G&C 270

GOOGLIES & CHINAMEN
An Occasional Cricketing Journal
Edition 270
June 2025
 
Spot the Ball

 
Out and About with the Professor
 
So, to date, Yorkshire have, after seven matches, confirmed their pre-season status as Division One relegation favourites. The only solace on the North East Terrace (Upper) is that Lancashire occupy a similar position in Division Two – if only relegation was an available option. For a side that could potentially have a batting line-up of: Lyth, Root, Brook, Malan and Bairstow, the problem has been scoring runs – especially in the first innings. While those five have all played this year they were never in the same team and Root’s 90 was made in the second innings against Warwicks when the rest of the side made a total of 142.
 
In fact, Yorkshire have only really had one dominant first innings score, and 255, 216, 205, 159 and 121 are not scores likely to set up winning positions. Lyth is the only batter to have played all the matches (with some success) with Malan being injured and Bairstow nipping off for the IPL semis (the other two, of course, just put in a single fleeting appearance). In the last match, against Notts, Yorkshire used their third-choice keeper, Harry Duke, while the second choice ‘keeper, Jonny Tattersall has batted at 4. All in all, it’s not going well. The only plus in all this mediocrity has been George Hill, whose 32 wickets at 14 have resulted in a call-up to the England A squad.
 

Hill bowling to Nottingham’s Lynden James and celebrating his call-up with 5-40.
 
By comparison, Notts, who look a pretty well-balanced side, seem untroubled by Test and ODI absentees and must have a good chance of the title with four wins from seven.
 
Not, of course, that any of this matters too much. Some years’ ago in Wisden, Michael Atherton wrote that county cricket, “serves no useful purpose” and I doubt if anything in the interim will have caused him to change his opinion. Of course, it permits good young players to come through into the international teams, but is that it? A nursery? Sticking the championship at either end of the season has made clear the ECB’s view of the matter, and I suppose, notwithstanding all the protestations that emerge after whatever the latest survey reveals, the continuation of the competition will become an increasing irrelevance if, for no other reason, because no one wants to go to see it.
 
The Nottingham game at Headingley was played in beautiful weather but the attendance can be judged from the photo above. All those blue seats are the Western Terrace, which is always closed for Championship matches (saving stewarding and cleaning costs…and probably “health and safety” too). The other side of the ground, rather better populated, still only has a few hundred elderly folk in the seats. If it’s cold (as it not infrequently is in the north of England) most of them tuck themselves away in the “Long Room” and the players are performing in a seemingly empty ground.
 
The mention of “elderly” and “Health and Safety” raises a question to which Googlies readers doubtless have well-researched answers. Presumably the counties carry out risk assessments prior to putting on what is, after all, a public entertainment. For a Championship game I imagine that involves making sure the defibrillators are working and wheelchairs have their axels greased, but what about T20 and the Hundred. The ball is now hit so frequently into the crowd (to the excited squeals of the commentators) that there must be injuries as a result. Very occasionally someone gets cracked on the head, but finger injuries (from people for whom a catch in the deep is a distant memory) and various other blows most be quite common. Do we, as spectators, implicitly (or otherwise) accept the risk when we buy a ticket? Is it lurking there in “terms and conditions”? Even if it is, can an organisation absolve itself of responsibility in this way? For a Championship match it is pretty easy (even for the elderly) to get out of the way but not in the limited overs matches, and quite often it seems like the would-be catchers in the crowd only succeed in deflecting the ball into someone else’s face.
 
I recall, from my playing days, a wicket keeper of decidedly limited ability, who could often only just manage to get a finger or two to the ball. It was said that first slip was the most dangerous position on the field. Why anyone takes a very young child or even a baby to such matches is even more mysterious. The commentators often drool when the camera finds a baby: “Starting them early”, “good for the future of the game”, and perhaps it is, the child might grow up to play county cricket in an empty stadium…if it doesn’t get hit on the head first.
 
