The circus moves on

Autumn is early in the trees this year, pointing up the lingering death of the English cricket season. On the other hand, the weather has been gentle, warm, and forgiving to beleaguered cricket administrators, at least in the southern third of the country. Some years it could have been very different.

But as cricket gear is shoved back in the cupboard in autumnal England, the dust is being shaken from pads and chest protectors in the southern hemisphere. The hymn of prayer is never silent. The English and Australian teams had no time to think at all, swapping the brown leaves of Chester-le-Street in County Durham for Springtime with Graeme Smith and South Africa. Strangely the change (and lack) of air seemed to galvanise the English, although they’d warmed up by beating the no doubt bored Australians in the last of the seven one-day internationals, thanks to some excellent bowling from a buoyant Graeme Swann. Even so, the English batting creaked its way to victory, looking to snatch defeat from the jaws of victory. Some of the English batsmen looked extremely perplexed by their performances.

In South Africa it really was a new dawn, a new day. Anderson and Onions got into the Sri Lankan batting so quickly that their opponents were thereafter always playing catch-up in the first match, and Shah, Collingwood and the ever-improving Morgan simply blew the highly rated South African bowling away in the second. Simple, you see, this 50 over game. The ball seemed regularly to being thrown back from the crowd. Was it twelve sixes in the innings? Unheard of! This was Shah’s best innings for England, and psychologically it would have been useful if he’d made those last two runs to his century, even though in terms of the match it wasn’t significant. I think most English cricket followers were also highly entertained by the sight and sound of the South African captain Smith whingeing that he was refused a runner when suffering from cramp late in his (very good) innings in reply to the large England total. Why is it we English don’t care much for this fine batsman? Maybe he seems always to want the moral high ground, as part of his sporting policy. It’s a national sporting trait, noticeable in South African rugby and athletics too at the present time. Batter the opposition with every weapon you’ve got. It’s the sound of a nation stretching for status and credibility, against great odds. Andrew Strauss said he couldn’t remember such an accomplished England batting performance in a one-day international, and neither could the rest of us. But then of course two days ago, normal service was resumed as our batting fell away against the New Zealand attack on a pitch that, like a fair few in this competition so far, was a bit sporty early in the game. So now, and with a certain inevitability, England and Australia play each other in the semi-finals of this World-Cup-lite. Am I bothered? Not much about the result. But let’s hope it’s a close game, and that both sides escape the humdrum nature of the cricket which has dominated the past month or so.

It’s good to be shifted from our parochial view of a game, a political perspective, a way of life and to be reminded that when we’re world weary, others are excited about possibility and new beginnings. I don’t know about anyone else though, but I find it hard to hold these many separate universes in my head without compromising my own relish for tomorrow. I’m confused. What’s special about this moment then? My head is all for globalism, but my heart has some catching up to do.

The road to perdition

This morning in The Times the sportswriter Simon Barnes described it as the worst example of cheating in sport, and who’s to disagree. The idea that a young Formula One racing driver should be asked by his team boss to crash at high speed with incalculable consequences to himself, other drivers and even spectators, so that another team-member can win a race, is deeply shocking.

This is no longer sport as we like to conceive of it. Arguably, if we were to do some linguistic analysis of the notion of ‘sport’, we might conclude that in fact we should have to define such actions out of the term. Have an argument around the family table about that one.

As Barnes points out, money is the determining factor in all Formula 1 business, and so a turn of events like this isn’t completely surprising. Money has been the theme behind many of the articles in this blog, alongside dissertations on the aesthetics of the Game We Love, to the point that to underline the issues again would be wearisome. However, and not in the spirit of ‘I told you so’, I did say at the outset that Pietersen and Flintoff would be crucial factors in the account of this summer, that I expected that never subsequently would they be a major part of English cricket success, and that knowing what the major stories of the season might be was difficult.

