GOOGLIES & CHINAMEN
An Occasional Cricketing Journal
Edition 59
November 2007
Caption Competition
Central Contract Matters
Central Contracts made absolute sense to Duncan Fletcher who wanted all the players exclusively under his control but the concept is under increasing strain as the ECB employees make bizarre decisions around the system. There has been no wicket keeper under central for a very long time but each England side has to take the field with one, however inept. On the other hand despite his poor form Andrew Strauss was awarded a renewed central contract in the summer but has not been picked for an England side since. He is not even included in the tour party for the test matches in Sri Lanka. So this has become a great number. Perhaps I should see if the ECB will give me a central contract. I won’t have to play and can watch the matches on TV at home whilst working out how to spend all the dosh. Meanwhile Andrew Flintoff, who should probably be named Peg Ankle, continues to be under central contract even though there is no likelihood of his playing for the foreseeable future. Perhaps Gilo should be given a central contract in case he decides to come out of retirement.
KP is still whingeing about tiredness. Why doesn’t he request an unpaid sabbatical from the ECB? I am sure that there are plenty of players who would be happy to step up and take his place. Then when KP has rested his weary frame he can find some side somewhere to grace with his talents and try to score sufficient runs to warrant getting his place back. Of course if his replacement scored heavily this might be a difficult task even for His KPness. Incidentally Graeme Swan who played much more cricket than KP this summer did not seem tired in Sri Lanka nor did Ryan Sidebottom who seems to be everybody’s pick as the star turn. Whilst KP’s behaviour may be less erratic since he came under the control of a good woman, or at least a minor pop star, he continues to present himself as a spoilt brat.
Middlesex Matters
2007 was a modest season of success for Middlesex with the club finishing half way up the second division in the main competition. However, almost every member of the staff received an award at the Annual Dinner. Tim Murtagh and Murali Kartik were named Players of the Year. In addition, presentations were made to the retiring Chairman of the England & Wales Cricket Board, David Morgan, and to Vinny Coddington who celebrated his 10th Anniversary as Chief Executive.
Player of the Month awards to were given to David Nash (April), Billy Godleman (May), Murali Kartik (June/July), Eoin Morgan (August) and Ed Smith (September). Special awards were then presented to Danny Evans for making his first class debut this season, Billy Godleman for his maiden first class century, Eoin Morgan for his maiden century for Middlesex, Steven Finn for his County Championship debut, Robbie Williams for five wickets in an innings on his County Championship debut and Owais Shah for his maiden ODI century.
The Betfair Scholarship Award was presented to Dan Housego. John Emburey then presented Steve Martin the Southgate Groundsman with a gift in recognition of his 25 years service. The Middlesex retirements of Ben Hutton and Richard Johnson were also marked with a presentation to both by David Nash. Other Awards included the John Bugden Bowling Award which went to Murali Kartik for his 6-21 against Glamorgan, Youth Player of the Season, Kabir Toor and Women’s Player of the Season, Sarah Bartlett.
Paul Weekes and Tim Murtagh were honoured at the reception that followed the end-of-season forum. Paul’s loyal service to Middlesex was recognised by his picture being added to the ‘Wall of Honour’ in the Middlesex Room. The club’s Treasurer, Geoff Norris, told guests that Paul had enjoyed considerable success between 1990 and 2006, with more than 18,000 runs and 600 wickets in all competitions. Tim Murtagh was voted Seaxe Player of the Year and received the Pascoe Trophy from the Seaxe Chairman, Jane Saxton. Tim took 42 first class wickets this season and was leading wicket-taker in the Pro40. In addition, Jane said his batting added strength to the tail and he was a consistently good fielder. She also praised his professionalism, which set a good example to others.
In addition The ECB announced the winners of the inaugural First Class County Marketing Awards, designed to recognize and reward excellence and innovation in promoting domestic cricket during summer 2007. Middlesex CCC was awarded Best Kit Design for its fresh approach to The Twenty20 Cup during which the players wore specially designed pink shirts to support the charity, Breakthrough Breast Cancer. The Club rose over £20,000 for the charity this season, and enjoyed significant publicity for this innovative approach.
Goodness knows how many presentations will be warranted when Middlesex eventually have a better than average season.
