Mind You, a Lot can happen in a Week ....

The last post on this blog talked about the extraordinary goings-on on Day 2 of the South Africa vs Australia Test match in Capetown last week. I can’t recall a day quite like it ever in the 50 years of my cricketing memory.

South Africa went into lunch on 49 for 1, and the story goes that their coach, Gary Kirsten then left the ground to visit his wife and third child who had been born a day or so before. He returned after three or four hours, midway through the evening session, to find his team on 72 for 1. Wondering whether there had been rain at the ground which had restricted his side to a paltry 23 runs since he’d been away, he found out that he’d missed 20 wickets and two complete innings.

I only hope that’s a true story!

The next day the pundits on Sky TV were Rob Key and Dominic Cork, both very good ex-England players. Even after a night to ruminate on the sensational day’s play neither of them could offer a real explanation of why such a spectacular implosion had occurred, and on Day 3 the match went on with centuries for both Amla and Smith, and in the end, South Africa won easily.

Later that day, I looked at my Twitter feed to see what the cricketing world had made of it all, and alighted on a report from an Australian writer I followed. His few paragraphs analysed it perfectly simply and logically. A difficult, but not impossible pitch, some classy bowling from the South Africans and a complete abrogation of the defensive and strategic fundamentals of playing the game from most of the Australian team, allied to an increasingly lemming like sense of panic down their batting order. The piece was at the same time deceptively simple, accurate, logical, incisive, perceptive, well-argued and beautifully written. In impeccable English, it addressed, dissected and answered the questions Key and Cork couldn’t.

The writer was an ex-Somerset player who captained England once. After his career ended, he upped sticks and settled in Australia, becoming one of the most outspoken, intelligent and thoughtful writers on the subject, a man with a real conscience. His name was Peter Roebuck, and I thought he was one of the best cricket writers on the planet. To me, his articles and books were something special.

One of his books

A few hours after witnessing this extraordinary day and writing this piece, he threw himself off the sixth floor of his hotel and killed himself. No doubt the reasons will come out in time, although I can’t say I really want to know. His beautiful writing is over, and for me, that is that.

For almost 100 years, the number of people involved in the game who have taken their own lives is horribly high. Men who have played the game at the highest level like Stoddart, Shrewsbury, Gimblett, Robertson-Glasgow, Bairstow, Trott, Iverson, Barnes all ended their own lives. And now Peter Roebuck joins that ghastly list. Does the game create conditions in men’s minds which ferment and develop a sense of despair or hopelessness resulting in suicide? Or is it the sort of game which tends to attract the melancholic and introspective - individuals who end it all with a gun, a noose or a box of pills? I simply don’t know.

All I know is one minute you’re reading an article thinking “Spot on Peter, Nail on the head again”, and the next thing you hear is that he’s gone. It’s all desperately sad. The closing words in the last article he wrote on the day he died were “Mind You, a lot can happen in a week.”

Right again, Peter.

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peter roebuck, cricket, suicide

INDIA AND THE DRS SYSTEM

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ENGLAND v INDIA - SHOULD WE BE WORRIED?

A four match Test series of England v India means 20 solid days of cricket to watch, with every ball recorded in High Definition. Hence, with only 24 hours in a day, no Blog Posts over the last month – it’s as simple as that.

Before it all started, it was being hyped as a really juicy contest between the two best Test sides in the world, and everyone was looking forward to a massive contest between two almost equally gifted sides.

THE ENGLAND TEAM WARMING UP.  WHERE WERE THE INDIANS?

Oh, how wrong that all turned out to be. It’s all over now, and England didn’t just beat India, they utterly demolished them in a way no-one expected. Cricket is the sport where the conditions affect the way the game is played more than any other. The heat (or the cold), the humidity, the weather, the pitch, the outfield, the way the pitch changes over the 5 days of the match, the light, all make a massive impact. Playing on a damp, cloudy day at Headingley, and a blazingly hot day in the Sub Continent creates two different games, and learning how to come to terms with both sets of conditions is the mark of a top class player.

India playing at home is one thing, but India (or indeed any of the Indian Sub Continent teams) playing in England is a quite different proposition, and this factor did not seem to be given the importance it deserved. In times past India have come here and played brilliantly. Their batsmen are always among the best in the World, because batting in India is almost the most important part of their game. They usually bat a long way down the order, and patience, concentration and dedication are their long suits. They have often lacked real pace in their bowling, but their spinners have always been a real handful. Fielding has never been one of their strengths, and it is difficult to name a world class Indian fielder however far back one looks. They work on the basis that the batsmen will always score enough runs for their limited bowling and fielding not to be a problem, which, up until now is something they have usually done.

Only a couple of months ago, they have just beaten every other team in the world in the 50 Over ODI World Cup, and they came to England as No. 1 in the ICC World Test Rankings. India is the hub of world cricket, with more people playing and watching than anywhere else. Their top players are feted as Gods in a way we don’t even understand over here. Cricket there, is as close to a religion as a sport can get.

Just read down their batting order, and the spectre of immediately facing a score of 600 for 5 instantly swims into your mind. Gambhir, Sehwag, Dravid, Tendulkar, Laxman, Dhoni, Yuvraj – the list just goes on and on. Harbhajan, their off spinner has taken more wickets than any other bowler playing Test Cricket today, and Zaheer Khan is simply a magician with medium paced swing bowling. And Harbhajan, the bowler, batting at No. 8 has scored back to back centuries in the last couple of years.

So, what could possibly go wrong?

Good question, because in the end the answer for India was - Almost Everything. They were woefully unprepared, playing just one match to acclimatise themselves to the English conditions. Apart from one shining example, the incomparable Rahul Dravid, their batsmen were a disgrace. Their fielding was uniformly dreadful. Their captaincy was uninspired, and often simply wrong. Their bowling was, at best, innocuous, and their overall attitude made you wonder if most of them even wanted to be here at all.

It was so embarrassing that it makes you wonder, or at least it makes me wonder, if the Indians still have an appetite for Test Cricket. Nowhere in the world has the Twenty Over game taken such a hold as it has in India. Watch a Test Match in India, and the grounds are almost deserted, but watch the Indian Premier League 20 Over games, and there are grounds with capacities nearing 100,000, and they are all heaving with spectators.

The really great players in the Indian team – Tendulkar, Dravid, Laxman and possibly Sehwag are nearer to the end of their careers than the beginning, and the evidence of this tour is that the younger team members either have no appetite for the 5 day game, or, because of the emphasis on the short game, simply do not have the skills to play it. This could easily result in them turning against it. There’s nothing like failure to turn your face against the difficult version if, with a more limited skill set, you can get success, adulation and a very decent living playing the One Day Knockabout version.

People like Gambhir, Yuvraj, Raina and possibly even Dhoni need a lot of strength of character to go home to India set on improving their game to remedy their deficiencies, rather than putting it in the “too difficult” box. In truth, I fear that this drubbing could all too easily lead to a further slide down the slope of the disappearance of Test Cricket in the Indian Sub Continent.

