Alastair Cook

Assembly

LordCanisLupus172 Comments

The aftermath of the tour continues and eyes turn towards the futures of the top table. Those eyes are cast more in the direction of the coach, Peter Moores, and when you read some of the stuff coming out, it’s no surprise.

Moores has to carry a number of burdens, partly of his own making, and partly a little unfair. I have not been inside a dressing room at professional level, but even at club level, you know when people don’t think you are credible, don’t listen to what you do, don’t care about your future. It’s not fair that Moores never played international cricket, and that will always count against him when it comes to motivating and coaching great international players. However, he has been on the county treadmill and knows it inside out, and will be a great county coach again when this ends. He commands respect of the county pros, but maybe lacks a little at the top level with the senior pros. Maybe. It’s guess work, but I’ve seen enough football managers lose that respect, and I can recognise some of the problems. At this stage, with a young core of players, Moores can bring them along, as long as he retains the support of the key senior pros. These being Cook, Bell, Broad and Anderson, and to a lesser degree, the next in line, Joe Root. All have played every game under Moores, and there is no hint of this changing any time soon.

The second cross he has to bear is that he lacks credibility among much of the watching public. James Morgan on TFT makes the analogy perfectly – would the England national team go back to Steve McClaren, or would the rugby team go back to Andy Robinson. Both were assistants under more successful coaches who never bridged the credibility gap with the public, probably unfairly. Moores, like it or not, comes across as a nice guy out of his depth at this level. I’m not, like some, going to assign some malevolent motive to his tenure on his behalf. He’s been thrown a hell of a challenge after the Ashes 2013-14, made even harder by the idiotic jettisoning of Kevin Pietersen (not for his absence from the team, but because of the messages it sent) and he has developed some of the younger players (although not greatly, not really). The sense remains though, as the World Cup campaign showed, that Moores is not up to key elements of the job. He will present a case, but the evidence is not backing it up. Combine an abject disaster in the World Cup with a home loss to Sri Lanka in all formats, and coughing up a 1-0 lead in the Caribbean, and there is not a lot to say “keep me on” other than some sort of hope for a change of fortune. My football team did that this season, and by the time we sacked our manager it was too late to save them, despite the best efforts of a new manager who did really well.

Which brings us to the third problem, and this one was partly of his own making, but more of that champion of champions Paul Downton. Peter Moores applied for a job and got it and accepted terms no manager/coach should ever do. That is, be told who he could not have in his team under any circumstances. You anti-KP fans keep making it about him if you want, but the message this sends to any player is profound. Be independently minded, have a strong opinion about your game, and how you want your career to pan out, and that could happen to you. It wasn’t a good start. Then, to have your appointment accompanied by the “greatest coach of his generation” comment by Downton was just amazing. Moores would have been completely at liberty to tell the MD to shut his hole, because that was going to stick. If he could not put before the public a set of results to live up to that billing, he was going to be ridiculed. So it has proved.

The final problem for Moores is his inability to speak, or appear to speak, in anything other than management tones. He sounds like a first year MBA student more than a cricket coach. Sport is about maximising the analytical tools to hand (I’m reading a fascinating book on baseball analysis at the moment) but it is also about unquantifiable exploits. You don’t find Jimmy Anderson’s fifth day morning session in any text book. You have that seize the day approach, the raising of the game to higher planes which can’t be factored in. If they were, sport would be bloody dull and we’d all not bother to watch it. But it’s too much process this, learning lessons that.

I’ll tell you another thing that doesn’t help, and it’s a warm welcome to a Paul Newman quote on here after at least a couple of weeks absence, is nonsense like this:

To watch England here has been to see a highly promising group who respect their coach and want to succeed for him and I believe Moores should be given that crack at the Ashes denied him in 2009 by another Kevin Pietersen-inspired controversy.

Just read that and weep. No player is going to come out in the open and say Moores shouldn’t be coach. KP did that and got fired as captain. KP said that about Flower and was booted out for it. There’s not a lot of longevity in showing you aren’t playing for the coach. I’d say we need to win more games to show how well we are playing for Moores, instead of going overboard over one win in Grenada. But Newman doesn’t let it go with his bete noire, who he is now getting all tin foil hat over. KP has the square root of eff all to do with Moores staying on as coach. Pietersen has not scored the runs required of him by Graves et al for starters. Second, KP is not responsible for Moores performance in the job thus far, so is a total utter irrelevance about whether Moores should stay in the job. Third, we’ve been down this long service award drivel before (he deserves a crack at the Ashes – if he deserved it in 2009, he’d have made an unanswerable case instead of losing home series in 2007 and 2008) and that worked in the World Cup. Also, Newman’s changed his tune. He was really down on Moores after the World Cup. Maybe Cook’s told him to lay off or something.

I feel a bit for Moores, to be honest. I actually think he’s a really decent man giving it his all, but he doesn’t really stand a chance. It may be, like before, he’s laying down the foundations for someone else, but also there’s the suspicion that this is as far as he can go. While it is hard to ignore the fact he took the job on compromised terms, he has not been the hate figure some portray him to be. He’s more a figure of sympathy, and in international sport, that is often much, much worse. If this best case you can make to keep him on is he deserves his go at the Ashes because he got sacked before, then you are not making a convincing case.

I thought I’d concentrate more on Moores in this piece, but do a brief bit on Cook and Strauss before longer thought pieces.

Cook has been the subject of a vicious attack by Boycott in the Telegraph. I wonder how Cook will approach Jonathan Agnew about that. Cook doesn’t take kindly to being spoken about like that and the consequences could be interesting. Boycott is a loudmouth, paid to express loud opinions, and you take them as they come. But I’ve never seen him this aggravated by a captain / player ever. This was going for the throat. I would say that it’s not as easy to dismiss Boycott’s views that align with a lot of us outside cricket, than it is for them to slate me, but they try (he’s a wife beater, he quit on England, blah blah – he also faced top quicks at 90 mph without a helmet on). A lot of us believe Cook isn’t the nice guy that his image is portrayed as, but I want to get away from that part. I want to look at the evidence – it’s all I try to do, and try to interpret. He’s protected, for now, and could jettison Moores to keep his career in check. It will be interesting to see how this plays out.

As for Strauss…. appointing him the new Director of Cricket would be Downtonian in its brilliance. He talks the language of all charlatans – promising to build for a non-specific future, while using this to move on from something else that he doesn’t like (in this case a player who might return to form and demand selection). He also has the cult of Cook in his playbook, and would be an establishment, company candidate when root and branch change to a more exciting, attractive style of play is going to be needed. This current England team still has dedicated fans and lovers of the game actively wanting them, or key members of them, to fail to get the changes needed in structure, attitude and approach. Bringing back Mr Bowling Dry, with his foster son as captain and his foster dad wheeling away behind the scenes, is spitting in the face of those who actively want to love this side again. Strauss is typical ECB. Unexciting, not credible and the wrong man. More of this later.

2015 Test Century Watch #19 – Alastair Cook

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o-ALASTAIR-COOK-facebook

Alastair Cook – 105 v West Indies at Bridgetown, Barbados

And so it came to pass on the first day of the fifth month of the year two thousand and three fives since the birth of our lord, that Saint Alastair of Cook made his 26th test century. And there was great rejoicing among the corps de press, and amongst former disciples and pharisees, who announced from the highest heights that the lord and saviour was “back to his best” and doth bellowed from their pulpits that the Saint had “rammed the critics’ words back down your throats” and “be quiet muppets”.

Alastair Cook’s 26th test hundred came nearly two years after his previous one. In that time he immortalised the number 95, and went the number of innings not making a century from the opener slot that was inhabited by people like Mike Brearley. I could make this a whole piece on the nonsense between hundreds, but let’s try to keep this true to form.

Only one of Cook’s tons has been less than 105 – his unbeaten first century on debut v India at Nagpur where he made 104 not out. This was his second century at Kensington Oval, where he made 139 not out in the first innings back in 2009, and it remains his only venue in the Caribbean where he has made a test hundred. This is his fourth century against West Indies, and as we’ll see later, he’s not exactly gone on from the three figure score in those innings. This is his first test century in the first innings of a test match (first overall, not England’s first innings) since his 115 in 2012 v South Africa.

