Author: LordCanisLupus

Canis Lupus On Chittagong

LordCanisLupus39 Comments

If you have come here looking for marks out of ten, then you have come to the wrong place. If you have come here to look for a tale of derring do, of great escapes, of wondrous times, then I suggest you log on to the Twelfth Man, or whatever the Tufty Club is that is approved by the ECB (or is that All Out Cricket?). If it is grumpiness, tetchiness and a completely egregious mention of Kevin Pietersen, then this might be for you.

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England have completed a 22 run victory over Bangladesh in a tight, absorbing test match, with lots of good entertainment and a tense, taut ending. What this was not was a good England performance. Just like 18 months ago in Grenada, where the Jimmy Anderson show won England a test, Chittagong was Ben Stokes saving our hides. This may, or may not, be a portent of things to come, but remember, after Grenada came Bridgetown, and defeat to a team we would probably all believe would struggle against Bangladesh if played now, and who are living down to Costcutter Charlie’s description of “Mediocre”.

Let’s focus on the good stuff first. It was a top test match to watch. How many actually did in this country will be interesting to note – I wonder how ITV4 did for viewers, for instance – but those that missed this because it was “only Bangladesh” will have missed a contest that ebbed and flowed. BBC Sport were busy this morning lauding England for an “unlikely victory”, which is a bit of nonsense because for the vast majority of this test England had their noses slightly in front. After Day 1 we thought it was a competitive score on the board; after Day 2 with the late wicket we thought it was honours even, but Bangladesh had to bat last; at the end of Day 3, after another reliable top order subsidence, England had “enough runs” and were firm favourites; and on Day 4, England had two tail order wickets to take at the end of it, looking really shaky when Rahim and Sabbir were in partnership. It’s not exactly Botham’s Ashes or Adelaide 2006.

England won because of more experience, probably – and it’s hard to dispute that when the team you are up against haven’t played a test for 14 months – and they had the most influential performer on either side, Ben Stokes. For the Durham man this was a test match he can look on with great pride. He saved England’s bacon in the second innings with a mature, composed, and very clinical 85 which should take pride of place in his collection of batting performances. I ignore the Aussie with the constantly changing moniker, and his lame attempts to belittle the output of Stokes. He was magnificent. 6 wickets in the match to add to his runs made him a slam dunk man of the match.

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Not To Be Trusted

Much has been said about how Cook only trusted his seamers (Stokes and Broad in particular) at the end of the game. Much was also said last night about the lion-hearted Broad “doing it again when it counted”. I must be watching a different game to these people. I saw tons of criticism of the spin-bowling allowing them to get that close (and not the top order batting for collapsing like wet cardboard, AGAIN). The top six in the Bangladesh batting order, the six you needed to get rid of, were all dismissed by spinners in the second innings. Yes. You wouldn’t know that from the reports, the tut-tutting online, the nonsense from Newman. The quicker bowlers knocked over the tail, the top order eked out by the spinners. I’m not saying the garden is rosy, I’m not saying we’ve found our spinning solution, and I’m not saying that this will work in India, but you’d have thought they’d all gone 1/120 the way people are going on. They weren’t Murali, or even Swann, but they were decent bowlers, maybe not quite test class, doing a job for England. In this mad rush to anoint a team as its greatest ever, you need to realise that not every generation is blessed with the tools to do so. I remember real dead losses like Richard Dawson and Ian Blackwell given a go.

Broad the Lionheart got rid of numbers 8 and 9. This wasn’t Trent Bridge, Jo’burg or even Oval 2009, but we do go overboard. That I’ve realised only too greatly since the 2013/14 epiphany. I hope we’ve learned from the past that we have a doughty, resilient side, with a long batting order, a decent, if limited bowling attack, and that there will be pains and losses along the way. We should realise that we have a flaky top order, a limited captain, and a propensity to alarming slumps when the intensity goes from their game. We are a little too reliant on super-performances to pull out matches, which isn’t the recipe for reliability. We are quite an enjoyable team to watch, but what we are not, and what this team should never be proposed as, is a great team, a team worthy of World #1. You might think that this is just the same old same old from me (and I’m reluctant to use too many personal pro-nouns), but I’ve not exactly been given a reason to hold those words back, have I? Thankfully, the response to this win has been more restrained than Grenada, for instance.

So let’s run through the team performance.

Cook – Returned with great fanfare from the attendant hordes, rejoicing in his return, and getting DDC some hits. Didn’t produce the runs we will eventually need from him, and his leadership was conservative. I think he should trust his spinners more, but that’s really easy for me to say. Now it is four test centuries in 42 test matches, if you are counting.

Duckett – A nondescript debut. Not having his technique demolished after two low scores could be an indicator that he’s in the chosen group of players who the media might give a chance to. See my comments on an earlier post about how not making 20 in your first test match is not a portent of great times unless you are Gooch or Hutton (and a couple of others).

Root – A quiet test match, which means he isn’t the heartbeat of the team for this test match. A massive contribution in the next, and a quiet test from Stokes will mean the clichés will be reversed. Perception here is he may have gone off the boil a little, which is understandable given he didn’t play the ODIs, and also he’s played a ton of cricket. That balance isn’t always easy. Which leads me to…

Ballance – Ballance is in that room where no-one wants to be. The “next one the media want out” room. I love how we are accused on here of not backing our players, but within ten minutes of a dismissal the journos are tweeting “he has to be gone”. I’d like to see them work on that basis, and perform their best. Ballance has made four test hundreds, and is derided for his technique. Cook can go months (and yes, him again) and all that the media care about is falling over themselves to say “he’s back to his best” after some flaky runs. Lord knows what they’d say about Tres, for example, now. Ballance had a poor game. Only he is on the hot seat.

Ali – Very useful runs in the first innings, part of the problem in the second. Five wickets in the match, but because he didn’t run through them, and bowled his usual assortment, he’s part of the problem. That five of them were top order batsmen (and left handers) is his fault. Seemed a pretty usual Mooen match to me, does things well in parts, does things not so well. Having made 7 or 8 his home, and effectively so, he’s back up the order.

Stokes – A terrific performance, with his second innings 85 a really top notch performance. With the ball he was our main weapon, snagging six wickets, and getting the vital blow of Rahim late on Day 2 to perhaps turn the match (given the tail subsided the following day). Interesting point raised by Nick Knight (yes, stick with me), that it seems as though Cook leans on Stokes for advice (said on Day 4) and that his views are quite widely respected in the team. He’s the heartbeat (or at least until Joe Root makes runs) of the team. Clearly man of the match.

Bairstow – Jonny is now a team fixture, and the debate as to whether he or Buttler should be the keeper is pretty much closed in my eyes (and I’m a Buttler fan). Again he came to our rescue, with 99 runs across two innings, both in key alliances to dig England out of a hole. It is a role he is becoming used to, but I feel we rely on too much. He dropped a big chance last night, that to this untrained keeper’s eye looked like a horrible one to take (Chris might opine), and copped a Hollywood strop for his troubles. Dunno, but I reached right for KP – the Autobiography at that point. Otherwise, on a difficult surface his improvement was there to see.

Woakes – A nothing game really with the ball, yet another 50+ runs with the bat at number 8. They are vital runs, coming in at 194/6 in the first and sticking around for another 60 or so and in at 189/6 in the 2nd and being there at the end for another 50 runs. 0/15 and 0/10 in two seven over efforts with the ball, keeping it tight, but not getting wickets.

Rashid – I can say that I didn’t see a lot of his bowling in this match, but I tend not to listen to what I’m being told by people who have made up their mind about him long before he reached the test team. He’s going to be a “when it clicks” it bowler. A sort of spin equivalent to Devon Malcolm. Is this a long-term recipe for a team that aspires to greatness? Probably not, because we are all about containment rather than attack. He didn’t have a great game. He knows that. Should we jack him in? Well, you’ve either made up your mind and wild horses wouldn’t make you do it, or you think, perhaps he is that weapon we might, one day, need.

