to go and sit in the emptiest stand at Lord's after work and watch the last hour of play, and revel in the desolation of the surroundings and the timelessness of the spectacle before me. And Francis Thompson's lines – "And a ghostly batsman plays to the bowling of a ghost/ And I look through my tears on a soundless-clapping host/ As the run-stealers flicker to and fro,/ To and fro: / Oh, my Hornby and my Barlow long ago!" – would drift into my mind, and it was no longer the 1980s, but the 1880s. Never let anyone tell you that there are no comforts to be had in a sense of continuity.
Woman on a winning run
Posted on 06/27/2009 in Women's cricket
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England can thank Charlotte Edwards that she picked cricket over serving tea
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English cricket is riding a tide of success, but it's the women, not the men, taking home the trophies. Captain Charlotte Edwards welcomes the challenge - and the long overdue recognition. The Guardian's Emine Saner meets her:
This 29-year-old batsman (batswoman sounds weird, doesn't it?) can't remember cricket ever not being a part of her life. Her father, a potato farmer, and her uncle both played for clubs in Cambridgeshire, where she grew up, and she remembers watching at the boundary edge with her brother when she was three. "My mum would be there making the teas, and the choice was either help make the tea or play cricket. Cricket became my life." She practised in the garden with her brother and father, and was encouraged to play at primary school. She was lucky that her secondary school took cricket so seriously, a rarity in state schools; she was the only girl on the team and became captain. "Those days were brilliant. The boys had grown up with me and I was treated like one of them. I didn't get any special treatment."
June 18, 2009
Lord's lights up but waits on night Tests
Posted on 06/18/2009 in English cricket
Chloe Saltau, writing in the Age, talks to Keith Bradshaw, the MCC’s secretary, about a quiet revolution at Lord’s.
The sacred ground will host the Twenty20 final on Sunday under its new retractable floodlights but Bradshaw said Test cricket also needed to move with the times as interest wanes in many parts of the world. As the only truly independent voice in the game, given the International Cricket Council board is comprised of sovereign nations that vote along political lines, he believes the MCC is well-placed to influence those changes.
"At the MCC we are purists and traditionalists and we're doing whatever we can to promote Test cricket. We're looking to stage neutral Test matches, we're looking at the concept of day-night Test cricket," Bradshaw said. "As a purist I think (Test cricket) is the pinnacle, and for the players it is the pinnacle, so it's important that we preserve it and the fact is numbers and interest have been reducing. Whilst I don't think for one minute that Test cricket is in danger of dying, I think we need to look ahead and look at innovative ideas."
Taking the positives and hitting the right areas
Posted on 06/18/2009 in English cricket
Alan Tyers has a hilarious satirical piece in the Wisden Cricketer where he reveals how England players got better and better at interviews over the course of the World Twenty20. Broady too – he’s coming on leaps and grounds. He’s a very intelligent cricketer, and he’s not afraid to try different things, running his hand through his hair, slipping in a little joke, dropping the microphone at a key moment. He’s got a massive future ahead of him as a specialist post-match interviewee if he wants it.
June 5, 2009
What ails English cricket?
Posted on 06/05/2009 in English cricket
In the Guardian, Duncan Fletcher discusses England's chances at the ICC World Twenty20, and what keeps the nation from reaching great heights.
I'm not writing off the chances of the current side, because they are playing with a lot of confidence at the moment after beating West Indies in all forms of the game over the last month. But I always felt English cricketers were not encouraged to improve their one-day skills by a system that simply presents them with another chance as soon as the previous one has passed.
In the Independent, Stephen Brenkley thinks England will do well to reach the semi-finals.
June 3, 2009
Inner turmoils of the opener's mind
Posted on 06/03/2009 in English cricket
David Foot, in his article in the Guardian, grapples with the issue of the decline of highly capable cricketers due to stress, arguing that cricket, like no other sport, is played in the head.
Both Trescothick and Gimblett made the undisputed point that cricket is, like no other game, played with the head. There is too much to worry about, too many complications that are as much intellectual as technical. Tresco's disaffection was less marked and nowadays he looks infinitely more relaxed and at peace with himself. But there were times, in the worst of the doldrums, when he, too, was repelled by the sight of a cricket bat. The similarities and phobias of these two West Countrymen, both opening batsmen bountiful of innate talent, is uncanny.
June 2, 2009
The past and future of English cricket
Posted on 06/02/2009 in English cricket
Is English cricket struggling to leave its past behind, or, with the advent of Twenty20, forgetting its history a little too quickly? Giles Smith tries to find some answers in his review of the BBC documentary The Empire of Cricket in the Times. Watch out for the interesting anecdote on the treatment meted out to WG Grace for his 'amateur' participation in an international tour.
The narrative arc seemed fairly typical for an English sport: invented it, lost it, never quite got over it. Here's my tip - don't bother coming up with a sport. Wait for someone else in another country to do it. Then casually perfect it while they're still sitting in leather chairs and hugging themselves about how clever they've been. It seems to work out so much more happily for everyone concerned if you don't “give the game to the world” but simply snitch it a few years later.
May 28, 2009
No Allen Stanford in ECB's annual report
Posted on 05/28/2009 in English cricket
Simon Wilde, writing in the Times, says it is mysterious that the US businessman fails to get a mention in English cricket's yearly review.
No, the Stanford fiasco could have been included but wasn't. Instead, Clarke's three-page chairman's statement concentrates on such issues as a lucrative new media deal, a rise in attendances at county matches and the success of the England women's team, but there is no reference to the 100 hours of talks with Stanford that presaged various deals worth eye-watering amounts of money (if only it had materialised) or the defeat to Stanford's Superstars on November 1 which meant each England player missed out on $1m.
May 27, 2009
Why the P20 may be about as welcome as a P45
Posted on 05/27/2009 in English cricket
As the ECB tries to shake up the sagging sales of Twenty20 tickets in the country, the next year's P20 remains as ill thought-out as a reverse-sweep off Joel Garner, writes Lawrence Booth in his column Spin, for the Guardian. There is an underlying sense that English cricket has hurriedly said yes to what it imagines will be another money-spinning tournament without actually working out how to spin the money.
The upshot is a tournament that smacks of overkill and has little hope of competing with the IPL as the world's leading Twenty20 competition. And, if the below-par crowds at the start of this year's Twenty20 Cup are anything to go by, the P20 risks diluting the impact of both tournaments.
May 26, 2009
England happily getting to know Graham Onions
Posted on 05/26/2009 in English cricket
Graham Onions is well placed in the shake-up to be Andy Flower's fourth seamer for this summer's Ashes series, writes Donald McRae in the Guardian.
He laughs when asked if Ricky Ponting has already claimed that the eye-watering rise of Bunny Onions is due to the six-week education he received in Australian club cricket? "Not quite. I saw that interview where he said, 'Graham Onions has done well but I expect Harmison and Vaughan will be back for the Ashes.' That's his opinion. But if I get the nod I'll be ready."
May 24, 2009
Lewis a sporting underacheiver
Posted on 05/24/2009 in English cricket
In the Sunday Telegraph, Andrew Alderson charts the downfall of former England allrounder Chris Lewis, who was recently sentenced to 13 years in prison after being found guilty of smuggling cocaine into the country. [Lewis' friends and associates] characterised him as engaging, yet infuriating: a fading sporting star who, after one disappointment too many, appears to have embarked on a flawed gamble to try to maintain his wealthy lifestyle by putting more than 7lb of the liquid Class A drug inside tins of fruit juice placed in luggage on a flight from St Lucia to Gatwick.
May 21, 2009
Warm-ups in Versace jeans
Posted on 05/21/2009 in English cricket
In the Age, Peter Hanlon writes that Chris Lewis' talent wasn't simply confined to the cricket field. In 1995, Lewis played for the Seddon Cricket Club in Melbourne, despite the fact that they couldn't afford to pay him, and the then club president Brian Rooney explains Lewis showed them a lavish partying lifestyle.
"On his way out here, he'd picked up a stewardess, lined up to see her when he got back to England," Rooney said. "By the time we got to the city, he'd taken a phone call from another girl, and I was driving him to a shop in South Yarra to meet another girl. I think you could say he was very popular with women."
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"We'd be doing park cricket warm-ups before the game, and he was wearing Versace jeans and a Versace T-shirt while everyone's got their whites on. It was a completely different environment for him," Rooney said. Foreign for Seddon, too. Grieves remembers girls no one had ever seen turning up at the cricket, "these stunning women driving BMWs, dropping off their business cards and asking to be introduced to Chris Lewis".
He talked to everyone, from the firsts down to the fourths, and was well liked. "After the game he'd buy everyone a drink, money wasn't an object," Rooney said. "He'd hang around for an hour, then he'd take off. He had his own life that he was well and truly living."
Chris Lewis: A waste of talent
Posted on 05/21/2009 in English cricket
He could have been viewed as a role model for the Black community in England, but former England allrounder Chris Lewis now faces 13 years in prison. Patrick Kidd writes in the Times about the man with a history of outrageous behaviour, and how Lewis wasted his abundant talent.
James Meikle has similar views on Lewis in the Guardian, writing that "descriptions such as promising and multi-talented soon turned to mercurial and enigmatic, and long before the end of his international career, fragile and lacking in confidence".
May 15, 2009
Will they be summer's history boys?
Posted on 05/15/2009 in English cricket
For more than a century, England have failed to win a home Ashes series in the same season as a Lions tour victory. As Shane Williams and Andrew Flintoff hope to change that, the two sporting giants talk fate, fears and fatherhood. Read the Brian Viner interview in the Telegraph.
Sitting before me in a warehouse in an enterprise park in Manchester, incongruously, are two men whose form and fitness could determine whether this sporting summer is a vintage one for these islands. Shane Williams, rugby union superstar, and Andrew Flintoff, cricketing colossus, have never met before, yet there is plenty of common ground. They were born in the same year, 1977, and together they have a chance of making history, or at least of achieving something never done in their lifetimes. Not since 1971 in New Zealand have the British and Irish Lions won a series in the same year that England's cricketers have captured the Ashes, winning what are surely the two supreme battles for sporting supremacy between the British Isles and the old outposts of empire.
May 8, 2009
Headingley's decorous heritage
Posted on 05/08/2009 in English cricket
The Western Terrace at Headingley was far from the Viking-helmeted, gorilla-suited, false-breasted transvestite Bacchanal it is today, writes Harry Pearson in the Guardian.
Mr Griffiths was Leeds' Yabba. Only he didn't hurl insults, he shouted tactical advice and always in the most polite terms. "Captain, it is time to bring Mr Underwood on," he would call in his deep and sonorous Caribbean voice. "An extra slip fielder might be in order when Mr Old is bowling, Mr Greig." Soon Mr Griffiths was so well known that it was hardly a surprise when one morning during the 1975 Ashes Test he walked out into the middle before start of play to inspect the wicket with the Australian captain Ian Chappell.
Mr Griffiths' great idol was Geoff Boycott. He was the first person I ever heard call the Yorkshire opener "Sir Geoffrey". Boycott is still with us – indeed, I am listening to him now – but his biggest fan fell silent some while ago. I am not sure what became of him. I would dearly love to hear his voice again, though – even if it meant attending a Test match in February.
May 6, 2009
Does England's contracts system need an overhaul?
Posted on 05/06/2009 in English cricket
Centrally-contracted players or free-agents? John Emburey and Gladstone Small debate the merits of the ECB's flagship policy in the Guardian.
John Emburey: The central contract system came in to help the coach and selectors manage the players: the idea was they would play less county cricket, which would mean they could be fully rested when Test series came around.But that hasn't necessarily stopped players playing more cricket – Test cricketers still complain they're tired, mentally and physically because of the full international calendar despite the presence of central contracts. And if there's big money available, like there is in the IPL, players still seem willing to fit a few extra games in. You can't really blame them for that either, especially given the huge sumsof money involved.
Gladstone Small: It's certainly not perfect, but essentially the current central contract system works well. I loved playing at Test level with all its dramas but I know from my own personal experience that I would have been a better-prepared player fitness wise if more time to rest between Tests had been available and that's what the current system lets players do.
Flintoff's loss poses question of balance for England
Posted on 05/06/2009 in English cricket
The lack of a real allrounder exposes the shallowness of Andrew Strauss's side's batting, writes Duncan Fletcher in the Guardian.
My one major concern, though, is the length of the tail. I know it's an old hobby horse of mine, but look at how South Africa won in Australia at the end of last year – it was thanks in no small part to contributions from the lower order. Australia used to have Adam Gilchrist at No7 and clever players like Shane Warne and Brett Lee beneath him. I'd prefer to see Matt Prior at No7, with Stuart Broad – promising though he is as a batsman – coming in at No8. It just shows you how the balance of the side is thrown when Flintoff is not there. Finding that all-rounder is crucial – as Australia are themselves discovering.
In any culture - sporting, business or otherwise - fresh faces are an essential part of the process of renewal. The best teams and the best coaches manage this transformation seamlessly, but, as Sir Alex Ferguson and Arsène Wenger have shown, manage it they must if triumphs are to become self-sustaining rather than isolated orgies of self-congratulation, writes Mike Atherton in the Times.
Green shoots are everywhere at the moment and certainly the Lord's pitch was tinged with green yesterday, which makes it all the more likely that Onions and Bresnan will play. Chris Gayle, the West Indies captain, quipped that he had never even tasted onions, never mind seen him bowl, but the four left-handers in the touring team's top six should be wary, lest England's new boy induces some unwanted tears because, from his delivery close to the stumps, Onions enjoys bowling at southpaws.
England must satisfy two big goals during the West Indies series. Not only do they need a convincing win, they also need to come out of the second of the two Tests with a clear idea of what their best side for the Ashes will be, writes Geoffrey Boycott in the Telegraph.
Above all, England need to stop thinking that everything will be all right if Andrew Flintoff shows up fit at the end of May. It is time they stopped waiting for Freddie. Flintoff is still a very fine cricketer but I have a feeling that his magic period is gone. You have to say that 2005 will probably represent his peak as a bowler, because he has played in only half of England's Test matches since then. There is no way he can reach that same level without a decent spell in the team.
England's unnecessary series against the West Indies begins today, but few save Ravi Bopara and Graham Onions are looking forward to it, writes Mike Selvey in the Guardian.
With one eye on the Ashes later in the summer, the ideal scenario at Lord's would be a flat pitch, a total lack of swing and strong resistance from the tourists. That way, Andrew Strauss and his team will have to move heaven and earth to secure a victory some time on Sunday, and they will learn so much more about themselves in the process, writes Nasser Hussain in the Daily Mail.
Cold should not be such a problem at Lord's this week, nor rain. There is a chance of light drizzle tomorrow and showers on Sunday but the general forecast is for cloudy skies and temperatures in the high teens. The 16-1 being offered by Ladbrokes on snow falling is as tempting as betting on Kevin Pietersen scoring a hundred and dedicating it to Peter Moores, writes Patrick Kidd in the Times.
Also in the Guardian, Paul Weaver says "Today an unwanted Test match will be dumped on the doorstep of Lord's and there is a very real danger that no one is willing to take care of it."
Read Fazeer Mohammed's opinion on Chris Gayle's late arrival in England and the WICB allowing him to extend his IPL stint in the Trinidad Express.
And this is not a West Indian thing exclusively, not when you have so many big-name cricketing hypocrites across the globe who were apparently on the verge of collapse from burnout, that is until the seemingly bottomless money pit of the IPL generated a surge of boundless energy from almost nowhere, not to mention a fundamental reorientation of perspectives on the game itself to the extent that Savannah-style vupping for 20 overs is now peddled by them as an experience every bit as intense, intriguing and complicated as Dostoevsky's "Crime and Punishment". So if Gayle is guilty of looking after number one, he's only right in tune with the tenor of our times.
May 5, 2009
Flower can set England straight
Posted on 05/05/2009 in English cricket
Will Andy Flower make a difference? I'd say he has already. Sitting on the outside looking in is always difficult but knowing something of the man, his strengths and what makes him tick, I think I can see where he has already made a mark on English cricket, writes Henry Olonga in the Guardian.
The message is clear and very much of the man. He is not one of those guys who leaves room for misunderstanding. In Africa we have something we call "a mother's look", which I guess is a variation on the English phrase "if looks could kill". A couple of times when I played under Andy's captaincy I got that look. There was no misunderstanding. No need for a word, no need for further explanation: I knew what I'd done and what he meant. There would be no repetition. And that's what England can expect. I doubt that there will be much room for politicking or undue diplomacy in Andy's world – after all he did not shirk from going head-to-head with a president when he had something to say – and I understand that it is the straight talking that has impressed already.
In the last 14 series, England have failed to win their opening Test. Stephen Brenkley, of the Independent asks three key players – Cook, Anderson and Swann – how they hope to stop the rot.
England last won the opening Test against Bangladesh in 2005, which hardly counts. But they had also done it in the three series preceding that and had not actually lost the opening game since 2002 (Australia, naturally). The rot for the present run set in against Australia in 2005 when they were hammered by Australia at Lord's. Of course, they came back from that to regain the Ashes but the start of the series has been a picture of woe since then. That applies as much to the ones that got away as much as the one they were never in.
Graham Onions and Tim Bresnan have started the season leaner and – and mean to make their mark on West Indies at Lord's, writes Paul Weaver in the Guardian.
It might have something to do with being a Newcastle United supporter but there is some anger and emotion inside Graham Onions that, if properly controlled, could lend an edge to his bowling against the West Indies at Lord's this week.
Like another opening bowler, Tim Bresnan, Onions is expected to make his Test debut tomorrow – strangely, both of them look more hoary than the fresh-faced Jimmy Anderson, now the leader of the attack – and it is the Durham player who represents the more interesting pick.
In the Daily Mail, Nick Metcalfe revisits some of the memorable contests between England and West Indies overs the decades.
May 4, 2009
Harmy, you’re history now
Posted on 05/04/2009 in English cricket
As England move into a brand new era, with a brand new coach who isn’t even called a coach — no, Andy Flower is England’s team director, whatever that means — we pass into this bracing new climate by discarding a few old faithfuls, especially Stephen Harmison, writes Simon Barnes in the Times.
In the sad circumstances of his passing, it is fitting to remember Harmison as he was at his very best: a great rampaging, unshaved Dirty Harry of a bowler — you don’t ask him to bowl, you just turn him loose. And it wasn’t the sort of thing that lasted for ever, it was great while it did. If Rick and Elspeth will always have Paris, then Harmison (and we) will always have 2005.
May 3, 2009
England can thrive in life after Freddie
Posted on 05/03/2009 in English cricket
How safe is Andrew Flintoff's place under England's new regime? asks Simon Wilde in the Sunday Times.
Flintoff has been included in the Twenty20 squad on the assumption that he recovers from knee surgery but national selector Geoff Miller indicated that plans are in place should Flintoff not be ready, so the management’s faith is not absolute. That faith has not been absolute for some time and it must have occurred to them that the Test team might be better off without him. To consider this claim we need to take into account not only Flintoff’s performances with bat and ball, but also what he brings to the dressing room and how much appetite he has for Test cricket. There has been speculation that he might quit Tests for the riches of Twenty20 cricket sooner rather than later.
England have chosen boldly for the earliest Test match to be played in this country. In a lean squad of 12 – a declaration of intent and decisiveness – they have included a new No 3 batsman and two new seam bowlers. One of the enduringly alluring games of early summer, or late spring as it has unfortunately become, is to select the team for the opening Test before the selectors get their hands on it, writes Stephen Brenkley in the Independent on Sunday.
It is improbable but the hint of their intentions was there last Wednesday in the dozen names. England have at their disposal two spin bowlers, Graeme Swann and Monty Panesar. In England, in May. The idea that both could make the final XI, and one must, is faintly ridiculous. England simply do not play two spinners unless one of them can also bat properly.But they may yet do so here partly because the Test pitches at Lord's in the last few years have given scant assistance to anybody, slope or no slope, and partly because there is the suspicion they might just have a strategy in mind for later in the summer.
