Adagio/Allegro

To show how Test cricket has changed, let me take you back in time (cue: harp glissandi/dry ice). The year is 1961, and as now, it’s the second week of July. England are playing Australia at the Headingly, Leeds ground in the third match of the series. They’re one down, and in the fast bowling department things are sufficiently bad that they’ve called up Les Jackson, a forty year old with a single 1949 Test appearance to his name and thinning hair. As now, public expectation is great: the previous series against Australia in England has been famously won, on the back of unparalleled bowling feats by off-spinner Jim Laker, who’s now fallen out with the cricket authorities and is sulking somewhere in a beer tent learning journalism, writing a rather good book about the series.

On the first day Australia are all out for 237, and England have five overs to bat until close of play. Jackson goes quite well, but ‘Fiery’ Fred Trueman takes the plaudits with five wickets. Trueman is already something of a sporting celebrity, and is to become a greater one in subsequent years. By the close of his career he will have taken 307 Test wickets, more than anyone else at that time, and more than any contemporary or recent English bowler has achieved - in an era when far more Test cricket is played. In that first Australian innings the English bowl 110 overs. The English reply is at an even more sedate pace: it takes them another four sessions of play and 149 overs to reach 299 all out. The pitch is sluggish, and relatively bowler-friendly. The most dangerous Aussie bowler, the left-armer Alan Davidson, reduces his pace and concentrates on bowling ‘cutters’, running his fingers down the left-hand side of the ball to make it ‘cut’ towards the waiting slips. He bowls 47 overs for a personal cost of 63 runs with twenty three of those overs being ‘maidens’ (i.e. no runs are scored from them). At one point Murray and Barrington, neither of them strokeless batsmen, play eleven consecutive overs without a run accruing. This slow rate of scoring is remarkable because fielders then were invariably closer to the batters than they are now, affording to modern eyes, many opportunities to hit ‘over the top’. And also because there is at least one remarkable assault on the bowling which highlights the negligible rate of scoring during the rest of the innings. On the Saturday morning the left-arm spinner Tony Lock strides out to bat, and in three dramatic overs and seventeen minutes hits thirty runs with eight boundaries. Lock was an aggressive cricketer in everything he did. It’s been sometimes said of the great Shane Warne that he was a slow bowler with a fast bowler’s temperament, and the same was true of Lock. He fielded superbly in dangerous positions close to the bat on the leg-side at a time when head protection was entirely absent, and his batting, though usually short-lived, could be brutishly effective. This time it’s probably the turning point of the match. When Australia bat again they collapse in not much more than two hours and are all out for 120 on an increasingly unreliable pitch, destroyed by Trueman’s pace and hostility. The selectors say thank you to Jackson, and he’s never picked again. Mind you, Trueman’s relationship with them, like Laker’s, is scarcely conducted on a bed of roses. All three were regular pro’s in a game at the time ruled by amateurs with dodgy upper class accents and hats. It was the first time I’d ever encountered a real ‘batting collapse’ and I remember the sense of exhilaration as yet another Australian wicket tumbled. England have a small target to chase and win with eight wickets to spare, the match being over in just three of the five days – even more unusual then than now.

In yesterday’s play at Cardiff, 348 runs were scored, from far fewer overs than were seen at Leeds in 1961: just the regulation union rules 90 minus two for a change of innings. Back in 1961, there was no need to stipulate a minimum number of overs. Even though there were already complaints about bowlers wasting time, eighteen overs an hour was pretty standard, more if spin bowlers with short run-ups were operating. By comparison, batsmen took fewer risks and showed less enterprise, as witness the comparative scoring rates. When England were finally all out for 435 this morning, their overall scoring rate was just a shade over four runs an over – double what it was in 1961. The Australians bowled only eleven maiden overs in the entire innings. But this morning too, an English spin bowler launched a succession of bold shots against Australian bowling. Graeme Swann boosted the likely England total with an exciting innings of 47 not out from just forty balls faced. In 1961 the slowness of batting was to provoke a ‘Campaign for Brighter Cricket’, and this in turn led to the invention of ‘limited overs’ versions of the professional game, culminating in the changing patterns of format we see today. Older folks will sometimes say the game hasn’t improved: on that it seems to me the jury must remain out. There were faults then, and there are faults now. Whatever the case, the 1961 Headingley Test was a riveting game of cricket, the Saturday particularly so. How many other new young fans were created that day, besides me?

