GOOGLIES & CHINAMEN
An Occasional Cricketing Journal
Edition 214
October 2020
T20s
Confusion reigned everywhere. The captain was issuing new instructions every over. First, he wanted everyone up to save the single and then he wanted them all to spread out. But when he adopted the latter tactic the R rate (runs per over) went up and he realised he was losing the match. This is not what he had signed up for when they elected him club captain. He wanted to make grand speeches, be seen as a visionary and be admired and loved by all his subjects, sorry, club members.
Many of those selected for the matches failed to turn up and to encourage them to do so the Club Treasurer agreed to pay half of their Tea Money. Whilst he claimed it an outstanding success it turned out that many benefited from this who were willing to turn up and pay the tariff anyway.
The captain was, however, enjoying the power he had granted himself of making new T20 rules without having to get them approved by the cricket committee. Each morning over coffee with his Best Friend he would devise new strictures which would be enacted by lunchtime. However, the problem soon became that he couldn’t remember them all and at an away match when asked what the fielding restrictions were for matches played in the North East, he found himself babbling incoherently and spouting rubbish. It seemed that even autocratic power had its shortcomings.
Vice Presidents and others started complaining about the way that the non-playing and older members had been treated, many of whom had been confined to the pavilion all season. The colts had been banned from going into the pavilion to meet with them and some even suggested that there would be no indoor nets at Christmas.
Meanwhile the club joker, Mat Hancock, continue to make absurd claims about his own achievements. Moreover, he would set himself goals that no-one believed could be achieved. For example, he prophesised that he would score a thousand runs in October even though everyone knew there were only two weekends of matches and his form was so bad he was unlikely to get a bat at all.
He wasn’t the only one making rash commitments. The Captain said that there would be matches at Christmas and that things would be back to normal soon. He would do well to change his tactics completely and recognise that the sehior members and those carrying injuries need protection and the rest must take their chances and bear in mind that most LBW appeals are turned down.
In & Within with the Professor
In the 17 years of its existence there have been, in this journal, comparatively few references to women’s cricket. The explanation is, presumably, that few contributors knew much about the subject and were thus inclined to be loyal to Wittgenstein’s famous maxim. Just maybe, also, there was a view that women’s cricket was far inferior and so of less importance.
However, it is now a commonplace that women’s participation in cricket had made steady progress over the last generation, and very rapid progress in the past decade or so. It is now quite normal to see mixed gender practice and matches for children at cricket clubs, and increasingly common for women to appear in a “men’s”(sic) team at adult level.
There have been numerous milestones in this advance and a number have apparently been identified in an exhibition at Lord’s, reviewed in the Spring edition of the splendidly eccentric journal of the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians. To take just two: it was in 1998 that Lord’s ended its disgracefully misogynistic ban on women members, and it was only 19 years later that the World Cup final attracted a sell-out crowd at Headquarters. One milestone to come is, of course, the inauguration, next year, of Clare Connor as the first woman President of the MCC in 233 years.
Arguably more important than all this however, is the quality of performance in women’s cricket in recent years. I suppose, for me, the most significant change was watching Claire Taylor bat in the early years of this century. I had seen women’s cricket before of course at an elite level - and played both with and against women (at a level decidedly below elite) - but Taylor was the first woman player I recall being a delight to watch, the first truly elegant top order bat who could play all around the ground. She became, of course, the first female Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 2009 and was followed by others later. I think, for me, Taylor became the first player to make women’s cricket truly watchable. There have been many since and many in the current side: Heather Knight, Nat Sciver, Tammy Beaumont, etc. (add your own choice). Sarah Taylor, also, was one of the most gifted of England’s wicketkeepers; far more natural in the role, in my view, than either of the current men’s incumbents.
Some of these observations are brought on, naturally, from watching the recent series against the West Indies. While the outcome (5-0) could scarcely have been more one-sided, there was some enthralling cricket to watch. Nat Sciver’s 82 in the Third match and Deandra Dottin’s bludgeoning of the ball in a couple of innings stand out. England’s bowling was perhaps the most significant difference, always looking tidy as opposed to, for example, the bizarre end of the final match where England needing 2 from 3 got there with two no-balls. While the ground fielding looked pretty good – there were three run-outs in England’s inning in match four – some of the catching was, to be frank, quite poor (bad enough, I suppose, to attract the Naser description of “average”); the exception was a stunning catch by the West Indies captain, Stafanie Taylor, in the last (truncated) match. All in all, much to enjoy.