Perhaps the most significant event of all is Flintoff’s announcement this week that from now on he intends to be ‘free-lance’. There’ll be no allegiance to Lancashire, his home club, or to England, except when he chooses to make himself available (which will presumably be only for major one-day tournaments). He’ll go where there’s most financial reward. His choice of agent, one Chubby Chandler, should have led us to expect this. Some commentators have welcomed the decision as a brave new honest world for cricket, and to be sure where Flintoff has led, others, presumably Pietersen included, will follow sooner rather than later. We will have to get used to enjoying the flowering of great talent for a shorter time, until sufficient momentum has been generated for the player concerned to take his business where the real money is.

It’s hard to conceive where this all takes us. I’ve already sketched out some of the possibilities. Hard though, not to feel a certain despair that in terms of direction of travel and theme, so much time, so many words have been spent on this.

As far as Flintoff goes, personally I hope that England wishes him well, but doesn’t consider him for selection again. They must move on without regret, accepting that he was a whole-hearted trier for his country, who ultimately failed to deliver to his full potential but gave us many memorable moments. We will have to learn to love the ones we’re with, game by game, and not grow too fond of them. And thank God, that in contrast with motorsport or football or athletics, the opportunities for the perversion of our sport are limited.

Not with a bang but a wimpy

As I write, the sixth one day international between England and Australia is about to start. Australia have won the first five by playing competent cricket at a consistently higher standard than England, and at the moment look as if they might win the next hundred games were the series to be prolonged that far. As well it might be, if the ECB thought it could fill the stadiums and make a buck. In this form of the game, England aren’t very good just at the present. Times without number in this series, their batsmen have got set, only to make an error at a point which has disrupted the rhythm of the overall batting performance. Their bowling although solid and reliable, has lacked the cutting edge to put pressure on their opponents. Their fielding has been no more than respectable. It’s been dispiriting to watch and listen to. It’s taken the edge off a season which might have been remembered with affection. Now we just all want to get it over and done.

This isn’t how a story should end. The action should move from one fast-paced chapter to another, a cliff-hanger at every turn, until in the last twenty pages, there’s a dénouement of startling originality, with the intriguing possibility of a sequel left hanging in the air. If I tried handing in something like this, my editor would send me a stern note and tell me to do better, and quickly.

But maybe if you or I had bought a ticket to one of the games, and we hadn’t seen the Australians yet this summer it would still have provided golden moments. The chance to see heroes at close quarters is always special. Otherwise why attend athletics meetings in the aftermath of the World Champs, or be present for your football club any time after Christmas, when the writing’s on the wall that yet another mid-table slot is more or less guaranteed. We want to be there at Trent Bridge or Southampton, in the company of others, to appreciate just how blisteringly quick Brett Lee is at full throttle, to see Ricky Ponting bat in case he never returns to England, to enjoy the sight of Michael Hussey dropping a catch he’d have taken ninety-nine times out of a hundred, to remember how beautifully a cricket ground is mown, to take in the atmosphere a crowd creates, and have a memory to cherish over the Yuletide sherry. If you were there, what does it matter that the game was meaningless or pedestrian. You’ll have noticed, of course, but not as much as we who watch at a safe uninvolved distance from the comfort of our sofas will have noticed. Cor blimey guvnor, the TV pundits have even been on the backs of the crowds for not making enough noise, as if it’s their fault or something, rather than their right, handsomely paid for. Maybe athey were just engrossed in what was happening. You don’t have to shout your head off to enjoy something.

I remember watching absolutely inconsequential games of cricket in my youth, and revelling in them. Images stay with one for ever. Derek Shackleton, the Hampshire medium pace bowler of legendary accuracy and subtlety fielding tall and lean at the boundary’s edge, and swapping friendly words and a cigarette with a spectator, before going back to his bowling mark and putting six balls on to the pitch within a half-crown of each other. Can that have been so? I think it was. And in the same match, his bowling partner ‘Butch’ White, delivering at express pace from the ‘wrong’ foot, dropping short and being pulled off the front foot an inch or two from his eyebrows by my hero Colin Cowdrey to the midwicket boundary. How did Cowdrey have the bravery and time to do that? Without a helmet! Or another time at Canterbury, the Kent stalwart Alan Dixon, bowling off-cutters that looked so easy, I reckoned even I could have made a hundred, but still managing a five-fer not many. Brian Luckhurst squirting the ball to the square boundary time after time. Wayne Daniel at Lords, so quick the ball was quite invisible from side on. Kapil Dev hitting the ball with a smile into the top tier at Northampton’s County Ground. Massive, balding, Garth Le Roux hitting parked cars at the same venue. Wayne the larrikin Larkins belting Northants to an improbable victory against the clock with half a dozen sixes. Michael Holding whispering to the bowling crease from a run that started pretty much at the sight screen. A pretty much unknown Michael Hussey accumulating 329 runs with an efficiency that had one scratching the head. How come this guy couldn’t get in the Australian team? The results of the matches are rarely recalled, but a thousand individual images come back with clarity and gratitude just to have been there and captured them in the camera of the mind.

