G&C 184
.GOOGLIES & CHINAMEN
An Occasional Cricketing Journal
Edition 184
April 2018
Caption Competition
1. Joe Root: Do you think that the Aussies cheated in the Ashes series?
Moeen Ali: No, we were just crap.
2. Adil Rashid: Why was Cameron Bancroft putting something down his pants?
Barry Mackenzie: He was just feeding his trouser snake.
3. David Willey: What warm up matches are the test boys going to have before the next test series?
Sam Billings: I hear that they are scheduled to play French Cricket on the beach.
4. Adil Rashid: Why has Cameron got his hand in his trousers?
Ken Dodd: He is ball tampering.
5. Adil Rashid: Why is Ben Stokes here? Is he on parole?
Out & About with the Professor
In 1982 some 522 members attended the Yorkshire County Cricket Club’s AGM. A further 100 were locked out. The police had to be called and at least one member tried to get the whole thing postponed on the grounds of public safety. In the event the meeting went ahead amid the toxic atmosphere of two feuding groups of members: one (the “Reform Group”) supporting Geoffrey Boycott, the other supporting the “committee” or some version of the “establishment”. This was a period when the captaincy of Yorkshire ping-ponged around between Boycott, Hampshire and Old and the committee had brought Illingworth back to Headingley as cricket manager but not, perhaps, to play the diplomat. The decidedly fractious relationships between the protagonists lasted for years and indeed there are still echoes of it today, for example, when Boycott stood for election to the Board a couple of years’ ago and received more votes against than for.
By contrast the 2018 AGM, while very well attended, was (sadly?) a much more harmonious affair. We were some £20 million in debt but this, we were told, was a manageable sum given our income streams “going forward”; we had successfully bid for an Ashes Test and Headingley was to be one of the eight venues for the new city-based T20 competition beginning in 2020. We have a growing membership (8,200 in 2017) and are the only county club to be in that position. There are plans in place to return First Class cricket to Sheffield and Bradford (the new T20 competition will necessitate the use of “out” grounds) and the construction of the new South Stand is well advanced and will, “going forward”, substantially increase the capacity of the Ground.
The photograph shows the stand in its current state. It would be fair to say that it will not be ready for the start of the season but it will be for the start of the next season. In the meantime, members were advised to attend home matches with earplugs since there will be some “construction noise”.
So - apart from the management speak - all good news then.
Actually, our previous Chair, Colin Graves, was an inveterate “going forward” man and the new man in charge, Steve Denison, seems to have been infected with the same loathsome habit.
Martin Moxon, the Director of Cricket, had a slightly tougher challenge in reviewing the actual performance of the cricket team; after all the Championship side avoided relegation by a very thin margin. The problem, as everyone in the room knew, was that the team didn’t score enough runs. Once Ballance had been selected for the Test side, no other senior player “stepped up to the plate” (ye gods). Indeed, Moxon thought (“going backwards”?) that this had been a problem for two years now. The solution? Well sport, like any human endeavour, is in part a mental process and so young Martin is going to send the entire team off to see the shrink. All first team players will have three compulsory sessions with the club’s sports psychologist a Dr Mark Nesti from Liverpool John Moores University. This is required because they all have the technical ability to play well and indeed all are looking very good in the nets. So, the problem must lie not in between the netting but in between the ears.
Now I’m sure Dr Nesti is a very able practitioner and may well produce excellent results. All I can offer from my own experience is that most of the psychologists that I have met in university faculties in forty odd years have been very strange indeed. And some demonstrably nuts. Still, let’s hope it works.
A slightly more prosaic solution to the batting problem has been the signing of two wonderful players: Kane Williamson and Cheteshwar Pujara. Had the management known of the possible availability of a couple of blubbing Aussies I suppose they might have been considered. But then again the Headingley crowd – not always the most forgiving of audiences – might not have approved.
When the blubbers had dried their eyes I had a look (not something I often do) at The Times newspaper and, in particular, Michael Atherton’s piece on the tampering subject. How, I wondered, was he going to write about this, remembering, as we all do, his “unfamiliar action”? His article used the word “hypocrisy” in the title and it came, in my view, fairly close to that itself. Atherton knew “to his cost” the moral opprobrium generated by ball tampering which, had been going on: “since the year dot”. He was, therefore, in 1994, little more than a victim of moral indignation. A timeline, beside the article, listed other “dirty tricks” which included Atherton putting dirt in his pockets “to keep his hands dry”. Well…that’s not exactly how I remember it. Indeed, the England management (in the shape, of course, of Raymond Illingworth) did not, I think it fair to say, impose a £2,000 fine on Atherton for hand-drying offences. Wisden records that of the £2,000 fine, half was for the dirt “and half for the lie”.
In all probability Smith, Warner and Bancroft are not great readers of Wisden. Had they been so they might not have come up with the ludicrous business about sticky tape and “granules” of dirt. Unlike Atherton they even managed to lie in the course of their confessions. Given the unreliability of those statements, it also makes it very hard to accept that no bowler was involved in a plan to change the condition of the ball.
These matters did not concern the good folk of Headingley, although there was (how could there not have been?) the odd reference to it during the meeting. The person who did seem to generate some moral indignation (and not for the first time) was Adil Rashid. Members have not forgotten him being “too tired” to play in the final match of the season two years’ back and now were not at all happy about his decision to only play white ball cricket and the Club’s acquiescence. Why wasn’t he being held to his contract? Did he expect anyone to put their hand in their pocket (not an easy thing for some Yorkshiremen at the best of times) to support his benefit? And so on. It would not have been the sort of thing that Brian Sellers would have allowed.
The name of Sellers, by the way, is often invoked by some senior members when some show of authority is felt to be needed. For them, I think, were he still alive and in the government the problems of Brexit transition would have quickly been solved, Monsieur Barnier sent scuttling back to Brussels, and Messrs Putin, Trump and Kim Jong-un put firmly in their place. Sadly he is no longer with us and died, in fact, shortly before the 1982 AGM. He might have been needed then as well.