Once England had been dismissed just before lunch, the Australians showed how to bat on this Cardiff pitch. After the young tyro Hughes had been roughed up by Flintoff, and dismissed by a very good catch from wicketkeeper Prior, although not before he’d scored 36, Ponting and Katich settled in. They played straight, they cut down the risks, and they both scored centuries by the end of the day. England could easily lose from here, so quickly has the game moved on.

England 435. Australia 249 for one wicket.

Ebb and flow

Trevor Bailey is a revered ex-England player, now in his eighties, a bit of a toff, who became a cultured and accomplished commentator on cricket throughout several decades. In his playing days he acquired the soubriquet ‘Barnacle’ because of his sometimes valuable, but sometimes tediously tenacious batting. Thankfully his radio commentaries were rather more flambuoyant: he was rarely boring in the studio. One thing sticks in the mind. Cricket, he said very often, is a situational game. I think what he meant by that was that the fascination often lies in speculation about how a game will develop. The shorter the game, the less scope for such speculation there is, which is why for many, five day Test cricket remains the truest form. How odd that in this developing virtual world, what seems to increasingly draw people is certainty rather than contingency. Discuss.

In a good day’s cricket, the advantage will switch from one team to another, maybe a number of times. Cricket isn’t alone in this: the stupendous Men’s Final at this year’s Wimbledon Tennis Championships showed how it can be true in that sport too, although significantly the five hours’ match duration very nearly equalled a complete day’s playing time in cricket. Roddick and Federer were so evenly matched that when it was finally over, the difference was pretty much the one service game which Roddick lost in the last set: amazingly the only one he lost in the entire match. This year tennis commentators seem to have taken to describing these phenomena of back and forth as ‘momentum shifts’. Cricketers haven’t caught on to that particular piece of jargon yet and talk more folksily about ‘ebb and flow’, which isn’t a perfectly apt description, but sometimes does justice to the palpable sense of loss of control a team may be suffering at any given moment.

Well, today in Cardiff there was plenty of ebb and flow, or if you will, a whole pile of momentum shifting, and at the close it was hard to say who the tide was carrying away. The opening ceremonies tried very hard to set the Australians on their heels with heart-tugging melodies from soprano Katherine Jenkins and co., though I noticed most of the best tunes were Welsh rather than English, but after that setback, the Australians took three prime English wickets before lunch, and would have been the happier team munching on their chicken and pasta. During the afternoon session, Pietersen and Collingwood took the fight back to their opponents, batting looked suddenly much easier, and at 228 for 3 after tea, England were clearly in the ascendant. But then Collingwood offered a weak shot at a not particularly threatening delivery, Pietersen lost the plot and tried something ghastly which might have been appropriate if his personal score had been 169 rather than just 69, and suddenly England looked in poor shape. At which point Flintoff strode to the wicket to join Matthew Prior, and for an hour or so the two of them simply took the Australian attack apart in an exhilarating display of hitting. And if they’d managed to stay together at close of play, England would have declared the day a triumph. As it was, both batsmen lost their stumps to the enthusiastic Peter Siddle, and we’re left wondering where this match is going.

What’s peculiar is that this is a pitch which suggests the probability of boring crcket – it’s low and slow. However today was anything but bum-numbing, and as a first day of Welsh Test cricket, has probably exceeded anyone’s expectations. Where will the momentum shift tomorrow?

England 336 for 7 wickets

Rumsfeld

I can’t conceive what it may be like for the English and Australian teams as they anticipate the first match of the ‘Ashes’ series which begins in a few hours time: for the mere spectator the tension is quite enough, and quite different in degree and quality to any other cricketing encounter I can remember for a while.

To recap, for the first time in many years, and rather against many expectations, when the two teams previously met in the northern hemisphere in 2005, England came out narrow winners in an extraordinarily tight series, characterised by passionate yet friendly rivalry. The English fast bowling was the key to the win, master-minded by an Australian coach Troy Cooley who unlocked hitherto unsuspected guile and consistency. Two winters later the Australians exacted a terrible revenge, annihilating the English 5-0. England’s cricket was poor, and their team morale worse. Their bowling was shoddy and out of sorts. Cooley was now working for the opposition.