There is no cosmic significance in any of this, although if you view it with the eye of faith, you may think that a kindly God gave us these things for our comfort and relaxation. But there is shared ritual here, which needs the contrivance of the relevant authorities to nurture and support. The watcher on TV is on the fringes: he or she remains uninitiated into the true mysteries. All they will want is Big Bangs. The smell of fried onions (or until recently at Northampton Saints Rugby Club in a certain part of the main stand, ‘Deep Heat’ wafting up from the team changing rooms) is just as much a part of the action for the paying customer at the ground.

Get a new plan, Stan

I may be about to sound like the bloke you’d try hard to avoid at the party. This was the season when English cricket, even if it regained a pot, finally lost the plot.

There was a time long ago when the narrative of a season could be very easily followed – and, please bear with me, but here we have to go back to the nineteen fifties again. Then there were just two strands to the annual story. An overseas team would come to play England, arriving (by boat at first) in early May, warming up in leisurely fashion by playing a whole sequence of games against the English counties, the two universities and the M.C.C. The five Test matches would be played predictably in Birmingham, London (Lords), Leeds, Manchester or Nottingham and then London again (the Kennington Oval), the last one finishing well before the August Bank Holiday. If the visiting team were Australia, England would usually lose the series. If it was anyone else, they’d usually win. Parallel to this would be a County Championship in which each of (eventually) seventeen ‘first class’ counties would play each other at least once, often twice. A batsman could score as many as 3816 runs in a season (Denis Compton in 1947) or take as many as 304 wickets (Kent’s ‘Tich’ Freeman in 1928). Everything would be wrapped up nicely by the beginning of September at which point there’d be a nice little celebration up in Scarborough with one or two ‘festival’ matches where batsmen threw caution to the winds and bowlers went wearily through the motions. The rest of the time the bowling class (I don’t think it’s my imagination but generally they were of a lower social standing than the cravated batters) never suffered injury despite being entirely beer-fuelled while softy batsmen were sponsored by Brylcreem (Denis Compton again), drank G&T’s and were universally beautiful to watch, even though by modern standards they scored extremely slowly. No one was paid very much money. They played for the love (or the hell) of it. Indeed some of the best participants were truly ‘amateur’ (see ‘cravats’): their private income subsidised their play and the public’s enjoyment. This was truly another, though not a better age. After all, Herr Hitler and food rationing were still recent memories, and Prime Minister Harold Macmillan was about to tell the nation of ‘winds of change’ in Africa and encourage them that in Britain they’d ‘never had it so good’.

Then, one day cricket was invented. Cricket became professional through and through. The one-day final became a climax to the county season, even if winning the ‘Gillette’ trophy was seen as a consolation prize vis-a vis the three day county programme. Telly was still black and white.

The sixties saw a big change: if cricket was to survive as a national sport it had to renew itself and become both more commercial and more attractive to watch. Two Test series a year became an occasional practice and eventually by the nineteen eighties a permanent one. More one day competitions flourished. Cricket on a Sunday became an early sign of the social acceptance that England was now a secular nation, at least after lunch on the first day of the week. 40 overs a side was born as a pro game. With improved world transport, and better communications, more foreign cricketers sought employment in the UK, and the individual cricket authorities here welcomed them with increasingly open arms, kidding themselves that their presence would automatically ‘improve standards’, but really more concerned to boost income at the gates of the grounds or get the jump on their rivals down the road. The presence of the imports changed the attitudes of indigenous English cricketers: it arguably made them more venal and work-shy. To be fair, more travelling was now required of them, if not more cricket. Less overs were being bowled in total, less runs scored, fewer wickets taken than in days of yore. But at least they had nice sponsored cars in which to make the journeys. Latterly, as the first contribution of the twenty-first century to the game’s history, 20-20 has been added to the repertoire of cricketing entertainment and next year we’re promised two domestic competitions for this shortest form of the game. Oh good.

