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Test cricket shines, briefly
By Will 1 month ago, 4 Comments »
They didn’t look like they believed they could do it. At least, judging by their body language, that seemed to be the case with India today while South Africa’s Hashim Amla did a Paul Collingwood. One of cricket’s most romantic venus, Eden Gardens, was electrified by the suspense, the ground abuzz with passionate followers engrossed by the theatre, and were soon rewarded for their patience with the wicket of a devastated Morne Morkel. Ahh, bliss.
So India win by an innings, thus levelling the series. It’s all perfectly set up for a five-Test thriller. Can South Africa bounce back in the third? Will India’s victory carry them through? Can anyone get Hashim Amla out? What pitch will they prepare for the third and who will they pick? Will South Africa have the resolve to fight back? So many questions, none of which will be answered because this is, in nobody’s wisdom, a pathetically short two-Test series.
Today highlighted the modern sporting world. On the one hand, tradition waved its flag triumphantly: Test cricket again demonstrated its long-lasting appeal – even in India, the new home of Twenty20 and one of the fastest growing economies in the world, a rapidly evolving nation dealing with extraordinary change at social and political level. On the other, India (or the ICC – it’s difficult to be certain about how much control the governing body actually has these days) only had two Tests against supposedly one of the best teams in the sport. This should have been the ideal opportunity to showcase the prime format of the sport with a long, arduous, impossibly engrossing series which takes over the lives of the fans and keeps both the authorities and television execs happy.
Instead, we’re all left kicking our heels and feeling strangely empty, like reading a really good book and having it snatched away from you or the pages torn out. Worse, the very fact it was only two Tests completely put me off the series at the start. I couldn’t be bothered in wasting my energies getting excited when I knew the tablecloth would be whipped away just when I was tucking into the main course.
Tests cannot be brief dalliances. They demand a long, emotionally-scarring, gut-wrenching relationship to be formed, leaving you exhausted but elated; confused, sometimes mournful, but ultimately glad for the experience. These one (or two) night stands are good for nobody, save the boards and TV companies who demand the sugar rush of Twenty20 be fed intravenously and anonymously and constantly.
4 Comments »Adam Gilchrist’s 2009 Cowdrey Lecture
By Will last year, at the end of June, 2 Comments »
An eloquent, thoughtful and insightful speech made by Adam Gilchrist today. He supported the rise of Twenty20 but defended Test cricket, urging administrators to leave it alone as much as possible. He also pushed for cricket to be included in the Olympics, which isn’t something I know or care much about, but I can see the good it would do for the publicity of cricket.
The post-speech question-and-answer session was excellent, featuring Gilchrist, Graeme Swann and Dave Richardson, the former South Africa wicketkeeper now working for the ICC, and a good man he is too. Shared a couple of beers with him in South Africa and he’s a very serious student of the game, with its core values at the heart of everything he does. When asked this evening his predictions for the Ashes, he quipped: “It’ll be 2-1 going into The Oval, with England in front, and the chairman of the ECB, Giles Clarke, will prepare a featherbed for the final Test” which was a bit of a surprise, and not one Clarke will too overly pleased with I bet.
I put up the transcript of the speech at Cricinfo, so do give it a close read, and MCC will have an MP3 of the recording later.
2 Comments »Day five, the Test’s still alive
By Will 2 years ago, mid-December, 8 Comments »
India need 256; England, just nine wickets. The greatest game of all is still alive and well, and there is a small but delicious irony in the delicate state this match finds itself in. That it is taking place so soon after the Mumbai terrorist attacks is honourable and pleasing. But that Chennai should be producing such a corking match, in India, at the end of a year which has seen the Twenty20 machine snowball almost out of control…it’s a reminder to everyone, in particular the often one-eyed BCCI, of our responsibility to cricket’s richest asset. Not Twenty20; not television or advertising revenue; not even Sachin or Brett or MS or KP, and certainly not Mr Stanford. But Tests. The oldest and still the most rewarding format of the game, and possibly the best of any sport there is.
