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GOOGLIES & CHINAMEN
An Occasional Cricketing Journal
Edition 223
July 2021
Caption Competition
Leaked Source: Exactly.
Out & About with the Professor
The Professor has left his sofa behind and is back on the grass
In May 1921 a group of Welwyn Garden City cricketers “and some Hatfield players” reportedly met to form a cricket club. In May 1971 I joined that cricket club and now, in 2021 we are celebrating the Club’s centenary (and I’m reflecting on fifty years as a member).
It is perhaps not very insightful to say that a lot of things have changed, but…a lot of things have changed. When I joined we had a first XI and a second team that didn’t quite have a full fixture list. We now have five senior XIs. They all play league cricket, which we did not in 1971. There are hoards of juniors and a full set of XIs up the age range which include girls. We had neither juniors nor girls in 1971.
The pavilion has been rebuilt and extended, as have the outdoor nets…twice. The square is unrecognisable from the 1970s when it was, on occasions, unrecognisable from the outfield. The club now has a set of equipment similar to that of first class counties in the past; covers, double sightscreens, a boundary marked by a rope (instead of little markers, the line between which had to be guessed), a large and small electronic scoreboard, and so on. In other words the Club has grown into one of the best appointed (and supported) in the Home Counties. To add to the general feeling of smugness, we are currently top of the ECB Saracens’ Hertfordshire League.
The quality of cricket has also undoubtedly improved. It has ebbed and flowed of course, the side that I joined was captained by Ian MacLaurin (later Sir Ian, Lord Mac and numerous other things, including President of the MCC). Ian was a very useful cricketer and he had attracted a strong team around him. When they left or retired a hole was created which in time was filled and so on. All club cricketers will recognise the ups and downs and it never pays to be too dismissive of other teams. When I moved to Hertfordshire just about the strongest side was St Albans…they are now in (in effect) the fourth division.
The last twenty years or so have been very successful and we have turned out sides not just with Minor County experience but with First Class credentials and, most recently of all, with Owais Shah, international caps. League and Cup titles and, perhaps most memorably of all, the Club T20 Cup (in a final against Finchley at the Rose Bowl) have followed. The odd thing, or so it appears to me, is that even though there has been considerable success, there is actually less cricket played. We have been able to hang on to our cricket week (many of which have disappeared) but we play no senior cricket on Sundays…and nobody seems to know why. There has not been, as far as I know, an outbreak of fervent religiosity in Hertfordshire and all the other “explanations” were as true in the 1970s (or nearly so) as they are now. Sunday cricket just seems to have gone out of fashion. The result is, of course, that a club player who is out cheaply, in effect doesn’t get a knock for a fortnight. Does this make sense? Why have all that facility unused every Sunday? How to revive Sunday cricket must be an imperative for all cricket clubs.
I watched a few games last week, saw the Club defeat the MCC and then Reed in the Herts League. Reed is the bottom club and it looked like some easy points, but there is always danger in presumption and it took a solid contribution from Owais Shah to ensure that the game was won.
I was pondering on choosing just one thing to stand out from all the others in terms of changes and I ended up with a focus on the players’ kit. When I was still playing things had moved on from a modest sized holdall, perhaps with a sleeve at the side to slide your bat into, to “coffins” that people dragged around which gave ample room of more than one bat and odd bits of clothing which hadn’t been washed for weeks, but essentially the clothing was very standard. Perhaps a cap might have a club badge and the sweater might show some colours, but that was pretty much it. Not so now; everything is badged and logo bearing and “everything” includes shirts, trousers, jumpers, caps, helmets, plus of course that essential for any modern club cricketer – a full range of “leisure wear”.
Owais – in the yellow helmet - about to belt some young seamer over his head
Players don’t sit around in their whites anymore, at the least opportunity they put on dark coloured shorts and shirts (all appropriately badged, of course) so it looks like half the side are, in the middle of the match, getting ready for bed.
We are currently sponsored by Carlsberg and so the name is across the chest of the shirts with various other logos on sleeves, pockets and, for all I know, jock-straps. The upshot is that huge bags are needed to carry all this kit, sometimes in the form of knapsacks which would make a paratrooper wince. The only exception to this universal uniformity is Owais Shah’s distinctive yellow helmet. It isn’t really needed as a matter of identity since he clearly has about half as much time again as anyone else to play his shots.
I now live a long way away from Welwyn Garden and it is a delight to return from time to time to see the Club thriving, the First XI doing so well… and the players all looking so smart.
Bruton Matters
I received the following from Allen Bruton
Jim, having attended a fund-raising lunch a few months ago it would appear that I am now on the circulation list. Thought you might be interested in the following:
Dear Donor,
Apologies for the recent lack of communication but owing to a big DIY project at the flat I seem to be spending the majority of my time in Wickes and Homebase. However, moving on to more exciting news, thanks entirely to funding provided to Matt Hancock’s sister, it is now possible to advise that the leather cricket ball is to be phased out. The replacement will be carbon neutral consisting of completely environmentally friendly materials. Arrangements are already in place for the “Ecoball” to be manufactured exclusively by Randox as recommended by their consultant, Owen Paterson MP. Worldwide distribution will be via the ports of Felixstowe and Harwich as recommended by their consultant Chris Grayling MP. I have long held the opinion that these ex-ministers, often devoting several hours per year to their consultancy roles, are largely unappreciated which is something I attempt to address later.