Have you seen a 105 Dmitri? Well, funny you should ask, but I saw a large part of a 105 made by Alastair Cook, when he made that score v Pakistan at Lord’s in 2006. I have seen two others at The Oval – the first by Chris Gayle in 2004, in an innings that drove Michael Holding mad I seem to recall, and the other by Justin Langer in 2005, when the Aussies started getting us all worried with that opening partnership. There have been 92 scores of 105 in test cricket. Alastair Cook and Jacques Kallis are the only two players to have been dismissed three times on that score. Ricky Ponting and Kumar Sangakkara have also made the score three times, but both have a not out to their name.

In our vintage slot, we go back to the first 105 made in tests, and that took place a mere 130 years ago (any jokes about it seeming like that between Cook’s last two hundreds is your gag, not mine). His name was Arthur Shrewsbury Sr, and he made his unbeaten 105 at the MCG. The home team had been dismissed for 163, and it reached that due to the Demon Spofforth making 50 from number 11. In England’s reply of 386, made over a very sedate 221 overs, Shrewsbury came in at 97 for 3 and batted for over 5 hours in making his score. Must have got a wiggle on with that over rate. England went on to seal an innings victory, bowling out Australia for 125 in a mere 102 overs. Paul Collingwood….beat that. The match report is worth reading.

The first 105 in the West Indies was by Les Ames in 1930 at Port of Spain. Doug McGlew’s 105 against Australia in 1958 held the record for the slowest ever test hundred until Mudassar Nazar beat him twenty or so years later. Just the nine hours and five minutes in getting to three figures. Fifty of these 105s have been scored since 1992, although it has been over a year since the last one – Virat Kohli made 105 against New Zealand at Wellington last year (after McCullum’s triple). Sherwin Campbell made the last 105 at Bridgetown, in the famous 1999 test against Australia (think Brian Lara).

This was England’s 17th test century in Bridgetown. Alastair Cook nestles in at #15. The record score for an England player is, surprisingly, 154 by Mark Ramprakash in 1998. Only one other player has passed 150 there for England, and it’s that man Andrew Sandham again, who made 152 in 1930. Alastair Cook joins Alec Stewart (two in one match) and Graham Thorpe as the only England players to make two centuries in Barbados.

Going back to Sandham, that 152 was made in the first innings of the first test. After a lean run in tests 2 and 3, Sandham made 325 and 50 in a timeless 4th test and never played for England again.

Imagine that, Alastair.

Alastair Cook’s 100 came up in 259 balls and contained 10 x 4.

Mediocre

LordCanisLupus64 Comments

There ends another series. If we’d just got Jason Holder early on in Antigua, and we’d scored 50 more runs in Bridgetown, it would have been a whitewash. Then it would have been six on the bounce and bring on the Aussies. Sorry. Been chanelling my inner Selfey there. It’s probably all Jos Buttler’s fault.

Instead of a whitewash we’ve got into a decent position here in Bridgetown, had our feet on the home team’s throat, and in another calamity, let them off the hook. To do it in Melbourne could have been understandable on a bad tour; to do it at Headingley could have been considered an understandable, if lamentable, brain fart. This reeked of complacency. This reeked of thinking we had the job done once we’d edged up to around 280 and had the home team a few down early. Blackwood got the West Indies into range and our lamentable, undroppable batting line-up (other than the revolving door non-Cook opener slot) handed another test over to the valiant opposition. Ballance, Root, Bell and Moeen – Headingley, Lord’s and Kensington Oval. Save your Moeen at Headingley stories….this middle order is untouchable we are told.

As a not a real fan candidate (according to Guardian commenters I’m supposed to be nice to – add “the usual malcontents” to the list of glorious things I’m not to be cheesed off about), I can say that I lost contact with this game at around tea. The feed for Sky Sports, which I bloody well pay for, went down. It never came back. I tried TMS, got 10 minutes of Swann’s summarising, and my internet link shut down to prevent further damage. Instead I watched a team live up to its billing in the NBA Play-offs (Golden State Warriors) on the TV and followed updates on cricinfo and Twitter as another team didn’t live up to its star-studded rep. To me this isn’t surprising – we’ve seen the over-hype machine cranked to bursting point after Grenada and it’s not as if we weren’t warning them. We’re not Jeremiahs…we’ve bloody seen this before. Lots of times. Now those who were quick to spray their bile over us after that miracle at St. George’s, will need to take it back. This was utterly abject. But they won’t when it’s easier to shoot the misery messenger telling you as it is.

It may be funny, in a strange sort of way, that Cook’s century was made at last. Because all the while he wasn’t scoring those big runs (and 105 isn’t massive, although very good in the context of the match) there was almost this paranoid need for him to retain all facets of the test job as if this would inspire him to make those scores. You know, all that leading from the front twaddle. There has been an air of defiance from our wonderful captain this tour, with his prickly demeanour reputed to have included a heated discussion with Agnew over his commentary stints with the mortal enemy. Who know’s if this is true? But what I heard from the bits of this series I caught was a concerted effort from some of the Sky crew to really “get behind” our captain, to the extent that there were copious mentions of our dear leader’s “body language” and “I’m in charge” stance. It’s nonsense. That you feel the need to point this out, or to comment on how much better it supposedly is indicates there’s a problem. I’m trying to work out a captain post-Gower who had these comments made about him.

I said after Grenada that:

1. When you win a test, act like you’ve been there before; and

2. When you win the test on a back of an inspirational solo effort, don’t bank on that as a long-term solution.

Instead, even I got sucked in, with my prediction that the WIndies would fall 40 or 50 short in their chase. This was in direct contrast to my suspicion. The suspicion was that the 123 we made in the second innings wasn’t the product of a minefield as seemed to be intimated on the wires last night. It was the product of total, utter incompetence, and watching this morning I didn’t see much devil in the wicket. No, we were perfecting a craft. Losing from winning positions is becoming a lovely little Cooky habit. Bring on Australia, I say. So I dismissed West Indies, wrongly, and they showed what getting your head down and not fretting about the “one with your name on it” as Botham muttered on could achieve. Well played chaps.

I’ve missed the aftermath. I understand Nasser got a bit pointed with Moores. Oh well, it’s always better to a sinner repent and all that. There’s far more good than bad with Mr Hussain. I’ve missed Bob off the long run, although I’m sure it will be the same old same old. It loses its resonance when you’ve been throwing hyperbole all over the place after Grenada. Then there’s the press – ready to stick it to all the doubters on Friday when Cook made his ton, and now ready to stick a belated knife in to whoever is this month’s sacrificial non-Cook lamb. Some have been just totally dismissive of the opposition, but now lay the blame at a comment by a loudmouthed Yorkie who gave the home team a supposed push with his “mediocre” comment.

The West Indies played with passion, with patience, with skill and with no little application when the going got tough. Darren Bravo’s innings summed it up. He has been accused of being flashy and irresponsible. Now he played with a calm head and rode what luck he had to make the crucial contribution. Jermaine Blackwood, a dasher of huge irresponsibility it is claimed, stuck to his task and was there at the end. He’s had a really promising series and I hope he goes on to bigger and better things. The bowling was honest, was clever and too good in the end. We kept being reminded that Jason Holder was “fourth seamer” material and yet he took wickets, whereas our seamers (Stokes and Jordan) appeared to have no clue for much of the time. I am still not seeing what the world sees in Chris Jordan’s bowling that I didn’t when at Surrey. Sure, he bowled a decent spell that took an early wicket, but he’s not consistent enough.

So where does this leave us? I’m fed up with saying what I say about Cook. The batting is now put to bed, and we have no chance of seeing him leave the team on form now. The captaincy position is more interesting, but there’s nothing I haven’t seen before. We’re told he is developing all the time, but I’m fed up with hearing this drivel, month in, month out. The century in Barbados proved nothing. It was a good innings, but not a match-winning one. It was his first in two years, yet this isn’t something to be lauded, but something to be concerned about. It answered no questions, other than one in the media’s mind. We weren’t wrong to criticise his preferential treatment just because me made a ton. You carry on, because the evidence is stacked in our favour. Boycott has had enough, that’s for sure.