David Walsh met Andrew Strauss for a round of golf, and interviewed him as well for the Sunday Times.
You wonder how this reasonable and mild-mannered man will survive. Captain and opening batsman, his is the scalp the Aussies will want. So you ask the kind of question Brett Lee will ask. “The captaincy came with an issue: what to do about Kevin Pietersen’s sense of having been wronged. You could have said, ‘England need Pietersen, Pietersen needs England, let’s get on with it’. Or you could have decided you and Kevin needed to talk?”
“The latter,” he says. “Kevin and I sat down and talked about it a few times, mainly when I took over from him, which was a difficult situation for him, for me and for English cricket. There is a reason he is feeling hurt and he is justified in that. He felt very strongly that he was doing what was right for English cricket and I think he felt that he had been supported by the ECB and that suddenly the support disappeared.When I took over he said, ‘Straussy, you are going to have no problems from me, all I want to do is score as many runs as I can for England. That is all I’m interested in’.
May 2, 2009
England run out of ideas
Posted on 05/02/2009 in English cricket
To turn again in Twenty20 cricket to Collingwood, a player who resigned from the one-day captaincy last summer on the same day as Michael Vaughan, smacks of a conservative choice in a game which demands liberation, and will not inspire confidence that England can win the tournament even with home advantage, writes David Hopps in the Guardian.
In a single mature moment last winter, Stuart Broad showed that he meant business for England. It was nothing he bowled, it was rather something he said. He told the Indian Premier League, who were undoubtedly willing to give this tall, handsome, blond, talented man a truckload of cash in return for three weeks' work, that he was frankly not interested, writes Stephen Brenkley in the Independent.
"The Ashes is a major reason that I didn't go to the IPL and a major reason why anyone plays for their country," he said. "You can make history. People have a passion for the Ashes and I think to the nation it's the most important thing in the cricketing world. It's the pinnacle. Beating the West Indies at home is brilliant but beating Australia gives massive national pride.
May 1, 2009
Flower trying too hard
Posted on 05/01/2009 in English cricket
After England announced a squad filled with surprises, Simon Wilde writes in the Times that new boss Andy Flower is trying too hard to make a statement. He also says that the exclusion of Vaughan, Bell and Harmison shows that central contracts don't mean much any more. Vaughan has not played a meaningful match for England since he was awarded a new contract last autumn - and he may very well never play another. Nor has a central contract ever done much for Bell's game; his Test average has fallen year on year ever since he was first awarded one. As for Harmison, a central contract merely seems to be a device by which he is permitted, between England disasters, to go back to Durham so that everyone can forget how badly he was bowling before he is recalled again. Nice work if you can get it.
April 30, 2009
Flower stamps his influence
Posted on 04/30/2009 in English cricket
England's decision to leave out big names like Michael Vaughan, Ian Bell and Steve Harmison for the first Test against West Indies shows Andy Flower is no respecter of reputations or seniority, says Vic Marks in the Guardian. It feels as if both Bell and Harmison ... have been kept in detention. A couple of good games for their counties in April are not enough for two of England's most exasperating cricketers to trot easily back into the team. They have been challenged to put together an unanswerable case for a recall. Nor are Michael Vaughan's fine words enough to get him back in the squad. He needs runs. Flower – and Strauss – have sent out a message that a new regime is in charge now.
In the Times, Michael Atherton also feels the shake-up in the squad is a strong message from Flower and the selectors.
April 29, 2009
Should Michael Vaughan be recalled?
Posted on 04/29/2009 in English cricket
Opinions are divided and former Test captains Ray Illingworth and Kepler Wessels go head-to-head in the Vaughan debate before the squad's announced. Illingworth feels there's a definite vacancy for Vaughan at No.3, partly because there aren't any other suitable candidates. Read on in the Guardian.
He certainly wasn't right when he played for Yorkshire at the back end of last season and he wouldn't be right for Test cricket if his head was still in turmoil, but he looks refreshed and fit to me. If his knee is as good as it's ever going to be then he gets over the fitness hurdle that we have been preoccupied by for the past few years.
Wessels disagrees.
No team can carry a passenger in a Test series – even less so in an Ashes campaign. If Vaughan is selected on reputation rather than worth, it will give the Australia bowlers a point of focus and they will hunt him down ruthlessly. I'm sure Michael knows that he needs to score at least one hundred for Yorkshire before he can be seriously considered.
In the Independent, Stephen Brenkley writes that it's fairly clear that the selectors were determined to delay the announcement of the squad until Vaughan scored some runs.
The amendment was entirely sensible because while nothing much was likely to change, it gave everybody concerned more time for proper reflection as the season started. Not that the deferment as it applied to Vaughan was entirely fanciful. Enough has been said to suggest that people in high places think he can still perform a significant role – the coach Andy Flower and the captain Andrew Strauss among them – but he still needed some runs to lend any sort of validity to that belief.
April 26, 2009
Flintoff must share the blame for latest setback
Posted on 04/26/2009 in English cricket
Simon Wilde writes in the Sunday Times that the latest injury shows Andrew Flintoff is no longer fit for regular Test cricket, and says the main purpose of central contracts - to manage the workloads of the most prized players - has been destroyed by the financial muscle of the IPL. Why Flintoff should be paid a basic retainer of nearly £200,000 when he is no longer putting England first is a moot point. The same argument applies to the likes of Kevin Pietersen and Paul Collingwood, except that as batsmen they are far less likely to suffer injuries and need less protecting.
Hughes makes early impression in England
Posted on 04/26/2009 in English cricket
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The Phillip Hughes fan club continues to expand
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Scyld Berry, of the Sunday Telegraph, is highly impressed with 20-year-old Australian opener Phillip Hughes, who made a century at Lord's on Middlesex debut earlier this week. Berry lists two advantages Hughes will have going into the Ashes: The first is that his opening partner for NSW is the same as for Australia, Simon Katich, so they know each other's game and Katich, at 33, is content to rein himself in, work the fielders around, and allow the prodigy to go for his shots without competing ... Hughes's second advantage is that he is attuning to English conditions – rapidly on this week's evidence - more than two months before the Ashes. No English cricketer still playing has ever had the advantage of playing in the Sheffield Shield.
April 25, 2009
Is there a Gower in the house
Posted on 04/25/2009 in English cricket
In the Guardian Barney Ronay analyses the chances of each of the four main candidates for the No. 3 slot in the England side, and wonders where the successor to England's last really good No. 3, David Gower, is. The No3 is now routinely described as "pivotal". We hear talk of him "dictating" not just an innings, but a match, a series, perhaps even a small landlocked Balkan state ... The real problem is that there is no obvious answer. England have four evenly-matched and largely generic candidates: Owais Shah (doomed man-in-possession); Ian Bell (baffling under-achiever); Ravi Bopara (free-wheeling maverick) and Michael Vaughan (creaking ex-great).
Who should cop the blame for Flintoff injury?
Posted on 04/25/2009 in English cricket
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Should Andrew Flintoff have played in the IPL?
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Andrew Flintoff's latest injury, which has ruled him out of the IPL and the Tests against West Indies, has the the English media wondering whether the ECB should have taken a firmer line against the player, and barred him from playing in South Africa. Nasser Hussain writes in the Daily Mail that the incident is a "black mark against the administration of English cricket and the England team".
Players just cannot have their cake and eat it. They cannot expect to reap the benefits of a lucrative central contract and then only be under control of the ECB when it suits them. Player power has over-ridden common sense. Someone has to explain to Morris and Clarke that good management is not about making friends. Sometimes it is about being prepared to upset people as well.
Nick Pierce, the ECB's chief medical officer, says the injury could have happened “any time, anywhere” to which Michael Atherton replies in the Times:
Pierce may well be correct to imply that Flintoff could have been injured just as easily playing for Lancashire, but would he have been tearing around the outfield at Hove, sliding on his injured knee to save a boundary, as he was on Thursday?
Derek Pringle, in the Daily Telegraph, is less harsh on the ECB, and notes the role of a powerful player union in decisions such as allowing England players to take part in the IPL.
Angus Fraser goes further in the Independent and places the responsibility for the predicament in Flintoff's hands. In the same paper, Stephen Brenkley looks at what a Freddie-less England line-up will look like.
In a balanced piece in the Guardian, David Hopps says the overriding response towards this IPL misadventure should not be resentment, but compassion.
April 23, 2009
A summer of hope for English cricket
Posted on 04/23/2009 in English cricket
Michael Atherton writes in the Times that with England hosting the World Twenty20 and the Ashes, and with no other major sporting distractions during the summer, the ECB had a golden opportunity to showcase English cricket. He says it also presents a chance for the ECB to redeem itself after a year that had the Stanford fiasco, the loss of three England captains, and mediocre performances on the field.
April 21, 2009
Raise a glass to the monarch of the counties
Posted on 04/21/2009 in English cricket
David Foot, chronicler of county cricket, celebrates his 80th birthday, his enthusiasm for the game as bright as ever, writes Frank Keating in the Guardian.
Locally, Foot remains a cherished eminence as columnist and champion of causes. His deadlines, too, have been met spot-on as a sharp and perceptive Bristol theatre critic down the years and, on a thousand winter Saturdays, 600 words on-the-whistle from City, Rovers, or his hometown Yeovil, where it all began 64 summers ago in 1945 on the weekly Western Gazette. The trainee 25-shilling-a-week copy-boy, just 16, tremulously cycled in from the family's East Coker cottage in his new broadish-brimmed brown trilby hat and six-guinea brown pinstripe suit fresh-off-the-peg of Yeovil's high-class outfitters, Messrs Bone & Flagg.
April 20, 2009
England still looking for fourth paceman
Posted on 04/20/2009 in English cricket
The headline-seizing contest between Ian Bell and Michael Vaughan for the No 3 position in the batting order is hiding a far harder task for the England selectors. With the Test series against West Indies beginning as soon as May 6, Geoff Miller and his colleagues are desperate for fit, in-form and fast bowlers to fill the squad, writes Richard Hobson in the Times.
Andrew Flintoff, Stuart Broad and James Anderson are sure to be the first three senior England seam bowlers but, other than Stephen Harmison, there are few options for the fourth place and back-up. Harmison is probably head of the queue when, ideally, he would find his rhythm quietly with Durham over the next two months. Beyond Harmison, contenders are a group of walking wounded.
April 19, 2009
Flower power should do the trick
Posted on 04/19/2009 in English cricket
England's new team director Andy Flower will not shy away from tough decisions. For a man with high standards and great mental strength (and a higher Test batting average than Steve Waugh), Steve James in the Telegraph says Flower may script the turnaround in England's fortunes.
But the thoughtful, thorough and likeable Flower is good. He had to be to make the impression he did after the departure of the coach Peter Moores and the captain Kevin Pietersen. He was hurt by that imbroglio, considered quitting even. But he felt an overwhelming loyalty towards the England cricket team. Having an English wife can do that.
'You're there to play cricket, that's your job'
Posted on 04/19/2009 in English cricket
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Andy Caddick enjoys a joke during Somerset's pre-season photocall
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It is no surprise to learn that Andy Caddick had a hand in the design of the new pavilion County Ground at Taunton; more of a surprise, perhaps, to discover that the building will be named after him. The action is well grooved and the body is just about holding up, and Andrew Longmore in the Sunday Times hopes Caddick can prove people wrong as he runs in one last time to help Somerset win that elusive County Championship.
A graph of Caddick’s career would resemble the FTSE index, a mountain range of boom and bust. His introverted character did not help and neither did his Antipodean tendency to say what he thought. Caddick came to England as an outsider, at a time when the national team was in its chop-and-change phase and young county players were expected to know their place.
Justin Langer isn't one of those players earning considerable riches in the IPL for only short periods of torture upon their creaking bodies. He’s turned down the IPL and is instead beginning the long plod on the treadmill of another season’s county cricket as skipper of Somerset. Steve James in the Telegraph finds out that Langer loves the pain.
County crusaders on duty at the IPL
Posted on 04/19/2009 in English cricket
Hampshire are used to coping without Kevin Pietersen, currently on duty with the Bangalore Royal Challengers in the IPL. Since 2005 he has spent just 13 days playing for his county, appearing in eight one-dayers, one Twenty20 match and one in the County Championship. Should England's fortunes fail to blossom under Andy Flower the value of county cricket will come into question yet again, but if it is a poor testing ground for the international game that is hardly surprising, given that England players of the future have so few opportunities to compete against the best. Paul Newman has more in the Independent on Sunday.
Steven Smart in the Observer feels Graham Napier is the wide-eyed joker in the IPL's elite pack after he was in danger of becoming just another unfulfilled county player.
April 17, 2009
Samit Patel tries to win the fat war
Posted on 04/17/2009 in English cricket
Termed 'unfit, fat and lazy' by Kevin Pietersen, Samit Patel is working his way back to fitness with much rigor at the gym in the hope of making an early international comeback. He talks to David Hopps about the last few months, with an update on his current diet. Read on in the Guardian.
Mum is drastically cutting the amount of oil used in a traditional Indian diet. Ron, lithe and hyperactive, is a useful role model. Patel observed: "I know all about 7am gym sessions these days, but Dad gets up at half past four so I suppose I am still getting a lie-in. I realise it is an attitude thing with me and I have to put in the work, but it's going to take some time."
Also read Chris Foy's interview with Patel in the Daily Mail.
April 16, 2009
Flower, the best man available for the job
Posted on 04/16/2009 in English cricket
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Andy Flower needs to stamp his authority quickly and make some big decisions ahead of a hectic summer
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Andy Flower's confirmation as England's new team director says much about the respect he has earned in his short time as coach, but also reflects poorly on the standard of the other applicants for the job, writes Mike Atherton in the Times. He also writes that Flower faces a serious challenge from the IPL and its effect on the England team, and from the upcoming summer with two very high-profile competitions.
He begins his term in one of the most critical years for English cricket in recent memory, a year when the spotlight will be turned on the national team both because of the enticing nature of the contests - the Ashes, World Twenty20 - and because there are no other sporting distractions. It is critical, therefore, that he stamps his authority quickly. Big decisions have to be made - and soon. Should Michael Vaughan be recalled? Who will captain England's Twenty20 team (pray not Shaun Udal)? Is Strauss the right man to lead England's 50-overs team?
The appointment of Andy Flower as England team director means that England now have the captain-coach combination they needed when Michael Vaughan quit last summer – but it has come about by outrageous fluke, writes Derek Pringle in the Daily Telegraph.
As Hugh Morris, the managing director of England cricket and the man who appointed Flower made plain, the coach-captain relationship is crucial to an international side. Show a united front and even the top dogs in the dressing-room will come to heel, and that is something that needs to happen if England are to perform as a team and not, as is increasingly the case, as a bunch of disparate, but not untalented, individuals.
Simon Briggs, also writing in the Daily Telegraph, looks at some of the key men Flower will have to bank on for the upcoming Ashes.
Nasser Hussain has a whole bunch of reasons why Flower was the right choice: the strong rapport with Strauss and chief selector Geoff Miller, because he brings in much-needed stability, because he'll push England's players to not settle for mediocrity. More in the Daily Mail.
Never mind the shortage of high-profile candidates for job of team director, the one the ECB has got is highly and recently creditable, writes Mike Selvey in the Guardian.
In the Independent, Stephen Brenkley says Flower is someone capable of making tough decisions, and his rounded attitude to life will undoubtedly help him in dealing with an England dressing room which contains talent of a size often matched by ego.
And, in a lighter vein, Alan Tyers looks at how the key figures in England cricket react to Flower's appointment in the Wisden Cricketer.
The magazine's editor, John Stern, is unhappy with the manner in which the ECB went about hiring Flower. It is believed that John Wright was interviewed on the phone and that’s it. On the phone? For a job that pays the thick of a quarter of a million quid? The whole headhunters and shortlist business looks like smoke and mirrors. They wanted to give Flower the job from day one and this whole process simply bought the ECB time to see how Flower coped in the West Indies.
April 15, 2009
English cricket must reassert itself
Posted on 04/15/2009 in English cricket
The ECB's marketing of the the upcoming summer of cricket in England under the banner 'The Great Exhibition' could well backfire and make an exhibition of English cricket itself if the home team fails, writes David Hopps in his blog in the Guardian.
The Great Exhibition of 1851 was a wonder of its day, designed to symbolise the economic and military supremacy of Great Britain. It was an Exhibition that gained its strength, as English cricket invariably likes to do, by an innate conservatism, a sense that change must take place in a context of stability and tradition. It was driven not by revolutionary fervour, but by an assumption of superiority that underpinned the Victorian age. English cricket's Great Exhibition dare not proclaim such superiority ñ although Giles Clarke, an ECB chairman not often touched by self doubt, will doubtless come close.
April 11, 2009
Fancying the idea of fancy dress
Posted on 04/11/2009 in English cricket
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Fans dressed up as Scooby Doo enjoy the action
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While some have disapproved of the idea of allowing fans to turn up in costumes for matches at the World Twenty20, the Times' Patrick Kidd welcomes the move. He has a couple of riders, though: dresses shouldn't block the view of other spectators, and they should be creative. Anyone who shows up in a Jimmy Savile wig or a 118 running vest should be evicted. Certain standards must be upheld: this is the Home of Cricket after all. Those who arrive looking like W.G.Grace should be rewarded with extra cake at tea, especially if it is a real beard. Instead of dressing as the Pink Panther, why not come as Peter, the Lord's cat, who was so famous that when he died that Wisden gave him an obituary?
April 10, 2009
England winning World Twenty20 is unlikely
Posted on 04/10/2009 in English cricket
The decision to exclude Strauss from England's World Twenty20 squad, perhaps to keep him fresh for the Ashes, subconsciously says that England don't think they have a realistic chance of winning the World Twenty20, writes Simon Wilde in the Times.
Strauss is never going to be a natural Twenty20 cricketer, but then if that argument was applied strictly to everyone under consideration England would struggle to put out any sort of XI. The fact is Strauss surprised most observers with his improvisation during the 50-overs matches in the West Indies, in which he finished man of the series - his first one-day series for two years because the selectors thought his game wasn't suited. If they can be wrong about his ability to play 50-overs, surely they can be wrong on 20-overs too?
April 7, 2009
The Claude with a silver lining
Posted on 04/07/2009 in English cricket
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Claude Henderson: "One of the toughest things about county cricket is seeing the same people every day."
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Claude Henderson grew up in Worcester in the Cape winelands, had a fine schoolboy career and went straight into first-class cricket for Boland, first under Bob Woolmer, before transferring to Western Province, where Duncan Fletcher was coach. He was picked for South Africa and played seven Tests, but his place was never secure.
Disillusioned, he turned his back on his country, falling into the arms of the East Midlands. A six-month contract with Leicestershire became a long-term year-round one, and he and his wife Nicci put down roots. The lanky left-arm spinner, the first Kolpak, talks about the journey so far in the Times.
There is so much negative talk about Kolpak cricketers. If you pick the right Kolpak, it will only strengthen the side and strengthen the system. There are lots of EU cricketers - I won't mention any names - who don't do that. England still has more players to qualify for their Test team than any other country, and Justin Langer said that this is now the strongest league in the world.
The strange case of a captain picked by mistake
Posted on 04/07/2009 in English cricket
Nigel Harvie Bennett, who died on July 26, 2008, aged 95, was an unwitting entrant into cricket folklore. He was appointed as Surrey's captain by mistake, after being confused with his namesake, and led the county to little success in 1946. The Times reveals more.
While the search was on for Major Leo, Major Nigel Bennett popped in to renew his membership. Alf Gover, in his autobiography, wrote that the pavilion clerk took the papers in to the secretary, who happened to have the chairman with him: they offered the captaincy to this Major Bennett, who accepted.
April 6, 2009
Taking up England's lead role
Posted on 04/06/2009 in English cricket
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Andrew Strauss must lead the Twenty20 squad
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Andrew Strauss must feel that he is suddenly in with a chance of securing the captaincy in all three forms of the game, after the way he batted in the fourth ODI in Barbados. With the announcement of England's World Twenty20 squad imminent, one can't write him off, especially as there's no obvious captaincy candidate to replace him, writes former England coach Duncan Fletcher in his blog on the Guardian website.