Because do you know what? Here I am, an interested, even fanatical punter, and I have to look up the details of what’s supposed to be happening when in the season. I’m unmoved by the ‘Friends Provident Trophy’ with its mix of leagues and knock-out. The ‘Pro-40’ league seems entirely irrelevant. I couldn’t tell you which team is in which division of the emasculated county championship, except that Northants (inevitably) are in the second division, as (amazingly) are bottom-placed Surrey for all their glitter and London swagger. Poor Mark Ramprakash. The final seal on his absence from the England team was that, despite the weight of his run-getting in recent years, none of it should count for his eligibility in the view of the press, because it had been achieved in Division Two. It didn’t matter. In which case, why are we bothering with Division Two at all?

The fixture list is a patchwork quilt. The final of the FP Trophy was separated from the rest of the competition by 20-20 matches. The county championship was suspended in mid-summer to allow one-day matches to flourish. The crowded, unrelenting international programme allows no room for the cricket-follower to pay attention to domestic matters. Only the final round of four day inter-county matches peeks out at the end of September – so let’s hope there’s still some interest in it by then. A season begun with cold hands stuffed in pockets while handfuls of spectators huddled together for warmth will end the same way shortly before October’s inevitable good weather. Professional cricket in 2009 is an animal designed by a committee and it really should be put out of its misery quickly. The administrators have done the almost impossible by creating a ‘product’ which gets worse, season by season, with every ‘innovation’ of format. The men in suits care only about numbers of ‘bums on seats’, regardless of their identity. Even there they’re losing headway. Yesterday’s eventually exciting one day match against Australia failed to sell out, and the atmosphere seemed to be tepid and distracted for most of the day. Ask yourself why that was.

Perhaps we should let professional cricket in England die. It sometimes seems as if, to echo the Gospels, we need to lose our life in order to re-gain it. I propose a moratorium. No cricket except the strictly amateur for five years. Think of it as a lengthy break for rain. Then, fresh with enthusiasm, let’s greet the sun and see the way to go.

Pastorale

While the English batsmen were clawing their way to victory last Saturday afternoon, I was walking through north west Kent along the long distance footpath which is called the London Loop. This describes a circle of roughly 150 miles broken by the Thames at Erith, and crossing the river in the west at Kingston. It passes through some surprisingly quiet countryside, given that its entire length is within the M25 London orbital motorway – but in case you’re thinking of trying it, I should warn you there are a few moments of grimness too!

About seven or eight miles from the Thames the route passes through the urban village of Old Bexley, a mile or so from the house where I spent most of my childhood and adolescence. From the High Street, the walker hangs a left up raggety Tanyard Lane, goes under the railway bridge, and turns right parallel to the railway up a path which will eventually bring her to an open space where once there were large gravel pits – this is the shallow valley of the River Cray. To the left about two hundred yards from Tanyard Lane is the ground of Bexley Cricket Club. Cricket has been played on this spot since the mid eighteen-seventies, but the history of Bexley C.C. goes back at least to 1805. It’s still today a very pretty ground, well managed and almost pastoral, given that this is distinctly suburban London. Quite by accident, I’d timed my arrival perfectly: it was midday and the game was in its first over. I stood and watched from the fence for a moment. The second over began, bowled from the far end. I took out my camera, clicked on the fourth or fifth ball, and as if I’d summoned up magic the batsman clipped the ball loosely off his pads and the fielder at mid-wicket took an easy catch. Disconsolate, his day ruined, the batsman walked from the ground slowly, so slowly, and threw his bat through the door of the little pavilion where it landed amongst his kit with a clatter and a curse. Drawn in by the little drama, I went through the ground gate and sat down on a bench by the scoreboard to ease my blistering heels and eat a sandwich. I was amazed to be greeted – in more friendly fashion than in many churches - and handed a hymnsheet – I mean a scorecard. There were as far as I could see, no other spectators apart from the teams and their immediate acolytes.

