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Test Mach Special
By Will 6 days ago, in the late evening, 2 Comments »
There was a frivolous and fun game on Twitter a few months ago, the hashtag being #radio4minus1letter, and they produced some gems.
“lose ends” an invited panel have to find the end of the sellotape roll ·
A look at Judeo-Roman history through one woman’s obsession with a charioteer: Woman’s Hur
The Shipping Forecat – a daily nautical report from a feline stowaway
But this is particularly good. Because it’s about cricket.
Geoffrey Boycott and Blowers travel supersonic in the world\’s fastest planes – Test Mach Special !
Suggestions welcome…
2 Comments »Idiocy epitomised
By Will Tuesday, last week, 2 Comments »
A couple of weeks ago, a friend went ballistically excited on me having just met Shahid Afridi. She is easily pleased, but nevertheless I began briefly to put aside my cynicism over Afridi. All that talent, bravado and bombast contrasting with, well, his inner demons. Will it go for six or will he sky it? That, in essence, seemed to be the way he conducted his life, not just his batting.
Captaincy could have changed him; he’s no spring chicken these days, after all, and Pakistan have a lot of impressionable young players to whom Afridi must be something of a demi-god. And then he bites a cricket ball with all the cameras zoned in on him, discarding years of experience, dispensing with maturity and utterly wringing his hands of professional responsibility, personal pride and common human sense. Were it not so ludicrously stupid, it would be a beautiful thing to watch in years to come.
Of all the players to do it, it had to be Afridi. Of all the countries to be afflicted by an act of such lunacy, it just had to be Pakistan. They are taking hold of this decade and ensuring they begin it right where they left off in the noughties. The only redeeming feature from the whole escapade was (apart from the ensuing nauseous hilarity that it even took place) Mark Nicholas’s sober, yet startled, opinion. “Woops. Wwwwwwwwoops!”
Idiocy epitomised. Thank you, Afridi, and a very good night.
2 Comments »Cricinfo now supports Facebook Connect
By Will Tuesday, last week, No Comments; be the first!
A little project I’ve been working on. When you go to a Cricinfo story which is commentable, you can leave your thoughts while logged in as a Facebook user. It’s one of a raft of features we have lined up that we hope will make talking with Cricinfo, and our other sites, a lot easier.
No Comments »Good luck, Ottis
By Will Sunday, last week, No Comments; be the first!
Ottis Gibson has left his position as England’s bowling coach to become the head coach of West Indies, according to the UK’s Daily Telegraph.
West Indies slay their coaches like a scythe lopping dandelion heads. Another poor mug into the fold, then, for the most poisoned of chalices. Good luck, Ottis.
No Comments »KP, Fred; talent, love, respect
By Will 1 month ago, No Comments; be the first!
Great piece from Andrew Miller on the differences in public perception of Kevin Pietersen and Andrew Flintoff.
No Comments »Yet Pietersen’s devotion to excellence is the very same attribute that alienates him from a fickle British public. From the days of Henry Cooper through to Eddie the Eagle and Frank Bruno, plucky and personable underdogs have always trumped sportsmen with genuine claims to greatness.
“It is peculiar how Pietersen is portrayed,” says a media colleague who has worked with him at close quarters. “He claims not to read the papers but that is definitely not the case. He takes criticism very personally and he is certainly not happy about it. I suspect the South African link will never allow him to be the Freddie-esque man of the people he so craves to be.”
According to Paul Burnham, founder of the Flintoff-worshipping Barmy Army, Pietersen’s persona is a direct challenge, for better or worse, to everything that British sports fans hold dear. “At the moment we are what we are as a culture. Personally I love it and wouldn’t want to change it, even though it isn’t what you want if you want to win all the time,” he says. “Freddie is old school and England’s fans can relate to that, whereas Pietersen is probably the most misunderstood cricketer there is. He’s got a really friendly personality but for some reason people don’t like his body language. He exudes confidence but it comes across as arrogance.”
“I think Fred comes across exactly the same as me,” says Gough. “He’s a bit of a joker who likes a drink and he plays his cricket in the right spirit. KP is slightly different. He’d take a wine bar over a pub any day, and that’s not a knock at him. He just enjoys that buzz and that edge about being a top-class sportsman. But because he wasn’t brought up in this country he still doesn’t quite understand how things work and how people look upon celebrities. It can be a difficult place if you make it a difficult place.”