 
This & That
 
If there was any doubt that we are in the era of the left-handed batsman the Lions batting line up for the match against India A should have clarified matters. The top six in the order were all left handers: Tom Haines, Ben McKinney, Emilio Gay, Max Holden, James Rew (c) and Dan Mousley.
 
In this match James Rew was given the job of captaining the side and he did the first thing right by winning the toss. However, he made the novice’s grave mistake of putting the opposition in. India A made hay and at the end of the first day they had reached 409 for 3. By the time they were dismissed on Day 2 they had amassed 587 and Karun Nair, a test triple centurian, had made 204.
 
Perhaps Rew should have taken note of the proceedings at Trent Bridge the previous week when in the one-off test match the Zimbabwe captain, Craig Ervine, also won the toss and invited England to bat. Maybe back home they don’t get much international news or perhaps he just likes running around all day. In the event England racked up 498 for 3 and by the time they declared the next morning they had scored 565 for 6 from just 96.3 overs. Ervine’s side were then rolled over twice, and England were not required to bat again.
 
In the Gloucester versus Kent CC2 match at Bristol, the visitors had slumped to 137 for 6 when the veteran Aussie, Grant Stewart, came in at number 8 to join Chris Benjamin. They added 264 for the seventh wicket before Stewart fell for 182 from 189 balls. But it was all to no avail as the hosts went on to win by three wickets with Cameron Green making 128 and 67 not out.
In the second ODI in Ireland Keacy Carty scored 102 for the West Indies but he was upstaged later in the day when Matthew Forde batting at number 8 scored 58 from 19 deliveries including 8 sixes. The weather intervened before Paul Stirling’s men could reply.
 
The IPL seemed to lose its momentum after the phony war break but since my last comments there have been some exceptional performances. KL Rahul scored 112 for Delhi Capitals but Sai Sudharsan and Shubman Gill, now the competition's two top run-scorers, were unbeaten as they raced to their target of 200 with an over to spare. Sudharsan made a 61-ball 108 while captain Gill hit 93 from 53 deliveries to chase a record total for a 10-wicket win in the IPL, while sharing 15 fours and 11 sixes between them.
 
Rishahb Pant has not had a great time since returning from his horrific car injuries but made up for it in his innings for LSG against RCB when he scored 118 not out as his side reached 227 for 3. In reply RCB had slumped to 123 for 4 when Jitesh Sharma scored 85 not out from 105 added with Agarwal to take RCB to victory. Sharma’s innings took just 33 balls.
 
Sunrisers Hyderabad didn’t always fire as they were expected to do but when they did it was explosive. Against KKR Travis Head made 76 from 40 balls but handed over to Heinrich Klaasen who made 105 not out from just 39 balls and took his side to 279 for 3. They went on to win by 110 runs. Klaasen incidentally has just retired from all international cricket and will concentrate on his busy franchise commitments in future.
 
RCB had reached 157 for 4 after 17.4 overs against Chennai Super Kings when Romario Shepherd joined Tim David at the crease. Shepherd proceeded to score 53 not out from 14 balls hitting six sixes and four fours in the process. The final score of 213 for 5 was just enough as his side won by 2 runs. Shepherd scored the joint second fastest fifty in the IPL from 14 balls. Jaiswal has the fastest from 13 balls.

The life of a modern cricketer, unless they are English, can be hectic as this demonstrates:
 
“Sikandar Raza hit the winning runs to lead Lahore Qalandars to the Pakistan Super League title, a little more than 24 hours after he was playing for Zimbabwe against England in their Test loss at Trent Bridge. The all-rounder struck a six and a four from consecutive deliveries to take Lahore to victory against Quetta Gladiators with one ball to spare.
 
"I had dinner in Birmingham, breakfast in Dubai, and drove to Abu Dhabi for lunch. Took a flight and had a dinner in Pakistan. This is the life of a professional cricketer. I'm truly humbled and blessed to have the life," Raza, 39, said.
 
