Just a quick post to say I’m out of the country for the next few weeks on a work trip, so as we approach the tour of the UAE I won’t see any of it, and won’t be commenting on it until I return towards the end of next month.
Indeed, my annoyance at missing half the Rugby World Cup has been tempered into relief given England’s display last Saturday, and it may end up the same for the cricket.
I somewhat doubt internet streams in Burma will be that good….
Laters etc.
TLG
Being Outside Cricket 
Have a good trip TLG – To you and all the other juvenile delinquents never learned how to behave
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Enjoy Burma! Rangoon is featuring very high on ‘my places I must visit’ list 🙂
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http://www.thecricketmonthly.com/story/921867/rule-of-three Gideon Haigh on ‘DOAG’ and a history of International Administration – well worth a read
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Winner, Article of the Year 2015.
The last section especially is what was so woefully absent from the Guardian’s coverage.
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I had to laugh on the radio tonight as they informed me that Andrew Strauss was on the touch line at Twickenham before the game kicked off. Oh the irony.
In a year, England have been knocked out of the group stage of the football, the cricket, and now the rugby. I would just like to congratulate the governing bodies of those 3 sports. Incompetent doesn’t even come close. I hope the rugby media will take a different line from the cowardly, and craven cricket media.
Lions lead by posh donkeys.
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Andy Bull points in the Guardian that the press were deluded, as they all tipped England to win, and ‘got behind’ the team. Now they’re flip-flopping to bash the coach when it’s too late to influence any change.
Welcome to our world, rugby fans!
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“Welcome to our world, rugby fans!”
To be fair, they still have to:
1) Scapegoat the best player.
2) Reappoint Martin Johnson as coach while calling him “the greatest coach of his generation”.
3) Appoint some journeyman player from the 1980s whose been in banking for 30 years since as supremo.
4) Try to rig the rules of future WCs so they can’t get knocked out early again.
5) Call anyone who doesn’t like any of this “outside rugby”.
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Yes I haven’t heard the “outside rugby” cry yet Simon.
I’m sure Selvey is advising his rugby journalist mates to start attacking the fans if they complain.
“Let them eat cake”. But is there any cake left? There is a mountain of cash in English sport, thanks to Sky subscribers, and corporate bone heads. But the administrators have pissed it all away. Jobs for the boys!
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Andy Bull was one of said press pack who didn’t seem to utter any criticism of the side until after it had all gone wrong. Suspect they all suffer the same problem of “be mean about the team and you don’t get no dressing room access no more”
More of them need to have the courage to step outside this bubble. But there are few signs of such a thing as yet…
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I’ve no real comment to make on either the cricket or the rugby, but I must say seeing Australia dump England out of the rugby world cup in humiliating circumstances was just like the good old days of cricket. English rugby seems to have been taking English cricket as a source of inspiration.
The pained look on the face of the bearded captain after the game was very reminiscent of some of Cook’s appearences.
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Lancaster’s comments afterwards was straight out of the Peter Moores coaching book. Banging on about England’s bonus point against Fiji. “Wales and Australia failed to get a bonus point against them.”
Yes, but it doesn’t mater because they both beat your team Stuart. Then he was going to look for the positives in the last game. I wonder what the laptop score was?
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I don’t think you can overstate how important not experiencing at the 2019 WC what the RFU are going through now is to the ECB. That shadow is going to loom over everything they do in the next nearly four years.
Also, has anyone noticed that in the tons of rugby comment after England’s exit no-one seems to have mentioned dropping every player who will be too old at the next Rugby WC? Funny how all the cricket journos thought that was a whizzo idea for the cricket team. Nothing to do with ‘him’ of course….
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Mark
my favorite was the journalist who helpfully provided a link to an earlier article where all 5 of the Guardian pundits predicted a win to England before the game. They had varying reasons for predicting an English win, but “they need to win”, and “they’re desperate”, was a recurring theme. This is a bit reminiscent of English cricket, where it seems if you want something bad enough, and you have character, then success will surely follow.
England really is a funny country. It’s delusions are laughable, but also really admirable. I hope it never changes.
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Simon
“I don’t think you can overstate how important not experiencing at the 2019 WC what the RFU are going through now is to the ECB.”
I don’t fully understand that sentence, but I suspect you mean ECB hasn’t learned its lessons after some very very bad results. Given the ongoing brilliant career of Giles Clarke and Andy Flower, I agree.
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Actually, England should have been given bonus points for having someone called “Richard Wigglesworth” in the team. If Billy Twelvetrees had been playing too, they definitely would have won.
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Sorry Fred – that sentence was as elegant as Giles Clarke’s dress sense or a three-quarter move involving Brad Barritt.
What I meant is that the ECB will be absolutely desperate for the England cricket team to put up a decent show in the WC in England in 2019. I think that’ll be the dominant consideration in what they do between now and then.
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Ah, now I understand that paragraph Simon. You just needed some punctuation. You should talk to Selvey, he can write a thousand words without drawing a breath, all through the magic of a comma.
Not sure however whether ECB will be too traumatised by the rugby experience. If the implosion in Australia didn’t challenge the sense of entitlement, I’m not sure anything will. And now England has won the Ashes back at home, so there’s no real problem is there? Especially since that bad influence has been dispôsed of.