Following my lifelong belief that honesty is the best policy I think it only fair to admit that the “Ecoball” does come at a cost being 50% more expensive and needing to be replaced every 10 overs. Thus, I am delighted to reassure you that the future of the annual Eton v Harrow fixture has been secured thanks to a sponsorship deal negotiated with Randox. Just as important and as part of a levelling up programme all clubs north of Doncaster will be entitled to one complimentary ball per season, an arrangement also applicable to Amersham Cricket Club.
The official launch of the “Ecoball” will be at the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow and used in the upcoming Australia v England Series when the teams will be competing for the Greta Thunberg Trophy, previously The Ashes. Please keep a note of these following dates:
Thursday 5th August 8.00pm Clap for the Westminster Consultants
Monday 1st November UN Climate Change Conference commences
Wednesday 8th December Greta Thunberg Trophy commences
Thanking you in anticipation of your continued support.
Regards,
Boris
This & That
In their Championship match at Taunton against Hampshire Somerset slumped to 43 for 5 and then 113 for 7. However, Lewis Gregory with 107 and van der Merwe with 88 saw them through to a highly unlikely 360.
Once the Vitality Blast got underway there were the usual feats of exceptional hitting. Will Jacks opens in this form for Surrey and slammed 70 from 24 balls against Middlesex who have proved almost as inept in this form of the game as in the 4-day format.
New Zealander, Glen Phillips, scored 94 not out from 58 balls playing for Gloucestershire against Sussex and then a couple of days later scored another 94 not out from 41 balls against Glamorgan.
Nottinghamshire bundled Worcester out for under 100 and then Alex Hales (remember him?} and Joe Clarke scored 89 in 6.2 overs with Hales 60 not out from 24 balls. Somerset also achieved a ten-wicket win reaching 169 from 15.4 overs with Tom Banton scoring 107 from 51 balls.
There must be some serious problem in the Middlesex camp. They have been poor for several seasons since winning the Championship and I think that the two recent Blast victories should not be allowed to disguise the underlying malaise. Selection has become more and more bizarre. Having scored runs in the Championship against Surrey John Simpson is now treated as a batsman in the T20 with very limited success. In the game at Taunton he is listed at number 5. Luke Hollman is at six and Nathan Sowter, a tailender is at seven. This is strange indeed for a side which struggles to score runs.
Perhaps the best uncapped batsman in England, Sam Northeast, left Kent for Hampshire in recent years and he would have been an excellent addition to the Middlesex middle order in all formats. Now he has been snapped up by Yorkshire with Middlesex again
looking on. And this is while Middlesex have allowed their best batsman of recent years and a member of England Lions sides, Nick Gubbins, to exit to Hampshire.
Morgan Matters
Will the GJM be watching live cricket again soon?
Middlesex are now the worst team in the whole County Championship. They are comfortably bottom of the Group Two table with 60 points despite having played more games than most. Derbyshire (Group One) could still challenge Middlesex's position, but they are only 2 points behind and have a game in hand! I am thoroughly glad that I do not have to go and watch them anymore... should I chuck in my Life Membership?
I am keeping away from the news from Lord's so that I can watch the lowdarks "live", but a new round of Championship matches starts today and... Middlesex do not seem to have a game! Perhaps some other mob booked Lord's ahead of them?
Middlesex have signed Oz allrounder Chris Green, but only for the first half of the T20! What's the use of that? Get some people for the Championship! The reason is apparently "visa and travel issues affecting Afghan spinner Mujeeb Ur Rahman".
Tanya told us that: "there were 2 catches for Kent wicketkeeper Ollie Robinson, who received an apology from Kent Online, who had mistakenly pictured him in their story about the other Ollie Robinson"!
In the June Cricketer, editor Simon Hughes tells us that the postponement of the IPL is a “rather beautiful development” because it has let the County Championship “have the stage all to itself”. What about the NZ Test series though!
Chris Rushworth became Durham’s leading first class wicket taker when he collected his 528th first class wicket for them v Worcs.
There is a full four-page article on my old mate Frank Hayes and (you’ll never guess what) I do not get a solitary mention! Incredible isn’t it? In fact, “university” only gets the briefest mention and which one it was most people will never know. That article includes four photographs of the great man and towards the back of the mag is another photo of him seemingly enjoying the experience of having Peter Lever vaulting over his back!
We also learn that MWWS thinks that Ed Smith can leave his Eng role “with his head held high”... not so sure myself.
Glamorgan have been in the Championship for 100 years and the C gives us all the details in a four page spread.