My own experiences of playing with women were limited to inter-faculty games, some of which could hardly bear the name of cricket, but also, many years’ ago, in a club match against the then England opening bowler, Sarah Potter. I’m ashamed to confess that the two opening batsmen were terrified. Not from the pace that Ms Potter could generate (gentle medium at best) but from the potential humiliation and derision in the clubhouse from being dismissed by a woman. As a result, her bowling figures looked decidedly economical, since all each of us attempted to do was drop on the ball, get a single, and get up the other end. Not an experience to boast of but that was how men behaved towards women cricketers in those far off, unenlightened days.
IPL Matters
I had been in Chicago for six weeks and so missed the second half of the international summer. I followed it on the internet but without much enthusiasm. However, I arrived back in the UK last week and have been captivated by the IPL taking place in the Emirates.
It all started sedately last Wednesday after I had flown into Manchester via Heathrow. Incidentally, there is no social distancing on and around aeroplanes. Rohit Sharma made another effortless, sublime 80 from 54 balls with 6 sixes. This was at Abu Dhabi, not Sharjah which has short boundaries. When they say short they mean about 65 metres which would look miles away if we were batting and would test our throwing arms to the limit. The previous day in Sharjah the Rajasthan Royals had scored 216 for 7 substantially due to 74 from 32 balls from Sanju Samson in an innings which included 9 sixes. Jofra Archer hit 4 sixes in 8 balls at the end of the innings. In reply the Chennai Superkings made a not too shabby 200 for 6.
The tournament had started the previous weekend and in the second match the Delhi Capitals slumped to 96 for 6 in the 17th over before Scott Stoinis scored 53 from 21 balls. In reply Mayank Agarwal scored 89 but the Kings XI Punjab could only tie the match. They batted first in the Tie Breaker and Rabada restricted them to just 2 runs. Delhi won with 4 balls to spare. Nicholas Pooran, of which more later, became the first batsmen to score a pair in this form of cricket.
So on to Thursday and I was treated to one of those special events that TV watchers of cricket get to see every so often, like Viv Richards demolishing Bob Willis in that ODI, ABdeV’s innings against the West Indians at the Wanderers, Stuart Broad before lunch against the Australians at Trent Bridge etc. The RCB captain, Virat Kohli, invited the King’s XI to bat first. They made unspectacular progress reaching 128 for 3 in the 16th over when Glenn Maxwell was dismissed. The commentators noted that KL Rahul needed to get a hundred for the King’s XI to reach a respectable score. Rahul was 73 at the time and I calculated that if he received half of the remaining deliveries he would need to score 27 from 13 deliveries, which was unlikely. But what do I know? He ended up 132 not out and his side reached 206 for 3. Rahul’s effort was the highest by any Indian in the tournament’s history and also the highest score by any team’s captain. Rahul, like Rohit, doesn’t slog and so his innings was a delight. It should be noted that during the latter stages of his innings he was dropped twice by, of all people, Kohli. Despite the presence of Kohli and de Villiers in their line up RCB slumped to 109 all out in their reply.
The following day the match was in Dubai where the boundaries are almost 80 metres which I suppose must be a bit like batting in the middle of Wormwood Scrubs. Delhi batted first and Prithvi Shaw made an accomplished 64 from 43 balls as they reached 175 for 3, which was more than enough as Chennai struggled to 131 for 7.
I made the mistake of watching the Spurs game and so when I turned over I half expected them to have changed the rules so that any time the ball hits the pad a batsman is given out automatically LBW. For the King’s XI Agarwal and Rahul had scored 175 without loss. The former was out for 106 from 50 balls and the latter for 69 but the score nevertheless reached a daunting 223 for 2. When Rajasthan batted Steve Smith made it look ridiculously easy but when he was caught on the cover boundary for 50 from 22 balls the score was 100 for 2 in the ninth over. Inexplicably he was replaced by Rahul Tewatia, not Robin Uthappa. Tewatia proceeded to flail about missing most deliveries and putting his side way behind the required rate. His partner Sanju Samson was going well but fell in the seventeenth over for 85 from 42 balls. By the eighteenth over Tewatia had scored 8 from 19 balls but he proceeded to hit five of Cottrell’s deliveries over the ropes. Uthappa was out to the first ball of the next over but the batsmen crossed and Tewatia hit the next two balls for six before falling for 53 from 31. Archer came in and hit his first two deliveries for six and going into the final over Rajasthan needed only three to win which they did with the luxury of three balls to spare. In the previous 4 overs they had scored 82. This was the highest successful run chase in IPL history.
However, during all this a momentous event occurred in the history of fielding. This was totally incredible at a level way beyond Stokes’ catch in the World Cup. Towards the end of his innings Samson hit high to midwicket. Pooran was on the boundary and he judged it too high to attempt a catch in the field of play and so stepped over the rope and flung himself backwards and caught the ball with himself in mid-air. Whilst still airborne facing the stands horizontally he manged to propel the ball backwards and over the rope onto the field of play. A fellow fielder retrieved it and threw it in so Samson ‘s effort was restricted to 2 rather than 6. Samson clearly wasn’t that impressed himself and bludgeoned the next ball twenty yards over long off for six. None of the commentators could believe what they had seen and Pooran’s effort is likely to be replayed endlessly as the years pass.
