G&C 203
GOOGLIES & CHINAMEN
An Occasional Cricketing Journal
Edition 203
November 2019
Out & About with the Professor
I’m not sure how to greet the news that Chris Silverwood has been appointed the new England coach. He was a useful performer for Yorkshire for a number of seasons but was limited by injury and, I seem to recall, played a couple of seasons for Middlesex. His international performances were modest. I don’t doubt that he is a good chap and all that (anyone from the historic town of Pontefract must be thoroughly reliable) but that, for me, isn’t quite the issue. I don’t know what to make of his appointment not because of the attributes he may or may not have; I don’t know what to make of it because I don’t know what international cricket coaches actually do.
We all know what coaches do at school or club level – they help players improve their technique, advance their cricket knowledge and education and instil confidence. I guess that still applies at county level – and Silverwood had considerable success at Essex. But what do they do at international level?
I have, in the past, sought an answer to this question from a couple of people who have held the post. On a couple of cricket tours I have asked both David Lloyd and Graham Gooch not, “What do you do?” (possibly a little insensitive, not to say blunt) but, “How much coaching do you do?”. Both said that there was very little time to do any. “ ‘ave you seen the skedule?” (Gooch…think Essex man), “ ‘ardly any time to turn round never mind coaching”. He then rattled off the timetable. On an overseas tour these days when they weren’t playing, travelling or resting (having travelled all the previous day, for example) there was little time to do anything much. But what about at home? “Well” (Lloyd this time) “what people forget is that it isn’t like a club. Even with central contracts these players come from all around the country. What’s more, they have private lives and family commitments. Many of the England players are husbands and fathers. We can’t just tell to be at the club for 9am practice.” And I think you can see the point. We might want to add (or some of us might) time-consuming little foreign trips to the IPL, etc., to earn some extra quids….and why not?
But, if all this is true, and time is very limited, what, to repeat, exactly does the international coach do?
A couple of years’ ago I went to the last day of the Test at Old Trafford between England and South Africa. I gave myself far too much time to get there and so was in the ground very early. Broad and Ali were the not out batsmen and England at 224-8 were in need of runs. Given that I was so early, and very few people were there, it was a chance to see the coaches in action. Broad, not out, clearly needed some time in the nets before play. I watched him walk across the ground to the nets where Ramprakash threw him 15 balls in one of those dog thrower things. 15 balls, I counted them, (yes, yes, I know, sad or what?) but that was it. After 15 he walked back. Nothing notable was said. No: “Get your foot to the pitch of the ball”, or “Keep your elbow up”, or any of the other schoolboy coaching homilies: just 15 hits and off. And that was Ramps, it wasn’t even the Head Coach. Broad got 5, by the way.
So…what do they do?
Presumably they have an important say in selection (formal or not), advice about the opposition (although these days many of the top players are IPL/Big Bash (soon The Hundred) chums and so know a lot about each other anyway. They surely discuss tactics with the captain, although how much of that is determined on the field of play is difficult to know. Perhaps there is some psychological pep-talks or similar (but isn’t that already covered by the team shrink?).
So…what...? Etc.
One thing they don’t do, which I think they should, is to take the interminable press interviews. In football, it is always the manager who makes the first responses to the Press after the match. They obviously all attend the same training course where they are told to speak to the TV for 90 seconds and say almost nothing. They: “couldn’t have asked more from the boys/were pleased the way they kept trying when 6-0 down/ were disappointed with the refs decision to send off half the team/…and so on: dreary platitude following dreary platitude. It is probably too late for Root now, and he seems to have mastered the art (been on the same course), but why do the coaches in cricket leave it to the captains? I recall Strauss having to scurry off the field after “a few words” with Athers or someone, in order to get the jacket off and pads on, to open the innings. I think he was out shortly afterwards. I’ve heard new national captains say that dealing with the Press is the hardest and most distracting part of the job. Bayliss clearly didn’t see taking this weight from his captain’s shoulders as part of his job and nor, so I hear, will Silverwood.
Why not?
After all… what else do they do?
After receiving this I replied to the Prof:
I think Bayliss made the stipulation before he took the job that he wouldn’t do the press interviews. I think that it is part of the Sky money deal that captains or someone have to be made available. They probably only bother with the Press so that they won’t come off their Christmas card list…
He responded:
Really? Could Bayliss have made such a deal?
How do you know it was part of the Sky contract to only speak to captains? If so, can the contracts not be changed? I'm sure that Athers et al would be very happy to speak to the England coach for "a few words". Especially since Root never says anything of any interest to anyone.
I replied
Maybe Silverwood hasn’t made that stipulation, or the ECB have told him to do as he’s told. I think that the post-match interviews are totally tedious and I turn off before them. And awards ceremonies. But it is even worse in football where sweaty inarticulate young men who can’t speak the language in the first place are asked to comment on technical aspects of the game. And most of the managers can’t speak English either. Maybe these interviews will fade out and the broadcasters will find other ways to fill out the lengthy match postmortems?
This &That
Overheard during a football commentary: “He could nutmeg a mermaid”
Premiership soccer has got so precise that you can no longer get a goal from a marginal or blatant offside position despite the daft changes to the offside laws. It’s just as well that there are other changes that leads to goals. First is that no longer can fifteen stone central defenders go through centre forwards or their front-line chums and so many of them stand around wondering what to do. It has also become the general rule that defenders cannot tackle in the box lest their intentions are misunderstood. And then there are the full backs who are required to participate in “playing out from the back” rather than give the ball a good thump up the line. They are also required to play as wingers as well and so need to be ultra-fit, very fast and to some extent skilful. Being a good tackler and defensive positional play come well down their list of requirements and so they leave plenty of openings for forwards to create chances.
I see that the one-time solution to England’s opening batsman position, Haseb Hameed, has been released by Lancashire. I know that he suffered an injury but this is a dramatic fall from stardom.
I suspect that Sam Northeast is rapidly becoming the new James Hildreth as the man the ECB ignored. He, of course was ignored by Middlesex when he left Kent and Ravi Bopara has been given a similar pass by Good ‘ol Gus.