Strauss is an intelligent cricketer who isn't scared to move out of his comfort zone...any captain can perform in easy conditions, but it takes the best to go out there and do it when it counts. Strauss has done a very good job all tour.
He has support from Richard Hobson in the Times, who believes the England captain should be named in the 30-man squad for the ICC World Twenty20, even though Rob Key is an alternative.
Back to the Guardian, Mike Selvey says England's blueprint for Ashes success should start with Andy Flower as coach. Appointing a new director of cricket, finding a fast bowler and sorting out the No. 3 slot also feature on the list.
At the previous World Twenty20, England went in with a good handful of specialists at the shortest form and flopped, winning one game out of five, but that does not mean that it would be wrong to chuck in a few people who have excelled in the Twenty20 Cup but who have not been in the Caribbean. Patrick Kidd presents his thoughts on the initial squad of 30 in his blog Line and Length on the Times website.
April 4, 2009
Mike Atherton on his Lewis Hamilton moment
Posted on 04/04/2009 in English cricket
What is it with the British and our sportsmen? It is a curious nation that falls in love with Andrew Flintoff and despises Kevin Pietersen. One, a good cricketer who has produced the odd great moment, whose popularity soared after a post-match hug with an opponent and didn't diminish despite a whitewash in Australia and an episode with a pedalo; the other a great cricketer, whose preparations are never less than perfect, but who is damned for a few ill-chosen comments and a perception that, like Hamilton, he puts himself before the rest, writes Mike Atherton in the Times.
For a short period in 1994, accused of ball-tampering and fined, not for ball-tampering, but for lying to the match referee, I felt exactly how Hamilton is feeling right now: embarrassed, hurt, foolish, hunted and on my own. There are some similarities between the episodes: an initial mistake - Hamilton allowing Jarno Trulli to pass, me keeping one side of the ball dry by using dust from an old pitch; the confession - Hamilton in an immediate post-match interview, me in the dressing-room at teatime; then the panic - how do we get out of this one?; the cover-up - Hamilton to the stewards, me to Peter Burge, the match referee; the punishment and then the press conference.
'I can't believe I am now part of Wisden club'
Posted on 04/04/2009 in English cricket
It was quite a shock – but the best kind of shock – to find out that I had been named one of Wisden's Five Cricketers of the Year. Scyld Berry interviewed me for the article before Christmas, but I was sworn to secrecy so it is a great thrill to finally be able to tell people, writes Claire Taylor in the Telegraph.
At that stage, I was still living with my mum, because I had no job and no income, which wasn't great for a 30-year-old. We worked out that I needed a better balance in my life, and I was lucky enough to find a post at a company called SUMS Consulting, which advises universities on how to improve their administration. I also took up the violin again, which was something I hadn't done since university. I have since played for Reading Symphony Orchestra and for the Aldworth Philharmonic – which actually suit me better as it only plays four big concerts a year, and that fits in really well with my cricket.
When I watched Claire Taylor at the age of 22 make one run from 14 balls on her England debut against Australia at Southampton in 1998, there was no hint that the chess-loving, violin-playing, Oxford maths graduate was up and running towards world domination, writes former England player Sarah Potter in the Times.
April 3, 2009
Pietersen has to think before he talks
Posted on 04/03/2009 in English cricket
Kevin Pietersen is a charming, engaging, forthright character who knows what he wants and how to go about it. He speaks from the heart and does not worry about upsetting anyone with what he says. But he really must start thinking before he talks because he is box office and everything he says is picked up, warns Nasser Hussain in his column for the Daily Mail.
This is the man who said that he could work with Peter Moores when he became captain but quickly said he had to go. This is the man who wanted Andy Flower sacked, too, but who now wants to work with him. This is the man who was an ambassador for Allen Stanford and then called him a sleazebag. It is naivety, really. Remarkably, Kevin is not as streetwise at times as he could be. But I would always have him in my side. Obviously because he is a fabulous batsman but also because of what he can offer off the field.
April 2, 2009
Pietersen plays his finest innings
Posted on 04/02/2009 in English cricket
Kevin Pietersen has done the professional sportsman a service. The weightless banalities that routinely spill from their mouths are the bane of the reporter's life and do little to promote our understanding of them or their world, writes Kevin Garside in the Telegraph.
Why shouldn't Pietersen confess his homesickness? That is not weakness. If it were he could not have raced to 4000 Test runs quicker than any bar The Don. Professionalism does not result in emotional lobotomies. Sportsmen still bleed like the rest of us and ten weeks away from home is no holiday no matter which Caribbean beach you are standing on.
April 1, 2009
The No. 4 who wants to look after No. 1
Posted on 04/01/2009 in English cricket
When it comes to polarising opinion, there are few sportsmen in Kevin Pietersen’s league. We all know him to be a wonderful batsman, quite possibly the best we have seen playing for the England team this last quarter-century. But the thing that divides us is his renowned tendency to selfishness, writes Mathew Syed in the Times.
His admirers contend that this is, if not quite admirable, certainly indispensable to the Pietersen phenomenon; that his view of the universe as Pietersen-centric is part of the reason why he is able to bat with the swagger and confidence that strikes such fear into the heart of opposition captains. Take away the selfishness, they say, and you take away the genius.
The rest of us query this psychological justification for Pietersen’s unbridled egoism. We offer the observation that greater sportsmen than he have been able to excel without also feeling the need to elevate their own interests so far above those of the team. We also point out that learning, on occasion, to yield oneself to a larger ideal is not just what it means to be part of a team, but is also what it means to grow up.
March 31, 2009
ECB should say sorry to Pietersen
Posted on 03/31/2009 in English cricket
England's only hope of surprising a resurgent Australia this summer is if the ECB makes its peace with Kevin Pietersen, writes Lawrence Booth in his blog in the Guardian.
When news emerged of Pietersen's fateful email to the England and Wales Cricket Board – the one in which he explained he couldn't work with Peter Moores – the feeling was that the coach would probably go on the basis that England needed a happy Pietersen more than a happy Moores. But England, being England, over-reacted and sacked Pietersen too, thus alienating their best player in a bid to avoid the perception that players dictate to boards – this, despite Pietersen being asked to outline his thoughts on the way ahead. Beckoned forth with one hand, he was stabbed by the other.
March 29, 2009
Are England taking the Mickey?
Posted on 03/29/2009 in English cricket
Coach Mickey Arthur, the mastermind behind South Africa’s recent successes, may be the man to revive England’s fortunes, writes John Stern in the Sunday Times.
While Andy Flower’s England were capitulating to the latest embarrassing defeat of their ill-fated winter in Bridgetown, Mickey Arthur’s South Africa were securing a tense, come-from- behind victory in Johannesburg in their first Twenty20 international against Australia. On results and track record there is simply no comparison between Flower, England’s acting coach, and Arthur, the man who has taken South Africa to the top of the world one-day rankings and masterminded a Test series victory in Australia over Christmas and New Year.
March 28, 2009
England should never have flirted with the IPL
Posted on 03/28/2009 in English cricket
What lasting good would an English IPL – even the phrase is internally contradictory – bring to English cricket? Would it enhance our chances of winning the Ashes? Would it improve cricket in our state schools? Would it bring into our game lasting money and broader support? asks Ed Smith in the Telegraph.
Perhaps some counties, as Surrey have argued, would have been able to fill their grounds and their coffers. But has it comes to this? That we are willing to shuffle around an entire Ashes summer in order to appease an Indian entrepreneur who has shown little or no interest in the health of English cricket? It is worth adding that I am not an opponent of the IPL. I wish it every success. But I am more concerned with the state of English cricket and of world cricket. To my mind, though apparently not in the minds of those who count, the success of the IPL's second season is a peripheral matter.
March 26, 2009
Lessons ignored in the rush for IPL cash
Posted on 03/26/2009 in English cricket
Rush to accomodate Indians suggests the Allen Stanford experience has not had any effect on English cricket's thinking, writes Mike Atherton in the Times.
Indeed, the IPL was, and may well be again, a magnificent success, bold in its conception, brilliant in its inception and dramatic throughout, a testament to the innovation, drive and financial muscle that sums up modern-day India. Twenty20, the best players in the world and Bollywood proved to be an alluring mix. But the IPL is not a gift to the game as a whole. Nobody, except the Board of Control for Cricket in India, the franchise investors and the players, makes a bean out of the IPL. It is, put simply, a private commercial enterprise, an utterly ruthless one at that, and, because there can be only one of its kind, owing to the crowded nature of the international fixture list, it is in competition with every other member nation of the ICC.
March 25, 2009
Regimented England unsuited to one-day cricket
Posted on 03/25/2009 in English cricket
We begin this week with a spot of nostalgia. Ladies and gentlemen, the Spin gives you Gooch, Botham, Stewart, Hick, Fairbrother, Lamb, Lewis, Reeve, Pringle, DeFreitas and Illingworth. As only the youngest among you will need telling, this was the side that should have beaten Pakistan in the final of the 1992 World Cup. It is also the last time England had a one-day team consistently worthy of the name, writes Lawrence Booth in the Guardian.
Money is being pumped into English cricket like never before. The back-room staff could form an XI of their own and still have men left over to make and serve the drinks. Central contracts briefly coincided with an upturn in the fortunes of the Test team, although hindsight makes you wonder whether that had more to do with Duncan Fletcher and the partnerships he formed with Nasser Hussain and Michael Vaughan. Yet the one-day team continues to blunder its way round the world like a bunch of accidental tourists, losing six games out of 10 against meaningful opposition and forever tripping at the first hurdle of a World Cup.
It is becoming increasingly obvious that one-day cricket is not our game. The delicate and/or flamboyant skills required to win one-day matches seem beyond traditional English play, writes Simon Hughes in the Telegraph.
March 19, 2009
Domestic strife at root of one-day woes
Posted on 03/19/2009 in English cricket
As defeats go, England’s humbling by West Indies in the Twenty20 match in Trinidad on Sunday was just one more black mark on a one-day landscape that, for nearly two decades, has looked dark indeed, writes Mike Atherton in the Times.
Two things continue to hold back England’s one-day cricket, one that can be sorted out with enough will and one that cannot. Dodgy weather is a hindrance, producing pitches that favour honest trundlers and batsmen wary of hitting through the line of the ball, both a rare breed in winning international teams. But New Zealand have a similar problem and when Strauss did service for Northern Districts two winters ago he proclaimed the standard of New Zealand’s domestic one-day cricket to be far superior to England’s.
David Lloyd, in his article on the Sky Sports website, writes that England's defeat in the Test series was a result of West Indies being the better side. He feels the quality of the team could only improve if there was a change in mindset on the field, and in the domestic structure off it.
March 17, 2009
Mascarenhas as Twenty20 captain?
Posted on 03/17/2009 in English cricket
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It was a rough day in the office for the England team on Sunday
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It may seem an outlandish notion to make a greenhorn in international cricket like Dimitri Mascarenhas captain, but Paul Newman makes a plausible case for him in the Daily Mail. There are three former England captains(Kevin Pietersen, Andrew Flintoff and Paul Collingwood) in the current squad who are all guaranteed a place in the Twenty20 team as long as they are fit, but none would relish a return to the helm.
Cricket365's Tim Ellis presents a hilarious account of England's miserable performance in Sunday's Twenty20. Not even Don King could promote the rabble of a team (and let's face it, there wasn't a million dollars on offer). Even the captain had to borrow Matt Prior's shirt. What was all that about?
Why Flower should be England coach
Posted on 03/17/2009 in English cricket
England will begin the hunt for a new coach at the end of the West Indies tour and Mike Atherton feels assistant coach Andy Flower would be the ideal man in charge. He writes in the Times:
There have been signs in the Caribbean that Flower's no-nonsense approach to cricket is beginning to hold sway, which will pay dividends in the medium term. The sense of cosiness that pervaded the team in the years since the Ashes win of 2005 is gradually being stripped away ... He is incredibly loyal and discreet, knows cricket inside out, having been a player of the highest class, and, having travelled around the world, he knows intimately the various playing conditions.
February 26, 2009
England's search for a new coach - a futile hunt?
Posted on 02/26/2009 in English cricket
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Will Andy Flower be the next England coach?
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Why are the ECB wasting money on a head-hunting firm to help find them a new national coach, Simon Wilde wonders in the Times.
There simply aren't that many people out there with the necessary qualifications, as is plain from the job description taking up large amounts of space on the board's website. A prime motivation for bringing in outsiders to draw up the initial shortlist is, of course, to avoid the accusation - levelled when Peter Moores was appointed - that the appointment might in any way be not thorough, or an "inside job".
But I can think of only one scenario in which this becomes an embarrassment, and that is if Andy Flower, who is effectively filling in as coach during the West Indies tour, gets the full-time gig. Were that to happen, with the involvement of an outside agency, Flower would immediately start work in a weakened state, undermined by the charge that he had been chosen on a nod and a wink by people he already knows at the board.
He also pleads for a better balance between ball and bat.
Test cricket's great selling point is supposed to be that it tests participants to the limit, yet in reality any Tom, Dick or Harry can score a Test match century these days. Pitches are routinely like motorways and refuse to break up over five days, genuinely fast bowlers are few and far between, because their shins and spines have been fractured by the demands of bowling on concrete surfaces, and most outfields are smoother than a supermodel's Brazilian.
Dancing to Giles Clarke's materialistic tune
Posted on 02/26/2009 in English cricket
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Giles Clarke: he sees material things like product, he doesn't see human aspects like soul
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| In the Daily Telegraph Simon Hughes digests Giles Clarke’s bullish media fightback earlier this week. Referring to Clarke’s prediction five years ago that by 2008 "everyone will have digital TV or get live cricket via their mobiles or computers so the terrestrial versus satellite issue will be irrelevant" Hughes notes:
He has a pathological ability to believe what he says. But it hasn't happened. TV audiences for cricket are at best a third of what they were. No one that I know watches Tests on a computer or a mobile.
He does have drive and he does have ideas. That is to be applauded. But too much of it is whimsical and he has a habit of alienating people.
The conclusion will not go down well within the halls of the ECB.
Like most entrepreneurs, Clarke sees material things like product, he doesn't see human aspects like soul. Deals excite him. English cricket has been tossed about on the waves of financiers' egos. The whole Stanford deal was really Clarke blowing a big raspberry to Lalit Modi, the founder of the IPL, and an attempt to curry favour with his own players. Can he now really expect Andrew Flintoff not to play in the IPL when he is busy selling the game to the highest bidders?
All the while he has been building the (unpaid) chairman's role into something so powerful and consuming that few others would have the time or scope to do it. Getting back in was a fait accompli. So the game will continue to dance to his rhythm. After last week's humiliation, perhaps the beat will be less erratic from now on. But don't bank on it.
But, as Clarke himself said of his critics: “I discard those people”.
Should Andrew Flintoff play in the IPL?
Posted on 02/26/2009 in English cricket
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Andrew Flintoff was bought by the Chennai Super Kings for $1.55 million
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In the Guardian read the debate between Paul Nixon and Bob Taylor on whether Andrew Flintoff should play in the IPL.
Nixon: Beyond the Ashes, playing in the IPL will also set Freddie up for the next World Cup. As our performance in the last tournament showed, England still need to improve when it comes to playing in top-level limited overs matches and there is no better practice environment for this than the IPL, where the best players come up against the best players.
Taylor: Andrew more than anyone knows how big the Ashes are. His contribution to England's success in 2005 has defined his career and a similarly crucial display this year would rank Andrew as one of the greatest players England has ever had. He cannot risk missing out on that opportunity. What's more, if Andrew's on-going injury problems are as bad as they appear then this could be his last ever Ashes. Missing out could, therefore, be a disaster.
Stanford saga is the tip of the iceberg
Posted on 02/26/2009 in English cricket
Basing deals on a 'capacity to pay' implies a board prepared to sell the national side at any expense, writes Gideon Haigh in the Guardian.
Managing cricket is about preserving value as well as leveraging price. At a time when the ECB is earnestly seeking a replacement for Vodafone, it would be disastrous to give the impression that they will whore their cricket team to anyone with "capacity to pay" – and who would wish to be that sponsor? English cricket has been damaged by association with Stanford; it is now damaged by association with a chairman and chief executive who have such a narrow and technocratic understanding of their duties.
February 25, 2009
Oh just face it: you screwed up
Posted on 02/25/2009 in English cricket
The effrontery of ECB's Giles Clarke and David Collier during the Stanford fiasco has been staggering on a number of levels, writes Lawrence Booth in the Guardian.
The effrontery is staggering on so many levels, the consistency of the logic shaky at best. Collier told BBC radio's Garry Richardson that there would have been an outcry if the ECB had looked Stanford's gift-horse in the mouth. Yet Stanford had already been turned away by India and South Africa, and hardly a peep of protest was heard from fans or administrators in those countries concerned about missing out on a giant pay-day. And if Collier really didn't think he had done anything wrong, why did he and Clarke even bother to discuss the issue of resignation?
Also read Nasser Hussain's interview with ECB chairman Giles Clarke in the Daily Mail.
NH: Let’s get into the Stanford affair. Did you do proper due diligence? One of his associates said the ECB were very naive not to raise concerns. It would have been easy to do so.
GC: Our job fundamentally was to see whether he could pay. There would have been nothing more shocking than to play the game and then nobody was paid. We aren’t financial service regulators. If these things were so simple why have the Securities Exchange Commission not taken the action they did considerably earlier? Their job is to protect investors. They didn’t. We are a national sporting body who were paid a sum of money for a match that was sanctioned and approved by the International Cricket Council. The West Indies board have been doing business with Stanford for many years.
February 22, 2009
ECB's imperial attitude has left English cricket in the cold
Posted on 02/22/2009 in English cricket
The Observer's chief sports writer, Kevin Mitchell, believes that the fear of a power shift towards India led the ECB to embrace Sir Allen Stanford. While the controversy surrounding the Texan's fraud charges wages on, Mitchell says that at the heart of the troubles lay the ECB attitude to India. Where other countries embraced the new big noise in the game, England balked.
The Sunday Times' Martin Johnson feels the ECB's disastrous flirtation with Stanford is having repercussions on the pitch. There is still some way to go before cricket can hope to match football for greed and dishonesty, but it’s getting there. Graver issues are afoot than a fraudulent appeal for a catch, but it’s all part of the wider philosophy – so shamelessly embraced by the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) – of the end justifying the means. Otherwise, why, on the final day of the gripping Antigua Test match, did the England wicketkeeper triumphantly claim a catch, when the gap between ball and bat would have accommodated an Eddie Stobart lorry?
Simon Wilde, in the same newspaper, writes that the ECB bosses were seduced by Stanford's cash and took their eye off the ball. Clarke and Collier may have been insufficiently mindful of the image of a game that is peculiarly wrapped up in morals. Football can be mired in as many financial scandals as it likes; cricket cannot. Stanford was simply too risky a venture. That should have been clear from the outset.
In the Independent on Sunday, Stephen Brenkley says it is a disgrace that the ECB is passing the buck.
Nick Cohen writes in the Observer that the on-field drama in Antigua couldn't hope to match the exposure of Stanford's rotten regime.
February 14, 2009
Bosses using 'player power' as cover-up
Posted on 02/14/2009 in English cricket
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How many Ayes? How many Nays?
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Ed Smith, in the Daily Telegraph, says the recent upheavals in the England cricket team and Chelsea football club indicate how weak bosses are using "player power" as a convenient excuse.
It’s player power, we are told, that is the real problem. Almost any crisis can be blamed on the modern players, with their big egos and eye on the big bucks, the precious stars who only look after number one and don’t leave home without their entourage of agents and hangers-on. Which begs the real question: if players are so untrustworthy and selfish, why are they pandered to by executives, boards and owners?
Player power is nothing unless it is allowed to be. You don’t hear about player power at Arsene Wenger’s Arsenal, or at Sir Alex Ferguson’s Manchester United, or in Warren Gatland’s Wales.