In Match 10 I had the privilege of seeing ABdeV in action as he scored 55 not out from 24 deliveries. Once set (after about three balls) he seems convinced that he can hit any delivery for six. RCB scored 78 from their last five overs and so reached a what had seemed unlikely 201 for 3. In the latter stages ABdeV was outscored by another young Indian Shivam Dube. When Mumbai batted they soon fell behind the required rate and when Pandya was out in the twelfth over the score was just 78 for 4, which meant 124 were required from 52 balls. But then Pollard reached 50 in 20 balls and Ishan Kishan kept hitting sixes and so Mumbai required 19 from the final over with Kishan on strike. The first two balls yielded singles leaving 17 from 4. Kishan hit the next two deliveries for six which took him to 99 before being caught on the boundary off the fifth. The batsmen had crossed and Pollard hit the final ball for 4 to tie the match. In the Super Over Mumbai only managed 7 which Kholi and deVilliers passed off their final ball.
When Jofra Archer hit the first ball he received in Game 12 for six his aggregate for the tournament became 46 from 12 balls which included 7 sixes.
What has become apparent in just these few games is the quality of the Indian batting. Sharma and Rahul have already featured strongly and Pant and Dhawan have looked good, whilst Kohli is yet to feature with the bat. But this is the old guard, the really impressive innings have been played by the youngsters – Ishan Kishan, Shivam Dube, Prithwi Shaw, Shubman Gil and Sanju Samson. It’s a great pity that the international round of T20 competitions stops most overseas players from playing in County Cricket for any length of time these days. We should also be encouraging our most promising players to join this company whenever possible. It has benefitted Bairstow, Stokes, Buttler and the Currans.
This & That
In the T20 Adam Hose made 119 not out for the Birmingham Bears as the reached 191 for 5. In reply Northants slumped to 71 for 6 in the tenth over but Taylor and White saw them through to an unlikely victory with an over to spare.
Hamish Rutherford was another centurion whop ended up on the losing side as Worcestershire reached 190 for 3, but Glamorgan got past them in their final over’
Zak Crawley was a successful centurion as he guided Kent to an easy win over Hampshire. Laurie Evans has found his way back to the Oval after spells at Warwickshire, Durham and Sussex and he would probably have been another victorious centurion as he raced to 81 not out from 46 balls by which time the Hampshire total had been overhauled.
Ben Raine has had a breakthrough season at Durham typified by his 71 not out from 39 balls with 8 sixes which enabled his side to chase down derbyshire’s 194 with a couple of overs to spare.
Joe Clarke had a quiet season in 2019 at Notts after his move from Worcestershire but has fired well in the T20 this year, none more so than in a winning chase against Lancashire when he scored 63 not out from 25 deliveries.
I saw some of the third T20 Ladies Match and was reasonably impressed by the keeping of Amy Jones until she tried to effect a run out by standing in front of the stumps and doing that grab it as it goes past and try and break the stumps behind you in a one motion action. She failed to take the ball and missed what should have been a straightforward run out. Who is coaching this crap? A stylist such as John Murray must be turning in his grave.
Much is made of how hard players work on the training ground. There is precious little evidence of this when watching defences in action over recent days. I suppose that defenders are taught to make twenty-yard square passes and five-yard neat passing triangles? They certainly don’t spend any time on the basics of marking or following runners if Manchester City and Fulham are anything to go by. Manchester City’s first line of defence is to foul which they normally do well up the field, but this backfired on Sunday when they found themselves doing it in their own penalty box and conceded three penalties as a result. As other sides learn from Leicester’s approach City could concede a record number of penalties this season.
I don’t think that we need wait for the Old Wanker’s predictions this season as Fulham are a shoo-in for relegation. I saw them against Aston Villa and they were awful.
During the Spurs v Newcastle game the commentator spent as much time apologising for foul language as commentating on the game. Why do they do this? Who is offended by this language and does anyone actually hear it? Why don’t the broadcasters accept it’s clarity as part of the Covid effect?
Morgan Matters
The Great man stays at home and enjoys some T20!
Lord's: Middlesex lost a T20 to Sussex by 3 wickets. Young leg spinner Luke Hollman took 2-33 on his first XI debut and S Eskinazi hit a quick 79: why can't he get any in proper cricket?
England and Northants allrounder David Capel is dead @ 57 after a 2 year battle with a brain tumour. He played 15 Tests and 23 ODIs and in fc cricket made 10,869 runs and took 270 wkts.