This & That
Who is it that knows better than all the rest of us that you need to be at the top of your game going into a test match and that to be there you need to have played in the toughest possible matches beforehand? It can only be the ECB and the England team management. Conversely, Mickey Mouse preparation leads to Mickey Mouse performance. Time and again we point this out and no-one seems to listen. What will it take for the ECB to insist on proper practice matches? Will 27 for 9 do it? If the host nation will not provide proper opposition then the ECB should arrange for the Lions to provide it. They are normally not far away.
Good news! Tim Paine and B.J. Watling both seem to be proper wicket keepers which makes you wonder how they got selected for their nation’s test sides. Both have made watching spin bowling in the current South Africa/Australia and NZ/England series less of a painful experience as they take the ball cleanly down the legside and stay down in performing their duties.
Close fielders particularly in front of the wicket nowadays cover themselves in armour to protect themselves. It is, therefore, ridiculous that when a batsman shapes to play an aggressive shot many of them turn around and leap into the air. By doing this they make themselves the largest possible target and expose the only parts of the body not clad in padding. The safest way to field in close is to get down and stay down thus making yourself the smallest possible target. You can also react to any chance of a catch that may be on offer
So KP has decided to retire and for once his actions aren’t received by a fanfare of publicity. I have given him plenty of stick over the years primarily for his loathsomeness. However, it must be recognised that he had an extraordinary talent. I witnessed the beginning of his test career at Lord’s in 2005 when on the second morning he hit Warne for six before holing out.
I subsequently saw several of his test and ODI hundreds of which I have little memory partly because he scored so quickly. I haven’t seen any footage of his big hundred in India on a turning pitch which the Professor rates as his best. I did see some of his innings against the South Africans at Headingly when he laid into Stein and kept clobbering him over mid-on. Perhaps most memorable is that phase he went through when he played all deliveries into the leg side regardless of length or width. He would move outside the off stump as the bowler approached and then play back foot drives through mid-wicket from eighteen inches outside the off stump. I think that I mentioned before that he seemed to mellow more recently and became quite a good commentator in the IPL and Big Bash.
Why are you allowed to rub the ball on your trousers to make it shine but not rub it in the dirt to rough it up?
In the old days goalkeepers used to be in charge of their six-yard boxes and would reckon to collect all crosses and control all other activity. Nowadays they stay rigidly on their goal lines and if they come for a cross just flail at it with a one-handed punch that could go anywhere. Why is this? In general goalkeepers are bigger than they used to be and subject to far less physical abuse from centre forwards, but they seem unable to put it about themselves. Ron Springett was under six foot but you would always expect him to catch all crosses and never resort to punching.
Morgan Matters
After his long winter vigil, the Great man is digging out his windcheater in readiness for the season
Thanks for Googlies: after all these years, you still cannot spell Eoin! I never use the incorrect Notts Forest; the correct abbreviation is Nottm! Notts is County... and county cricket!
The ICC is at last going to try to curb the dire expansion of T20 at the expense of first class and, in particular, Test cricket. They could start with the ECB's ridiculous plans for the expansion in GB due to happen in (the year) 2020. The collective union for cricketers worldwide (FICA) has enthusiastically welcomed the move to introduce stronger regulation of domestic T20 leagues.
ECB board member Andy Nash has resigned in a huff over the allocation of Tests and other internationals to the counties and compensation payments to other counties not getting many or any. I am not quite clear why he is so upset but it is probably because Somerset are not getting enough internationals or compensation for not getting enough internationals.
Eoin will play his 200th ODI in tonight's game at Christchurch.
Astonishing! Rangers had a brilliant 1-3 win at 3rd placed Aston Villa (who had thumped leaders Wolves 4-1 on Sat) in front of more than 30,000 home fans expecting a comfortable home win to maintain their promotion challenge. Ryan Manning, Jake Bidwell and Luke Freeman put Rangers 3 up before the home team grabbed an 88th minute consolation when most of the home fans had headed towards the boozer. I was always confident that Rangers would avoid relegation (he lied), but this seems to have confirmed it. They are now 16 points clear of the relegation places.
R Sidebottom has joined Surrey as a "bowling consultant to work alongside Geoff Arnold". I have often seen GA at 2s games without knowing what his role was... is he now guiding his successor? He must be about 100 by now! I have just looked him up and he will be 74 in September, but he looks older. Why would you want to work for so long? I was 49 when I retired!
Middlesex have signed A Agar (WA, SLA) for the entire 2018 T20.
WI qualify for the 2019 WC. C Gayle was out to the first ball of the match. I have now seen some amazing pictures of R Berrington's diabolical lbw decision: the ball hit him outside the line of leg stump and was going further down! There is no decision review system here and had there been, Scot would have qualified for the WC, being just 4 wkts down and on the same total as WI!
Broad has now reached 400 Test wickets and is the youngest pace bowler to get there; he is in 15th place in the list of Test wicket takers.
The Cricketer is a very good magazine these days and good value too: the April issue has 146 pages! It also reveals that when K Williamson arrives at Yorks this summer, he will be the fifth best batsman on the books, going by their career averages: E Callis 65.5, C Pujara 56.4, J Root 51.3, G Ballance 48.5, Williamson 48.48!
Middlesex have requested T Murtagh's release from the Ireland squad so he will miss Ire's 4 day game against Som at Taunton starting on 6 April. Middlesex have an important friendly v Durham MCCU starting on 7 April!
King Cricket Matters
Alex Bowden gives some thoughts on the topic of the month
Absolutely the best recent headline about Australia’s ball tampering is the one on Fox Sports suggesting that David Warner has ‘gone rogue’. The evidence for David Warner’s rogue-going is that (a) he was sitting on his own at one point and (b) he drank Champagne with friends who weren’t cricketers. Based on this, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that we have also gone rogue, because (a) sounds rather lovely while (b) is definitely something we’ve done at weddings and female birthdays.
