KP

Battle

LordCanisLupus84 Comments

As if we are surprised, the battle lines remain drawn. Those who think that the exclusion of Kevin Pietersen is the single most important thing in the game, and those that think that those who did it have been proven catastrophically wrong.

Jim Holden’s laughable piece, brilliantly picked apart by D’Arthez on here, has received backing from Simon Hughes and Paul Newman on Twitter. Both of these have been completely out of their prams whenever Pietersen’s name is mentioned. One is a massive supporter of Alastair Cook, another played a great deal of his county cricket alongside Paul Downton. Their support for the piece has been laughed at by many, with Tickers having a good old go on Twitter.

It seems as though little has changed in 12 or so months. However, there are journalists now prepared to countenance change – Nick Hoult may or may not have changed due to the paper hiring Pietersen, but the exit stage left of Pringle shows much of their editorial approach has changed. In addition Ali Martin is being far more even-handed than a Mike Selfey might have been. These are little acorns compared to the mighty ancient jokes in the media forest who put personal animosity over the real problem. That is an organisation that treats its real lifeblood with contempt. I’m not naming names, but you know who they are.

With Graves about to enact something or other, and former Derbyshire all-rounder Tom Harrison seemingly taking control of things, there is uncertainty. Ridiculous cat calls that Graves doesn’t start his role until May are especially hilarious given what Downton was up to before he took up his post last year and for which received no similar rebuke. Graves may be all things to all men at the moment, but what he is is a threat to the current flawed, and more importantly ridiculed hierarchy of Giles, Downton, Whitaker and Moores. Propping up Cook props up this lot, even with Cook’s mildest of hissy fits.

The same old battle lines, the same old nonsense, the same old resistance to admitting backing the wrong horse in a one horse race. Those not with the change programmes are being left behind. There’s a new chief coming along and he’s not listening to you, like Downton did when he asked you lot what you thought about Pietersen. Supporting those who prop this edifice up, the Cook captaincy, laughed at by most; the Downton follies; the Moores Matrices and the Whitaker Waffles all stupefying in their incompetence, all making us a laughing stock, is not taking us forward. It is holding us back.

Have a good week, folks.

Rumbling

LordCanisLupus123 Comments

So many of you have picked up on the George Dobell / David Hopps piece on cricinfo. Paul Downton’s future appears in the balance. There are rumblings afoot. It comes as little surprise to me that if this meeting was meant to be held in secrecy that information has come out in advance. As it’s George we’ll call it good journalism.

I’m not going to be dancing any jigs, whooping that I told you so, or any of that. This catastrophe could have been written last year. The warning signs were going off all over the place. When, as an administrator, you are the story, and if you don’t have a “terrific year”, you are going to be in trouble. The ECB made their stance clear about this World Cup. It would present us with a great chance to do well, and from a long way out the decks were cleared. It was a disaster. Much was not in our gift, but a hell of a lot was.

This is a sad time for English cricket. It’s not the time for joy or crowing. It’s the bloody time to unite behind a team we can believe in, and with no petty administrative spats. I’ll only believe this is for real when Andy Flower’s shadow isn’t cast over the proceedings. We do have a lot to thank him for, but just like the presence of Ferguson loomed over Moyes, it isn’t doing anyone any good him remaining on site.

Pietersen has been the symptom, and now, finally, we might be coming to a more realistic diagnosis. We may have a very interesting time to watch this play out, but things look to be moving. Given this is the ECB, don’t expect them to do the expected.

Cookery

LordCanisLupus40 Comments

I don’t like singling out one BTL piece of stupidity, because it’s rife with it. But one who holds himself up as some sort of higher being wrote this.

Sit down before you read it. Then the name of the title of this post…

“Given his record I’m not sure he needs to outscore the rest in the CC’

Yes he does or we may as well pick Gower and Botham. If we don’t it undermines all the decent honest loyal and hardworking cricketers in the Championship. He gets preferential treatment based on his (distant) past.”

Note the introduction of other tenets that come into play in this individual’s selection methodology.

  • Total volume of runs (persuasive)
  • Being Decent
  • Being Honest
  • Being Loyal
  • Being Hardworking
  • Playing In The Championship

What does not matter

  • International pedigree
  • A player of great innings
  • Runs in a T20 tournament (mentioned in a previous post)

8181 runs, 20 odd hundreds, one in an Ashes series just prior to the disaster, and most runs in a disastrous tour, irrelevant. Distant past? Look what he did last time India came over here, and how he took them to the cleaners. He didn’t get that chance to feather his stats and shut this nonsense up. But the beloved skipper did, didn’t he? Didn’t he do really, really well….