Broad – He’s going to be called Hollywood from now on. (Interesting only to me, I call Neil Warnock “Hollywood” in football). Hollywood is the man to win you the game. He can bowl unplayable spells, He can also average 143 in India. Broad nicked out two late wickets last night to put England in control, but in context, it was “just” the numbers 8 or 9. No-one else was going to get the Hollywood glare if they’d done it (perhaps Stokes). Two double figure scores should not be overlooked, scratching out vital runs, and yet having us pine for the man capable of 169 v Pakistan.

Batty – Again, didn’t see a lot, but the one spell I did saw him bowl well, look dangerous, and having the batsmen taking risks to score. But then it’s really fashionable in cricket circles to slag off Batty. True, he’s 39. Newman uses him as a reason to bemoan England spin bowling (I’ll bet if Cook is still playing with England in his late 30s we won’t be seeing the same). But Batty took a few wickets, including the key breakthrough of Rahim to end the menacing 6th wicket partnership, and still the people moan. Again, what it is it about us not backing our players? I’ve read the slamming verdicts on him, and note that, yet again, we are the ones with the agenda.

To the other question / debate that has been posed. How should Bangladesh treat this performance and how should England fans approach it? First of all this wasn’t Bangladesh’s first chance to push a top team to the limit. Last year in Chittagong they took a decent first innings lead on South Africa before the rains came to ruin the match. This should, if Bangladesh are approaching this the right way, a pleasure in being a plucky loser to a world power, but a real case of “we probably should have won this”. To have chased down 280-odd would have been magnificent. I’m not having the “moral winner” stuff, because England made it hard work (and because Bangladesh made them work hard), but I probably would like to judge this off the back of the second test back in Dhaka later this week. England, after all, looked like world-beaters in the 1997 first Ashes test, but subsided. Bangladesh need to maintain the intensity.

As for whether England fans should cheer on Bangladesh, well you know our site’s views on that. You should be free to choose who you want to win without admonishment. I don’t necessarily cheer on the oppo, but I also don’t get as mad about England as I used to which I think allows me to take a more dispassionate view on proceedings. It certainly helps in not losing my temper at the latest move I disagree with. It also allows me to laugh when the pants on fire enthusiasts stretch their latest (il)logical leaps of faith. I might have a dispassionate view on England, but I’m not about to reduce the passion for the game. This test match was a cracker. It deserves 2000+ words on it as an Ashes test might. It had great storylines, it had great drama and importantly it had a great test match wicket. So many of us were thinking it wasn’t going to be up to five days play, but the surface played its part in this absorbing contest. Let’s hope Dhaka brings us a repeat.

Happy to hear your thoughts. I’ll have some other takes tomorrow, if I have the time.

Bangladesh v England, 1st Test, Day Three

LordCanisLupus54 Comments

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This is a compelling test match. We can discuss the quality of the surface, we can discuss the lack of crowds, we can discuss the quality of our spin bowling, or we can discuss who is in the comms box. But as a game of cricket this is a really good one, and the match has turned towards England because of the contributions of Ben Stokes in particular. Stokes will score centuries, has scored centuries, that will not be anywhere near as vital as this 85 here. That would have been enough for one person alone, but this was allied to a bowling spell this morning that limited Bangladesh to just 248 when the hosts could have been expected to take a lead given their overnight position.

I’m strangely neutral on Ben Stokes. It might be the product of the environment that he is in, or the rush to appoint him the new Flintoff/Botham. He’s not in their bowling class, but he’s a much better bat than Freddie, and probably around Botham’s class in my view. But there’s something about the abrasive personality that doesn’t wash with me. But that hardly matters. I wasn’t ever starting the Graham Gooch fan club, but loved every one of his runs when made for England. Stokes is someone I want in my team, rather than against me. In watching his innings today the big shock was when he got out. He’d looked supreme from the time I’d started to watch, and Jonny Bairstow was, once again, his partner in solidity. Stokes was simply superb, and while Ian Watd has called him the “heartbeat” of the team (which usually happens when Joe Root fails), it’s more that he’s our fireman at the moment. Getting us out of sticky situations, with his fellow officer Bairstow.

I’m a bit awry with sleep patterns at the moment, so missed most of the first two sessions, which is where the crux of the action seemed to take place. Sky have not as yet shown me the highlights, so I can’t comment on it, but once again England’s top order collapsed. The fact we have a very long batting line-up (Batty, at 11, had a first class hundred just a few months ago), doesn’t excuse the fact this is happening far too often. Stokes is a top player, so is Bairstow, but you can’t keep relying on this to happen. We go to India next, we go to Australia next year, and we are 80 for 5, it’ll take some stones for Stokes and Bairstow or Ali to keep us above the water. So when James Taylor said, as he just has on Sky, that this day has gone according to plan, he’s talking out of his hat. Cook, for all the plaudits he gets, is needed more than ever, so it may be impertinent of me to comment that he has one century in his last 14 test matches. Cook’s 263 last year may be a once in a lifetime Asian condition monolithic innings, but we need him to really stand up. Odds were stacked against him in this test, coming out with hardly any match practice. Hopefully he needed the run out. Duckett has not made a case yet, but of course he needs time before he starts getting the James Vince treatment. That is being reserved for Gary Ballance, who the media cohorts could not wait to turn on when he dismissed, with the tweets flying (Stocks in an early reprise of his Compton campaign, perhaps?). Joe Root had a failure, which seems to be magnified when he’s at three for some reason.

The cognoscenti believe we have enough. The line to take has been set. Lose this and we will be undertaking a post-mortem on English spin bowling. That there is an obvious deficiency in that department has not come a surprise. It is not Batty or Rashid’s fault they have been selected. Broad can go games without looking like a bowling terror, but that seems fine. However, if you are a spin bowler not running through “only Bangladesh” then there are serious questions to be asked. Swann covered up a multitude of sins when he was in his pomp, and we had an able deputy in Monty (who would walk into this team if he were anywhere near where he was 10 years ago). Now we have what we have. As I said, it’s not their fault they’ve been selected. That Rashid doesn’t seem to be able to have a bad hour without some piling in who should know better is symptomatic of where we are now.

OK, enough from me. Comments on today’s play here, and also for thoughts during the 4th, and possibly final, day from Chittagong. It has been a compelling game, and it may yet have a sting in the tail. I don’t think, despite Jonny’s confidence, that it is in the bag yet, but yes, England are most certainly favourites.

Comments below.

By way of an update, I thought I’d just do some basic stats on how you can extrapolate success in your first test with the potential for a long career with England. I think we all hope that Ben Duckett is the answer, but his first test has thrown up scores of 14 and 15. Of England’s top 20 run-scorers in history, just four did not pass 20 in their first test (Gooch, infamously; Stewart – although he had one knock and was 0 not out when we won in Kingston in 1990; Sir Len Hutton (0 and 1); and Nasser Hussain (13 in the same test as Stewart, and thus one innings).

Of the top 20 run scorers 10 made half-centuries in their debut match, three made centuries, one made it in their first ever innings (Strauss). Cook, Gower and KP all made two scores of 50 or more in their first test. Players to have made 14 in their first test innings? Peter Such and Alan Mullally!!!! Those with batting reps to do it include Rikki Clarke and Darren Maddy. CB Fry made 15 on his second innings.

The most amount of innings between a debut and a half century was Alec Stewart, who took 10 innings. Of the 10 that didn’t make 50s on their debut, Gooch took five innings, Boycott four innings (debut score of 48), Athers took five (a century, also made 47 in his second innings), Cowdrey took five innings (and made a hundred in the sixth), Hutton made a hundred in his third innings, Barrington a 50 in his fourth, Hussain a fifty in his sixth, Vaughan in his seventh and Botham in his fifth.

A good rule of thumb therefore, is if you don’t get to 50 in your first five innings, you might be struggling for a test career. Just three of our top 20 did that.

 

The Phantom Menace – Bangladesh v England Preview (of sorts)

LordCanisLupus43 Comments

Why The Phantom Menace. It’s a prequel to the best ones, innit?

There’s something about the commencement of a winter test tour that gets the old fires burning in DmitriWorld. It has long been a tradition of tuning into matches at ungodly hours, or waking up to news of either stirring deeds or abject failure. Of trying to piece together what might have gone on from the overnight score to the score at the time I rise from my pit. In short, it’s a bit of bloody good fun. Unless you have to write about it!