There is bad news on TSRJ (which I have not seen anywhere else): “surgery on his ruptured knee cartilage will keep him sidelined for several months”. An interview with Bob Taylor reveals that he thinks Ben Foakes is England’s best wicket keeper.
O Robinson has been suspended from all international cricket pending an investigation into his "offensive tweets" he published as a teenager. Without wanting to defend him all that strongly, I would suggest that we have all made some stupid decisions in our teenage years and I would have thought that a "hundred lines" type of punishment rather than a serious punishment like suspension would have been more appropriate.
Headingley: Sussex 215 (A Orr 67, A Thomason 52), Yorkshire win by an innings and 30, Tanya wrote: " but when Thomason wibbled the ball to slip shortly after tea, Sussex succumbed". Yes, wibbled! It does not feature in my dictionary.
D Bess has been recalled for the 2nd Test @ Edgbaston (his bowling average this season is 41.64), he replaces the suspended Robinson.
B Johnson has supported culture secretary O Dowden in his view that the ECB went "over the top" in suspending O Robinson. I hate it when I find myself in (partial) agreement with Johnson (does not happen very often).
B Johnson (again!) wants to get the "whole country" behind the England (footy) team but refuses to condemn those who booed players taking the knee: that's more like it, something I can really disagree with!
It seems that England are on the brink of picking C Overton to replace O Robinson in the next Test. However, he suffered a 2-match ban in 2015 for telling Sussex's Pakistani-born batsman Ashar Zaidi to "go back to your own fucking country". Again, this was not laudable conduct, but he has already been punished for it, which should be enough.
Mark Ramprakash says that B Johnson's intervention in the suspension of O Robinson is "unwelcome" and "if I was Ollie Robinson I'm not sure I would want Johnson involved and trying to support me".
J Anderson is "poised" to take over from A Cook as Eng's most capped Test player. Both are on 161 caps at present, S Broad is next on 147.
The ECB has pledged to take "relevant and appropriate action" after more historical tweets from England players emerged from eg J Anderson, E Morgan and J Buttler.
Barney Ronay says that "England's policy of living for tomorrow has left the team adrift in vagueness" and I agree that not picking the strongest team is daft, especially as NZ are the no 1 Test team in the world!
I have hated summer footy competitions for many decades now, but this one seems worse than ever: there are 13 pages on Euro 2020 (they cannot even get the year right!) in today's G and there has only been one match so far, the nail-biter between Turkey and Italy!
In the Times, Elizabeth Ammon awarded these ratings for the England players: Burns 7, Sibley 2, Crawley 2, Root 5, Pope 5, Lawrence 6, Bracey 1, Stone 8, Wood 8, Broad 5, Anderson 4, Robinson 8. J Root has failed to reach 50 in his last 11 Test innings... so is it his bowling that keeps him in the team? And why is he almost completely exempt from criticism? And why is C Silverwood also exempt from criticism, especially as he is (almost) the sole selector? J Agnew thought that England's performance was "excruciating" and "one of the worst results I have seen in a long time".
I do not study the Vitality Blast very much, but I did notice that J Clarke (Notts) hit 136 off 65 balls in the win over Northants.
Blimey! Middx win match sensation! It was only a T20 v Hants at Radlett, but they won by 3 wkts: H 215-6, Mx 217-7 (J Cracknell 77, J Simpson 62).
Tim de Lisle tells us that at home in the last four Test summers J Root has averaged 32, behind Stokes, Crawley, Buttler, Cook, Burns and Sibley. Since I wrote that Root seemed to be almost completely exempt from criticism, he has been getting some, especially from Andy Bull in today's G.
O Stone has been ruled out for the rest of the season with a stress fracture of the lower back and Sussex left armer George Garton has received his first call up to the senior Eng squad.
Ex-Surrey keeper/ batsman Lonsdale Skinner has a long interesting piece in the G today with the title "Unfair Delivery" and it is all about how English cricket has been failing the Caribbean community for decades. He says (probably correctly) that "immigration in the late forties and onwards from the English-speaking Caribbean brought some good players, but they were largely shunned by the counties". He makes several very valid points and here is one excellent example: "for 28 years from 1992, the ECB did not appoint a non-white match official, until this year after John Holder and Ismail Dawood threatened them with an Employment Tribunal case and it appointed Devon Malcolm and Dean Headley".
Middlesex win match sensation (I remember this happened once before, but I cannot recall when), though it was only a T20 at Radlett: Glamorgan 170-8 (D Douthwaite 53, W Weighell 51), Middlesex 171-3 (S Eskinazi 91*). Middlesex won by 7 wickets and shoot up the table to next to bottom as (incredibly) Hampshire have an even worse run rate than Middlesex (but they have a game in hand).
The July Cricketer tells us that Middlesex's overseas players for 2021 Blast will be Chris Green (formerly with Birmingham) and Paul Stirling for the first half, but Mujeeb ur Rahman (Afghanistan) and Daryl Mitchell (NZ) for the second half.