Being loyal. Being Hardworking. Being Honest. Being Decent. These things score runs, these things take wickets (by the way, no-one, but no-one denies KP is a hardworker.)

We’re fucked with people like this and their attitudes. That bloke may be 34 (not ages of some great players when they packed it in – more than 34) but he has scaled heights that others can only dream of. Let’s put it this way, if Wayne Rooney broke his leg today, and was out for a year, and was in his early 30s, do you think he wouldn’t be picked for England more or less as soon as he is fit? Give KP two or three games, and if he makes decent runs, stick him in the team. If he doesn’t, leave him out. He’s proved he’s international class. You’re not playing some loyal, decent, club man from the middle of the table instead of him. Well not if you don’t want the sack, or ridicule.

To compare KP to two people over 50 with no playing career for the best part of two decades is crap. Absolute weapons grade crap.

Good grief.

Later on we get this:

He did not play one match winning innings in the Ashes, batted at number 4 when the shine is off the ball and was marginally better in Australia ( and much worse than Bell in England.). In the Big Bash his strike rate was average in a competition shorn of Australia’s best bowlers and any overseas international bowlers – but perhaps he didn’t tweet that. 
But as you say he needs to be scoring lots of Div 1 runs to be considered and if they are to consider getting him back it must be on that basis.

The man’s a joke. Arron tears that apart, so I didn’t have to (misses out the 4th innings at The Oval when his shot making nearly pulled off a run chase, but no doubt if he had done that, it would have been slagged off due to Michael Clarke’s wonderful captaincy.

You really can’t get KP on his past form. His injury? Yes. But form, no. So don’t try it with selectivity, with prejudice and sprinkle a fair helping of nonsense.

Elephants

LordCanisLupus15 Comments
That's KP Over There
That’s KP Over There (Taken By Me In Hluhluwe – Jan 2005)

The elephant (or gorilla) in the room for this blog in the past few days has been the feverish chatter about the return of Kevin Pietersen. Is it on, or isn’t it? What do I think (as if I have a microbe of influence at all…)? Where do I think this might be going?

All, seriously. I have no idea. This is a game being played by loads of machiavellian characters, each with different wants and needs, each adept or inept in media management at any given time.

Let’s put it this way, because this is one line that annoys me. Who would Pietersen replace, out of Ballance, Bell, Root or Moeen? Well, with Moeen needed more for his spin, with his batting not convincing anyone at test level yet, you could have him as a number 7. It’s negative, but I have a feeling we’ll be needing runs this summer. Or, the answer is, he wouldn’t replace any of them if he wasn’t better than them. If he is better than any one of those, then he should play because England should be putting their best team out on the field. It’s how people are recalled to teams every series. If Prior is a better player than Buttler, then he should play. If Finn is bowling better than Anderson, he should play. We got in this mess because we decided, in our infinite wisdom, that personalities are more important than performance. So KP’s disappointing, but not disastrous last two Ashes series are highlighted, while Cook’s disasters in both are less important because he is captain. And because Root has milked some pedestrian attacks for runs, we have to ignore the performances, one or two knocks excepted, of his Ashes cricket. It’s bonkers.

This narrative has allowed to become received wisdom. The four middle order batsmen are set in stone, they are the future, they are the men in possession. That carries no weight in my opinion. None whatsoever. If you believe that KP is better than them now, then he plays. Let’s go back to the 2005 Ashes. Pietersen made his case, forthrightly, in his appearance on the scene. Let’s put it this way, KP made 75% of the one day centuries that Ian Bell has made in his career, in his first series. He smashed that innings at Bristol that still makes Sky Sports Classic. He came into the team because he was a better bet than Thorpey. They backed Bell, because he was the future, and stuck with him, even though it was Thorpe who should have played in hindsight. We picked on percevied merit then – Thorpe was not as good as Pietersen. Now we have the old player being Pietersen, and the younger players thrusting to get in. No-one is dropping Joe Root, Ian Bell to me is KP-lite, but I know not all agree with that, and just like we are all reminded of Cook’s 2011 as proof of his mightiness against Australia, so we’ll all be reminded of three (small) tons in the 2013 series. Ballance, I like, but better than KP? Really? Are you sure? On the evidence of three hundreds against, let’s be frank, popgun attacks. Popgun attacks, I might remind you, that Alastair Cook did not make 100 against, although we all now know 95s are better than tons.