However, as is rapidly becoming apparent, the world of cricket is changing, and tests are crammed into increasingly shrinking windows. In the space of just over two months, England will play SEVEN test matches, in very hot conditions, on alien pitches to our way of playing, and with the evident possibility that we face challenges we cannot match. While this test is going on, West Indies will be playing Pakistan, Zimbabwe will commence against Sri Lanka, in a few weeks Australia face South Africa, then we meet with India not far into the future. It’s compression of the schedule and it is going to diminish the sport. Context? You don’t even have enough time to digest the last test match before one is on you like a flash.

But enough of that. England face an intriguing challenge from Bangladesh in a two test series that a cynic might say is being used as preparation for the series against India in a few weeks time. While Bangladesh still have a laughable test record, there are definite signs of improvement. Whether this is enough to mean England will have a great fight on their hand is for debate. What won’t help is that, astonishingly, this is the first test Bangladesh have played in 14 months. If Alastair Cook is worried about a lack of practice and sharpness, Bangladesh have one up on him!

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Wrong captain

So to Captain Cook, leader of the troops, taking the battle to the oppo, leading from the front. This will be his 134th test, passing Alec Stewart for the England record. It’s been a long and distinguished career, but as Cooky doesn’t like talking about personal milestones, I won’t bother either.

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134 Dutiful Tests

Cook is clearly the key man. From the team that played last in Bangladesh, only Cook and Broad remain. Cook’s record in the sub-continent (and including UAE) is a really good one, and his experience is going to be vital. Without him making runs, one fears for England. This tour will expose our two key weaknesses; the spin bowling has been getting the most attention, but our middle order probably is more concerning. Joe Root missed the ODI tour and didn’t seem to get much time in the middle in the practice matches. One hopes it will be alright on the night. Gary Ballance looks to be locked in at number 4, something that would have seemed unthinkable after the last series (but this was really Gary B being Gary B – because he’s not elegant, he has a technique only his mother could love, and well, he’s Gary B he doesn’t get the benefit of the doubt the dashers get). At 5 is possibly Moeen, possibly Stoke, possibly Bairstow, and there will be times when we need them to keep us afloat. This is a big tour for Stokes. He showed in the ODIs that he came to terms with slower wickets, but this is test cricket. A good start in Bangladesh seems necessary, because I think he’s a confidence player.

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A sight for sore eyes….

Which leads me to the opener slot. Ben Duckett looks like getting the nod. That’s interesting. I wonder if it is the fear that Hameed will be a sort of Compton to Cook, and make our captain think he has to play a different game to his norm because the other opener might be a bit pedestrian. If that’s the reason, it’s a shame. Attrition and stickability are going to be keys in the next seven tests. Now that’s not to say I don’t want Duckett getting a go, because he looks middle order material to me in the times I’ve seen him (and I know he opens for Northants). I wish him well, like every debutant, and he’s certainly an exciting, talented prospect.

Bowling looks to be three spinners (Ansari missing out, it seems) and three seamers (Broad, Woakes and Stokes). Seriously, that could go any way you like. Broad doesn’t have a great record on sub-continent wickets, Woakes is going to be really tested, and Stokes? The spin is going to be “hands over eyes” stuff.

If England are in any way complacent, one should look at the last test played at Chittagong.

http://www.espncricinfo.com/bangladesh-v-south-africa-2015/engine/match/817213.html

South Africa were far from having matters their own way in this match. Rain washed out the last two days of play with the test fascinatingly poised.

England’s last visit to Chittagong produced this match:

http://www.espncricinfo.com/bdeshveng2010/engine/match/426423.html

Kevin Pietersen made 99, only the second England player to make that score this century. Without looking at Statsguru, a pat on the back if you can name the other. In that match Lovejoy took 10 wickets, Mushfiqur Rahim was a right royal pain, and Junaid Siddique made a century.

Rahim made his runs from 8 in that match, whereas tomorrow he might line up at 5 or 6. Tamim and Imrul have made decent impressions in their most recent tests, and Mahmadullah always look a decent player to me. Shakib is a canny old customer. These aren’t the muppets of yesteryear. They may not be a formidable force, but they appear on the upward path. I hope we see two really good games of cricket in their own right, and not as some Jar Jar Binks warm up act for Luke Skywalker, Han Solo, Ravi Ashwin and Virat Kohli.

Enjoy the test match winter (which ends at Christmas with England) and feel free to fire away as per usual. Because when you do, you put a skip in my step and the sun in my heart.

Comments on Day 1 below.

 

He’s No Coward…

LordCanisLupus106 Comments

It was decided in the halls of power at the Daily Mail that Mr Paul Newman and Mr Nasser Hussain were not sufficiently qualified to stick the knife into Eoin Morgan at any given opportunity. Newman tried, oh how he tried. But not well enough. So fresh from a jaunt to Minnesota, the deity that is Oliver Holt, son of Emily Bishop, a top journo back when leather jackets and Jimmy Hill’s kitchen were en vogue, had to fly out on a three day trip to back the boys up. Oliver, or as his lovely friends call him “Ollie” came, he saw, and he wrote. Badly. Away we go.

Eoin Morgan is a lucky man. He is lucky because he has a group of honest, honourable friends in the England one-day side who, through their public displays of support, have shown way more loyalty to him than he has to them.

And away we go. Remember one thing throughout this piece, because it is in his headline. He is NOT, absolutely NOT accusing Eoin Morgan of cowardice. Definition of cowardice is:

lack of bravery.
“my cowardice got the better of me and I crept out of the room”
synonyms: faint-heartedness, spiritlessness, spinelessness, timidity, timorousness, fearfulness,pusillanimity, weakness, feebleness;

informalgutlessness, wimpishness, wimpiness,sissiness;
informalwetness;
archaicpoltroonery, recreancy;
rarecravenness
“he was charged with displaying cowardice in the face of the enemy”

No, maybe not cowardice here, but we’ve got disloyalty out of the way by way of a starter for 10.

He is lucky because in men such as Andrew Strauss, Trevor Bayliss and Paul Farbrace he has bosses at the ECB who have stood by him, even though privately they must be dismayed and disconcerted by his refusal to tour Bangladesh.

How do you know their private thoughts? Is that what Newman told you via the good journalism route? They may have disagreed, but it was they who gave people the option, indicating this wasn’t a slam-dunk decision. But hey, that’s a nicety because Eoin isn’t being accused of cowardice, even though he refused to obey orders (although held privately).

He is lucky because even though he chose to miss the three ODIs in Dhaka and Chittagong, even though stand-in skipper Jos Buttler and the young players thrust into the limelight in his absence performed like heroes, Morgan has been told he will reassume the captaincy in India in January.

Oh my god. “Performed like heroes”. We beat Bangladesh 2-1. A good result. A result if achieved under Morgan’s stewardship would have been run-of-the-mill. The ability to puff up the victories is an English specialism.

We’ve had three paragraphs kicking off on the theme of being “lucky”. Prepare yourself for five paragraphs starting Everyone knew…

Everyone knew, as we walked out of the lobby of the England team hotel in Chittagong last week and down the slope towards the waiting security convoy, that Morgan will be allowed to waltz straight back in to the side for the first ODI against India in Pune.

“I was with the England team” says Mr Sanctimony. I was with them. And because I’m with them I can say that Eoin shouldn’t be when (assistant, look up where the 1st ODI is in January) we take the field in Pune, and I’ll be sitting at home, or commenting on some old football nonsense. If “everyone knew” Sanctimony, why did you feel the need to go there and get some sort of journo purple heart to prove “it’s safe”? What was the point other than a tedious hatchet job.

Everyone knew, as we walked past the heavily-armed Bangladeshi SWAT soldiers, their backs turned to us as they scanned the lush hotel gardens for any possible threat, that even though Morgan had decided this was way too much hassle, he will lead the team out at the start of the next leg of the ODI tour on January 15.

“Way too much hassle”. Because Eoin Morgan took a serious decision, that could jeopardise his place in the England team, because it was too much hassle. Hey, as I say, WE are the ones with an agenda. Also, security. SWAT teams, possible threats. But Eoin isn’t a coward. It’s too much hassle.