Needing 202 for victory, Raza joined Kusal Perera at the crease with 20 balls remaining and the pair staged an unbroken 59-run partnership to complete the highest chase in a PSL final. Raza had been batting in Nottingham on Saturday, scoring 60 as Zimbabwe fell to an innings defeat. The match finishing a day early allowed Raza time to fly back to Pakistan, arriving at the Gaddafi Stadium 10 minutes before the toss. He dismissed Rilee Rossouw in the first innings, finishing with figures of 1-43, then came to the wicket with Lahore needing 57 from 3.2 overs, having only scored 48 runs since the halfway mark. He immediately hit Mohammad Amir for a four and six to set his side back on track, before Perera hit three sixes and two fours from the next 12 balls, to leave Lahore needing 13 from Faheem Ashraf's final over. The pair had added five runs after three deliveries before Raza finished the match in style, lifting a flat six over point and then whipping a four through mid-wicket.
 
 
 
Thompson Matters
Steve gets it off his chest
 
Call me old-fashioned or even a miserable old git but Jacob Bethell’s decision to have his gulab jamun and eat it, fully aided and abetted by the ECB and presumably therefore the England management team, by making himself unavailable for Test selection last month and playing albeit fleetingly in the IPL, caused his Test captain to get his abacus in a twist under scrutiny from a journalist from the Great Jack Morgan’s G.  Even if the Young Pretender had been given permission to be unavailable for Zimbabwe and that it was all within the parameters of an agreement between the ECB and the BCCI (and we know who calls the shots these days) from a miserable old git’s perspective it’s not a good look.
 
When some journalists put the England captain’s ‘two and two together’ and came up with five, it was enough to get Ben on a deep-state agenda rant. It was an unnecessarily sticky moment which could have been avoided if Jacob had packed his many coloured sweaters in his suitcase and put them in the attic for the entire English summer.  A difficult precedent has now been set.
 
As to the Test itself almost inevitably it provided more questions than answers. Crawley looks world-class but sadly not consistently.  There was definitely smoke coming from above the pavilion at Trent Bridge, but it was emanating from the burger vans behind and certainly not white enough to confirm the arrival of a new Pope. He is always easy on the eye, much like Ian Bell, but only a good Indian summer will really silence the doubters.
 
The contrast between Bashir’s Test form and his other first-class record is such that like several others his summer against the tourists will reveal more about his genuine pedigree. It’s hard to see where Cook finds another appearance to prevent him from becoming a member of the One-Test Club but as a bowler, if he stays fit he’ll be in with a chance.
 
It’s early days but always fun, six months out, to try to select the England side for the first Ashes Test in Perth in November - so here goes:
 
Bethell
Duckett
Pope
Root
Brook
Stokes (Capt.)
Smith (WK)
Atkinson
Carse
Potts
Bashir
 
 
The 150th celebrations at South Hampstead will centre around a match between the club and MCC on July 16th.  Club Chairman Bob Peach would like to invite Googlies readers who were former club members or played against the club down the years to share in the day at Milverton Road.  The match starts at 11am with lunch taken at 1pm. Refreshments will be available throughout the day and after the match it is hoped there will be some activities involving the club’s thriving colts section. If, like me, it has been some time since you visited the club this will be the perfect opportunity to see a number of developments on the ground and to meet up with old friends on a very special day. More details to follow in next month’s edition.
 
Rangers Matters
 
The Rangers have had a strange two seasons with sequences of results that made them look like candidates for promotion and then suddenly candidates for relegation. They ended up in relative safety, but I was surprised to note that they played their last match without the managership of Marti Cifuentes to guide them. Apparently, he was on “gardening leave”. I am not aware of any previous instance of a football manager being put on gardening leave.
 