Hugh Morris, the managing director of England cricket, admitted to having a “ring around” of the players before the removal of Kevin Pietersen and Peter Moores. How many successful captains or coaches would have survived a “ring around” at the wrong moment?, Smith asks.
February 11, 2009
England's sporting bodies worse than bankers
Posted on 02/11/2009 in English cricket
England's rugby and cricket teams appear to be bound together on the same spiralling run downwards to ignominy, says Jim White in the Daily Telegraph.
From the highs of winning the Rugby World Cup in 2003 and the Ashes in 2005, both teams are now so bereft of confidence and hope that the coming weekend looks about as appetising as Antony Worrall Thompson’s balance sheet. Never mind dreaming that we might be the match of New Zealand and Australia, we are about to be hammered by Wales and the West Indies.
There are more theories right now for the dual decline than runs posted on the Sabina Park scoreboard. The rush for celebrity, the rush for money, the rush for excuses: all have been blamed. Yet it is hard to see what is going on as anything other than an exhibition of corporate incompetence on a level we had thought was restricted to the boardrooms of city institutions.
Are England better off without Flintoff?
Posted on 02/11/2009 in English cricket
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Not the talisman of old?
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He might be regarded as England's talisman, but Andrew Flintoff's not been at his best since 2005 and the team's Test record is better without him, Lawrence Booth says in his latest post on the Guardian website.
The facts are these. Since Flintoff made his debut at Headingley in 1998, he has played in 72 of a possible 131 Tests (excluding the game for the World XI). With him, England win less than 39% of their matches and lose 33%. Without him, they win 45% and lose 32%. When you consider that he missed three Ashes trouncings (in 1998-99, 2001 and 2002-03) at a stage of his career when he was still some way off becoming the titan who bestrode the 2005 Ashes, it's fair to say those stats could be even worse. Again, this is not to say England should drop Flintoff. Far from it. It's simply to get a few things in perspective.
Another thing. Flintoff last scored a Test hundred and took five wickets in an innings during that 2005 series - one that marked the end of an 18-month golden spell for England's supposed heir to Ian Botham. Since then, he has averaged under 30 with the bat and not far off 34 with the ball. Even taking injuries into account, these are not the stats of a world-class all-rounder.
In the Guardian, Vic Marks says Monty Panesar should blend patience and parsimony to revive his fortunes. He feels Panesar showed some signs of improvement in Jamaica after a disappointing tour of India.
Panesar should take note of how Benn achieved his success (no West Indian spinner since Lance Gibbs has taken eight wickets in a Test match). This may not be the fashionable response to Panesar's problems (most crave that he magically becomes a modern-day Bishen Bedi) and it is a rather prosaic one: he needs to be more miserly, to bowl more maidens and the wickets will eventually follow.
Nick Hoult throws up a few more numbers in the Daily Telegraph.
3 The number of Tests (out of 20) that England have won since the 2005 Ashes with Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff in the side.
10 The number of Tests (out of 21) that England have won since the 2005 Ashes without Flintoff in the side. Pietersen has played all 41 Tests in that time.
13 The number of Tests (out of 20) that England have lost with Pietersen and Flintoff in the side since the 2005 Ashes.
February 10, 2009
England desperately need a manager
Posted on 02/10/2009 in England in West Indies 2008-09
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Andrew Strauss could do with some support
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The events of Saturday afternoon reflected more than just a momentary mental lapse. They suggested not just that a grim month for English cricket, when internecine warfare replaced any sense of team unity, has had a lasting effect, but also that there is a deeper malaise, one that has become increasingly apparent as England have stumbled along these past three years, says Michael Atherton in the Times.
The most fundamental issue of all is the absence of authority at the heart of the England team. We have a new captain and a temporary coach but whose hand is on the tiller, steering the team through a difficult period that poses such awkward challenges as the Indian Premier League (IPL)? For all the backroom staff with the team — masseurs, spin doctors, physiologists, you name it — there is one crucial position missing; that of a manager, a decision-maker who is ultimately responsible and ultimately accountable.
Suresh Menon feels it's not correct to blame the IPL for England's defeat. Read on in Espnstar.com
Usually it is the former players who missed out on the moolah who tend to sound all moralistic. Mr Graham Gooch loved to play for his beloved country so much that he was willing to chuck it all up and captain a rebel tour in South Africa, then banned from international cricket. He was banned for three years for placing money above country.
There's all this camaraderie in front of the cameras, but how genuine is it?, former England coach Duncan Fletcher asks in the Guardian. He feels the need for a head coach is important, since otherwise it leaves Andrew Strauss with a lot to handle.
Sure, not many dressing rooms can say they contain 11 happy chappies, but some get close. I used to talk in terms of a critical mass: if eight of the 11 guys get on well they can outweigh the influence of the three who may feel like they're on the outside. But as soon as that critical mass reaches 7–4 or 6–5 you have problems. I look at this side and wonder where we are at. Team spirit is not something that can be faked. It has to happen naturally.
Fletcher suggests Steve Harmison be dropped in favour of a second spinner and Owais Shah replace Ian Bell.
The one thing England can no longer afford to do is to stick with the status quo, says the Guardian's Mike Selvey.
Something has to give. In 1994 [the year England were bowled out for 46], determined that the selection merry-go-round that had characterised England cricket at that time should cease, Mike Atherton and Keith Fletcher kept faith with the same side and were rewarded. Times have changed. Continuity has been the norm, which is fine up to a point. But it has made some players bomb-proof and complacent. They dare not let things stand.
Kevin Pietersen's brilliant but truncated innings in Kingston will join the ranks of the game's memorable almost-hundreds, writes Michael Henderson on the Guardian website.
If Andy Flower is as tough as everyone says he is, he should demand the selectors recall Robert Key or Michael Vaughan, says David Hopps on the same website.
Stephen Brenkley expresses a similar view in the Independent.
Check out Patrick Kidd's 51 special quiz in his Line and Length blog on the Times website.
February 9, 2009
England locked in a time warp
Posted on 02/09/2009 in England in West Indies 2008-09
Several off-field issues are clouding England's progress. They are not in a rebuilding stage. There is no motivation to improve when they have more than a dozen backroom staff to analyse their techniques, put out the cones at training, and virtually wipe their bottoms for them, writes Geoff Boycott in the Telegraph.
It is time that England started putting the cricket first, not the whole circus that surrounds it. One of the big problems of the last year is that everything we have heard about the national side has been to do with money and politics. Meanwhile the cricket itself has become almost incidental, which I find rather sad.
In the Times, Michael Atherton writes that England's collapse at Sabina Park has brought back bad memories of Trinidad '94.
What was Paul Collingwood doing sprinting for a couple of runs when he had been bowled neck and crop by Jerome Taylor? In that moment, there was the reminder of Mark Ramprakash’s suicidal run-out in Trinidad 15 years before, the surest sign that the situation was about to overpower a group of players who were, mentally, not up to the task.
The post-mortem continues and Mike Selvey in the Guardian calls for immediate changes to the batting order. Time's running out for Ian Bell and Paul Collingwood and it's time to give Owais Shah a chance. Perhaps sending an SOS to Michael Vaughan won't be a bad idea.
Where do England go with this? They have the best part of a week to contemplate, with the second Test starting in Antigua on Friday. Flower has his work cut out. There are denials of disunity of any consequence in the ranks but there remains an impression of the PR shots of a smiling family leaning on the gate after a politician has been caught with his pants down. Something will have to give.
In the Daily Mail, Nasser Hussain writes that the unneccessary off-field distractions and constant backroom changes have contributed to England's heavy defeat.
Pietersen has had to travel around the West Indies with Hugh Morris, who was instrumental in removing him as captain, while Andrew Flintoff has been like a bear with a sore head with the press because they said he knifed his captain. There have to be tensions there. The priority has to be pulling on that England shirt.
James Lawton writes in the Independent:
When you compare his [Gayle's] lot to that of Andrew Strauss, inheritor of a situation that made a mockery of team organisation and any understanding of individual duty to a wider cause, it is enough, surely, to make English cricket lovers groan with a mixture of bitterness and disbelief.
Why? Because if their West Indian counterparts are seeing the miracle of renewal, new gusts of hope, and pride, what do English supporters see? It is something no less depressing than the entrenchment of decay and its agent complacency and – why avoid the reality? – greed.
It's a homecoming for Ottis Gibson, who's back in the West Indies as part of England's coaching staff. He talks to Haydn Gill in the Nation on his transition from being an international player to a coach.
"I am happy to say that I think I've got the respect of all the guys. They listen carefully to what I have to say. They challenge me sometimes. That's what you want as a coach. You don't want your word to be gospel all the time. You want people to have their own views."
February 8, 2009
Atherton all praise for the modern Ws
Posted on 02/08/2009 in English cricket
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Shane Warne was the best of the lot, according to Michael Atherton
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Speaking to Tony Becca in the Jamaica Gleaner, former England captain Michael Atherton says Shane Warne was "the outstanding cricketer of my generation".
He mastered the very difficult art of leg-spin bowling, right-arm leg-spin that is, and I believe, based on what he did with the ball, he is the greatest spin bowler that ever lived. I remember the Ashes series in 2005, how brilliantly he bowled. As a great player, he rose to the occasion while some others who were regarded as great players, their performances went down a notch. You knew, whenever you scored runs against him, that you had to be at the top of the game. Apart from his skills, he worked batsmen out. He was a master. He was he a clever bowler, he was a great cricketer. On top of that, he knew the game. In fact, I believe he would have made a great captain.
On the best fast bowlers of his generation, Atherton, who played some great bowlers through his career, says:
Curtly and Courtney were fast, they were accurate and they were difficult to bat against; but I believe, generally, that Waqar and Wasim were the best of the lot, the best of my time.
February 6, 2009
Prior's the man to keep
Posted on 02/06/2009 in England in West Indies 2008-09
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Has Matt Prior proved his critics wrong?
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It is time to end the argument about who should be England’s wicketkeeper-batsman, or, to be more precise, batsman-wicketkeeper. Matt Prior showed again yesterday that, if the selectors are intent on fielding a player who can make Test fifties, hundreds even, and not let down the side with the gloves, then he is the man for the job, says Pat Gibson in the Times.
Steve James thinks as much in the Daily Telegraph.
Prior belongs. Every Test innings he has played has demonstrated as much. After 21 of them his average stands at 42. Yesterday was the seventh occasion on which he has passed fifty during that time. What more do you want from your gloveman? Yes, the romantics will carp at the pureness of his glovework.
But is it that bad? He makes mistakes, as he did here in letting a couple of balls slip beneath him, but so do all keepers. And so did all keepers. In England the glasses are spectacularly rose-tinted when looking back upon our former wicketkeepers. None of them dropped a catch, apparently. Indeed it came as a great shock when I watched on ESPN recently and witnessed Alan Knott dropping a dolly in a domestic cup final. Jack Russell shelled his share of catches too, including one on his Test debut. They were wonderful keepers, as, of course, was Bob Taylor, but it is all about perception.
In the Times, Simon Wilde applauds Andrew Strauss' decision not to write a newspaper column, and also looks at the real hero and villain among Pietersen and Flintoff.
It's not so much seize the day as pluck it, pluck it like a ripe apple from the tree and make it yours. So a Latin scholar explained to me, anyway. So, as we turn to the panoply of sport and look to its participants and its great occasions, we can ask: who has the talent for plucking? Kevin Pietersen does, says Simon Barnes in the same paper.
February 3, 2009
Spectre of IPL auction hangs on England dressing room
Posted on 02/03/2009 in English cricket
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Andrew Flintoff is one of seven England players in the IPL auction
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Comical Ali would find it difficult to argue all is hunky dory in the England dressing room and Friday's IPL auction is unlikely to help matters, says Lawrence Booth in his post on the Guardian website.
The goodish news is that only four members of the squad in the West Indies - Kevin Pietersen (bidding starts at $1.35m), Andrew Flintoff ($950,000), Paul Collingwood ($250,000) and Owais Shah ($150,000) - are on the IPL list. Three others - Ravi Bopara ($150,000), Samit Patel ($100,000) and Luke Wright ($150,000) - are in England. In theory, this limits the scope for jealousy. But then in theory, the Stanford match was a simple enough proposition too, and look how England failed to get their heads round that one.
It's true that other dressing rooms round the world failed to implode with envy when the first auction took place a year ago in Mumbai. But England's circumstances right now are particularly sensitive. Pietersen is putting a brave face on the treatment he received at the hands of his team-mates and the England and Wales Cricket Board; Flintoff has had to admit he backed Peter Moores; and Andrew Strauss is doing his best to hold the whole thing together with the help of Andy Flower, a decent man who isn't even sure whether he wants to be coach. The blue touch paper is waiting to be lit.
Mind games
Posted on 02/03/2009 in English cricket
Is cricket played as much with the head as with bat and ball? Though essentially a physical pastime, David Foot in his blog on the Guardian website tries to reason why the game in particular has appealed so much to men of letters, the poets, those with sensitive, philosophical natures.
Sir Arthur Conan Doyle loved the game's swaying statistics with one theory superseding another as entrenched batsmen were ground down and then outwitted. His friends believed that the capture of a wicket was to him as fulfilling as the villain's nadir in the final chapter.
Michael Vaughan is very bad at singing - well music in general really. By his own admission, he's an awful singer but it doesn't stop him from belting them out from time to time. It gets more interesting in The Five Minute Interview with John Matthew Hall in the Independent.
You know me as a cricketer but in truer life I'd have been...
A businessman. I'm always coming up with great ideas that I know would do really well.
For the trivia buffs, the Snow special quiz on the Times website is worth a shot.
January 31, 2009
Test Match Special's Frindall dies at 69
Posted on 01/31/2009 in English cricket
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Bill Frindall
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Bill Frindall's death after a brief illness comes as a shock to those of us who worked alongside him as well as to the hundreds of thousands of cricket fans who felt they knew him after listening to his interjections and mischievous grunt of a laugh on TMS for more than four decades, writes Vic Marks in the Guardian.
Bill would delight in recalling that he was born (in Epsom, Surrey) on the first day of the famous, timeless Test between England and South Africa in Durban on 3 March 1939, and that he was a "record" 11 days old when the game finished – prematurely – because the England team had to catch their boat ...
... Initially he became famous as Johnston's stooge on air. Bill was soon christened The Bearded Wonder and was a ready butt for Johnston's schoolboy humour. He also had an important role to play for Arlott. Bill would proudly tell of his first encounter with the Guardian's former cricket correspondent. "I hear you like driving," said Arlott. "Well, I like drinking. We're going to get on well." And so they did.
Whatever distractions there might have been (and with his sharp eye he was often the first to spot a pretty girl in the back of the commentary box or, for that matter, in Row H of the Warner Stand), Bill Frindall was also the one who did not miss a ball, writes Christopher Martin-Jenkins in the Times.
Bill linked not just John Arlott, Brian Johnston, Fred Trueman and Trevor Bailey to the present day, but the likes of Norman Yardley, Freddie Brown, Robert Hudson and Alan Gibson, too. It would not be quite true to say that he made himself indispensable, because there are other very competent practitioners of the essential art of cricket scoring, but he was indubitably the most illustrious, indefatigable and industrious of them all. The name Bill Frindall was, quite rightly, a byword for efficiency and reliability.
Bill Frindall had the most mundane and unsung job in cricket but somehow he turned it into an art form, writes Stephen Brenkley in the Independent.
Continue reading "Test Match Special's Frindall dies at 69"
January 28, 2009
The mysterious case of Owais Shah
Posted on 01/28/2009 in England in West Indies 2008-09
Owais Shah is in danger of becoming the most high-profile casualty of England's desperation for Ian Bell to succeed at No. 3, says Lawrence Booth in his latest post on the Guardian website.
Of course, this may all be a very English debate. More ruthless sides would have dispensed with Bell some time ago and ensured their most obviously wristy player was in the side, hitting the ball to parts of the ground the opposition had never even thought of defending. But, as Pietersen has discovered, unorthodoxy takes longer to be accepted in English cricket. Shah's greatest crime may have been to neglect the game that needs playing off the field, as well as the one on it.
On the same website, Toby Radford, Shah's coach at Middlesex since 2007, and Graeme Fowler, the former Lancashire and England batsman, debate the merits of including Shah in the England Test side.
January 25, 2009
Lord Marland on Stanford, Clarke and television
Posted on 01/25/2009 in English cricket
Lord Marland is challenging Giles Clarke for the chairmanship of the ECB and hoping to tap into the split that is forming over Clarke's handle of his dealings with Sir Allen Stanford and the absence of cricket from terrestrial TV. In wide-ranging interview with Peter Hayter from the Mail on Sunday, Marland outlines his plans for English cricket.
'The fact is that we have suffered a terrible period where nothing done by those running the game has been done well. I believed the decision to sell out TV rights to Sky in 2004 was breathtakingly shortsighted and I believe the decision to do so again this time round was just as myopic.
'Sky do a great job televising cricket, but the ECB continues to deny access to the vast majority of the viewing public. We've got to get cricket back on BBC or Channel 4, even if it is through a Match of the Day-type highlights package at the very least.
'People will ask where the money is coming from for my idea to raise £100m. There is already £25m in the ECB coffers lying untouched, but I'd raise an extra £100m on top and I'll do it the way I've always done it, for the Conservatives and for Boris Johnson and for a number of charities.
January 22, 2009
School of hard knocks prepares Andrew Strauss
Posted on 01/22/2009 in English cricket
In this week of fresh starts and renewed hope, has English cricket found, in Andrew Strauss, its Barack Obama? Well, do not expect any soaring rhetoric or inspirational imagery, rather a dollop of perspiration and common sense, writes Mike Atherton in the Times.
Still, unlike Obama at his oath-of-office ceremony, the new England captain has made an error-free start, speaking sensibly to the media, evading nothing and giving his first few days a grand theme - that of player responsibility. Something that would be considered so fundamental to professionalism, even to players of the most recent generation, has been waylaid in the drive to cover all bases. That such a recalibration of priorities is deemed necessary is terribly damning of paths recently taken, but, surely, asking players to take responsibility for their actions is a necessary first step.
January 21, 2009
Do England even need a head coach?
Posted on 01/21/2009 in English cricket
England travel to West Indies with a back-room set-up not seen for two decades. And it might just work, writes Mike Selvey in the Guardian.
The sacking of Peter Moores has derailed plans – well his plans, at any rate – and the timescale coupled with the imperative to get the appointment absolutely right next time means that there is no direct replacement as head coach. Instead, there is an old-fashioned arrangement at the top of the tree, if not further down, with the managing director of England cricket, Hugh Morris, in charge much in the manner of the tour manager of yore, and the operations manager of the team, Phil Neale, to deal with logistical matters over and above his usual duties. It is to Andy Flower that the team will look for guidance, however.
January 20, 2009
ECB unity impossible if Hugh Morris remains
Posted on 01/20/2009 in English cricket
In the Telegraph, Geoff Boycott says Hugh Morris, the managing director of England cricket, should be sacked. Boycott believes Morris must explain why he saw fit to conduct a players' poll and undermine Kevin Pietersen "to the point of no return".
He clearly can't have enough confidence in himself to make his own decisions. You should not be asking staff what they think of management. If you ask the players to choose their captain or coach, then why do you need a managing director? If you ask players each month whom they want as captain you would have to change the captain on a monthly basis because if the skipper criticises a player, shouts at someone, leaves a couple of guys out of the team, or doesn't bowl a guy as much as he thinks he should bowl, you can bet they will not vote for him the next time there is a players' poll.
Mission impossible for England on tour?
Posted on 01/20/2009 in English cricket
When Andrew Strauss leads England to the West Indies, he must prove his side has the unity to perform for its new captain in Ashes year. Stephen Brenkley, in the Independent, considers the prospects for success.
January 18, 2009
What happened to the Schofield Report?