I don’t know about Moores. I am not as down on him as others, but the position is becoming more and more untenable. The story book had been set. After the World Cup embarrassment, it was clear that the media message the ECB wanted to portray was that the tests were what mattered now, and we’d just won three on the bounce in that format. Cook was refreshed, there were young pros developing and this is the future. Now we look like a shambles within a week of a “famous victory”. The reports I’m hearing is that we are trying to say the Windies weren’t really “mediocre”. Well, let’s see how the Australians deal with this team. Moores has to be on thin ice, and we’ll see very soon how the new management react.

Jonathan Trott has been sent to the cricketing gallows, so he’ll pay the price. Ian Bell started the series on fire, and finished it fully soaked. Gary Ballance looks good, but I’m still worried about his technique, and Joe Root did not follow up his great effort at Barbados. The bowling is a long-term issue, and you can moan about Moeen until the cows come home, but 123 all out sums it up. Is that Moores fault? Really?

Meanwhile one of the main architects of this struggle remains in Loughborough like the malevolent priest, the power behind the monarchy. We have rumours of his evangelical student Strauss becoming the Director of Cricket, which fills me with all the joy of a root canal procedure, and there remains the thoroughly uninspiring body language king as captain. Good grief. How can you put up with Stuart Broad’s batting as captain of your team. I don’t care if he got hit, we all have who have played the game, and the next time you bat you are nervous. He’s not pulling his weight. If the issue is that serious, he has to go. Just has to. How can you ask people to play through tough times when one of your senior pros is showing such fragility?

I am now listening to TMS and Boycott’s comments. This should be fun.

Vian will have more tomorrow, hopefully, and thanks for all the comments today. We’ll be back tomorrow with more comments and analysis of what has just happened, and some of the reaction.

Buffering

LordCanisLupus5 Comments
Coming To You Live From The Jersey Shore
Coming To You Live From The Jersey Shore

Watching test cricket in the US is not as impossible as it used to be. I have access to the test match feed, but my internet connection isn’t brilliant and there are also other things to do. It’s a peaceful holiday, a really cool and calm time with a sick mother in law and a wife fussing over her and also getting her home air back in her lungs. Meanwhile it’s sunset and selfies more for me (and I don’t mean the journalist).

I’ll let Vian take over many of the more technical duties relating to this test. I’ve been struck by a couple of things while I’ve been watching. First, listening to one of our Sky Sports finest discussing a pitch pre-game is about as accurate a predictor of the game’s progress as legendary NFL draft seer Mel Kiper Jr has been when confronted with the first round of this year’s horse-trade. We had predictions of a great pitch to bat on and with it breaking up on day 5. Unless there’s a monsoon on the next two days, the public will be on the beach / drinking rum, or if they know what they are doing, going to admire the view at Bathsheba.

There is, of course, the Alastair Cook century to deal with. I have never looked forward to a century watch less. I am probably glad to be by the Delaware Bay than have to read much of the bilge that no doubt accompanied this century. But, let’s get one thing into context. Without it, in this test, we’d be in big, big trouble. It would be churlish in the extreme to be denigrating of this century given the context of the match. These are two really ordinary teams, and the difference is in a couple of extraordinary performances, and not much else. 39 for 5 is really killing this game off, isn’t it? We have just over 100 runs to play with. 150 might be enough, but it might not. Our tail has not exactly been our strong point when it comes to the team’s performance. Bloody hell, we need it now.

Make no mistake, this has not been a rampage, and this does not augur well for the upcoming battles. Much has been made about the Jonathan Trott experiment failing, and I know, I must get round to reading George Dobell’s take on matters. Others have been rather too keen to jump on the bandwagon, and while I note all that has been said on here about his form towards the last couple of years of his first go around, we were hoping for the best. I don’t know if we are seeing a trend here as well – one the press won’t ever go to town on – but that since Strauss, this is another opener who has tried and failed with Cook. They just don’t last long with him. According to some, mentioning this in the same breath is “warped thinking” and that we thought Trott had been put there to fail to make Cook look good. Hey, if there’s an insult from a press-man going, I’ll catch it and run with it. It’s nowhere near as warped a thinking as Cook getting 35 or so test innings to register a century and then to be greeted with a “he’s back” and “you are the ones with problems” nonsense I have seen over the past couple of days. Wind your bloody necks in.

But in between the constant buffering on my feed, I’ve seen two poor batting sides. I’ve seen England lurching between spells where they look like absolute top dollar to others where they’ve been utter, utter dross. The proof of this particular pudding is how we do in the late summer this year with Australia about. That’s what they want us to focus on. I don’t see the up and at them needed to compete. Jimmy Anderson has it in bursts, and again, from what I saw today he was excellent (seriously, spare the bloody “genius” cockwaffle I saw on Twitter from some who should really know better – act like you’ve been there before) but there’s enormous question marks over the rest of the bowling. It might be we get out of here winning 2-0, but portraying it as a brilliant success isn’t going to cut it. There are flaws, massive flaws, and they can’t be covered up that easily.

I have the house to myself tomorrow to watch the denouement. The rest are going out to collect sea glass. I hope our message in a bottle is one of success, and of lower order scoring prowess. Instead, we could be watching a cliff-hanger, with the fragile veneer of English cricket potentially shattered on the mediocre rocks of West Indian cricket. And with that, it’s off to watch the NBA play-offs.

From Town Bank, NJ, it’s Dmitri Old, wishing you well.

Philadelphia

LordCanisLupus56 Comments

The City of Brotherly Love. A place where the name suggests accord and liberty, while 80 miles or so down the road in Baltimore, there’s a fire burning, and people are mad as hell.

But enough of that. I thought brotherly love might be an apt theme for my last post for a while from this side of the pond, as I’ll be heading over to Philly tomorrow, and straight out of it before the rush hour traffic hits. And in the spirit of brotherly love, I’d thought I’d look at what’s been happening the past few days and especially in relation to the man who seems to inspire it throughout the media and a large swathe of the English cricketing public. We are talking about our captain.

Or, is he as thick and creamy as the cheese spread that also takes the name? No comments on that from me….

The attitude that we’ve seen taken to Alastair Cook in the past year or so has been greeted here with a sense of wonder. There was the backing of him post-Ashes when there really wasn’t one of us who posts here who thought, in their heart of hearts, that he could carry on after that disaster. But in an amazing turn of events – and please, press, remember this when you keep harping on about KP’s press team – somehow, someway, he dodged all the bullets when it came to keeping his place. Flower was shunted upstairs, KP was shown the door, the hierarchy had either resigned, or were about to resign, the batting coach was invited to leave, and senior players went. Standing there, unabashed, backed to the hilt by the lost and departed Downton, was Alastair Cook, for whom blame was never attached by the fourth estate or the TV boys.

Now, we stand after a win against West Indies where we are being told by respected cricket writers like Simon Wilde (like Simon, so I wonder how recent, recent is meant to be), this…

and Cook is giving off all the impression that he’s the man with nothing to fear from anybody. He’s reportedly – and given it’s Sale saying it, I mean reportedly – been up to his old tricks of sorting out a journo or two who has done something he doesn’t like and had a pop. There’s a sort of swagger after this win, which came with him bringing us home with a half century after a decent hand in the first innings.

I’ve lost count how many times I’ve been told, not directly but I know some of it is aimed our way, to stop moaning and enjoy the win. And they have a point. I contrast this tom my football team in 2004, who got to the FA Cup Final, only to be soundly beaten by Manchester United, as expected. As we came out of the ground, all the Man Utd fans looked miserable. “Cheer up”  I exhorted one of the “you’ve won th FA Cup. Come on, be happy.” It was the retort one of them gave me that I’ll remember “We were supposed to win this, we’re not getting excited. We were expected to beat you”. As a Millwall fan that day, that hurt quite a bit. It actually signalled the starting point of me moving away from football. But think what United fans said, and, sadly, it was true. They were expected to win, it was nice to win, but no biggie.