What is however stated less explicitly is (c) a general vibe that Warner is distancing himself from the team and is also kind of furious. Unnamed players have warned that there could be an ‘incident’ (which, admittedly, could just mean that one or two of them want to lamp him) and there’s a sense that throughout the tour he’s been gradually drifting further and further into Davidwarnerland where David Warner makes the laws and David Warner enforces the laws and everyone else is somehow in the wrong.
If you’re reading articles elsewhere today, there’s a good chance you’ll come across a sentence along the lines of “there’s a growing feeling that Warner was the ringleader” and this probably feels fairly credible to you.
Let’s bulletpoint the circumstantial evidence:
David Warner is an off-field arsehole
David Warner is an on-field arsehole who likes to ‘get involved‘
David Warner was until recently Australia’s ball maintenance guy
The third of those is probably the only one that’s truly of relevance because we all know there are plenty of arseholes who don’t tamper with cricket balls. There has also been a suggestion that Cameron Bancroft only became Ball Management Guy after a dressing room attendant spotted Warner putting sandpaper in his strapping during the second Test at Port Elizabeth. This claim has the general air of being not enormously true based on the vagueness of the source, but we mention it anyway because you never know. We certainly wouldn’t bet big money against it and not just because we already have a lot of outgoings and to do so would therefore be somewhat irresponsible as well as juvenile.
The most compelling case for David Warner as ringleader has been put forward by journalist Geoff Lemon. He thinks Warner’s smarter than he’s generally given credit for (which, in all honesty, isn’t actually all that hard given the public perception of him) but he says he’s also prone to wild mood swings and high aggression. Even never having met him, those qualities just seem instantly and 100 per cent believable.
Lemon doesn’t think Steve Smith can control Warner and instead just tries to accommodate him. He thinks the South Africa experience has got to Warner and that he’s increasingly been driven by what he perceives to be righteous rage. Under a weak captain and an indulgent and protective coach who lacks perspective and self-awareness, you can see how that kind of an attitude might lead Warner towards ever-darker parts of the grey area and incrementally on from there.
An alternative view, which we’ll put forward for balance, is that David Warner is a very convenient and beautifully appropriate fall guy.
We were in a police line-up once. It was when we were at university. We can’t remember exactly how it came about, but we think that someone from the police came onto the campus and said that they needed young men with short dark hair to make up the numbers. So we went down to the station along with a bunch of other short-dark-haired middle-class students and stood next to a lad from the estate with somewhat longer hair and then the person came in and said it was the lad from the estate and we all got a tenner and went and bought ourselves ten pints.
The point is, take almost any conceivable combination of current Test cricketers, line them up alongside David Warner and then ask people to guess which one’s been a dick. Doesn’t even matter what the crime is – who are people going to pick? People are going to pick David Warner because he’s a dick.
The idea that Australia did something wrong and that Warner was 99 per cent responsible is an easy thing to accept because it just seems so fundamentally plausible.
Warner too will be aware of this. He’s spent most of his career feeling like everyone’s got it in for him and while there’s a dash of paranoia and a soupçon of insecurity in that assessment, it’s also pretty much fully accurate and correct.
The man himself, you feel, will have a strong sense of the way the wind is blowing this week and might therefore have concluded that he might as well ‘go rogue’ before he’s officially banished. Why wait?
KC on KP
Alex Bowden shares some thoughts
Cricketers these days just fade away. Other than grainy Twitter clips of him striking boundaries for the [insert city name] Sunbadgerers, we honestly can’t remember the last time we saw Kevin Pietersen play cricket. But he’s definitely retired now.
As we see it, there are two main ways you can go about covering a player’s retirement. (1) You trawl through the archives, pick out his finest innings and try and do a comprehensive career retrospective. (2) You sit down with a coffee and see what first comes into your head as being the peak moment.
The issue with taking the first approach for Kevin Pietersen is that as well as all the great innings, the task also entails wading through a whole heap of stuff about him falling out with people. We once described his feud with the ECB as being exactly like a soap opera because it never ends.
Our view of that thing is increasingly that it was a situation where fairly small stuff grew to seem like big stuff for a bunch of coaches and cricketers who had to spend morning, noon and night together. For context, in one of the more accidentally enlightening passages in his autobiography, KP said: “We are on the road for 250 days a year, we wear our England kit on most of these days … It never, ever ended.” You don’t have to like the guy to read that sentence and sympathise a bit.
The other problem with the ‘some of his best innings’ approach is that, even cut short, Pietersen’s was a long career. It took in 104 Tests, a slightly greater number of one-day internationals and a World T20 win. You can’t really do a functional summary of something that sprawling, which leaves us with option two: you go with the moment you were most excited about and just sort of hope to hell that it speaks of some greater emotional truth that somehow crystallises his entire career.
Having made a coffee and consulted our head, the thing that we thought of as being the peak Kevin Pietersen moment was his first Test innings. We’d guess that somewhere around 99-100 per cent of you will disagree with that. Even those of you who picked something from the same year will probably go with his “series-winning” hundred at the Oval.
Plenty of people think that Pietersen’s hundred defined the series and while it was of course hugely important, the series had to a great extent already been defined by then – there had already been four-and-a-half Test matches, after all. Pietersen’s was probably the key moment that was seen by most people, but that is not the same as being the best moment.
We’ve written before about how we found that whole fifth Test a slightly maudlin experience. Pietersen’s was an autumnal knock, both literally but also in the sense that if there was still much to look forward to in terms of his own career, it was already pretty clear even at the time that the zenith in terms of memorable summers was already drawing to a close.
The first Test had a different vibe. There’d been a hell of a preamble in terms of a crazy volume of adrenal one-day cricket, but Lord’s was where the posturing ended and the important stuff began.