Meanwhile the Great Jack Morgan reported: “According to the Middlesex Newsletter, the Director (who now appears to be back in charge) is talking to a potential Kolpak, but is not otherwise looking to recruit. I think this is wrong: we had twelve seamers at the start of 2007 and five of these have now gone; of the remaining seven, one is Keegan, about whom we have heard nothing and who is unlikely to play Championship cricket, even if he is still on the staff. This leaves six seamers (of which three are total greenhorns and two of those are away at university for the first half of the season), which has never been enough in the past. Even if the Kolpak is a seamer, it still looks dangerously thin to me. Kartik’s good news is bad news for Middlesex: they now need to strengthen both spin and pace. Jim Revier tells me that Omari Banks, whom Middlesex were rumoured to be considering, has signed for Somerset, while Alex Loudon was so aghast at the prospect of playing under Smudger that he promptly retired from the game! Jim also tells me that Boyd Rankin has gone to Warwickshire. I spotted ex-Middlesex keeper Joel Pope at Southgate with the Leicestershire squad (but without his name on his back) and guessed that he was on trial with them, but now it has been announced that he has signed for them (but Nixon and New are ahead of him in the queue). Did you hear that Rikki Clarke has gone to Derbyshire as captain? It turns out that Saqlain’s “personal reasons” for leaving Sussex were that Surrey were offering him more money!
The lack of batting bonus points definitely cost Middlesex promotion as I hinted that it might earlier in the season. Middlesex actually had a slightly better record than Nottinghamshire (won 6, lost 2 against won 6, lost 3) and as the bowling points (43 each) were the same, it is clear that the huge difference of 25 batting points was the reason for missing promotion. Of course, batting well in the first innings is also likely to put the team into a winning position, so if we had batted slightly better we would have had more wins as well as more batting points and would have strolled into the first division.”
Off spin Matters
Who said that off-spin bowling was dead? Well come to think of it I suppose it was me. It was only very recently the case that off spinners who didn’t have a Doozra were treated as cannon fodder and indeed any that did have the hint of one were picked instantly for the England squad, viz Alex Loudon (remember him?). But suddenly things have all changed. Sure the Doozra wielding boys have excelled with Murali getting a stack of wickets for Lancashire and Saqlain helping Sussex claim the title. But the orthodox only offies have made a big comeback.
First there was Ramesh Powar bowling his little lobs slower than Bomber Wells against England in the one day international series. The England camp was mesmerized and had no plan to deal with them. Unfortunately for the red glasses toting little fatman from India the rest of the international community are less gullible and in the Twenty20 World Cup he was blasted out of sight. Then there was Harbajhan Singh who bowled with style and class for Surrey before producing an immaculate display in the Twenty20 World Cup.
And then there was Graham Swann who managed to squeeze Monty out of the limelight in Sri Lanka and by the end of the series no one begrudged his selection ahead of the bearded darling of the media.
I still think, though, that this is blip in the demise of the traditional off spinner. Huge bats, covered wickets and hard fast tracks combine to make their craft exceptionally difficult.
CCC in Australia Matters
Ian McIntosh was kind enough to send me a copy of the Middlesex League Handbook for 2007 since he thought that there would be articles of interest for me. And he was right. Mickey Dunn wrote an article about the first CCC tour of Australia in 1971 and included the following photo of the tour party:
David Evans of Edmonton captained the side and the other players that I can identify are The Legendary Len Stubbs and Terry Cordaroy both of South Hampstead, Roger Pearman of Hornsey, Brian Reid of Brentham, Charlie Toole of Finchley and Mickey Dunn, himself , who of course has played for every club in the Home Counties. The Manager of this tour was Conn Davies of Alexander Park. The scorer was Audrey Hawdon who is on one knee in the front row and her husband, the South Hampstead statistician, Tony, is wearing the open raincoat.
There will no doubt be some amongst the readers who are able to help with a full identification of the party.
Big Ronnie Matters
Big Ronnie took a fair amount of stick in these pages in the early days when Nass thought he was the answer to England’s problems. It turns out that we may have bee a little too hard on him. The Wisden Cricketer has a feature called Number Crunching which pointed out that Big Ronnie’s stats in first class cricket are significantly better than Freddie’s. This may not be all that surprising as Freddie has never been a big wicket taker and his batting is very inconsistent. In fact Freddie may turn out to be a sort of Durham Sprayer in that indifferent performances are actually the norm and that his purple patches, at least with the bat, are rare.
For the record:
Batting: Big Ronnie averaged 41.58, Freddie averages 35.06
Bowling: Big Ronnie averaged 29.51, Freddie averages 32.04
Both men pass the acid test of an all rounder in that their batting averages are better than their bowling averages.
The Great Jack Morgan suggested: “One of the reasons for these figures is that Ronnie has played a lot of county cricket while Freddie has played mostly international cricket. And when Fred played for Lancs in his early career, he was seen mainly as a batsman and was used sparingly as a bowler. Having said that, we shouldn’t under-rate Ronnie’s career and I always had a lot of respect for him as a batsman.”
Lardarse Matters
The Googlies staff writers have been keeping their eagle eyes open at various county grounds throughout the summer for potential members of that most prestigious of Jazz Hat sides, the Lardarse Eleven. After several selection meetings and much soul searching we are confident that we have found a side that will match any other pound for pound:
Rob Key
Virendar Sehwag
David Sales
Samit Patel
Matthew Walker
Ian Blackwell
Mark Ealham
Ramesh Powar
Andrew Hall
Jimmy Fatboy Ormond
Mushtaq Ahmed
The wicket keeping duties will be offered to anyone of them who can bend down on the day. Some will say that Rob Key has shed pounds but he stays in on the basis that he carries all his weight now in his face.