If indeed they actually want to improve the situation, the Indian authorities, who are currently in a classical state of complete denial about it all, need to grasp this nettle firmly, and do so in the knowledge that grasping it is going to hurt. The Indian cricket temperament is not one of hard work and toil to perfect all aspects of their game. For many years now, they have relied on an abundance of a group of individual natural talents to shine through. Being good in one facet of the game used to get you through, but England have shown just how much that approach has been discredited. Every England player has at least two strings to their bow, and a few (Broad, Bresnan and Trott) have three.

Contrast the Indians. Look at Tendulkar, an utterly brilliant batsman, who is no more than a moderately good fielder. Look at Sehwag and Zaheer Khan, neither of whom who should have been anywhere near the team given their fitness levels, with fielding which is pretty mediocre. Look at the bowling attack when Zaheer Khan collapses after one match. There are no replacements available or even thought about, and this from the nation with the greatest number of players anywhere on the planet.

In England, when Tremlett picks up an injury, what happens. We get Bresnan as a replacement, and he is so good that Tremlett is now going to have a big job getting back into the side. Lose Jonathan Trott, a brilliant No.3, to injury and what happens? Ian Bell steps up to take his place and plays some of the most brilliant cricket you’ll ever see, scoring a phenomenal number of runs in the process. Now the selectors have a problem about what happens when Trott returns.

All of the above concentrates on India’s failings and makes no allowance for the class of the England team at the moment. Just as much as India’s failure, you need to applaud England’s ability. They can bat long and quickly. There have been 3 Double Hundreds (as well as a 175 and a 153) in six England Innings. They bowl relentlessly with no let up. You see off Anderson and Broad, and on comes Bresnan and Swann, building pressure continuously. When did that last happen in any series anywhere? The Australian 1990 side and the 1980 West Indians come to mind. The England players dominated the game for almost every session played, and simply didn’t allow India a look in. At the top level, that is what wins games.

None of this happens by accident, and it all started when England were humiliated in the Caribbean by being bowled out for 51. That was the turning point, and perhaps this 4-0 whitewash will do the same for India.

There’s some serious planning behind all this change in the England camp. A total commitment to all aspects of the game - batting, bowling and fielding. Everyone in the squad has to buy into the ethos. Samit Patel, quite possibly the best all-rounder in the country doesn’t get picked because he’s not prepared to go down the fitness route which Andy Flower and the other England managers demand – a message to all the others, I have no doubt.

Until a few years ago the bowlers could get away with the “rabbit” approach to batting. Now, even that’s all gone. In the last match England batted all the way down to No.11. Even James Anderson, the least good batsman in the team is OK for a few runs. Bresnan, who must be the best No.8 in the world right now, got a 50 and a 90. And when he’s out in comes Broad and Swann! And having that immense strength in depth gives the Upper Order batmen the confidence to play without the degree of fear they used to show. They can almost guarantee that the guys down the order can dig them out of a hole if the top Six get out cheaply, so they can play with a degree of freedom which allows them to express themselves.

Unfortunately, the vast disparity between the two sides became almost an embarrassment, and took away the huge pleasure one feels when two sides battle each other in a way which reduces your fingernails to the quick. It’s good to see your own side triumph, but the feeling in 2005 with the Ashes is far greater, simply because of the almost unbearable tension which built up in so many of those games.

It’s interesting that today, the ICC have announced a “World” Test Eleven, selected by the Great and the Good from the Cricketing world. It’s all based on individual’s performance from August 2010 – August 2011. In the Eleven, there are 5 England players – Cook, Trott, Swann, Anderson and Broad. From India, the ex No1 Test Team, there is one player – Sachin Tendulkar. I even think they’ve got that wrong. Rahul Dravid should have been there. But the main point is that only one of the eleven players comes from India, which does tend to make you wonder about the robustness of the ranking system which left India as No.1 Test side until a few days ago.

The other 5 players in the team come from two countries, South Africa and Sri Lanka. Sangakkara is chosen as captain, and the other four places belong to Hashim Amla, Dale Steyn, AB de Villiers and Jacques Kallis. The fascinating thing about selecting such a World Team is – Who do they play? Mars away or Jupiter at Headingley?

All of which makes for a mouth watering Test series in 2012, when the South Africans visit England. Are we looking forward to that?

What do you think?

test cricket,
england v india,
cricket
npower tests

INDIA TRIUMPH AGAINST AUSTRALIA

One of the great pleasures in my life is watching International Test Cricket. It raises passions, draws exceptional performances from those who play and, over a five day period, the ebbs and flows, ins and outs and the highs and lows of the game can result in a sporting experience unmatched in any other game. Even the current fetish with Twenty-Twenty and One Day Games, whilst they can be hugely exciting, can’t bring out the chess-like thrusts and parries which only a five day game can generate.

The number of national teams in the World which can compete at the highest level does not reach anywhere near double figures. As I write, the two best teams on the Planet, India and Australia, are locking horns in the second of a 4 match series in the sub-continent, so the TV is getting a fair amount of use.

MY FAVOURITE BATSMAN, VIRENDER SEHWAG IN ACTION

It is not easy to identify many things in life where Australia lead the world, but sport in general is one where they have punched way above their weight for many years. Swimming, Athletics, Tennis and Golf come immediately to mind, but in the field of Cricket, they have been the World No. 1 team on average for the good part of 70 years. Yes, there have been times when England and the West Indies particularly, have had the upper hand, but it doesn’t seem to last for too long.

PONTING TRYING AND FAILING TO RUN SEHWAG OUT

For the last 15 years or so however, they have been THE team to beat – except that almost no-one has managed to do it. England managed it in 2005, but only just. They’ve almost come to expect winning and domination as their right. But, over the last year, we’ve seen the major stars in a blindingly good Australian side depart the stage. Gilchrist, Gillespie, Warne and McGrath were all the best in the world at what they did, and they’ve all gone. Today, Hayden is on the wane, Ponting has had his share of injuries, and, all of a sudden, to me they look vulnerable, rather than dominating and all conquering.

India, as well, have been in a state of change. Many of their great stars are reaching the end of their careers, and they have started a wholesale “move to youth”. In the next year or two, we will see the end of great players like Kumble, Tendulkar, Gambir and Dravid, and time will herald a new order of Indian players. You can see it already with people like Mahendra Singh Dhoni, Ishant Sharma, Amit Mishra and the like who are well on the way to replacing these elder statesmen.

There must be something rather reprehensible in me where I get more pleasure than I should by seeing Australia under the cosh. In this match, they were not just beaten, they were utterly outplayed in every department of the game, with India registering their most emphatic Test win ever. I mean you just don't beat Australia by 320 runs.

But for once, the Aussies took it on the chin. Ponting recognised they had been thrashed and set out to move on, Be in no doubt, they’ll be back, but with no spinners in the team whom the captain trusts with the ball, Hayden playing most bizarrely, Brett Lee for once looking very ordinary, Ponting getting in all manner of difficulties facing Sharma, and only Clarke and Johnson showing any resistance in the Australian’s second innings, you wonder what’s going to happen to turn it all around for them in the next seven days.

