Evening all.
On the train home and setting up tomorrow. Not read the eulogies, not particularly interested to be honest. This appears to be a road. Shoaib Malik made 245 on it. Alastair Cook is a class bat who can be incredibly tough to get out. He has played well.
I’m going to go off piste a little. I don’t blame Pakistan for a pitch like this. If I were them I’d prepare one where I’d go for a batting contest and take my chances. It is too good a surface but we collapsed on belters in England. It is not the entertainment business. It is sport. I don’t pretend they are exciting but they are part of test cricket. England will do very well to draw. They are doing very well.
Imbeciles like Vaughan need to wind their necks in. We’ve won two (I think) overseas tests v Pakistan for a reason. They are not cheap. They are phenomenally hard earned. Sticking us on disintegrated pitches where it is who has the best spinners and batsman against it world elicit the same moans. We are sounding a lot like Aussies. This is not a contest played for our benefit. Sub continental cricket is hard. Very hard.
I can’t go through the post without responding to the usual muppet. I suggest, if you so love my content, you do one of two things. Fight your corner here or Foxtrot Oscar. I’ve taken a back seat for the past two months. Had a break. Done other things. It’s been nice. It’s not us making it him v him. Distance hasn’t validated the decision. Don’t like it? Don’t come here. I’m a nobody.
The fourth day beckons. Think it will be dull. Might see a triple. You never know. …
Being Outside Cricket 
Personally (and I accept I’m in a minority) I’d be much happier to watch us lose on a raging bunsen than wade through the kind of draw this game is shaping up to be.
More realistically, as I said to Tresgaskis on Twitter, being a groundsman in Abu Dhabi needs to be understood as a brutally difficult job. The weather means that most of the year if you get anything even a bit wrong, you end up with a baked concrete road…
LikeLike
Absolutely. This is what annoys me. It’s as if they can make a pitch we like. It’s tough.
It is not exciting but then I’m not enamoured of two and a bit day green tops.
LikeLike
It’s odd how people get bent out of shape about this. “Death of Tests” and all that.
To me this is a part of Test cricket. Obviously if all the other pitches in the series are like this and it ends up 0-0 then I think there’s a problem. But usually the other pitches have more in for spin and there are some results.
LikeLike
This is terribly unfair – but here goes…
Do all Cook’s runs in Asia tend to win matches? No, they don’t –
http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/stats/index.html?class=1;continent=2;filter=advanced;groupby=players;orderby=won;team=1;team=2;team=3;team=4;team=5;template=results;type=team
Yes I know – this probably says more about England’s bowling in the time Cook has been playing. Still, for all his runs in Asia, Cook has currently played in as many winning teams in Asia as, for example, Ashley Giles.
LikeLike
5 wins in 19 matches. Or 3 in 17 if we exclude Bangladesh. That is really not that much to write home about.
Mind you, Clive Lloyd is the only visiting batsman to score more than 1000 runs in wins in Asia.
And if we exclude Bangladesh (like the ECB does from its scheduling, so it is fair), the leading run scorer for England in wins in Asia is a certain Kevin Pietersen.
In terms of averages in wins, Cook is up there with the best, but he is partly helped by the incompetence of the rest of the batting order (if England had won 3-0 in 2012, his average for this statistic would have come crashing down, as Cook himself averaged less than 30 for that series).
LikeLike
It’s a road and doubt the Pakistan team think much of it either. Nothing for seamers or most importantly spinners. I’d have produced a Bunsen if I was them, but doubt they get that much of a say home from home. I’m going to the 2nd test in Dubai, be interested if they’ve had a word by then..
LikeLike
If He gets 355*, how many hypocritical tossers will mention the drops and jammy lbw reprieves?
LikeLike
It would have to be a timeless Test for him to plod his way to that score wouldn’t it?
LikeLike
Will you celebrate hard enough? Will I write posts eulogising about it? If not joyous enough then I shall be cast asunder. As will all those here.