It’s like a really good bottle of port to Twenty20’s vodka and Red Bull: rich, occasionally musty, with a multitude of flavours.
8 Comments »Test cricket in serious danger
By Will 2 years ago, mid-October, 10 Comments »
I have accepted Twenty20. I even like it. But watching how powerful the newly-formed tournaments have become is like witnessing a teenager push a pensioner over on the street. It’s rude, wrong and has an air of danger. You want to stop it; you don’t quite know how.
The pensioner, if you’ll allow me to extend this frankly ridiculous analogy, is Test cricket. OK, so the doddery old bugger hasn’t yet been floored by IPL’s gang, but the news this week that Sri Lanka could be sending a second XI to tour England next year is the most significant effect Twenty20 has had on the game as a whole. The Twenty20 World Cup has been a success, and will eventually replace the ageing 50-over wreck, but Test cricket has so far remained swaddled in its own security blanket of tradition. Until now.
The reason, if you’re not aware, is that Sri Lanka Cricket has proposed a US$70m deal with Lalit Modi, the oligarch behind the IPL. In addition, Sri Lanka’s sports minister has said that his top players are therefore committed to fulfilling their highly lucrative contracts with Modi – at the expense of Tests. The teenagers are jeering at the old pensioner. “Come and have a go if you think you’re hard enough,” they rant.
By 2010, almost half the County Championship fixtures will be done and dusted by about May 15, to accomodate the English Premier League, the Twenty20 Cup and whatever else the ECB’s bean-counters decide upon. Where does this leave four and five-day cricket? The Championship remains the most coveted title in England. Test cricket remains the atlas of most cricketers’ aspirations. And yet they could soon be marginalised by the unsavoury appetite for money.
Once dollars are involved, it’s very hard to stop the rift widening. Who can blame players when they’re being offered life-changing sums? Happily, the ICC president, David Morgan, has brandished this decision by Sri Lanka as deeply worrying, so there is still hope that his organisation can stop the rot. But if Sri Lanka do decide not to tour, their relationship with India thus strengthens, and the BCCI’s clout over world cricket becomes even more encompassing. Even more worrying.
The whole face of international cricket could be about to change very dramatically.
10 Comments »A poor advert for the game?
By Will 2 years ago, mid-July, 21 Comments »
Help me out here. I’m struggling to decide whether the past five days has done Test cricket a good deal or not.
My instinct says no. England racked up nearly 600, bowled South Africa out once, then the South Africans realised how placid the pitch was and applied application to their obvious ability. It subsided calmly to a draw, as though carefully lowering a heavy box full of antique china. It might have made you want to gauge out both your eyeballs, but McKenzie and Amla’s resistance was pretty remarkable, even on a pitch more akin to Lahore than Lord’s. In fact, it’s got to be one of the world’s most benign surfaces.
But we’re not used to such gentle, lackadaisical play these days are we? So did you enjoy this meticulous cricket, or do you feel it was a poor advert for the game?
21 Comments »England v South Africa, 1st Test, Lord’s, 2nd day
By Will 2 years ago, mid-July, 13 Comments »
Genuinely enthralling day’s cricket yesterday. Who needs Twenty20 (etc etc). Keep your eye on the scorecard today and wibble away like champions in the comments.
(Edit: woops. I didn’t mean New Zealand…!)
13 Comments »Pietersen as a Test captain, anyone?
By Jonathan Liew 2 years ago, at the start of July, 9 Comments »
There’s always a tendency to make your best player captain, but of late it’s one England have found it quite easy to resist. Captains need guile, nous, subtlety and tact. Mike Brearley had those things. Conversely, I reckon there’s about a 10% chance Kevin Pietersen hasn’t even heard of Mike Brearley.