It does beg the question as to whether we’re seeing the sunset performances of the Aussies for a couple of years. If you were Kevin Pietersen, you might be thinking that the stars are lining up in just about the right alignment for next year’s Ashes contest in England.

I, for one, can’t wait.

Tags:cricket,
india,
australia,
test matches

AN UNFAIR ADVANTAGE

Today England play South Africa in the first of five One Day Internationals. Oh No, I hear you say, he’s off on his cricket theme again. But no, keep going, dear reader.

At the same time, I’m also reading a book by a guy (Paul Gogarty) who ambles his way around the coast of England and writes his thoughts on the journey. he writes in the style of Bill Bryson, except this guy’s got his knickers a bit twisted on the Global Warming thing, which irritates me a bit. If I want the end of the world rammed down my throat, I'll look at Al Gore's video, thank you. He’s reached the North East Coast of England, and having had something approaching a messianic vision on Lindisfarne, he heads Earthwards and reaches the village of Ashington in Northumberland, where he stops for a cup of tea and a bun.

Now Ashington pushes the definition of a village a bit – it has around 28,000 inhabitants - but technically, it’s a village. One which has suffered deprivation and hardship like most Brits simply wouldn’t understand. The Colliery which was the village's life blood has gone, unemployment is almost the status quo, and the main entertainment today, he sees, is playing Bingo.

And yet, Ashington has hidden depths. If you’re into Painting, read up about the Ashington Group, a band of mid Twentieth Century artists who pictured the lives of the locals in the community. This is a real Division One school of Painting – Princess Anne opened the £16 million gallery housing their Art a while back.

The place Mr Gogarty, our intrepid Author writes, is also the home of the Leek Growing World Championships - don’t ask, this is England. He mentions a contestant who is photographed playing the violin to his veggies - apparently it encourages them to grow.

But if you are into sport, try this for size. If Football (soccer) is your bag, it would be a Once in a Lifetime event if the hugely prestigious Footballer of the Year competition was won by someone from your town or village. Surprisingly, Ashington has been in the illustrious and small group of places where an inhabitant has achieved this, which is not bad for a village.

Except, it has happened on four separate occasions. Jackie Milburn (known in the local Geordie dialect as “Oor Jackie”) in 1958, Jimmy Adamson in 1962, (Sir) Bobby Charlton in 1966, and Jackie Charlton in 1967, all came from Ashington. Ooh-er.

So back to the cricket. It starts on TV in five minutes, so I’d better get typing quickly. Who’s back in the England team today, with a brief to blast the South Africans out of the game? Someone who returned into the England Test team a few days ago, and gave the South Africans a real roughing up in the last match. None other than Steve Harmison – one of the very few/only (you choose) really fast bowlers in this country today.

And, just to close the circle of this piece of scribbling before the game starts, just hazard a guess where he comes from?

You got it! There must be something in the water.

Tags:

cricket,ashington,harmison

WHO'D BE A TEST CRICKET UMPIRE?

With the march of new technology, the difficulty of the job of umpiring a Test Match has taken a quantum leap upwards. Time and time again, we see the umpire’s decision dissected by the commentators, using hindsight, “Hawk-Eye”, a committee review, “Snicko”, continuously repeated backwards and forwards Slow Motion camera work using up to 26 camera around a ground, to decide on the rights and wrongs of a decision. They use all this paraphanalia and some few minutes later, a puff of technological “White Smoke” appears and the pundits deliver their verdict. If it confirms the umpire’s decision, well he was only doing his job properly wasn’t he, and if he’s wrong, then there’s another small nail in the integrity of the umpire’s position. Occasionally, they then replay the offending moment in real time, and you hardly have time to see anything – you then realise just what a difficult job making a decision actually is.

Now, the Rules of Cricket are quite clear, and it is one of the more charming parts of the game – on the field, the Umpires have the final responsibility for the interpretation of the Rules and all the decisions which flow from that. It doesn’t say they have to be right, just “in their opinion …….”. They get it right most times, but, being human, they sometimes get it wrong. But whether it is intended or otherwise, this “God-like” power and position of the Umpire is under increasing threat from these reviews. And surely, it doesn’t need to be like that.

Umpires make mistakes – they always have, and they always will. The game is played on this basis. As a batsman, at least if you’re my age, you “walk” if the Umpire’s finger goes up – even if you know you are not out (think Gilchrist here, bless him). Others (think Atherton here) take the view that, if the umpire has the final say, then they’d better stay there at the crease, even though they know they’re out, just to balance the times when the umpire gets it wrong – law of averages, and all that.

Now it is fair to say that the technology is here to stay, and it will only become more sophisticated as time passes. Which means that burying one’s head in the technological sand is not going to work. And this is the issue. For time immemorial, there was no real way to determine the accuracy of the umpire’s decisions, so everything goes down in history as undisputed fact. When Len Hutton scored 364 Not Out in 1938 (Did you know, by the way he was only 22 when he played that innings?), there was no Hawkeye then to show whether Fred Smith actually got a snick off him when he was on 24.

Today, it’s utterly different. The almost obscene avalanche of money rushing towards the sport will magnify the potential impact of this issue to be even more important than it is today. Just imagine the issues of the two catches (Did they, or did they not, touch the ground?) which enlivened the South Africa Test a couple of days ago, if something similar happened in the Stanford Match later this year. Ambassadors would be withdrawn, and UN ressolutions would be called for. You just know that something’s got to give, and give soon.

The argument today seems to hinge on the balance of Ultimate Umpire Power vs Technological confirmation and accuracy of a decision. To me the situation is basically simple. The Umpire should retain his ultimate authority in spite of the existence and use of all these technical aids. It is one of the real charms of the game, that the final decision rests on the shoulders of one man. But surely, we should use the aids we have today to improve the accuracy of the decisions, subject always to the Umpire’s final say-so.

I’m still not sure about the referral process. It allows the players to be able to put increased pressure on the umpire. Yes, it gets a disputed decision revisited, but it is the thin end of a very large wedge in the destruction of the Umpire’s power on the field. So, why not use the technology? If the umpire doesn’t, the Sky TV Director will.

If the umpire is quite sure in his mind about a decision, then let him call it without the gizmos. He can then take the flak if he’s proven to be wrong.If he isn’t sure, then let him call up the same technology that the commentating pundits spray around after every difficult decision. He can then make his decision after seeing what he wants, and he then retains his authority on the field.

You will still get decisions where not everyone agrees – but so what? Two days ago, Michael Vaughan “caught” a ball very low down off Hashim Amla. In real time, it looked for all the world, as if it was out. Vaughan clearly thought he’d caught it, Amla walked immediately, the umpire didn’t stop him, and everyone was convinced the catch was good. When the replay came up on the screen, the South African dressing room (and yours truly as well, watching on the box) said “Hang on a minute, did it touch the ground?”, and chaos ensued.