That’s the monumental fuckwittery we face.
Needless to say, they don’t influence me so I can roll on.
Will you celebrate joyously enough?
LikeLike
No, he leaves me utterly cold, and did so before 2014, though admittedly that’s when I stopped being remotely pleased about what he did for the team.
But it’s not him, it’s the way he’s written about, that completely alienates me. Irreverence is mistaken for abuse. This is Britain, right, with a tradition of satire and kicking upwards? Apparently not: absolute servility and conformity are the watchwords now. I don’t have much truck with stoicism, “keep calm and carry on” and national treasures. I never realised, until the cult of Cook, that this made me unEnglish. Celebrating a man like Cook in the way Selvey did, having been weaned on Marshall, Richards, Lara, Warne etc, or when players like Tendulkar, Sangakkara and Steyn dominated my adulthood – it’s just ludicrous to me. I might as well get on my knees and thank my washing machine for doing what it’s always done. There is no sense of wonder whatsoever with Cook. But you can’t even say so without coming up against some sort of cricketing McCarthyism.
He is, as Disraeli said of Lord Liverpool, the arch-mediocrity. Lord Liverpool is the longest-serving British PM of the last 200 years. When historians stop assessing him objectively, and start telling us we should genuflect before him purely on the basis of longevity and whatever political skill it took to retain his power, then I’ll stop calling out Selvey and his ilk for nauseating hagiography.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Can’t wait for century watch.
LikeLike
I’m a mile behind. But thrilled that 245 was scored for the first time in tests.
LikeLike
Absolutely Dmitri!
I would not pay a penny to go and watch him bat. (Face facts Selvey)
That is not to say he is not a good player. But his role in the team is to do the donkey work. (Not an unimportant job, but donkey work non the less.) see off the new ball, occupy the crease, bat sessions.
The more the media fawn over him, the less I like him. (NOT HIS FAULT, BUT THE MEDIAs) He has shown time and again against good attacks that he is a good to average player. Nothing more or less. He does however make up for this by making big scores against average attacks. Which makes his record look better than it is. Keeps his average higher than it probably should be. But if all batsman were like him the game would be dead and gone.
Nobody except the odd people who genuflect in front of him would pay to only watch him play. You wouldn’t. He’s not that great or enjoyable to watch. And no matter how many syrupy pieces they write it will never change that reality.
LikeLike
Well said Arron and Mark, completely agree. The washing machine comparison is excellent.
Many people in the normal, outsideish sort of world persist in saying cricket is boring, a snorefest, nothing happens, etc etc. And when Alastair Cook is batting, it’s hard to argue with them.
Pretending he’s the handsomest and most adorable man in the world doesn’t change that, it’s just rather silly. He does the job he does very well, when he’s on form, but it isn’t the most exciting job in cricket.
Of course, if you think sport is not for entertainment but for the remorseless pursuit of averages and records – if you think cricketers should be, to paraphrase Tennyson, ‘icily regular, splendidly dull’ – then he’s terrific.
LikeLike
It all about balance Zephirine. You don’t want a team of just Cooks. But a team of flashy Gower types might look nice on the eye, they may also not dig you out of a hole.
You need both. But the media have elevated this man above all others. So they have made themselves look stupid, and their opinions meaningless. You bring together both a Cook and a KP and you have something. They decided to rid themselves of the later. So they have to ever pump up their man into superman.
LikeLike
Ten sessions, 11 wickets. Four of those were declaration batting, another one an umpiring howler. Might as well bat on the highway, and save the cost of constructing a stadium.
Oh, and the runrate is still below 2.8 for England.
LikeLike
Not much else to look at than statistical milestones on days like these.
England’s highest score against Pakistan, 278 by Dennis Compton, is one that could go.
Stats on longest innings came to mind as well:
http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/stats/index.html?class=1;filter=advanced;orderby=balls_faced;template=results;type=batting;view=innings
Crikey, he isn’t even half way (at the time of writing, 407 plays 847) to Hutton’s record!