For the moment, though, KP appears to the man in possession, which allows a tantalising glimpse into an imagined, post-Vaughan future. The present skipper clearly wants to make it as far as the next Ashes series, although so did Graham Thorpe, you might remember. In fact, any one of a number of circumstances could derail Vaughan before next summer – poor form with the bat, a thumping at the hands of South Africa, a disastrous winter tour, that blasted knee, an invitation to take part in Strictly Come Dancing – you know, anything.
And so, a number of names would be in the frame. Collingwood, if he’s still in the team; Cook, probably; Flintoff as a romantic outside bet; Strauss, heaven forbid. Pietersen, though, will definitely be a front-runner. If his stint as one-day captain goes well or he has a sensational run of form, his hand will be strengthened still further.
What would Pietersen be like as a captain? More importantly, perhaps, what would Pietersen the captain be like as a batsman? This is how the captaincy has affected the batting averages of some modern-day captains:
Ricky Ponting: 62.00 as captain; 55.97 not as captain
Brian Lara: 57.83 as captain; 50.12 not as captain
Rahul Dravid: 44.51 as captain; 57.66 not as captain
Michael Vaughan: 37.71 as captain; 50.98 not as captain
Interesting, isn’t it? The best two captains – Dravid and Vaughan – are the two whose form actually dips when given the top job.
When you consider the circumstances, it begins to make a little sense. Imagine that Vaughan or Dravid comes out to bat at 10 for 1 in reply to a score of about about 500. Neither man is exactly going to come out with all guns blazing. As captain, that would be irresponsible. Vaughan and Dravid feel a great and justifiable sense of responsibility towards their team which sometimes inhibits them from playing their natural game.
If Ponting or Lara came in in the same situation (Lara’s retired, I know) they would feel less constrained by the match situation. The reason? Ponting knows that if he’s out cheaply, chances are one of the batsman coming after him will save the day. Lara knows, or knew, that even if he scored 150, the West Indies would still very possibly lose. Neither Ponting nor Lara are as central to their team’s batting line-up as Vaughan or Dravid are, and they can thus play with a far greater degree of freedom.
That’s not to say that players whose figures improve when they become captain are simply selfish and single-minded; merely that the more freedom you have to play your natural game, the less it matters whether you’re a good captain or not. Ponting could be a terrible captain and Australia would still win most of the time. Lara could be a brilliant one and the West Indies would still lose. It’s the likes of Vaughan and Dravid, in the middle ground, who have to rein themselves in for the good of the team.
The qualities that make players good captains, then, actually render them less effective as a batsman. If KP ever becomes England captain, it looks like someone else is going to have to get the runs.
9 Comments »Twenty20: sport or reality TV?
By Will 2 years ago, mid-June, 12 Comments »
Simon Barnes questions whether cricket needs Twenty20:
Are we supposed to cheer for England? I don’t really think so; after all, the object of the match isn’t glory. It’s all about rich people suddenly getting even richer. Or not, of course.
And I ask myself: am I really going to get over-excited about Kevin Pietersen’s chances of buying a second Porsche? No, this is not the kind of fixture that is going to stir up the ancient loyalties that spring from ancient traditions.
But all the same, the match will have a kind of grisly fascination. I mean, say it comes down to the last ball, one wicket or one run to win; oh, and it’s a huge slog and the ball’s spiralling up in the air and if he catches it, every England player will get a million bucks, and if he drops it, they won’t, and who’s underneath it? Go, Monty, go!
This kind of simple yes-or-no test is a staple of modern television, but it’s not sport, it’s reality TV. We don’t care what they’re doing, we only care whether or not they can pull it off under as much artificial pressure as possible. “It’s always been my dream,” they sob. “It’s the chance of a lifetime.” And they blow it, or they don’t, tears prick the nation’s eyes, and then we put the kettle on.
It’s entertainment, but it’s not sport. In sport, the process itself matters: the beauties, the subtleties, the long-term relationships, the tactical nuances, the opposition, the quest for perfect execution. In reality TV, we put someone on the griddle, put him to the ultimate test, and then forget him for ever while we pour ourselves a nice drink.