Everyone knew, as we watched England’s players climbing onto the coach that would carry them through the teeming destitution of the streets of Chittagong on a journey that Morgan had decided was too dangerous for him to take, that the absent skipper’s place was safe.

I’ve had this discussion already. Not questioning why this is happening in a country racked with poverty, with a political system in meltdown, and a recent terrorist attack on westerners, and whether sums of money should be spent on it. I know this is a debate, there is no right answer, but acknowledge it. Also Morgan has decided it was too dangerous to take. But he’s not a coward. Olly took it, Eoin didn’t. But not a coward.

Everyone knew, as we rode behind the team in the convoy taking us to the Zohur Ahmed Chowdhury Stadium, trucks of Rapid Action Battalion troops at the front of the line of 10 vehicles and an ambulance bringing up the rear, that even though Morgan had said he could not cope with this level of distraction, he had decided the level of distraction in India would be just fine.

Ah, India. Holt has a point. Eoin Morgan cited an incident in India as a reason for not going, but has been to subsequent IPLs. We can go into many scenarios here, and I doubt Holt has, but maybe experience has proven it safe for Morgan, while maybe he wasn’t so sure about this. I mean, trucks of Rapid Action Battalion troops would convince me we’re playing in a non-hostile environment. But hey, I’m funny like that.

Everyone knew, even as England’s band of brothers defied a noisy, excitable and partisan crowd to set a record for a run chase at the ground and seal a 2-1 series victory, that Morgan will be allowed to reassume control when it suits him.

“Band of Brothers”. A bloody cricket team. Why is he, and others, not too subtly inferring that sport is like war. Leading them out to battle, fighting for England, leading from the front. etc. It’s a bloody sport.

The prospect of his recall is hard to stomach. This is a man who still, apparently, considers himself a leader but who, despite the considered advice of the ECB’s trusted and highly-respected security director, Reg Dickason, that it was safe to tour Bangladesh; decided that he would really rather not stand together with his players in Dhaka and Chittagong.

Do you think he might have discussed it with them, as Jos Buttler made clear, and they thought it fine (and will they think the same of Hales, who has given up on his test career for now over this). Or is there “good journalism” going on here too. Or, as I suspect with Holt, he’s making this shit up.

Welcome to England’s first non-playing captain; a guy who waves his team off to foreign climes when the going gets tough and rejoins them when it gets easier. Welcome to the guy who chooses the day his mates land in Dhaka to send out a tweet boasting about the hospitality he has been enjoying from Guinness at a boozy session in Ireland.

Keep this in mind, when you think about a previous England captain who rested for a Bangladesh tour, or another former England stalwart who decided in 1986-7 to not tour with England again, or our upstanding keeper-batsman who opted out of touring India. Morgan missed three ODIs. And in true Daily Mail style, if he wasn’t volunteering, or wearing sackcloth and ashes, he was to be condemned. How dare him have a beer when his colleagues were sweating away in Bangladesh.

Some captain this. Some leader. Some sense of comradeship. Some sense of solidarity. For that tweet alone, the man is an embarrassment. It says a hell of a lot about the loyalty and character of players such as Ben Stokes that they should still seek to defend and support him and it says a hell of a lot about the loyalty of Morgan that he should turn his back on them.

Some captain. One of two to lead us to an overseas ICC tournament final in 24 years. When he did lead, he was seen as a cool head on the field, a decent tactician, a supporter of his players and an evangelical pursuer of a more aggressive, attacking form of cricket which has royally entertained us. He looks like a fine leader to me, and one players might be loyal to. How dare you cast aspersions on that on the back of a three day jaunt, Holt. What the hell do you know. Still, he’s not a coward.

Let’s be honest about Morgan’s decision not to tour Bangladesh: he got it wrong. The evidence of a one-day tour that passed without incident off the field proved he was mistaken.

I pray to God that nothing happens during the test series. If there’s anything going off while we are there, England will be home on the first flight (or at least to Dubai). He did not get it wrong just because nothing has happened. That is absolutely dense logic, and one a newspaper reporter should be ashamed of.

It is important to note, of course, that the England Test team are still in Bangladesh and that a security threat remains. Just as it will remain when the Test tour moves on to India next month and when the one-day tour of the subcontinent resumes in January. Modern sportsmen live with threat now. It is their new reality.

The differences between India and Bangladesh are so stark that Holt’s ignorance is on show. I suppose them, India and Pakistan are all the bleedin’ same, ain’t they?

But it is also important to note that the ECB’s preparations for the tour of Bangladesh have been beyond reproach. They could not have done more to create a safe environment for the players. The team hotel in Dhaka was in the midst of an army-controlled area. The team hotel in Chittagong is in a secure compound.

Terrific. England created this. Not the local government, their military, their police, who could, just possibly, be trying to curtail the trouble going on in Bangladesh. It may be overplayed by us in England, but there are issues. For example, one of the Government’s own son was a participant in the Bakery assault back in July. No-one had a clue he’d been radicalised, and that he was indeed planning to be a part of that attack. Still, military preventatives are all we need and never fail.

So when the one-day players flew out of Chittagong on Thursday evening, bound for London, the ECB had kept their part of the bargain. They had ensured their safety. Morgan would have been on that plane, too, if, he had deigned to pitch up in the first place.

If he isn’t accusing him of cowardice, then what is he? Being lazy? I’m losing the will here.

Let’s be clear about one thing: I am not criticising Morgan or Alex Hales, who also refused to travel, for a failure of courage. It is a failure of logic that I object to. Logic and advice suggested it would be safe to tour Bangladesh. Logic also suggests that if it is not safe to tour Bangladesh, then it is probably not safe to tour India, either.

You must note that despite calling him disloyal, saying that Morgan thought it wasn’t safe, that he hadn’t had his players’ backs, that he wasn’t a leader, that he waves off the team when the going gets tough, he’s not, definitely not accusing him of cowardice. He’s accusing him of the crime of not being logical. Logic defies me that the Mail is our most influential rag, and that women in the main are its target, when it has the Tits and Hate column on its website. But Olly works for that rag, and objects to “a failure of logic”. Don’t be a coward, Sanctimony, call him a coward.

And, I’m sorry, but if you are the captain of a team and you wish to remain as captain, you carry a responsibility to your players. Or you should do. That’s why Morgan should be stripped of the role for the limited-overs tour of India.

What does this even mean? Because here comes a belter…

Ask yourself whether principled captains in our recent cricketing past, men such as Michael Atherton, Nasser Hussain, Michael Vaughan and Strauss would have pulled out of a tour and let the team go without them and you know the answer.

Andrew Strauss pulled out of a tour in 2009 to rest. Someone tell Holt that. It was to Bangladesh which was seen as an “easy” tour. Oh, so if management say so, its OK. If a player, worried about his safety does, he’s not a “principled” captain. On the contrary, Eoin sounds quite principled to me. Just because it doesn’t align with Mr Logical, out there for three days, Holt and his definition, Morgan’s a wrong ‘un.

Remind yourself of the example of current Test skipper Alastair Cook. His wife is about to give birth to their second child but he will still then fly out to Bangladesh to be in Chittagong for the first Test.

Good on Cook for going. Good luck to him. Hope his baby is well, and he scores runs. That’s his decision. But then we are talking St. Alastair here, aren’t we.

If you want to, believe those who say that Morgan’s absence in Bangladesh will make absolutely no difference to his authority with the men who travelled without him on the tour that is universally regarded as the toughest trip for English cricketers.

In the absence of public statements saying that, and every single England player questioned saying they understood it, and that it makes no difference, you carry on with your petty spiteful campaign.

Or consider instead what many senior figures, past and present players, are saying privately: that when the chips are down at some time in the future and Morgan is trying to rally his men, they will look at him and somewhere in their minds they will be thinking: ‘Where were you in Bangladesh when we needed you most?’

But he’s not being accused of cowardice. “Hey! Eoin. I’m not going to fight my hardest because you aren’t logical.”

That’ll do for now. There’s a really good baseball game on at this time.

UPDATE. A very unexpected endorsement.

I can see you, Paul….. How do you feel being undermined by Olly, because, old son, that’s what it looks like from this space. In fact “everyone knows” that.