The next morning, with all their own experience, all the time in the world and all the technology available behind them, the commentators still could not agree whether the catch was good or not. It was a 2-1 split, and this was David Gower, Michael Holding and David Lloyd we’re talking about here, not Ant and Dec.

We seem to be aiming for 100% perfection for any change, when that is never going to happen. And because we can’t get it, we won’t take the simple steps forward which seem all too obvious – the ones which will get us from 70% to 90%. Maybe you say it’s sport to have these controversies, but I’m not so sure. Think World Cup 1966, think “The Hand of God”, think the World Cup England Rugby game recently.

Surely what we need is a simple mechanism which allows the unfortunate “obvious” errors which we see all the time in the game to be prevented. In the Test series so far, to my knowledge, Cook was given out wrongly to a ball which touched his trousers, not his glove, Strauss was sent packing quite incorrectly and Collingwood suffered the same fate. Two seconds watching a replay by any of the umpires would, I submit, have reversed those decisions, and avoided the umpires’ red faces, and who then knows how the match would have changed.

Collingwood, fighting for his place in the team needed a good innings, and through no fault of his own, didn’t get a chance to play one. He was dropped for the next match, when a decent score may just possibly have resulted in a different decision. It can’t be right if a wrong umpiring decision could lose a player his place in the team. Just think if Strauss had got a wrong’un in his survival innings recently in New Zealand. No-one could have guaranteed on that day that he would go on to play a matchwinning innings, and we’d almost certainly have a new opening bat for England now. It’s that important.

But the Umpire’s job is hugely difficult, and increasingly so. Think of what he has to do. You’ve got Brett Lee blasting down towards you behind your left shoulder to bowl – at something like 90 miles/hour. Each and every ball, the Umpire must check that the bowler’s front foot does not overstep the crease creating a No Ball. He then has to look up, focus on the ball, measure where it lands, compute its line and height and the amount of swing and bounce in case it hits the batsman’s pads, decide whether the ball hits the bat at all, or just before or just after the pad, and decide whether the ball would have hit the stumps, in three dimensions.

Now, a simple bit of maths. Assuming the ball lands “on a length”, at 90 mph, the umpire has around 0.12 seconds to adjust and pick all this up from the time he’s also looking at the bowler’s front foot and trying to decide where it hits the ground. The minimum reaction time for a Human Being estimated by the clever souls who study Athletics sprinting, is around 0.11 seconds. Indeed, if an athlete is found to have started off the blocks in less time than this, he is deemed to have jumped the start, because a faster reaction is physiologically impossible. So why do we expect a 50 year old Cricket umpire to hit that sweet spot 270 times a day in a cricket match, when the time allowed is on the limit of the physically possible?

Answer – because we do. But we don’t have to. Why don’t we aim one of these machines at the crease and leave it to the machine to bleep if the bowler oversteps the mark. That strikes me as simple. You get an accurate answer every time, you get it immediately and the umpire is released to concentrate on the other end of the pitch, where the action is going to take place.

And why can an on-the-pitch umpire refer some decisions to the Third Umpire and not others? And some to the Square Leg umpire, and not others?

This gets hugely complicated quite quickly. So why not start with the basics?

1 - Technology is here to stay.

2 - Clearly visible errors quickly erode the Umpire’s credibility.

3 - The amount of money in the game is making and is going to continue to make umpiring decisions increasingly more important.

4 - The position of authority of the Umpire must be bolstered and supported where it can.

5 - We live in a world where it is naïve (See 3 above – money doesn’t talk, it shouts) to think we can rely unreservedly on the word of the players – morals and integrity are not absolute things and money can easily be seen as the lubricant of the devil here. Anyone been to a Soccer match recently?

So, start there and let the umpire, not the teams, have access to the gizmos Sky and its commentators use. Let the umpires choose when they are unsure, as they can, and do today with run-outs, to have access to the technology being used currently to judge them.

Insist that decisions on No Balls are given to a line judge machine. I’m sure they must exist - if not, go to Wimbledon and ask them.

Umpires are not idiots, and none of them want to look a fool. You have to believe that every one of them is trying to do the best job he can. Yes, it will make a few pauses in the game to go through these replays, but measure the time lost when the current disputes take place on the field, as well as the unnecessary controversy which then fizzes around for days/weeks and sometimes for ever, and off-set that against it. The umpires will use it when they are in doubt – but leave the final decision on Out/Not Out to them.

If they have the choice, and they don’t use it when they should, and consistently get it wrong, then sack them. They’ve had their chance, and in the same way that poor play gets you dropped, they should lose their place if they then don’t make reasonable decisions. What isn’t fair is to berate and demean them when they are being judged by processes far more revealing than they themselves can use.

Simple really.

Tags:

cricket,umpires

WELL ANYWAY, IT AMUSED ME No. 27

I've driven past this road sign umpteen times on the way to work, but the cricketingness in it only clicked with me today.

I suppose you woudn't believe me if I said the next street along was named "Jonty Road".

Or "Brian Close"?

Thought so.

Tags:

cricket,humour

WELL ANYWAY, IT AMUSED ME No. 23

West Indies are playing Sri Lanka at Cricket today in a One Day International in Trinidad. This picture of Jerome Taylor, the West Indies fast Bowler reminded me of Spike Milligan’s introduction in The Last Goon Show of All as "Spike Milligna, the well-known typing error".

THE CRICKETER AS ANAGRAM

For the life of me, I can’t think why.

Tags:

humour,
cricket

WELL ANYWAY, IT AMUSED ME No 22

So there I am watching India play South Africa at cricket. The commentators are Graham Thorpe, an Englishman, and Kepler Vessels, a South African – both great players in their prime. It’s fair to say we’re watching India get comprehensively destroyed, as they try to recover from an amazing brainstorm where they’d managed to amass 76 runs in their first innings, with South Africa declaring their own first innings closed on 494 for 7.

In the middle of the play, we see four men, an umpire and three players kneeling on the ground peering at the turf. We can’t see what they’re looking at, but it is obviously attracting their full attention.

Graham Thorpe – “What is it?”

Kepler Vessels – “It’s a pig.”

Graham Thorpe (Snorting, I was going to say, but am not going for the cheap laugh here – Cricket is serious stuff) – “It’s not a pig!”

Now we’re getting a grandstand view of the scene of the crime with a close-up of the four guys kneeling on the ground. Trust me, a pig was nowhere to be seen. I know what pigs look like.

So, the four men confer, and somebody shouts to one of the ground-staff to bring something onto the pitch. An Indian guy duly runs on with some tools, bends down, and attacks the ground, extracting something which had been holding the covers down on the previous day when it had rained.

“There you are,” says Kepler Vessels – “it was a pig, a tint pig”.

Graham Thorpe wisely said nothing.