Yorkshire have signed D Bess on a 4 year deal. Durham have re-signed one-cap wonder Scott Borthwick from Surrey on a 5 year deal.
Ex-Middlesex slow left armer Tom Smith took 5-17 as Glo thrashed Warwickshire in the T20.
Yorkshire are investigating allegations of "institutional racism" after former England U19s capt Azeem Rafiq said his experiences at Headingley left him close to taking his own life.
Ex-England, Durham and Lancashire seamer G Onions has retired because of a back injury. He played 9 Tests taking 32 wkts @ 29.9 and 192 fc matches taking 723 wkts inc 31 5 wkt hauls.
TSRJ has not played for Middlesex this year and now he will miss the rest of the season because of an "ongoing shoulder complaint".
I Bell is retiring at 38 after 118 Tests, 161 ODIs and 8 T20s for Eng between 2004 and 2015. He scored 7,727 Test runs at 42.69 inc 22 tons, more than 20,000 fc runs with 57 tons plus nearly 14,000 limited overs runs.
I watched the whole of the second T20 v Oz and again England won with surprising ease to lead 2-0 with 1 to go: Oz 157-7 ( Finch 40, Stoinis 35, Jordan 2-40) England 158-4 (J Buttler 77* off 54, D Malan 42 off 32, A Agar 2-27), England won by 6 wkts and have a 2-0 lead with 1 to play. D Malan's strike rate in his 15 T20 internationals is 147.8 and his average is 48.71.
Bristol: the BWT match between Glo and Np was abandoned with Gloucester on 66-6 (29.4) because a Northants player (not playing in the match) felt ill last week and received a positive Covid-19 test yesterday morning. This sounds strange, but I suppose it is "better to be safe than sorry"?
Rs 2 (Lyndon Dykes pen and Ilias Chair) N Forest 0 and Rs are top of the embryonic Championship table! They are actually dead level with Reading, but Rs are top on alphabetical order!
Lord's T20: Middlesex made a modest 142-6 (Esky 33 Simmo 30*), but it was too many for Hampshire who only managed 123 a/o with only two, T Alsop and (ex-Middlesex bowler now mainly a batsman) J Fuller into double figures with 43 and 34 respectively, skipper S Finn 3-27.
The ECB is cutting 62 jobs in response to projected losses of up to £200m due to the pandemic.
T20: at the Bowl, Hampshire made 141-9 (Walallawita 3-19, Sowter 3-30), Middlesex 121 a/o (Simpson 48, Shaheen Afridi 6-19), Hampshire won by 20, Middlesex finished fourth in the South group, 4 points away from qualifying.
Les Ferdinand (the only black director of footy in the senior English game) has defended Rs' decision not to "take the knee" before the Championship game against Coventry on Friday. He felt the impact of the protests "has now been diluted and the decision was rightly made to stop it". The chair of Kick it Out, Sanjay Bhandari said "I agree with QPR that we need to focus on action that creates real change. We should be talking about solutions not symbols".
Middlesex reject Harry Podmore's contract with Kent has been extended to keep him at the club until the end of the 2023 season.
B Johnson has announced that crowds returning to sporting events has been "paused" and there is plenty of speculation that this could mean delayed until 1.4.21 or later and pessimists are saying some sports could "disappear forever". I have been thinking for a while that I might have already seen my last top class cricket match and this (almost) confirms it.
Oz Test batsman Dean Jones has died aged 59 in Mumbai, where he was an IPL commentator. He played 52 Tests (batting average 46.55) and 164 ODIs (44.61). Vic calls him "charismatic, abrasive and confident: the epitome of an Australian cricketer".
BWT: this was absolutely ludicrous! Essex crawled to 179-6 in 80.3 overs so the match was drawn, but under someone's daft plan a drawn match would be regarded as a victory for the side who led on first innings, which, of course was Essex! They were lucky there were no spectators present or they would have been lynched! Essex are in more trouble after it was revealed that their players sprayed champers on their young Muslim 12th man, Feroze Khushi, while celebrating their draw v Som.
Hall of Shame
The latest grotesquely overpaid footballer who can’t even manage the basics is Nathan Maitland-Niles who twice failed to reach the near post with corner kicks at a critical stage of Arsenal’s Premier League game at Anfield.
Bob Willis Trophy: The Cricketer team of the season
Nick Friend makes his selection
Strange XI
It has been far too long since we had a strange XI to ponder and identify which Jazz hat fits them. So, try this bunch:
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 214
October 2020
T20s
Confusion reigned everywhere. The captain was issuing new instructions every over. First, he wanted everyone up to save the single and then he wanted them all to spread out. But when he adopted the latter tactic the R rate (runs per over) went up and he realised he was losing the match. This is not what he had signed up for when they elected him club captain. He wanted to make grand speeches, be seen as a visionary and be admired and loved by all his subjects, sorry, club members.