Indian Premier League live on Youtube
By Will 1 month ago, 3 Comments »
This caught everyone by surprise. The IPL will be streamed live on YouTube, a feat which could revolutionise the way sport is broadcast and consumed. If that’s too bold a statement, it will certainly have TV executives shifting uncomfortably in their leather-upholstered swivel chairs. Google are game-changers, and so is Lalit Modi – like him or loath him – so it’s a fascinating partnership. As a fan, I am over the moon and excited by the impact it could have on TV’s monopoly. This could open up the industry, certainly for live sporting events.
The only question which remains is whether they’ll run pre-roll ads or rely on Google Adsense.
3 Comments »An upside of the UDRS
By Will 1 month ago, 3 Comments »
I even hate the acronym. Anyway, my colleague Brydon Coverdale reports that the decision to have neutral umpires in Tests may be scrapped for the Ashes, so confident is the ICC in the UDRS. For all its flaws, this may be a welcome consequence of the system’s continued use.
The ICC could allow Australian and English umpires to stand in the Ashes series later this year as its confidence with the umpire decision review system continues to grow. Despite the controversial video-official judgments in the Johannesburg Test over the past few days, David Morgan, the ICC president, said the UDRS was proving successful enough for the ICC to consider scrapping the neutral-umpire system.
“The decision review system is making good progress,” Morgan told Cricinfo. “There have been problems at the Wanderers that I can’t go into because that’s being investigated by the International Cricket Council. But I think the progress with the DRS has been extremely good indeed, to the extent that I think we should be thinking about the best umpires being appointed to Test match cricket irrespective of whether they come from the participating teams or not.”
I have missed English umpires in English series. Fans (particularly in England, I felt) grew fond of their home umpires. Dickie Bird, Peter Willey, David Constant and, of course, David Shepherd all lent the game an air of fun, occasionally humour, but most of all authority. Players respected them. Perhaps it’s easier for an umpire of the same country to give one of “his” players a ticking off. Perhaps, too, players listen to those umpires more readily than they might an official from another, distant country.
I hope it happens.
3 Comments »Well done, Rich
By Will 1 month ago, 5 Comments »
Warm and hearty applause to Rich Abbott, a young and aspiring journalist-in-the-making who paid for his own fare out to South Africa and produced some damn fine copy for the blog.
More of the same from Australia please, Rich, before someone snaps you up. Three cheers. Hip hip.
5 Comments »You know it’s time to sleep when…
By Will 1 month ago, 6 Comments »
Ricky’s dropped on nought.
8.4 Mohammad Asif to Ponting, 1 run, dropped, short ball, hooked high out to the deep, straight down the throat of Aamer at long leg who puts down a sitter
Bugger.
6 Comments »Professionalism. What is it?
By Will 1 month ago, 1 Comment »
It could be easily argued that the noughties was the era of professionalism. That statement alone is false; the 2000s were no less professional a time than any before it. Less so, probably. But whatever the situation – sport, commerce, the music industry – the rallying cry for professionalism could be heard for miles, without anyone really knowing what it means. It always seems to me like the get-out clause when no other solution has worked. Or worse, when nobody has a solution in the first place. “If we can only become more professional, the opportunities are endless”.
It’s not a bad phrase when used in the right context. In sport, it encapsulates the need for more of a regime, perhaps better fitness or leadership or the curbing of drinking and so on. It is, however, a bullshit phrase.
So, were you more professional in the 2000s? Ed Smith’s piece is well worth a read
1 Comment »In 13 years as a cricketer I watched ultra-professionalism become entrenched as received wisdom. Between 1996 and 2008 I played under 14 different coaches and captains: every one of them began the new season with the stated aim of “making the team more professional”. It was a goal that no one challenged and a process that never ended.
Professionalism was continually invoked as the primary means of improvement, whereas amateurishness was mocked as a laughable relic. But it was often unclear to me what the word professionalism meant. “What we really need,” people would say, is “a good, solid professional win.” How does that differ, I always wanted to ask, from a normal kind of win? In fact, professionalism wasn’t so much a real process as a form of self-definition. We had to become ever-more professional, because that was the lens through which we interpreted progress and success.