But let’s go even further back, because we need to provide Kevin Pietersen’s back story.
Just before his Test debut, KP had a slight reputation for being awkward, but it wasn’t really thought of as being an insurmountable problem. Andrew Strauss would not at this point have called him a cunt. His personality was really just a background thing; something almost wholly overshadowed by his batting.
Back when there were no Lions in England in 2003-04, Pietersen toured India with England A and scored four centuries. Matt Prior did reasonably well on the same tour and pretty much no-one else emerged in credit. In terms of working out who England should pick to bat in the middle order in coming years, it was a pretty successful tour.
In 2004, the full England side played one-day series in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Kevin Pietersen was from South Africa and South Africa didn’t much like him. Five innings into his one-day international career, Pietersen had been dismissed once, for a golden duck, and was averaging 234, scoring at near-enough a run a ball. In the fifth match against South Africa, Pietersen made his second hundred – an even 100 not out off 69 balls in an England defeat. In the seventh match (different times), he made 116 out of 240 and England lost again.
Presumably they were feeling magnanimous in victory, but the South African fans who had been giving him relentless shit throughout the series were also giving him a bit of applause by this point.
Forget everything that happened afterwards for a moment: this is the character who came to the crease at Lord’s in 2005 and he did so when England had been losing the Ashes for as long as anyone could remember. They had also been losing wickets to Glenn McGrath for as long as anyone could remember.
England’s score shortly after Pietersen emerged was 21-5 and Glenn McGrath had 5-7. All notions that maybe things were different this time around had been inserted into the bin. England lost that match, but with his first (and second) innings in Test cricket, Pietersen reached into the bin, extracted those hopes, wrapped them up in clingfilm and said: “Let’s not be hasty. I think we can make something out of these yet.”
He made just 57 runs, but those 57 runs contained a lot of information and KP did three important things. The first important thing that KP did was pretty much fuck-all. After 41 balls he’d scored nine runs. He faced McGrath, Jason Gillespie and Brett Lee and pretty much just ignored them. He made it look like it was possible to not to subside to 21-5.
The next important thing that KP did was he smashed Glenn McGrath for 14 runs in three balls. This was simply not a thing that happened to Glenn McGrath in any circumstances, let alone (a) against England and (b) when England had pretty much already collapsed.
The final important thing that KP did was he hit Shane Warne for six. Warne had barely bowled by this point and also dismissed KP with his very next delivery, but given KP’s one-day record at this point, hitting Warne for six definitely implanted the idea that Warne being hit for six might happen again and if Warne being hit for six by an England player could happen again, what the hell else could happen?
Pietersen’s second innings in that match was really just him elaborating on these three points. He hit Brett Lee for six, he hit Warne for six again. He made 64 not out as England were bowled out for 180. He said to his team-mates: “It is possible to hammer these bowlers and if it’s possible to hammer them then it’s definitely possible to just sort of hang around working the ball about making steady runs.”
He also said the exact same thing to the fans, which was even more important because the people in the stands were the batteries that powered that England side. That England side redefined what England fans thought their team could do and also how people thought they would go about it.
Kevin Pietersen sent out that message early and as a bonus he also gave the impression that he might play one or two innings that would be worth watching in the future.
In memoriam
I received the following from John Lindley
I thought that you might like to have a copy of this tribute to Sam Kelso, who was involved with Ealing Cricket Club for so many years. He was also Middx League Secretary for some years as well as being a much sought after Dinner Speaker on the Club Dinners Circuit. He spoke alongside some of the very best when such events happened on a regular basis during the Winter months.
Sam Kelso passed away on Sunday 25 February 2018 at the age of 86. Sam made a massive contribution to Ealing Cricket Club, serving as Secretary for 22 years. He will be greatly missed by his family, all of us at ECC, and Hanwell Town FC where he played a vital part in the revival of that club.
Bob Fisher, a long-standing friend of Sam and ECC Trustee delivered a fitting tribute at last week’s AGM which I would like to share with you: “Sam became a playing member of the club in 1952 and was our longest serving member. He made no claim to be the greatest player in the world spending the majority of his time in the club's 2nd XI but he did score over 19,000 runs and he passed a 1000 runs in a season on seven occasions.
He was a very astute and tactically sound captain who could also be very competitive. He captained both the 2nd XI and the 3rd XI leading the 2nd XI to three league titles in 1973, 1975 and 1977. However, he was far more than just a cricketer as he was secretary of the club from 1958 to 1979. These were in the days when there were no mobile phones and no e-mails meaning Sam spent hours and hours at the club working on its behalf.
He wrote the history of the club for our centenary booklet and subsequently wrote the history of the following ten years. He had a true love for this club, a club for which he did so much. I had the privilege of visiting him on a couple of occasions in the days leading up to his death. Whilst we both knew that his days were numbered he asked me about the arrangements for the celebration of the club's 150th year in 2020. A true Ealing man to the end. May he rest in peace.”
I received the following from Katherine Dandridge
We warmly welcome all who would like to celebrate the life of David Paul Dandridge who sadly passed away recently at a service and wake as follows:
Date: Friday 6th April
Time: 4pm
Where: Mortlake Crematorium
The wake afterward will be held at: Shepherds Bush Cricket Club
Dad had requested an item of bright clothing or accessory to be included in funeral guests ensembles if you so wish and also that the service and wake be in the spirit of celebration!
Old Danes Gathering
There will be an Old Danes Gathering at Shepherds Bush Cricket Club on Friday 27 July which is the Friday of their Cricket Week. This event is not a Boys only event and wives, girlfriends and others will all be welcome. There will be an open bar throughout the afternoon and evening with proceedings commencing around 2pm and continuing until you’ve had enough. Thanks to those who have already responded to the invite. I will distribute in April a list of those planning to attend.