Tags:

cricket,
humour

VIRENDER SEHWAG'S STUNNING INNINGS

SEHWAG, CAUGHT BRILLIANTLY BY A "SUN" PHOTOGRAPHER

Regular readers of this tiny corner of the Internet will by now, have picked up on my love of cricket. Having just watched England, over the last few weeks, dutifully beating a depleted New Zealand team, the interest has now switched to a “Top of the Table” Test Series in India, where the home side takes on South Africa.

If you assume that Australia are still the best side in the world (and I’m actually not quite sure about that), then you’d probably say that this series is between the second and third best sides in the World at present, playing to become heir apparent. So there’s a lot to play for.

Day Three of the First Test has just finished, and I’ve just watched the most blistering innings I can ever recall. Over the first two days, South Africa fought their way rather effectively to a tremendous score of 540. Alright, it was on a batting paradise of a wicket, but it still left India a massive psychological task to knuckle down and match such a huge score. If it had been England under the cosh, you would have worried every ball about a batting collapse, to be followed, as night follows day, by a humiliating Follow On.

Not India - they’ve just finished the day at 468 for 1 wicket, with Virender Sehwag unbeaten on 309. Triple centuries are very rare beasts, and on a day when temperatures were stratospheric and the humidity was a bit like a sauna, Sehwag blasted his way to his 300 score in 278 balls. This is the fewest ever in Test cricket, beating Wally Hammond’s record which has stood for 75 years by an unbelievable 77 balls. If you don't accept Hammond's record, where the number of balls was estimated, then the next best is Matthew Hayden, at 360 balls. Just do the maths, and marvel!

TAKING THE PLAUDITS - HE PLAYED FLAWLESSLY

To my simple mind, when this guy is “on song”, he is the most exciting batsman on Earth, only Sri Lanka’s Sangakkara being remotely comparable. He hits the ball all over the ground with an arrogant ferocity which must put the fear of God into any opposition captain. You could see the despair in the bowlers – there was nowhere on the pitch they could bowl that was safe from him. So far in this innings, he's hit 41 Fours and 5 Sixes. As a comparison Alistair Cook, England's opener, hit his first Test Cricket Six ever (out of nearly 3000 runs) in New Zealand the other day - and that hit was a fluke top edge over the Wicket keeper!

And this all came from a man who is not sure of his place in the team! A very revealing comment from him after the day’s play shows just how much difference there is in the mindsets of Sehwag and several of the current England batsmen. When asked how he managed to concentrate (he was batting all day and some of yesterday, with almost no errors made) – “It hurt when I was not in the team so I had to prove myself and I want to get back my seat so that's why I can concentrate and it's good for me and I think I'll continue in the next two Tests." I bet that makes South Africa really happy.

Goodness knows what awaits us tomorrow, as India need to carry on, still trailing by 72 runs. If things go well for them, you could easily see them carrying on for most of another day, with the mouth-watering thought of Sehwag playing the highest Test scoring innings ever. He only needs to score another 92 runs – about 10 overs at the rate he can score, if he gets going! And if you want to look at another record, India were the team on the end of a farcical score of 952 for 6 (it’s the 6 wickets that that makes the knife really twist), made by Sri Lanka 11 years ago, so they might even think of getting that record erased if they think a draw is likely!

From South Africa’s viewpoint, you could feel their demoralisation when they saw what they thought was their dominating total of 540 being taken brutally apart by some of the most inspired, and inspiring hitting you will ever see.

It was an absolute joy to watch. Thank goodness for my Sky+ box. It’s just gone Midnight, and I’m going to sit through it again.

We need to get the England team to watch it all. Actually perhaps not. This would blow their confidence wide apart, and with India visiting these shores in a couple of months for a Test Series against Mr Vaughan and his Merry Men, I think we’re going to need all the help we can get.

Tags:sehwag,india,cricket,south africa

ENGLISH CRICKET - THE OXYMORON

Having spent the last 5 days incarcerated at home, feeling “One Degree Under”, or more accurately Four Degrees Over, I have spent more time than usual in front of a TV screen – not all of which has been good for one’s health.

Having watched the English Rugby Team zealously extend their run of staggering incompetence, the next day I turned to Michael Vaughan and his colleagues in New Zealand to restore my flagging belief in English sporting prowess. While the Rugby team were doing their thing, the England Cricket team had been on a high, ripping through the New Zealand team in a way we haven’t seen for quite a while, leaving it all to play for on the last day – at last, proper Test Match Cricket.

I ended up watching most of the last day’s play from behind the sofa. It is really despairing when, one player excepted (Ian Bell), the whole of the team managed to put on such a display of concerted ineptitude, that you wonder what is really at the bottom of such a performance. There’s not a world-class player in the team (Yes, I know Pietersen was playing), but they can all hit the ball, and score runs. They were “only” playing New Zealand for goodness sake. The reason behind their abject display had to be something different. You could understand it if they’d gone down fighting, but it was a performance of resigned gutlessness, the like of which I haven’t seen for a long time.

Because the match ended so early on TV, there was a good deal of time to fill so Sky, in a move of exquisite cruelness, played a match by match recording of England winning the Ashes in 2005. Here we had many of the same people, Vaughan, Strauss, Harmison, Hoggard, Bell, Pietersen, playing cricket as if they believed themselves to be individually and corporately the best in the world, and completing (albeit just!) one of the most joyous sporting triumphs ever.

Yes, names like Trescothick, Flintoff, Giles, Simon Jones are not there anymore, but the chasm between the attitude in 2005, and the display in Hamilton on Sunday was enormous. On Sunday, even someone normally as positive as Pietersen seemed resigned to failure, offering all the reasons under the sun why the pitch, the opposition, the weather, anything he could think of actually, were all a bit too much to make a win at all possible. Perhaps the coach should stop all the techno-babble which pervades England’s game today, and sit them all down and force them to watch that Ashes film, and simply say – “That’s how you do it.”

As a complete contrast, look at how India, in a fascinating and compulsive series of Tests and One-Dayers in Australia along with Sri Lanka have grasped that particular nettle. They’ve had the bold foresight to pick a new captain in Dhoni, who has insisted on new blood in the team, binning several of the old-timers – but not you will note Tendulkar. He’s got the new boys picked, and has not hidden them away, but thrown them the ball and the bat, and said “Go on then- prove yourself”. And they have. The injection of youth has meant their fielding has improved enormously, and their batting has worked better than any of the opposition – the top 3 run scorers in the competition were all Indian, and in the bowlers they have found some great new stars.

The most exciting cricket of the summer occurred after watching Ponting, one of the World’s very best batsmen, losing out time and time again to Harbhajan, the Indian spinner. After a very acrimonious Test in Perth, either by fair means or foul Harbhajan was excluded from the next game. You could almost hear a palpable sigh of relief, the next time Ponting walked to the middle, knowing he couldn’t be dismissed by his bete-noir, only to face a new, raw, untested 19 year old fast bowler, Ishant Sharma. Sharma bowled 9 overs at him and, in the best spell of intelligent, aggressive fast bowling I have seen for ages, made Ponting look totally inadequate and decidedly second rate (which he isn’t), until falling victim to him. It was utterly compulsive viewing, and a real gem of a sporting moment.