The question no one ever dared ask was: is professionalism actually helping us to play cricket any better? There were very good reasons for not asking the question. It was too risky–because professionalism supplied not only the dominant ideology, but also the ruling class. In 1996, my cricket team had one coach, working closely with the captain (who has much more power in cricket than in most sports). But by 2008, there were so many coaches, analysts and hangers-on that I couldn’t keep up with all their names. Geoff Boycott estimated that the current England team has an auxiliary staff of 13. Even in financially strapped county cricket, the ratio of support staff to players has grown dramatically. Players learn not to ask the question: “What is it that you do, exactly?”
Occasionally, it is true, an ex-pro warned me against over-professionalism. After making a promising start to my first-class career, I was interviewed by the maverick cricketer-turned-journalist Simon Hughes. At the time, I was playing as an amateur for Cambridge University against professional county teams. Hughes suggested that when I made the transition to becoming a full-time pro, I might lose some of the individuality and freshness that had helped me to succeed up to then. I shrugged off his question with a series of professional clichés about “doing whatever it takes to get better”.
Thank you, Pakistan, for helping me keep the faith
By Will 1 month ago, 9 Comments »
My former colleague, Siddhartha Vaidyanathan – a fine writer and finer bloke – produced a maudlin reflection on his experience as a fan and cricket journalist over the last decade. Much of what he says I agree with. I don’t know if the sport has undergone such radical change so quickly in its history, and that speed of transformation alone is enough to unsettle even the most fervent follower.
All is not lost, though. Oh no. Pakistan, on the verge of levelling the Test series against Australia, somehow contrived to lose a match that was practically in the bag, zipped, locked and sealed. That they escaped the win – I think that’s an accurate reflection of how they play their cricket – left me initially sad, mostly dumbstruck, and then briefly elated. It would be unfair on her fans if cricket didn’t begin the decade in traditional fashion, and what could be more apt than Pakistan lurching like a trapped wasp from the sublime to the shambolic?
Bravo, Pakistan, and thank you for the glorious entertainment.
9 Comments »Cricket geekery epitomised
By Will 1 month ago, No Comments; be the first!
It’s a wonder Andy Zaltzman is still a married man. Outstanding cricket geekery:
No Comments »Happy New Year, Confectionery Stallers, and welcome to a new year, a new decade (or the last year of an old decade, depending on your decade-defining proclivities). I am firmly in the New Decade camp, and so, I assume, is Jacques Kallis, if only so he can claim to be the 29th member of the highly exclusive club of players who have scored Test hundreds in three different decades.
(I have a full list of these 29 cricketing legends, but will not list them here for fear of antagonising my wife, who is anxious for me not to join the equally exclusive club of husbands who have spent excessive parts of two decades working out things on Statsguru. But a special mention for the great Indian batsman Vijay Merchant, who is the only man in the history of humanity to have scored just one Test century in three separate decades. Throw that little fact into your next conversation at work and see how people react. Hang on, I’m not quite finished with this one yet. If Kallis can somehow muster another five-wicket innings from his creaking limbs, he will become only the eighth bowler to take a five-for in three different decades, and join Kapil Dev as the only player to have both scored hundreds and taken five-fors in three decades. I’m done now.)
Cricinfo’s Google Chrome extension
By Will 1 month ago, No Comments; be the first!
Me and Deepak Gulati (in fact, I’ve done next to nothing other than instigate it. Deepak’s the genius) have been working on an extension for Google Chrome for Cricinfo which has been live for a couple of weeks. It’s really neat, as is Google Chrome (obviously).
It’s hot out of the oven, so grab it now.
No Comments »Duncan Fletcher shows a new side
By Will 1 month ago, 2 Comments »
Ah. Maybe not then. Go on, Dunc – cheeeeeeeeeese.
From Test Match Special on Flickr.
2 Comments »Video of Sehwag’s 293 v Sri Lanka
By Will 1 month ago, No Comments; be the first!
If anyone has it, do leave a comment. Not yet seen a single ball of it.
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