One of the things I read today to explain the loss was that English rugby had become too nice and didn’t tolerate aggression and bad behaviour. It was nice to see recognition that a bit of attitude is part of the mix. I don’t follow rugby enough to comment on England’s culture, but I follow life very closely, and it’s clear that a bit of attitude needs to be part of the mix. Looking at you Bairstow.
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Fred,
Yes I saw the guardian “magnificent five” predictions. One of the authors did admit last night after the game that his predictions had been as delusional as some of the England fans. (Nice little Selvey type dig at the supporters)
Dean Ryan is making the point that the real problem is the people who appointed the coach in the first place. They appointed Martin Johnson (who was a great captain) but had no coaching experience. Then they appointed Lancaster who has won nothing. Why should they be trusted to appoint the next coach? So similar to the clowns at the ECB
When you look at he amount of money in English sport we are a f……..g laughing stock. Blazers, men in Blazers. We have legions of these people.
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“This is a bit reminiscent of English cricket, where it seems if you want something bad enough, and you have character, then success will surely follow.
England really is a funny country. ”
This seems to have started with English football, Fred, where I understand that what’s required is passion. Sufficient passion apparently renders skill unnecessary.
It’s a comparatively recent English characteristic, I think it’s another example of present-day England ineptly imitating the US and absorbing a garbled message that you have to Follow Your Dream and if you Want It Enough it will come to you. If you fail, it’s because you didn’t Want It Enough. Hence, defeated England captains have that look on their faces because they, really, really wanted to win, so why didn’t the magic happen?
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So if Stuart Lancaster gets the boot will the people who extended his contract to 2020 get the boot too? I will have a fiver on that they don’t.
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Guardian: “Asked how the review of England’s World Cup failure would pan out, Ritchie quickly made it clear it would be confined to Lancaster and his coaching team. His role would be to ask the tough questions, not to answer them.”
Simples. Ask Giles Clarke.
Only it was also confined to exclude Flower and his coaching team.
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First UAE warm-up match under way. Opening with a batsman who’s never opened in f/c cricket worked as well as might have been predicted.
Cook made a “defiant” (TM Chris ‘Laughing’ Stocks) 53.
#deservedahundred
#worthtwohundred
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The match report by Stocks makes you almost wish it was Selvey:
“England captain Alastair Cook at his grinding best” (he didn’t write the headline but it sums up perfectly what’s to follow)
“Alastair Cook again showed his ability to grind out runs in Asian conditions”. (Best not mention that UAE average of 26)
“The kind of reassuring bloody mindedness that served him so well on the 2012 tour of India”. (Got it! He scored a lot of runs in India. It was a terrific performance. Can we move on?)
“Opposition that boasted more than 100 Test caps”. (The bowling attack has 25 Test caps – 22 held by Junaid who has not been the same bowler since injury. The two spinners who did most of the bowling have played less than 10 f/c matches between them).
“Root said: ‘It’s very pleasing to see us start like that. Alastair leads from the front when he’s at his absolute best and that’s what we admire him for. Today was a great example of that'”. (A fifty in a warm-up game….).
At least he doesn’t lick Strauss’s boots a la Newman. It’s going to be a long winter.
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#worthadouble
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In other news, Chris Cairns in court in London for perjury relating to march fixing allegations (denied under oath by Cairns several years ago in Modi’s trial I believe). Brendan McCullum is due to appear as a witness AGAINST Cairns.
Sad as I remember what a great player Chris was and indeed his father, Lance, was too…
😦
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match* fixing
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Can Newman work some more grovelling at the feet of Strauss into a warm-up match report?
“England coach Trevor Bayliss suggested at the start of this tour that the selectors had yet to decide between Moeen and Hales for the first stab here at finally filling the giant shoes vacated by Andrew Strauss in 2012”.
“Giant shoes”? Strauss averaged 32 in his last 33 Tests. That might be “a career of two parts” for some other players…
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A bit late, well very late to this party (I had been away for a while) but this is the part of the fawning of Strauss that always, always gets me. Post his very good Ashes in 2009 where I do think he did help pull the side together after the fall-out of the Moores era and certainly led with the bat that series, he had a very poor time afterwards as a batsman. Indeed the press talk of England having never replaced Strauss the batsman, they are certainly being disingenuous with regards to the last nigh on 3 years of his career.
I also fail to see that his onfield captaincy was any more than functional. He was hardly one for perceptive attacking field changes (and I don’t mean “funky” field placings) or bowling changes as he was usually just rotating four main bowlers. He was just a better leader than Cook was for much of the equivalent period afterwards and marginally less defensive. I think as we have discussed before there is considerable amnesia about the UAE tour in 2012 and even the performances of the England team (himself included) in the rest of that year up to and including the South Africa series where his final defenestration by Morkel for the 3rd series in a row confirmed that he was indeed a busted flush with the bat. It was also a time when ‘bowling dry’ with the portly huffer and puffer otherwise known as Timmy Bresnan got the battering that really should have seen the tactic deposed along with Strauss. However it was to last a couple more years……
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At least Strauss is a true English man, born in England..
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