As a contrast, we get two England senior fast bowlers, Hoggard and Harmision, who both start a Test Series woefully underprepared, and who both spectacularly fail to deliver. Quite what Ryan Sidebottom, who grabbed 10 wickets in the match thought about it must have thought about it is not known, but you could probably make a shrewd guess. All we heard in response from Harmison was he had stayed in England to be present for the birth of his fourth child – and the cricket came second.

Well fine.

These guys are on fancy contracts, which, if you believe the newspapers, means they are being paid £300-400k per year, before bonuses and sponsorship. I have no problem with sportsmen earning big bucks, but the deal is simple. You get the money, we get 100% of you, body and soul. If Harmison, who has already backed out of One Day cricket for England, wants to spend more time with his family, than he can go back to the county ranks and do precisely that. This is a man who, in the 2005 Ashes series reached No.1 in the world. Here he looked more like someone wanting to discuss his offspring's Knitting patterns, rather than someone looking to put the fear of God into Daniel Vettori’s men. Fast bowling is about attitude – look at the West Indians in their heyday, look at Lillie and Thompson, Trueman even – men who frightened you before you even got on the field.

Harmison’s time has gone. We need to take a leaf out of the Indian’s book, and at least put people in the side who want to give their all to play for the country. The next Ashes series is coming at us more quickly than you think, and we need a team with belief in themselves. You might get another Sidebottom – heaven knows we need one.

And I haven’t even got onto Kevin Pietersen yet!

Tags:

cricket,
harmison,
test cricket,
new zealand

SLEDGING PUTS CRICKET ON SLIPPERY SLOPE

I have spent the last few days swanning around in Norfolk, walking the dogs on the beach and generally doing not very much. Apart, that is, from ringing work colleagues up to ask them what they are doing, and timing how long it takes for the torrent of abuse to start.

As anyone who reads a newspaper will now be aware, Australia played India in the 2nd match of a Test Series over the last few days. I (or more precisely my Sky+ Box) spent the nights diligently recording the play live, and I then spent the days, and the aptest word here is undoubtedly INDOLENTLY, replaying the action. I have to say, if you’d watched it as a Cricket match, with the sound turned down, you’d have got to the end with extremely mixed feelings, but having watched a real Roller Coaster.

It was a very, and I mean very, exciting match which veered, and on occasions careered, from one side to the other remarkably quickly. Firstly Australia, down and out at 134 for 6 (out of which please note – Ponting lbw bowled Harbhajan Singh - 55), ended up making a further 329 runs before their last wicket fell at 463. Andrew Symonds played a majestic, mature, intelligent and remarkably responsible innings ending up with 162 Not Out. The only real problem from the Indians viewpoint was he was unarguably out to a thick edge when he was on 30. But there you go – that’s cricket.

The Indians were 1 down for 8 runs, and you thought – here we go. Dravid scraped his way rather agonisingly to 54, and was given out wrongly, and badly wrongly, by Umpire Bucknor. But VVS Laxman made an excellent 109, and Tendulkar, who, it must be said, struggled at first, but played with terrific grit, concentration and flair in the end, ended up brilliantly unbeaten on 154. Harbhajan Singh (it’s him again), their off-spinner, added 63 runs of his own, in a great 8th Wicket partnership of 129. I love watching the fielding side getting increasingly pissed off when the rubbish tail-enders put a really good score together. The Indians, extremely unexpectedly, ended up with 532, 69 ahead of the home side.

Australia went at it again in their second innings, and seemed to bat for ever. They got to 250 for 2 (including Ponting c Laxman b Harbhajan Singh – 1). With good centuries coming from Mathew Hayden (123) and Mike Hussey (145 Not Out), they crawled up to 401 before declaring, leaving India to get 333 on the remaining part of the last day, in very short order. Once again in the 2nd Australian innings, the Indians must have felt the umpire was playing 12th Man for the Home Side when he gave Hussey the benefit of a microscopically small lbw doubt when he was on 20.

The rest of the story is History. It looked for almost all of the day that Ponting had been too greedy, and the Indians would play out a draw. In a last ditch, “try anything” effort, Ponting gave the ball to Michael Clarke, their No 5 batsman, who then ended up 11 balls later with the hysterically improbable figures of 3 wickets for 5 runs, and the Indians in despair. In his proper job as No 5 batsman for the Australians in this game, Clarke scored a total of 1 run, and was in the middle for a total of 5 balls. Bizarre.

To say the Indians felt robbed is an understatement, and it is difficult not to feel a huge amount of sympathy for them. Suffering from some of the worst umpiring I’ve seen for a while, they could point to a little matter of 257 runs scored by Hayden and Symonds when both had been clearly out, as well as Dravid being cut down just when he’d started to play some decent strokes. But, if you want a One way then the Other way type of excitement in a Cricket game, watch a copy of this one. You can't come to any conclusion other than that crass umpiring cost the Indians the game. they would not have won, but they would not have lost either.

But then, of course, we get the Harbhajan v Symonds “monkey” discussion. And who knows where that’s going to lead? Why can’t these guys behave like grown ups, at least when they’re on a cricket field playing fro their country?

Perhaps the real cause is that we have an International Cricket Board who seem to have no idea how to address the issue of “sledging”. Here we are in Australia, where, in its modern form, it was invented, honed, polished and turned into an Antipodean Art form. It’s been going on for decades – and, on occasions in the past, in a much wittier form. As an aside, try Bill Woodfull, Australia’s captain (note the country of origin even 70 years ago) in the Bodyline series of 1932-33, responding to Douglas Jardine's complaint that a slip fielder had sworn at him: “All right, which one of you bastards called this bastard a bastard?”

Trawl the Internet today and you don’t need to look far to find pages of the “Best 10 Sledges of All time”. The interesting thing is, for the first one I looked at, 9 of the 10 involved, guess who – our Australian friends.

I have no idea whether Harbhajan Singh called Andrew Symonds “a monkey”. Whether the comments are about race, colour, size, sexuality, their opponent’s wives, their appetite for other men’s wives (and their pets), these goings-on have been going on for too long, and it strikes me as childishly and naively inappropriate to jump on the issue in such a ham-fisted way. The authorities can’t be stupid enough not to realise what the potential consequence of their actions was likely to be. Why can’t either of the Umpires get the message to the team captains on the field? Are they so emasculated now? Why can’t the match referees feel the collars of the worst exponents, and advise them that the clock’s ticking? Why can’t the authorities make it unequivocally known what they wan’t and what they are going to do if they don’t get it? Why can’t they befuddle this particular issue to give them time to build an intelligent and workable strategy to combat it all?

But look at who made the complaint in this match. One Ricky Ponting. Now I think Ponting is arguably the best batsman in the world. But here’s a man who has been dismissed by the man he is now accusing, on 8 occasions in the last 8 Tests they’ve both played in. Ponting almost looked in the second innings here as if he was under a Harbhajan spell - and he got 1 run and stayed in for 4 very jittery balls. You could be forgiven for thinking rather cynically that with Harbhajan properly out of the way, he might just be able to get a decent score going in this series. Just a thought.