He still is, but this time, of the two bowling attacks, at this point it seems as if the English may have the edge. This is for two reasons. One is that Brett Lee, the super-fast glamourboy of the Australian team, is crocked for at least this match and possibly the second one as well. Lee can leak runs, but in tandem with the talented Mitchell Johnson he could have been a mighty, even overwhelming, shock force. Both of them can bat too, and the Australian lower order will be weaker for Lee’s absence.

The second reason is that of the alternatives and supplements to the Australian fast-bowling, only one of the three possibles is experienced in English conditions. That’s Stuart Clark, a big-boned, rather ungainly bowler of no express pace, who nevertheless has patience and nagging accuracy, allied to good variation in cut and swing. The other two, Siddle and Hilfenhaus are known to be good performers but we have yet to see how they’ll go here. My bet is that of the two we may find Hilfenhaus is the danger-man, though the press and pundits don’t agree. Possibly all three may play alongside the formidable Johnson because the one regular spinner in the Australian side, the off-break bowler Nathan Hauritz, hasn’t looked the part so far on the tour, and his previous Test Match record isn’t great anyway. The irony is that the pitch in Cardiff may take spin, and the English may for the first time in many years pick two spin bowlers for the initial match of a series. If it happens, and I say ‘if’, this will be a throwback to the nineteen-fifties when a balanced attack was more-or-less defined as two quick bowlers plus an all-rounder who bowled medium pace and two spinners, one right, one left-armed.

A Test Match has never been played in Cardiff before, although it’s been a long-cherished dream that one day one might. What’s puzzling is that the ECB should choose to hold the first, crucial match of a showcase series there – other grounds have generally been allowed less pressurised circumstances to bed themselves in. There’s much discussion about how the pitch will play: in county matches there this year the ball has turned from the first day – not the norm in English Test Match cricket – but it’s also said that the pitch for this match will have been prepared differently. As Donald Rumsfeld would have said, at the present time this is a known unknown.

The weather is in the same category. Cardiff is slightly more vulnerable to wetness than other parts of the UK, because of its proximity to the Irish Sea and the mountains. Will this counteract any tendency to spin? Will we have sufficient play for a result? The forecast is initially positive, less good towards the weekend.

Two things are known about the respective batting line-ups. One is the resilience of the Australians. Very frequently – and it’s already happened at least twice on this tour – they’ll be five wickets down for not many, only for the last few batsmen, in theory less accomplished, to take them to a very good score. The wicketkeeper Haddin, and Johnson are the two keys to this. They need as close attention and analysis by the English coaches as any of the higher order. The English batting on the other hand can be very good, or it can be horrid, and notoriously they’re vulnerable early in a series. In theory they bat long down the order too with Graeme Swann coming in at number nine, but on a pitch where hard work is required no one after Collingwood at 5 has the aptitude or ability for a long patient innings.

I see no reason to change my earlier forecast for the series – a likely 2-1 or 3-1 to the Australians – although much of the British press believes we can win by a similar margin. But along the way there’ll be unknown unknowns – injuries, outstanding pieces of individual play, maybe even political events – and these will have an effect on the result too. Let battle commence.

Forty years on...

I left Eltham College to go to university after the summer of 1969. Eltham was what was then called a ‘Direct Grant’ institution: free places were available for academically able pupils at this ‘School for the Sons of Missionaries’. At eleven and in the top class of the Maypole County Primary School I could spell and do math, and my IQ rating just about cut the mustard, despite a certain confusion in the non-verbal area - I could never see how all those strange diagrams on the test paper related to each other when twisted through 90 degrees. The Maypole’s distinguished alumni included Mick Jagger and (later) Min Patel, the Kent left-arm spinner who played cricket just the once for England. Eltham could claim Eric Liddell (of ‘Chariots of Fire’ fame), and Mervyn Peake, the artist and author of proto-fantasy novels, but sadly no cricketers or rock n’rollers. Despite that drawback, it was a lovely, leafy place to attend school, and my sixth-form (Grades 12 and 13) was very happy indeed. I chose to study Latin, Greek and Ancient History largely because the Head of Classics, David Herbert, was a very good cricketer as well as a clever man.