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
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James Sharp
Broad Lee House
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High Peak
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An Occasional Cricketing Journal
Edition 184
April 2018
Caption Competition
1. Joe Root: Do you think that the Aussies cheated in the Ashes series?
Moeen Ali: No, we were just crap.
2. Adil Rashid: Why was Cameron Bancroft putting something down his pants?
Barry Mackenzie: He was just feeding his trouser snake.
3. David Willey: What warm up matches are the test boys going to have before the next test series?
Sam Billings: I hear that they are scheduled to play French Cricket on the beach.
4. Adil Rashid: Why has Cameron got his hand in his trousers?
Ken Dodd: He is ball tampering.
5. Adil Rashid: Why is Ben Stokes here? Is he on parole?
Out & About with the Professor
In 1982 some 522 members attended the Yorkshire County Cricket Club’s AGM. A further 100 were locked out. The police had to be called and at least one member tried to get the whole thing postponed on the grounds of public safety. In the event the meeting went ahead amid the toxic atmosphere of two feuding groups of members: one (the “Reform Group”) supporting Geoffrey Boycott, the other supporting the “committee” or some version of the “establishment”. This was a period when the captaincy of Yorkshire ping-ponged around between Boycott, Hampshire and Old and the committee had brought Illingworth back to Headingley as cricket manager but not, perhaps, to play the diplomat. The decidedly fractious relationships between the protagonists lasted for years and indeed there are still echoes of it today, for example, when Boycott stood for election to the Board a couple of years’ ago and received more votes against than for.
By contrast the 2018 AGM, while very well attended, was (sadly?) a much more harmonious affair. We were some £20 million in debt but this, we were told, was a manageable sum given our income streams “going forward”; we had successfully bid for an Ashes Test and Headingley was to be one of the eight venues for the new city-based T20 competition beginning in 2020. We have a growing membership (8,200 in 2017) and are the only county club to be in that position. There are plans in place to return First Class cricket to Sheffield and Bradford (the new T20 competition will necessitate the use of “out” grounds) and the construction of the new South Stand is well advanced and will, “going forward”, substantially increase the capacity of the Ground.
The photograph shows the stand in its current state. It would be fair to say that it will not be ready for the start of the season but it will be for the start of the next season. In the meantime, members were advised to attend home matches with earplugs since there will be some “construction noise”.
So - apart from the management speak - all good news then.
Actually, our previous Chair, Colin Graves, was an inveterate “going forward” man and the new man in charge, Steve Denison, seems to have been infected with the same loathsome habit.
Martin Moxon, the Director of Cricket, had a slightly tougher challenge in reviewing the actual performance of the cricket team; after all the Championship side avoided relegation by a very thin margin. The problem, as everyone in the room knew, was that the team didn’t score enough runs. Once Ballance had been selected for the Test side, no other senior player “stepped up to the plate” (ye gods). Indeed, Moxon thought (“going backwards”?) that this had been a problem for two years now. The solution? Well sport, like any human endeavour, is in part a mental process and so young Martin is going to send the entire team off to see the shrink. All first team players will have three compulsory sessions with the club’s sports psychologist a Dr Mark Nesti from Liverpool John Moores University. This is required because they all have the technical ability to play well and indeed all are looking very good in the nets. So, the problem must lie not in between the netting but in between the ears.
Now I’m sure Dr Nesti is a very able practitioner and may well produce excellent results. All I can offer from my own experience is that most of the psychologists that I have met in university faculties in forty odd years have been very strange indeed. And some demonstrably nuts. Still, let’s hope it works.
A slightly more prosaic solution to the batting problem has been the signing of two wonderful players: Kane Williamson and Cheteshwar Pujara. Had the management known of the possible availability of a couple of blubbing Aussies I suppose they might have been considered. But then again the Headingley crowd – not always the most forgiving of audiences – might not have approved.
When the blubbers had dried their eyes I had a look (not something I often do) at The Times newspaper and, in particular, Michael Atherton’s piece on the tampering subject. How, I wondered, was he going to write about this, remembering, as we all do, his “unfamiliar action”? His article used the word “hypocrisy” in the title and it came, in my view, fairly close to that itself. Atherton knew “to his cost” the moral opprobrium generated by ball tampering which, had been going on: “since the year dot”. He was, therefore, in 1994, little more than a victim of moral indignation. A timeline, beside the article, listed other “dirty tricks” which included Atherton putting dirt in his pockets “to keep his hands dry”. Well…that’s not exactly how I remember it. Indeed, the England management (in the shape, of course, of Raymond Illingworth) did not, I think it fair to say, impose a £2,000 fine on Atherton for hand-drying offences. Wisden records that of the £2,000 fine, half was for the dirt “and half for the lie”.
In all probability Smith, Warner and Bancroft are not great readers of Wisden. Had they been so they might not have come up with the ludicrous business about sticky tape and “granules” of dirt. Unlike Atherton they even managed to lie in the course of their confessions. Given the unreliability of those statements, it also makes it very hard to accept that no bowler was involved in a plan to change the condition of the ball.
These matters did not concern the good folk of Headingley, although there was (how could there not have been?) the odd reference to it during the meeting. The person who did seem to generate some moral indignation (and not for the first time) was Adil Rashid. Members have not forgotten him being “too tired” to play in the final match of the season two years’ back and now were not at all happy about his decision to only play white ball cricket and the Club’s acquiescence. Why wasn’t he being held to his contract? Did he expect anyone to put their hand in their pocket (not an easy thing for some Yorkshiremen at the best of times) to support his benefit? And so on. It would not have been the sort of thing that Brian Sellers would have allowed.
The name of Sellers, by the way, is often invoked by some senior members when some show of authority is felt to be needed. For them, I think, were he still alive and in the government the problems of Brexit transition would have quickly been solved, Monsieur Barnier sent scuttling back to Brussels, and Messrs Putin, Trump and Kim Jong-un put firmly in their place. Sadly he is no longer with us and died, in fact, shortly before the 1982 AGM. He might have been needed then as well.