It does irritate me, at least, after a terrific cricket match, that Ponting either felt the need or allowed it to escalate this in the way he did. There’s a feeling of “Let he who is without sin cast the first stone”, or is it “People who live in glass houses shouldn’t throw stones”, or possibly “Stop being a Great Wus”, about it all.

No-one doubts that the whole “sledging” issue needs to be addressed. But why do we seem to have people in charge of the game who seem unable to understand that there are more ways of killing a cat than smashing it over the head with a brick.

I was going to suggest the Authority's approach should be “Softly, Softly, Catchy Monkey”, but that would not have been in the best possible taste.

So I won’t.

Tags:

ponting,
harbhajan,
australia,india,
cricket,
test match

ENGLAND v SRI LANKA - NOTHING TO SMILE ABOUT

One of the real pleasures of owning a Sky Box is to watch top class cricket all the year round. Recently, the rains have transformed my garden into a bit of a quagmire, and the damp, freezing weather has occasionally turned the usual pleasure of walking the dogs into a bit of a duty. Switching on to watch a game in the Southern hemisphere has been like flinging the central heating on and getting the sun to shine, on demand. The only frustrating bit of sand in the oyster, it has to be said, is that one of the teams playing was England.

Sri Lanka are a really good side, especially on their home ground, but then again, so are England supposed to be. Starting out rated second in the World, England were expected to give the Sri Lankans a good run for their money. The three match Test Series will go down in the history books as a 1-0 win for the home side. But the reality was, it was nowhere near as close as that. Apart from the first morning of the First Test, where England had Sri Lanka on their knees at 40 for 5, they were pretty comprehensively outplayed by the opposition for almost the rest of the series.

In all departments of the game, bowling, fielding, wicket keeping and batting, we deserved to go down 3-0, and only a series of timely interventions from the weather helped us keep the difference to one match.

You can trawl through the details but the simple facts are we do not have a truly world class batsman in the line-up. Cook was the best with a disastrous start in the First Test slowly being turned into a match saving hundred -the only one scored by anyone in the England side on the tour. Interestingly, only Tendulkar, Miandad, and a certain D Bradman, have scored more or as many Test Hundreds by the time they were 23 as Alistair Cook has. Just think how many good players are NOT on that very short list. He may not be the most attractive player to watch, but England really, really needs someone like him.

The rest of them dillied and dallied with Petersen being as dreadful as I can remember. Bell flattered to deceive, suffering from the new contagious English disease of not being able to turn a 50 into a 100 (once again, look at Cook’s record here – it’s in a completely different league). Bopara and Collingwood seemed to suffer a massive crisis of confidence, although Prior stepped up to the mark on occasions. Apart from Cook, the only English player whose batting you could say allowed him to hold his head up was Sidebottom, who played some terrifically gutsy and intelligent innings at No 7. The whole middle order seemed to be totally unsettled by Peterson’s continual failures, showing that building a batting side around one person, who then singularly fails to deliver the goods, can destroy a side’s confidence very quickly.

The fielding, in recent times a real England strong point, was simply average at best, and unacceptably poor for much of the time. Prior’s wicket keeping was shambolic and he let through far too many chances which should have been taken. It would be an interesting exercise to work out how many runs Sri Lankan batsmen went on to score, following a dropped catch by Prior. My guess is in the many hundreds – simply not good enough, and possibly match losing on occasions. If he’s the best we’ve got, we’ve got a real problem.

The bowlers toiled doggedly, with Hoggard in the First Test being outstanding. Quite how we managed to lose a match when we had them 40 for 5 before lunch on day 1 is quite beyond me, and them as well, I suspect. Anderson was very disappointing. Sidebottom bowled better than his figures show, and Broad had a baptism of fire. Harmison struggled to dominate, and where Malinga got some real bit on occasions, Harmison should have but didn’t. Panesar was far too expensive, but at least had three matches to see, at close quarters, just how Muralitharan does it all.

But none of all this takes away the pleasure of watching the Sri Lankans play. To my untutored mind, they play some of the most exciting cricket in the World today. Players like Sangakarra, Jayawardena, Jayasuriya, Vaas and Murali are all men who can turn matches on their own, as well as being an utter delight to watch. Just at the moment, England has none of these – at least I hope it’s only “just at the moment”.

On a completely different level, one small nugget of pleasure in the series was watching Bob Willis who did the summing-up role for Sky. Now Willis was a tremendous bowler in his time, but, as a TV Pundit, until recently he qualified as the honorary Scotsman in PG Wodehouse’s comment "It is never difficult to distinguish between a Scotsman with a grievance and a ray of sunshine.”

You never saw Willis smile. Someone in the Sky hierarchy however, has clearly noticed this and sent him on a Smiling Course recently, with devastating results. As he is introduced to the viewers now, he stares at you with this amazing face on, which one suspects is his early unfinished version of a genial smile. He looks as if he has unintentionally just sat down, quite hard, on the handle end of a cricket bat. Having got the smile out of the way, his face reverts to the grumpy, tetchy man we have grown to know and love. Come the end of his bit, the rictus smile is switched back on – talk about Jekyll and Hyde.

Somebody should tell him to wait until he’s finished the course.

If you don't believe me, the camera can't lie - pictures below.

THAT'S MY BOY

...... AND AGAIN!

....... AND YET AGAIN!

THE SMILE - WORK IN PROGRESS

Tags:

cricket,
sri lanka,
bob willis,sky sports

CRICKET - THE LONG AND THE SHORT OF IT

With all that’s going on in the world at the moment, worrying about the place of Twenty-Twenty Cricket in the overall structure of the game, is probably not that sensible. Which probably explains, simply and logically, that I’m probably not that sensible then. Oh well, there you go.

I’ve sat and watched a fair few of the games in the World Twenty-Twenty Championships in South Africa over the last couple of weeks In spite of some seriously silly uniforms worn by the teams – Australia’s rather pervy skin tight pale grey suits topped by Motorway Cone Collector inspired yellow Bin Liners, which win my personal award here, I’ve seen some outrageously brilliant and exciting cricket.

But watching Pietersen blast 70 odd off Zimbabwe, watching India and Pakistan fight out a nail biting Tie (probably by far the best result to maintain any form of peace in that part of the world), watching my favourite team of the Tournament, Sri Lanka, attack the game with great skill and enjoyment, and then the other night watching poor old Stuart Broad being blasted for 6 Sixes by Yuvraj Singh, who ended up scoring 50 in an utterly ridiculous 12 balls – how can anyone say that lot isn’t either entertainment or sport. I thought it was all bloody fantastic.

And then, on Friday, I turned the TV on to see the other end of the spectrum playing out in front of me – Lancashire playing Surrey at the Oval on the third day of a Four day County match, where the outcome was to determine the winner of the 2007 County Championship. A perfect sporting definition of Chalk and Cheese.