There were two cricket squares at Eltham. The lesser of the two stood in front of the school’s pleasant 19th century façade. The playing area was small, and you’d have thought that a satisfying hit through one of the windows on the building was very feasible, although I never saw it done. However there was also a very short boundary on the other side. To prevent cars coming through the hedge onto the ground a tall street lamp had been erected there where Grove Park Road turned, and I do remember its very top being clanged by what appeared to be a remarkable mis-hit during an old boys match (American readers, please note, ‘old boys’ are past students: sometimes very past!). The actual pitch on the 2nd XI ground was slow and rather unsatisfactory: the ball would hold in the lush turf, and it was hard to play confident strokes. When I was younger it suited my brand of loopy low-bouncing, in-swinging medium pace. In my under-15 year I picked up a hatful of fortuitous wickets there.

The senior ground lay on a sunny slope on the other side of the plane trees. The surface here was harder and nicer to play on, and there was a pavilion which some of us used for table-tennis illicitly during lunchtimes in the winter months. There it was that for the first time I made a few runs in a junior house match, and started to believe, after the discouragements of a silly and misguidedly macho Geography teacher, that I could bat a bit. It was only 38 not out from Carey House’s total of about 55 (my house team was a poor one – so poor that they’d made me captain!) and Chalmers - the opposition team - dropped the four catches that I offered them, but never mind, that kind of detail never appears in the scorebook. Martin Shankleman was one of the generous fielders: I believe he went on to a distinguished career as a BBC economics correspondent, although of course there might not only be one Martin Shankleman.

There too in 1969 I carried off the only sporting cup I’ve ever won. In the late nineteen-sixties there was a vogue for ‘single-wicket’ competitions, in which one person was pitted against another in a very short form of the game. You had four overs to bat against your opponent, who of course had to bowl all twenty four balls consecutively – very tiring for a quick bowler! A wicketkeeper and nine fielders were naively trusted with impartiality by fielding for both players. For the most part I played very undistinguished cricket, but managed to do just enough to get through the first three or four rounds. The final must have been unutterably boring to watch, and almost in itself enough to sign the death warrant for this form of the game. I scraped eight almost strokeless runs before giving a tame catch in the third over. My opponent, Phil Raisey, must have been confident of winning – he was pretty confident about most things as I recall. But he unaccountably missed an innocuous straight ball and was clean bowled for three, leaving me to collect the trophy from Judy Rambridge, the school secretary, indeed the only woman in the school, who planted a kiss on my (reddening) cheek. That was even more of a shock than my win: things weren’t usually done like that at Eltham. I hope her subsequent reprimand wasn’t too stern. Moral: single wicket competitions only work where betting’s allowed. At Eltham, although there was a bookie’s just round the corner, visiting it got you chucked out.

The school keeps in touch. It’s changed a great deal. There are now girls as well as boys, which is certainly a change for the better. There’s probably a whole deal more kissing. But the ethos has changed in other ways too, partly by fault of consecutive central governments, and I don’t go back. However this year one young Elthamian has accomplished a feat which will make it to next year’s Wisden where all that is noteworthy about cricket is written down for posterity. In an Under 15 match, Jack Robertson presided over the scoring of 48 runs in just one over. There were four no-balls (invalid deliveries). These add one run each to the score and give the batsman an extra ball. Jack missed one of the (therefore ten) balls bowled in total, but hit five fours and four sixes from the other nine. And this is a world record – wow! - as the school song has it: Floreat Elthamia! Stand and flourish ever!

Sound-bytten

In its pre-Ashes trails, BBC’s Radio 5 has been re-playing a clip of commentary by cricket correspondent Jonathan Agnew from fifteen or so years ago. It makes the hairs on the neck of this cricket-lover bristle each time it’s played in.

The year was 1993, and it was the first Test Match of the series against Australia at Manchester’s Old Trafford ground – which sadly will not feature in this year’s contests. Back then we’d all heard just a little about a young man called Shane Warne, still relatively new to the Australian side. We knew he was rated highly, and that after a slow start in Test Match cricket he’d begun to take wickets. We could now see that, if a tad on the porky side, he had a fashionable laddish demeanour, complete with trendy haircut, and a knowing, teasing smile. We were curious to know just how good he was.

Agnew describes Warne’s first ball to the English batsman Mike Gatting, then in the twilight of a distinguished career. In fact it’s Warne’s very first ball in Ashes cricket. Warne takes only a few steps to the crease, and he bowls. Agnew thinks at first that the ball has taken Gatting on the pad, and then reports, clearly astonished, that Gatting has been clean-bowled. Quite quickly this moment became known as the ‘ball of the century’.