Posted on 01/18/2009 in English cricket
A grand talking shop about the future of Test cricket is to take place in rural Leicestershire. Andrew Strauss and former England captains will be attending. It is a spacious venue, an old country house suitable for an Agatha Christie murder, perhaps in the Orangery. The trouble is that the delegates will have no room for manoeuvre, writes Scyld Berry in the Daily Telegraph.
The conference has been organised by the England and Wales Cricket Board, and it is a good idea. But there would have been much less need for it if only they had heeded the two key recommendations of the Schofield Report, which they themselves commissioned after the last Ashes debacle.
Reduce the amount of cricket which the England team have to play so they can focus on quality instead of quantity; and do the same at domestic county level.
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England fly off to the West Indies on Wednesday on their first stage of a year so packed and over-loaded that only terrorists can stop it. In the West Indies until early April, a home series against West Indies in May, the Twenty20 World Cup in June, the Ashes in July and August, a seven-match, one-day series against Australia in September, the Champions Trophy running into October, then off to South Africa for three months – only if their tour of Pakistan this time next year is cancelled will England stop. Quality? No, sir! The primary object of the exercise is the England team earning enough to subsidise the counties.
Will England retain the virtue of loyalty?
Posted on 01/18/2009 in English cricket
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Will Andrew Strauss implement a players' management committee?
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England's policy of loyalty may have to end under their new leadership, says Stephen Brenkley in the Independent on Sunday. He thinks Ian Bell might be the first to go.
England have rightly made a virtue of loyalty in the past few years. Recently, this has seemed to reach obsessive heights, especially with regard to the batting. The only notable amendment has been the omission of Michael Vaughan and that, originally at least, was of his own doing.
Others have been imbibing more regularly in the Last Chance Saloon than Eddie Grundy in The Bull at Ambridge. This has been born partly out of loyalty, the resistance to easy change, and partly because of the feeling that Test players take time to become accustomed to the rhythms and pressures of international cricket. It was one of the verities trotted out by the erstwhile coach, Peter Moores, that almost all Test batsmen scored far more heavily in the second half of their careers than the first. Moores was to find, of course, that loyalty is not always a two-way street, and it will be fascinating to discover if England retain his philosophy.
Andrew Strauss has much on his plate right now, more than Billy Bunter ever had. But one simple move will ease his troubles considerably. He must implement a players' management committee, says Steve James in the Daily Telegraph.
'We're all fighting to win' - Flintoff
Posted on 01/18/2009 in English cricket
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Andrew Flintoff: "Harmy's great for the team. If anyone's got a problem they go straight to Harmy"
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In an interview to Paul Hayward of the Observer, Andrew Flintoff gives his thoughts in the aftermath of the captain-coach row, and states he's not interested in captaining England again. The talk of dressing-room divisions came up in the wake of the fallout between Kevin Pietersen and Peter Moores, but Flintoff feels cliques are nothing uncommon.
"I'm in that dressing room. I don't need to read about it. Everyone's going on about cliques and this and that. I suppose there are. You get put together as a group of people. The one thing you've got in common is that you play cricket. Within that, you'll get on better with someone. That's not to the detriment of the side. That's how it is. If you're in an office or any other walk of life you get on better with some than others and that's how the England team works. When you get on the pitch we're all fighting for the same outcome. We want to win games of cricket. I really don't see it being a problem."
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"I play darts," Flintoff asserts. Proudly. "Harmy is the instigator of that. He brings a dartboard on tour every time. We have our own little Premier League. There's me, Harmy, Alastair Cook, Jimmy Anderson, Tim Ambrose, Graeme Swann.
"Harmy's great for the team. If anyone's got a problem they go straight to Harmy. He's got his door open every time. He's got his DVDs. It's almost as if Harmy's room has become the team room or the common room for everyone. There's people coming and going all the time. He does still get homesick but he's learned to deal with it. His influence on the side, which isn't seen, is absolutely huge."
January 17, 2009
Pinter's stroke of genius
Posted on 01/17/2009 in English cricket
Ed Smith pays tribute to Harold Pinter in the Daily Telegraph, and writes his love for cricket - a game regarded as being closest to the English establishment - was not inconsistent with his reputation as an anti-establishment writer.
How could such an anti-establishment writer love the sport with which England once hoped to educate its officer class and civilise its empire?
That underestimates both cricket and Pinter. Cricket, despite its passing snobberies, has never naturally suited narrowness. True, the game remains conservative. But cricket is conservative with a very small 'c' – nostalgic, sceptical, independent-minded and slightly pessimistic.
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It goes without saying that cricket's sub-plots and dramas appealed to the playwright in Pinter. Even a 'boring' draw can, and often does, host the most thrilling battles and sublime moments. I once turned on the television, watched Brian Lara execute a heavenly late cut, and immediately switched off again, perfectly satisfied.
January 15, 2009
Pietersen outmanoeuvred by English behaviour
Posted on 01/15/2009 in English cricket
Kevin Pietersen might have gone about his business with Peter Moores the wrong way, but over at The Wisden Cricketer, Lawrence Booth argues that it was his misunderstanding of the peculiar behaviour of the English:
In the eyes of the England and Wales Cricket Board, Pietersen committed a couple of tangible crimes: he did not have the full support of the dressing-room (the attempts by certain players in recent days to claim otherwise have exposed another of Fox’s defining English characteristics – hypocrisy); and he was seen to make excessive demands regarding the identity of the coach (according to Dennis Amiss, the vice-chairman of the ECB, this made his position untenable, but for some reason only once it became public: Fox points out that the English like to avoid embarrassment at all costs).
But there was another, tacit crime: Pietersen did not understand the Hidden Rules of English Behaviour – the sub-title of Fox’s work. He was not, in short, English. When people point out that Pietersen’s appointment in August was an accident waiting to happen, they may have been right – but almost certainly for the wrong reasons. After all, other captains have presided over divided dressing rooms: big egos are a fact of life in international sport. No, Pietersen’s unspoken crime was the un-English one of throwing his weight around without due deference to qualities to such as self-deprecation, humour and not taking the whole thing so damn seriously. His directness proved unsettling.
January 13, 2009
England shouldn't disbar outsider Ford
Posted on 01/13/2009 in English cricket
Hugh Morris should ignore the nebulous fear of player power and make sure England's next coaching appointment is the right one, writes David Hopps in the Guardian.
Ford led South Africa to eight Test series wins from 11 between 1999 and 2002. Key, who looks excited by the chance that his coach might get a chance with England, says he is widely admired and can deal with elite players. Ford might have spoken prematurely of his "good relationship for a long time" with Pietersen, but that is no bad thing because Pietersen's return to the ranks will also need to be skilfully managed for years to come.
In the Telegraph, Geoff Boycott feels Hugh Morris and Dave Collier have so far acted like dinosaurs, telling the public nothing. Andrew Strauss is well liked by his team-mates and if the ECB thought he was the best for English cricket then why didn't they appoint him four months ago?
He also shares his opinion on Andy Flower.
Andy Flower, in temporary charge in the West Indies, is exactly the kind of coach I would have demanded if I was captain. He has played Test cricket successfully and has experience of playing abroad. If he does well maybe he could throw his hat in the ring, if the job is advertised. But let's hope it is not Collier and Morris making the permanent appointment.
January 12, 2009
Kevin Pietersen: sacked for being Kevin Pietersen
Posted on 01/12/2009 in English cricket
As the dust settles on a week bizarre even by the standards of English cricket, we must ask ourselves what it is that Kevin Pietersen has done wrong, writes Simon Barnes in the Times.
So what went wrong? It seems that people simply decided that, after all, Pietersen was the wrong sort of chap. Why? He expressed reservations about the coaching staff, but many a captain does that. Not everyone in the team was crazy about him, but show me a captain loved by all and I'll show you the Tewin Irregulars. Pietersen just went about things the wrong way. He complained about the head coach in a manner that wasn't quite right. He was unfamiliar with the local code and, well, I'm afraid we don't do things like that here, old boy. It seems that Pietersen has gone because he doesn't fit in, because he is very keen on his own way and because he is a bit of a maverick.
Naivety was behind the South African's demise as England captain, writes Angus Fraser, who looks at several issues Pietersen faced, in the Independent.
Issue: Pietersen was informed by email and does not fully understand why he is no longer England captain.
What Pietersen said: "I had lots of face-to-face meetings with Hugh Morris, Giles Clarke [ECB chairman] and David Collier [ECB chief executive] in India and they asked me to do a strategy plan on how I wanted to take the English cricket team forward. On New Year's Eve I sent the strategy email and said that I can't lead this team forward and take it to the West Indies if Peter Moores is coach. Hugh Morris phoned [a few days later] to tell me that they had had an emergency board meeting and they had accepted my resignation. I said on what basis had it been accepted? They had no answer. I was not told that Moores had been sacked. To lose a job of that importance over the phone is crushing. But it's done and it's time to move on."
Conclusion: Believing he was in a very strong position and it to be in the best interests of English cricket, Pietersen gave his employers an ultimatum. It did not go down very well with the ECB who, after five months of working closely with Pietersen, may have begun to question whether he was the right man for the job. The ECB realised the problem would not go away if they kept one of Pietersen and Moores in position. The cleanest and possibly best way forward was to remove both. Pietersen's ultimatum gave the ECB a way out with him. Comments made by senior players suggested there were issues surrounding Moores too, so he was sacked. The media maelstrom that erupted on the day Pietersen was returning from South Africa meant the ECB could not inform him face to face. Email or telephone conversation was the only way of informing him before he found out via the media.
Why appoint anyone at all as Peter Moores' successor? asks Richard Hobson in the Times.
The way forward should be bolder. England are actually heading towards it on the forthcoming tour to the West Indies. There will be no head coach and Hugh Morris, the managing director of England cricket, will serve as an old-fashioned manager. Even without Moores, players will be able to draw upon a batting coach in Andy Flower, a fast-bowling coach (Ottis Gibson), fielding coach (Richard Halsall) and, for some of the time, Mushtaq Ahmed as spin coach. Mark Garaway, the analyst, will conjure all the statistics and replays on his laptop, while the medical team will be large enough to service a small town. Any base left uncovered by that lot is hard to spot.
January 11, 2009
'Pietersen lacked the qualities of a Test captain'
Posted on 01/11/2009 in English cricket
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Simon Wilde: "It is easy to overlook that Pietersen was not cut out for a job that needs diplomacy and good sense"
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Simon Wilde, writing in the The Sunday Times, feels the captain-coach saga was a consequence of Kevin Pietersen's own misjudgment of the feelings of his team-mates - a reflection of his failure to live up to the skills required of a captain.
His talks with an Indian Premier League franchise aroused suspicions about his motives for returning to India after the terror attacks. And his decision to continue with a holiday in Africa while the captaincy crisis escalated — even after his wife, Jessica Taylor, had returned to Britain to appear in Dancing on Ice — suggested a careless regard for his position.
Pietersen is a brilliant cricketer, but his celebrity, and his love of that celebrity, was always going to be his downfall because it led him to believe that his wants, rather than others' needs, would always be paramount. Rachel Cooke in the Guardian believes that celebrity culture has had such a massive impact on the way we think about work - and cricket is work for those who play it professionally - that even the ECB, so opaque and old-fashionedly cackhanded in its processes, is apt to do its bidding. Don't choose the best person for the job, choose the best known.
Also in the Sunday Times, David Gower, although agreeing with the appointment of Andrew Strauss as captain, feels exceptional players like Kevin Pietersen need to be given more leeway to completely live up to their talent.
Dealing with a Pietersen-type character is never going to be entirely straightforward. There are immense up sides to having such a man in your team; when you have the combination of his enormous talent and a similar determination to succeed you have a genuine superstar and natural match winner, a valuable asset. But the chances are he is going to do things differently to everyone else and that his way of doing things might not gel with the lesser mortals. There have been variations on this theme ever since the game began.
John Stern, writing in the same newspaper, feels that although Andrew Strauss has been appointed captain under adverse circumstances, it provides him a good opportunity to unite an England team affected by poor results and disharmony.
Far from being handed a hospital pass last week, Andrew Strauss, ironically, has the sort of power and influence that Kevin Pietersen apparently craved. Strauss believes that “the captain is ultimately responsible” and “I’m quite strong in my belief of how the team should be run”. But he adds: “In reality I’m a different character to KP in that I back myself to work with most people.” And, according to those who know Strauss well, he is not a man to throw his weight around.
Vic Marks agrees with Stern in his blog in the Observer: He feels Strauss is the right man to lead England and should have been captain after Michael Vaughan announced his resignation. He also thinks Tom Moody would make a good coach but convincing him to take over after Moores' departure may take time.
Ian Chappell thinks Australia will welcome the latest controversy to engulf English cricket as they attempt to get together a winning combination for their series in South Africa and subsequently, the Ashes. Read his article in the Sunday Telegraph.
January 10, 2009
'Strauss can do anything he puts his mind to...'
Posted on 01/10/2009 in English cricket
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Andrew Strauss is in charge of both the Test and ODI team on the tour of West Indies
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Andrew Strauss' best friend, Ben Hutton, knows the new England captain will show the self-belief and determination he does in all other areas of life. Read more in the Independent.
I have been lucky enough to see, at first hand, most stages of Andrew's life. Progression from cocky, precocious schoolboy, to shambolic undergraduate, responsible county captain, match-winning international cricketer, and now committed family man. Evident from the start was a competitive nature the like of which many of us at school had never previously witnessed. Whether it was playing stump cricket with a tennis ball in a corridor of the school dormitory, hitting golf balls on a driving range or chipping them at a flag on a green, he wanted to be the best.
As the England captaincy was passed from Kevin Pietersen to Andrew Strauss, the contrast with five months earlier could not have been sharper. Strauss does not have Pietersen's presence or star quality, but there was, as expected, an air of calm reassurance in the Warner Stand at Lord's, writes Mike Atherton in the Times.
Strauss was pointedly introduced yesterday as “England's Test captain” and, when asked about the one-day situation, was forced to concede it was “in flux” (in other words, nobody has a clue what will happen). Had Geoff Miller, the national selector, gone down the route suggested by The Times after Vaughan resigned, and appointed Strauss to the Test captaincy and Pietersen to the one-day job, England would not be faced with a situation in which their only viable candidate has been ignored as a one-day player for the past 18 months.
Kevin Pietersen's self-belief is both a help and a hindrance, writes Ed Smith in the Telegraph.
How many international newcomers have the phenomenal self-belief to return to the homeland they have shunned, with boos ringing around the stadium, and score not just one century, but three hundreds in five innings?
That is what Kevin Pietersen did in South Africa in 2005. This, surely, was a signal not just of an extraordinary talent, but a man made of different stuff from ordinary mortals.
How many of us, having watched the county captain throw your kit bag over the dressing-room balcony, would have the single-mindedness to stay with the side and help secure promotion the following season?
That is what Pietersen did in 2004 at Nottinghamshire after very publicly falling out with Jason Gallian – a strong hint that Pietersen's ability to block out distractions is extraordinary.
There has been far too much made of the meeting with Australia this summer, as though England's fixtures with other teams held no significance. For the tour to the West Indies, which begins later this month, the selectors have a chance to teach Pietersen a lesson in humility. They should drop him, and include Rob Key of Kent, writes Michael Henderson in the Telegraph.
Read Barney Ronay's take on the resignations of England captains in the Guardian.
While Michael Vaughan's captaincy resignation was classical and beautifully orthodox, Pietersen's was something else: a flair resignation, instinctive, full of improvisation, even ugly at times. This was resignation presidential-style. The only regret was that it didn't involve Pietersen standing at a raised dais, perhaps making sweeping hand gestures.
As Hugh Morris begins the search for Peter Moores' successor, what can he learn from the previous incumbents? Paul Coupar has more in the Guardian.
From an academic point of view, what the whole Kevin Pietersen-Peter Moores face-off has brought up, once again, is a debate about the relative authority of captains and coaches in world cricket, writes Kunal Pradhan in the Indian Express.
January 9, 2009
An Aussie as the England coach
Posted on 01/09/2009 in English cricket
England are hunting for a new coach following the sacking of Peter Moores, and Shane Warne believes the team needs somebody from outside their set-up to take an objective view and bring in a few ideas. He writes in the Times:
I'd like to throw in the name of an Australian who would do a really good job: not S. K. Warne, but Darren Lehmann. As a player he did wonders for Yorkshire and had the respect of everyone. Now he has moved into coaching. He would be great at installing confidence right across the board, through the players, the ECB, sponsors, supporters ... everybody.
In the same paper, Patrick Kidd tries to work out what cliques exist in the England dressing room.
The Flintoff Camp Made up of sensitive fast bowlers who don't like batsmen getting all the credit for their hard work.
The Pietersen Camp Made up of batsmen who were acolytes of Duncan Fletcher and less enamoured of Peter Moores.
The Darts Camp Those who spend hours on the oche on tour: Harmison, Cook and Flintoff.
Angus Fraser writes in the Independent that much will depend on how Pietersen reacts to his fall. Will he sit in the corner waiting for the right moment to undermine those that he believes undermined him, or will he put his hands up and say: "Sorry, lads, I got that wrong. Now can we all move forward together?"
It is to be hoped for the sake of the England cricket team that Pietersen, having learnt his lesson, takes the second option, and there is no reason to believe he will not. Yes, Pietersen has a rather large ego and his career to date has not been littered with tolerant acts, but behind the at times thick skin is a man who needs to feel wanted and loved. It is these characteristics that make him the player he is. There is little Pietersen desires more than standing with his arms in the air acknowledging the applause and adoration of a full-house crowd, and it can only be achieved by scoring a hundred for England.
In the Guardian Gideon Haigh writes that England have finally mastered the art of mental disintegration but they seem to be applying it on themselves instead of their opponents.
With the Ashes six months away, the series already looms as a competition between two teams almost so consumed by their own weaknesses that their opposition's weaknesses are a secondary consideration. Yet Australia's challenges are at least identifiable and familiar: they have simply been beaten, in two of their last three series, by better cricket teams. England's problems seem more pervasive, systemic and elusive, arising mainly from a cricketer in Kevin Pietersen whose talents first loomed as a solution for all ills.
January 8, 2009
Strauss deserves his shot
Posted on 01/08/2009 in English cricket
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Andrew Strauss takes over the England captaincy during a turbulent time
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They have decided not to gamble this time; there has been no waving of magic wands at Lord's. Instead they have reverted to the bleeding obvious, which they were so determined to ignore when Michael Vaughan suddenly resigned last summer, writes Vic Marks in the Guardian.
If Andrew Strauss offers boring dependability then there will be sighs of relief all round. Our pencils will not be so sharpened when the next England captain is hauled in front of the press. Strauss will provide a reservoir of unflappable, forgettable common sense. And there is no harm in that.
What the downfall of Kevin Pietersen and Peter Moores has shown is just how big a job Strauss has on his hands. It is not just that the team are underperforming — there have been victories only against lower-ranked opposition in the 18 months that Moores has been in charge — but that they are hopelessly divided, writes Mike Atherton in the Times.
Even now talk of an Andrew Strauss captaincy brings with it uncertainty, but he should have been given his chance a long time ago, writes David Hopps in the Guardian.
His England teammates have long joked that he has the upbringing — Radley College and Durham University — but his qualifications are more real than that. He is also widely perceived to be the shrewdest tactician in the side. What counted against Strauss last summer was the ECB's reluctance to go down the route of split captaincy after the near-simultaneous resignations of Vaughan from the Test job and Paul Collingwood as leader of the one-day side.
In the era before professional captains, Andrew Strauss would have been an automatic choice to lead England, writes Simon Hughes in the Telegraph.
Strauss is a warm, responsible, hard-working character, always approachable, with absolutely no ego. He readily plays down his own achievements, humorously admonishing himself, for instance, after his twin hundreds in Chennai, for his lack of muscularity and inability to hit the ball infront of square. He's no shrinking violet though. You poke fun at Strauss at your peril. He's a good reader of character and is quick with return fire. It usually scores a direct hit.