This & That
Who is it that knows better than all the rest of us that you need to be at the top of your game going into a test match and that to be there you need to have played in the toughest possible matches beforehand? It can only be the ECB and the England team management. Conversely, Mickey Mouse preparation leads to Mickey Mouse performance. Time and again we point this out and no-one seems to listen. What will it take for the ECB to insist on proper practice matches? Will 27 for 9 do it? If the host nation will not provide proper opposition then the ECB should arrange for the Lions to provide it. They are normally not far away.
Good news! Tim Paine and B.J. Watling both seem to be proper wicket keepers which makes you wonder how they got selected for their nation’s test sides. Both have made watching spin bowling in the current South Africa/Australia and NZ/England series less of a painful experience as they take the ball cleanly down the legside and stay down in performing their duties.
Close fielders particularly in front of the wicket nowadays cover themselves in armour to protect themselves. It is, therefore, ridiculous that when a batsman shapes to play an aggressive shot many of them turn around and leap into the air. By doing this they make themselves the largest possible target and expose the only parts of the body not clad in padding. The safest way to field in close is to get down and stay down thus making yourself the smallest possible target. You can also react to any chance of a catch that may be on offer
So KP has decided to retire and for once his actions aren’t received by a fanfare of publicity. I have given him plenty of stick over the years primarily for his loathsomeness. However, it must be recognised that he had an extraordinary talent. I witnessed the beginning of his test career at Lord’s in 2005 when on the second morning he hit Warne for six before holing out.
I subsequently saw several of his test and ODI hundreds of which I have little memory partly because he scored so quickly. I haven’t seen any footage of his big hundred in India on a turning pitch which the Professor rates as his best. I did see some of his innings against the South Africans at Headingly when he laid into Stein and kept clobbering him over mid-on. Perhaps most memorable is that phase he went through when he played all deliveries into the leg side regardless of length or width. He would move outside the off stump as the bowler approached and then play back foot drives through mid-wicket from eighteen inches outside the off stump. I think that I mentioned before that he seemed to mellow more recently and became quite a good commentator in the IPL and Big Bash.
Why are you allowed to rub the ball on your trousers to make it shine but not rub it in the dirt to rough it up?
In the old days goalkeepers used to be in charge of their six-yard boxes and would reckon to collect all crosses and control all other activity. Nowadays they stay rigidly on their goal lines and if they come for a cross just flail at it with a one-handed punch that could go anywhere. Why is this? In general goalkeepers are bigger than they used to be and subject to far less physical abuse from centre forwards, but they seem unable to put it about themselves. Ron Springett was under six foot but you would always expect him to catch all crosses and never resort to punching.
Morgan Matters
After his long winter vigil, the Great man is digging out his windcheater in readiness for the season
Thanks for Googlies: after all these years, you still cannot spell Eoin! I never use the incorrect Notts Forest; the correct abbreviation is Nottm! Notts is County... and county cricket!
The ICC is at last going to try to curb the dire expansion of T20 at the expense of first class and, in particular, Test cricket. They could start with the ECB's ridiculous plans for the expansion in GB due to happen in (the year) 2020. The collective union for cricketers worldwide (FICA) has enthusiastically welcomed the move to introduce stronger regulation of domestic T20 leagues.
ECB board member Andy Nash has resigned in a huff over the allocation of Tests and other internationals to the counties and compensation payments to other counties not getting many or any. I am not quite clear why he is so upset but it is probably because Somerset are not getting enough internationals or compensation for not getting enough internationals.
Eoin will play his 200th ODI in tonight's game at Christchurch.
Astonishing! Rangers had a brilliant 1-3 win at 3rd placed Aston Villa (who had thumped leaders Wolves 4-1 on Sat) in front of more than 30,000 home fans expecting a comfortable home win to maintain their promotion challenge. Ryan Manning, Jake Bidwell and Luke Freeman put Rangers 3 up before the home team grabbed an 88th minute consolation when most of the home fans had headed towards the boozer. I was always confident that Rangers would avoid relegation (he lied), but this seems to have confirmed it. They are now 16 points clear of the relegation places.
R Sidebottom has joined Surrey as a "bowling consultant to work alongside Geoff Arnold". I have often seen GA at 2s games without knowing what his role was... is he now guiding his successor? He must be about 100 by now! I have just looked him up and he will be 74 in September, but he looks older. Why would you want to work for so long? I was 49 when I retired!
Middlesex have signed A Agar (WA, SLA) for the entire 2018 T20.
WI qualify for the 2019 WC. C Gayle was out to the first ball of the match. I have now seen some amazing pictures of R Berrington's diabolical lbw decision: the ball hit him outside the line of leg stump and was going further down! There is no decision review system here and had there been, Scot would have qualified for the WC, being just 4 wkts down and on the same total as WI!
Broad has now reached 400 Test wickets and is the youngest pace bowler to get there; he is in 15th place in the list of Test wicket takers.
The Cricketer is a very good magazine these days and good value too: the April issue has 146 pages! It also reveals that when K Williamson arrives at Yorks this summer, he will be the fifth best batsman on the books, going by their career averages: E Callis 65.5, C Pujara 56.4, J Root 51.3, G Ballance 48.5, Williamson 48.48!
Middlesex have requested T Murtagh's release from the Ireland squad so he will miss Ire's 4 day game against Som at Taunton starting on 6 April. Middlesex have an important friendly v Durham MCCU starting on 7 April!
King Cricket Matters
Alex Bowden gives some thoughts on the topic of the month
Absolutely the best recent headline about Australia’s ball tampering is the one on Fox Sports suggesting that David Warner has ‘gone rogue’. The evidence for David Warner’s rogue-going is that (a) he was sitting on his own at one point and (b) he drank Champagne with friends who weren’t cricketers. Based on this, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that we have also gone rogue, because (a) sounds rather lovely while (b) is definitely something we’ve done at weddings and female birthdays.