In a T20 international between Australia and Sri Lanka Finch and Warner, who made 100 not out, both scored at 178 but they were overshadowed by Maxwell who scored 62 at 221. The Australians racked up a formidable 233 for 2. The Sri Lankan bowler, Kasun Rajitha, conceded 75 runs from his four overs. Sri Lanka finished on 99 for 9 and so lost by a huge 134 in a twenty over match.
Victoria won the toss and elected to bat in their Sheffield Shield match at Melbourne. Finch and Maxwell were scheduled to bat at five and six in the order but neither got in until the score had reached 473. Nic Maddinson made 224, Marcus Harris 116 and Will Pucovski 123. When Peter Handscomb, who bottom scored with 30, declared at 616 for 6 he must have felt secure in having the upper hand. This feeling would have been enhanced when South Australia’s Jake Weatherald was out to the first ball of the innings. When Travis Head was out at 185 for 4 Victoria must have expected a first innings lead but they were thwarted by Tom Cooper who made 271 not out, Alex Carey 117 and Tom Andrews 101 as South Australia went on to 671 for 6.
I hadn’t seen much Caribbean T20 this year but turned on Sky whilst preparing my dinner to see Guyana Amazon Warriors struggling at 90 for 2 after 12 overs. I was then treated to an extraordinary display of hitting by their opener, Brandon King, who moved from 40 to 132 not out over the remaining overs. This was clean hitting to all parts of the ground against a Barbadian attack which included international bowlers: Holder, Shakib, Gurney and Duminy.
Professional footballers have always had too much spare time on their hands and one of the ways they fill that up is to hang around at barber shops. The current favoured style for white boys is the short back and sides that makes them look like conscripts from the fifties. The black fraternity have always gone in for dying their hair blonde with or without short dreadlocks to accompany. I noticed a variation on this when Reece James came on as a very impressive substitute for Chelsea against Burnley last Saturday. He has a hairstyle reminiscent of a seventies Biba lampshade. It is of course OK to have a distinctive hairstyle if you are playing well but if you are having a shocker every missed tackle or misdirected pass is immediately attributable to you, which may be why Saha always looks indifferent.
Spurs paid £57m for Tanguy Ndombele, Arsenal paid £75m for Pepe, Newcastle paid c£50 m for Joelinton and, of course, there is Fred. None of these have made an impact in the Premiership yet or indeed have established themselves in their club’s first elevens. It is even worse for central defenders who cost an arm and a leg and just look like duffers- Mustafi, Sanchez, Otamendi etc. And then there is Aurier who the miserly Spurs paid £23m for. Gary Neville: “I always think when you watch Aurier defend, it's a mess, It's just something that you see. He's a player who's not in control. He's not composed. He's rash. You always think with Aurier there's a good chance it's a yellow, it's a red or it's a goal given away. If he gets away with those three it's a pretty rare game.”
I turned on Sky Cricket last week not realising that the T20 World Cup qualifiers were on from Dubai/Abu Dhabi. And there were two ex-Middlesex men, Stirling and Balbirnie, leading Ireland to a victory. Stirling has scored well in these matches and is highly rated by the commentators. Another ex-Middlesex man, Adam Rossington, has been selected by Shane Warne for the Lord’s based Hundred side.
Morgan Matters
The GJM starts with a surprising confession
Since the cricket season ended, I have surprised myself by not really missing it because i) Middx were so dreadful that it seems like a release; and ii) I have had good entertainment on the box like the (rugby) World Cup and the (athletics) World Championships.
Dawid Malan is stepping down as Middlesex captain and O Rayner and T Barber are being released, so it looks as if M Holden survives (never believe rumours you hear circulating at Lord's!). N Sowter has agreed a 2 year contract extension and M Cummins has signed a 3 year “Kolpak” deal (i.e. he does not count as an overseas player, but he has to give up his WI career).
BBC Sport’s users have chosen this “team of the season”:
D Sibley (chosen by 88% of users),
A Cook (50%),
M Labuschagne (84%).
S Northeast (65%),
D Malan (41%),
D Vilas (70%),
R Higgins (46%),
L Gregory (49%),
S Harmer (68%),
K Abbott (64%),
C Rushworth (49%).
The media are saying that the ECB want G Kirsten as the next head coach and they are meeting today (2/10).
The Players' Player of the Year Award has gone to B Stokes ahead of S Harmer, R Higgins and D Sibley. Young PotY was T Banton and the Women's P of the Summer was S Ecclestone.
G Kirsten is likely to be announced as England's new head coach next week, according to the media.
England coach: C Silverwood is now spoken about as the likely choice.
Rs have just beaten Blackburn 4-2 (Wells, Eze, Osayi-Samuel and Hugill) and are now 9th. Both Wells and Hugill are in the top 7 goal scorers in the Championship.
C Silverwood is confirmed as England's new coach and so I will now remind people that he is a Middlesex man!
JSCR tells me that M Ferguson (aka The Ferg) has died aged 76.
I have been looking at the performances of the Middlesex players in the 2019 first class season and it does not make enjoyable reading. Only ten players made 200 runs and their averages were:
Malan 48.14,
Simpson 44.29,
Robson 35.46,
Harris 33.67,
Helm 33.63,
Gubbins 27.82,
Eskinazi 24.21,
Roland-Jones 24.0
Scott 21.83
Holden 13.65;
only five players took 20 wickets and their averages were:
Murtagh 16.33,
Helm 25.21,
Roland-Jones 28.2,
Finn 30
Harris 39.7.
Whoever takes over the captaincy must surely come from this group (unless an outsider is brought in?), but it is not clear who it should be. Esky looked to be the next in line, but his form deteriorated badly towards the end of the season (in the Championship his batting average was only 19) and he was omitted from the last 2 matches and Gubbins's (in the Championship his average was only 22) form was similarly disappointing. The leading candidates would therefore appear to be John Simpson, Sam Robson, or possibly, Toby Roland-Jones... unless someone is brought in from outside (eg P Handscomb see below).