The Ashes may be only six months away but Strauss has enough time to forge a healthy working relationship with a new coach and plan a competitive challenge, writes Angus Fraser in the Independent.
Kevin Pietersen: A big gamble that failed
Posted on 01/08/2009 in English cricket
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Kevin Pietersen's tenure as England captain lasted only five months
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When Kevin Pietersen was appointed England captain, it seemed to be an enormous gamble that was likely to end in tears. Nobody, though, could have predicted the speed with which his captaincy has imploded, nor the scale of the fallout, writes Mike Atherton in the Times.
Once the story gathered pace that Pietersen could not work with Moores, neither went out of his way to deny the rift or reaffirm the promises of co-operation that had accompanied Pietersen’s elevation to the top job. Moores said nothing, while Pietersen merely said that the situation was “unhealthy” and needed resolving quickly. Pietersen had, in effect, flexed his muscles, sure of his own power. Pietersen’s mistake was to stay on holiday in South Africa instead of returning when the rift became public. By not coming home at the first opportunity, his attitude towards the captaincy was revealed as casual.
Kevin Pietersen has learned the hard way that he can't just go through his career taking people on. As England captain, you need savvy, to be streetwise and politically astute. You have to choose the right time to pick your fights and this was not the right time, writes Nasser Hussain in the Daily Mail.
The ECB wouldn't go all the way by giving him the coaching team he wanted. To do so would have made Pietersen the most powerful England skipper there has ever been and they weren't prepared to do that because he didn't understand the political game or how to play it.
With six months until the Ashes, England have no coach, a captain who can't make the one-day side and a general air of chaos, writes Duncan Fletcher in the Guardian.
What a mess. And how sad for English cricket that a year containing a home Ashes series has begun in such chaos. You have to ask why the men in suits couldn't see this situation coming. The moment Kevin Pietersen asked for his so-called clear-the-air meeting with Peter Moores last summer, the penny should have dropped at the England and Wales Cricket Board: the relationship between captain and coach was clearly a situation that needed monitoring, on a game-by-game basis, from the word go. Can they honestly say this has happened?
The feud between the former England captain and coach may have been unseemly but perhaps it was for the best, writes Mike Selvey in the Guardian.
A global view, then, might be that English cricket is a fiasco. The reality, however, which will be seen once the dust has settled and the team are ensconced on St Kitts in the Caribbean, is that out of it all the right things may have happened, at least so far as the Test team are concerned. It is, with a nice sense of timing, precisely six months until the first day of the Ashes series and, no matter how people view the forthcoming six Tests against West Indies, this will be the focus. And from the hiatus, far from having their chances diminished against a vulnerable Australian team, England's prospects have been enhanced.
Kevin Pietersen is not so brash as he looks. He comes over as upfront and in-your-face precisely because he is, underneath, insecure, writes Scyld Berry in the Telegraph.
Pietersen grew up with one younger and two older brothers in Natal. The two older ones are burly individuals or 'big units' too. A telling story about his childhood is that when his parents closed their eyes to say grace at meal times, the older brothers would try to nick the sausages – or whatever – from Kevin's plate. Hence the insecurity, and the pugnacity when he does stand up for himself.
Whatever the official line, it is now clear that the atmosphere in the England dressing room had become toxic. It had gone beyond conflicting personalities. They occur in every dressing room, in every walk of life, but distrust and favouritism were beginning to flourish, writes Stephen Brenkley in the Independent.
At the risk of contradicting my suggestion in yesterday's Times that Hugh Morris, the managing director of England cricket, should have ordered Pietersen and Peter Moores to sort out their relationship, there was no point in continuing a partnership of incompatibles, writes Christopher Martin-Jenkins in the Times.
Pietersen's intention was to undertake a silent revolution against Moores and he might just have pulled it off. But the rift became public on New Year's Eve, two days after the omission of Michael Vaughan from the squad to tour the West Indies. From that point on, Pietersen's chances of one of the most egotistical campaigns ever attempted by an England cricket captain were slim, writes David Hopps in the Guardian.
Pietersen said that it was the media speculation surrounding his public row with Moores that forced him to resign, but the realisation that he did not have the full support of the dressing room must have had a huge influence on his decision, writes Angus Fraser in the Independent.
The non-selection of Michael Vaughan to tour the West Indies was the final straw but the rift [between Pietersen and Moores] had developed long before that, writes Paul Newman in the Daily Mail.
There is an innocence about Pietersen, something he shares with another great batsman and disaster-prone England cricketer, Geoff Boycott. They share a strange bewilderment that other people fail to see the world in the same terms, as a Boycott-centric, or a KP-centric, place, writes Simon Barnes in the Times.
One admires the ECB's thoughtfulness in giving those Aussies a morale boosting chuckle within days of them losing a home series, to Mr Pietersen's native South Africa, for the first time since 1703, writes Mathew Norman in the Independent.
There is a thin line in team sport between bringing that edge, that something extra, and upsetting colleagues. Pietersen has an unhappy knack of crossing it. This time, it seems he overestimated the strength of feeling in the ranks against Peter Moores, writes Richard Hobson in the Times.
A supremely talented batsman, part of his allure to spectators is his unpredictability. He loves taking risks, but while that can be both thrilling and acceptable in the context he understands, on the cricket field, it hastened his downfall when he gambled on unseating Moores, writes Derek Pringle in the Telegraph.
Also in the Telegraph, Steve James looks at the key players in the Pietersen-Moores row. He says Andrew Flintoff is an "overlooked figure lurking in the background of this matter. It is no secret that he and Pietersen are not exactly bosom-buddies."
For most of yesterday there was only one certainty. It was that Pietersen would not be captain when England set off for the West Indies in two weeks' time and then resume the ancient battle with Australia in Cardiff in July. Behind this reality was a conclusion that could not be avoided. It was that whatever the detail, whether he jumped or was pushed, Pietersen had not only reduced himself to a parody of what an international captain should be, writes James Lawton in the Independent.
Kevin Pietersen is a contradiction. A flamboyant batsman with a pop star for a wife and Hollywood actors among his friends, Pietersen was a celebrity cricket captain in the mould of Ian Botham, Andrew Flintoff and Wally Hammond. Yet few tales of bad behaviour have emerged about Pietersen, not even unsubstantiated rumour, writes Patrick Kidd in the Times.
Also read Andrew Miller's comment that Pietersen and England need each other on cricinfo.com.
January 7, 2009
Pietersen and Moores need to eat humble pie
Posted on 01/07/2009 in English cricket
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Kevin Pietersen hasn't won many fans by going public about his disagreement with Peter Moores
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A bit of humble pie for Kevin Pietersen and Peter Moores is required if the ridiculous mess in the England cricket team is to be cleared up before mud sticks to everyone, writes Christopher Martin-Jenkins in the Times.
Neither should lose his job, given some clear thinking and plain speaking. Neither, in fact, has much of a record: England have won seven Tests out of 22 under Moores's guidance as head coach, only one of these against a top-notch team, and that consolation victory in the last Test against South Africa in August had much to do with Pietersen's batting and captaincy.
The new captain, however, has swiftly had to learn that a flurry of one-day victories over a South Africa team content with the main prize in the bag, was delusory. The Stanford embarrassment and India's excellence in November and December put things into clearer perspective.
If Kevin Pietersen's short and controversial stint as England captain is already over, it will satisfy those who argued that Andrew Strauss was a more sensible choice to replace Michael Vaughan last August, writes Huw Turberville in the Telegraph.
Kevin Pietersen has divided opinions ever since he arrived in England as former team-mates can testify. Stephen Brenkley explores a chequered record in the Independent.
It was like that in Nottinghamshire six years ago and what happened there bears similarity to what is happening now. Pietersen had been taken to the county by Clive Rice, a South African whom he presumably respected and admired. When Rice left the county, however, things started to go wrong. He did not like the new regime and he fell out terminally with Jason Gallian, the county's captain. Gallian, the most un-Australian of Australians, is sedulous in reflecting on his relationship with Pietersen and is clearly not proud of his own part in it, which culminated in Gallian hurling some of Pietersen's kit over the dressing-room balcony at Trent Bridge.
If and when Kevin Pietersen succeeds in driving Peter Moores from office, he may find that the relief of ousting a man he did not rate is replaced by a more profound problem: how to unite a dressing room containing characters who do not necessarily regard their leader as the chosen one, writes Lawrence Booth in the Guardian.
January 6, 2009
Moores set to be the wrong casualty
Posted on 01/06/2009 in English cricket
In a post on the Wisden Cricketer blog, John Stern offers a rather interesting, and different, view on England's captain-coach crisis.
Creative differences make for healthy teams.
Strauss was the common-sense option as captain when Vaughan resigned last August and he looks an even better choice now, and not just because he’s started scoring runs again.
Leadership is not about ego or breast-beating. It is about inclusiveness, inspiration and, inevitably, compromise. The ability to do the latter is not a sign of weakness but strength.
Nuts enough to work with KP?
Posted on 01/06/2009 in English cricket
The England board could replace coach Peter Moores by the end of the week and it's time to look at some of the contenders.
The Daily Telegraph's Nick Hoult feels a foreign coach is the most likely though former England spinner Ashley Giles, who is Warwickshire's director of cricket, could be the caretaker coach for the West Indies tour.
The Guardian looks at it in a different way. Who will be nuts enough to work with KP, asks Andy Bull.
Graham Ford Age 48
Current job Kent coach
Coaching pedigree Strong: he coached South Africa to eight Test series wins out of 11 during between 1999 and 2002 and helped Kent to the Twenty20 Cup in 2007. Rating 8/10
Does his face fit?
Ford has turned down job offers from India and New Zealand in the past two years to stay with Kent. They were relegated in 2008 and he has said he is determined to stay on and lead them back to the first division. He is the outstanding candidate, if only because the hat seems to fit so well. 9/10
Luck or skill?
Having only played seven first-class matches in his life he has had to earn the opportunities that better ex-players are gifted with. He has certainly benefited from the quality of the players he has worked with though, right through from his early days, with Malcolm Marshall at Natal, to the captaincy of Rob Key at Kent. 7/10
Compatibility with KP
Hand in glove. Ford worked with Pietersen at Natal and made an effort to dissuade him from moving to England. In his autobiography Pietersen calls him: "Someone I both respect and admire". Was born in the same town as the captain — Pietermaritzberg. 10/10
Pietersen's rift with Moores has highlighted one of cricket's eternal questions: in the final analysis, who is the boss – the captain of a team or its coach? In the Independent Angus Fraser explains why there is no easy answer.
Cricket would benefit from having a similar structure to football or rugby but it is not that simple. The nature of the game does not allow it, and that is why it is not in place. The influence an all-controlling manager could have on a cricket team is limited because he cannot make substitutions and change the structure of the team. The 11 players named at the toss have to see the game through. The primary role of a cricket coach is to develop the players under his guidance and provide them with all the preparation and information they require for the contest ahead. Historically they have always had a say in team selection and accepted that, when the team leaves the dressing room and crosses the white line, responsiblity for what happens lies with the captain.
January 5, 2009
Fire the boss!
Posted on 01/05/2009 in English cricket
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It seems increasingly likely that Peter Moores will face the axe
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As the row between Kevin Pietersen, the England cricket captain, and Peter Moores, the head coach, begins to establish some kind of rhythm, it seems increasingly likely that Moores will have to go, writes Simon Barnes in the Times:
Why? Simple: because Pietersen wants him gone. Throughout the history of sport, cricketers, more than most athletes, have been considered inferior to such people as selectors and chairmen and tour managers. A lack of deference to such people used to cost players their places, as Fred Trueman, among many others, learnt the hard way. But now, it seems, the captain is about to sack the coach, much as a writer sacks the editor or the lead violinist sacks the conductor. Fire the boss! What a thrilling concept - how wonderful it would be, whenever our careers seem to be developing along unpleasing lines, to sack the boss.
In the Independent Angus Fraser writes the row and its inevitable fall-out could undermine a huge year for English cricket. Perhaps the bravest and best decision England cricket's managing director Hugh Morris can make is to remove both.
In the next 12 months, England will compete for the Ashes and the Twenty20 world cup, as well as play several important Test and limited-over series. How the Australians must be laughing. Ricky Ponting's side, like Pietersen's, might be losing Test series, but at least their dressing-room does not appear to be imploding. But while Australia are in apparent disarray, England are at civil war ... If Pietersen gets his way, as it appears he will, should the next England coach be rubber-stamped by him? It would be a ridiculous decision because it will be nigh on impossible to find someone who can work with and satisfy Pietersen on a daily basis.
The Guardian's Mike Selvey believes Pietersen is the fulcrum of the team and will be so in the foreseeable future. In such circumstances, while it would be unwise to allow him such autocracy that he can, for example, effectively appoint the next coach so that it fits in with his own agenda, it would be equally unwise to risk alienating Pietersen by antagonising him further with a coach with whom he did not feel he could develop a rapport.
January 4, 2009
England shoot themselves in the foot
Posted on 01/04/2009 in English cricket
Stephen Brenkley wonders in the Independent on Sunday how the Kevin Pietersen-Peter Moores rift will be resolved.
The English game would look foolish if either man were to depart. Moores was appointed to replace Duncan Fletcher 20 months ago without interview. He was deemed to be the sole and logical choice. Pietersen was similarly ushered in when Vaughan resigned last summer. It was as if there was no alternative, but there is always an alternative.
John Stern writes in the Sunday Times that it is likely that neither Pietersen nor Moores will be sacked.
The most likely outcome is a Morris-inspired fragile peace, an agreement between all parties to muddle on through to this summer’s Ashes, the result of which will dictate the career paths of players and coaches alike.
January 2, 2009
Captain-coach rift biggest concern for England
Posted on 01/02/2009 in English cricket
Patrick Kidd writes in the Times that the ECB would rather see a reconciliation than lose either captain or coach so close to the Ashes. Yet, he writes, there is no doubt that if Pietersen pushed the issue, England would be loath to lose the one batsman whom Australia fear.
Before the second Test against South Africa at Headingley last summer, Vaughan is believed to have wanted Simon Jones to be recalled, but Moores and the selectors plumped for the untried Darren Pattinson. It may well have been one of the reasons why Vaughan decided to stand down...
... some have felt that Moores is not suited to coaching an international side, particularly in handling the egos and demands of world-class players.
Simon Hughes, writing in the Daily Telegraph, feels Peter Moores' lack of sophistication is a possible reason for the rift with Kevin Pietersen.
Pietersen cut a forlorn figure as he cast around for alternatives in Madras. As an inexperienced captain, he needed more imaginative input from the coaching staff. Moores is a decent, enthusiastic, hard-working man, and he is certainly not timid, giving a strong lead in the departure of Michael Vaughan as captain. But, as a coach who has spent most of his time around county cricket, he perhaps lacks real sophistication at the highest level. This is probably the source of Pietersen’s lack of respect.
Stephen Brenkley writes in the Independent that it would be in the captain's best interests to come to terms with Moore. If he is seen to be instrumental in getting rid of him – and he would be if Moores went – building trust with anybody again would be hard for him.
December 30, 2008
Michael Vaughan's career all but over
Posted on 12/30/2008 in English cricket
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Calls for Michael Vaughan's return are motivated more by a recognition of his past achievements, writes Michael Atherton
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Michael Atherton, writing in the Times, feels Michael Vaughan's desire to return to international cricket appears a far-fetched one as runs have not been forthcoming to merit a selection in the side, and that calls for his comeback are motivated more by past achievements than a realistic assessment of the present. He also thinks some of the England players are fortunate to have kept their place in the side following a disappointing tour of India.
Vaughan has repeatedly stated his desire to return to international cricket and tried to structure his winter plans to that effect. But after his emotional resignation speech in August there has been little evidence that his body has responded to his mind’s desire. Both he and Geoff Miller, the national selector, accepted that a volume of runs was necessary to justify a return, but they have not been forthcoming. Those who argued for Vaughan’s return, most notably the newspaper for which he writes and Duncan Fletcher, his former coach with England, did so out of recognition of past achievements and a belief that, as an Ashes-winning captain, Vaughan would be able to sprinkle some magic Ashes-winning dust on this underachieving squad. Michael Vaughan, in his own article in the Daily Telegraph, admits he understands the reasons for not being picked for the tour of West Indies, and feels his best way to press claims for a recall is by scoring heavily in the pre-season for Yorkshire.
I am not in the England team and Yorkshire now has to be my main concern. I have to knuckle down with them and start the season as well as I can. If that happens then I will put the guys under pressure and still have the chance to play for England again, something that I dearly would like to do during an Ashes summer.
Derek Pringle, writing in the same newspaper, is not surprised that Vaughan wasn't selected for the tour of West Indies, and feels the future prospects for his selection do not look all too encouraging.
Cricinfo's Andrew McGlashan presents his take on Vaughan's chances of a comeback here.
December 29, 2008
Vaughan for Windies?
Posted on 12/29/2008 in English cricket
England are set to pick their Test squad for West Indies on Monday and Duncan Fletcher feels former captain Michael Vaughan should be brought back because of his experience. He writes in the Guardian:
I don't buy the worries about having a former captain in the side. I had Nasser Hussain captaining Mike Atherton and Alec Stewart, and then Vaughan captaining Hussain. Michael can be very sensitive to what is needed and he will understand that his role is to quietly offer advice when it's asked for. If he is selected for the West Indies and can get his batting right over there, England simply must pick him against Australia.
Angus Fraser believes the decision the selectors take regarding Vaughan's inclusion in the squad will be criticised whatever it is. He writes in the Independent:
If Vaughan is named in the squad the reasons for his return will be questioned. The 34-year-old has done nothing to warrant inclusion since resigning as captain four months ago ... Should Vaughan be overlooked the reasons for him being offered a sought after and lucrative 12-month central contract in September will be quizzed.
December 28, 2008
Who should bat at No. 3 for England?
Posted on 12/28/2008 in English cricket
Few great sides have lacked a top-class No. 3 and few good sides have carried a No. 3 who was not making runs. And yet, today, England are unclear who should be playing there, writes Simon Wilde in the Sunday Times.
Ian Bell has averaged 15 since moving to that position when Kevin Pietersen took over as captain; before him, Michael Vaughan averaged eight there in four matches against South Africa. It is one reason England have rarely won of late.
In the Daily Telegraph, Steve James writes that Kevin Pietersen has been struggling with his technique for the first time in his career and wonders whether it is wise to burden him with captaincy.
... just imagine if Pietersen had been in nick all year. Because he still ended the year as England's leading run scorer in both Tests (with 1,015 runs) and one-dayers (658), their player of the year by some distance. He is the man. As compatriot Gary Kirsten, India's coach and generally a man of understatement, says in their local vernacular: "Jeez, he's dangerous is that oke". He sure is.
December 26, 2008
England must end mood swings
Posted on 12/26/2008 in English cricket
Geoffrey Boycott, writing in the The Daily Telegraph, feels England's batsmen need to rise to the occasion, with the team's bowling options limited by an injury-prone Ryan Sidebottom and the lack of a quality spinner, to entertain any hopes of beating a struggling Australia.
For England to beat Australia, Flintoff has to stay fit, he is the iconic figure, and Harmison needs lots of bowling between now and the Ashes so he can bowl straight and on a length. He has the ammunition but needs plenty of overs so he can train it in the right direction.
And finally we have to improve the inconsistency of the batting. The players have to remember it isn't how many shots you play, or how quickly you make runs, or how long you spend at the wicket. It is how many runs you make. That is the key.
December 25, 2008
Don't gloat about Australia's supposed decline
Posted on 12/25/2008 in English cricket
The Times' Simon Barnes is upset after Australia's defeat to South Africa in Perth.
I am cast down for several reasons. The first is that it was, well, South Africa they lost to. With Australia v South Africa, who the hell are you supposed to cheer for? “Come on, Satan!” Or do you say: “No, no, sock it to 'em, Beelzebub?”
He also believes its too soon to start wondering if Australia are in decline.
Let us simply note the result and nod. Let us refrain from sending off gloating texts and e-mails to the southern hemisphere. Let us remember that every talent Australia possess will be doubled when they are in England. So hear this, Australia: we are not gloating, all right? Just noting.