Clock of the Heart

LordCanisLupus27 Comments

The last three or four weeks have been something else. So much so that this is the first time in a while I’ve thought I should allocate some time to writing a piece that is a little bit more than a shortish match report, a snipe at a Newman piece of nonsense, or setting up a poll for you to consider.

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I’ve worked for my employer for a very long time, and now the workloads are such that we are all pushed harder than ever. It’s not a complaint, it’s a realistic setting out of the position we find us in right now. I get home later, I get home more mentally shattered, and cricket needs to compete for my time even more than ever. My job waxes and wanes. It’s waxing so much at the moment that we might call in Madame Tussauds.

Which means times is scarce, and free time needs to be appreciated. At this time of year, especially with the start of the NFL and the postseason in baseball (where my favourite team made it, but flamed out quickly) cricket is going to lose. If that happens, writing about it becomes less easy. Cricket blogging skews the attention space I give, but it isn’t going to conquer all.

With that in mind, I thought”what I should write” now I’ve got a few minutes. Throughout my time on this blog, and its predecessor, I’ve complained about how I don’t feel like actively supporting England as I think they (as Team ECB – I can’t divorce the two), and their supposed “loyal” fan base abandoned me ages ago, and they didn’t care very much about it.I’ve done that to death. It’s a recurring theme, and it still remains.

I also complained how the media was a sop to the ECB, not holding them to account, but supporting them, enabling them and in the end being in hock to them. This is a mainstay of the blog – indeed, Cricket365 have instigated a weekly review of the press on their site (like the Mediawatch on Football365, but not as punchy and not as good). We had our own focus, and it was on broadsheet journos in particular. The key individuals were Pringle and Selvey, two writers who evoke a mean spirit, a propensity to sneer towards those who dare question their omnipotence, and thus on this blog were roundly castigated for their atitudes. It speaks volumes that they have both been let go by their papers for younger, and presumably cheaper, regular replacements (Hoult and Martin).

We still have the festering boil that is most of the Daily Mail’s coverage these days (LB being an exception), but given that disgraceful rag is the leading web-traffic “news” driver in this country, it speaks more to the country we live in than anything a mere blogger, talking to his echo chamber, could ever compete against. Much of Newman’s copy mirrors the attitude of its paper, and there’s a much bigger problem there than cricket. A newspaper allowed to criticise anyone and anything that it sees fit is unable to comprehend or contemplate that anyone might dare criticise it and its ways (and doesn’t give a stuff if it does). We saw it this week with Brexit and those who think economic suicide is not a “patriotic” duty being told to be “silenced”. We’ve seen that bloody tactic before, and we’ve seen more than a few enablers of it on social media. How’s your lovely cuddly ECB now, folks?

But it’s the Mail’s attitude that I want to expand upon here, and it is related to cricket, so stick with it. If I might be indulged a little on Brexit, but only tangentially because I hate politics on here, if you doubt the wisdom of the decision you are told you are part of a “sneering metropolitan elite”. Given I live and work in London, do I tick those boxes? Well, that’s all part of the charm. I was born in a now destroyed hospital in Greenwich, and raised on a council estate in Deptford. My dad was a printer, my mum worked in a pub. I was about as working class as they come.I wasn’t a metropolitan elite, but I’m a Londoner. If I was born into that family now, I wouldn’t have Sky TV, that I do know. I’m not an elite, but what I was, was someone who loved playing cricket.

When I was living in Deptford we played football, and we played cricket on the streets. Cricket was visible. It had a presence. It was pretty much the only sport on TV on a Sunday. During summer holidays it was on TV all day when we were in the house and a test match or Gillette Cup match was on. This wasn’t a matter of consuming my media differently, it was as ingrained in me as football was. Rugby League and Rugby Union might have been on over the winter, but I had no desire to play that rubbish. Football needed a ball and five people tops. Cricket the same. How could you play rugby in the streets with those numbers? I didn’t learn how to play cricket at school. I learned in the street, with mates. But I was secured as a cricket nut from Infant School because my Dad helped me get into it, it was on the TV, and other like-minded kids wanted to play it. The cool dads in the media, especially those educated at the higher establishments, who seem to think they know what the kids like these days, are concentrating on the yoof at too old an age. Get them really young. That’s why kids play football.

I moved to another estate at the outer edges when I was 10, and we carried on playing cricket in the street, knowing the adults in their houses didn’t like it, but hell, why not. We’d improvise on our playing areas. One had no legside opportunities to score runs, so you learned to drive and cut. Another had a straight area, a bit of legside in front of square and nothing offside. So you learned to hit straight, or clear legs out of the way. You also had to take every catch that came your way. I don’t see any kids playing cricket in the street now, and I still live there, I don’t see any playing football for that matter. But unlike football, kids will consume it daily because if you are a football fan it is still easy to follow the game. Why would any kid even know about cricket now?

For a while Eminem’s song “Lose Yourself” was the England team song when people came out to bat. The opening lyrics in that song are prophetic…

Look
If you had
One shot
Or one opportunity
To seize everything you ever wanted
In one moment
Would you capture it
Or just let it slip?

Every man and his dog knows when that opportunity was. It was September 2005. It was after the greatest England series we will ever know. It is where an underdog England team beat the mightiest of champions, and more to the point, damn well deserved to. It had characters, it had charm, it had verve, it had steel. It wouldn’t win every game, but it had people you could follow and enjoy doing so. At that point, the authorities in this country thought this would be a jolly great time to say to the 8 million who watched the denouement of the Trent Bridge terror, and who had chosen to invest their time and emotional wellbeing in a cricket event, even if it was for a short period, that no, that was it, unless you stumped up to Mr Murdoch’s lovely force for good.

Football did not do that, despite people claiming it that did. First, when the Premier League went to Sky, the biggest match in the football calendar at that point was the FA Cup Final, which remained on terrestrial TV, and the biggest tournament was the World Cup, and no-one doubted it was the world’s premier tournament, and that was entirely on terrestrial TV (at the Finals stage). Until recently the biggest Champions League matches could be found on terrestrial TV. Weekly live football wasn’t totally ingrained, and ITV for a while, after it lost the contract, covered a ton of Championship football on its local networks. Live football, free to air, with limited other routes for consumption of TV media, was available. The sport did not shut its access down across the board. It hasn’t been faultless, and the viewing figures in the UK are rarely published, but Sky invest so much money in it that if they didn’t win the contract, they’d be dead. But football is not cricket. Football did not shut down live coverage to all.

Cricket did. It took a great product, and at that time, what looked like a great team and told those who liked watching it, you have to pay, and pay quite a bit. The sport had just received a shot in the arm, after years of a poor product, winning its flagship series, and it turned in on itself. It took a short-term profit view, to prop up their addled infrastructure, at the expense of ever having it as a mass viewed event again. Why do you think the Olympics and the World Cup, and the Euros, are in the public conscience and their every move hung on by lots and lots of people, but cricket isn’t? To keep saying this doesn’t take massive insight, but to correct it, or even try, would take such a leap of faith that it doesn’t bear thinking about. It would cause a massive problem because, frankly, the players are paid too much, and the cost of facilities don’t reflect the revenue from them in most cases. Cricket is an economic basket case at anywhere other than international level in this country. As the distance between free to air, and recognising heroes, gets more distant, so does the chances of ever becoming big again. So does the point of writing about the sport.

So I sit here, less time to consume, because that is what everyone wants you to do in media land (consume), the sport and you wonder why I should care enough to write about it. I feel this even more when I see events like this week in Chittagong. As far as I recall, their chief gobshite, Oliver Holt, a man of great sanctimony, has not written about cricket for quite a while. He might have done a Lord’s test or something, but we have more recall of Martin Samuel following that line. The Mail have Paul Newman out there as the cricket correspondent, and Nasser Hussain as some combination of management stooge / bellower in chief, yet the Mail, and no doubt Mr Holt, felt the need to drop in and bring his sanctimonious perspective. Those of us out in the real world, who actually might be faced with the need to go to Bangladesh feel Eoin Morgan’s anxiety. For me it isn’t necessarily my safety, but what I’d put my loved ones through if I went. The mental torment, whether logical or not. Logic and fear are not usually compatible bedfellows. When you are dealing with the unexpected, and not knowing what you might be facing, I blame no-one for making that decision to stay at home. Sport isn’t war. Even if I had made the decision to go, I wouldn’t have questioned it. But that’s not enough for a paper that accuses the likes of me of being a sneering metropolitan elite, but does sneering for a living and a profit. No, Holt had to go. We await his piece on Sunday with a mixture of great relish, and great despair. He’s going to be a weapons grade tit, and we all know it.