Many of those selected for the matches failed to turn up and to encourage them to do so the Club Treasurer agreed to pay half of their Tea Money. Whilst he claimed it an outstanding success it turned out that many benefited from this who were willing to turn up and pay the tariff anyway.
The captain was, however, enjoying the power he had granted himself of making new T20 rules without having to get them approved by the cricket committee. Each morning over coffee with his Best Friend he would devise new strictures which would be enacted by lunchtime. However, the problem soon became that he couldn’t remember them all and at an away match when asked what the fielding restrictions were for matches played in the North East, he found himself babbling incoherently and spouting rubbish. It seemed that even autocratic power had its shortcomings.
Vice Presidents and others started complaining about the way that the non-playing and older members had been treated, many of whom had been confined to the pavilion all season. The colts had been banned from going into the pavilion to meet with them and some even suggested that there would be no indoor nets at Christmas.
Meanwhile the club joker, Mat Hancock, continue to make absurd claims about his own achievements. Moreover, he would set himself goals that no-one believed could be achieved. For example, he prophesised that he would score a thousand runs in October even though everyone knew there were only two weekends of matches and his form was so bad he was unlikely to get a bat at all.
He wasn’t the only one making rash commitments. The Captain said that there would be matches at Christmas and that things would be back to normal soon. He would do well to change his tactics completely and recognise that the sehior members and those carrying injuries need protection and the rest must take their chances and bear in mind that most LBW appeals are turned down.
In & Within with the Professor
In the 17 years of its existence there have been, in this journal, comparatively few references to women’s cricket. The explanation is, presumably, that few contributors knew much about the subject and were thus inclined to be loyal to Wittgenstein’s famous maxim. Just maybe, also, there was a view that women’s cricket was far inferior and so of less importance.
However, it is now a commonplace that women’s participation in cricket had made steady progress over the last generation, and very rapid progress in the past decade or so. It is now quite normal to see mixed gender practice and matches for children at cricket clubs, and increasingly common for women to appear in a “men’s”(sic) team at adult level.
There have been numerous milestones in this advance and a number have apparently been identified in an exhibition at Lord’s, reviewed in the Spring edition of the splendidly eccentric journal of the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians. To take just two: it was in 1998 that Lord’s ended its disgracefully misogynistic ban on women members, and it was only 19 years later that the World Cup final attracted a sell-out crowd at Headquarters. One milestone to come is, of course, the inauguration, next year, of Clare Connor as the first woman President of the MCC in 233 years.
Arguably more important than all this however, is the quality of performance in women’s cricket in recent years. I suppose, for me, the most significant change was watching Claire Taylor bat in the early years of this century. I had seen women’s cricket before of course at an elite level - and played both with and against women (at a level decidedly below elite) - but Taylor was the first woman player I recall being a delight to watch, the first truly elegant top order bat who could play all around the ground. She became, of course, the first female Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 2009 and was followed by others later. I think, for me, Taylor became the first player to make women’s cricket truly watchable. There have been many since and many in the current side: Heather Knight, Nat Sciver, Tammy Beaumont, etc. (add your own choice). Sarah Taylor, also, was one of the most gifted of England’s wicketkeepers; far more natural in the role, in my view, than either of the current men’s incumbents.
Some of these observations are brought on, naturally, from watching the recent series against the West Indies. While the outcome (5-0) could scarcely have been more one-sided, there was some enthralling cricket to watch. Nat Sciver’s 82 in the Third match and Deandra Dottin’s bludgeoning of the ball in a couple of innings stand out. England’s bowling was perhaps the most significant difference, always looking tidy as opposed to, for example, the bizarre end of the final match where England needing 2 from 3 got there with two no-balls. While the ground fielding looked pretty good – there were three run-outs in England’s inning in match four – some of the catching was, to be frank, quite poor (bad enough, I suppose, to attract the Naser description of “average”); the exception was a stunning catch by the West Indies captain, Stafanie Taylor, in the last (truncated) match. All in all, much to enjoy.
My own experiences of playing with women were limited to inter-faculty games, some of which could hardly bear the name of cricket, but also, many years’ ago, in a club match against the then England opening bowler, Sarah Potter. I’m ashamed to confess that the two opening batsmen were terrified. Not from the pace that Ms Potter could generate (gentle medium at best) but from the potential humiliation and derision in the clubhouse from being dismissed by a woman. As a result, her bowling figures looked decidedly economical, since all each of us attempted to do was drop on the ball, get a single, and get up the other end. Not an experience to boast of but that was how men behaved towards women cricketers in those far off, unenlightened days.
IPL Matters
I had been in Chicago for six weeks and so missed the second half of the international summer. I followed it on the internet but without much enthusiasm. However, I arrived back in the UK last week and have been captivated by the IPL taking place in the Emirates.