Would Twenty20 have survived 20 or 30 years ago? It’s highly unlikely. If anything, the new, whizz-bang version mirrors our modern society’s insatiable greed for immediate entertainment. I’ve spoken to lots of fringe-fans (mainly taxi drivers) who find Test cricket dull and too long-winded yet are taken in by Twenty20. They can’t stand the slow-drip tension over five days but are happy to set aside four hours of urgent, in-your-face sport, safe in the knowledge they will see a result. It’s slightly safer, certainly simpler than Test cricket. People don’t have the time they did 20 years ago – or rather, there is a pressure to be doing things all the time – but perhaps also they don’t have the patience.
I suppose cricket should be applauded for reacting to what the public clearly want, but not if it comes at the expense of its grandest format.
12 Comments »England’s win over New Zealand
By Will 2 years ago, mid-June, 5 Comments »
I’ve been up in Nottingham, hence the total lack of postage here. I’m now in Devon, so while I enjoy the beach, why not offer your thoughts on England’s series win over New Zealand? Were you impressed in the manner with which they wrapped up the win? Or do you, like me, have concerns ahead of the South Africa series?
Go on. Be prolific commenters.
5 Comments »New Zealand out-collapse England
By Will 2 years ago, at the end of May, 2 Comments »
It takes something for a team to match, or better, one of England’s infamous collapses, but New Zealand managed just that today. England’s brave attempt at capitulation was admirable: 5 for 28. New Zealand, however, out-collapsed them with a very flacid 7 for 29. Superb collapsing all round.
What a day. Who cares for Twenty20 when Test cricket can provide sixteen wickets in a single day, the momentum and energy flipping to and fro every hour? It was breathless cricket, with some wonderful bowling from the two spinners – Daniel Vettori and Monty Panesar – and some questionable batting mixed in among it.
How cruel momentum can be. New Zealand were utterly odds-on favourites after England’s 1990-esque capitulation in the morning. They batted like muppets in a swamp to Vettori – who bowled masterfully, it should be noted – and New Zealand stole a huge first-innings lead of 179. Cockahoop they were. But for them to be bowled out for 114 (Panesar six-fer) shows firstly what a beasting pitch this is, but moreover how fragile confidence is. You think you’re riding high, on the crest of a wave which will crash down and swallow your opponents…before you all fall off the surf board and drown in your own wave. Awful analogy I know, but you get my meaning.
And look what happened – New Zealand bowled like a drain in the final session. Too short, too wide – Alastair Cook and Andrew Strauss looked relatively at ease. Cook fell, but England really could upset the odds and do the unthinkable. They don’t deserve to win at all, but then nor do New Zealand for their awful collapse. Fascinating fourth day in prospect.
2 Comments »The worth of Pietersen
By Will 2 years ago, mid-May, 9 Comments »
Kevin Pietersen, one of cricket’s most marketable assets, is on the verge of signing for an unnamed Indian Premier League franchise for a record-breaking $4m. That is quite some u-turn.
Before (February 29, 2008):
“There’s no way in this world I’d turn my back on England,” he told BBC Radio Five Live. “I know there is interest and, yes, there have been offers, etc etc, but it’s not something I’m particularly interested in. Money’s not really too important, it’s not as if I need money right now. I’m really enjoying doing what I’m doing.”
After (April 5, 2008):
“It’s silly to think that you’re losing up to a million [dollars] over six weeks.”
The comparison is a little unfair: Pietersen did justify his stance later by saying “You want your best players playing both for their country and for the IPL. You don’t want them choosing between the two”, and that’s probably the way it should go. If Pietersen or Andrew Flintoff or any other England player wants to make some quick money, they of course should be allowed.
The big concern for cricketers is whether the IPL goldrush goose will, in their minds, deem Test cricket the ugly, cheap duckling. Worse, Test cricket could lose even more quality players if other leagues spawn, such as Allen Stanford’s, thus diluting the format’s very essence.