What does Holt’s appearance mean to the likes of a cricket correspondent and former player who have lived through it for longer than him? Why wasn’t Newman or Hussain capable of doing precisely what Mr Sanctimony has done? Why just three days for Saint Oliver, on the back of his usual Ryder Cup shindig and a laughable piece after a visit to the new purpose-built Vikings stadium when he compared a billionaire ripping off his city partners with a monolith built for the Olympics and using it to beat West Ham around the head? Why did the Mail think it right to send someone to that country just to prove that Holt is more “courageous” than an England captain – because this is what this dick waving exercise was? As Cricket 365 said, Bangladesh are providing England military strength security. Instead of us asking if an England captain is safe, shouldn’t we be asking, as Holt probably should, whether they SHOULD be doing this, and if so WHY it is necessary? Are the ECB paying for this in totality? In part? Or are the ICC? Maybe he’ll surprise us. Given his focus on the national bloody anthem, I’m not holding my breath. And that’s something an asthmatic should never say.

Which brings me on to the ECB. I should be sitting back here smug, self-satisfied, proved right at their terminal incompetence. But I’m not. I’m sad, I’m angry, I’m disillusioned, and as time is tight, the last one is the easiest of the emotions to maintain. You can sit on Twitter and snipe at Kent doing their best to protect their own position, but that doesn’t get over the point that we judge often, don’t we, on little knowledge of the facts (it appears there is no contingency for this situation, and lawyers love a vacuum) and more on who is the “good guy” and who is the “bad guy”. After all, we’ve had two years telling us one player is Mr Nice Guy and the other is an obnoxious arse, and you pick your side. Why not with something that was never written down as a rule.

In this instance the behaviour of Rod Bransgrove is every bit more egregious than that of that other “bad guy” who seemed guilty only of not getting on with his coach, captain and injured wicket keeper. First of all, Rocket Rod decided that the way to get his membership on side was to call them, effectively, a bunch of out of touch oddballs. His words betrayed the attitude that many of those stuck to the good old values of long-form cricket could not possibly have the knowledge of a “successful businessman” and that they can moan all they like. If theyput in their views against the new City T20, he wasn’t going to pay a blind bit of notice to what these freaks had to say.

Now, one could admire this tosser’s honesty – but as we are frequently seeing in this sport, honesty covers a multitude of flaws barely adequately – but no, I choose not to. He’s a prick. I came to that conclusion then, and when he commented on Durham, well, I wasn’t going to be actively dissuaded by him then either. Not when he sat on a county team that had parlous financial troubles before he bailed them out, and now he’s sitting on a pile of losses too . His team was arguably worse run than Durham, but it wasn’t a going concern unless he bailed it out, which is his right.  Nah, that don’t matter to Rod. He just wants a City T20 team in his stadium in the hope he might get a little bit back of the money he’s lost. He has no more interest in developing test players as I have of setting up the Rocket Rod Rollerdisco Team.

It’s a famous quote, but one that resonates for the ECB. Bertrand Russell might have had Colin Graves in mind when he said “The trouble with the world is that the stupid are cocksure and the intelligent are full of doubt.” I am certainly full of doubt, so I hope I qualify for the latter, but when Graves, in his interview with TMS earlier this summer said he didn’t regret a thing he’d done in his tenure so far, I thought of this quote. Lizzie Ammon’s key revelation, in a piece lacking true meat but with a juicy morsel but certainly still far more steely than most of her media fellows have put out, relating to the four horse manures of the ECB spouting off loudly on a train confirmed fears, if confirmed they needed to be. People of the world, and of England cricket in particular, listen to me. These people are not high quality. They are lacking in insight, in competence, in ability and in strategy. The main “quality” the likes of Dig Your Own, the Empty Suit, Mr Comma, Mr Cupboard Under The Stairs, Norman Collier, Selfey’s mate Clarke … et al is that they are cocksure. I’ll leave it to others whether they qualify for the first part of Russell’s quote.

GraemeC, a contributor to the Ashes Panel last year and a sadly infrequent commenter here, has prepared a bit of an explanation on Yorkshire’s finances that is (a) better than mine last time out and (b) written brilliantly. I won’t add it to this mammoth piece of prose, but look out for it soon.

It’s really hard to think where cricket goes from here. There will be a sport. We just might not like it.

So to the blog, and the content, itself….

On the contents coming up, I’m sorry to say that I’m going to have to scale back on the ambitions for a lot of nostalgia pieces, and for that I am truly sorry, and quite disappointed. I love writing them, but they take a very long time, and it’s time I’d rather spend on other matters, if truth be told. I had done a fair bit leading into KP’s 158 in 2005, and I might add that as a Part 1, with no guarantee on timing for the meaty bits of part 2. My look back on Trent Bridge 1986 is also incomplete, but I don’t want to waste Sidesplittin’s brilliant answer to the question I posed on the mysterious Evan Gray. I’ll find some way in, one day, Sidey. I also hoped to do some stuff on the 30th anniversary of Gatting’s England tour to Australia, and started a first part on that. Then matters took over.  We have a full suite of test matches coming up (or in train) and that should keep us rolling along nicely. There’s no shortage of idiotic copy around still, so we won’t be wanting for material. All we will be wanting for is time.

Time. In time it could have been so much more. The time has nothing to show because. Time won’t give me time.

Take that FICJAM.

Champions in Chittagong

LordCanisLupus45 Comments

England chased down a testing total, not without a few scares here and there, to win the series. According to the stuff I have read, Ben Stokes played a very mature innings to see us home. Hallelujah to that, just what we want, especially on slow surfaces against spin where he’s been found wanting in the past.

This is really a very short post. I am incredibly snowed under at work at the moment, and yes, it doesn’t happen too often, so posting is going to be tricky at the best of times. Chris and Sean are in similar positions too at the moment. But I want further comments to come on the back of a victory posting rather than more misery. It is amazing how the press are trumping up a series win in Bangladesh when they probably expected a whitewash by the visitors before our departure (and ignoring the results that the Bangladesh team had achieved). I can’t help but thinking there’s an itty bitty agenda behind that.

A message from your local station, as they say in the States. Mr Newman, I presume…

And they did it without their regular top four one-day batsmen after Jason Roy was ruled out through injury to join Alex Hales, Joe Root and Eoin Morgan in being absent from the decider.

Ah. As if we didn’t know that Hales and Morgan weren’t there.Note also, starting a sentence with the word And…. horrendous. You never get me doing that.

I come to praise Rashid, not bury him…

Yet three of those wickets came from bad balls and Rashid was a little flattered to record figures of four for 43 on a ground that is not conducive to the modern dynamic brand of one-day cricket being played worldwide.

And just in case you might have forgotten…

But the calm figure of Woakes joined Stokes to sensibly see England home to what is – with their captain in Morgan choosing to stay at home and others missing – an against the odds and hugely satisfying one-day triumph.

I sometimes wonder if he writes for his goldfish, so short a memory he expects of his readership.

Now, of course, Oliver Holt was over there, on a little flying visit to confirm the security was OK and that the stayaways were wrong. I call Holt by the name Mr Sanctimony. It was once said by Mark of this parish that the “Hold the Back Page” generation were the first set of journalists to gain TV prominence. Mark once said, and it’s a line I love, that they turned up on Sunday morning TV, with a leather jacket, often unshaven, and they thought they were Keith Richard.

He (Holt, not Mark) had a little snip back at yours truly at the weekend for an observation I made about a lamentably researched piece on the Minnesota Vikings stadium (a standing joke in the U S on the way it was financed) just to bash West Ham and their move to the Olympic Stadium. It was agenda driven claptrap. I cannot wait for his piece on his journey to Chittagong. The old fisking keyboard may be brought out for one more go. You do wonder how Newman thinks when old superiority bollox flounces in to Bangladesh, has his say, and then flounces out again, like some modern day envoy from the FO. “Natives a bit restless, showed ’em a flash of the old double barrel, a couple of tanks, kept ’em in line, no bother at all.” Let’s wait and see, eh?