LikeLike
Well, admittedly Cook could just beat that record if he gets strike 50% of the time, and England bat another 140 overs or so. There is just enough time in the Test for that.
LikeLike
The two leading scorers in Tests in 2015, on a road, in 40-degree heat, with Hawkeye on either its ‘Big 3’ or its ‘who gives a shit about fans’ setting, no reviews anyway, Umpire Ravi in the box, spinners with collective figures of 0-487, and not the slightest prospect of a result.
I never thought I’d say this, but I’d rather be here:
http://metro.co.uk/2012/01/09/watching-paint-dry-championship-attracts-international-interest-279060/
LikeLike
Elsewhere in the world West Indies are following on. Herath taking 6/87 there.
LikeLike
6/68. Really not sure how I typed that. Must be something with the number 13 somehow.
LikeLike
With the third new ball about to be reached, there is some confusion about whether the reviews get reset. The ICC brought in the resetting of reviews after the second new ball. However they don’t seem to have allowed for a third new ball.
Funny how they make all these rules.
LikeLike
Whoah! Bairstow falls 92 short of his maiden ton. 443/5, after 161.3 slow overs, in which the scoring rate has hardly ever crept above 3. Currently, the runrate is 2.74. Snorefest.
Also, it is possible that Cook’s run at Hutton’s record gets cruelly interrupted since England only have Stokes, Buttler, Broad, Rashid and Anderson to accompany him.
LikeLike
The last 10 overs the rate is down to 1.8 runs per over. This after 150 overs and only a few wickets down. I don’t realy see what they are trying to achieve now.
The Cook groupies are getting very excited about him beating G Sobers 365….the highest score against Pakistan.
LikeLike
I thought the English press had decided that if you can bat on a road, you’re not a proper batsman (cf. Steven Smith). Can’t they make up their mind about anything?
LikeLike
Yes, the critics of the pitch have had to wind their necks in a bit now because their hero has scored a double century and might score a triple.
LikeLike
A spinner has taken a wicket! It’s like that one ODI England won in ‘the difficult winter’ in terms of ruining a good stat.
According to cricinfo, Cook has hit two fours all day.
LikeLike
Oh God, its the FICJAM and Lovejoy show. Apparently if we start believing we can win matches like this, it will restore our position as number one in the world, according to Lovejoy.
LikeLike
Apparently Cook runs like Woody off Toy Story. This is nearly as mind-numbing at the cricket. There can still be a result according to Lovejoy. FIC JAM has gone, thank heavens, and so has COOk!!!
LikeLike
You did it. You were the one. The Cook fanboys will be after you!
LikeLike
Sounds like it was a no ball as well. That’ll get them into a lather
LikeLike
Yes Simon, but as his fanboys were quick to point out that means he has run 90 odd of his runs today. Never mind his partners runs. Which makes him superman.
He hasn’t scored a 6 since 2012 either. Just another meaningless stat for you.
LikeLike
is Buttler trying for the Ian Bell Award for Frustratingness? He seems to be always just about to become a real star with the bat, but then Fate intervenes.
LikeLike
Just a taster for what will be in tomorrow’s fish n chip wrappers
Here’s Duncan:…… “Truly epic. What patience, what focus, what endurance; not only this innings but the last decade. Unfashionable hero he maybe but, Alastair Cook merits more respect than is grudgingly accorded him. We have witnessed something rare here, something to be cherished…”
If it wasn’t for the morons in the media and the ECB he might get a bit more respect. But they have tried to make him something he ain’t.
LikeLike
Another reason to love the ex-RFM gang of the English press corps:
Pakistan were going to bring back Yasir Shah but after that insight, they’ve decided not to bother.
LikeLike
The Mr Gradgrind of English cricket punditry.
Utilitarian to his core. No room for flair or luxuries.