Sri Lanka's vice-captain Kusal Mendis, opener Danushka Gunathilaka and keeper Niroshan Dickwella have all been sent home from the Eng tour for "breaching bio secure protocols".
The Woakes Dilemna
King Cricket addresses this pressing issue
After six years away, Chris Woakes is back in England's T20 squad. It kind of feels like they've just happened upon him hanging about the place and concluded that they had to put him somewhere.
We've been moving house for the last week or so. We were only supposed to be in the previous place short-term but all of these viral shenanigans rather extended our stay. This means that the moving process has been something of a voyage of discovery.
Several things have not turned up. For the most part we are comfortable with the fact that these items must have been secreted in a 'safe place' during the previous move and will now forever remain there. We're greatly disappointed that we never found the pig's bum from Farmyard Heads and Tails though. We invested a great deal of hope in the notion that it would 'turn up in the move' and so the mystery of its disappearance haunts us.
More problematically, temporary home and shipping container have unearthed a number of unexpected items which must now be stowed somewhere or other. What do you do when you find yourself grasping something you probably don't want to throw away but with no clear idea where it should go? Well you just jam it somewhere randomly, don't you? You postpone the decision indefinitely.
So it is that Chris Woakes may or may not become an integral part of England's World T20 campaign on the basis that no-one's quite sure where else he should go.
As we've said before, Woakes swings the ball less than Jimmy Anderson and seams it less than Stuart Broad. He isn’t as striking or dynamic an all-rounder as Ben Stokes and it's wrong to pick him ahead of Mark Wood. So it's hard to crowbar him into the Test team - particularly overseas. But he's still good. You don't want to dispatch him into non-recyclable waste. You have to put him somewhere.
Over the winter, Woakes went to South Africa, Sri Lanka and India with England and played precisely zero games. Someone somewhere is now pointing at him and saying: "Do you seriously want that? You haven't used it in ages. Can we not just take it down to Barnardo's when we drop off the baby bouncer thing?"
Haseeb Hameed Matters
This article appeared in an online blog
Everything unravelled for Haseeb Hameed at Lancashire. You got the sense that the unravelling momentum was so great towards the end that the county were switching between management strategies every other day in a desperate bid to stumble on something that worked. In contrast, Hameed's new county, Nottinghamshire, have settled on dealing with him in one particular way. And they've stuck with it.
Lancashire's director of cricket, Paul Allott, once said that Hameed's extreme loss of form was a "complete and utter mystery."
In a famous quote, Allott told BBC Radio Lancashire: "We gave him more opportunity, probably, than he deserved all through the summer." Then as if to illustrate the mad oscillation between carrot and stick, he added: "But, having said that, I’ve not seen a more talented young opening batsman in my 40 odd years in the game."
A few months later, Allott told Wisden that Hameed was, "hanging on by his fingertips at Lancashire.”
Allott doesn't emerge from this particularly well. But it's a snapshot in time. What we were seeing was a club that had already tried any number of logical things at a point where the logical ideas had dried up.
By persisting with Hameed through years of runlessness and variously cajoling, encouraging or bollocking him into performing better, Lancashire had developed a very complicated relationship with the player. Every interaction with coaches, management and players will have been loaded with meaning, one way or another.
After being released, he joined Nottinghamshire, where pretty much everyone just wanted him to do well.
Peter Moores is almost a figure of fun to some people after his two failed stints with England. But to a lot of young players, he is a figure of fun in an entirely positive way. Quite a lot of cricketers very much enjoy playing under a coach who can be more supportive than most.
Moores can pick out and lift a young player. James Anderson was just some lad who spent lunch breaks bowling at a single stump before Moores became England coach. Stuart Broad, Matt Prior and Graeme Swann all came to prominence during his first tenure too.
He is unfailingly effusive when he speaks about Hameed and the club have also made him vice-captain for the Championship and captain of the one-day side.
It is easy to look at all this and Hameed's consequent recall into the England squad and conclude that this is what Lancashire should have been doing all along. But it doesn't work like that. Complexities have been stripped away.
Hameed's operating in a simpler environment now. There's no history. There are no failed experiments. His time at Nottinghamshire is characterised by constant progress. This is a great trajectory to be on and there's no real need to dwell on the fact that it's a hell of a lot more likely when you're starting from such a low ebb.
Strange Elevens
The members of the Strange XI in the last edition all had batting averages in excess of 40 at the beginning of the 2021 season.
Googlies Website
All the back editions of Googlies can be found on the G&C website. There are also many photographs most of which have never appeared in Googlies.
www.googliesandchinamen.com
Googlies and Chinamen
is produced by
James Sharp
Broad Lee House
Combs
High Peak
SK23 9XA
An Occasional Cricketing Journal
Edition 223
July 2021
Caption Competition
- Leaked Source: Maybe the England test squad is good enough, but the leadership isn’t?
Leaked Source: Exactly.
