After the stupidity and rancour of the last 36 hours, let’s get back to cricket. Tonight’s game looks like a walkover, with AB the Unstoppable in prime form, and with Ireland looking a little over-matched. But this Irish bunch is a resilient team I think we all get a lot of fun from watching, and who we want to see a lot more of. Canberra can mean runs……lots of them.
Any comments from those who can should be left here.
If anyone is interested, John has followed up my blog post with a comment. You can read his views. I’m not particularly interested in responding, if truth be told. I made my point. He made his. Would I prefer restraint in the comments? Probably. Do I moderate? As little as possible. I’m not The Guardian BTL, that’s for sure. I would, actually, prefer if you all just left it where it is, and didn’t chip in now. But I won’t stop you. Keep it clean.
Enjoy the game, for those who can get to watch it.
England have lost 16 of their last 21 ODIs against Full Members. The last four of those have been thrashings. In the last five-and-a-half World Cups they have won five and lost 17 matches against Full Member nations. They have not won an ODI series for a year; when Ashley Giles was coach, Stuart Broad was captain and Michael Lumb made a century on debut. They have dropped several chances in recent games, including Aaron Finch before he had scored in Melbourne and Lahiru Thirimanne on 2 in Wellington. Both went on to make centuries. Sunday’s result was not an aberration.
Root, of course, was in an impossible position.
Joe Root was put up as the interview person for the day or so after the loss to Sri Lanka. Many are questioning why Moores wasn’t fronting up. I made many of those same accusations in Sri Lanka (how he came out when we won a game, then didn’t speak until we’d lost the series) and was told I was being unfair. OK. But come on. Root was emotional after the game. This can’t be right, can it?
The man who, at 24, had just become England’s youngest World Cup centurion deserved a better fate than being wheeled out to explain the team’s latest calamity. The ECB might as well have thrown out a piece of meat.
I concur, George.. now to the pay-off.
But their logic was simple. They no longer trust some of those in management to defuse situations – Paul Downton was originally pencilled in to take this press conference and every time Colin Graves speaks he undermines his executive team – and they hoped that, by producing one of the few men who has performed well in recent days, they might distract attention from the wretched performance of England’s most senior cricketers in the field.
Well I never. That’s just so out of character. A trait we were mentioning, what, a week into his tenure?
That’s “guesswork”.
It was a desperate ploy. The ECB knew full well that a report leading with Joe Root’s century would be like leading a report into the sinking of Titanic by noting that the band played beautifully.
It’s why we like you George. You tell us things we don’t know, and you do it as if you are our eyes and ears.
It has been quite a day, hasn’t it? The line that the ECB spun last night, that the Graves position yesterday was not, in fact, an opening of the door, but merely a restatement of current positions is eroding before our eyes. Nick Hoult’s latest piece in the Telegraph seems to paint a very different picture, and even Selfey’s article gave the game away because he writes it as if there is a chance KP might come back before defending Downton et al. Other articles in The Guardian, here and here, intimate that the existing ECB line last night might be a little, er, premature. I don’t know – maybe someone really in the know can keep those of us outside really informed. Then we might not get so up in arms, eh?
There are clearly, it seems to us trying to figure out what the hell is happening through the prism of our journalistic corps, divisions in the ECB; differences of approaches and perhaps personalities and nuances to do with timing of posts being actually filled. Nature, and bloggers like me abhor vacuums. There’s something afoot, because we’ve seen it before. We remember how Cook was disposed of, the modus operandi of putting something out there, getting the reaction, and moving from there. We aren’t out of the World Cup, yet this looks like jostling for positions to me. The World Cup had better come right or there could be more of this on the way. In the absence of clarity, in the absence of the full context, we’ll try to fill in the blanks.
This blogger, as you know, has a job, watches cricket when it fits in with his life, and has many other things to do. I do not pretend to be a journalist, and I doubt you will ever find a claim to it on here, it’s not my job and I do this because, believe it or not, I enjoy it.
I’ve written on the sport I really enjoy and am thoroughly saddened by in the past year or so. I indulge in speculation based on comparing articles with what I hear, with what I’m told, with what I read, trying to cross reference where I can, but time is limited. I watch the sport, have a vast back catalogue of books, dvds, magazines and podcasts. I’m a cricket nut with not enough time. I also think I know a little, not a lot, about human nature. I am not friends with any cricketer. I hear gossip, much of it told to me by the way, by people who might know. If this is guesswork, then so bloody well be it. But it’s guesswork based on caring, based on looking and reading and trying to draw conclusions. You know, the sort of thing we all do.
Why the anger? Well, a journalist today, who we all know, and I’ve been pretty civil to on here and, from communicating on social media I quite like, posted this on my Twitter feed.
@DmitriOld Why use picture of that fine journalist, the late Doug Ibbotson, for your blog, much of which is quite unpleasant and guesswork?
Here’s why I put a picture of Doug Ibbotson on my blog feed, (and it only really seems to appear on my dashboard, which you don’t see, and on blog posts copied onto Twitter) John. Because the edition of Wisden Cricket Monthly in around 1988 it comes from had it, and the thought that a journo today could have a photo like that as his identity pic, complete with pipe, amused me. Plus, as you say John, he was a damn fine journalist. As was David Foot. As was Neil Hallam. The brilliance of the county scene in those WCMs is a million miles away from what we get today in our cricket magazines. So maybe it’s a little nod to a previous era. And maybe, just maybe, a pic of an old journo with a pipe is pretty damn good. I’m not comparing myself to him, I’m not thinking I’m a journalist, and I’m certainly not meaning the use of the pic in any mean-spirited way. I do hope you are not implying that. And please don’t invoke the old “he’s more of a journalist…” stuff because I know he was. Because I’m not.