The next surprise was to recognise the bowler at the near end, who was also fielding beside me at third man when he wasn’t lumbering to the crease. I asked the man who’d handed me the scorecard, ‘Isn’t that Darren Cousins, who used to play for Northamptonshire?’ He said it was. ‘You follow Northants then?’ I admitted it was where I lived. Cousins is now in his mid to late thirties, I guess, at county level a worthy journeyman seam bowler, who for a couple of years did rather well in Northampton, on a pitch which was never exactly bowler-friendly. It seems he now lives in Cambridge but makes the round trip of 140 miles each weekend to play for Bexley in the Kent Premier League: the opponents this week, St. Lawrence, whose home is the Kent county ground at Canterbury. Only one other name on the scorecard meant anything - St. Lawrence’s P.G.Dixey, a young wicketkeeper currently on the fringe of the Kent side, kept from it by the excellent Geraint Jones. But 140 miles! No money for this, probably not even expenses, unless they’re paying him a subsistence wage to be a ‘senior pro’ and coach the kids.

It was evident I was watching a good class of cricket, and much, much better than the standard I remembered from occasional childhood visits. Cousins was not having one of his better days, but Jason Benn, bowling from the far end, was distinctly swift, even on an evidently sluggish pitch, particularly when he bent his back. The batting was cautious and entirely measured. A lovely checked extra cover drive was played off Cousins, never an inch off the turf, technically quite perfect. Checking the scorecard on the web a few days later, the second wicket pair got to 79 before the next wicket fell, and the new batsman, Charlie Hemphrey, eventually went on to make a classy century. I’d have stayed longer, but I was only halfway to my eventual destination at Petts Wood station, and I knew I’d have to nurse my feet on the way – it’s either my gait or my right boot, but too often I end up wounded when I walk. However, it was good to be reminded where the heart of the game beats in England, played for fun, but with great attention to detail. It deserves an audience. What a pity there isn’t one! I’d like to think that if I were ever to retire back to Bexley, I’d be a regular on the bench, swaddled in my peasant’s smock, and shaking a stick at each wicket that fell. Yet, there are probably equally fine prospects around the Northamptonshire villages, and who’s to say the quality of play may not be as good there too.

You're not going to like it Mr. Spock

If there’s life on planets in distant solar systems, and it's intelligent, do you think it plays sport? It seems a likely universal that, however many legs you've been given, you’d want to know who can move them the fastest. Perhaps unknown to us fleas really do have their own Olympic Games to celebrate who can jump the highest. The joy of football is its ease of play in a variety of situations, so perhaps an analogue for the ‘beautiful game’ is a possibility somewhere out near Alpha Centauri. Citius, altius, fortius. But somehow the eccentricities of cricket seem unlikely to be mimicked anywhere else in the depths of space, though maybe that’s just another tedious example of a human wrongly thinking that the world revolves around him. Well at any rate, if aliens ever make contact, let’s hope that they have a sense of play for mutual enjoyment, rather than the crueller notion that seems, for instance, endemic to cats. ‘To play with’ has a number of connotations. But I digress.

For all that cricket’s so steeped in stats, it’s sometimes a very illogical game in terms of who wins and who loses. Unpredictable, sometimes even rather random in its elevation of individuals to hero status, it maintains its charm by means of arcane laws and (in England at least) meteorological whim. And so it’s been at London’s Oval cricket ground these past few days, as England stuttered to a famous victory in the final Test match of the summer, and thus regained the Ashes they’d lost so overwhelmingly in Australia two years ago. If you still don’t know the significance of ‘The Ashes’ I once again commend you to Google where I’m sure many folks are gagging to tell you about this piece of Anglo-Australian heritage, which has resulted in an enduring and fascinating sporting rivalry. Anyway, 2009 now goes down in history alongside 1953, 1956, 1981 and 2005 as a Great Moment in recent English cricket history.

Here’s how it happened, though I still retell it through something of a haze of disbelief.

