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shaun-udal
Shaun of the Stanford
By Will 2 years ago, mid-October, 1 Comment »
You know you’ve got a story when the captain of a professional team says: “Yeah. I should be selling helmets and other cricket kit. Instead, I’m off to Antigua to play in the Stanford 20/20. Tsk.” Those were the words of Shaun Udal, Middlesex’s captain, speaking to Cricinfo last week ahead of the truly frightening event which begins this Saturday.
It is very difficult not to share in his excitement, or confusion. After all – he really was going to be selling cricket equipment and playing for the might of Berkshire until Middlesex came calling.
Udal’s “knock me down with a feather and call me Rosy” perplexed wonderment at the Stanford jamboree, or cash cow, is genuine and understandable. But for all his admirable English modesty, what is more surprising is his success at the knee-creaking age of 39. Well, be honest – it is, isn’t it? Not only that but his unlikely twirlership with Murali Kartik. England, watch out: the Shaun-Murali marriage could get them into an embarrassing muddle.
Kartik took 14 wickets at 20.14 in this year’s Twenty20 Cup, while Udal took 12 and conceded a smidgen above six-per-over. These are seriously useful figures and confirm (if anyone was in any doubt) that spinners aren’t the weedy, pathetic victims we all assumed Twenty20 would make of them. They are winners.
Udal was honest about his age, but also his ageing team. Tyron Henderson was born in 1974, eight days before Richard Nixon resigned from office. Kartik is one year younger at 33. And Udal himself? Keep it under your lid (one of Udal’s, ideally) but he’s approaching the big four-oh. Like spinners, however, Twenty20 has embraced the ageing masses and confounded our prejudice that only double jointed teenagers high on crack could possibly be successful in such an energetic, high-voltage game.
By no means are Udal and co. travelling to Antigua to make up the numbers. And it certainly beats pounding the M3 in a diesel, listening to Five Live ponder “yeah, but is it really cricket?”
The full interview will be at Cricinfo on Friday
1 Comment »Middlesex’s woes
By Will 2 years ago, at the start of September, 2 Comments »
I don’t know what’s going on at Middlesex. One minute they’re winning the Twenty20 Cup and heading to India for the Champions League. The next, they’re trying to tempt South Africa’s Mickey Arthur into a new post of managing director (though Angus Fraser is the current front-runner). For a brief few weeks, Middlesex re-tasted glory – the glory that is rightfully theirs, having nobly sacrificed their own form for the past 17 years to allow the other prissy teams (Lancashire, Sussex, Warwickshire – all those tramps) some success. They want this glory back. It is theirs, they play at the home of cricket, and justice will be done.
Well, it turns out that justice will not be served just yet. News comes through that Ed Joyce has turned down the captaincy; Shaun Udal has accepted the captaincy; Dawid Malan, the club’s brightest prospect since Owais Shah, might be off to Warwickshire. And poor old Nick Compton’s had enough and might be splitting to Somerset.
It nearly makes me want to support Durham on a full-time basis. And perhaps I will if we lose Malan.
2 Comments »Udal lured out of retirement
By Will 3 years ago, at the start of December, 6 Comments »
Jamie Dalrymple, the England allrounder, left Middlesex for Glamorgan two weeks ago. You might think that Middlesex would have cast their net to scoop a like-for-like. Instead they’ve persuaded (persistently) Shaun Udal, the 38-year-old former England and Hampshire offspinner, to join them. For two years.
Yes, quite.
6 Comments »Two champions, only one winner
By Jonathan Liew 3 years ago, mid-November, 22 Comments »
Someone is really going to have to put a stop to the Warne-Murali debate. It’s doing my head in.
It’s not that I don’t enjoy a spot of abstract, hypothetical cricketing banter. My teens consisted of little else, in fact. It’s just that this debate is – or should be – so thoroughly redundant. Is there seriously anybody out there who would take Murali over Warne? Please, step to the front of the class so we can ridicule you.
Murali is, of course, a great bowler and I don’t want to hate on him too much. I was present at his two greatest performances on English soil – The Oval in 1998 and Trent Bridge in 2006. He wins games. He turns it miles. He’s a genuinely laid-back guy in a world of grunting Pietersens and Nels. He is, as I say, a great bowler. Even his batting’s quite fun to watch.
But against a great bowler, surely the greatest. Warne won games, and he turned it miles. But where Murali tends to prey on uncertain, vulnerable batsmen, which is why he so often manages to roll an entire side over, Warne thrived on taking key wickets at key times, and cajoling his team-mates into doing the same. That’s something you can’t measure with statistics. Murali is a genius, but greater than a genius is a winner, and Warne is both. And he bats. And he catches. And he turned Shaun Udal into a Test bowler. Case closed for me.