However Hamish McDouall believes the Baggy Green, which has been a symbol of dominance in cricket for two decades, is now fading and tatty. He writes in his blog Googlies & Grass Stains:
Where had the Australian top order been hiding? Matthew Hayden is now officially over the hill, his return since October reminding me of an economy slipping into recession. Mike Hussey had two failures, Ponting one and a half. Clarke and Katich, neither of them batsmen in the run-accumulating mould of Waugh or Langer, are now the only reliable source of runs. Symonds is patchy, and will always be so. Watson survives in the squad because of his bowling. The highest scorer for Australia at the WACA was Brad Haddin. If that doesn’t send shivers up the selectors spines Ponting’s captaincy should. He was surly, his body language defensive. He did away with slips. He set defensive fields. He opened up after lunch with Krejza and Siddle. He didn’t look at Symonds or Katich, relying on the nude spin of Clarke for variation. There was no paint-striping team talk, little clapping.
Patrick Kidd profiles David Boon in the Times' Ashes Heroes series.
Boon once vomited on the outfield at Adelaide before a TV audience of millions (not necessarily, we stress, because of alcohol), and then went on to make a century and be man of the match. A class act. One other thing in his favour was his lack of athleticism, meaning that he often fielded close in to the wicket in the danger areas given usually to young pups. Yet occasionally he could produce stunning chase-and-throws from the deep. They used to have a saying in England: never risk a fourth run to David Boon.
December 24, 2008
How they rate in 2008
Posted on 12/24/2008 in English cricket
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Nasser Hussain feels the time isn't right for England to recall Michael Vaughan
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England's cricketing year was the usual blend of triumph and disaster, but how was it for the players? In the Guardian, Lawrence Booth rates the England players according to their performances this year.
Until Ian Bell consistently produces match-winning innings, England's No3 is a luxury the team can ill afford, writes Vic Marks in the Guardian.
Rather than the end, being dropped could be regarded as the trigger needed for a spurt in Bell's Test career whenever he returns. He has obvious talent so a return would almost be guaranteed. But England need him refreshed and more ruthless and a break might help. Currently Strauss, Michael Clarke and Yuvraj Singh provide good examples of the benefits of being left out. For Bell, playing for England is in danger of becoming a routine occupation and compared to his predecessors, like Derek Randall ("I always played every Test as if it was my last"), he has that wonderful safety net of the central contract.
According to latest rumours, England are thinking about recalling Michael Vaughan for the West Indies tour, but that would be a mistake. Bringing him back at this stage cannot be justified and would create more problems than it solves, writes Nasser Hussain in the Daily Mail.
Where would it leave Owais Shah? He did well in the one-day series so if Michael came into the team ahead of him it would be a real kick in the guts. The alternative would be for Shah to play instead of Bell with Michael in reserve. But having an ex-captain carrying the drinks doesn't sit well with me.
A few plusses, too many minuses
Posted on 12/24/2008 in England in India 2008-09
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Mahendra Singh Dhoni sent down the last over of the series in Mohali
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England's tour of India was a disaster on the pitch, but sometimes results can be excused for the greater good, writes Derek Pringle in the Daily Telegraph.
A new glasnost between the England and Wales Cricket Board and their counterparts at the Board of Control for Cricket in India, was particularly evident. Suddenly, seemingly intractable problems, such as the participation of England players in the Indian Premier League, did not seem so insoluble. What the fearful thought was the sound of gunfire was actually a bout of mutual backslapping from the two boards.
By not winning a single match of significance (their lone success came in their opening warm-up match), England's players could not claim the same sense of achievement after losing both the Test and one-day series. Plaudits were due, mainly to Pietersen and Hugh Morris, but only for the pair's leadership during the Mumbai siege and its immediate aftermath.
Also in the Daily Telegraph, Simon Hughes says, What will be recalled as the Commando and Kalashnikov Test series came to a paradoxically limp end as wicketkeeper MS Dhoni sent down a few harmless deliveries to Andrew Strauss.
If there was one lesson to draw from this two-Test series, it is that chances to win do not come along very often on the sub-continent and when you get one you have to be sure to take it, writes Mike Atherton in the Times.
With the Ashes just seven months away, how is the team developing? Moores will be happy to see Andrew Strauss rehabilitated and back to his best at the top of the order, Andrew Flintoff patently fit again and beginning to find some batting form to go with his rock-solid bowling, and Matt Prior performing well enough with the gloves that the uncertainty over the wicketkeeping position can die down a while. In Graeme Swann, England have found a reliable second spinner for whom Test cricket and big reputations hold no fear.
Amjad Khan and Adil Rashid were passed over in the quest for stability, and Samit Patel misused in the one-dayers, but England must realise the attack is in transition all the same, writes David Hopps in the Guardian.
Of England's Ashes-winning quartet, Matthew Hoggard has been pensioned off and suggestions that Simon Jones might somehow return to fitness for a second Ashes series seem too fanciful by half. At least Andrew Flintoff has survived India unscathed. But what of Steve Harmison, dropped in both one-day and Test series, and whose mood was once again dragged down by life on tour? England, as has already been remarked, can't live with him and they can't live without him.
Also check out David Hopps' England's tour report in order of merit in the Guardian.
Despite hindrances England performed remarkably well, competing hard against a top outfit arguably playing the best cricket in the world. There were several times in each Test when England could have wilted but they continued to fight and they can leave India with their heads held high, writes Angus Fraser in the Independent.
If Monty Panesar was Indian, he would have been nowhere near Mohali. He would have been at one of four venues preparing for the Ranji Trophy quarter-finals, assuming the team he played for had made it that far, writes Dileep Premachandran in the Guardian
December 19, 2008
Where does Giles Clarke go from here?
Posted on 12/19/2008 in English cricket
The latest Stanford bombshell has raised questions over the deal approved by Giles Clarke, but as the ECB elections approach, his ability to bring in money to the coffers may save him, writes Paul Weaver in the Guardian.
When Giles Clarke looks in the mirror he is, like Snow White's stepmother one senses, not displeased with the view. And when a mirror is not at hand there is always Sir Allen Stanford. Clarke, the chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board, is first and foremost an entrepreneur, a bright gambler who financed his Oxford education playing backgammon and bridge, a committee member of the Society of Merchant Venturers. And in Stanford he sees a man made in his own enterprising image, a taker of calculated risks.
December 17, 2008
At what cost?
Posted on 12/17/2008 in English cricket
Vodafone's decision to cut its ties with English cricket is unconnected with a desire to save money. The company is anxious to attract more young customers and is thought to be keener on sponsoring music events. It is also keen on sponsorship with international appeal, which is why, for instance, it preferred to sponsor the Champions League rather than just Manchester United. Ian King in the Times says with the UK accounting for only 4% of Vodafone's global business, the cricket tie-up was thought to have run its course.
Cricket sources pointed out the sport in England needs £53 million “just to stand still” and to safeguard investment in grassroots programmes, including the Chance to Shine campaign to bring competitive cricket back to state schools. Ashling O'Connor in the same paper, believes the task may be tough with Sport England announcing a pot of £37.8 million as cricket's central funding for the next four years.
December 14, 2008
Boycott: a legend lampooned
Posted on 12/14/2008 in English cricket
In the Sunday Times, Simon Wilde revisits England's tour of India in 1981-82 when Geoffrey Boycott broke the world batting record but left his England team-mates underwhelmed.
The record came at 4.23pm with a leg-side single off left-arm spinner Dilip Doshi. Asked to describe the reaction in England’s dressing room, Taylor said: “It was moderate. Had it been someone else, we would have been ecstatic, but because it was ‘Sir Geoffrey’ it was somewhat different. He wasn’t everyone’s cup of tea, particularly not among the England players.”
December 12, 2008
When they were students
Posted on 12/12/2008 in English cricket
It's almost 20 years since a student team containing Mike Atherton, Nasser Hussain and, er, Treherne Parker made history — and struggled to get into nightclubs, writes Rob Smyth in the Guardian.
It was a very talented squad — all were affiliated to counties at the time — and Atherton and Hussain were called into the Test squad later that summer. The strikingly mature Atherton led the team outstandingly: if not a boy among men, he was at least a postgrad among undergrads. "He was such an impressive figure," says the opening bowler Alan Hansford, who picked up the wickets of Alec Stewart, Graeme Hick, Tim Curtis and, er, Courtney Walsh during the tournament. "Even then, his sense of destiny was apparent."
December 10, 2008
No right answer for England
Posted on 12/10/2008 in English cricket
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The reason for Flintoff's yes: Team unity or IPL lure?
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In his post on the Wisden Cricketer blog, Lawrence Booth says the decisions and statements made by the England team in the past few days will provoke different reactions from the media. Here's one of the three examples he provides:
Event 2: Andrew Flintoff sings the praises of team unity
Interpretation A: Flintoff’s contention that “one of the reasons I decided to go was for my team-mates” is a glowing endorsement of England’s team spirit and a sign of the increasing maturity of our sportsmen. After all, seven years ago Andy Caddick and Robert Croft pulled out of the tour to India in the aftermath of 9/11. This time, and without pressure from their bosses, England’s cricketers have embraced the bigger picture.
Interpretation B: Flintoff and his mate Steve Harmison could not afford to miss out on the opportunity to impress in the home of the Indian Premier League. A fortnight’s window in the IPL remains open to England’s players in the spring and runs and wickets in Chennai and – fingers crossed – Mohali could catch the franchise owners’ eyes. Would such unity have been on display in, say, Pakistan?
Beautiful to watch, frustrating to captain
Posted on 12/10/2008 in English cricket
Chris Lewis, the former England allrounder, has been accused of attempting to smuggle cocaine with an estimated street value of £200,000 into the United Kingdom. Mike Atherton, in the Times, says Lewis was the supreme athlete who underachieved; the intelligent man who more than once punctured a hole in his career through sheer stupidity; the warm, friendly face who was also a committed loner, for whom controversy was never far away.
In the Daily Telegraph, Derek Pringle recalls touring with Lewis.
Talented, narcissistic (he once posed naked in a magazine), frustrating, though never anything but unfailingly polite, Lewie, as he was then known, had the anti-social habit of ordering just about everything on the room-service menu, tasting a mouthful of each, and then leaving it to smell out the room. He also owned a hairdryer that gave off electric shocks, but he didn't tell me that until after it had made me and my hair stand to attention one day.
In the Independent, Stephen Brenkley offers another view.
He was one of many cricketers in the decade following Ian Botham's decline who was dubbed the new Botham. Lewis was one of the few who had the all-round gifts to succeed. He could bowl fast and with swing, his batting was swashbuckling, his fielding both in the deep and at gully was almost ahead of its time. But he never came close. Nobody seemed truly to know him in the dressing room. He was hardly aloof but he did not give much of himself; he was not unfriendly but he did not show much inclination to make friends.
December 7, 2008
Highlights of 2008
Posted on 12/07/2008 in English cricket
In the Sunday Telegraph, Scyld Berry looks back at some key cricketing events from 2008 and casts his eye on the year to come. He wonders whether Graeme Smith's 154* in the Edgbaston Test is the finest captain's innings of all time and whether Kevin Pietersen will still be captain if England lose the Ashes next year.
December 3, 2008
The Barnacle turns 85
Posted on 12/03/2008 in English cricket
Trevor Bailey is 85, without a driving license, but with a firm opinion that England should be captained by an Englishman. The Guardian's Frank Keating calls him up to wish him Happy Birthday.
Ring back in an hour, he says - he's in the middle of cooking lunch (lamb chops and all the trimmings) for himself and his beloved Greta, wife of 60 years. English cricket's one-time doughtiest dead-bat seems in fine nick, except they've refused to renew his driving licence - "far too old," they said. So, car-less, he was unable to attend this summer the 90th birthday party of his long-time new-ball partner and England's most venerable surviving Test alumnus, Sir Alec Bedser.
Bailey's barn-door dead bat had led to a tremendous surge of national jubilation when at Lord's in the Coronation month of 1953 he and Willie Watson had clung together on the burning deck for half a day to save the second Test and so, by August of that year, allow the Ashes to be won. Complete strangers still regularly quiz Trevor for full details. No wonder, for as the onliest Neville Cardus all-hailed in these very pages: "Bailey's bat was not made of the stuff of which lost causes are compounded. It was a truly great vigil, a stand of noble martyrdom on an everlasting afternoon of immense strain."
November 27, 2008
Ed Smith's retirement is a loss to professional cricket
Posted on 11/27/2008 in English cricket
Without Ed Smith, the Middlesex dressing room, and by extension the professional game, will be that little bit more uniform, that little less diverse, writes Mike Atherton in the Times.
Smith is too good a batsman to be lost to professional cricket at such a tender age. It is clearly a source of intense irritation to him that the focus is always on the other bits of his life. “When it came to cricket, I was never a dilettante,” he says. His record proves it: he averaged more than 40, scored 34 first-class hundreds and in excess of 12,000 first-class runs. With experience and youth on his side, he ought to be entering his prime years; another crack at international cricket should not be beyond him.
November 26, 2008
Bring back Banger
Posted on 11/26/2008 in English cricket
There would have been pleasure at watching Marcus Trescothick win the £20,000 prize for his autobiography Coming Back To Me. Yet, even as the applause rang round the room, the thought was inescapable: how the current England team could do with him back. Tom Fordyce in his blog on BBC Sport reflects on what a difference a fit, happy Trescothick could make to today's struggling line-up.
Trescothick is still only 32 years old, two years younger than Vaughan and a year younger than Ricky Ponting. By rights he should be at his peak.
Instead, he'll see out the remainder of his playing days at his beloved Somerset, determined to never again be more than a car journey away from wife Hayley and daughters Ellie and Millie. England fans can yearn all they like. He's not coming back.
Ed Smith's new chapter
Posted on 11/26/2008 in English cricket
If I wanted to annoy Ed Smith, I would tell him he is a better writer than he ever was a cricketer. All the same, it's a pretty compliment: Smith played three Tests for England and scored 34 first-class hundreds for Kent and Middlesex, with a top score of 213. You have to write fairly decent books to top that," writes Simon Barnes in the Times.
He has written three well-received books. His 'prentice piece, Playing Hard Ball, compared his experiences in cricket and baseball. He then did a season's diary, one with an awful lot of meat, On And Off The Field. His present book is in many ways remarkable, entitled boldly What Sport Tells Us About Life. The diary deals with 2003, the year he played for England. He made 64 in his first innings; in his last, he was given out leg-before to a ball that would have comfortably cleared the stumps. What sport tells us here is that life is a bitch. He never played for England again.
Thus it was that England lost a player who might have been up for the long haul. He was, in some eyes, a Future England Captain who never made it, a Mike Brearley come again, but better off the back foot. He couldn't break back in; what some call consistency of selection, others call a clique. Smith's was a career that missed its trajectory.
November 23, 2008
Games on the field, and off it
Posted on 11/23/2008 in English cricket
Nothing is going right for England. Defeat on the field is being accompanied by desperate – and, so far, similarly successful – brinkmanship off it, writes Stephen Brenkley in the Independent on Sunday.
At the core of fractious negotiations is Twenty20 cricket: the Indian Premier League and whether England's players appear in it, the so-called England Premier League and Indian involvement, and the future format of the Champions League. Everyone wants a share of the money, but in essence it is up to India whether they get it. England must have Indian players, and many other nationalities, taking part in their Premier League due to start in 2010, otherwise it could face serious trouble under trade description regulations, let alone crowd resistance. But in return India want more involvement by English players in the IPL.
Watching how the Indian players have gone about their skills in the current one-day series it is clear to me that playing in the IPL has helped them improve in vital areas and had a huge benefit on their team, writes Steve Harmison in the Mail on Sunday.
And the danger for England is that if our players are not involved in the IPL in future we could get left far behind in certain areas. Yuvraj Singh has been fantastic, of course, but other less well known batsmen, such as Suresh Raina and Yusuf Pathan, have shown what they've learned from the high-pressure demands and challenges of regular Twenty20 cricket against top opposition in the IPL. Batsmen are no longer content to look for 260-275 as par scores, and are now looking for a minimum of 290-300 every time.
November 20, 2008
Check please!
Posted on 11/20/2008 in English cricket
The career of a sportsman is relatively short and the attitude of most is to grasp what is on offer when it is there. Angus Fraser in the Independent believes though England's top players could earn in excess of £1.5 million over the course of the next 15 months, the workload may take its toll on the players with injuries and more casualties.
Injury is an occupational hazard for a sportsman and, sadly, there will be the occasional player whose body cannot cope with the constant demands that are placed on it. Fast bowlers are the most prone to injury. The physically trying nature of the job means that a pull, strain, tear or stress fracture is never far away.
November 13, 2008
Simon says
Posted on 11/13/2008 in English cricket
There is a chance that Simon Jones' career could be over. The fast bowler has already begun planning for the cricketing afterlife and taken the first tentative steps on his latest comeback trail. He admits international cricket is "something you miss terribly" but the crowning of Pietersen – who is godfather to Harvey, the eldest of Jones' two young sons – will not harm his chances of a recall. Wayne Veysey has more in the Telegraph.
The bowler many judges rate as the most skilful in England has not played international cricket since breaking down during the 2005 Trent Bridge Test even though his form last summer – he took 42 Championship wickets at 18 apiece – was surely good enough for him to be selected ahead of Darren Pattinson for the second Test against South Africa at Headingley.
"I heard I was close," said Jones. "I was told I was close, not officially. I don't know whether the wrong message had gone round because I was rotated by Worcester sometimes but I was fit to play."
November 11, 2008
Why a benefit year hurts
Posted on 11/11/2008 in English cricket
Robin Martin-Jenkins explains in the Wisden Cricketer how the distractions brought about by a benefit year cause a player's form to deteriorate.
Suddenly, having only ever been good at playing cricket, he is thrust into the cut-throat world of the local business community. He has to become an expert networker, party planner and public speaker all at once. He has to buy a laptop and a printer. Most alien of all to him, he has to buy a diary and fill it with appointments to meet sponsors, caterers and tie designers. He has to plan his life and it becomes more complicated than at any time since those long-gone school days.
Sniffing an opportunity
Posted on 11/11/2008 in English cricket
Australia’s 2-0 defeat was their first in a series since 2005 and their biggest since 1988-89, and has perhaps offered England hope of exploiting Australia’s frailties in the Ashes. For that, England will have to build the same momentum this winter that they did when overcoming West Indies and South Africa in 2004 writes Christopher Martin-Jenkins in the Times. He also believes Monty Panesar might prove to be the trump card both in India and against Australia.
Anyone rushing to take yesterday’s shortened odds of 15-8 against England regaining the Ashes next year should remember how Ponting responded to his team’s previous defeat in a series. They won 19 of their next 20 Tests, including five out of five against England.
November 9, 2008
What if...
Posted on 11/09/2008 in English cricket
England left Antigua empty-handed after being thrashed by the Stanford Super Stars, with Kevin Pietersen saying he was happy that the money will make such a difference to the West Indian players. However, surely the England stars would have found some uses for US$1 million. In the Sunday Telegraph, Andrew Baker looks at how the squad could have spent their winnings.
Peter Moores [coach]: I would have invested any such windfall proceedings in the acquisition of a personality. I would also have purchased a quantity of "focus" for the team to take with them to India.
Matt Prior: A full-time bodyguard for my wife.
Ian Bell: Pot noodles. Lots and lots of pot noodles. No disrespect to the people of India, but while their cricketers are tasty, the food there mings.
November 7, 2008
It's all in the name
Posted on 11/07/2008 in English cricket
Nick Compton carries the weight of one of cricket's most famous surnames on his shoulders. After eight years at Middlesex he is looking to start afresh with a new county, but first has headed out to Australia to spend a winter with coach Neil D'Costa, who has played a major part in Michael Clarke's career. The early results are promising after Compton hit a century for his club side and he is keen to make his own name for himself as he tells Ray Gatt in the Australian
I've been at Middlesex for eight seasons now and Compton is obviously a household name in that part of the world. It is something I got used to. Maybe it has been a sub-conscious thing, perhaps it was more pressure than I needed. I'm my own player and people realise that. I think one of the reasons was to get away from that, disconnect with the UK. Come here in relative obscurity.