LikeLike
Selvey’s slightly more muted than yesterday. One might almost think that he had draft articles about overtaking Dennis Compton or scoring triple centuries that he had to tear up.
When I say relatively muted he still manages to:
1) Start with his bizarre obsession about Cook’s sweating
2) Whinge that he wasn’t really out, and
3) When there’s an innings that has impressive enough meaningful stats, choose to emphasis a meaningless one. Balls faced, not minutes, is the relevant stat – who hasn’t known this for about thirty years? But it lets him portray Cook as the greatest who’s ever batted – not “merely” 29th.
LikeLike
Selvey must be exhausted, having smashed Masanobu Sato’s record by nearly four hours…
LikeLike
I really wish my curiosity had not lead me to googling who you were referring to. I really didn’t need to know that.
But I do take your point.
LikeLike
My apologies Fred
LikeLike
I’ll raise you all having watched the Test today by saying that I got to see Aung San Suu Kyi this morning at Thandwe airport.
Still stunned.
LikeLike
Ah…but did she recognise you? 🙂
LikeLike
She would have, but something about returning a country to democracy got in the way.
LikeLike
As I was saying to Jacob Zuma just the other day, I do despise name droppers.
LikeLike
Well known, but unidentified England cricket player/ football player………. “Who’s Aung San Suu Kyi? “
LikeLike
Plumbing new depths today apparently. And “vile”. Oh, and Tweedledee joined in.
LikeLike
She retweeted us. Laugh out loud.
LikeLike
He’s now calling you out! Ha ha.
LikeLike
On about anonymity despite having profile pics including a cricket ball, the Ashes urn and Graeme Hick
LikeLike
The anonymous canard. It’s superb. I love it.
LikeLike
Why? You can’t possibly be more insignificant than a random accountant in Sheffield with two History degrees who’s spent three years trying to explain his total disillusionment with English cricket.
I’m enjoying BBC4 tonight, thanks. Think the third Music For Misfits dropped the ball in embarrassing fashion, but hey, an hour of Britpop clips will do nicely before bed.
I got a lot of stuff washed last night too. Sometimes we take our washing machines for granted, but when they handle a huge load, it’s enormously satisfying. I hear angels sing, rapturous applause echoes from here to Southampton, and I privately gesture to the sky, thanking the discipline of St Francis of Zanussi.
Oh well, back to my biography of the flawless Lord Liverpool. Feudalism is great. I am a serf. Things like Brass Eye should never have been on telly.
The odd thing is, I received Wisden 2015 for my birthday last week, and was surprised to find that I didn’t have a problem with Patrick Collins’s review of the KP book. If you wanted to nail him, that’s how to do it. As ever, the exasperating thing is that all the childish self-absorbed drivel made it very easy to ignore the important points being made.
Oh sorry. I forgot. BOC is vile and doesn’t do nuance.
Signing off.
LikeLiked by 1 person
Some stats on Cook’s boundary count for the terminally sad like me who wonder about such things.
Not hitting a six in a double century? Not that unusual – over 150 of those. Williamson’s 242* against SL was the previous example. Bit surprised to discover Sobers didn’t hit a six in his 365*.
http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/stats/index.html?class=1;filter=advanced;orderby=sixes;orderbyad=reverse;page=4;qualmax1=400;qualmin1=200;qualval1=batted_score;template=results;type=batting;view=innings
LikeLike
Number of fours in a Test 250? Now we’re talking! Nobody has hit fewer than Cook’s 18:
http://stats.espncricinfo.com/ci/engine/stats/index.html?class=1;filter=advanced;orderby=fours;orderbyad=reverse;qualmax2=400;qualmin2=250;qualval2=batted_score;template=results;type=batting;view=innings
I’d never have guessed who hit the most – and with a bit of daylight to spare. Another batting record that resides south of the river – but they don’t like to talk about it….