Penguin Matters
In the last issue Peter Ray took some very high ground about professionalism in the modern game. Many readers may have been confused about his distinguishing between pots and kettles and relative blackness but only the Great Jack Morgan put pen to paper:
“What breathtaking hypocrisy from Peter Ray! He bemoans the “complete lack of proper cricketing manners displayed by those who should serve as role models for the young”, yet he was the worst behaved player ever to step onto a cricket field. Peter was certainly a dreadful role model for the young, but his cricketing manners may not have influenced “brainless idiots like Prior” because I have never heard Matt come out with the sort of obscenities that issued from Peter’s mouth. Is he taking the piss?”
Well, is anyone going to corroborate Jack’s allegations? Will Peter come to his own defence and deny such outrageous accusations? And what happened to Peter to make him such a wise and sagely commentator these days? Googlies undertake to publish all correspondence on these matters.
Marital Matters
You can play for an English county through one of four routes:
Alongside their Academies ambitious counties will soon be seen raising harems of eligible young ladies. Prestigious international stars will then be solicited in an attempt to lure them to these shores. But they won’t be able to get full “privileges” until they are safely married and qualified. Next season, with some careful planning over the next few months, Middlesex could have a new ball attack of Malinga and Lee with Bond as a useful back up. But it may take the provision of some exceptionally tastey crumpet to get Michael Clarke to tie the knot.
Match Report Matters
Bill Hart, like all my South Hampstead correspondents, could remember nothing about the Ealing match that featured in the last edition of Googlies. But he is a dedicated Nostalgia Chappie and he sent me this:
“If you look through the scorebooks of around that period you will find a match which we won at Ealing. Batting second Terry Cordaroy carried his bat in what I think was one of his finest innings. As usual at Ealing in the early sixties, the wicket wore badly, and I remember batting with Terry near the end. Coxon and an off-spinner (it might have been Alan Price, but I have a feeling that it was Peter Mitchell), were turning the ball very sharply. I hung on for grim death, whilst Terry (taking all of Coxon) played as though he was on a perfect wicket, until the job was done. Could you please let me know if my memory is anywhere near accurate?”
I was able to reply as follows:
Sat 31 July 1965
Ealing 100
Stevens 40
Hart 5-28
Peach 5-20
SH 101-7
Cordaroy 51 not out
Hart 13 not out
Coxon 3-32
Mitchell 2-17
You came in at 78-7 when Peach was out and so you were the dominant scorer in the winning partnership. Terry hit the first ball of the innings for four but only scored one other boundary. Your recollection seems pretty good although you were obviously too modest to mention the five for.
Sexist and, possibly, Racist Matters
During the Twenty20 World Cup I made a note to include in Irritating Trends the use of a female commentator. I didn’t catch her name but I believe she was a black South African. The odd thing was that she clearly knew what she was talking about but it just didn’t seem right. I was mulling over how to write this up over the coming weeks when I found myself tuning in to Test Match Special for the first of England’s one dayers against Sri Lanka. It was clearly the second string commentators who had been despatched to the northern jungle in forty degrees heat since Simon Mann and Dougie Brown were there to give me the low-down on KP’s extending list of failures. But when Simon Mann handed over it wasn’t to Arlo White but to Alison Mitchell. I felt sure that this would confirm my prejudices and give me some copy but to my amazement she not only commentated well but clearly also knew what she was talking about. I checked out her credentials and I can’t find any mention of her having played the game. So how has she acquired the knowledge to pontificate at this level?
I concluded that the use of female commentators probably wasn’t irritating after all and that perhaps all I had to do was get used to them. And then an interesting thought came to mind. Why don’t they promote Alison to the first division of TMS commentators and remove the blathering idiot Blofeld for good? I don’t know anyone who can even tolerate his fanciful, ill informed meanderings. He isn’t even professional since he can’t be bothered to find out who the players are. But apparently some people like him. In the Wisden Cricketer readers’ poll to find the best commentary team those selected were: Boycott, Agnew, Lloyd, Atherton and Holding. Martin-Jenkins and Nass were next, but Blofeld then appeared before Nicholas, Botham, Marks, Gower, Hughes, Fraser and Knight. There was no mention of Allott, Colville or the Welsh Wizard.
Red Mist Matters
The puzzling thing is that Youvraj Singh was not in the Indian test side in England and didn’t feature strongly in the ODIs. His innings against England in the Twenty20 World Cup was staggering. The previous fastest fifty in international cricket had been scored from seventeen balls. Youvraj scored his from just eleven balls. This alone was unbelievable. That it included a perfect over of sixes without slogging was awesome. And then a couple of days later he scored 70 against Australia from just thirty deliveries.