As expected we’ve seen a deluge of piffle. Now, in the manner only those well-meaning souls can do, I’m showing no brotherly love to people who say “what the hell are you moaning about?” I think you’ll find, I’ve not done a lot. What has cheesed me off is someone started up the hyperbole machine and has forgotten to switch it off. One who has had me scratching my head in disbelief is Nasser Hussain. Seriously Nas, what the hell has happened to you? How is this an acceptable line of praise for an England captain as we aspire to reach the highest peaks.

but for now his game looks in very good order again and he is making very good half-centuries.

I’ve seen that average statistic trotted out as well. You know, the one that cuts off the year preceding Southampton. “Very good half-centuries” Nasser. Against, lets be fair, not top quality attacks. While Ballance, Root and Bell have made centuries in the middle order. This takes us for fools. I’ve downloaded some cricket for my flight, where I have Alastair Cook’s two tons in India in the second and third tests to look forward to. That’s very good order, Nasser, not a gentle 70-odd in five hours against some disappointing bowling, or drop-ridden knocks at the fag end of last Summer. Where’s the analysis in this?

You can’t drop him now for his batting, because half-centuries are good enough for him it seems. That elusive hundred might be very near, but as I’ve said on numerous occasions, when it comes, it doesn’t prove the selectors right for waiting for it. The longer this wait goes on, the longer it becomes an issue. Sure, a century in amidst a load of single figure scores isn’t a cure-all either, but this holy grail of Cook looking better is just wishful thinking masquerading as an analysis. Seriously, I watched five minutes of him playing in Colombo in 2012 a day or so ago and the difference is stark. He was more fluid. At the moment he bats like a metal man who hasn’t seen a drop of oil for a while, all stiff movements… as if he’s been pre-programmed.

I’m not a fan – I’m genuinely not fans of people who are protected on high by establishment and don’t seem to realise how bloody lucky they are to have that backing. This isn’t hatred, which, of course, is levelled at me and my ilk. I would like to see him make a ton of runs at the top of the order, and will be content if they lead to England wins. I don’t necessarily subscribe to the Essex succession in the record breaker charts, or some of the more fanciful stuff, but there’s a prodigal son aspect here and it is worrying. Half centuries are enough now (they weren’t for Mark Ramprakash, for instance but then, blah blah, 25 centuries, blah blah) because he now looks like a leader on the field.

Hogwash.

We won a test match against the 8th best team in the world. James Morgan on The Full Toss sums it up and also uses a football analogy. This win has been greeted by former players, Sky TV, some of the press, and the masses on Social Media like a massive win, a win for the ages. Even Botham is being invoked to reflect a wonderful spell by Anderson (want to watch him in his pomp – try Trent Bridge, 2013). This was a great win – no questions asked.

I love the West Indies, I want them to do so well, and we all know this is a really mediocre side we are playing. They could improve, but this isn’t top notch oppo. Sure, England did well to win, but you saw what I said on Sunday about inspired performances winning games – they aren’t reliable. A real curmudgeon, and I’m not entitled to be that in the glow of victory, would point out that the West Indies had got to 200 for 2 and it was a deck no team in the world could get a team out on if you listened to the media masses on Friday night. No, we bowled badly first time up, and also with the new ball first time round in the second innings. Against good teams, you don’t get second chances. Imagine that’s David Warner instead of Kraigg Brathwaite; AB deVilliers instead of Daren Bravo. Good luck with that.

But no. We must go mad for a win, and we must recognise Alastair’s “I’m In Charge” body language. It’s ludicrous. We’ve beaten a mediocre team. Graves is right.

Cook appears to have learnt from his mistakes. Last summer, for instance, his decision to spread the field when Sri Lanka captain Angelo Mathews was batting with the tail lost England the Headingley Test but here he kept the field up to Denesh Ramdin in a similar situation and kept the pressure on.

This is top drawer from Nasser. He has learned from being an absolute weapons grade disaster and instead didn’t cave in and make a hash of it. We are celebrating competence. I watched how an Australia team strangled England at Adelaide. They believed they could get us all out, and the one man we had to shepherd the tail wasn’t interested in scoring runs. Watch that. If someone blasts the life out of you, fair play. Here Hussain says Cook lost us a test match, something not often repeated (many criticised the bowlers and Moores for the tactics as well), and yet we can hope the next time he gets a good side in this position, he doesn’t capitulate. Oh, and Mathews was well on his way to a ton at the time, while Ramdin was just starting so let’s not compare apples and oranges.

This doesn’t rank in the top five, easily, of test wins this England team have had away from home in the last 10 years. Mumbai and Kolkata to win in India (under Cook, great stuff) are too fresh in my memory to be erased by a collapse in Grenada. I’d stick Colombo in 2012 to end a run of four straight defeats as well. The demolition in Melbourne would be there, because we’d just lost in Perth, in 2010/11. I’d add the grossly underrated win in Durban in 2009 to the mix, aided by a fantastic hundred by Cook, because it was so unexpected. Mumbai 2006 was also one for the ages, as we squared a series in India.

This win can only be significant because it bolsters a team that needs it. A team coming together but with the captain more important than anything else. Every interview is “I back Cooky” etc etc, and all this good environment and positive vibe bullshit. The last one who didn’t back him got the boot, the media are in the tank because they mostly appear to love him, I’m constantly told on twitter and on podcasts that he’s a lovely bloke, and that no-one wants to see him fail. Fine. But if, like me, you have tons and tons of games on your archives at home, or if you can get to see them elsewhere, you are being sold down the river. Cook’s not back to his best. He’s nowhere near it. And if you are being misled over that, what else are you being misled over? Oh, I’m a tin-hatted conspiracy theorist. No. I don’t like being told something when almost the opposite is staring me in the face.

If we win against New Zealand, fine. Win against Australia, brilliant. I’ll eat the humblest of humble pie. Until then, spare me the great wins claptrap, the reinforced leader of a loyal hardy bunch of men BS, and the back to his best cockwaffle. And I will be a bloody curmudgeon if I want to be. I am a real fan, and real fans don’t go mental over wins pulled out of their arse against a team that is prone to brainfarts. Or as Australia called them in 2006/7 and 13/14 “England”.

That’s my lot. A rant and a half, and still didn’t cover everything I wanted to.

I’m travelling tomorrow, so I’ll leave you in Vian’s capable hands, and see you on the other side of the Atlantic.

Godfather

LordCanisLupus63 Comments

You may have come here in error – Twitter playing havoc. For the Death of A Gentleman review click here – https://collythorpe.wordpress.com/2015/08/10/death-of-a-gentleman-2/

Or read below…..

We should really have known.

There’s a statement made about NFL players scoring a Touchdown. “When you get into the end zone, act like you’ve been there before”. I think a lot of England fans, and that’s what they are, even if they disagree with me, need to keep that in mind. Sure, celebrate your victories and enjoy them, but don’t get carried away. Act like we’ve been there before. Act like this isn’t a vindication.

I’m happy to heap praise on England for creating an opening and then ruthlessly exploiting it. Hurrah!  Jimmy Anderson pressed the “on” button, got the vital wickets with the new ball, and then let the situation and the pressure do the rest. Busting down the door on a wicket completely condemned as a dead loss (because these same bowlers did not come up to those standards in previous new ball spells, which is going to be forgotten now) was very good to see. Contrary to what those who criticise us think, I enjoyed watching us do that. What I won’t do is get carried away.

There’s something in the English sporting spirit that makes us over-react to victories. It’s the reason we never completely dominate anything for any length of time. While we seem remarkably satisfied with winning the 2005 and 2010/11 Ashes, the fact both of these were followed by total humiliation not long after summed up a lot of our England sporting psyche. I mean, seriously, how do you think Australia would have greeted this win against the 8th rated side in the world? Sure, they’d go on a little, but many would say “how the hell did we need a brilliant session to beat these guys?”

I’m one for parallels with history, and this looks and smells like Spring 2008. England had lost a shocking match to New Zealand at Hamilton, getting turned over for a small total in the 1st Test, and people had the knives out for the captain (Vaughan) and the coach (Moores). Then we won a scrappy test at Wellington on the back of a Tim Ambrose century, and went on to win at Napier as KP bailed us out on day one, and Strauss made his career best in the second. No-one went overboard over those expected victories, because coming up were sterner tests. When we lost the big home series to South Africa, the writing was on the wall for the nightmares to follow. Wellington wasn’t a new dawn, just a false one.