- Gareth Southgate: If you pick back of a length bowlers and set ultra-defensive fields you can’t go wrong.
- Matt Hancock: Perhaps they should pick me? After all I am responsible for millions of tests and I can inflate any score they want.
- The GOB (good old Boris): Leave it to me. I have lifted the restrictions and so they will all get Covid and won’t have to play anymore.
- Stuart Law: At least we won’t get beaten in The Hundred.
- Angus Fraser: Enough. I don’t want any more questions about why Middlesex are no good. I now consider the matter closed.
Out & About with the Professor
The Professor has left his sofa behind and is back on the grass
In May 1921 a group of Welwyn Garden City cricketers “and some Hatfield players” reportedly met to form a cricket club. In May 1971 I joined that cricket club and now, in 2021 we are celebrating the Club’s centenary (and I’m reflecting on fifty years as a member).
It is perhaps not very insightful to say that a lot of things have changed, but…a lot of things have changed. When I joined we had a first XI and a second team that didn’t quite have a full fixture list. We now have five senior XIs. They all play league cricket, which we did not in 1971. There are hoards of juniors and a full set of XIs up the age range which include girls. We had neither juniors nor girls in 1971.
The pavilion has been rebuilt and extended, as have the outdoor nets…twice. The square is unrecognisable from the 1970s when it was, on occasions, unrecognisable from the outfield. The club now has a set of equipment similar to that of first class counties in the past; covers, double sightscreens, a boundary marked by a rope (instead of little markers, the line between which had to be guessed), a large and small electronic scoreboard, and so on. In other words the Club has grown into one of the best appointed (and supported) in the Home Counties. To add to the general feeling of smugness, we are currently top of the ECB Saracens’ Hertfordshire League.
The quality of cricket has also undoubtedly improved. It has ebbed and flowed of course, the side that I joined was captained by Ian MacLaurin (later Sir Ian, Lord Mac and numerous other things, including President of the MCC). Ian was a very useful cricketer and he had attracted a strong team around him. When they left or retired a hole was created which in time was filled and so on. All club cricketers will recognise the ups and downs and it never pays to be too dismissive of other teams. When I moved to Hertfordshire just about the strongest side was St Albans…they are now in (in effect) the fourth division.
The last twenty years or so have been very successful and we have turned out sides not just with Minor County experience but with First Class credentials and, most recently of all, with Owais Shah, international caps. League and Cup titles and, perhaps most memorably of all, the Club T20 Cup (in a final against Finchley at the Rose Bowl) have followed. The odd thing, or so it appears to me, is that even though there has been considerable success, there is actually less cricket played. We have been able to hang on to our cricket week (many of which have disappeared) but we play no senior cricket on Sundays…and nobody seems to know why. There has not been, as far as I know, an outbreak of fervent religiosity in Hertfordshire and all the other “explanations” were as true in the 1970s (or nearly so) as they are now. Sunday cricket just seems to have gone out of fashion. The result is, of course, that a club player who is out cheaply, in effect doesn’t get a knock for a fortnight. Does this make sense? Why have all that facility unused every Sunday? How to revive Sunday cricket must be an imperative for all cricket clubs.
I watched a few games last week, saw the Club defeat the MCC and then Reed in the Herts League. Reed is the bottom club and it looked like some easy points, but there is always danger in presumption and it took a solid contribution from Owais Shah to ensure that the game was won.
I was pondering on choosing just one thing to stand out from all the others in terms of changes and I ended up with a focus on the players’ kit. When I was still playing things had moved on from a modest sized holdall, perhaps with a sleeve at the side to slide your bat into, to “coffins” that people dragged around which gave ample room of more than one bat and odd bits of clothing which hadn’t been washed for weeks, but essentially the clothing was very standard. Perhaps a cap might have a club badge and the sweater might show some colours, but that was pretty much it. Not so now; everything is badged and logo bearing and “everything” includes shirts, trousers, jumpers, caps, helmets, plus of course that essential for any modern club cricketer – a full range of “leisure wear”.
Owais – in the yellow helmet - about to belt some young seamer over his head
Players don’t sit around in their whites anymore, at the least opportunity they put on dark coloured shorts and shirts (all appropriately badged, of course) so it looks like half the side are, in the middle of the match, getting ready for bed.
We are currently sponsored by Carlsberg and so the name is across the chest of the shirts with various other logos on sleeves, pockets and, for all I know, jock-straps. The upshot is that huge bags are needed to carry all this kit, sometimes in the form of knapsacks which would make a paratrooper wince. The only exception to this universal uniformity is Owais Shah’s distinctive yellow helmet. It isn’t really needed as a matter of identity since he clearly has about half as much time again as anyone else to play his shots.
I now live a long way away from Welwyn Garden and it is a delight to return from time to time to see the Club thriving, the First XI doing so well… and the players all looking so smart.