Irritating Little Pillock Matters
After last’s month’s description of Mushtaq Ahmed by The Great Jack Morgan as an Irritating Little Pillock I received a reprimand by email from a reader who restricted his identity to Keith. I felt obliged to respond and found myself explaining this phenomenon whereby the great performer so irritates the watchers on all grounds except Hove.
My theory is that whilst he is known as a leg spinner he bowls almost exclusively googlies. As a result batsmen play for the leg spinner but get hit on the front pad a lot. The introduction of Hawkeye has made umpires more aware of how many balls would have hit the stumps and have started to give front foot lbws to the spinners. Contrast this to the Barrington days when batsmen would play off spinners by just letting the ball hit the front pad. Consequently the entire Sussex fielding side gets plenty of opportunities to try out their luck with the umpire each over and if they get a successful appeal on a one in twenty basis then Mushie will get a wicket every five overs which is the best strike rate in the division.
I think that Mushie will go down as one of the greats of modern county cricket. He has been the principal reason for Sussex winning three championships in five years. On the other hand I have seen several days play with him wheeling away from one end all afternoon but with the pad hit four times an over and each one generating an appeal, it can become tiresome to say the least.
Irritating Trends in Modern Cricket –Number 48
Before the Old Danes Gathering during the Shepherds Bush Cricket Week this summer Dave Perrin had warned me that the match would be accompanied by music of Caribbean origin. Since we were the guests of the club we could hardly object and I assumed that it would not affect our gathering. In the event in did seem rather strange to have this music seemingly forced out of a ghetto blaster throughout the match in progress. Nevertheless we put it down to an idiosyncratic feature of the visiting side, rather like a demand for kosher teas or halal barbecued sausages in the evening. I didn’t give it much further thought until I received this from the Great Jack Morgan:
“ I was strolling past Hampton Hill CC (they play in the park, but not close to Teddington CC) the other day about 11.30am when a match was about to start and my attention was grabbed by an enormous ghetto blaster from which was blaring deafening pop music. I waited a few minutes while the match got under way, but there was no sign of the row being turned off. Is this the new thing? I had never heard of music during a club match until our visit to the Bush this year: have you encountered it before? The music at HHCC was slightly better than that at the Bush, but because it was about three times as loud, it was even more irritating and I hurried on my way. I then surprised myself by trekking over to Southgate for the Pro40 play-off match against Northants. I confirmed that members were to be admitted free, that the weather would be dry and sunny (though still windy) and as the match was on a Sunday, the traffic problems would surely be insignificant... so I couldn’t think of a reason for not going. However, I had not realised that the match would be covered by Sky and that this meant pop music blasting out before the match and during the interval and ridiculous bursts when boundaries were hit or wickets fell. My only previous experience of this was at the ODIs in SA in 2000 and I was not ready for another musical experience.”
Strange Elevens
The Great Jack Morgan supplied me with a Premiership style squad for this month’s Strange Eleven. I selected from them this formidable side who you wouldn’t want to come up against whilst on tour in Devon.
Geoff Boycott
Roy Marshall
Eddie Barlow
Mike JK Smith
Zaheer Abbas
Clive Lloyd
Tony Frost
Dan Vettori
Eddie Hemmings
Paul Allott
Hallam Moseley
As usual all you have to do is decide which Jazz Hat fits them all.
You can all join in Matters
I am planning to produce an article for a future edition on the opening day of Middlesex League cricket in May 1973. I have some details of the South Hampstead match at Stanmore and Bob Fisher has already agreed to send me some data on Ealing’s opening match. If you have any recollections of your club’s first game please forward them to me.
Football Matters
Andrew Baker is a man of many talents and in addition to being the manager of Kelvin West’s local Ladies soccer side he is also an equestrian. Unfortunately he was hospitalised recently after taking a fall whilst show jumping. Kelvin West kindly agreed to take over temporary managerial duties on the football front. When he went into the gents he found that there had been some modifications made to the wash basins. When he asked the Ladies why, they replied that it was an attempt to encourage the men to wash their hands after using the urinals.
Earlier Editions
I will be please to email you a copy of the earlier editions of Googlies & Chinamen, if you missed them.
Googlies and Chinamen
is produced by
James Sharp
Broad Lee House
Combs
High Peak
SK23 9XA
Tel & fax: 01298 70237
Email: [email protected]
An Occasional Cricketing Journal
Edition 59
November 2007
Caption Competition
- Ian Botham: Who said they saw me riding sidesaddle into town?
- Charles Colville: Put that away. I only suggested that Freddie is one of England’s top ever all rounders.
- Victoria Beckham: Don’t call me a washed up old slapper if you don’t mind. Mine name’s not Geri Halliwell.
- Mae West: How disappointing, it was a gun in your pocket after all and I had really hoped that you were pleased to see me.