Let me turn to the reaction once more, and I’ll probably start with a reply to a comment below:

You know I was mad at Yossarian’s post in the week and some questioned why I should be. I’m glad I saw BTL because it proved I’m totally right to feel as I do. I’ll pick up on what those who have called people “not real fans” all I like because (and to sound childish) they started it. I’m not having any person question my fandom to the England cricket team. I went on a whitewash in 2006/7 and fronted up and pushed our corner in a foreign land. I went to South Africa. I’ve been to tests in England for many many years, often losing years. I’ve been a county member for many years. You question whether I’m a real fan? Excuse my French but Fuck Off.

If I weren’t a real fan, I’d have left. I’d have not bothered writing a blog nearly every day for a year. I don’t question your status, do not have the absloute front to question mine, and those who come on this blog. Who made you the sole arbiters of fandom? Do one. You don’t get to choose how I follow my team.

That should do it…..

You are not a real fan unless you over-react totally to this win and tell the world that Jimmy Anderson is absolutely amazing (is he a bowler of great spells, rather than a great bowler? To throw that cack back at them) and that Alastair Cook is now a very good captain in good form. If you can’t celebrate this win, what’s up with you?

We’ve beaten the 8th ranked team in the world, without their best quick bowler, and a frail batting line-up having wasted the advantage given us to a large degree on the 1st day. If this was a flawless, ruthless demolition over four days on a good deck, I’d be encouraged. But this was won because of an inspired performance on Day 5. The thing with inspired performances is that by and large, they don’t happen often. You can’t rely on them.

I was very happy with the win last night, but knew this was coming. I despair of the lack of nuanced thought. I’m not going to like Alastair Cook any more for it, but nor am I going to say he was rubbish. I’d just point out that there’s a mighty old elephant in the room if we’re celebrating 70s and cosy little 50 not outs (after the shine went off the new ball, this was no more than a net, albeit one played with some little initial pressure on it) as him being in good form, I recall him being in really decent nick when he reeled off three centuries on the bounce in India or three in five in Australia, including doubles and big tons. You are the ones clutching at straws, not me.

I knew what was coming, so I watched The Godfather for the first time. I might want to make some of those who call me “not a real fan” an offer they can’t refuse.

Parky

LordCanisLupus32 Comments

Opening day of the County Championship and as I can confirm, it was a bit blowy and cold out there. Got to love April cricket. There were interesting performances out there – Sussex struggled early but Wright and Brown pulled them out of the abyss; Colly rolled back the years with the ball at batsman-friendly Taunton; Worcester put up a decent opening day show as they played the champions; and Brendon Taylor made a debut ton for Notts against the North London mob.

Down in division two Northants made the highest team score of the day, while Glamorgan posted two centuries in their very solid start v Leicestershire, before the Surrey Circus comes to town next weekend. Rudolph and Bragg making hay while the wind blew (so much that they played without bails according to Twitter).

Spring is here, and so is cricket. County cricket may not be to all tastes, but I have to say I love my days out when I go far more than the T20 games, while recognising this is a personal choice and not something I want to dictate on anyone!

But it was a game outside the County Championship that is going to grab all the headlines, and even now, the attitude of some to it is just off the charts churlish. Kevin Pietersen turned out for Surrey in a friendly match at Oxford. He made 170. The world went mad.

Now, I’m telling you when he got to three figures, I laughed. A lot. I felt the rage swelling inside the anti-KP mob, and knew it would burst through at some point. Let me put this to you straight, ladies and gents, we are not stupid. We do all realise the quality of opponent he was facing. But let’s also have some context here. For right or wrong, this was his first game of red ball cricket at this sort of standard (didn’t he play a Grade game pre Big-Bash) for well over a year. He was fresh, but not proper match hardened. Wickets fell around him at the start of the Surrey innings and he needed to bed in. He did all that was asked of him. Then he made hay and took the score to safety and made 170. It’s a bloody good start, but we know there’s much tougher tests ahead.

Now, keep in mind the main newspapers sent people like Lawrence Booth, Ali Martin and so forth to this game. This is the lead cricket story in all the papers. The bloke is box office, and gets the hits because he’s divisive and compelling in equal doses. As many of you know, a journalist I defended because I’ve really liked his work had a bit of a bad hair day when the news came through:

{I have deleted the part about Chris Stocks. He’s been really good to apologise, and I don’t want to settle any more scores. Fair play requires a fair acceptance.}

Derek Pringle was there, and his bizarre retweet of this beauty (to be fair, the original tweeter, when it was pointed out that if KP had pulled out at 100, Surrey would have been 220 for 6) speaks volumes.

He’s also burbled on about this:

I mean, really? You need to be there to know how he played. Sounded like a KP knock to me – a bit iffy early, a few whiffs, into a rhythm, bang. Does Mike Newell or James Whitaker need to be there to know that. Good grief.

We can see what a circus this is going to be, can’t we?

Meanwhile, I’ll leave you (and thanks to Vian for this) with this lovely quote from our beloved captain:

“It’s a big Test series we want to win. I think my position should not really be a talking point as it has been over the last 15 months. I know it is, but I’m here for the most important thing – to help England win games of cricket. I feel I’ve still the energy to do that and the experience over the last three-and-a-half years to lead this young team forward.”

I get more than one correspondent saying my attacks on Cook are tiresome. and yet I think I’m one of the more mild ones on here. But this is tone deaf. It really is. There’s backing yourself and then there’s being deluded. Alastair, you’ve not made a hundred in international cricket for two years, and no-one is confusing your captaincy with Mike Brearley’s. Please stop saying these very silly things. Thanks.

It’s been a day.

Furious

LordCanisLupus76 Comments

Let me kick this off with some blatant self-promotion:

The front of this bloke. Seriously. He’s wandering around giving unattributable interviews, carefully couched to convey that message he wants out there, but subtle enough to maintain his affable bloke persona. People buy it just as easily as they buy all the stuff about Pietersen. We all know it, the one about “every dressing room KP’s ever been in”. I love that one – I’ve worked for my organisation for a long time, and had ten or so roles there, and I’ll bet I moaned about every job I had at one time, every one of my colleagues at one time, and every one of my managers at one time. Even in all the jobs I loved! Christ, we had a night out last night doing it. KP’s not allowed to do it, but Cook is…. Cook can cast aspersions in his ever so polite way, and we’re supposed to forget he’s the most media-trained, reliable drone spokesman the ECB have ever put in front of a camera.

The bit that sticks in my craw is the supposed fury Alastair Cook would feel if Pietersen came back into the team. Really? As I put in the tweet above, he should thank his lucky stars he is still in the team, let alone be angry that someone else might be. You know that line that was spun a few years ago, during the series against Pakistan (the one where KP was dropped at the end of it for the ODI series) where Cook was supposedly fighting for his survival before he got his head down and made one of those gritty hundreds that you don’t really remember unless you were there (by far the most interesting thing about it was how he got past 100)? Cook’s scores in the 9 months up to that “career saving” innings were as follows:

v South Africa (you know, not bad)

15, 12, 118, 65, 55, 21, 1

v Bangladesh (take it or leave it)

173, 39, 21, 109* and then at home 7, 23, 29, 8

v Pakistan

8, 12, 17, 4, 6 then 110

Notice there – 3 centuries up to the second innings at the Oval, including a hugely important one in a win in Durban. and two on his first tour as captain to Bangladesh. Yes, he had a ropey time of it in England, but hell, he’s been doing that for a couple of years now and no-one seems to give a flying one. Compared to his current trot, this is Bradman type batting. Yet he was under threat then, and no-one is calling him out for his “fury” in the press corp now. This bloke has no right to be in the team on form, and if it is his leadership keeping him there, well seriously, god help us.