The fewest boundaries in a Test double century is (amazingly) six by Greg Chappell against Pakistan in Brisbane in the early ’80s.. The next lowest is eleven. Chappell wasn’t a slow-scoring batsman and his overall SR for that innings was quite respectable. It isn’t as if Brisbane is the MCG in terms of boundary size and, for example, Zaheer hit ten boundaries making 80 in that match. What on earth was going on?
LikeLike
He was also dropped twice, on 147 and 174 I believe.
So not quite top notch. But very useful. See,that is the problem. If the media would just portray him as a better then average player then fine. It’s this attempt to make him a God that turns me against him.
LikeLike
Coping so well in that heat, and not sweating… Perhaps it’s all true, what David Icke says, and Cook is a lizard….
LikeLiked by 1 person
Pietersen radio interview if anyone’s interested and not caught up with it yet:
http://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/p0359vxs
#obsessed
LikeLike
Blimey, he’s talking like he’s retired, or possibly died.
Perhaps he’s planning to spend a year dead for tax reasons, like Hotblack Desiato.
LikeLike
He’s a bizarre mixture of innocence, confidence, idiocy and drive. And of course talent. No wonder he freaked England out. Maybe he would have had a happier career with SA or even Aus, where a more robust culture would have helped.
LikeLike
I think he only really freaked out a very few people in the England setup, but unfortunately they were the ones with the power.
I’d guess he’d have been happy in Aus, but there weren’t exactly any vacancies at the time.
LikeLike
Not sure about that Zeph, I think the likes of Anderson, Broad, Swann, prior et al were part of it, it wasn’t just the suits.
That interview was quite good, in the end I thought it was good to have a professional female journo who wasn’t a cricket pundit do it. It added a freshness that wouldn’t have been possible from the usual suspects. Good to have questions just asked, without the questioner trying to insert themselves into the answer.
Also the bit about repeatedly pulling away and making MJ stop his run up, just to wind him up. Blogs would be raging about such unsporting behaviour, be really we all know it happens all the time, and KP had no problem talking about it. In a similar situation, most Australians would make a vague but knowing reference to it “all being good fun” and “not crossing the line”, and Cook would say something about character and the “right spirit of the game of cricket.” Not KP, he happily confesses to messing with MJ.
What a shame his career got terminated, he was maturing into quite an interesting character.
LikeLike
It was a good interview, the terms were set out plainly at the beginning and there wasn’t any smartarse stuff.
He is an interesting character and I think in real life would be likeable, but exhausting. He’s quite manic. I found the stuff about needing the cricket ground to be your ‘safe happy place’ rather revealing, too.
It did surprise me how much he was talking about his career in the past, not even necessarily the England stuff but all of it, though perhaps that was just the mood of the day or a little game-playing.
But they won’t get rid of him, he’ll keep cropping up again somewhere around cricket. It’s like Whack-a-Kevin.
LikeLike
Quite a few swipes at “the coaches”. Brilliantly managed by Eleanor Oldroyd. She should do Zaha Hadid….
LikeLike
23 minutes in. Pretty good.
LikeLike
Just listened to it all the way through. It’s going to do nothing to calm anything down, and it isn’t playing to the themes that those keen to keep him ostracised would like.
I’m not sure I believe a lot of it – especially the “I knew I wouldn’t score runs” bits. Sometimes I think he tries to do the modesty, and it’s not convincing. I didn’t want you to be modest. I wanted you to collar the bloody opposition.
It was an interesting, almost low-key, listen. There’s still the hatred of the coaches shining through, but this is a bloke who’s had it.
I’m sure he is a difficult one to deal with. But I miss him playing international cricket for England, because I enjoyed watching him bat. I make no apologies for that. At all.
Looking forward to the book. Got some vouchers, so I’ll buy it.
And yes, BinA. Eleanor Oldroyd was absolutely magnificent.
LikeLiked by 1 person
“23 minutes in. Pretty good.”