- Ian Botham: You won’t catch me down on one knee in front of a queen.
- Ian Botham: I have walked all the way from John O’Groats; I want a whole box of Wheatabix, a case of red wine and Calamity Jane.
- Sitting Bull: Nice draw, white man. You have six bullets in there and I have two thousand braves behind me. Why don’t you put that away and come over here and smoke the peace pipe with me. I have just got in some rather good Colombian weed.
- Henry Blofeld: I say Beefy, hold on a minute!
Central Contract Matters
Central Contracts made absolute sense to Duncan Fletcher who wanted all the players exclusively under his control but the concept is under increasing strain as the ECB employees make bizarre decisions around the system. There has been no wicket keeper under central for a very long time but each England side has to take the field with one, however inept. On the other hand despite his poor form Andrew Strauss was awarded a renewed central contract in the summer but has not been picked for an England side since. He is not even included in the tour party for the test matches in Sri Lanka. So this has become a great number. Perhaps I should see if the ECB will give me a central contract. I won’t have to play and can watch the matches on TV at home whilst working out how to spend all the dosh. Meanwhile Andrew Flintoff, who should probably be named Peg Ankle, continues to be under central contract even though there is no likelihood of his playing for the foreseeable future. Perhaps Gilo should be given a central contract in case he decides to come out of retirement.
KP is still whingeing about tiredness. Why doesn’t he request an unpaid sabbatical from the ECB? I am sure that there are plenty of players who would be happy to step up and take his place. Then when KP has rested his weary frame he can find some side somewhere to grace with his talents and try to score sufficient runs to warrant getting his place back. Of course if his replacement scored heavily this might be a difficult task even for His KPness. Incidentally Graeme Swan who played much more cricket than KP this summer did not seem tired in Sri Lanka nor did Ryan Sidebottom who seems to be everybody’s pick as the star turn. Whilst KP’s behaviour may be less erratic since he came under the control of a good woman, or at least a minor pop star, he continues to present himself as a spoilt brat.
Middlesex Matters
2007 was a modest season of success for Middlesex with the club finishing half way up the second division in the main competition. However, almost every member of the staff received an award at the Annual Dinner. Tim Murtagh and Murali Kartik were named Players of the Year. In addition, presentations were made to the retiring Chairman of the England & Wales Cricket Board, David Morgan, and to Vinny Coddington who celebrated his 10th Anniversary as Chief Executive.
Player of the Month awards to were given to David Nash (April), Billy Godleman (May), Murali Kartik (June/July), Eoin Morgan (August) and Ed Smith (September). Special awards were then presented to Danny Evans for making his first class debut this season, Billy Godleman for his maiden first class century, Eoin Morgan for his maiden century for Middlesex, Steven Finn for his County Championship debut, Robbie Williams for five wickets in an innings on his County Championship debut and Owais Shah for his maiden ODI century.
The Betfair Scholarship Award was presented to Dan Housego. John Emburey then presented Steve Martin the Southgate Groundsman with a gift in recognition of his 25 years service. The Middlesex retirements of Ben Hutton and Richard Johnson were also marked with a presentation to both by David Nash. Other Awards included the John Bugden Bowling Award which went to Murali Kartik for his 6-21 against Glamorgan, Youth Player of the Season, Kabir Toor and Women’s Player of the Season, Sarah Bartlett.
Paul Weekes and Tim Murtagh were honoured at the reception that followed the end-of-season forum. Paul’s loyal service to Middlesex was recognised by his picture being added to the ‘Wall of Honour’ in the Middlesex Room. The club’s Treasurer, Geoff Norris, told guests that Paul had enjoyed considerable success between 1990 and 2006, with more than 18,000 runs and 600 wickets in all competitions. Tim Murtagh was voted Seaxe Player of the Year and received the Pascoe Trophy from the Seaxe Chairman, Jane Saxton. Tim took 42 first class wickets this season and was leading wicket-taker in the Pro40. In addition, Jane said his batting added strength to the tail and he was a consistently good fielder. She also praised his professionalism, which set a good example to others.
In addition The ECB announced the winners of the inaugural First Class County Marketing Awards, designed to recognize and reward excellence and innovation in promoting domestic cricket during summer 2007. Middlesex CCC was awarded Best Kit Design for its fresh approach to The Twenty20 Cup during which the players wore specially designed pink shirts to support the charity, Breakthrough Breast Cancer. The Club rose over £20,000 for the charity this season, and enjoyed significant publicity for this innovative approach.
Goodness knows how many presentations will be warranted when Middlesex eventually have a better than average season.