There was a fair bit of tut tutting over the last podcast of Geek and Friends, where there seemed to be a distinct softening of tone over the ECB stuff, with all the protagonists being the sort of people with the best interests of England at heart, and just being misguided and useless. I am not as hard on them as some of you were, because I see a bit where they are coming from. What I abhor is their (the ECB) stubborness. In the face of masses of evidence, in the face of wonderful modern management and statistical analysis techniques, the best gurus, the best coaches, the most money, the  best facilities, our strategy appears a simple, but rather fucking crap one. Wait long enough and Cook will score runs, Moores will be the coach we all think he can be, and you can forget your damn KP. This isn’t some nice guy scheme, it’s a self-preservation society. In the words of Madness, presumably titling their song for Graeme Swann, it’s pass the blame, and don’t blame me…..

Do not, I repeat, do not fall for this bollocks. It’s nothing more than a confession of their ineptitude and their unwillingness to change. Stick a daring move or two at the start, call everything transitional, back a teacher’s pet, and let’s see what happens. But whatever you do, don’t do anything drastic until they start aiming their arrows at us, and ridiculing us. Then we’ll think about it.

I’ve felt this for a while about Cook, and that is he plays the role of dutiful pupil really well. From the outside all the people look at the dutiful, teacher’s pet and say what a lovely boy, and I’d be so proud of him if he was my son. The other kids might not appreciate it, especially if teacher’s pet become head boy and gets a bit of power. You either stick with him, and yes, like him or you go against him and take risks. This seems the analogy to me. The thing with those sort of kids? The entitlement starts to set in. Their place is pre-ordained. Woe betide any challenger.

Yeah, I’m making this shit up. Of course I am. Sam Robson can score a test ton and have flaws in his game, but your captain can show the same flaws but because he got over them in the past he’ll do it again, so we’ll keep him. Nick Compton made two tons in successive tests, and hasn’t been seen since a couple of poor test matches got him the boot. Michael Carberry? Well he was never going to stick after a series where he took shot and shell and coped a little better than his skipper. Joe Root clearly was wasted there, what with scoring 180 once…. He got dropped three test matches after making an 80, which is the sort of score that would get our media in paroxysms of delight if their lovely little angel did it.

No. They are waiting for the next hundred, so muppets like Swann can shove it down our throats, and tell us to do one, or whatever charming turn of phrase he’ll pop up with next. If it comes in the West Indies, and it really, really should, we’ll get it full blast. As if we’ve been wrong for the last year and a half, as his form dived, his captaincy tanked and the ECB went into la-la mode.

Meanwhile, while the Cook bandwagon stalls, we have the sight of KP signing for Surrey. I’m sure I’ll wend my cheery little self down to Kennington’s Shangri-La, to watch Kumar and KP, but it’s a sideshow. Like it or not, Booth is probably not far off the mark when it comes to his comment that the aim is for KP to ply his trade with no real prospect of selection, as if by doing this these people have been so damn clever. Well, they haven’t been, because if they think this nonsense is pulling the wool over my eyes, and many on here, then their taking us for even bigger idiots than the “outside cricket” meme implied. If they are being deceitful, thinking this is ever so smart, then let them answer to those who pay the bills, who keep the game going.

I thought we might be coming to the end game, but we aren’t. Nowhere near it. Moores is allowed another tour, to no doubt create a good environment, while Cookie gets another stab at captaincy where you can bet your life that a victory in the series will be recorded as only the second series win in the Caribbean since 1967. Wait for it, you know it’s coming. I mean, this sorry outfit in the West Indies will be put on equal footing with those greats of 20 or so years. It’ll happen. The Cook Captaincy bandwagon will be off an running, and the KP sideshow will be relegated to….. well, given past form, the first cricket story in most papers.

OK. That’s my thousand or so tonight. Thanks for all the comments, hits, support etc. Life is so much more busy now that I can’t post as much, but hope that what I do put up here is doing the business.

There will be a thread on tonight’s semi-final coming up, and also a little bit of self-congratulatory news. So until then, wait for it…

I’ll leave you with this (as recommended in the comments)

Voices

LordCanisLupus55 Comments

A Chinese proverb states ” One who is tripped by the foot can get up again. One who is tripped by the tongue may not.”

It remains to be seen whether the two subjects of today’s blog will be able to recover from their verbal trips, or whether this is the sign of the end of an empire. If it is the end, this will not go down meekly.

Let’s take Alastair Cook. Now we all know that when it comes to admirers of his captaincy I stand somewhere near the back of the queue. You also know that I think he was cowardly in his approach post-Ashes, got one of the softest rides one could imagine in the summer, culminating in grown press men almost weeping for joy when he made that scratchy old 95 at the Rose Bowl that was greeted by the hordes as one for the ages. He was then given a wonderful ride through a one-day series at home as at every turn we asked to remember the test series win. When he was finally put out of his and our agony of the ODI captain, deep down we knew we’d burned what slim chance we had of doing well at the altar of the Cult of the Cook. Indulging Chef, messing about with our openers, messing about with our middle order, set a bad sign. You’d think he’d know that. You think he’d accept that. But, according to how his words have been reported, that hasn’t happened…

Cook’s no novice. He’s uttered polished word after measured line to take, augmented by bland words and boyish charm. He knows if he wanders off the reservation there will be a reaction. What he needs to realise now is that sympathy for him has left town. To stay on the side of Downton and Moores would be to nail your colours to the mast of failure. To stray onto the other side will cause him to miss out on records, lose his support in high places and then some other stuff comes along with it….. horses heads, that sort of thing. So he’s tried to straddle the middle ground. Be mildly critical, but not so that he burns his bridges. He’s been successful with neither. By saying this in Abu Dhabi on the day a test squad, which in my view he has no right to be in on form, is announced, he’s picked his moment. He comes across as feeling sorry for himself, professing to surprise while saying he had no divine right, and then the hindsight part. Oh, and at the end he tries to put the boot in KP, just to curry favour with his masters in case they thought he’d gone completely off the reservation.

Cook seems to believe there are boundless reservoirs of goodwill out there for him, and true, many still do like him. But a lot more dislike him now than they did in November 2013. However, we see a lack of self-awareness:

I don’t know what’s gone on on that tour, and I can only speak from watching a little bit from afar, but it did look like the lads were shell-shocked from the first two games. That’s when you need real leadership to help steer you through that.

He has to be kidding me. Or does he really believe it was his wonderful leadership that turned around the India series? We don’t have to go too far back to see how Cook’s leadership galvanised a shell-shocked squad.

Most are nailing him for this paragraph..

“I can’t speak about what’s gone on there in depth, but you always back yourself, and I would have loved to have had the opportunity that was taken away from me. The selectors made that decision because they thought it was the best for English cricket. Hindsight has probably proved them wrong, but now it’s very easy to say that.”

I don’t like the “opportunity that was taken away from me”. That entitlement permeates more than anything that I’ve heard from Pietersen (who is markedly more media savvy). As for the last part about being proved wrong dispensing of his services, you wonder what planet he is on. Even KP hasn’t bragged like that. Yes, that comes across as a brag. Please feel free to tell me how that’s been taken out of context.

“[The Test team] was in a good place. I wouldn’t say all of it [confidence] has been [broken], but a hell of a lot of it has been. You have to remember that it is a different format and you get a change, but all teams are grouped under the same English cricket umbrella, and we can’t be naive enough to think that it’s not,” he admitted.

Dear God. You wonder if this “backing yourself” isn’t ECB speak for wiping all inconvenient memories and only analysing the positive data. It’s off the reservation this stuff. This India series win is the stuff of cricketing legend. A mighty foe, slain by a young hungry team, under the tutelage of a mighty sage fighting his own demons, but creating a good environment. It’s a ton of horse manure and most sane people know it.

Gary Ballance.

Sorry for the random name-check.

But if you want fun, listen to Pat Murphy and James Whitaker. Proper questions, prevarication and avoidance, and then forcing out the KP point. And you wonder why there is hesitation in KP signing for Surrey. I know a little about how much some were paid in Surrey a few years ago, and KP would earn that for a few weeks in Hyderabad. He should do that in my view. He’s not getting a place out of this lot unless they go. Top to bottom. They are all invested in this crock of nonsense, and none can save face now. It has to start with Flower moving on, Downton being packed off and a new chairman of selectors. The coach would be untenable at this point, and the selectors would also have little chance. Can you see that happening? I can’t.