Bruton Matters
I received the following from Allen Bruton
Jim, having attended a fund-raising lunch a few months ago it would appear that I am now on the circulation list. Thought you might be interested in the following:
Dear Donor,
Apologies for the recent lack of communication but owing to a big DIY project at the flat I seem to be spending the majority of my time in Wickes and Homebase. However, moving on to more exciting news, thanks entirely to funding provided to Matt Hancock’s sister, it is now possible to advise that the leather cricket ball is to be phased out. The replacement will be carbon neutral consisting of completely environmentally friendly materials. Arrangements are already in place for the “Ecoball” to be manufactured exclusively by Randox as recommended by their consultant, Owen Paterson MP. Worldwide distribution will be via the ports of Felixstowe and Harwich as recommended by their consultant Chris Grayling MP. I have long held the opinion that these ex-ministers, often devoting several hours per year to their consultancy roles, are largely unappreciated which is something I attempt to address later.
Following my lifelong belief that honesty is the best policy I think it only fair to admit that the “Ecoball” does come at a cost being 50% more expensive and needing to be replaced every 10 overs. Thus, I am delighted to reassure you that the future of the annual Eton v Harrow fixture has been secured thanks to a sponsorship deal negotiated with Randox. Just as important and as part of a levelling up programme all clubs north of Doncaster will be entitled to one complimentary ball per season, an arrangement also applicable to Amersham Cricket Club.
The official launch of the “Ecoball” will be at the UN Climate Change Conference in Glasgow and used in the upcoming Australia v England Series when the teams will be competing for the Greta Thunberg Trophy, previously The Ashes. Please keep a note of these following dates:
Thursday 5th August 8.00pm Clap for the Westminster Consultants
Monday 1st November UN Climate Change Conference commences
Wednesday 8th December Greta Thunberg Trophy commences
Thanking you in anticipation of your continued support.
Regards,
Boris
This & That
In their Championship match at Taunton against Hampshire Somerset slumped to 43 for 5 and then 113 for 7. However, Lewis Gregory with 107 and van der Merwe with 88 saw them through to a highly unlikely 360.
Once the Vitality Blast got underway there were the usual feats of exceptional hitting. Will Jacks opens in this form for Surrey and slammed 70 from 24 balls against Middlesex who have proved almost as inept in this form of the game as in the 4-day format.
New Zealander, Glen Phillips, scored 94 not out from 58 balls playing for Gloucestershire against Sussex and then a couple of days later scored another 94 not out from 41 balls against Glamorgan.
Nottinghamshire bundled Worcester out for under 100 and then Alex Hales (remember him?} and Joe Clarke scored 89 in 6.2 overs with Hales 60 not out from 24 balls. Somerset also achieved a ten-wicket win reaching 169 from 15.4 overs with Tom Banton scoring 107 from 51 balls.
There must be some serious problem in the Middlesex camp. They have been poor for several seasons since winning the Championship and I think that the two recent Blast victories should not be allowed to disguise the underlying malaise. Selection has become more and more bizarre. Having scored runs in the Championship against Surrey John Simpson is now treated as a batsman in the T20 with very limited success. In the game at Taunton he is listed at number 5. Luke Hollman is at six and Nathan Sowter, a tailender is at seven. This is strange indeed for a side which struggles to score runs.
Perhaps the best uncapped batsman in England, Sam Northeast, left Kent for Hampshire in recent years and he would have been an excellent addition to the Middlesex middle order in all formats. Now he has been snapped up by Yorkshire with Middlesex again
looking on. And this is while Middlesex have allowed their best batsman of recent years and a member of England Lions sides, Nick Gubbins, to exit to Hampshire.
Morgan Matters
Will the GJM be watching live cricket again soon?
Middlesex are now the worst team in the whole County Championship. They are comfortably bottom of the Group Two table with 60 points despite having played more games than most. Derbyshire (Group One) could still challenge Middlesex's position, but they are only 2 points behind and have a game in hand! I am thoroughly glad that I do not have to go and watch them anymore... should I chuck in my Life Membership?
I am keeping away from the news from Lord's so that I can watch the lowdarks "live", but a new round of Championship matches starts today and... Middlesex do not seem to have a game! Perhaps some other mob booked Lord's ahead of them?
Middlesex have signed Oz allrounder Chris Green, but only for the first half of the T20! What's the use of that? Get some people for the Championship! The reason is apparently "visa and travel issues affecting Afghan spinner Mujeeb Ur Rahman".
Tanya told us that: "there were 2 catches for Kent wicketkeeper Ollie Robinson, who received an apology from Kent Online, who had mistakenly pictured him in their story about the other Ollie Robinson"!
In the June Cricketer, editor Simon Hughes tells us that the postponement of the IPL is a “rather beautiful development” because it has let the County Championship “have the stage all to itself”. What about the NZ Test series though!
Chris Rushworth became Durham’s leading first class wicket taker when he collected his 528th first class wicket for them v Worcs.