EFL Analysis explains “Shortly after the announcement that Cifuentes would be placed on gardening leave, links to the vacancy at West Brom emerged. However, it didn’t take long for West Brom to quash those rumours and state they were not looking at the 42-year-old. Now, we have information to share courtesy of our Chief Football Correspondent Graeme Bailey on the matter, and it appears the problems behind the scenes arose because Cifuentes’ people were contacting other clubs to sound out a potential move. We understand talks did take place between Cifuentes and West Brom, but he is not on their shortlist for the managerial role at The Hawthorns. It is also thought that QPR chiefs were unhappy to learn that Cifuentes was actively dissatisfied with the project at Loftus Road when it comes to transfer plans. The issue is, QPR claim Cifuentes knew what he was buying into when he agreed his deal with the club. While a return to QPR has not been ruled out for Cifuentes, it sounds like there are a few wrinkles to iron out between all parties from here on out. Interestingly, this is an almost exact repeat of Cifuentes’ previous fallout with his bosses at Swedish outfit, Hammarby, where the manager could not get on board with the club’s strategy.”
 
 
 
King Cricket Matters
 
A quick update on the (unutterably shit) situation at Old Trafford where the various committees responsible for running the club have just realised they missed a person when doling out blame a fortnight ago.
 
You may remember that the last bout of finger-pointing resulted in a conclusion that Lancs needed a different captain, different players and different pitches to turn things around. At some point during the innings defeat to Leicestershire, someone must have said, “Hey, what about the coach?” and so now they’ve “parted ways” with Dale Benkenstein as well.
 
It has to be said, Benkenstein’s county coaching record is not brilliant. Lancs were relegated under him last season and are the only county yet to win a game this season. Before that, he was coach of Gloucestershire for a couple of years. They finished bottom of Division 1 and then bottom of Division 2.
 
 
 
 
 
Molloy Matters
Ken sent me his review of the all English Euro final
 
I thought the Manchester United players were disgraceful.
 
The exaggerated reaction to fouls and non fouls, their aggressive attitude as the game slipped away from them and the complete lack of sportsmanship after the game was not acceptable. I understand they were disappointed but they should have realised that they themselves failed and that Spurs not only had the better tactics but also seemed much more "up for the game."
 
Amorim has a really big job on his hands if he has to knock that set of players into shape
 
I see Romero got the man of the match award which is fair enough but I thought the whole team played well, individually and collectively to carry out the tactics Ange had planned.
 
I reject the critics claims of awful everything because there were a lot of good things, especially given that with their three most creative players injured it would not have been practical to plan an attacking game and I am sure Man U had not planned for Spurs to play the way they did
 
The midfield did an excellent job containing Bruno and chums and the back four were outstanding. It would be interesting to see how many miles Sarr, Bissouma and Bentacor put in
 
Richarlison had his best game for Spurs, again putting in a lot of hard work that justified him starting ahead of Son
 
It was not pretty but they are not the first team to win with a defensive plan
 
Levy’s decision on Ange will be interesting and the action in the transfer window fascinating. Will he try to keep Romero or get enough money to find a replacement of similar standing. There are not many who could fill his boots as his battle with Maguire showed.
 
Suryavanshi Matters
Steve James comments on the prodigy
 
Most of the 14-year-olds I coach know all too well about the importance placed on the backlift. “Head and hands” has become my batting mantra, simply because I believe that, whatever the format, the head and hands work together in creating the optimal position to hit the ball, which after all is the ultimate aim of the pursuit, whether that is in defence or attack.
 
So when Vaibhav Suryavanshi, who astonishingly is just that tender age, was making his extraordinary 35-ball century in the Indian Premier League on Monday, it was comforting to see the effect his eye-catching backlift can have.
Suryavanshi is a left-hander who very publicly idolises the West Indian Brian Lara and swift comparisons have inevitably been made between the two, simply because both their backlifts take the hands so high. Those swings are actually very different, however: Lara’s was a much straighter backlift — in other words not veering too far out towards the slips — with his front (right) elbow bent and at its highest point the bat’s toe going skywards.
 