The Cricketer also thinks Dawid is going to Yorks and they also tell us that coach S Law wants Peter Handscomb as overseas player and as captain. PH has 16 Test caps (scoring 2 centuries) and has county experience with Durham, Gloucs and Yorks and was topscorer for Durham in the first innings against Middlesex at Lord's last month, making an impressive 54 off 72 balls, one of only 3 fifties in the low-scoring match (the Robson brothers made the other two). The C also tells us that "Martin Andersson hopes to be fit to bowl again when the 2020 season arrives, having been restricted to batting following a stress fracture suffered in 2018."
The ECB have announced that 3.15m people attended international and domestic cricket in the 2019 summer, an increase of 18% on 2018, not surprising, I suppose, with a WC and an Ashes series in the same summer.
S Harmer won the Cricket Writers Club County Championship Player of the Year... what? Ahead of Max Holden?
G Dobell thinks that "the introduction of the Hundred really does appear to threaten the viability of the county game and as the wonderful season of 2019 reminded us, that would be a damn shame". M Henderson tells us that Notts put up "the worst performance in the history of County Cricket: they lost 10 of their 14 Championship matches". A Samson tells us that "Darren Stevens became the oldest player to score a first class double century since Walter Keeton in 1949 and he also became the oldest to score a double century and take 5 wickets in a first class match since WG Grace".
Ex-Middlesex keeper Stuart Poynter has ended his Ireland career by signing a new deal with Durham to avoid having to register as an overseas player, despite being born in Hammersmith and going to school in Teddington.
A Flower is leaving the ECB after 12 years.
P Stirling was top of both the Middlesex batting (50) and bowling (14.5) averages according to the Cricketer: how will they replace him? He did not play enough to qualify for "my" averages, given above.
Liam Plunkett "achieved" a rare double for Surrey in the Championship by finishing bottom of the batting averages with a remarkable 0.66 and matched that by also finishing bottom of the bowling averages with a splendid 160! Some were saying he was unlucky not to be going on tour!
It's official: Malan is in talks with Yorks, while George Scott has actually signed for Gloucs.
R Bopara has joined Sussex.
Rs had a good win at Hull by 2 to 3. Ryan Manning and Ebere Eze (2 pens) the scorers; Hull's second came in the 7th minute of stoppage time. Rs are now 5th and only 1 point off the promotion spots.
The Hundred: the only Middx players selected for the Hundred squads are: Malan (Trent), Simpson (Northern), Sowter (Oval), Morgan (London) and Helm (Birmingham).
There is quite a lot in the news at the moment about footballers getting dementia (and dying because of brain damage caused by heading heavy footballs), the only example being quoted is Jeff Astle, but i) Tony Hateley died from exactly the same thing didn't he? and ii) that was in the days when they played with very heavy mud-soaked balls (like we used to play with), not today's sleek, light, mud-free versions.
England are to play 2 Tests in SL in March as part of the ICC World Test Championship.
Today's G has a large photo of Ollie Watkins scoring one of his 2 goals against Rs at Loftus Road last night in the 1-3 loss to Brentford, but there is no report, just 2 sentences adjacent to the photo... I suppose it is better than no coverage at all?
Shakib al Hasan (Bang Test capt) has been banned for 2 years for "failing to report corrupt approaches".
Vic M points out that there are no Welshmen in the Welsh Fire (Hundred) team and generally shares my pessimism about the whole thing.
Odd Fellows
This article appeared on the BBC website
Picking teams is fun. That’s why fantasy cricket leagues are a thing. Tell you what’s not fun though: picking a team for a living and being subjected to actual real-life scrutiny for all of your terrible decisions. Whenever a Test squad is announced, there’s generally at least one selection you’ll disagree with and quite often it’s James Vince. Whoever it is though, you can normally at least understand how the decision came about, even if you don’t necessarily agree with it.
However, every now and again, about once every five years or so, there’s an out-and-out weird Test selection that makes absolutely no sense at all.
Here’s a true thing that you might not be fully aware of: these truly weird selections are actually very hard to identify when you look back into the past. Hindsight knackers everything up, you see. Here’s a couple of examples:
Usman Afzaal played three Tests for England and made 83 runs. His feels like a weird selection because we think of him as a nothingy sort of middle-order Test batsman. But Afzaal averaged 40 in first-class cricket and England needed a middle-order batsman. His selection made total sense.
Chris Schofield played two Tests for England and never took a wicket. We remember him as a leg-spinner who couldn’t even hack it in county cricket, but he was called up before anyone knew he would utterly fail to live up to his promise. He made his Test debut at 21 at a time when there was huge desire to find a wrist spinner. His selection was understandable.
Here are some weirder ones. Not good, not bad – just weird.
Darren Pattinson, 2008
One cap, two wickets at 48.00
The Pattinsons moved around. Darren was born in Grimsby, James was born in Melbourne, then they all went back to the UK for a bit. “We lived in one of those skinny houses,” said James about the period the family spent in Cleethorpes. As we all know, James ended up playing for Australia, but only after Darren had played one Test for England. It wasn’t the fact he had an Australian accent that made it weird. It was the fact that he was almost 29 and had only played 11 first-class matches. (He’d mostly been working as a roofer.)
England seemed to change their entire selection policy out of nowhere for this one. At that time they didn’t really do ‘horses for courses’. Whenever there was an opening, they had a hierarchy and the players in that hierarchy tended to have quite a bit of cricket ahead of them and generally quite a bit more than Pattinson behind them as well.
To provide the necessary context, here are the pace bowlers who made their Test debuts before and after Pattinson: Chris Tremlett, Stuart Broad, Tim Bresnan, Graham Onions and…
Amjad Khan, 2009
One cap, one wicket at 122.00
Sometimes, even with that era’s very careful ‘picking-on-promise’ sort of policy, selections still ended up slightly weird. Amjad Khan was a good bowler, but in terms of promise, he was never The Next Big Thing. He was also sufficiently injury-prone that he never really forced his way into the team based on his returns in county cricket either.
Yet somehow, thanks to a certain amount of promise and a reasonable record and a couple of injuries, he played a Test match. His first over lasted nine balls and he was later fined for excessive appealing.
Amjad Khan is the only person born in Denmark to play Test cricket, which is weird enough to warrant inclusion in itself.