What happened was this. Like Shahid Afridi in the previous blog, Warne is a leg-spinner, but the methods of the two men are very different. Warne is shorter than Afridi, and bowls more slowly, often throwing the ball up above the batsman’s eyeline. A typical Warne delivery might come at the batsman between 49 and 53 miles per hour. When you consider that a second serve in professional men’s tennis will still register 90 or 100 miles per hour, you can get a feel for the pace of Warne’s bowling. The point is that there’s time for doubt to register in the batsman’s mind, as the ball comes down.

Like most leg-spinners, Warne bowls from the back of the hand. This requires strong and flexible wrists and fingers, and has the great virtue of disguise. The amount of torque applied to the ball can be varied, and depending on the angle at which the wrist is rotated the direction of spin can change too. This sounds counter-intuitive at first, but experiment and you’ll see how it could be so. The batter needs to watch very carefully as the ball leaves the bowler’s hand, and may take other cues from the bowler’s arm movement or approach to the crease, but even so she may find it very hard to ‘pick’ whether the ball will turn away from her, or into her, or if the wrist has gone right over the top, over-spinning the ball, she may find the ball hurrying off the pitch awkwardly when it bounces.

I don’t know that there will have been many spin bowlers in the history of the game who have spun the ball more than Warne. You hear people talk about Clarrie Grimmett, George Tribe and other greats of the past, and sometimes they make it sound as if such ability was routine ‘back then’. The best I can say is that Shane Warne is unique in the last fifty years. It’s a guess, but he’s probably the finest spin bowler the sport has ever seen. Like many that were to follow over the next fifteen years, the ball which did for Gatting, was spun hard, and because it was spun hard it drifted in the air towards and then outside Gatting’s pads. When it hit the pitch, outside the leg stump, the ball bit into the turf and turned back in behind the batsmen maybe a foot and a half, to hit the middle and off stumps. The wicketkeeper, Ian Healy, was fooled as much as the batsman: he was still expecting to take the ball down the leg-side. Hearing the clatter of the wood behind him, Gatting stood transfixed, unable to believe what had just happened. In other circumstances his attitude might have been interpreted as dissent. In fact it was just shock. And a legend was born.

As the series progressed, and during subsequent series, we learned a lot more about the Warne repertoire, which never made him any easier to play. His googly (the ball which turns the opposite way from normal) was never spun very much, but in his early days was still an effective weapon. As time went on, and his craft took toll of his shoulder, the googly became less obvious. So did the ‘slider’, his much faster, flatter ball, which in those early days accounted for many of his wickets. Four things supported him throughout his career. The first was his enviable accuracy for a bowler of his type. Loose balls just didn’t seem to happen. He was ‘at’ the batsman all the time, and there was never a loosening of the stranglehold. The second was his reputation. In particular English batsmen never ever recovered from that ‘Gatting moment’. At times they were completely strokeless and clueless against him. Each series he played, he claimed to have invented yet another new variation or two, but the chances are this was mostly smoke and mirrors. More important was his ability to out-think the batsmen he played against. The third thing was Warne’s relentless, cheery aggression. Every ball bowled was apparently carefully considered before and after delivery. There would be talk to the batsmen, of a bantering but undermining nature. He never once lost his head on the cricket field, even if occasional antics off it attracted the attention of the press. Fourthly he had an excellent team around him, often great players in their own right. He got many wickets for other bowlers, as batsmen relaxed, glad not to be facing the demon Warne for once.

I never tired of watching him, even when he was helping Australia beat us yet again. He toured England four times, and this year he’ll be missing, though no doubt omnipresent in the commentary box. Who knows, he may give us a sound-byte or two of his own for posterity…

Body Chemistry

We who read newspaper articles are familiar with the benefits of exercise: that in sensible quantities it protects the body against deterioration and that because of the production of endorphins it makes us feel good too. Whereas say, sitting in an armchair and watching five days continuous Test Match cricket will invariably lead to physical flabbiness, mental decline and spiritual death. Especially if England lose.

But what of the function of sport in the body politic? How real are the effects of sporting triumph or failure on the wider motivations of a state’s population? What does it add or subtract to the way Britain goes to work?