Lara had a much straighter backlift than Suryavanshi with Lara’s toe of the bat pointing towards the sky
The new southpaw sensation Suryavanshi, from Samastipur in eastern India, has a backlift born of the modern era, where the technique of hitting should never be idly dissed. His bat goes laterally with his front arm quite straight at its furthest point, the wrists cocking so violently that the bat comes forward ahead of hands, creating incredibly fast hand-speed into the ball and therefore a coruscating flourish of a follow-through.
 
As his Rajasthan Royals batting coach, Vikram Rathour, said after his 101 that included 11 sixes: “He’s got a great downswing if you want to go into technique. So that helps him generate this kind of power.”
 
Indeed, he does possess a spectacular downswing, courtesy of the whip of the wrist after being cocked. But that is only possible because of a significant upswing, a subject that has long been a bugbear of mine since entering the coaching world. It was all so much simpler in the old days when everyone tapped their bat on the ground and therefore had to take their hands back to play any kind of attacking shot, but the advent of the raised bat has complicated matters, with so many young players in particular fooled into thinking they have already picked the bat up when in reality all they are doing is dropping it and then jabbing at the ball.
 
There are those who believe that the quickest bowlers should be combatted with a shorter backlift but I have always been of the opinion that they should be met with a higher backlift, because then the speed of the hands, whether slowing down to defend or quickening to attack, can be managed so much better. I know that Ricky Ponting is an advocate of this too.
 
As Suryavanshi’s oldest coach, Manish Ojha, who first worked with the prodigy when he was eight, says: “Watch his arm extension in his big hits — it goes all the way. That’s what we trained for. The higher the bat lift and the higher it finishes on the other side [after the shot], you get more power, timing. The greater the arm extension on the front side, the better it is. The smoothness in body-weight transfer and good head position helps.”
 
It is all about “head and hands”, Manish, yes, but the point about weight transfer, and therefore power generated from the lower half of the body, is important too. Suryavanshi takes a small step back in his crease to produce a classic power-hitting position, so that his weight is on a bent back leg that protrudes out towards the off side, then it is transferred forward, with his front leg braced and far enough out of the way on the leg side, as his back hip also drives through to achieve remarkable power.
 
He likes the leg side, that is for sure, with 61 per cent of his 101 and indeed 82 per cent of his boundaries coming there, and you can be sure that bowlers will quickly wise up and not bowl so many good-length and short-of-a-length balls in the slot as they did on Monday. But still the striking was uncommonly clean and long, especially for one so young.
 
Players in this country will always struggle to be that advanced at such a young age because of a combination of the seasons, the climate and the pitches. Ours have to catch up later when, for instance, the volume of county cricket allows rapid improvements.
 
Of course, we knew that Suryavanshi was something very special when he hoisted his first ball in the IPL over extra cover for six off Shardul Thakur, but Monday’s innings was to take levels of incredulity off the scale, as he took an attack including such names as Mohammed Siraj, Ishant Sharma, Prasidh Krishna and Washington Sundar apart.
 
What will his future hold? Could he be a Test player one day? Will he even want to be one, or need to be one? Who can say, and I cannot even give a technical gaze into the crystal ball simply because I have no idea what his defence is like and how that backlift might translate into straighter-bat strokes. He has played five first-class matches, though, and averages just ten in them, with a highest score of 41, so that is not a great start, even if he has made an unbeaten 332 in a state under-19 competition.
 
Unsurprisingly he is a quick learner, though, which is one of the first traits I look for in a young player. “I don’t remember teaching him something more than once,” Ohja has said. “When I started working with him I found him quite different from others. You would give him a demo of a technique or a shot, and he would pick it up in no time. Most of the players adopt things easily in practice but when it comes to playing matches, they fail. But the unique feature about Vaibhav was that he would execute things perfectly even during high-pressure matches.”
 
And one question that I debated in another article this week about the lack of pace in county cricket appears to have been answered already. He has Jofra Archer as a team-mate at Rajasthan and apparently he plays him rather well. “He is one guy who takes on Jofra in the nets,” the batting coach Rathour says. “Jofra is maybe one of the toughest bowlers to face in the nets because he is so awkward and he bowls quick. But he is the one who really takes him on.”
 