Scott Borthwick, 2014
One cap, five runs at 2.50 and four wickets at 20.50
What on earth was that all about? Scott Borthwick basically played for England because he happened to be in Australia.
Depending on your nationality, you may or may not remember the 2013/14 Ashes. If you don’t remember it, all you really need to know is that it did not go amazingly well for England.
It went so badly, in fact, that when Graeme Swann retired after the third Test, England concluded that it wasn’t worth spending money on long haul flights. Borthwick was already over in Australia playing Grade cricket, so they added him to the squad.
By the fifth Test, there were quite a lot of players who England did not want to pick because they were fragile eggshell men. Borthwick was duly selected as the frontline spinner, despite having finished 15th in Durham’s Championship averages the previous season.
Scott Borthwick is a batsman now.
Joe Denly, 2019
Eight caps, 457 runs at 28.56, no wickets
Joe Denly made his Test debut against the West Indies earlier this year. Let’s walk through how that actually came about. Denly had a really good 2018 domestic season in white ball cricket. He made some runs and bowled a bit more than he had done in the past. His leg-spin was duly recategorised from ‘part-time’ to ‘handy second string’. Even though he’d only averaged 34.50 in the second division of the County Championship, he was called into England’s Test squad for the tour of Sri Lanka. He wasn’t named in the limited overs squads, but when Liam Dawson was injured, they brought him in. He played the T20 international and took four wickets. A combination of that performance and hanging around without being Keaton Jennings meant Denly made his Test debut. Ever since then, he has done just enough to avoid being dropped and gives every impression he will continue in that vein pretty much forever.
The Fag End of the SeasonIan Louis Harris (Ged) has the last words
Monday 23 September 2019
Whose idea was it to play first class cricket in England beyond the autumn equinox this year? I suppose it is inevitable as the authorities try to fit more and more short form cricket into the central chunk of the summer that the first-class season will increasingly bookend those tournaments. Anyway, this round of matches was entirely played after the equinox (which, for astronomical geeks, took place about 40 minutes before play was supposed to start on 23 September). The Lord's match for this fag end of the season was Middlesex v Derbyshire.
I had work commitments for much of the day but wanted to show the Lord's pavilion to a couple of Z/Yen's keen youngsters; Morgan and Sean (the latter being Michael's nephew). I got to Lord's in time to see a little bit of cricket before the fellas arrived, but by the time they got to Lord's it was raining. Still, I could show them around the pavilion and could also show them some live sport in the form of real tennis, where a couple of my pals were battling out a tournament match. After my guests departed, I joined the Seaxe Club evening for a quick drink before going home.
Tuesday 24 September 2019
I had pre-arranged to spend the day with DJ at Lord's, but the weather forecast looked so shocking we expected no play, so we scaled back our arrangement to be lunch only. I agreed to play tennis as a late substitute at 15:00. The timing worked very well - I was able to get a good chunk of work done before meeting DJ at Lord's around 12:15 and taking some early lunch and having a good chat with him.
Miraculously, there was a short hiatus in the rain that enabled some 20-25 minutes of play, which we enjoyed in glorious sunshine, before the clouds and rain returned. I guessed, correctly, that any further breaks in the rain would be too brief to enable play and in any case I think David felt that he had enjoyed the shortened but enjoyable get together and he would return to some work-oriented tasks.
I had a good hour of tennis before learning that stumps had been drawn early which enabled me to shower, change and get to the Middlesex Sponsors party in perfect time. Very few sponsors turned up as the weather had been so poor, thus, unusually, I chatted with several players, as they outnumbered the sponsors. I spoke with Ethan Bamber for the first time who didn't seem to realise how impressive he now looks. I hope my pep talk helped; he did go on to take his maiden first class fivefer in this match so i don't think it hindered. I also told Ethan that I had seen his dad play Horatio opposite Daniel Day-Lewis's Hamlet, which seemed to amuse him:
There was plenty to drink (I was quite moderate) and enormous quantities of cheese (I tried to help out). I also won half a case of wine...again! Half of that half case went in "informal storage charges" to the tennis pros after the party. Strangely, the rain had completely relented by evening so I decided to partially walk off my wine and cheese.
Wednesday 25 September 2019
I had my prearranged tennis game scheduled for the morning (a couple of hours in the end) and Richard Goatley wanted to see me at noon, so the morning went that way. I had a good game of tennis and missed little cricket before lunch. The weather improved (against the forecast) lunchtime, so I grabbed a sandwich and some reading matter, taking up position on the Members' Bar balcony - a place that is normally hard to get to but which was almost deserted at the fag end of the season.
There I watched, read and chatted for a couple of hours, before deciding that I really should go home and get my work done. What a great idea to have cricket this late in the season when the weather smiles like this. The match ended, thusly, while I was beavering away in the city the next day.
King Cricket Matters
King Cricket welcomes match reports which should on no account mention the cricket itself.
Edwardian went to Cambridge MCCU versus Worcestershire CCC at Fenner’s back in April. Edwardian writ:
I had an idea how the day would pan out but I went anyway. I hadn’t been able to get to any of the county fixtures at Fenner’s so I decided to go, expecting to leave at lunchtime. This was Worcestershire’s second visit to play the MCCU, the last visit in 2014 ending in a draw.
I arrived before play, said hello to the Worcestershire captain, entered the pavilion and wandered about a bit. I ate my sandwiches by 11.30am. I chose aubergine and garlic for the filling, leftovers from the night before. Surprisingly good. No beer.
I took in some of the conversations which ranged from relaxing the dress code in the Lord’s Pavilion, The Hundred as a money-making exercise for corporate events and cricketers who go by their middle names. A WCCC supporter had named his child after Graeme Pollock. When by chance, he met the man himself, he told him about it. Pollock replied, “What, Robert?” This stumped the WCCC chap. Curiously that was the child’s middle name.
Having fond memories of watching cricket at New Road in the early Nineties and having canoed across the ground when it was flooded, it was good to talk about cricket in Worcester and also living near the Worcestershire Sauce factory.
I left at lunchtime as the rain began, deciding to cook a roast lamb dinner. I checked the result when I got home. A draw.