On Tuesday and Wednesday last week the weather was good in London. On Wednesday it was very good indeed with one of those puzzling and frustratingly short temperature spikes which England sometimes experiences. For one day and one day only, the mercury ascended to just around 30 degrees.

Now it was in everyone’s interests that the fifth Test produce a result. If the match were to have been a draw, the rules say the Ashes would have stayed with Australia, because the series itself would have been drawn one match apiece, and Australia were the winners in the previous series. England therefore went in to the match fully committed to attempting a victory. But no doubt the Aussies too would have preferred a win so that they could go home saying that they’d beaten the Poms fair and square. Again. Australians are like that.

But what seems to have happened last week was that the wicket was left exposed to the elements for longer than usual. Before the commencement of play it was, ex-England captain Michael Atherton observed ‘the colour of a rich tea biscuit’. Nevertheless I think everyone expected that like most Oval pitches it would be absolutely hard and true at least for the first half of the match. Later, maybe, spin bowling would be a decisive factor. So it was something of a surprise to see the ball begin to take chunks out of the surface of the wicket on the second day. One one occasion an Andrew Flintoff delivery caused a positive explosion of dust. These things play on the minds of batsmen. If the surface is uneven, the ball is likely to deviate awkwardly when it pitches: the batsmen can never trust to the line of the ball. The unusual state of the pitch can only have been conscious preparation by the groundstaff – but of course they wouldn’t have known which side it would have favoured, until the coin had been tossed, so this was a gamble, not a conspiracy. One thing was certain: the side winning the toss and batting had the advantage – and on this occasion that was England. Or so the logic ran – except that in the event, both sides scored more runs in their second innings than in their first.

The composition of both sides was controversial. The Australians omitted their spin bowler, Hauritz, presumably because their battery of quick bowlers had done so well for them at Leeds, and it would have seemed churlish to discard any of the four quite so quickly. As things turned out it was a pusillanimous piece of selection, although not as crucial as it might have been had the Australian batting been more steadfast in their first innings. If the game had been closer, Hauritz might have been the difference. By contrast England took the gamble of playing fast bowler Harmison and debutant batter Trott. The first selection turned out to be useful, the second absolutely inspired. Or remarkably good luck. When Trott has played a dozen more Test matches, we’ll have a clearer idea about that. In the event Panesar was omitted, and eventually this can be seen as a good decision in view of his lack of form. However there was a moment on the fourth day when we wondered if we would lose for lack of the 'turbanator'.

Once again, the umpiring in this match was undistinguished. Billy Bowden and Asad Rauf have made too many quixotic or just plain wrong decisions in this series, and they kept to their form here. Batsmen were given out caught when they hadn’t hit the ball, and leg before wicket when they had. Decisions were given against batsmen when the bowler by overstepping the bowling crease had bowled a no-ball – an ‘illegal’ delivery. It would be hard however to make a case that one side suffered more than the other: perhaps the Australians came out of it marginally worse off. This often seems to be the case for teams playing away from home, even with neutral umpires. Is the crowd the critical factor, even in mild-mannered Britain?

On the first day England spluttered their way to 307 for eight wickets. There was a fifty from Strauss, and a good half century from the recalled Bell. He needed to show that he could contribute to the first innings of a ‘chips down’ Test match. But largely the tendency for English batsmen to give their wicket away once they’d made a good start to their innings was confirmed. Collingwood was particularly to blame: his technique outside the off-stump at present is inadequate. Cook looks to have lost his way technically too. His strength square of the wicket on the off side has become a weakness, and he’s lost his balance and composure at the crease. Prior and Flintoff also fell to shots they won’t have been proud of. Trott played very solidly and confidently for someone making a Test debut in such an important match until he was ‘run out’ as he overbalanced playing the ball into the leg side. Katich’s reactions were tremendous in throwing down the stumps before the batsman had time to recover: an excellent piece of fielding.

On the second morning, Broad and the tail enders squeezed out a few more runs to take England to 332, but the pundits were pretty much agreed: this was an inadequate England score on this pitch. The expectation was that the Australians would score far more heavily, and put possibly terminal pressure on the English when they batted again. England had thrown it away.