Loading ...Understudy tourists
By Ian 3 years ago, mid-August, 5 Comments »
England will soon have to pick its squad for the winter tours and the three understudy roles up for grabs are those of top-three batsman, wicketkeeper and spinner. My calls for Bob Key were largely dismissed, so I’ll move on to the ‘keeper, who will start as Matt Prior’s back-up, but may get a crack if the Sussex man drops Sangakkara on 0 and becomes Murali’s latest bunny.
It seems England now have an embarrassment of riches at keeper with several stumpers scoring regular runs this season. Foster, Ambrose, Mustard, Read, Jones, Batty have all scored well. Read and Jones have likely had their turn, but Foster may be due another one? Ambrose has been excellent too. Tricky. Mustard must be in line for ODIs, because he’s brilliant at the top of the order for Durham. It’s a shame for Steven Davies that Worcestershire have hardly played this season.
Spinners are more of a quandary. I don’t agree that Pietersen and Vaughan can fill in the gaps. We need a genuine spinner to support Monty, especially in Sri Lanka. The problem is that, as ever, there are no English spinners topping the charts, although I can’t see what Graeme Swann has done to upset the selectors. He would do alright. Adil Rashid has great potential and can bat too. As can Alex Loudon. But would any of them bowl out Sri Lanka? I’m at a loss.
Bring back Shaggy?!
5 Comments »Trescothick- Shoaib was the difference
By Scott 5 years ago, at the start of December, No Comments; be the first!
England opening batsman Marcus Trescothick conceded that England had been outplayed in Pakistan, and pinpoints Shoaib Akhtar as the difference:
There’s no point making excuses: we were outplayed, simple as that. They had qualities that we didn’t. Most critically, they had Shoaib Akhtar, who bowled better than I have ever seen him bowl before. Sure, Inzamam-ul-Haq and Danish Kaneria had big series, too, but it was Shoaib who kept putting us under pressure early on in our innings. Without him, Pakistan would have been a much less fearsome unit.
Shoaib is a huge figure in world cricket; a volatile, dynamic, and emotional man who has a huge role to play in Pakistani cricket, and I wrote about him at length the other day.
Trescothick also muses about the lessons England need to take from their defeat:
But the lesson here is that we have to learn to adapt. You can still be positive by scoring at two runs an over. We have to become flexible enough to control any situation.
The best example of this was our run-chase at Multan, which ended in failure and so set the tone for the series. We had two half-decent partnerships – first Andrew Strauss and Ian Bell, and then Geraint Jones and Shaun Udal – which relied on playing patiently and seeing off the bowlers. While it would have been nice to dash to a quick win – and the pitch wasn’t getting any younger – hindsight certainly suggests we were too eager that day.
You don’t get many opportunities to win games in Pakistan, so it really hurt to let that opportunity slip. We had outplayed them for most of the match, and if we had won it, I’m sure the whole tour would have been a completely different story.
In a three Test series, it is so hard to come back after you’ve dropped the First Test. Mismanaging the runchase as they did, England will have to learn if they want to do better in the sub-continent in future.
No Comments »Udal, Loudon to tour Pakistan
By Will 5 years ago, mid-September, 31 Comments »
Thoughts on the squad? Shaun Udal and Alex Loudon both in the party.
Squads
England squad Michael Vaughan (capt), James Anderson, Ian Bell, Paul Collingwood, Andrew Flintoff, Ashley Giles, Steve Harmison, Matthew Hoggard, Geraint Jones, Simon Jones, Alex Loudon, Kevin Pietersen, Matt Prior, Andrew Strauss, Chris Tremlett, Marcus Trescothick, Shaun Udal.
England one-day squad Michael Vaughan (capt), James Anderson, Paul Collingwood, Andrew Flintoff, Ashley Giles, Steve Harmison, Geraint Jones, Simon Jones, Kevin Pietersen, Matt Prior, Liam Plunkett, Vikram Solanki, Andrew Strauss, Chris Tremlett, Marcus Trescothick
National Academy Squad Gareth Batty, Ravi Bopara, Stuart Broad, Rikki Clarke, Alastair Cook, James Dalrymple, Steven Davies, Mark Footitt, Ed Joyce, Robert Key, Sajid Mahmood, Liam Plunkett, Chris Read, Owais Shah, Tom Smith, Luke Wright, Mike Yardy
31 Comments »