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An Occasional Cricketing Journal
Edition 203
November 2019
Out & About with the Professor
I’m not sure how to greet the news that Chris Silverwood has been appointed the new England coach. He was a useful performer for Yorkshire for a number of seasons but was limited by injury and, I seem to recall, played a couple of seasons for Middlesex. His international performances were modest. I don’t doubt that he is a good chap and all that (anyone from the historic town of Pontefract must be thoroughly reliable) but that, for me, isn’t quite the issue. I don’t know what to make of his appointment not because of the attributes he may or may not have; I don’t know what to make of it because I don’t know what international cricket coaches actually do.
We all know what coaches do at school or club level – they help players improve their technique, advance their cricket knowledge and education and instil confidence. I guess that still applies at county level – and Silverwood had considerable success at Essex. But what do they do at international level?
I have, in the past, sought an answer to this question from a couple of people who have held the post. On a couple of cricket tours I have asked both David Lloyd and Graham Gooch not, “What do you do?” (possibly a little insensitive, not to say blunt) but, “How much coaching do you do?”. Both said that there was very little time to do any. “ ‘ave you seen the skedule?” (Gooch…think Essex man), “ ‘ardly any time to turn round never mind coaching”. He then rattled off the timetable. On an overseas tour these days when they weren’t playing, travelling or resting (having travelled all the previous day, for example) there was little time to do anything much. But what about at home? “Well” (Lloyd this time) “what people forget is that it isn’t like a club. Even with central contracts these players come from all around the country. What’s more, they have private lives and family commitments. Many of the England players are husbands and fathers. We can’t just tell to be at the club for 9am practice.” And I think you can see the point. We might want to add (or some of us might) time-consuming little foreign trips to the IPL, etc., to earn some extra quids….and why not?
But, if all this is true, and time is very limited, what, to repeat, exactly does the international coach do?
A couple of years’ ago I went to the last day of the Test at Old Trafford between England and South Africa. I gave myself far too much time to get there and so was in the ground very early. Broad and Ali were the not out batsmen and England at 224-8 were in need of runs. Given that I was so early, and very few people were there, it was a chance to see the coaches in action. Broad, not out, clearly needed some time in the nets before play. I watched him walk across the ground to the nets where Ramprakash threw him 15 balls in one of those dog thrower things. 15 balls, I counted them, (yes, yes, I know, sad or what?) but that was it. After 15 he walked back. Nothing notable was said. No: “Get your foot to the pitch of the ball”, or “Keep your elbow up”, or any of the other schoolboy coaching homilies: just 15 hits and off. And that was Ramps, it wasn’t even the Head Coach. Broad got 5, by the way.
So…what do they do?
Presumably they have an important say in selection (formal or not), advice about the opposition (although these days many of the top players are IPL/Big Bash (soon The Hundred) chums and so know a lot about each other anyway. They surely discuss tactics with the captain, although how much of that is determined on the field of play is difficult to know. Perhaps there is some psychological pep-talks or similar (but isn’t that already covered by the team shrink?).
So…what...? Etc.
One thing they don’t do, which I think they should, is to take the interminable press interviews. In football, it is always the manager who makes the first responses to the Press after the match. They obviously all attend the same training course where they are told to speak to the TV for 90 seconds and say almost nothing. They: “couldn’t have asked more from the boys/were pleased the way they kept trying when 6-0 down/ were disappointed with the refs decision to send off half the team/…and so on: dreary platitude following dreary platitude. It is probably too late for Root now, and he seems to have mastered the art (been on the same course), but why do the coaches in cricket leave it to the captains? I recall Strauss having to scurry off the field after “a few words” with Athers or someone, in order to get the jacket off and pads on, to open the innings. I think he was out shortly afterwards. I’ve heard new national captains say that dealing with the Press is the hardest and most distracting part of the job. Bayliss clearly didn’t see taking this weight from his captain’s shoulders as part of his job and nor, so I hear, will Silverwood.
Why not?
After all… what else do they do?
After receiving this I replied to the Prof:
I think Bayliss made the stipulation before he took the job that he wouldn’t do the press interviews. I think that it is part of the Sky money deal that captains or someone have to be made available. They probably only bother with the Press so that they won’t come off their Christmas card list…
He responded:
Really? Could Bayliss have made such a deal?
How do you know it was part of the Sky contract to only speak to captains? If so, can the contracts not be changed? I'm sure that Athers et al would be very happy to speak to the England coach for "a few words". Especially since Root never says anything of any interest to anyone.
I replied
Maybe Silverwood hasn’t made that stipulation, or the ECB have told him to do as he’s told. I think that the post-match interviews are totally tedious and I turn off before them. And awards ceremonies. But it is even worse in football where sweaty inarticulate young men who can’t speak the language in the first place are asked to comment on technical aspects of the game. And most of the managers can’t speak English either. Maybe these interviews will fade out and the broadcasters will find other ways to fill out the lengthy match postmortems?
This &That
Overheard during a football commentary: “He could nutmeg a mermaid”
Premiership soccer has got so precise that you can no longer get a goal from a marginal or blatant offside position despite the daft changes to the offside laws. It’s just as well that there are other changes that leads to goals. First is that no longer can fifteen stone central defenders go through centre forwards or their front-line chums and so many of them stand around wondering what to do. It has also become the general rule that defenders cannot tackle in the box lest their intentions are misunderstood. And then there are the full backs who are required to participate in “playing out from the back” rather than give the ball a good thump up the line. They are also required to play as wingers as well and so need to be ultra-fit, very fast and to some extent skilful. Being a good tackler and defensive positional play come well down their list of requirements and so they leave plenty of openings for forwards to create chances.
I see that the one-time solution to England’s opening batsman position, Haseb Hameed, has been released by Lancashire. I know that he suffered an injury but this is a dramatic fall from stardom.
I suspect that Sam Northeast is rapidly becoming the new James Hildreth as the man the ECB ignored. He, of course was ignored by Middlesex when he left Kent and Ravi Bopara has been given a similar pass by Good ‘ol Gus.