And at 73 for no wicket, and the initial storm of fast bowling weathered, that seemed to be the script. However Stuart Broad had other ideas. By keeping the ball full and allowing it to swing he quickly removed the heart of the Australian batting to the extent that sixteen overs later they were 111 for 7, and the match was effectively won, though the English weren’t yet daring to allow themselves believe it. Broad has often looked ineffective in these first years of his international career, but here he showed that with his height and rhythm he can cause problems when he’s prepared to be patient and consistent. These unglamorous, slightly dogged virtues can be hard for a golden lad to make his own in an age where media attention rakes in the cash. After slightly stiffer resistance from the tail, Swann – who was bowling very nicely – wrapped up the innings at 160, and to their surprise England found themselves batting again. They stuttered and stumbled to 58 for 3 at the close with Strauss and Trott clinging on. Collingwood and Cook had again failed. At this point the expectation was that the wicket would deteriorate further and England would be lucky to make 200. Since the lead was 172, the task for Australia would still be formidable – probably beyond them.

But again, on Saturday, the pitch confounded everyone. Although it looked bad, and dust continued to puff up from the ball when it pitched, batting was obviously quite possible. Strauss was excellent in making 75, and Trott extraordinary in maintaining his calm to end on 119. The late middle order was enterprising, particularly Graeme Swann who biffed 63 from 57 balls to leave Australia absolutely on the ropes. When England eventually declared at 373 their opponents now had to make more runs to win the match than anyone had ever previously achieved in any Test anywhere. Only the weather could save them now, and that didn’t seem likely.

And yet. And yet. Although logic told us that it couldn’t possibly happen, not on this pitch, not in this match, as Australia went to close of play at 80 without loss, we began to wonder. I said to someone after church on the Sunday morning that I thought it would go to a fifth day at least, and although a wicket fell in each of the first two overs of the day, one to Swann, one to Broad and both lbw, by mid afternoon with Australia 217 for 2 and Ponting and Michael Hussey looking quite untroubled, anything still looked achievable. Then in the space of a few overs the English fielding, so often lack-lustre, regained them the initiative. Thus far Flintoff’s match had been a quiet one apart from clean bowling Hilfenhaus to end the first Australian knock and striking four quick boundaries second time around. Did Ponting assume that the injury Flintoff was carrying would provide him with an extra second or two to make his ground in taking a quick run? If so, he was wrong. Flintoff’s quick gathering of the ball and direct hit to the stumps saw off the Australian captain. And then, Michael Clarke replayed Trott’s first innings overbalancing act, revealed by the cameras as a frame away from safety when Strauss too flicked down the stumps from a short distance away. Thereafter, there was scant resistance from a demoralised batting line up, and by about ten to six, the England team were expressing their jubilation. Even the neglected Steve Harmison had played a part, prising out three of the Australian batters. The atmosphere at the end of the match reminded me of an extremely large fete – good natured, jolly, but rather restrained. There was little or no triumphalism.

When the Australians were beaten in 2005, there was daftness in the air – open-top buses, MBE decorations from the Queen for all of the players, including some, like Paul Collingwood, who had contributed little to the victory, loose talk about England being the best team in the world, lionising of players who still had much to prove. The legacy was the infamous trip Down Under which followed eighteen months later, where the English players were exposed as hollow men. Four years later the mood has been far more sombre and appropriate, partly by design, insomuch as the players now move immediately into one-day matches where reputations will quickly be enhanced or redressed, and partly because a lesson has been learned.

What might better be said of this match, which ebbed and flowed – as the series has done – with collective wills evident and individual skills glowingly expressed – is that it was a great advertisement for the enduring appeal of a sport perhaps, in this form, in its twilight years. I’m grateful to have been able to follow it. Its memories will warm the cockles of my heart as Bolton Wanderers play some other mid-table EPL soccer club on a dark January Saturday afternoon.

England 332 and 373 for 9 declared: Australia 160 and 348.
England won by 197 runs, and won the series 2-1

Sorry, Mr. Spock. Unlikely. Illogical. But true. Throughout the series Australia scored more runs, and took more wickets. Their fielding was better. They were the better team man for man. They remain one place ahead of the English in the world rankings. Yet at a few key moments they weakened, and so lost. Even in the weird and wonderful world of cricket, this is quite rare.