Meanwhile the Great Jack Morgan reported: “According to the Middlesex Newsletter, the Director (who now appears to be back in charge) is talking to a potential Kolpak, but is not otherwise looking to recruit. I think this is wrong: we had twelve seamers at the start of 2007 and five of these have now gone; of the remaining seven, one is Keegan, about whom we have heard nothing and who is unlikely to play Championship cricket, even if he is still on the staff. This leaves six seamers (of which three are total greenhorns and two of those are away at university for the first half of the season), which has never been enough in the past. Even if the Kolpak is a seamer, it still looks dangerously thin to me. Kartik’s good news is bad news for Middlesex: they now need to strengthen both spin and pace. Jim Revier tells me that Omari Banks, whom Middlesex were rumoured to be considering, has signed for Somerset, while Alex Loudon was so aghast at the prospect of playing under Smudger that he promptly retired from the game! Jim also tells me that Boyd Rankin has gone to Warwickshire. I spotted ex-Middlesex keeper Joel Pope at Southgate with the Leicestershire squad (but without his name on his back) and guessed that he was on trial with them, but now it has been announced that he has signed for them (but Nixon and New are ahead of him in the queue). Did you hear that Rikki Clarke has gone to Derbyshire as captain? It turns out that Saqlain’s “personal reasons” for leaving Sussex were that Surrey were offering him more money!
The lack of batting bonus points definitely cost Middlesex promotion as I hinted that it might earlier in the season. Middlesex actually had a slightly better record than Nottinghamshire (won 6, lost 2 against won 6, lost 3) and as the bowling points (43 each) were the same, it is clear that the huge difference of 25 batting points was the reason for missing promotion. Of course, batting well in the first innings is also likely to put the team into a winning position, so if we had batted slightly better we would have had more wins as well as more batting points and would have strolled into the first division.”
Off spin Matters
Who said that off-spin bowling was dead? Well come to think of it I suppose it was me. It was only very recently the case that off spinners who didn’t have a Doozra were treated as cannon fodder and indeed any that did have the hint of one were picked instantly for the England squad, viz Alex Loudon (remember him?). But suddenly things have all changed. Sure the Doozra wielding boys have excelled with Murali getting a stack of wickets for Lancashire and Saqlain helping Sussex claim the title. But the orthodox only offies have made a big comeback.
First there was Ramesh Powar bowling his little lobs slower than Bomber Wells against England in the one day international series. The England camp was mesmerized and had no plan to deal with them. Unfortunately for the red glasses toting little fatman from India the rest of the international community are less gullible and in the Twenty20 World Cup he was blasted out of sight. Then there was Harbajhan Singh who bowled with style and class for Surrey before producing an immaculate display in the Twenty20 World Cup.
And then there was Graham Swann who managed to squeeze Monty out of the limelight in Sri Lanka and by the end of the series no one begrudged his selection ahead of the bearded darling of the media.
I still think, though, that this is blip in the demise of the traditional off spinner. Huge bats, covered wickets and hard fast tracks combine to make their craft exceptionally difficult.
CCC in Australia Matters
Ian McIntosh was kind enough to send me a copy of the Middlesex League Handbook for 2007 since he thought that there would be articles of interest for me. And he was right. Mickey Dunn wrote an article about the first CCC tour of Australia in 1971 and included the following photo of the tour party:
David Evans of Edmonton captained the side and the other players that I can identify are The Legendary Len Stubbs and Terry Cordaroy both of South Hampstead, Roger Pearman of Hornsey, Brian Reid of Brentham, Charlie Toole of Finchley and Mickey Dunn, himself , who of course has played for every club in the Home Counties. The Manager of this tour was Conn Davies of Alexander Park. The scorer was Audrey Hawdon who is on one knee in the front row and her husband, the South Hampstead statistician, Tony, is wearing the open raincoat.
There will no doubt be some amongst the readers who are able to help with a full identification of the party.
Big Ronnie Matters
Big Ronnie took a fair amount of stick in these pages in the early days when Nass thought he was the answer to England’s problems. It turns out that we may have bee a little too hard on him. The Wisden Cricketer has a feature called Number Crunching which pointed out that Big Ronnie’s stats in first class cricket are significantly better than Freddie’s. This may not be all that surprising as Freddie has never been a big wicket taker and his batting is very inconsistent. In fact Freddie may turn out to be a sort of Durham Sprayer in that indifferent performances are actually the norm and that his purple patches, at least with the bat, are rare.
For the record:
Batting: Big Ronnie averaged 41.58, Freddie averages 35.06
Bowling: Big Ronnie averaged 29.51, Freddie averages 32.04
Both men pass the acid test of an all rounder in that their batting averages are better than their bowling averages.
The Great Jack Morgan suggested: “One of the reasons for these figures is that Ronnie has played a lot of county cricket while Freddie has played mostly international cricket. And when Fred played for Lancs in his early career, he was seen mainly as a batsman and was used sparingly as a bowler. Having said that, we shouldn’t under-rate Ronnie’s career and I always had a lot of respect for him as a batsman.”