Do you mean where “my inability to play left arm spinners became a media thing which it should never have done”?
All part of the game. It became a media thing, but only because he kept getting out that way. Ali can’t play the short ball. Cook keeps snicking the ball around off. Watson LBW. Bell’s soft wafts. Root wont come forward. Ponting wont put the hook away, (insert Australian batsman name) is too aggressive against swing in England. Every batsman is exposed, they all get found out, the question is how they respond. Watching to see what happens next with Kholi.
Absolutely it should have became the media thing it did KP, but you also addressed it.
LikeLike
Just watching the highlights and the 2 spells by Wahab (morning and afternoon) were superb. It really is great to see a true fast bowler troubling batsman with his pace even on a pitch like this one! I know we have all asked this before, but why is it so hard for us to produce a bowler like this in the UK? I would love nothing more than to see an English bowler tearing in and hurling down 90mph reverse swinging toe crunchers….
LikeLike
I think we do produce them every now and then (Gough, Flintoff, Harmison, Jones, Wood being examples I’d use) but if their knees and ankles don’t give out before they’re 25-ish, the line-and-length coaches will crush their spirit.
Hello everyone.
LikeLike
Hello MM. Join the joyless. Scour the sour. Visit the vile!
LikeLike
Oh and Devon Malcolm and Syd Lawrence. We’re going way back in time there, though.
LikeLike
Sorry I’ve been away. Hurt my foot, which obvs affected my typing. Or summat.
I’ll take a nil-nil right now if it upsets the media’s calm. Actually, both sides will be lucky to get nil.
LikeLike
Don’t get me wrong we do produce em, but not as regularly it seems as say Aus, SA or Pakistan. On a side note I remember watching live on TV as Syd Lawrence had his awful injury, a very early, but sad cricketing memory…..
I like Scour the sour LCL, how about the abhorrent anti-Cooks….
LikeLike
Read Newman, if you dare….
LikeLike
Is it a ‘I would rather gouge out my eyes with a rusty trowel’ than read this type of article. Or a beautifully crafted, balanced and elegant summation of the day’s play, with a few justifiable lines on Cook and his innings?
All this Cook stuff has got me thinking. I agree it is uncalled for, it is sycophantic and toe curling, some in the MSM really do need to take a good hard look. I can’t remember, however, but were they like this about KP for example. Before they hated him so passionately? Did they rave about him then, say 2004 to the time he was captain, like they have done with Cook?
Maybe they MSM have always latched onto someone and blown it out of all proportion. Perhaps now we are far more aware due to the frequency and weight of articles that are produced. There are so many platforms and the speed at which we access them has maybe increased our exposure and, therefore, awareness of the rot they write quite drastically? Or was it always thus?
LikeLike
As I recall, there was almost always a ‘but’ somewhere in the Pietersen coverage, a mention of haircuts or earrings or hubris or reckless shots. Though there certainly was enthusiasm, revisit this one:
http://www.theguardian.com/sport/2005/sep/13/ashes2005.ashes10
LikeLike
Guess who wrote this in 2011….
Ambition is usually a fine attribute for a sportsman to have but while the sheer monolithic nature of Cook’s innings, with its determination, can only be admired, he overdid the single-mindedness on Friday to the point where his batting had all the dynamism of a long-term prisoner ticking off the days until his release.
LikeLike
No, they didn’t do it with KP. And there was some serious hating going on before it all went pear shaped with the Soith African series.
I don’t remember the media doing this with any player over the last 40 years. They fell in love with Sir Ian Botham when he was at his best. But they also attacked his private life. No one has been given this ludicrous coverage.
LikeLike
Extraordinary. Extraordinary again in the same paragraph. Unforgiveable (sic).
LikeLike
In the same sentence….
That old Alastair Cook just kept rolling relentlessly on for close to 14 extraordinary hours in this first Test before a controversial end to one of the most extraordinary innings ever played by an England batsman.
LikeLike