November 6, 2008
Get your moaning in order, England
Posted on 11/06/2008 in English cricket
Alan Tyers casts his cynical, satirical eye over Peter Moores' would-be diary, reflecting on the Stanford Super Series at The Wisden Cricketer's blog:
As I said, the most important thing about Stanford was not the money but actually getting the players tuned up for India. One of the key skills about an England tour to the sub-continent is having your moaning in really tip-top order, so that when you arrive, you’re ready to hit the ground complaining.
“Bang… The hotel’s not up to scratch… bang… That bloke’s looking at my missus… bang… This foreign muck don’t half play havoc with my guts…”
At the same blog, Miles Jupp questions the excuses England gave for their performance in the Stanford money match:
Peter Moores said it was all about attitude, and that our thinking had all been wrong. He even implied there might have been too much thinking (which sounds dangerously like bollocks). It is hard to imagine anybody being able to use that excuse convincingly anywhere. “Your honour, although my client’s actions may appear thoughtless, the truth is in fact quite the opposite. At the very moment he took the staff of that depot hostage he was, if anything, thinking too much…”
The idea that England allowed themselves to think too much about the nature of the game and the contradictions it threw up seems far-fetched. Moores made it sound as if each and every member of the team went out to bat and immediately suffered an existential crisis. As if someone as happy-go-lucky as Paul Collingwood would suddenly raise an arm during the bowler’s delivery stride and howl plaintively “Oh never mind the cricket - what are any of us actually put on this world for?”
Financial crisis could jolt England's Ashes hopes
Posted on 11/06/2008 in English cricket
In his blog, Line and Length blog on Times Online, Patrick Kidd comes up with a very interesting theory, one which could harm England's prospects in next year's Ashes.
Kidd's Law of Economics part 1a: Australia always do well out of an economic crisis. Plus, Kidd's Law of Economics part 1b: There is nothing like a recession to stimulate the arrival of some all-time great Ozzie cricketer on the world stage. For some reason, they thrive on it. Maybe because there is nothing else to do during a depression than to become really good at cricket. Plus it depresses the English even more. So don't view their troubles in India as the beginning of a decline. Instead, be afraid that some new hero is about to emerge. Here's the evidence.
Here's one of the four example he offers to prove his theory:
1992 As if you needed any more proof for my "Australia flourishes in a recession" theory, I offer up Black Wednesday on September 16, when sterling collapsed and John Major had to pull us out of the ERM, costing Britain £3.4 million. A couple of days beforehand, a young spinner named Warne had just completed his first Test series for Australia in Sri Lanka and had not been all that effective. He was selected for the next summer's Ashes tour, however, and turned out OK in the long run.
So there you are, a theory that can be explained thus: unfulfilled Australian cricketer + economic crisis = All-time Aussie Hero + Demoralised Poms.
Come on, England. It's entertainment
Posted on 11/06/2008 in Stanford 20/20 for 20
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Shane Warne: "Stanford is somebody we should want to be involved"
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England surely missed a trick during their one-week outing in Antigua for the Stanford Super Series, says Shane Warne in the Times. He says they failed to embrace the entertainment.
Saturday was always going to be a great occasion and I think that England missed a trick. They could have said that they were looking forward to a carnival atmosphere, to an evening of great entertainment for the crowd with a fantastic chance to earn $1million. They could have talked up the whole spectacle - yes, acknowledging the money, but emphasising how it would generate a really exciting game.
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Let's take the example of Allen Stanford walking into the dressing-room. That wasn't exactly a spying mission in the middle of a tense Ashes decider. Instead of getting uptight, players could have said something like, “Hello, mate, how are you going?” They might have asked him about his love of cricket or his businesses. Who knows - they might even have picked up a tip or two for the longer term.
October 30, 2008
Stanford's game isn't cricket, so what is it?
Posted on 10/30/2008 in Stanford 20/20 for 20
Another day, and the disquiet over the whole Stanford venture rumbles on, with particular attention now being paid to the role of the ECB in the whole affair.
In the Times Michael Atherton cuts to the quick.
With developments this week suggesting that the contract is more about Stanford and his brand than any altruistic concerns about West Indies cricket, it is clear that the ECB has been, at best, naive and at worst outmanoeuvred again.
Briefings were given yesterday by officials from the governing body indicating how uneasy they have become at the sight of the England team being used as a prop for a rich man's ego.
Stephen Brenkley, writing in the Independent, was just as forthright.
The Stanford Twenty20 Super Series has been a public relations disaster. Whatever the complications of the deal and however apparently irresistible the money was, the tournament has become less and less desirable by the day.
From the moment that the ECB and Sir Allen unveiled a case filled with $20m in cash at Lord's last June to be paid for an exhibition match between England and the Stanford Superstars it has been plain that this event has been almost exclusively about the cash and the rich man supplying it.
Paul Newman in the Daily Mail quotes Michael Holding, a former Stanford ambassador: “Allen Stanford is just in it for himself, not West Indian cricket. Everyone will see.” Newman continues:
How could the English game's rulers be so naive in jumping into bed with an American billionaire and expect him to be the answer to their prayers as they find themselves increasingly isolated in a cricket world dominated by India?
This week was only ever going to be about Stanford and the huge amount of money he is throwing at the winners of Saturday's exhibition match between the England cricket team and a group of West Indian cricketers who go by the name of the Stanford Superstars, as everything here has to be prefixed with the name of the man who virtually rules this Caribbean island.
Dean Wilson in the Mirror ponders how the man himself will react to the opprobrium heading his way.
It is not the sort of response Stanford is used to and he will be either completely taken aback by the strength of feeling in the England camp or he will be fuming at the lack of kow-towing from his guests that his money usually affords him. But he should appreciate that a large part of the anger stems from his behaviour that has made a mockery of the game of cricket.
Andy Bull in his blog for the Guardian wonders if Stanford can recoup his investment.
Certainly the 20/20 for 20 has put him in a much better position to grow his business in the City. As for the money to be made directly from the match itself, the ceiling of the potential profits sits far lower than his expenditure on it all. As long as he is in partnership with the ECB rather than the BCCI, then it is going to stay that way. The huge money in cricket comes with a presence in India, not England.
As long as the project to convert Americans to cricket remains a pipedream and Stanford is in cahoots with the English, the tournament is never going to make the kinds of blockbuster sums associated with the future of Twenty20. He invited India, remember, to play this challenge match after they won the World Twenty20, but they turned him down.
Allen Stanford's millions are not a solution for English cricket - the solution lies in India and a deal which will make England's best players available to the IPL, writes Mihir Bose on BBC Sport. The ECB must come to terms with Indian cricket. If it does not, it will be in danger of getting bogged down in matches that may generate publicity and bring some money but will do nothing for its cricket in the long term.
October 29, 2008
England selling soul of the game
Posted on 10/29/2008 in Stanford 20/20 for 20
As the media anger over the sight of Allen Stanford with Emily Prior perched on his knees dies down, there is also a growing tide of thinking that the whole 20/20 for 20 venture is looking increasingly tawdry.
There were more than a few raised eyebrows last June when Stanford’s helicopter landed at Lord’s and he was almost treated as a saviour by fawning ECB executives. The unveiling of US$20 million is hard currency inside the indoor school for many signalled that English cricket had sold out.
Now that the eight-day feast of Stanford’s cash-driven Twenty20 is underway, it has proved too rich for many of those watching it.
In today’s Daily Mail, Paul Newman wrote that “English cricket has clearly jumped into a very uncomfortable bed by so eagerly accepting Stanford's millions and now everyone involved with our game has to lie in it. The ECB may have made sure that their players become very wealthy this week but the price being paid is an expensive one. English cricket is selling its soul.”
According to Newman, those comments have registered with the players, one (unnamed) member of the England squad saying: “If that's what people back home are thinking then we can't get out of here quick enough.”
In the Times on Monday, Simon Barnes described the tournament as “pornography”. He added: “It is not, then, the pursuit of excellence. Nor is it the pursuit of money. Rather, it is the pursuit of squirming. It is a billionaire's malicious joke at the expense of people he never could be, even if he had a billion billion. He will make a group of richly gifted international athletes squirm and grovel before the altars of money.”
In the Sunday Times Simon Wilde also showed he is no fan. “What a vision it is: a toytown stadium, black bats, silver stumps, vulgar amounts of money and a contraction of the game’s skills into the time it takes to consume a jumbo burger, a tub of popcorn and a bucket of Pepsi. Bad taste, just another toxic asset the United States has given the world.”
Steve James in the Guardian would not disagree. “The match is a disgrace at almost every level, and not just because its Texas billionaire backer, Sir Allen Stanford, has spent the past week on a dollar-driven ego trip, parading around his private ground, hogging the limelight and cavorting with the England players' wives. November 1 will be the night cricket is turned into reality TV, where some grisly voyeuristic fare is served up for those of a short attention span. Big Brother has finished: roll up instead to watch the nervous antics of the England cricket team. Who will drop a catch to cost his mates half a million quid?”
Perhaps more surprising, given the vast sums poured into the venture, are the facilities. The pitches have been slow and low, exactly what is not needed for high-scoring, big-hitting matches, and the low-level floodlights, necessary because of the proximity of the ground to the airport, has made catching a lottery, with some of the world’s best fielders left looking like club duffers.
“The cricketing reality is the pitch and outfield mean the games will be dull, dull, dull,” wrote John Ethridge in the Sun. “Certainly the loot available is inversely proportional to the quality of the product, although the ground is pretty.”
It is possible to find those still who are prepared to enthuse. Here’s Nasser Hussain on Emilygate. “It was pretty harmless, to be honest, and the wives must remember that their husbands are potentially earning a fortune by being here and they are in a lovely place having a lovely time in the sunshine. If the man who is putting up all the money wants to give them a quick cuddle for the cameras is that really a big problem?”
It should be remembered, however, that Hussain fronted the ECB/Stanford announcement at Lord’s last summer and is also covering the tournament for Sky … and the broadcasters have invested heavily in their coverage of the event.
October 27, 2008
Matt Prior: 'I wasn't sledging Tendulkar'
Posted on 10/27/2008 in English cricket
Matt Prior speaks to Brian Viner in the Independent on various topics - the move from South Africa to England, his mother's illness, the Stanford 20/20 for 20, the number of South-African born players in the England team, the jellybean incident ... and the infamous Porsche sledge.
"People who do know me know that if I muck up I hold my hand up and admit it," he [Prior] continues, "but I was being accused of stuff I hadn't even done. That Porsche comment ... why would I say that to Tendulkar? He's got aeroplanes.
"What happened was that we'd had a long day in the field the day before, and I said something about keeping our npower energy up, which was picked up by the stump mic, and because npower were the sponsors, there was a bottle of champagne in my kit bag the next day. Well, at the time Alastair Cook wanted a new TV, so next day he's at short leg going 'Bang & Olufsen, Bang & Olufsen, great televisions' and I think Porsche Carreras are great cars, so that's why I mentioned Porsche. It wasn't a sledge but that quote made me look such an average person. I don't mind if people think I'm an average cricketer, but I don't like to be thought an average person."
October 26, 2008
Money shot cheapens the appeal of cricket
Posted on 10/26/2008 in Stanford 20/20 for 20
Simon Barnes writing in The Times makes clear that he has no time for Allen Stanford and his multi-million dollar jamboree in Antigua, voicing the opinion that "sport has become the new pornography".
I won't be watching out of partisanship, loyalty or patriotism, or the pursuit of excellence. If I watch - and I feel no pressing need to - I will do so for reasons that are furtive and shaming. The spectacle may be briefly compelling, but it will soon lose its charm, leaving behind only a kind of embarrassment for the grotesque contortions of the participants. In short, pornography.
This is not, then, the pursuit of excellence. Nor is it the pursuit of money. Rather, it is the pursuit of squirming. It is a billionaire's malicious joke at the expense of people he never could be, even if he had a billion billion. He will make a group of richly gifted international athletes squirm and grovel before the altars of money.
October 16, 2008
Sate my appetite
Posted on 10/16/2008 in English cricket
The actor and comedian, Miles Jupp, is a frustrated man. The lack of cricket might be considered a blessing by some, but not for Jupp in his latest blog at The Wisden Cricketer magazine's site:
In the meantime, my appetite for cricket discussion has to be sated by any means possible. I’m currently trying to drop a cricket reference into nearly every conversation I have in the hope that someone will take the bait. Ideally you do it in such a way that if the person you’re talking to isn’t a cricket fan then they don’t notice what you’re doing, but it’s a hard thing to nail. Twice this week people that I’ve only just met have said, “you talk about cricket a lot, don’t you?”
I’m not deterred by such failures though, because when you can identify them, cricket lovers will stick together. We’re like the Freemasons. Recently I went to an audition for a small part in a film, and once I’d had a go at the script I thought I’d unleash the secret handshake and so dropped in a cricketing reference. While everyone else in Soho panicked about the credit crunch and sent out for sushi, the two of us stood and talked about cricket.
And it worked. I got the part. And so it was that on Sunday morning, I was sitting nervously on the steps of a London gentlemen’s Club waiting to film a scene with Jude Law and Robert Downey Jr. I’d like to think that the reason I was there was because another man and I have exactly the same concerns about Michael Vaughan.
Lucre who's talking
Posted on 10/16/2008 in English cricket
Sri Lanka's decision to accept Lalit Modi's $70m offer is comeuppance for the ECB's reluctance to grant the nation Test matches in England, writes Gideon Haigh in the Guardian.
So, too, is the England and Wales Cricket Board hemmed in that little bit tighter. For which country's cricketers will be content to accept second billing in an English summer when they can see their names up in the razzle-dazzling Indian Premier League lights? The ECB also gets its comeuppance for decades of neglect: Sri Lanka, in their quarter century as a Test nation, have been granted only 10 Tests in England ...
... The multi-million dollar endowment for Sri Lanka Cricket projects the BCCI into a new position: that of cricket's lender of last resort. And Sri Lanka, of course, is far from alone in having rising expenses to meet and restive cricketers to placate: more benefactions are perfectly possible.
Warne is right: Monty has not learnt since day one
Posted on 10/16/2008 in English cricket
Monty Panesar is a commendable bowler, yet his inability to learn from his own mistakes has been to his detriment, writes Mike Selvey in the Guardian.
There is a particular image to be carried from England's last tour of Sri Lanka and it is this: Monty Panesar is bowling to Mahela Jayawardene, off-stumpish and good length. Jayawardene plonks his left leg forward and waits until the ball is under his nose, at which point his left hand rotates the bat blade clockwise an eighth of a turn, his right deftly imparts a little energy and the ball slides away through point in the direction of a distant fielder. The batsmen stroll a single and the scoreboard clicks round. It happened time after time after time ...
He appeared to learn not one single thing from the trip, which rather sums up his international career: he began it as a very good bowler and he remains just that, stuck on the same level at which he started. Shane Warne, who is no Bertrand Russell when it comes to philosophy, nevertheless got it absolutely right with his observation that Panesar, rather than having played 33 Tests, had merely played his first one 33 times.
October 14, 2008
Joining Botham on his walks
Posted on 10/14/2008 in English cricket
In the Daily Mail, Lee Clayton joins Ian Botham during one of his charity walks, and discusses how he [Clayton] fared.
I managed to last nine miles at his shoulder, walking at a pace of 4.5mph, which is around three times normal walking speed.
I'm not sure what hurt first - burning calves, sore shins, aching thighs or screaming feet.
'A man ran with us on Sunday with his two sons,' Beefy reports. 'Fourteen years ago, he was given no chance of survival; that's why I do this. The pain you feel is nothing compared to what these people endure. We're making a difference.'
And he won't be quitting - a 25th anniversary walk is being planned for 2010.
October 9, 2008
Flintoff fights back
Posted on 10/09/2008 in English cricket
The Daily Mail's Paul Newman meets Andrew Flintoff in a frank and open chat about his comeback to international cricket.
'I was sat on the balcony at Lord's after we had gone four up in the one-day series against South Africa,' said relaxed and rejuvenated Flintoff.
'Everybody had gone, I had a beer in my hand and I just sat there and thought about everything I'd gone through over the last 10 months. I couldn't believe how pleased I was. How much I'd enjoyed being part of that, to be back in the England team winning games.
'There were so many low moments, so many times when I wondered if I would ever be sat there again like that.'
The return of a fully-fit and firing Flintoff was the story of the summer.
October 8, 2008
'Who gives a damn? It's not cricket'
Posted on 10/08/2008 in English cricket
Angus Fraser, in the Independent, writes that the rest of the cricketing world, or even the vast majority of England supporters, could not care if the US $20 million match between Stanford All-Star XI and England gets cancelled. Fraser feels the match is nothing more than an exhibition game, as it is just a move by Allen Stanford to promote himself and his company, but provides the ECB an opportunity to have greater control over its players.
Teams play matches to be successful and win trophies for the country they represent and the fans who passionately follow them. For a player, fortune is amassed and fame is gained as a direct result of excelling in these events and winning trophies.
Stanford's match, however, is different. It has been arranged almost as a "Big Brother" experiment, so that a billionaire can promote himself and his company while watching how players react when playing under a huge and falsely created amount of pressure. The game is an irrelevance. No trophy of any value will be won and the performances of the players will not appear in their career records. It is nothing more than an exhibition game.
October 6, 2008
Giles Clarke keen to extend reign
Posted on 10/06/2008 in English cricket
Giles Clarke reflects on his first year in office as chairman of the ECB. Read his interview with Ivo Tennant in the Times.
Clarke, 55, says that much of his job is about networking and socialising for the good of the game. “I am also very proud that we have secured a new broadcasting deal until 2013, particularly given the crisis in the economy, that there has been so much unprecedented investment in amateur and professional facilities, and that we have a much better relationship with Pakistan now,” he said. “In future years I want to see them play in the Midlands and the North in particular, where there are large Asian communities.”
October 5, 2008
'I'm mad to get back into the England team'
Posted on 10/05/2008 in English cricket
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'I'm dedicating the next year to getting back into the England team': Vaughan
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Michael Vaughan, in the Sunday Telegraph, writes about the reasons that contributed to his resignation as England captain and his determination to get back into the England team.
I’ve given myself until November 10 to decide my best way back. To be the best player I can be, my decision-making has to be spot-on, and I felt recently I was making some wrong decisions as captain and a batsman. The hunger is still there all right – I’m mad to get back into the England team.
Four out of the five England captains in the past 20 years, when every Test match has been televised and media scrutiny has never been greater, have resigned in highly-stressed circumstances, writes Scyld Berry in the Sunday Telegraph.
Part of the reason for Vaughan’s resignation can be traced to the England tour of New Zealand. When he arrived there for the Test series, he found the England one-day players already 'jaded’. Partly this was the consequence of touring: the longer a tour, Vaughan believes, the less effective the players are. But the objective reader, wishing the England captaincy to be a more sustainable job, can also take this as a veiled criticism of the management style of Peter Moores, as it was then, when highly focused on training. After two Twenty20 internationals in New Zealand, and five one-day games, the players should have been livelier, instead of producing flat performances which were only just sufficient to win the Test series 2-1.
England selector Geoff Miller, in an interview with Stephen Brenkley in the Independent on Sunday, talks about Michael Vaughan’s resignation, the surprising selection of Darren Pattinson, and English cricket’s new phase under Kevin Pietersen’s leadership.
About Pattinson's selection
"I was surprised at the reaction because it was unwarranted from Darren's viewpoint," he said. "There was a logical reason behind it. We'd had a special meeting about it and gone through all the contenders, everybody in the frame. He had proved himself at that stage, had created a feeling and was the kind of bowler we wanted. On the morning, circumstances conspired and as the swing bowler he was the choice. Will it be a |