The Pakistan team won the T20/20 trophy, to the surprise of most, and the enjoyment of many. The England women’s team won their comparable but less-publicised tournament, and have thus secured themselves an invitation to 10 Downing Street. Lucky them. What’s certain is that the politicians are getting quicker and quicker to exploit any sporting success for their own ends. I’m sure the women will really enjoy meeting Gordon Brown and Peter Mandelson, though goodness knows what they’ll talk about. Supply your own dreadful jokes about bowling maidens over if you must. Nevertheless, while Charlotte Edwards, their charming and talented captain had already secured a CBE in the Queen’s Birthday Honours, I wonder if the rest of her team-mates will now be similarly rewarded? I suspect not, which will be a regrettable indication of the continuing gender bias in the British establishment, sporting or otherwise. The women’s team are good to watch, and I mean that purely from a playing point of view. Although of course…not only that. Oh bother, I mean…

What tangles men can get into writing about women’s sport. Perhaps that’s why they don’t do it. Which doesn’t explain why the women sports journalists neglect the subject. Ah, but then there aren’t any women sports journalists, are there? Well, not many.

We in Britain are very lucky, able to flit from flower to sporting flower depending on the degree of success achieved in any of many possible fields. This week we hang on Andy Murray’s drop-shot, as we contemplate the once in a century prospect of a Wimbledon champion in the making. Simultaneously, we have an excellent U21 soccer team, who appear perhaps to have the beating of Europe. Our gallant swimmers are about to be done out of medals at the European event by the machinations of international bodies and swimsuit manufacturers, while Jensen Button leads the field in Formula 1 motor-racing (if you count that a sport!). All these things compensate for the fact that the Lions rugby team have been beaten in the first match against the Springboks (the only one they were likely to win because of the altitude at which the other two will be played). And cricket is somewhere in the mix too. In a fortnight there’ll be high excitement as we anticipate the Ashes series against Australia, but if the English team fail, it will be no more than many if not most expect. We British have so many sports to follow, that at any given moment some of our competitors are always being humiliated somewhere in the world. It takes a really special win to get us going. Students of sexual politics please note the gender of the examples quoted. So are we really talking only about the feelings of 49% of the population?

As with Afghanistan back in April, this T20/20 win really should mean something for the Pakistanis. The past five years have been traumatic for the sport there. Indeed, the rest of the cricketing world has tended to view them with suspicion for the past two decades. Ever since, in fact, they started to get good at the game in international terms. They can never get on with each other, they’re temperamental, they cheat, they probably throw matches, they have a chip on their shoulder, their umpires are biased – all these things have been hinted at, or said openly worldwide, and particularly by those whose skin is white. And to top it all, a white cricket coach beloved of both English and South African fans, died in tragic and slightly mysterious circumstances whilst in charge of the side. And when we in England talk loosely of cricket as a national game, we have to remember that for the Pakistanis, it really is.

They have, and always have had wonderfully talented players. Once again, from this lot, I’ll single out Shahid Afridi. On his day (and there were at least three of them in this competition) he’s a devastatingly destructive batsman and to add to that he’s an almost unique bowler too. The Dutch capitulated, having never seen anything like him before, and although his method is well-known by the other playing countries, no one handles him well. His stock ball is the leg-spinner, which turns away from the right handed batsman, not sharply, but just enough. It comes from a considerable height and it’s never delivered exactly slowly, but is varied by balls which with no obvious change of action may come at the batsman much, much quicker than any other bowler of his type I’ve ever seen.

In the Times this week Michael Atherton remarked how radical Islam dislikes sport: like the arts and fashion it’s seen as distracting from the job of obedience to Allah. Islam means ‘submission’ after all, and it’s possible to read that as the laying down of all rights to human pleasure in the service of the Almighty. Christians too, are sometimes polarised in their understanding of the value of these gifts. Are they part of God’s creation, to be enjoyed and fulfilled? Or the Devil’s work, to be abhorred. In my experience the clergy will frequently call upon us to sacrifice what we most love. The less body chemistry that’s going on, the more they’ll be happy.

One can only hope that this win gives consolation and encouragement to the mass of Pakistan’s people to resist their would-be oppressors. Even given the current economic diffculties in the UK, they probably need the endorphins more than we do.

Half full...half empty

Sport is a selfish, chauvinistic business. And even supporters do navel-gazing, though I suppose I have a preference for some navels over others. Denise Lewis’ was always pretty good. I might pass up the opportunity if it involved rugby teams (male).