9 Comments »Sri Lankans rattled
By Will 2 years ago, at the start of April, 4 Comments »
I’ve had my eye off the proverbial the last 24 hours, so am surprised and excited to see West Indies’ bowlers have rattled Sri Lanka’s top-order. As I write, they’re 109 for 6 and lead by a slender 94. Poor old Windies haven’t won at home since 2005 and since 2000 the locals have only celebrated seven victories.
Update: Samaraweera makes 125 and West Indies need 253 to win. Nuff bloody said.
4 Comments »The lure of money
By Will 2 years ago, at the end of March, 4 Comments »
We return to England after six weeks of toil, and not much has changed. We have reversed a decline in Test cricket, but realise that sterner ones wait in the form of the touring South Africans later in the season. Also, all the talk is now returning to the IPL, and its influence on the game’s future. I can’t believe for one moment that there aren’t going to be changes to the game. Money talks too loudly, but exactly what they are and when they will come is for others to decide. For the England players, we have just had a timely reminder of what money can’t buy, playing and winning for your country.
Dean Headley on the ECB’s attitude towards the IPL:
4 Comments »“If the ECB ignore these opportunities for players, it could have catastrophic results in terms of losing a star player or several star players,” Headley told The Sunday Telegraph.
“Even if we don’t see an exodus we might have a lot of disgruntled England players and that’s not healthy. Where would that leave our game? It might only take a few brave players to start the ball rolling. We need all parties concerned to come together and reach an agreement that keeps everyone happy.”
New Zealand v England, 3rd Test, Napier
By Will 2 years ago, mid-March, 2 Comments »
The third and final Test of this series is intriguingly poised. Out go Jacob Oram and Kyle Mills for New Zealand, in come Tim Southee – a promising nineteen-year-old swing bowler – and Grant Elliott, a South African-born allrounder. On paper, England are favourites, but the pitch at McLean Park is as flat as an ironing board (so say the experts) and, although five days is a long time (cliché alert), all indications point to a run-feast of a draw.
There is plenty to play for – not only for this series, but the return series in May. As one of New Zealand’s lot said, they’re treating this match as the third of six, which is an interesting way of looking at it. Here’s the scorecard for when play gets underway in a couple of hours.
It’s Stephen Fleming’s 111th and final Test, and he still needs another 113 runs to achieve his ambition of averaging 40 in Test cricket. He couldn’t have a better pitch on which to give it a fair crack. It’s also Christopher Martin-Jenkins’ last Test as The Times’ cricket correspondent. He’ll still be commentating, and occasionally writing the odd feature (for Cricinfo, hopefully), but it brings to an end a fine and distinguished reporting career by one of the most respected writers in the industry. Cheers to CMJ.
2 Comments »New Zealand v England, 1st Test, Hamilton
By Will 2 years ago, at the start of March, 9 Comments »
Ah, Test cricket. We welcome it back with open arms, albeit wiping the sleep from our eyes as we prepare to reverse our body clocks in the pursuit of sport and entertainment. Still – it could be worse (it could be 12 months ago when we were weeping our way through the depression of the Ashes) and England have an excellent chance of gaining an upper hand over New Zealand.
Of course, New Zealand can never be written off or dismissed entirely. Like a particularly hardy breed of mosquito, they’re rather hard to swat; what they lack in quality they more than make up for in grit and a never-say-die attitude. However, with the absence of Shane Bond – who’s deserted them for the wallet-swelling lure of the Indian Cricket League – New Zealand’s attack looks flimsy at best; only Daniel Vettori and Chris Martin can boast 50 Test wickets to their name. That is a worryingly weak statistic.
So do chat away. We’ll be doing all we can at Cricinfo to a) stay awake during the inevitable rain delays and b) keep you amused on commentary, so keep an eye on us. I’ll leave this open for the Test for you night owls to dissect the teams’ performances.
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