Lardarse Matters
The Googlies staff writers have been keeping their eagle eyes open at various county grounds throughout the summer for potential members of that most prestigious of Jazz Hat sides, the Lardarse Eleven. After several selection meetings and much soul searching we are confident that we have found a side that will match any other pound for pound:
Rob Key
Virendar Sehwag
David Sales
Samit Patel
Matthew Walker
Ian Blackwell
Mark Ealham
Ramesh Powar
Andrew Hall
Jimmy Fatboy Ormond
Mushtaq Ahmed
The wicket keeping duties will be offered to anyone of them who can bend down on the day. Some will say that Rob Key has shed pounds but he stays in on the basis that he carries all his weight now in his face.
Penguin Matters
In the last issue Peter Ray took some very high ground about professionalism in the modern game. Many readers may have been confused about his distinguishing between pots and kettles and relative blackness but only the Great Jack Morgan put pen to paper:
“What breathtaking hypocrisy from Peter Ray! He bemoans the “complete lack of proper cricketing manners displayed by those who should serve as role models for the young”, yet he was the worst behaved player ever to step onto a cricket field. Peter was certainly a dreadful role model for the young, but his cricketing manners may not have influenced “brainless idiots like Prior” because I have never heard Matt come out with the sort of obscenities that issued from Peter’s mouth. Is he taking the piss?”
Well, is anyone going to corroborate Jack’s allegations? Will Peter come to his own defence and deny such outrageous accusations? And what happened to Peter to make him such a wise and sagely commentator these days? Googlies undertake to publish all correspondence on these matters.
Marital Matters
You can play for an English county through one of four routes:
- You are English and get signed up;
- You have an EEC passport;
- You can play as a Kolpak,
- You are an official overseas player.
Alongside their Academies ambitious counties will soon be seen raising harems of eligible young ladies. Prestigious international stars will then be solicited in an attempt to lure them to these shores. But they won’t be able to get full “privileges” until they are safely married and qualified. Next season, with some careful planning over the next few months, Middlesex could have a new ball attack of Malinga and Lee with Bond as a useful back up. But it may take the provision of some exceptionally tastey crumpet to get Michael Clarke to tie the knot.
Match Report Matters
Bill Hart, like all my South Hampstead correspondents, could remember nothing about the Ealing match that featured in the last edition of Googlies. But he is a dedicated Nostalgia Chappie and he sent me this:
“If you look through the scorebooks of around that period you will find a match which we won at Ealing. Batting second Terry Cordaroy carried his bat in what I think was one of his finest innings. As usual at Ealing in the early sixties, the wicket wore badly, and I remember batting with Terry near the end. Coxon and an off-spinner (it might have been Alan Price, but I have a feeling that it was Peter Mitchell), were turning the ball very sharply. I hung on for grim death, whilst Terry (taking all of Coxon) played as though he was on a perfect wicket, until the job was done. Could you please let me know if my memory is anywhere near accurate?”
I was able to reply as follows:
Sat 31 July 1965
Ealing 100
Stevens 40
Hart 5-28
Peach 5-20
SH 101-7
Cordaroy 51 not out
Hart 13 not out
Coxon 3-32
Mitchell 2-17
You came in at 78-7 when Peach was out and so you were the dominant scorer in the winning partnership. Terry hit the first ball of the innings for four but only scored one other boundary. Your recollection seems pretty good although you were obviously too modest to mention the five for.
Sexist and, possibly, Racist Matters
During the Twenty20 World Cup I made a note to include in Irritating Trends the use of a female commentator. I didn’t catch her name but I believe she was a black South African. The odd thing was that she clearly knew what she was talking about but it just didn’t seem right. I was mulling over how to write this up over the coming weeks when I found myself tuning in to Test Match Special for the first of England’s one dayers against Sri Lanka. It was clearly the second string commentators who had been despatched to the northern jungle in forty degrees heat since Simon Mann and Dougie Brown were there to give me the low-down on KP’s extending list of failures. But when Simon Mann handed over it wasn’t to Arlo White but to Alison Mitchell. I felt sure that this would confirm my prejudices and give me some copy but to my amazement she not only commentated well but clearly also knew what she was talking about. I checked out her credentials and I can’t find any mention of her having played the game. So how has she acquired the knowledge to pontificate at this level?
I concluded that the use of female commentators probably wasn’t irritating after all and that perhaps all I had to do was get used to them. And then an interesting thought came to mind. Why don’t they promote Alison to the first division of TMS commentators and remove the blathering idiot Blofeld for good? I don’t know anyone who can even tolerate his fanciful, ill informed meanderings. He isn’t even professional since he can’t be bothered to find out who the players are. But apparently some people like him. In the Wisden Cricketer readers’ poll to find the best commentary team those selected were: Boycott, Agnew, Lloyd, Atherton and Holding. Martin-Jenkins and Nass were next, but Blofeld then appeared before Nicholas, Botham, Marks, Gower, Hughes, Fraser and Knight. There was no mention of Allott, Colville or the Welsh Wizard.