It all started sedately last Wednesday after I had flown into Manchester via Heathrow. Incidentally, there is no social distancing on and around aeroplanes. Rohit Sharma made another effortless, sublime 80 from 54 balls with 6 sixes. This was at Abu Dhabi, not Sharjah which has short boundaries. When they say short they mean about 65 metres which would look miles away if we were batting and would test our throwing arms to the limit. The previous day in Sharjah the Rajasthan Royals had scored 216 for 7 substantially due to 74 from 32 balls from Sanju Samson in an innings which included 9 sixes. Jofra Archer hit 4 sixes in 8 balls at the end of the innings. In reply the Chennai Superkings made a not too shabby 200 for 6.
The tournament had started the previous weekend and in the second match the Delhi Capitals slumped to 96 for 6 in the 17th over before Scott Stoinis scored 53 from 21 balls. In reply Mayank Agarwal scored 89 but the Kings XI Punjab could only tie the match. They batted first in the Tie Breaker and Rabada restricted them to just 2 runs. Delhi won with 4 balls to spare. Nicholas Pooran, of which more later, became the first batsmen to score a pair in this form of cricket.
So on to Thursday and I was treated to one of those special events that TV watchers of cricket get to see every so often, like Viv Richards demolishing Bob Willis in that ODI, ABdeV’s innings against the West Indians at the Wanderers, Stuart Broad before lunch against the Australians at Trent Bridge etc. The RCB captain, Virat Kohli, invited the King’s XI to bat first. They made unspectacular progress reaching 128 for 3 in the 16th over when Glenn Maxwell was dismissed. The commentators noted that KL Rahul needed to get a hundred for the King’s XI to reach a respectable score. Rahul was 73 at the time and I calculated that if he received half of the remaining deliveries he would need to score 27 from 13 deliveries, which was unlikely. But what do I know? He ended up 132 not out and his side reached 206 for 3. Rahul’s effort was the highest by any Indian in the tournament’s history and also the highest score by any team’s captain. Rahul, like Rohit, doesn’t slog and so his innings was a delight. It should be noted that during the latter stages of his innings he was dropped twice by, of all people, Kohli. Despite the presence of Kohli and de Villiers in their line up RCB slumped to 109 all out in their reply.
The following day the match was in Dubai where the boundaries are almost 80 metres which I suppose must be a bit like batting in the middle of Wormwood Scrubs. Delhi batted first and Prithvi Shaw made an accomplished 64 from 43 balls as they reached 175 for 3, which was more than enough as Chennai struggled to 131 for 7.
I made the mistake of watching the Spurs game and so when I turned over I half expected them to have changed the rules so that any time the ball hits the pad a batsman is given out automatically LBW. For the King’s XI Agarwal and Rahul had scored 175 without loss. The former was out for 106 from 50 balls and the latter for 69 but the score nevertheless reached a daunting 223 for 2. When Rajasthan batted Steve Smith made it look ridiculously easy but when he was caught on the cover boundary for 50 from 22 balls the score was 100 for 2 in the ninth over. Inexplicably he was replaced by Rahul Tewatia, not Robin Uthappa. Tewatia proceeded to flail about missing most deliveries and putting his side way behind the required rate. His partner Sanju Samson was going well but fell in the seventeenth over for 85 from 42 balls. By the eighteenth over Tewatia had scored 8 from 19 balls but he proceeded to hit five of Cottrell’s deliveries over the ropes. Uthappa was out to the first ball of the next over but the batsmen crossed and Tewatia hit the next two balls for six before falling for 53 from 31. Archer came in and hit his first two deliveries for six and going into the final over Rajasthan needed only three to win which they did with the luxury of three balls to spare. In the previous 4 overs they had scored 82. This was the highest successful run chase in IPL history.
However, during all this a momentous event occurred in the history of fielding. This was totally incredible at a level way beyond Stokes’ catch in the World Cup. Towards the end of his innings Samson hit high to midwicket. Pooran was on the boundary and he judged it too high to attempt a catch in the field of play and so stepped over the rope and flung himself backwards and caught the ball with himself in mid-air. Whilst still airborne facing the stands horizontally he manged to propel the ball backwards and over the rope onto the field of play. A fellow fielder retrieved it and threw it in so Samson ‘s effort was restricted to 2 rather than 6. Samson clearly wasn’t that impressed himself and bludgeoned the next ball twenty yards over long off for six. None of the commentators could believe what they had seen and Pooran’s effort is likely to be replayed endlessly as the years pass.