But Whitaker is that special kind of cretin. The sort who thinks he’s being so damn ultra smart, so utterly professional by avoiding a question, a straight question put to him.

I’ll paraphrase:

PM : “KP’s going to try to make a go of it to get back into the England team, what do you make of that?

JW: “Good luck with that”

PM: “So does he have a chance?”

JW: “Developing a team, Ballance. Promising. Good luck getting in KP?”

PM: “You think they are better than Pietersen”

JW: “Gary Ballance. We developed Ian Bell. Gary Ballance. Upside. Upside. Not in plans.”

And so on. All about future and no plans. It’s media speak, and while I berate Cook for speaking his mind, it at least says what he feels. This is pre-computed, line to take, cobblers. Just sod off out of it, you damn empty suit Whitaker. Who the hell do you think you are, patronising those who might want to see everyone given a chance to make it? Standing there. All smug, self-satisfied, full of his own importance. So smart. If he were an ice cream, he’d lick himself.

Don’t humour them KP. Just don’t.

As for the test team, well. Jonathan Trott, great. Adam Lyth, good luck. Adil Rashid, I sense players being plucked from the air, Mark Wood, wish him well. But please. James Tredwell couldn’t get into a second division team last summer, and now he’s arguably our number one test spinner. It takes that kind of thought that takes your breath away. No wonder KP is no longer in their plans with thinking like that.

Have faith. Gary Ballance. Have hope. Gary Ballance. Be not afraid…..

I’ll get to the press shortly. It’s been a ‘mare, ain’t it?

That Man Downton

LordCanisLupus4 Comments

The fisk I never did, the article that deserved it.

Paul Hayward interviewed Paul Downton the other day. The results were the usual bombast, bonhomie (false) and another word beginning with bo that I’m not putting here. Let’s read his statements:

“The England and Wales Cricket Board is still trying to bury the winter of discontent (2013-14) and Hugh Morris’s successor as managing director of the England team is not ducking questions. With a new chairman (Colin Graves) and chief executive (Tom Harrison) at the game’s governing body, which was lambasted for its handling of the Pietersen saga, Downton insists the time has come to recognise a mood of change. “The collapse in that side was total,” he admits.”

So where was the review as to why that happened. It isn’t merely age when other great players around the world last much longer than our players do. Sangakkara is still playing on, Mahela will be at this World Cup, Tendulkar was great until his very late 30s, as was Dravid. Kallis was a great all-rounder well past 35. Shiv’s still going strong. But no, we are to accept that at 35 or so, it is inevitable a team will collapse. It means you don’t have to do hard stuff, like look at coaching techniques, schedule, captaincy, that sort of thing. It’s frankly insulting. As if a 5-0 humping to a barelu above average Australia team was a startling inevitability.

 “We’ve blooded 10 players in Test cricket in 18 months and seven have made very positive contributions,” Downton says. “The big question [after the Ashes] was: how are we going to replace [Graeme] Swann. Moeen came along and, so far, a year into international cricket, has been phenomenal, and a breath of fresh air.

Ten players. List them, and you find Woakes, Kerrigan, Rankin, Ballance, Stokes and Borthwick were before Downton “officially” took over, so who is the “we” here. Of the four he was in charge of, Robson is officially on “drop watch” despite hitting more test centuries in his last seven tests than Cook has done in 18 months. Buttler was brought in once they prised Prior off the pitch with his shot achilles. They really didn’t want to do it, so don’t bruise yourself from patting so hard on the back on that one. Chris Jordan is Mr Inconsistency, and although he is exciting, he hasn’t nailed a place down. That leaves Moeen, who they really want to bring to our attention. Well done on that one. I’ll give them Ballance, but he was on the radar before Downton took over, but one thing you know that credit has many parents, but failure is an orphan.

“For Gary Ballance to be voted emerging Test player of the year was sensational. Root has recovered and scored six centuries: three in Tests and three in one-dayers. In the background was the turmoil that was going on in the media about Alastair and Kevin. To my mind, what was going on on the cricket side was being missed: the turnaround against India, after we went 1-0 down. That was huge testament to that group of players, the coaches that had come in, to Alastair, the environment they created, the way young players were thriving.”

Yes, we know. Well done. But who created this turmoil, and indeed, hindered our players by making it Cook v KP, which is what it was. Step forward, Paul. You and your interview, your breaching of confidentiality, your unequivocal backing to a non-performing captain, prior to a year of non-performance? No, didn’t think you would. Credit to the good environment where of four series played last summer, we are told to remember one, and forget the other three, as well as the one in Sri Lanka.

Of the World Cup, Downton says: “I think people will look at us now and say we’re a bit of a side to be reckoned with.”

You can actually hear him say that, can’t you. In that smug, supercilious way of his. Self-congratulatory, self-justification seeping from every pore. It’s that awful condundrum. I want this team to do well, but if they do, Downton will barge everyone out of the way to claim the credit. It’s what they do.

On Cook, the more recent casualty, Downton starts out: “His Test success has been frozen in time. We had a difficult summer, which we got through really on the up at the end – won three Tests in a row. The sense of achievement at that stage was huge – from [Cook’s] point of view, and the young guys coming in.

“I think his credentials in one-day cricket are less obvious than in Test cricket. He’s a good player – and his one-day record is good. The thinking at the time was: ‘You’ve just created this winning environment, you deserve the right to go on,’ and, also, we were trying to pick a side for a World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, so we backed him and gave him every opportunity to lead that side. Bear in mind he was appointed after the last World Cup with this World Cup in mind, so we didn’t want to give that away.

Where do you start? Note the lovely use of “difficult summer”. We all recall, those of you who may know me from another parish, of the beautiful usage of “difficult winter”. Note no mention of two abject losses, but three wins against a team that packed it in. A great batting side, supposedly, that just gave up. Ignore the two defeats as we played utterly brainless cricket. How we let down our newbies, like Robson and Moeen at Headingley and Ballance at Lord’s.

Then he rambles along some justification for sticking with Cook, and saying that they’d backed him this far and didn’t want to give it away because, I think we are being told, that his leadership was a key factor in our winning the India test series. It’s a peculiar narrative. It seems to place more faith in the runes than in identifying performance and adaptability. Because I’m a bit fast for a chunky, you ain’t sticking me at fly half in a rugby team. I’m a prop. Cook is a test opener at best, not one in modern ODI cricket. He’s had his best shots starved in tests and not been able to break free, so what on earth is he going to bring to an ODI team when he’s playing poorly at his strengths? This must be the analysis that banks would pay Downton a fortune for.

“In the end, the pressure was on him for the whole year, when he became the lightning rod for a lot of criticism, some of it fair, a lot of it unfair. Then it was clear we had just reached a tipping point, when he wasn’t going to be able to perform and the pressure was just immense. It maybe got to the stage where it was impacting the side. We had several chats. He would have no complaints in terms of [that] – he just hadn’t got enough runs, he knows that.

Disingenuous in the extreme. You put the pressure on him, Downton. You made him the lightning rod. He should have been dropped from test matches on form after the Sri Lanka series, and no, that 95 does not change my mind. He should have been left out of the ODI side as soon as possible to prepare for the World Cup, but you didn’t. It wasn’t just the pressure making him underperform, because if so, what was the excuse for the previous 12 months? The strong suspicion in this parish is that Cook was sacked when the heat REALLY turned on Downton after his arrogant interviews in Sri Lanka. You know how it is with football, when the heat turns on the Chairman, he sacks the manager.

“The opportunity we have is to reintroduce Alastair now. He’s an asset to English cricket. My view is that he will continue to captain the Test side. There’s a huge amount to look forward to: 17 Tests in 10 months, with an Ashes series and South Africa. He deserves the opportunity to get back to doing what he does best, which is scoring Test runs.