There is a full four-page article on my old mate Frank Hayes and (you’ll never guess what) I do not get a solitary mention! Incredible isn’t it? In fact, “university” only gets the briefest mention and which one it was most people will never know. That article includes four photographs of the great man and towards the back of the mag is another photo of him seemingly enjoying the experience of having Peter Lever vaulting over his back!
We also learn that MWWS thinks that Ed Smith can leave his Eng role “with his head held high”... not so sure myself.
Glamorgan have been in the Championship for 100 years and the C gives us all the details in a four page spread.
There is bad news on TSRJ (which I have not seen anywhere else): “surgery on his ruptured knee cartilage will keep him sidelined for several months”. An interview with Bob Taylor reveals that he thinks Ben Foakes is England’s best wicket keeper.
O Robinson has been suspended from all international cricket pending an investigation into his "offensive tweets" he published as a teenager. Without wanting to defend him all that strongly, I would suggest that we have all made some stupid decisions in our teenage years and I would have thought that a "hundred lines" type of punishment rather than a serious punishment like suspension would have been more appropriate.
Headingley: Sussex 215 (A Orr 67, A Thomason 52), Yorkshire win by an innings and 30, Tanya wrote: " but when Thomason wibbled the ball to slip shortly after tea, Sussex succumbed". Yes, wibbled! It does not feature in my dictionary.
D Bess has been recalled for the 2nd Test @ Edgbaston (his bowling average this season is 41.64), he replaces the suspended Robinson.
B Johnson has supported culture secretary O Dowden in his view that the ECB went "over the top" in suspending O Robinson. I hate it when I find myself in (partial) agreement with Johnson (does not happen very often).
B Johnson (again!) wants to get the "whole country" behind the England (footy) team but refuses to condemn those who booed players taking the knee: that's more like it, something I can really disagree with!
It seems that England are on the brink of picking C Overton to replace O Robinson in the next Test. However, he suffered a 2-match ban in 2015 for telling Sussex's Pakistani-born batsman Ashar Zaidi to "go back to your own fucking country". Again, this was not laudable conduct, but he has already been punished for it, which should be enough.
Mark Ramprakash says that B Johnson's intervention in the suspension of O Robinson is "unwelcome" and "if I was Ollie Robinson I'm not sure I would want Johnson involved and trying to support me".
J Anderson is "poised" to take over from A Cook as Eng's most capped Test player. Both are on 161 caps at present, S Broad is next on 147.
The ECB has pledged to take "relevant and appropriate action" after more historical tweets from England players emerged from eg J Anderson, E Morgan and J Buttler.
Barney Ronay says that "England's policy of living for tomorrow has left the team adrift in vagueness" and I agree that not picking the strongest team is daft, especially as NZ are the no 1 Test team in the world!
I have hated summer footy competitions for many decades now, but this one seems worse than ever: there are 13 pages on Euro 2020 (they cannot even get the year right!) in today's G and there has only been one match so far, the nail-biter between Turkey and Italy!
In the Times, Elizabeth Ammon awarded these ratings for the England players: Burns 7, Sibley 2, Crawley 2, Root 5, Pope 5, Lawrence 6, Bracey 1, Stone 8, Wood 8, Broad 5, Anderson 4, Robinson 8. J Root has failed to reach 50 in his last 11 Test innings... so is it his bowling that keeps him in the team? And why is he almost completely exempt from criticism? And why is C Silverwood also exempt from criticism, especially as he is (almost) the sole selector? J Agnew thought that England's performance was "excruciating" and "one of the worst results I have seen in a long time".
I do not study the Vitality Blast very much, but I did notice that J Clarke (Notts) hit 136 off 65 balls in the win over Northants.
Blimey! Middx win match sensation! It was only a T20 v Hants at Radlett, but they won by 3 wkts: H 215-6, Mx 217-7 (J Cracknell 77, J Simpson 62).
Tim de Lisle tells us that at home in the last four Test summers J Root has averaged 32, behind Stokes, Crawley, Buttler, Cook, Burns and Sibley. Since I wrote that Root seemed to be almost completely exempt from criticism, he has been getting some, especially from Andy Bull in today's G.
O Stone has been ruled out for the rest of the season with a stress fracture of the lower back and Sussex left armer George Garton has received his first call up to the senior Eng squad.
Ex-Surrey keeper/ batsman Lonsdale Skinner has a long interesting piece in the G today with the title "Unfair Delivery" and it is all about how English cricket has been failing the Caribbean community for decades. He says (probably correctly) that "immigration in the late forties and onwards from the English-speaking Caribbean brought some good players, but they were largely shunned by the counties". He makes several very valid points and here is one excellent example: "for 28 years from 1992, the ECB did not appoint a non-white match official, until this year after John Holder and Ismail Dawood threatened them with an Employment Tribunal case and it appointed Devon Malcolm and Dean Headley".
Middlesex win match sensation (I remember this happened once before, but I cannot recall when), though it was only a T20 at Radlett: Glamorgan 170-8 (D Douthwaite 53, W Weighell 51), Middlesex 171-3 (S Eskinazi 91*). Middlesex won by 7 wickets and shoot up the table to next to bottom as (incredibly) Hampshire have an even worse run rate than Middlesex (but they have a game in hand).