He appears to know only that way: to take the bowlers on. His journey from here will be fascinating.
 
Crocks Corner
In this era when bowlers have to carry out inappropriate fitness regimes and then spend more time on the treatment bench than actually bowling this feature celebrates the manifold complaints of these elite athletes. Feel free to submit anything you notice
 
“Fast bowler Gus Atkinson has been ruled out of England's one-day international series against West Indies because of a hamstring injury. Atkinson, 27, suffered the injury during England's comprehensive Test victory against Zimbabwe, which they won by an innings and 45 runs. He is expected to be fit in time for the five-match Test series against India, with the first Test at Headingley, starting on 20 June. England will not be adding a replacement for Atkinson in the squad for the three-match series against West Indies, which starts on Thursday at Edgbaston. Atkinson is the second injury withdrawal from the series after Jofra Archer was ruled out because of a thumb issue sustained playing in the Indian Premier League (IPL).”
 
“England Test captain Ben Stokes says he gave up drinking alcohol at the start of the year in the hope the abstinence would help with his recovery from injury. Stokes, 33, had surgery on his left hamstring in December after suffering a tear during the third Test against New Zealand. He was initially ruled out for at least three months but has not yet featured for Durham in the County Championship. All-rounder Stokes sustained a similar injury during The Hundred last summer, but he said that he has changed his approach to rehabilitation this time, which included reflection on his relationship with alcohol. "After my first major injury, I remember the shock of it and after the initial adrenaline had stopped, I was thinking, 'How has this happened?'" Stokes told the Untapped podcast, hosted by Spencer Matthews.
"[I thought] 'We did have a bit of a drink four or five nights ago, could that have played a part?' It wouldn't have helped. “Then I was like 'OK, I need to start changing what I do'." As a result, Stokes said he has not had an alcoholic drink since the beginning of January. He added that it is unlikely that he will ever give up alcohol entirely but that he has learned to manage his behaviour with it. He said that when he was younger, his drinking habits were "all or nothing", whereas he is now able to manage having "a social drink".”
 
 
Robin Ager
 
Earlier this month I heard from Carol, his wife, that Robin had died at home with his family.
 
Robin was a left-handed batsman and wicket keeper. He joined South Hampstead from Turnham Green in the early sixties where he had already played and scored a hundred for Surrey second XI. South Hampstead was batting heavy at this stage, but they were all right handers- Cordaroy, Weale, Peach, Stubbs, Nienow and Tutton and so Robin usually managed to get a place in the top three. His batting style was something of what has become known as a “dasher” and I remember him hitting powerfully in the mid-on and mid-off areas. He scored over 1000 runs in both 1964 and 1965 in 1st XI matches for the club.
 
In these pages I have previously ranked him as the best wicket keeper I have played with and I still stand by this. The ball always stayed low at South Hampstead and so the keeper had to be prepared to take the ball unusually lower than on most tracks. That is except when the leg spinner, Roy Phipps was bowling. I always found Roy particularly difficult to handle with his extra bounce and over spin, but Robin made it look easy and rarely mishandled a take.
 
He was a key member of Bob Peach’s 1968 side that played in the Wills Final at Lord’s
 

 
Robin keeping wicket at Lord’s. Roger Pearman is the batsman, Len Stubbs the slip fielder and I am at short leg, on as sub.
 
He formed a close friendship with Bill Hart, and it was always a riotous evening when they teamed up for bar duty on a Saturday night. After he got married and started a family he returned to playing at Turnham Green.
 
Robin had a wry sense of humour and I always recalled his tale of buying an expensive pair of leather shoes from a gentleman’s outfitter. After a few weeks he noticed that there was a deterioration on the toe caps and so he returned them to the shop where they agreed to return them to the makers for tests. When he returned, he was told that they were unable to replace them as the cause of the deterioration was urine.
 
 
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