Meanwhile India are world #1 test team and Australia have been whitewashed in an ODI series by South Africa. International cricket, bloody hell.

Defeat In Dhaka / Misery In Mirpur

LordCanisLupus71 Comments

I saw a fair bit of today’s game in between the usual weekend errands, visiting mum and dad’s grave to commemorate their wedding anniversary, and dozing off during the Buttler / Bairstow partnership. It’s been one of those days.

England had their foot on the home team’s throat twice, and on both occasions let them wriggle out of it / had the game wrested away. Mahmadullah played very well for his 75, but it was undoubtedly the skipper, Mashrafe Mortaza, who played the key role with a belligerent 44, turning a likely score of 200 into nearer 240 and given the way the wicket played, it looked competitive. I have to say I was quite relaxed about it because I’ve always felt if the tail had made a pitch look easy, then so should a top batting line-up, and England are purported to have one of those.

Jake Ball bowled pretty well again, and that’s nice to see. Rashid was a little more ropey than Friday, but still got both of the key partnership makers with a variety of balls, including a filthy long-hop spanked straight down Moeen’s throat for Mossadek’s dismissal. Rashid will have days like these. As Rufus quoted on the comments, lifting a Geoff (not Keith) Lemon saying “leg-spinners never bowl a bad ball on Youtube”. Woakes is now taken for granted, and he took wickets up front. David Willey bowled tightly up front, but got a little stick later on. It just felt that England had let the hosts off the hook. 239.

I pause this piece to see how Newman managed to shoe-horn Eoin Morgan into his article…

Yet it was still wrong of an England captain to lose his temper in this way and the incident will provide a lesson for Buttler as he gets to grips with captaining the team in the controversial absence of Morgan.

And a snipe at Rashid…

Mahmudullah hit 75 before he was trapped by Adil Rashid, who has recovered well here in the first two one-day internationals from the bad feeling that surrounded his withdrawal from Yorkshire’s championship decider.

As I said, we’re the ones with an agenda. Remember that.

In his post-match interview Jos was disappointed that England hadn’t backed themselves to go at the target, and instead played timidly at the start. That might have had something to do with the way Jason Roy faced the threat of Shakib in the first over, when he looked like he read the bowling with all the success that I had of understanding Finnish on Friday. It was Vince who went first, to another windy drive (checked Michael Vaughan’s twitter feed), and then Duckett, to the obvious disappointment of the media who desperately want one of the newer players to really come off to allow them to knife Morgan more, drove airily and was bowled through the gate. Roy tried to play a positive shot off Mortaza and was nailed plumb in front, and Stokes followed suit. 26 for 4 and dire straits.

Bairstow, who the press are anointing as Morgan’s replacement followed up his run out for a duck with some mature rebuilding while Buttler played assuredly. Things looked to be sound and solid until YJB nicked off after a 79 run partnership. Mooen Ali played an awful shot to get out, but he’s Moeen, so the world will let him off. Then Buttler went – going across his stumps, being given not out, but on the supposed instructions of the dressing room, the decision was reviewed and Buttler went. The immediate aftermath will no doubt be poured over, but it appeared as though there might have been some over-zealous celebrations by the home team (someone on Twitter said he was sent on his way by a Bangla Haka) and Buttler lost it. This is becoming a bit of a trend from England, in that we do seem to become a little upset a little too easily, but Jos’s comment of “grown men acting like that” in the post-match nonsense with Nick Knight gave clear vent to what he thought about it.

England threatened a little thanks to mature batting by Adil Rashid (again) and Jake Ball’s belligerence, but it was always unlikely to win the match and so it proved. England lost by 34 runs and the series is 1-1. Then came the handshakes…

https://twitter.com/benstokes38/status/785178217032351749

This may prove to be a little tastier a tour than imagined before the start. Bangladesh appear to be no-one’s fools on their own patch. It’s taken nearly 20 years, but these guys relish a fight.

On to game three in Chittagong on Wednesday.

We really are not being well served by the appearance of Dominic Cork on commentary. He’s truly woeful, and is there, I presume, to make Nick Knight look statesmanlike. What Nasser (who spouted some woeful old claptrap about captains having passion in the post-match interview) and Rob Key have done to deserve Cork’s company is beyond me. Athar Ali Khan is more than decent as a home commentator, while I really had to look up Jon Kent, to find out he has two more ODI caps than Mark Butcher but contributed the same amount of runs and wickets as Mark in those appearances. He’s OK, he’s not offended me yet. But Dominic Cork? Really?

Elsewhere India have stuck a massive score on New Zealand, with Kohli making another double-hundred and Rahane 188, putting the hosts in total control and New Zealand needing to play for a draw from a long way out. Australia were comfortably beaten on what looked like a snooze of an ODI in Port Elizabeth, on what looked another deadly dull PE pitch. It’s 4-0 to the home team, and the world shrugs its shoulders.

The Wanderer Returns…

LordCanisLupus34 Comments

Sort of….

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I have to confess that in the last three weeks or so blogging has had to take a back seat. It’s the nature of the beast, as both Sean and Chris can attest, that we aren’t in the privileged position of being able to sit around all day watching and writing about cricket. We have jobs that require our time, and while the workload of mine has waxed and waned over the past few years, I’m in the “it’s so damn crazy it is off the charts” phase. You know I’ve been to Rio, yesterday I was in Helsinki, this week I’ve been interviewing, the previous week I was drowning while suffering from another bloody toothache. This coincided with times when Chris was away and Sean was also busy. So there has been a lack of regular content – long-standing readers know how this blog works and recognise this is what happens.

I was on a plane – or at least waiting for one at the bloody expensive Helsinki Airport – yesterday when the Bangladesh game finished. I had one thought other than wasn’t it nice to see Rashid ram the critics words right back at them, and that was “how would Newman segue in a snide reference to Eoin Morgan” into his write-up. Newman is out there for the ODI phase and is not going to let the uppity Irishman’s decision rest. And, so it was, with some trepidation, that I opened up the Mail Online and read the great man’s piece. And I didn’t have long to wait…

And the most satisfied member of the England side was surely stand-in captain Jos Buttler, who followed his impressive leadership in the first week of a tour dominated by safety concerns with a match-winning all-round display. A penny for the thoughts of Eoin Morgan?

In the absence of a telling contribution by one of his potential replacements – Vince and Bairstow didn’t perform, and Duckett’s 60 was not the compelling hundred the punditerati truly wanted – it had to turn to the leadership issue. Jos Buttler offers a few platitudes, presumably enhancing how much he might get under the new contracts, and that’s “impressive leadership”. Jesus, they are easily impressed. I’m accused, regularly, of having an agenda. I’ve nothing on these people.

Newman isn’t one to let an agenda lie, and it was how he signed his piece off that sums him up:

And it was one that provided food for thought for England’s refuseniks in Morgan and Alex Hales.

I bet it doesn’t Paul. It’s another ODI, in another country, which will be forgotten by most within a couple of weeks, save those who might face the 5 wickets in an ODI debut trivia question in a few years time. Your desperation for them to express regret speaks volumes.

England’s win, plucking one from the jaws of defeat, was a really good one. Good that Ben Stokes played a solid innings in a winning cause and posting his first ODI ton. Jos, once again, showed his incredible ability to smack balls with nothing more than an amazing power from those wrists. It’s hard to write something about wrist power without invoking the old Finbarr Saunders from Viz, but he plays shots I’ve never seen before. There has to be a way to harness this for test cricket, doesn’t there?

I’ll confess I’ve not seen the bowling performance yet. Jake Ball does look to have something, given a more than capable debut in tests, and it does remain to be seen if he is another string we have to our one day bow now that it appears to me as though Mark Wood is going to need to have his workload excessively managed if we are ever going to get him performing. Adil Rashid does what he does on occasions in ODIs – he takes wickets, doesn’t get truly collared, and has snarky comments made about him by certain sections of the media (one of them employed now by TalkShite Two). Newman lived down to this…

Yet ultimately they were indebted to the unlikely figures of Ball, who ended up with the best figures by an English one-day debutant, and Rashid, coming into this series under something of a cloud, for turning the tables.