The July Cricketer tells us that Middlesex's overseas players for 2021 Blast will be Chris Green (formerly with Birmingham) and Paul Stirling for the first half, but Mujeeb ur Rahman (Afghanistan) and Daryl Mitchell (NZ) for the second half.
Sri Lanka's vice-captain Kusal Mendis, opener Danushka Gunathilaka and keeper Niroshan Dickwella have all been sent home from the Eng tour for "breaching bio secure protocols".
The Woakes Dilemna
King Cricket addresses this pressing issue
After six years away, Chris Woakes is back in England's T20 squad. It kind of feels like they've just happened upon him hanging about the place and concluded that they had to put him somewhere.
We've been moving house for the last week or so. We were only supposed to be in the previous place short-term but all of these viral shenanigans rather extended our stay. This means that the moving process has been something of a voyage of discovery.
Several things have not turned up. For the most part we are comfortable with the fact that these items must have been secreted in a 'safe place' during the previous move and will now forever remain there. We're greatly disappointed that we never found the pig's bum from Farmyard Heads and Tails though. We invested a great deal of hope in the notion that it would 'turn up in the move' and so the mystery of its disappearance haunts us.
More problematically, temporary home and shipping container have unearthed a number of unexpected items which must now be stowed somewhere or other. What do you do when you find yourself grasping something you probably don't want to throw away but with no clear idea where it should go? Well you just jam it somewhere randomly, don't you? You postpone the decision indefinitely.
So it is that Chris Woakes may or may not become an integral part of England's World T20 campaign on the basis that no-one's quite sure where else he should go.
As we've said before, Woakes swings the ball less than Jimmy Anderson and seams it less than Stuart Broad. He isn’t as striking or dynamic an all-rounder as Ben Stokes and it's wrong to pick him ahead of Mark Wood. So it's hard to crowbar him into the Test team - particularly overseas. But he's still good. You don't want to dispatch him into non-recyclable waste. You have to put him somewhere.
Over the winter, Woakes went to South Africa, Sri Lanka and India with England and played precisely zero games. Someone somewhere is now pointing at him and saying: "Do you seriously want that? You haven't used it in ages. Can we not just take it down to Barnardo's when we drop off the baby bouncer thing?"
Haseeb Hameed Matters
This article appeared in an online blog
Everything unravelled for Haseeb Hameed at Lancashire. You got the sense that the unravelling momentum was so great towards the end that the county were switching between management strategies every other day in a desperate bid to stumble on something that worked. In contrast, Hameed's new county, Nottinghamshire, have settled on dealing with him in one particular way. And they've stuck with it.
Lancashire's director of cricket, Paul Allott, once said that Hameed's extreme loss of form was a "complete and utter mystery."
In a famous quote, Allott told BBC Radio Lancashire: "We gave him more opportunity, probably, than he deserved all through the summer." Then as if to illustrate the mad oscillation between carrot and stick, he added: "But, having said that, I’ve not seen a more talented young opening batsman in my 40 odd years in the game."
A few months later, Allott told Wisden that Hameed was, "hanging on by his fingertips at Lancashire.”
Allott doesn't emerge from this particularly well. But it's a snapshot in time. What we were seeing was a club that had already tried any number of logical things at a point where the logical ideas had dried up.
By persisting with Hameed through years of runlessness and variously cajoling, encouraging or bollocking him into performing better, Lancashire had developed a very complicated relationship with the player. Every interaction with coaches, management and players will have been loaded with meaning, one way or another.
After being released, he joined Nottinghamshire, where pretty much everyone just wanted him to do well.
Peter Moores is almost a figure of fun to some people after his two failed stints with England. But to a lot of young players, he is a figure of fun in an entirely positive way. Quite a lot of cricketers very much enjoy playing under a coach who can be more supportive than most.
Moores can pick out and lift a young player. James Anderson was just some lad who spent lunch breaks bowling at a single stump before Moores became England coach. Stuart Broad, Matt Prior and Graeme Swann all came to prominence during his first tenure too.
He is unfailingly effusive when he speaks about Hameed and the club have also made him vice-captain for the Championship and captain of the one-day side.
It is easy to look at all this and Hameed's consequent recall into the England squad and conclude that this is what Lancashire should have been doing all along. But it doesn't work like that. Complexities have been stripped away.
Hameed's operating in a simpler environment now. There's no history. There are no failed experiments. His time at Nottinghamshire is characterised by constant progress. This is a great trajectory to be on and there's no real need to dwell on the fact that it's a hell of a lot more likely when you're starting from such a low ebb.
Strange Elevens
The members of the Strange XI in the last edition all had batting averages in excess of 40 at the beginning of the 2021 season.
Googlies Website
All the back editions of Googlies can be found on the G&C website. There are also many photographs most of which have never appeared in Googlies.
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