Red Mist Matters
The puzzling thing is that Youvraj Singh was not in the Indian test side in England and didn’t feature strongly in the ODIs. His innings against England in the Twenty20 World Cup was staggering. The previous fastest fifty in international cricket had been scored from seventeen balls. Youvraj scored his from just eleven balls. This alone was unbelievable. That it included a perfect over of sixes without slogging was awesome. And then a couple of days later he scored 70 against Australia from just thirty deliveries.
Irritating Little Pillock Matters
After last’s month’s description of Mushtaq Ahmed by The Great Jack Morgan as an Irritating Little Pillock I received a reprimand by email from a reader who restricted his identity to Keith. I felt obliged to respond and found myself explaining this phenomenon whereby the great performer so irritates the watchers on all grounds except Hove.
My theory is that whilst he is known as a leg spinner he bowls almost exclusively googlies. As a result batsmen play for the leg spinner but get hit on the front pad a lot. The introduction of Hawkeye has made umpires more aware of how many balls would have hit the stumps and have started to give front foot lbws to the spinners. Contrast this to the Barrington days when batsmen would play off spinners by just letting the ball hit the front pad. Consequently the entire Sussex fielding side gets plenty of opportunities to try out their luck with the umpire each over and if they get a successful appeal on a one in twenty basis then Mushie will get a wicket every five overs which is the best strike rate in the division.
I think that Mushie will go down as one of the greats of modern county cricket. He has been the principal reason for Sussex winning three championships in five years. On the other hand I have seen several days play with him wheeling away from one end all afternoon but with the pad hit four times an over and each one generating an appeal, it can become tiresome to say the least.
Irritating Trends in Modern Cricket –Number 48
Before the Old Danes Gathering during the Shepherds Bush Cricket Week this summer Dave Perrin had warned me that the match would be accompanied by music of Caribbean origin. Since we were the guests of the club we could hardly object and I assumed that it would not affect our gathering. In the event in did seem rather strange to have this music seemingly forced out of a ghetto blaster throughout the match in progress. Nevertheless we put it down to an idiosyncratic feature of the visiting side, rather like a demand for kosher teas or halal barbecued sausages in the evening. I didn’t give it much further thought until I received this from the Great Jack Morgan:
“ I was strolling past Hampton Hill CC (they play in the park, but not close to Teddington CC) the other day about 11.30am when a match was about to start and my attention was grabbed by an enormous ghetto blaster from which was blaring deafening pop music. I waited a few minutes while the match got under way, but there was no sign of the row being turned off. Is this the new thing? I had never heard of music during a club match until our visit to the Bush this year: have you encountered it before? The music at HHCC was slightly better than that at the Bush, but because it was about three times as loud, it was even more irritating and I hurried on my way. I then surprised myself by trekking over to Southgate for the Pro40 play-off match against Northants. I confirmed that members were to be admitted free, that the weather would be dry and sunny (though still windy) and as the match was on a Sunday, the traffic problems would surely be insignificant... so I couldn’t think of a reason for not going. However, I had not realised that the match would be covered by Sky and that this meant pop music blasting out before the match and during the interval and ridiculous bursts when boundaries were hit or wickets fell. My only previous experience of this was at the ODIs in SA in 2000 and I was not ready for another musical experience.”
Strange Elevens
The Great Jack Morgan supplied me with a Premiership style squad for this month’s Strange Eleven. I selected from them this formidable side who you wouldn’t want to come up against whilst on tour in Devon.
Geoff Boycott
Roy Marshall
Eddie Barlow
Mike JK Smith
Zaheer Abbas
Clive Lloyd
Tony Frost
Dan Vettori
Eddie Hemmings
Paul Allott
Hallam Moseley
As usual all you have to do is decide which Jazz Hat fits them all.
You can all join in Matters
I am planning to produce an article for a future edition on the opening day of Middlesex League cricket in May 1973. I have some details of the South Hampstead match at Stanmore and Bob Fisher has already agreed to send me some data on Ealing’s opening match. If you have any recollections of your club’s first game please forward them to me.
Football Matters
Andrew Baker is a man of many talents and in addition to being the manager of Kelvin West’s local Ladies soccer side he is also an equestrian. Unfortunately he was hospitalised recently after taking a fall whilst show jumping. Kelvin West kindly agreed to take over temporary managerial duties on the football front. When he went into the gents he found that there had been some modifications made to the wash basins. When he asked the Ladies why, they replied that it was an attempt to encourage the men to wash their hands after using the urinals.
Earlier Editions
I will be please to email you a copy of the earlier editions of Googlies & Chinamen, if you missed them.
Googlies and Chinamen
is produced by
James Sharp
Broad Lee House
Combs
High Peak
SK23 9XA
Tel & fax: 01298 70237
Email: [email protected]