In Match 10 I had the privilege of seeing ABdeV in action as he scored 55 not out from 24 deliveries. Once set (after about three balls) he seems convinced that he can hit any delivery for six. RCB scored 78 from their last five overs and so reached a what had seemed unlikely 201 for 3. In the latter stages ABdeV was outscored by another young Indian Shivam Dube. When Mumbai batted they soon fell behind the required rate and when Pandya was out in the twelfth over the score was just 78 for 4, which meant 124 were required from 52 balls. But then Pollard reached 50 in 20 balls and Ishan Kishan kept hitting sixes and so Mumbai required 19 from the final over with Kishan on strike. The first two balls yielded singles leaving 17 from 4. Kishan hit the next two deliveries for six which took him to 99 before being caught on the boundary off the fifth. The batsmen had crossed and Pollard hit the final ball for 4 to tie the match. In the Super Over Mumbai only managed 7 which Kholi and deVilliers passed off their final ball.
When Jofra Archer hit the first ball he received in Game 12 for six his aggregate for the tournament became 46 from 12 balls which included 7 sixes.
What has become apparent in just these few games is the quality of the Indian batting. Sharma and Rahul have already featured strongly and Pant and Dhawan have looked good, whilst Kohli is yet to feature with the bat. But this is the old guard, the really impressive innings have been played by the youngsters – Ishan Kishan, Shivam Dube, Prithwi Shaw, Shubman Gil and Sanju Samson. It’s a great pity that the international round of T20 competitions stops most overseas players from playing in County Cricket for any length of time these days. We should also be encouraging our most promising players to join this company whenever possible. It has benefitted Bairstow, Stokes, Buttler and the Currans.
This & That
In the T20 Adam Hose made 119 not out for the Birmingham Bears as the reached 191 for 5. In reply Northants slumped to 71 for 6 in the tenth over but Taylor and White saw them through to an unlikely victory with an over to spare.
Hamish Rutherford was another centurion whop ended up on the losing side as Worcestershire reached 190 for 3, but Glamorgan got past them in their final over’
Zak Crawley was a successful centurion as he guided Kent to an easy win over Hampshire. Laurie Evans has found his way back to the Oval after spells at Warwickshire, Durham and Sussex and he would probably have been another victorious centurion as he raced to 81 not out from 46 balls by which time the Hampshire total had been overhauled.
Ben Raine has had a breakthrough season at Durham typified by his 71 not out from 39 balls with 8 sixes which enabled his side to chase down derbyshire’s 194 with a couple of overs to spare.
Joe Clarke had a quiet season in 2019 at Notts after his move from Worcestershire but has fired well in the T20 this year, none more so than in a winning chase against Lancashire when he scored 63 not out from 25 deliveries.
I saw some of the third T20 Ladies Match and was reasonably impressed by the keeping of Amy Jones until she tried to effect a run out by standing in front of the stumps and doing that grab it as it goes past and try and break the stumps behind you in a one motion action. She failed to take the ball and missed what should have been a straightforward run out. Who is coaching this crap? A stylist such as John Murray must be turning in his grave.
Much is made of how hard players work on the training ground. There is precious little evidence of this when watching defences in action over recent days. I suppose that defenders are taught to make twenty-yard square passes and five-yard neat passing triangles? They certainly don’t spend any time on the basics of marking or following runners if Manchester City and Fulham are anything to go by. Manchester City’s first line of defence is to foul which they normally do well up the field, but this backfired on Sunday when they found themselves doing it in their own penalty box and conceded three penalties as a result. As other sides learn from Leicester’s approach City could concede a record number of penalties this season.
I don’t think that we need wait for the Old Wanker’s predictions this season as Fulham are a shoo-in for relegation. I saw them against Aston Villa and they were awful.
During the Spurs v Newcastle game the commentator spent as much time apologising for foul language as commentating on the game. Why do they do this? Who is offended by this language and does anyone actually hear it? Why don’t the broadcasters accept it’s clarity as part of the Covid effect?
Morgan Matters
The Great man stays at home and enjoys some T20!
Lord's: Middlesex lost a T20 to Sussex by 3 wickets. Young leg spinner Luke Hollman took 2-33 on his first XI debut and S Eskinazi hit a quick 79: why can't he get any in proper cricket?
England and Northants allrounder David Capel is dead @ 57 after a 2 year battle with a brain tumour. He played 15 Tests and 23 ODIs and in fc cricket made 10,869 runs and took 270 wkts.
Yorkshire have signed D Bess on a 4 year deal. Durham have re-signed one-cap wonder Scott Borthwick from Surrey on a 5 year deal.
Ex-Middlesex slow left armer Tom Smith took 5-17 as Glo thrashed Warwickshire in the T20.
Yorkshire are investigating allegations of "institutional racism" after former England U19s capt Azeem Rafiq said his experiences at Headingley left him close to taking his own life.