Remember the last man to be called an asset, Alastair. Be bloody careful. “My view is that he will continue to captain the test side” is Downton’s carefully worded statement. I’d be careful there, too, Alastair. Notice how Cook deserves the opportunity to do what he does best, but that isn’t open to others. He really talks out of his hat. The my view part is directly linked to the twaddle at the end of the Sri Lanka tour. He backed Cook and having shut up Moores who seemed to let the cat out of the bag, then within a week presided over a meeting (though may or may not have voted) that fired the captain. Thus, arguably the most hands-on MD for many years, can claim decisions are made by others. Disingenuous throughout his steely core.

“I’m not pretending that this won’t have damaged him. He’ll be incredibly hurt. But he’s incredibly strong-minded and I hope he would come back rejuvenated, utterly determined and with a view that he’s just turned 30 – so he’s got potentially five years more, and 10, 15 more Test hundreds in him. He’ll blow every record in England away.”

With “friends” like Downton, who needs enemies. Build him up, make him the lightning rod, back him as if he were your prodigal son, then dump him before the life’s ambition he had, and you give him this “sympathy”. As for the last bit, he will blow the records away if he is given a divine right to do so. Note, he expects Cook to collapse at 35 too. Also, note to Downton. Number of centuries since June 2013 = 0. Magic beans time again.

His first mistake, you could argue, was turning up too early for his new job. He says: “I was due to start on Feb 1 [last year] but in fact I went to Australia on New Year’s Eve [2013] and really met Andy [Flower, the head coach] for the first time that day. I watched the Test and was immediately into the aftermath of a disastrous series.

Maybe you should have started a few months later. Or not taken the post up at all. Instead you went out there, talked to the one man who was particularly keen to protect his legacy and made decisions based on that feedback. You flew out into a disastrous series, so instead of a full review, we got the decisions you made. And you want to treat this approach as a virtue? Aw shucks.

“From that point, six centrally contracted players were out of the side. Swann had gone home, Trott had gone home, Prior was dropped, Root was dropped, Bresnan was out and Finn was out. Six of our 11 weren’t playing. We’d still not replaced Strauss, 18 months on. Carberry had had a decent series but hadn’t nailed it down. We had an issue to deal with in Kevin.

Carberry scored more runs than Cook, did he not (281 to 246)? No fear…. who gives a stuff about performance? Then we have the irreplaceable Bresnan, and let’s not go there with who played a part in Finn falling apart. Swann was, it seems, patently unfit or a deserter (either of which pose huge management questions in themselves) and we all know about Trott. Prior was injured and woefully out of form. Hey! Pick on the top run scorer as the “issue”. Because all we have is the FACT that our most disconnected player made the most runs for us on this tour. I don’t know how this happens. One would suggest the others might have got more disconnected as well….

I’ve heard all the corporate twaddle, and I don’t care. I read the book, and I don’t care. I have heard KP speak since, and I don’t care. Downton nailed his “good old chaps” mantra to the wall and we can’t prise it away now.

“From that low point, taking the decision that Kevin and ourselves would part company, and then moving on, what we’ve done has surpassed our expectations. There’s a group of players now who’ve almost grown up together, from Woakes, Taylor, Buttler, Root, Stokes. We’ve got a real core of people who can potentially come together.”

Surpassed expectations. Bovine excrement. What was it Clarke said about picking a team to win matches and go up the World Rankings, whereupon we promptly lost to Sri Lanka. We lost two ODI series at home to teams who travel badly (and we’ve shown how by beating one of them in Australia) and by flaming out a World T20 based on ego. I know the spin I put on beating India at home, but this clown has a different one.

“I’m not going to go into the detail. What I’ve said in the past is that I arrived in Sydney and saw someone who was clearly quite disconnected from the team. You can tell, just watching,” Downton says. “And, of course, that’s subsequently been proven by what he’s written. All you need to do is read Kevin’s book to understand why that decision had to be made. What I said at the time was that he found himself disconnected.

I……can’t…….speak. The book “proved” your decision was right, but any accusation in it was not worth investigating? Having your cake and eat it? All you need to do is read the book to tell you why. I tell you what Downton, stop the prevarication, stop the innuendo and tell us why. In plain words other than disconnected.

“It became a unanimous decision from senior players in the dressing room, captain, all the coaching staff, through the management to the board that actually now is the right time to part company. We settled with Kevin. Kevin wanted to get his future sorted out before the IPL as well. So, we settled.

“Am I confident it was right for English cricket? Absolutely. I think young players have flourished and thrived. And I think you get to the point where performances start to dip away. We’d managed Kevin for 10 years and it was time just to move on. It’s very good to see Kevin enjoying his cricket again [at the Big Bash]. Seeing him wearing a head cam or mic’d up to the commentary box – he’s thrived in that kind of atmosphere. He loves it.”

The last part is insulting shite and we all know it. As if freeing KP from the torture of playing for England is making him happy, and Downton can claim some credit. You don’t want him enjoying his cricket. Don’t pretend otherwise. The inference also, that KP is past it, is particularly laughable, as if that played a part in it.

Also, a unanimous decision by the senior players? Did KP vote for himself? That’s a lovely picture, with the new MD, fresh in the role, thinking it appropriate to seek decisions from players he thought were senior. Sounds like someone organising a witch hunt to me. (Hey, we’ll keep faith with you, want to ditch the mouthy one?). Something is rotten in the ECB… in Team England. Their Downton’s words. Read them.

You know something with Downton. These interviews aren’t short. He’s got more to say.

Downton is in no discernible rush to defend the ECB’s handling of Pietersen’s eviction – the dodgy dossier myth – but will not be changing his story. Instead, he aims to shift attention to the next Ashes series and the array of potential Test stars at Peter Moores’s disposal.

Yes. I’d ignore that dodgy dossier too. Did it ever happen?

Especially Root. “He’s a very, very impressive young man who’s got a very clear focus and very astute cricketing brain. You forget he’s only just turned 24. I watched him score a hundred in Antigua [in March]. He had a broken thumb. Luckily, there was a rain break for 20 minutes that allowed the painkillers to come on.

“He basically constructed a hundred with one hand, couldn’t put any power through his right hand, and played the most extraordinarily mature innings, which was just pure grit, game nous, cricket sense. Nobody had a good tour of Australia. He was one, and got dropped. To come back and score six hundreds in a year has been a phenomenal achievement.

“He was the one that said, ‘It may be that the middle order will suit me well’. Andy Flower had identified that he played spin extremely well. His temperament in the middle order seems terrific. He was given the opportunity to bat at five and absolutely nailed it in the summer. He’s a real cricketer of substance now.”

Joe Root, watch out mate. He’s claiming the credit for you. The fact we know you had grit and ability is by the by. Your undressing by a quality pace attack isn’t to be worried about, just rejoice that he smacked friendly bowling on slow pitches all over the shop. Rejoice at that news.

“I just think it was his time,” he says of Moores. “To me, Peter was the outstanding coach in England. What I felt we needed was someone with substance and confidence to take on what was going to be a difficult start. It’s always exciting to be part of a rebuilding. But he’d already been coach, there were some people who questioned him; certainly there were ex-players who’d played with him who were quick to point out some faults, and the honeymoon period was always going to be quite slim.”

He’s been a winner so far. Good grief. You sack KP and big up other failures. Why isn’t he being nailed by the media for this. Please God. He’s a walking duck shoot, you could pick this nonsense off at will. Why don’t you?

New blog. Same theme. He is more confident now, with the World Cup on the way, and expectations low. They’ve done that job well, and you can, as he does, put it on the turmoil he created by sacking a top player and putting another one in the firing range as the anointed one. He then appointed a coach very few of us believe in, and made mistake after mistake in the role. He’s been atrocious, he’s been disingenuous, he’s been a disaster. Sadly, he’ll be there to claim any credit when it is there, even if it is hard for us to see.

He returned to the game from a banking career with HSBC, Cazenove and JP Morgan to appoint Moores as Flower’s successor.

Some people claim that this CV means he’s not to be questioned. Some people don’t remember 2008. Some people suffer from Stockholm Syndrome. He’s not the ECB’s banker, he’s there manager of the shop floor. I wasn’t aware banking made you good at that. Still, life continues to surprise. To quote a phrase from another blogger – he’s done so much bungling, I’m surprised Zippy and George aren’t turning up, and Rod, Jane and Freddie will be appointed the new selectors.

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