I’m sorry if you find this blog “quite unpleasant”. I plead guilty to this being guesswork in the main, because I’ve not pretended to be ITK. But you aren’t exactly playing by the rules on your side either.
I actually have a fair bit of time for John Etheridge. I’m surprised he picked on this as something to try to beat me with. Come on, sir.
Right, got that off my chest.
By way of a public service, I managed to capture some of the BTL comments from the Selvey article that got deleted. I have reproduced some of them here. If the author wishes me to take them down, then please let me know and I will be happy to do so. I stored a few others, but they haven’t been deleted yet.
Bag of smoke…
“That theme of course was Kevin Pietersen, the fruit-fly, the pest that will not go away.”
Don’t sit on the fence, Mike.
Honestly, it makes you wonder doesn’t it, about the supposed impartiality of so-called ‘journalists’? Since when was it acceptable to so nakedly express one’s opinions of a player like this? I suppose it beats the normal innuendo, but quite how Selvey thinks this sort of thing is acceptable is beyond me. It’s faintly amusing that he should be so hostile towards our best ever batsman (going on statistics…), whilst affording the current shitshower of an England team and its hierarchy every courtesy.
This bit too made me chuckle – could it be any more matey? Proof, if it were required, that Selvey is essentially a mouthpiece for Downton. What a puppet.
“Downton takes no offence, thinks it was merely something clumsily expressed and in no way malicious :but it is grist to the mill at a bad time.”
Bagsofsmoke again..
“…the fruit-fly, the pest that will not go away.”
Don’t sit on the fence, Mike…
Since when is it acceptable journalism for a correspondent to be so nakedly hostile to a player? I understand you don’t like the man, but afford him some respect, Mike, as England’s best ever batsman. You sound like Etheridge. Since when is this sort of journalism acceptable in the Guardian?
Ah, it all becomes clear. I forget that you’re essentially a puppet, a mouthpiece, for the execrable Paul Downton. Proof, were it required, that that is the case:
“Downton takes no offence, thinks it was merely something clumsily expressed and in no way malicious :but it is grist to the mill at a bad time.”
Gluck
How can His Lordship still be considered a journalist anymore? Is he angling for a job as ECB PR chief (and pray, how would we tell the difference?)
Sorry about the fonts going all over the place….
The Slogfather…
Well.. I’ve waited until now to become an ‘under’, as well as having been a long-term ‘outsider’… but having read this from ‘lordselfie’…
The reality is that the new (yet to be confirmed) ECB (or whatever the next name becomes) Chairman, has now rattled a few cages within the press…
Following on from this, it would/should appear, that the current Team management and overlords (DowntownShabby, MooresThePityful, ForGodsSake -er, HisGreasyGilesness and TheFlowerpotman) are being found out…
There is no team management, just jobsworth incompetence – but then we’ve known that for many a month…
Sadly, most of the mainstream press (with a few notable exceptions) have chose to ignore reality.
So us, being the (outside) meek, shall inherit this dearth…
Others were saved but remain, lots more I missed….
Selfey has an article up on the guardian re Graves.
His loyalty to Downton is touching.
Please read. Then vent here. Linking from the mobile is hard so if anyone can post the link in the comments I’d be grateful.
UPDATE – I have some keyboard access so thought I’d do some more for the blog. I can’t cut and paste (yet) here so you will have to wait until this evening.
Selfey’s article is almost beyond parody. I think he’s trolling his audience. I refuse to believe that he thinks Downton has any room to complain about the treatment he might receive or that he is any kind of victim here. Then to refer to Graves as not being malicious and that Downton thinks this is a careless statement is hilarious. Downton, he of outside cricket and not knowing a confidentiality agreement’s restrictions, is in a position to offer any verdict, even through his mouthpiece? This is la-la land we are dealing with.
Watching his c-i-f moderators lock into mortal combat with people criticising a journalist’s integrity, the day after Selfey “joke” texted Hoult about the way he’d written up the Graves article is another act of wonderful hilarity. I know they are two different modes of communication, but he’s not abiding by his own standards. No change there.
Also, disparaging Pietersen as a pest, a fruit fly is another piece of utter nonsense. Name calling eh? Beyond the pale except when I do it!
The usual nonsense making this about KP when the ECB are the question is just par for the course. Some buffoon called humptydumpty, already linked to in the comments below, called the pro-KP lobby “woodlice” which is just beautiful. Another who never applauded his tons, his great deeds on the field and bought the rumours of his “conduct” hook, line and sinker. It’s tiresome. Amazing how when you frame it the way we do and argue back, especially on Twitter, the anti-KP lot have little to rest on. “So you think Moores is a good appointment?” “So Downton has done a brilliant job?” “That Whitaker, does he fill you with confidence?” “Pleased with Giles Clarke, are you?” “Hey, how about David Saker? He’s done a top job with the bowlers?” “Hasn’t Alastair Cook done well since that tour?” and “aren’t you pleased that you are viewed as “outside cricket” by the people who need your money to survive?”
Putting it like this, the future of a talented batsman near the end of his career is a footnote. One day these people may lose their blindness caused by rage, and see the big picture.
But, given Nash has said she’ll give everything she owns to charity if KP plays for England again, I say pick him. It’d be worth it!
Being Outside Cricket 