The semi-finals of T20/20 begin today with South Africa (who will probably win the competition) playing Pakistan (who are lucky to still be there). England didn’t deserve to be part of the later stages. In the course of the tournament, they beat Pakistan and India, but lost embarrassingly to Holland, were outplayed in every department by South Africa, and then were shaded by the West Indies in a rain affected game which they might have won if it had gone the whole distance.

The English team seemed mildly disappointed that they hadn’t done better. On the other hand the Indian team, who fancied themselves to win the tournament, looked thunderous after the defeat by England which condemned them to an early ride home. As with all Indian teams which fail to measure up to expectations, they knew what to expect on de-planing. The captain and wicketkeeper M.S. Dhoni will have to live with a guard on his house these next few weeks. Indian fans can be just that – fanatical to the point of dangerous.

India lost to England by a narrow margin – just three runs – and had it not been for two balls which contrived to go for five wides each (on each occasion the bowler bowled a wide ball, and Dhoni failed to gather it as it sped to the boundary) the result would have been reversed. In both this match and particularly the game against Pakistan England showed energy and skill, even if they relied on Pietersen too much for impetus.

However the differences in 20/20 ability between England and South Africa were starkly drawn. England are a good fielding side, but South Africa are outstanding, with De Villiers especially brilliant. And young Van der Merwe held a brilliant catch to get rid of Pietersen and rock England’s equilibrium. Pietersen’s shot was mistimed but still forceful, Van der Merwe threw himself high to his right at a wide mid-on and held on to the ball at full stretch. Pietersen’s wry smile said it all: he was unlucky. England’s batting is one-paced, without the ability either to regularly accelerate when required or hit sufficient boundaries. Collingwood is especially puzzling. He’s evidently a whole-hearted cricketer, but as a batsman seems to be one of those who lose timing for whole periods of their career. He’s not in such bad touch as he was early last summer when a big innings seemed an impossibility, but he’s temporarily lost the art of big hitting, and is reduced to pushing the ball around – which doesn’t seem to be what the team needs. Much has been made of his shortcomings as a captain – perhaps too much. Moving people around ostentatiously in the field every ball isn’t necessarily the hallmark of good captaincy. I suspect that if he’d scored more runs in this competition, commentators would have thought him a better skipper too.

England’s bowling was OK. No one was outstanding throughout. Swann was steady, and Broad was perhaps the best overall performer. Anderson had his moments. Mascarhenas’ mojo was never fully working. Rashid made a useful debut. Sidebottom provided some left-arm variety. But there’s no really immediately threatening bowler such as Sri Lanka’s Mendis or South Africa’s Steyn. And in a tournament where left arm spinners often seem to be the most awkward to score from we’ve no one deemed good enough. Panesar languishes, more or less wicketless, in Northampton. At this rate they won’t be able to select him even for the Tests against Australia. Samit Patel will apparently never get a game until he can show more evidence of trunk curls, press ups and half a dozen miles before breakfast. Breakwell seems to be old hat, although he can still hit the ball a fearsome distance, and is having a rather good season at county level. I think Patel would have been a better bet than Rashid here.

And yet…and yet... We weren’t the worst team in the competition by a long chalk – probably better than at least two of the semi-finalists. And there’s a philosophical question which lingers. Do we think 20/20 is a really good example of sport insofar as anyone can beat anyone on the day? It’s a lottery, even without the weather intervening. But wouldn’t we rather our sport decided who truly, simply was the best?

Compare and contrast: 1) Premier League Soccer which over the course of forty or so matches in a season reduces the element of chance very greatly. Granted, even then two teams might be near inseparable until one random event tips the scales one way or another – usually a referee’s disputed decision. 2) The Wimbledon Tennis championships in which either Nadal or Federer may have an off day and be beaten in the second round, so depriving the public of the opportunity to see the two undoubtedly best players in the world slug it out in another ‘epic final’. (Sorry, Andy Murray!) 3) T20/20 in which Ireland beats Bangladesh, Holland beats England, and England beats India. In none of these three matches do we think the best team won, yet we loved it all.

I think it’s all trivial, and a certain randomness in results merely adds to the charm of sport, but I doubt they’d agree in Mumbai or Kolkata. And what do the bookies think, I wonder? Where would they want the balance to lie? Is their cup running over right now, or filled with bitter tears?