But, what a great match that was. All the dynamics were different, the speed, the tempo, the strategy, no pyjamas for the teams, the crowd (or more precisely the lack of it) – everything was almost another world. And yet the drama unfolding was in some ways just as gripping, particularly because of the gradually twisting screw which was being applied to the tension on the players of both teams – the look on Dominic Cork’s face when he was out 24 runs short of victory, after one of the greatest run chases ever, told it all.

The star of the match however, was ex Ballroom Dancer turned Right hand batsman Mark Ramprakash. And what he had delivered over the first three days was simply a Batting Masterclass. Cricket works, at one level, on Statistics, so here goes. He scored 196 in Surrey’s First innings, and finished unbeaten in his second innings on 130. That lot meant he had averaged (yes, averaged) over 100 for the second season in succession. Only two people have ever matched that, and only one other (and it would have to have been Geoff Boycott, wouldn’t it?) has done it twice.

SALSA AT THE OVAL - RAMPRAKASH STYLE

Ramprakash has had his go at playing for England, but his last appearance was 5 years ago. Since then, my newspaper faithfully reports, he has scored 11,000 runs and 44 centuries. I don’t know how many players manage to get to that sort of total in their entire careers let alone in the last 5 years since being dropped by England, but I imagine you don’t need to take both your shoes off to reach the answer.

If there’s a more effective batsman in this country playing today, please advise me who he is, and, to avoid a wasted few key depressions on your part, don’t say Kevin Pietersen.

The occult-like goings on of the England Test Selectors have been a lifelong mystery to me, and I suspect that’s not going to change. But Goodness knows what Ramprakash must think he’s got to do to be considered to play again for England. I suspect he must have given up all hope.

But watching him and Yuvraj Singh the previous night made you feel you’d seen the absolute pinnacles of both extremes of the game within 24 hours.

And you think Cricket is boring?

Tags:

cricket,twenty twenty,yuvraj,ramprakash,20 20

SWEET AND SOUR - THE JELLY BEAN SAGA

Who’d have thought that a company making Jelly Beans would dream up the idea of using, of all things, the England Cricket team, to spearhead a new Marketing campaign.

And, although Kevin Peterson took umbrage on the field at having been accused by the Indian batsman, it would seem that Alistair Cook may well be the Secret Jelly Bean thrower, although he claims today to be “more of a fruit pastille man”. Cook, until now, looked, for all the world, to be the model of propriety in the England test team.

ALISTAIR COOK BATTING FOR ENGLAND

You look at his 22 year old, “Butter wouldn’t melt in the mouth” features, and you can’t imagine him getting on the sledging bandwagon, but the simple answer these days is that they’re all at it. Sometimes it’s picked up by the wicket microphone, and depressingly too infrequently there’s actually bit of wit about what’s heard.

My favourite snippet was one involving the rather “porky” Sri Lankan batsman Arjuna Ranatunga as the victim. Shane Warne (who else?), trying to tempt the batsman out of his crease mused what it took to get the plump character to get out of his crease and drive. Wicketkeeper Ian Healy piped up, “Put a Mars Bar on a good length. That should do it.”

Excellent. Unfortunately, they’re not all like that.

Anyway, back to Mr Cook, and his ability to behave as if he still hadn’t completed the growing-up process. Eagle-eyed readers will perhaps understand the reasons more when they recollect that he went to the same school as myself – Bedford.

Now, one of the compulsory subjects there, in my day, was Applied Childishness. There was not then (at least, I don’t think) an ‘O’ level in it, although I guess it may well now be on some Examining Board’s offerings, but in the 60s, it seemed to be a significant part of the growing up process at Bedford.

Some examples - My brother-in-law, who also was educated there, recalls doing a most effective Chemistry Practical, by proving that the School Swimming Pool would indeed turn a very satisfying shade of pink (actually PINK!), when a cupful of Potassium Permanganate was added to the water.

His other exploit, on the very last day of his school life, was at the Final Assembly of the term, which was then held at the unbelievable time of 7.00am in the morning to allow Boarders the maximum time to get home. Rather than enjoying for the last time the stentorian tones of the School Grand Piano accompanying the rendition of the School Song, it was decided (note use of Passive Tense here to avoid long term incriminations) to put a bunch of bamboo canes into the piano. The change from poignant classical chords, to Chas and Dave, did not apparently go down too well with those in charge.

Brother-in-Law was offered the option, with about a minute of his school life remaining, of being expelled, of having Six of the Best (Corporal Punishment then being encouraged as part of School life’s rich pageant). He chose not to be expelled.

My own contribution was much less flashy, but potentially a good deal more dangerous. My Sixth form education was in the Sciences, in the middle of the time when the Americans were getting ready to send men to the Moon. We forget now just how exciting that was. I was fascinated and caught up in the whole thing, and read avidly everything written about it. One thing which caught my eye was the fact that the fuels used by the American Titan rockets were Red Fuming Nitric Acid and (even after 40 years, I’m word perfect here) Unsymmetrical Di-Methyl Hydrazine). These two rather noxious substances are what is known as Hypergolic, that is they ignite on impact. The simple schoolboy view was that all you had to get the two substances in contact, and QED, you went to the Moon. How prophetic that thought nearly was!

So, as the year’s Organic Chemistry course wound its way forward, one day we ended up studying Hydrazine and its associated compounds. It didn’t take much thought to wonder using a tad of lateral thinking that, with the Di-methyl Hydrazine we had just made, and the Red Fuming Nitric Acid, which was sitting there unused in the Science lab Fume Cupboard, there might be an interesting practical experiment to be undertaken here. Now the Di-methyl Hydrazine I had made was apparently symmetrical, but I concluded that the symmetry issue was probably the icing on the cake, so what the hell.

I poured a small thimbleful of each out into separate containers in the fume cupboard, and with the mechanical arms used to pour corrosive liquids into containers, gingerly poured a small amount of one into the other. Thank God I was behind the wooden stanchion at the corner of the Fume Cupboard, because I think we (actually I) demonstrated just how powerful this fuel was. With a very smart explosion, it neatly blew the Fume Cupboard out and the panes of glass all over the Laboratory - thankfully no-one was hit by the flying pieces, but one’s blood runs a bit cold thinking about it even today.

The strange thing was that no-one seemed to make a song and dance about it. I was told off, and it was suggested that perhaps I shouldn’t do anything like it again, but that was it. Can you imagine the Health and Safety Investigation that would be set in train today?

However, as a sure-fire way of remembering what these substances were, well, it has all stuck in my memory without sign of brain fade, ever since.

Talk about a picture speaking a thousand words. I think it’s a better way of education than the H&S restricted book experiments undertaken today, but then, I’m only a Grumpy, Rose coloured spectacled, Old Git.

Comments on the last clause in the last sentence are NOT welcome.

Tags:

alistair cook,
bedford school,
jelly beans,cricket,
sledging