Tribal matters

A significant book could be written about the history of race and cricket. Someone’s probably done it already, and without looking it up I’d guess that C.L.R. James the great West Indian socialist and writer about the game may have been the one. At the very least he’ll have serially passed comment on many of the relevant issues while he was alive. But it’s still a developing story. How sad that the only native Australian to have represented his country in recent times, Andrew Symonds, should have hit a brick wall with the game’s administrators in the way he’s done. How odd that so few British born people of Afro-Caribbean descent are currently even knocking on the door of the English team. And what a lesson to us that the effects of ‘apartheid’ still rumble on, forty years after John Arlott brought Basil D’Oliveira – a ‘coloured’ man - out of the South African cricketing wilderness eventually to play for England. You can’t overturn the consequences of evil politics overnight. Like cricket, that’s a long game.

One of the unexpected consequences is that so many white South Africans with cricket in their blood have made Britain their home – though for differing reasons. After D’Oliveira came Tony Greig, six and a half feet of blond aggressive intent, who rallied English cricket briefly before sailing on to Australia where he helped change the sport into something else, floodlights, pyjama clothing and all, during the late seventies and early eighties. Then there was Allan Lamb, who the town and county of Northampton got to know very well during the nineteen eighties: a diminutive, dashing, bristling batsman with a robust sense of humour. He teamed up with Ian Botham, and even now TV ads for British meat occasionally pop up using a ‘Beefy and Lamby’ strapline – a joke probably understood by a diminishing number of the audience. Then we had great hopes of Graeme Hick, a refugee from Zimbabwe. On his first showing in England with a young Zimbabwe team he scored two big double-hundreds. We believed that Hick’s powerful frame and broad bat would deliver a cascade of runs for England after his qualification. But by the time he’d qualified the fearlessness of youth had ebbed away, and although Hick played often for England, in the Test match arena he became famous for not delivering as it was hoped he might. In the contemporary side, there’s Pietersen of course. This time, as opposed to Tony Greig, the cricketer has left South Africa because he feared that racial bias against a white man might militate against selection for the country of his birth. Andrew Strauss too has as many South African credentials as English, although the trace of accent is now very slight. And now welcome Jonathan Trott, the latest recruit to the English Test team, another man of giant physical stature, one of whose forbears, Albert, played with distinction for both England and Australia in another age.

Whether Trott is a wise selection we’ll find out in less than a week’s time. He’s had a great season with the bat, and is said (well they would, wouldn’t they!) to have a great temperament. He used to bowl a bit of medium pace too, but as often seems to happen in England, this talent has been neglected recently. In his stead the selectors could have chosen Mark Ramprakash to play on his home ground. Like Hick his record in Test cricket (and Ramps last played some years ago) doesn’t measure up to his enormous talent, which in the last five years has simply taken apart anyone who’s bowled against him on the county circuit in a way without precedent in my lifetime. But the selectors in their wisdom have decided a leopard can’t change his spots. Trescothick, the other English batsman of massive talent, seems still too mentally fragile to respond to the call, so Trott it will be. Hot to Trott? Or on a bad trot? Pick your headline.

One has to wonder what subconscious messages have been sent to players by those choosing England teams in recent years. How is it that the three talented players mentioned above – Hick, Ramprakash and Trescothick – have all failed to perform for their England? Surely there must have been – must still be – a failure to nurture on the part of coaches and administrators? And when you add to that the current form of Monty Panesar, whose game seems to have suffered a terrible crisis of confidence, a pattern seems to be established. (Panesar has been picked for the Oval, but has picked up a mere handful of wickets this season against mediocre opposition at great cost.)

There must be the suspicion that ‘man management’ (itself a gender specific phrase) operates, has operated, at a very poor level in the England set-up. If you don’t fit the system, because of raw talent, or colour, (or sexual orientation?) or eccentricity, you don’t get support. Can that really be true?

Good luck to England on Thursday. They’re going to need it if the weather stays fair. They haven't necessarily given themselves the best chance.