Ex-England, Durham and Lancashire seamer G Onions has retired because of a back injury. He played 9 Tests taking 32 wkts @ 29.9 and 192 fc matches taking 723 wkts inc 31 5 wkt hauls.
TSRJ has not played for Middlesex this year and now he will miss the rest of the season because of an "ongoing shoulder complaint".
I Bell is retiring at 38 after 118 Tests, 161 ODIs and 8 T20s for Eng between 2004 and 2015. He scored 7,727 Test runs at 42.69 inc 22 tons, more than 20,000 fc runs with 57 tons plus nearly 14,000 limited overs runs.
I watched the whole of the second T20 v Oz and again England won with surprising ease to lead 2-0 with 1 to go: Oz 157-7 ( Finch 40, Stoinis 35, Jordan 2-40) England 158-4 (J Buttler 77* off 54, D Malan 42 off 32, A Agar 2-27), England won by 6 wkts and have a 2-0 lead with 1 to play. D Malan's strike rate in his 15 T20 internationals is 147.8 and his average is 48.71.
Bristol: the BWT match between Glo and Np was abandoned with Gloucester on 66-6 (29.4) because a Northants player (not playing in the match) felt ill last week and received a positive Covid-19 test yesterday morning. This sounds strange, but I suppose it is "better to be safe than sorry"?
Rs 2 (Lyndon Dykes pen and Ilias Chair) N Forest 0 and Rs are top of the embryonic Championship table! They are actually dead level with Reading, but Rs are top on alphabetical order!
Lord's T20: Middlesex made a modest 142-6 (Esky 33 Simmo 30*), but it was too many for Hampshire who only managed 123 a/o with only two, T Alsop and (ex-Middlesex bowler now mainly a batsman) J Fuller into double figures with 43 and 34 respectively, skipper S Finn 3-27.
The ECB is cutting 62 jobs in response to projected losses of up to £200m due to the pandemic.
T20: at the Bowl, Hampshire made 141-9 (Walallawita 3-19, Sowter 3-30), Middlesex 121 a/o (Simpson 48, Shaheen Afridi 6-19), Hampshire won by 20, Middlesex finished fourth in the South group, 4 points away from qualifying.
Les Ferdinand (the only black director of footy in the senior English game) has defended Rs' decision not to "take the knee" before the Championship game against Coventry on Friday. He felt the impact of the protests "has now been diluted and the decision was rightly made to stop it". The chair of Kick it Out, Sanjay Bhandari said "I agree with QPR that we need to focus on action that creates real change. We should be talking about solutions not symbols".
Middlesex reject Harry Podmore's contract with Kent has been extended to keep him at the club until the end of the 2023 season.
B Johnson has announced that crowds returning to sporting events has been "paused" and there is plenty of speculation that this could mean delayed until 1.4.21 or later and pessimists are saying some sports could "disappear forever". I have been thinking for a while that I might have already seen my last top class cricket match and this (almost) confirms it.
Oz Test batsman Dean Jones has died aged 59 in Mumbai, where he was an IPL commentator. He played 52 Tests (batting average 46.55) and 164 ODIs (44.61). Vic calls him "charismatic, abrasive and confident: the epitome of an Australian cricketer".
BWT: this was absolutely ludicrous! Essex crawled to 179-6 in 80.3 overs so the match was drawn, but under someone's daft plan a drawn match would be regarded as a victory for the side who led on first innings, which, of course was Essex! They were lucky there were no spectators present or they would have been lynched! Essex are in more trouble after it was revealed that their players sprayed champers on their young Muslim 12th man, Feroze Khushi, while celebrating their draw v Som.
Hall of Shame
The latest grotesquely overpaid footballer who can’t even manage the basics is Nathan Maitland-Niles who twice failed to reach the near post with corner kicks at a critical stage of Arsenal’s Premier League game at Anfield.
Bob Willis Trophy: The Cricketer team of the season
Nick Friend makes his selection
- Alastair Cook
- Jake Libby
- Tom Lammonby
- Ben Slater
- Will Rhodes
- Steven Davies
- Darren Stevens
- Craig Overton
- Simon Harmer
- Jamie Porter
- Olly Hannon-Dalby
Strange XI
It has been far too long since we had a strange XI to ponder and identify which Jazz hat fits them. So, try this bunch:
- Haseed Hameed
- James Vince
- Ben Duckett
- Tom Westley
- Gary Ballance
- Scott Borthwick
- Ben Foakes
- Alex Blake
- Toby Roland-Jones
- Jack Leach
- Jake Ball
Googlies Website
All the back editions of Googlies can be found on the G&C website. There are also many photographs most of which have never appeared in Googlies.
www.googliesandchinamen.com
Googlies and Chinamen
is produced by
James Sharp
Broad Lee House
Combs
High Peak
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