In a T20 international between Australia and Sri Lanka Finch and Warner, who made 100 not out, both scored at 178 but they were overshadowed by Maxwell who scored 62 at 221. The Australians racked up a formidable 233 for 2. The Sri Lankan bowler, Kasun Rajitha, conceded 75 runs from his four overs. Sri Lanka finished on 99 for 9 and so lost by a huge 134 in a twenty over match.
Victoria won the toss and elected to bat in their Sheffield Shield match at Melbourne. Finch and Maxwell were scheduled to bat at five and six in the order but neither got in until the score had reached 473. Nic Maddinson made 224, Marcus Harris 116 and Will Pucovski 123. When Peter Handscomb, who bottom scored with 30, declared at 616 for 6 he must have felt secure in having the upper hand. This feeling would have been enhanced when South Australia’s Jake Weatherald was out to the first ball of the innings. When Travis Head was out at 185 for 4 Victoria must have expected a first innings lead but they were thwarted by Tom Cooper who made 271 not out, Alex Carey 117 and Tom Andrews 101 as South Australia went on to 671 for 6.
I hadn’t seen much Caribbean T20 this year but turned on Sky whilst preparing my dinner to see Guyana Amazon Warriors struggling at 90 for 2 after 12 overs. I was then treated to an extraordinary display of hitting by their opener, Brandon King, who moved from 40 to 132 not out over the remaining overs. This was clean hitting to all parts of the ground against a Barbadian attack which included international bowlers: Holder, Shakib, Gurney and Duminy.
Professional footballers have always had too much spare time on their hands and one of the ways they fill that up is to hang around at barber shops. The current favoured style for white boys is the short back and sides that makes them look like conscripts from the fifties. The black fraternity have always gone in for dying their hair blonde with or without short dreadlocks to accompany. I noticed a variation on this when Reece James came on as a very impressive substitute for Chelsea against Burnley last Saturday. He has a hairstyle reminiscent of a seventies Biba lampshade. It is of course OK to have a distinctive hairstyle if you are playing well but if you are having a shocker every missed tackle or misdirected pass is immediately attributable to you, which may be why Saha always looks indifferent.
Spurs paid £57m for Tanguy Ndombele, Arsenal paid £75m for Pepe, Newcastle paid c£50 m for Joelinton and, of course, there is Fred. None of these have made an impact in the Premiership yet or indeed have established themselves in their club’s first elevens. It is even worse for central defenders who cost an arm and a leg and just look like duffers- Mustafi, Sanchez, Otamendi etc. And then there is Aurier who the miserly Spurs paid £23m for. Gary Neville: “I always think when you watch Aurier defend, it's a mess, It's just something that you see. He's a player who's not in control. He's not composed. He's rash. You always think with Aurier there's a good chance it's a yellow, it's a red or it's a goal given away. If he gets away with those three it's a pretty rare game.”
I turned on Sky Cricket last week not realising that the T20 World Cup qualifiers were on from Dubai/Abu Dhabi. And there were two ex-Middlesex men, Stirling and Balbirnie, leading Ireland to a victory. Stirling has scored well in these matches and is highly rated by the commentators. Another ex-Middlesex man, Adam Rossington, has been selected by Shane Warne for the Lord’s based Hundred side.
Morgan Matters
The GJM starts with a surprising confession
Since the cricket season ended, I have surprised myself by not really missing it because i) Middx were so dreadful that it seems like a release; and ii) I have had good entertainment on the box like the (rugby) World Cup and the (athletics) World Championships.
Dawid Malan is stepping down as Middlesex captain and O Rayner and T Barber are being released, so it looks as if M Holden survives (never believe rumours you hear circulating at Lord's!). N Sowter has agreed a 2 year contract extension and M Cummins has signed a 3 year “Kolpak” deal (i.e. he does not count as an overseas player, but he has to give up his WI career).
BBC Sport’s users have chosen this “team of the season”:
D Sibley (chosen by 88% of users),
A Cook (50%),
M Labuschagne (84%).
S Northeast (65%),
D Malan (41%),
D Vilas (70%),
R Higgins (46%),
L Gregory (49%),
S Harmer (68%),
K Abbott (64%),
C Rushworth (49%).
The media are saying that the ECB want G Kirsten as the next head coach and they are meeting today (2/10).
The Players' Player of the Year Award has gone to B Stokes ahead of S Harmer, R Higgins and D Sibley. Young PotY was T Banton and the Women's P of the Summer was S Ecclestone.
G Kirsten is likely to be announced as England's new head coach next week, according to the media.
England coach: C Silverwood is now spoken about as the likely choice.
Rs have just beaten Blackburn 4-2 (Wells, Eze, Osayi-Samuel and Hugill) and are now 9th. Both Wells and Hugill are in the top 7 goal scorers in the Championship.
C Silverwood is confirmed as England's new coach and so I will now remind people that he is a Middlesex man!
JSCR tells me that M Ferguson (aka The Ferg) has died aged 76.
I have been looking at the performances of the Middlesex players in the 2019 first class season and it does not make enjoyable reading. Only ten players made 200 runs and their averages were:
Malan 48.14,
Simpson 44.29,
Robson 35.46,
Harris 33.67,
Helm 33.63,
Gubbins 27.82,
Eskinazi 24.21,
Roland-Jones 24.0
Scott 21.83
Holden 13.65;
only five players took 20 wickets and their averages were:
Murtagh 16.33,
Helm 25.21,
Roland-Jones 28.2,
Finn 30
Harris 39.7.
Whoever takes over the captaincy must surely come from this group (unless an outsider is brought in?), but it is not clear who it should be. Esky looked to be the next in line, but his form deteriorated badly towards the end of the season (in the Championship his batting average was only 19) and he was omitted from the last 2 matches and Gubbins's (in the Championship his average was only 22) form was similarly disappointing. The leading candidates would therefore appear to be John Simpson, Sam Robson, or possibly, Toby Roland-Jones... unless someone is brought in from outside (eg P Handscomb see below).