What is however stated less explicitly is (c) a general vibe that Warner is distancing himself from the team and is also kind of furious. Unnamed players have warned that there could be an ‘incident’ (which, admittedly, could just mean that one or two of them want to lamp him) and there’s a sense that throughout the tour he’s been gradually drifting further and further into Davidwarnerland where David Warner makes the laws and David Warner enforces the laws and everyone else is somehow in the wrong.
If you’re reading articles elsewhere today, there’s a good chance you’ll come across a sentence along the lines of “there’s a growing feeling that Warner was the ringleader” and this probably feels fairly credible to you.
Let’s bulletpoint the circumstantial evidence:
David Warner is an off-field arsehole
David Warner is an on-field arsehole who likes to ‘get involved‘
David Warner was until recently Australia’s ball maintenance guy
The third of those is probably the only one that’s truly of relevance because we all know there are plenty of arseholes who don’t tamper with cricket balls. There has also been a suggestion that Cameron Bancroft only became Ball Management Guy after a dressing room attendant spotted Warner putting sandpaper in his strapping during the second Test at Port Elizabeth. This claim has the general air of being not enormously true based on the vagueness of the source, but we mention it anyway because you never know. We certainly wouldn’t bet big money against it and not just because we already have a lot of outgoings and to do so would therefore be somewhat irresponsible as well as juvenile.
The most compelling case for David Warner as ringleader has been put forward by journalist Geoff Lemon. He thinks Warner’s smarter than he’s generally given credit for (which, in all honesty, isn’t actually all that hard given the public perception of him) but he says he’s also prone to wild mood swings and high aggression. Even never having met him, those qualities just seem instantly and 100 per cent believable.
Lemon doesn’t think Steve Smith can control Warner and instead just tries to accommodate him. He thinks the South Africa experience has got to Warner and that he’s increasingly been driven by what he perceives to be righteous rage. Under a weak captain and an indulgent and protective coach who lacks perspective and self-awareness, you can see how that kind of an attitude might lead Warner towards ever-darker parts of the grey area and incrementally on from there.
An alternative view, which we’ll put forward for balance, is that David Warner is a very convenient and beautifully appropriate fall guy.
We were in a police line-up once. It was when we were at university. We can’t remember exactly how it came about, but we think that someone from the police came onto the campus and said that they needed young men with short dark hair to make up the numbers. So we went down to the station along with a bunch of other short-dark-haired middle-class students and stood next to a lad from the estate with somewhat longer hair and then the person came in and said it was the lad from the estate and we all got a tenner and went and bought ourselves ten pints.
The point is, take almost any conceivable combination of current Test cricketers, line them up alongside David Warner and then ask people to guess which one’s been a dick. Doesn’t even matter what the crime is – who are people going to pick? People are going to pick David Warner because he’s a dick.
The idea that Australia did something wrong and that Warner was 99 per cent responsible is an easy thing to accept because it just seems so fundamentally plausible.
Warner too will be aware of this. He’s spent most of his career feeling like everyone’s got it in for him and while there’s a dash of paranoia and a soupçon of insecurity in that assessment, it’s also pretty much fully accurate and correct.
The man himself, you feel, will have a strong sense of the way the wind is blowing this week and might therefore have concluded that he might as well ‘go rogue’ before he’s officially banished. Why wait?
KC on KP
Alex Bowden shares some thoughts
Cricketers these days just fade away. Other than grainy Twitter clips of him striking boundaries for the [insert city name] Sunbadgerers, we honestly can’t remember the last time we saw Kevin Pietersen play cricket. But he’s definitely retired now.
As we see it, there are two main ways you can go about covering a player’s retirement. (1) You trawl through the archives, pick out his finest innings and try and do a comprehensive career retrospective. (2) You sit down with a coffee and see what first comes into your head as being the peak moment.
The issue with taking the first approach for Kevin Pietersen is that as well as all the great innings, the task also entails wading through a whole heap of stuff about him falling out with people. We once described his feud with the ECB as being exactly like a soap opera because it never ends.
Our view of that thing is increasingly that it was a situation where fairly small stuff grew to seem like big stuff for a bunch of coaches and cricketers who had to spend morning, noon and night together. For context, in one of the more accidentally enlightening passages in his autobiography, KP said: “We are on the road for 250 days a year, we wear our England kit on most of these days … It never, ever ended.” You don’t have to like the guy to read that sentence and sympathise a bit.
The other problem with the ‘some of his best innings’ approach is that, even cut short, Pietersen’s was a long career. It took in 104 Tests, a slightly greater number of one-day internationals and a World T20 win. You can’t really do a functional summary of something that sprawling, which leaves us with option two: you go with the moment you were most excited about and just sort of hope to hell that it speaks of some greater emotional truth that somehow crystallises his entire career.
Having made a coffee and consulted our head, the thing that we thought of as being the peak Kevin Pietersen moment was his first Test innings. We’d guess that somewhere around 99-100 per cent of you will disagree with that. Even those of you who picked something from the same year will probably go with his “series-winning” hundred at the Oval.
Plenty of people think that Pietersen’s hundred defined the series and while it was of course hugely important, the series had to a great extent already been defined by then – there had already been four-and-a-half Test matches, after all. Pietersen’s was probably the key moment that was seen by most people, but that is not the same as being the best moment.
We’ve written before about how we found that whole fifth Test a slightly maudlin experience. Pietersen’s was an autumnal knock, both literally but also in the sense that if there was still much to look forward to in terms of his own career, it was already pretty clear even at the time that the zenith in terms of memorable summers was already drawing to a close.
The first Test had a different vibe. There’d been a hell of a preamble in terms of a crazy volume of adrenal one-day cricket, but Lord’s was where the posturing ended and the important stuff began.