If you ain’t in the in-crowd, then you are out. Presumably this will be reflected in less money in his central contract. You have to be a “good egg” and we’ll have lots of “good journalism” telling us what is being one of those and what isn’t.

I’m running off a load of cricket from the Tivo onto computer and have the India v New Zealand series on. When I left on Thursday I was being advised that Thakur of BCCI, a new tinpot general who thinks being good at business means he’s top dollar to run a sport, was threatening to cancel the whole series. In the World Baseball Classic there is a “mercy rule” if you are getting thumped too heavily, and with India romping this series on result wickets, and with Ashwin posting figures that pur him up with the all-time champions, then I first thought that Thakur’s sporting instincts for a contest were kicking in. Not really. But what happened since then? I genuinely don’t know other than I’ve had to set the recorder to pick up the highlights in the early hours of the morning because there’s a game on and Kohli’s made a hundred. Given I’ve slept most of the day I’ve not been able to catch up on all the toing and froing, so grateful for a steer. Did Lodhi give him a kick up the arse? Are we going to have India over for the Chumpions Trophy, or as it should be known the “win it and Comma gets a CBE Trophy”?

Sean excoriated the ECB over the Durham fiasco earlier this week and rightly so. Those anti-KP sorts who think we cried and cried purely over the ECB casting out of “our hero” are still welcome to speak now they’ve seen the true nastiness of those in charge. The county that has brought us Paul Collingwood, Steve Harmison, Graeme Onions, Ben Stokes and Mark Wood will now be severely hamstrung in nurturing any further north-east talent because the ECB felt the need to “punish them” as some sort of ludicrous “pour encourager les autres” meme. This is less Battle of Minorca, and more the rattled of Lord’s, who know deep down that all the counties, more or less, are in a dreadful state. I had a look at Yorkshire’s finances, and it’s amazing to look at their debt structure:

yorkshire-accounts

Yorkshire’s turnover in 2015 was £8m. Its staff costs (and other cricket expenses) in 2015 was £3.1m. The cost of providing cricket in 2015 – admin, catering etc. –  was just under £2m. Other overheads were £2.6m. This means EBITDA – your operating profit in crude terms, is £500k. So if you owed nothing, you made half a million quid. Which is, at least a profit. But you can work out that not only is there £25m of debt there, that hasn’t been obtained by popping down to DFS to take advantage of interest free credit for four years. There’s interest to pay.

And that interest is £648k. Their EBITDA doesn’t even cover their interest payments. In finanical analysis terms, this is not particularly indicative of a very secure going concern. Yorkshire announced a profit overall because of an “Exceptional Item” of £781k. The thing with Exceptional Items is that they are meant to be “Exceptional”. I’ve had to study accounts where that term is stretched to breaking point to indicate that a company is healthy. This one is quite interesting.

exceptional

I’m not party to the discussions, but Yorkshire posted a profit in 2015 because they got the local HSBC to reduce the repayment, and in return the bank now has a first charge over one of their facilities. What I’m indicating here is that the cricket club that is held up as a paragon of excellence on the cricket field functions because the head of the ECB has put up his own money – yet still holds the whip hand given it owes him £20 odd million – to save his club. If he had taken the approach of the Durham creditors and said “right, no more to keep you out of the shit”, what would have happened to Yorkshire? I mean, if you really can’t see how there’s potential conflict of interest, you must have a dose of SelfeyRashiditis. Note how that loan from Graves is due to be paid out in the next two to five years. It won’t. It can’t be given Yorkshire’s turnover. Graves will just roll it over.

I’m picking on Yorkshire because, to their credit, they publish their accounts on their website. I saw Ashley Giles having a word or two about Durham’s financial ineptitude but I tried for a while, using my sources of information, and found the only way I could see Lancashire’s accounts was to stump up £12. I love you all, but I won’t do that.

That’s the offence. One that every county’s cricket operations mimics – it doesn’t take a lot of sense to see county attendances will never match the wages needed to pay players – yet Durham need to be punished because their creditors took a much tougher line than Sugar Daddy Graves and his ilk. Before people throw Surrey at me, it has often been said that Surrey is a conference facility running a cricket team. So Durham need to be punished, and so it is that they have been relegated. And deducted points in all three competitions. And been stripped of their test match ground status. One wonders what they might do to a Northamptonshire should they need a bail-out. Would it require them to play Minor Counties cricket? Deduct them 100 points and thus make any game against a team with nothing to play for meaningless and thus destroying what credibility the Second Division has? Again, Sean did his piece, and his pieces at it, and I’ll return to the theme in the coming days or so. But just think through the logical consequences of the decision, of how cricket operates in this country, and what could happen in the future. The ECB have been a disgrace. Don’t worry, I’ll come to Bransgrove in the near future as well.

I have gone off a little on this, and thus not covered some of the other ground I intended to at the start of this piece. That’s fine. I can write some more later. Until then, thanks for sticking with us.

The Annual “End of Summer Poll”

LordCanisLupus149 Comments
IMG_3934
The Reigning Champion

The county season is in the books. There’s at least a fortnight between now and the next England international game. So it seems an opportune moment to bring the new poll to you for your enjoyment and completion.

It has to be said that I haven’t had cricket on my mind much this week. I was in Rio de Janeiro for the first half of the week, in what looked like possibly the best beach cricket location in the world (certainly after the rain that blighted my visit had compacted the sand) at Copacabana, but with the crap weather I had a chance to contemplate some stuff that I could include. I thought, and I’ve blatantly nicked the idea from Awful Announcing, that we consider a Mount Rushmore of Outside Cricket. The four characters that have shaped the Outside Cricket agenda, if there is an agenda, the most. It could be a player, it could be a writer, an anouncer, an administrator, a coach. It can’t be one of us, that’s the only stipulation. I would like you to nominate four individuals to be cast in stone!

Of course, eyes will focus on the Worst Journalist result. A keenly fought contest, the reigning champions have been sacked within the year – Pringle winning in 2014, Selfey last year – so who are we going to curse this year.

The International Summer

England’s Test Player Of The Summer (Top Three) –

Best Overseas Test Player Of The Summer (Top Three)

Best Test Innings Of The Summer (Top Three)

Best Bowling Performance (Individual) Of The Summer (Top Three)

Journalists & Commentators (Bloggers do not count, cricket press, writing for papers, magazines and cricinfo)

Best Three Journalists (rank order)

Worst Five Journalists (rank order)

Best Commentator

Oh No! Why He Is On? Worst Three Commentators

Mount Outside Cricketmore

Your four people to be inaugurated onto the mountain…

Open Space –

Your overall comments on the summer….

Comments on the blog –

What do you like, what don’t you like, what would you like to see more of, would you like to write? All here…

You can send these to Dmitriold@hotmail.co.uk or comment below. I will bring you the results somewhere near 1 November, so you have time. But quick responses are often the best ones.

A Blatant Holding Thread

LordCanisLupus129 Comments

Sorry everyone. The travails of the real world have put a hold on new postings. I’m thoroughly busy in the office, Southeastern are a disaster area, and when I get home I find I want to veg out on the sofa. So cricket has taken a little bit of a back seat.

So here we are. Chris is still in foreign lands. I’ll be far far away for most of next week, so we’ll see if Sean or any of our guest writers can fill in the breach in the meantime.

So, to avoid SimonH’s excellent ICC post getting cluttered up with even more comments, let’s have your views on the news coming from the meeting of county chairmen today. Were they all mouth and no trousers – and Yorkshire, I’m looking at you. How far will the south east resistance go – Kent, Sussex and Surrey reputed to be the ones to stand up to Mr Mediocre and the Empty Suit? Can #39 avoid licking so many ECB boots that he comes down with cherry blossom poisoning (an Only Fools and Horses joke)? Watch as other media giants push each other out the way to crawl to the ECB. It’s been a spectator sport all right.

Comment away.

PS – TMS followed me on Twitter. That’s odd.