The Cricketer also thinks Dawid is going to Yorks and they also tell us that coach S Law wants Peter Handscomb as overseas player and as captain. PH has 16 Test caps (scoring 2 centuries) and has county experience with Durham, Gloucs and Yorks and was topscorer for Durham in the first innings against Middlesex at Lord's last month, making an impressive 54 off 72 balls, one of only 3 fifties in the low-scoring match (the Robson brothers made the other two). The C also tells us that "Martin Andersson hopes to be fit to bowl again when the 2020 season arrives, having been restricted to batting following a stress fracture suffered in 2018."
The ECB have announced that 3.15m people attended international and domestic cricket in the 2019 summer, an increase of 18% on 2018, not surprising, I suppose, with a WC and an Ashes series in the same summer.
S Harmer won the Cricket Writers Club County Championship Player of the Year... what? Ahead of Max Holden?
G Dobell thinks that "the introduction of the Hundred really does appear to threaten the viability of the county game and as the wonderful season of 2019 reminded us, that would be a damn shame". M Henderson tells us that Notts put up "the worst performance in the history of County Cricket: they lost 10 of their 14 Championship matches". A Samson tells us that "Darren Stevens became the oldest player to score a first class double century since Walter Keeton in 1949 and he also became the oldest to score a double century and take 5 wickets in a first class match since WG Grace".
Ex-Middlesex keeper Stuart Poynter has ended his Ireland career by signing a new deal with Durham to avoid having to register as an overseas player, despite being born in Hammersmith and going to school in Teddington.
A Flower is leaving the ECB after 12 years.
P Stirling was top of both the Middlesex batting (50) and bowling (14.5) averages according to the Cricketer: how will they replace him? He did not play enough to qualify for "my" averages, given above.
Liam Plunkett "achieved" a rare double for Surrey in the Championship by finishing bottom of the batting averages with a remarkable 0.66 and matched that by also finishing bottom of the bowling averages with a splendid 160! Some were saying he was unlucky not to be going on tour!
It's official: Malan is in talks with Yorks, while George Scott has actually signed for Gloucs.
R Bopara has joined Sussex.
Rs had a good win at Hull by 2 to 3. Ryan Manning and Ebere Eze (2 pens) the scorers; Hull's second came in the 7th minute of stoppage time. Rs are now 5th and only 1 point off the promotion spots.
The Hundred: the only Middx players selected for the Hundred squads are: Malan (Trent), Simpson (Northern), Sowter (Oval), Morgan (London) and Helm (Birmingham).
There is quite a lot in the news at the moment about footballers getting dementia (and dying because of brain damage caused by heading heavy footballs), the only example being quoted is Jeff Astle, but i) Tony Hateley died from exactly the same thing didn't he? and ii) that was in the days when they played with very heavy mud-soaked balls (like we used to play with), not today's sleek, light, mud-free versions.
England are to play 2 Tests in SL in March as part of the ICC World Test Championship.
Today's G has a large photo of Ollie Watkins scoring one of his 2 goals against Rs at Loftus Road last night in the 1-3 loss to Brentford, but there is no report, just 2 sentences adjacent to the photo... I suppose it is better than no coverage at all?
Shakib al Hasan (Bang Test capt) has been banned for 2 years for "failing to report corrupt approaches".
Vic M points out that there are no Welshmen in the Welsh Fire (Hundred) team and generally shares my pessimism about the whole thing.
Odd Fellows
This article appeared on the BBC website
Picking teams is fun. That’s why fantasy cricket leagues are a thing. Tell you what’s not fun though: picking a team for a living and being subjected to actual real-life scrutiny for all of your terrible decisions. Whenever a Test squad is announced, there’s generally at least one selection you’ll disagree with and quite often it’s James Vince. Whoever it is though, you can normally at least understand how the decision came about, even if you don’t necessarily agree with it.
However, every now and again, about once every five years or so, there’s an out-and-out weird Test selection that makes absolutely no sense at all.
Here’s a true thing that you might not be fully aware of: these truly weird selections are actually very hard to identify when you look back into the past. Hindsight knackers everything up, you see. Here’s a couple of examples:
Usman Afzaal played three Tests for England and made 83 runs. His feels like a weird selection because we think of him as a nothingy sort of middle-order Test batsman. But Afzaal averaged 40 in first-class cricket and England needed a middle-order batsman. His selection made total sense.
Chris Schofield played two Tests for England and never took a wicket. We remember him as a leg-spinner who couldn’t even hack it in county cricket, but he was called up before anyone knew he would utterly fail to live up to his promise. He made his Test debut at 21 at a time when there was huge desire to find a wrist spinner. His selection was understandable.
Here are some weirder ones. Not good, not bad – just weird.
Darren Pattinson, 2008
One cap, two wickets at 48.00
The Pattinsons moved around. Darren was born in Grimsby, James was born in Melbourne, then they all went back to the UK for a bit. “We lived in one of those skinny houses,” said James about the period the family spent in Cleethorpes. As we all know, James ended up playing for Australia, but only after Darren had played one Test for England. It wasn’t the fact he had an Australian accent that made it weird. It was the fact that he was almost 29 and had only played 11 first-class matches. (He’d mostly been working as a roofer.)
England seemed to change their entire selection policy out of nowhere for this one. At that time they didn’t really do ‘horses for courses’. Whenever there was an opening, they had a hierarchy and the players in that hierarchy tended to have quite a bit of cricket ahead of them and generally quite a bit more than Pattinson behind them as well.
To provide the necessary context, here are the pace bowlers who made their Test debuts before and after Pattinson: Chris Tremlett, Stuart Broad, Tim Bresnan, Graham Onions and…
Amjad Khan, 2009
One cap, one wicket at 122.00
Sometimes, even with that era’s very careful ‘picking-on-promise’ sort of policy, selections still ended up slightly weird. Amjad Khan was a good bowler, but in terms of promise, he was never The Next Big Thing. He was also sufficiently injury-prone that he never really forced his way into the team based on his returns in county cricket either.
Yet somehow, thanks to a certain amount of promise and a reasonable record and a couple of injuries, he played a Test match. His first over lasted nine balls and he was later fined for excessive appealing.
Amjad Khan is the only person born in Denmark to play Test cricket, which is weird enough to warrant inclusion in itself.