But let’s go even further back, because we need to provide Kevin Pietersen’s back story.
Just before his Test debut, KP had a slight reputation for being awkward, but it wasn’t really thought of as being an insurmountable problem. Andrew Strauss would not at this point have called him a cunt. His personality was really just a background thing; something almost wholly overshadowed by his batting.
Back when there were no Lions in England in 2003-04, Pietersen toured India with England A and scored four centuries. Matt Prior did reasonably well on the same tour and pretty much no-one else emerged in credit. In terms of working out who England should pick to bat in the middle order in coming years, it was a pretty successful tour.
In 2004, the full England side played one-day series in Zimbabwe and South Africa. Kevin Pietersen was from South Africa and South Africa didn’t much like him. Five innings into his one-day international career, Pietersen had been dismissed once, for a golden duck, and was averaging 234, scoring at near-enough a run a ball. In the fifth match against South Africa, Pietersen made his second hundred – an even 100 not out off 69 balls in an England defeat. In the seventh match (different times), he made 116 out of 240 and England lost again.
Presumably they were feeling magnanimous in victory, but the South African fans who had been giving him relentless shit throughout the series were also giving him a bit of applause by this point.
Forget everything that happened afterwards for a moment: this is the character who came to the crease at Lord’s in 2005 and he did so when England had been losing the Ashes for as long as anyone could remember. They had also been losing wickets to Glenn McGrath for as long as anyone could remember.
England’s score shortly after Pietersen emerged was 21-5 and Glenn McGrath had 5-7. All notions that maybe things were different this time around had been inserted into the bin. England lost that match, but with his first (and second) innings in Test cricket, Pietersen reached into the bin, extracted those hopes, wrapped them up in clingfilm and said: “Let’s not be hasty. I think we can make something out of these yet.”
He made just 57 runs, but those 57 runs contained a lot of information and KP did three important things. The first important thing that KP did was pretty much fuck-all. After 41 balls he’d scored nine runs. He faced McGrath, Jason Gillespie and Brett Lee and pretty much just ignored them. He made it look like it was possible to not to subside to 21-5.
The next important thing that KP did was he smashed Glenn McGrath for 14 runs in three balls. This was simply not a thing that happened to Glenn McGrath in any circumstances, let alone (a) against England and (b) when England had pretty much already collapsed.
The final important thing that KP did was he hit Shane Warne for six. Warne had barely bowled by this point and also dismissed KP with his very next delivery, but given KP’s one-day record at this point, hitting Warne for six definitely implanted the idea that Warne being hit for six might happen again and if Warne being hit for six by an England player could happen again, what the hell else could happen?
Pietersen’s second innings in that match was really just him elaborating on these three points. He hit Brett Lee for six, he hit Warne for six again. He made 64 not out as England were bowled out for 180. He said to his team-mates: “It is possible to hammer these bowlers and if it’s possible to hammer them then it’s definitely possible to just sort of hang around working the ball about making steady runs.”
He also said the exact same thing to the fans, which was even more important because the people in the stands were the batteries that powered that England side. That England side redefined what England fans thought their team could do and also how people thought they would go about it.
Kevin Pietersen sent out that message early and as a bonus he also gave the impression that he might play one or two innings that would be worth watching in the future.
In memoriam
I received the following from John Lindley
I thought that you might like to have a copy of this tribute to Sam Kelso, who was involved with Ealing Cricket Club for so many years. He was also Middx League Secretary for some years as well as being a much sought after Dinner Speaker on the Club Dinners Circuit. He spoke alongside some of the very best when such events happened on a regular basis during the Winter months.
Sam Kelso passed away on Sunday 25 February 2018 at the age of 86. Sam made a massive contribution to Ealing Cricket Club, serving as Secretary for 22 years. He will be greatly missed by his family, all of us at ECC, and Hanwell Town FC where he played a vital part in the revival of that club.
Bob Fisher, a long-standing friend of Sam and ECC Trustee delivered a fitting tribute at last week’s AGM which I would like to share with you: “Sam became a playing member of the club in 1952 and was our longest serving member. He made no claim to be the greatest player in the world spending the majority of his time in the club's 2nd XI but he did score over 19,000 runs and he passed a 1000 runs in a season on seven occasions.
He was a very astute and tactically sound captain who could also be very competitive. He captained both the 2nd XI and the 3rd XI leading the 2nd XI to three league titles in 1973, 1975 and 1977. However, he was far more than just a cricketer as he was secretary of the club from 1958 to 1979. These were in the days when there were no mobile phones and no e-mails meaning Sam spent hours and hours at the club working on its behalf.
He wrote the history of the club for our centenary booklet and subsequently wrote the history of the following ten years. He had a true love for this club, a club for which he did so much. I had the privilege of visiting him on a couple of occasions in the days leading up to his death. Whilst we both knew that his days were numbered he asked me about the arrangements for the celebration of the club's 150th year in 2020. A true Ealing man to the end. May he rest in peace.”
I received the following from Katherine Dandridge
We warmly welcome all who would like to celebrate the life of David Paul Dandridge who sadly passed away recently at a service and wake as follows:
Date: Friday 6th April
Time: 4pm
Where: Mortlake Crematorium
The wake afterward will be held at: Shepherds Bush Cricket Club
Dad had requested an item of bright clothing or accessory to be included in funeral guests ensembles if you so wish and also that the service and wake be in the spirit of celebration!
Old Danes Gathering
There will be an Old Danes Gathering at Shepherds Bush Cricket Club on Friday 27 July which is the Friday of their Cricket Week. This event is not a Boys only event and wives, girlfriends and others will all be welcome. There will be an open bar throughout the afternoon and evening with proceedings commencing around 2pm and continuing until you’ve had enough. Thanks to those who have already responded to the invite. I will distribute in April a list of those planning to attend.
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
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