Scott Borthwick, 2014
One cap, five runs at 2.50 and four wickets at 20.50
What on earth was that all about? Scott Borthwick basically played for England because he happened to be in Australia.
Depending on your nationality, you may or may not remember the 2013/14 Ashes. If you don’t remember it, all you really need to know is that it did not go amazingly well for England.
It went so badly, in fact, that when Graeme Swann retired after the third Test, England concluded that it wasn’t worth spending money on long haul flights. Borthwick was already over in Australia playing Grade cricket, so they added him to the squad.
By the fifth Test, there were quite a lot of players who England did not want to pick because they were fragile eggshell men. Borthwick was duly selected as the frontline spinner, despite having finished 15th in Durham’s Championship averages the previous season.
Scott Borthwick is a batsman now.
Joe Denly, 2019
Eight caps, 457 runs at 28.56, no wickets
Joe Denly made his Test debut against the West Indies earlier this year. Let’s walk through how that actually came about. Denly had a really good 2018 domestic season in white ball cricket. He made some runs and bowled a bit more than he had done in the past. His leg-spin was duly recategorised from ‘part-time’ to ‘handy second string’. Even though he’d only averaged 34.50 in the second division of the County Championship, he was called into England’s Test squad for the tour of Sri Lanka. He wasn’t named in the limited overs squads, but when Liam Dawson was injured, they brought him in. He played the T20 international and took four wickets. A combination of that performance and hanging around without being Keaton Jennings meant Denly made his Test debut. Ever since then, he has done just enough to avoid being dropped and gives every impression he will continue in that vein pretty much forever.
The Fag End of the SeasonIan Louis Harris (Ged) has the last words
Monday 23 September 2019
Whose idea was it to play first class cricket in England beyond the autumn equinox this year? I suppose it is inevitable as the authorities try to fit more and more short form cricket into the central chunk of the summer that the first-class season will increasingly bookend those tournaments. Anyway, this round of matches was entirely played after the equinox (which, for astronomical geeks, took place about 40 minutes before play was supposed to start on 23 September). The Lord's match for this fag end of the season was Middlesex v Derbyshire.
I had work commitments for much of the day but wanted to show the Lord's pavilion to a couple of Z/Yen's keen youngsters; Morgan and Sean (the latter being Michael's nephew). I got to Lord's in time to see a little bit of cricket before the fellas arrived, but by the time they got to Lord's it was raining. Still, I could show them around the pavilion and could also show them some live sport in the form of real tennis, where a couple of my pals were battling out a tournament match. After my guests departed, I joined the Seaxe Club evening for a quick drink before going home.
Tuesday 24 September 2019
I had pre-arranged to spend the day with DJ at Lord's, but the weather forecast looked so shocking we expected no play, so we scaled back our arrangement to be lunch only. I agreed to play tennis as a late substitute at 15:00. The timing worked very well - I was able to get a good chunk of work done before meeting DJ at Lord's around 12:15 and taking some early lunch and having a good chat with him.
Miraculously, there was a short hiatus in the rain that enabled some 20-25 minutes of play, which we enjoyed in glorious sunshine, before the clouds and rain returned. I guessed, correctly, that any further breaks in the rain would be too brief to enable play and in any case I think David felt that he had enjoyed the shortened but enjoyable get together and he would return to some work-oriented tasks.
I had a good hour of tennis before learning that stumps had been drawn early which enabled me to shower, change and get to the Middlesex Sponsors party in perfect time. Very few sponsors turned up as the weather had been so poor, thus, unusually, I chatted with several players, as they outnumbered the sponsors. I spoke with Ethan Bamber for the first time who didn't seem to realise how impressive he now looks. I hope my pep talk helped; he did go on to take his maiden first class fivefer in this match so i don't think it hindered. I also told Ethan that I had seen his dad play Horatio opposite Daniel Day-Lewis's Hamlet, which seemed to amuse him:
There was plenty to drink (I was quite moderate) and enormous quantities of cheese (I tried to help out). I also won half a case of wine...again! Half of that half case went in "informal storage charges" to the tennis pros after the party. Strangely, the rain had completely relented by evening so I decided to partially walk off my wine and cheese.
Wednesday 25 September 2019
I had my prearranged tennis game scheduled for the morning (a couple of hours in the end) and Richard Goatley wanted to see me at noon, so the morning went that way. I had a good game of tennis and missed little cricket before lunch. The weather improved (against the forecast) lunchtime, so I grabbed a sandwich and some reading matter, taking up position on the Members' Bar balcony - a place that is normally hard to get to but which was almost deserted at the fag end of the season.
There I watched, read and chatted for a couple of hours, before deciding that I really should go home and get my work done. What a great idea to have cricket this late in the season when the weather smiles like this. The match ended, thusly, while I was beavering away in the city the next day.
King Cricket Matters
King Cricket welcomes match reports which should on no account mention the cricket itself.
Edwardian went to Cambridge MCCU versus Worcestershire CCC at Fenner’s back in April. Edwardian writ:
I had an idea how the day would pan out but I went anyway. I hadn’t been able to get to any of the county fixtures at Fenner’s so I decided to go, expecting to leave at lunchtime. This was Worcestershire’s second visit to play the MCCU, the last visit in 2014 ending in a draw.
I arrived before play, said hello to the Worcestershire captain, entered the pavilion and wandered about a bit. I ate my sandwiches by 11.30am. I chose aubergine and garlic for the filling, leftovers from the night before. Surprisingly good. No beer.
I took in some of the conversations which ranged from relaxing the dress code in the Lord’s Pavilion, The Hundred as a money-making exercise for corporate events and cricketers who go by their middle names. A WCCC supporter had named his child after Graeme Pollock. When by chance, he met the man himself, he told him about it. Pollock replied, “What, Robert?” This stumped the WCCC chap. Curiously that was the child’s middle name.
Having fond memories of watching cricket at New Road in the early Nineties and having canoed across the ground when it was flooded, it was good to talk about cricket in Worcester and also living near the Worcestershire Sauce factory.
I left at lunchtime as the rain began, deciding to cook a roast lamb dinner. I checked the result when I got home. A draw.
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