Also, there’s this nonsense that Pietersen should have been dropped on form. Rubbish. Utter codswallop. This inconvenient fact that he made most runs by an English player on that tour, had a half decent preceding series is just wiped out. Stop it. Now. Don’t rewrite history to suit the circumstances. As for the ludicrous notion that he was “inconsistent” or “random”, or prone to low scores under 10, well….. Makes you wonder how you suffered the Atherton years against Australia and West Indies if you think like that.

KP was dropped because Andy Flower wanted him out, and the bosses, thinking they could talk down to the proles, went along with it. Because these people have to be convinced of how damn clever they are, they tried to finesse. KP may not have helped his position, and his book certainly didn’t, but with the absence of the smoking gun, this lot were always open to ridicule. There’s been so much spin over Moeen, Gary et al, and a 3-1 win over India that I thought the earth might go off its axis. Aided and abetted by a compliant press, enjoying every anti-KP statement with relish as if personal scores were being settled, the England firmament felt rather confident at the end of the test summer last year. Sri Lanka had been swept under the carpet, Cook had his three half-centuries, and KP look banished. Hip Hip hooray.

This blogger, in a previous life, kept mentioning the Cook captaincy elephant in the room (as did the commenters on here), kept reminding the media of the incompetence of Downton, were dreading Moores in charge of something important, and worrying about our conservatism in the treatment of people like Hales and, yes, once they tried him, Taylor. The edifice was crumbling during the ODI series v India, where we were handily beaten at home, and yet ignored the same team had been destroyed in New Zealand not nine months before. It was collapsing after the series in Sri Lanka. There I was cheerfully reminding myself of someone who said my rabid hatred of the ECB was clouding my judgement, especially on Downton. I should be crowing now, but I’m not. I’m sad it’s come to this.

KP has been a sideshow to me. Once departed with, I’m afraid that anything that happens now is going to be a freak show. KP needs to score runs for a county team, something that Matt Prior, for instance did not need to do last Summer, and he wasn’t even the incumbent. When he does, if they are for Surrey, we’ll have the old “second division runs” debate (batting coach Mark Ramprakash may be able to empathise with that), and every failure will be greeted with relish and glee. It’ll be tedious in the extreme. Then, if he makes a ton or two, the hype will go into over-drive, every injured England batsman will know the shadow will be following them, and any run of failure will be madness. Any others in the logjam will have no chance – James Vince for example – if KP is the county story. This isn’t KP’s fault – the ECB did this with their ludicrous nonsense last week.

John Etheridge is quoted in the comments as saying he has a 1% chance of playing. Why? He scores runs at county level, we all know he is international class, he should be in front of everyone, should he not? Stuff his age. Never bothered them in the past. So why is it only 1%? Tell us John, in words plain and simple to leave no doubt in our minds.

We think we know why. Because it makes Downton, Whitaker, Moores, Cook, Anderson, Broad, Newell, Prior, Swann, and most importantly Giles Clarke and Andy Flower look more stupid than the current situation paints them. That’s why this is a farce. We pick on personality, we pick on not looking stupid. Nothing else can explain the bloody-mindedness we saw in the World Cup selection, the hanging on to Cook as ODI captain, and yes, as test captain. We are held hostage by these people. This is our team, we ask you to pick the best players, that is all. It is you who make this more difficult than it really is.

Seriously, in my mind, it should be 0% or 100%. The first is he has no chance, and should be put out of his and our misery. We can then slag the decision makers off to our content, and although it will be enjoyable from time to time, we can walk away from the sport at any time in disgust at the conduct of all. It’s pure victimisation. If there’s a smoking gun, it would have been displayed all right. No doubt about it.

Otherwise, he should be in the team. Give him a couple of warm up games and in he goes. Hell, I said it. He’s better than them all on his day. We know it, they know it. That’s what scares them.

But what I also will say, and have said all along, it is not about KP this. It’s about the way the sport is run in this country. It’s about the media coverage and how KP has been treated. Yes, I know Pietersen is an exceptionally smooth operator with the media, and has played a blinder by and large. People recognise why he did that book like that, and it was high risk. But, as time has gone by, he’s not exactly been proved wrong, has he? On Moores, on Downton, on the clique, on the attitude, on Flower, on the ECB leaking etc. etc. He had a good, not great Big Bash, but what he has is that mentality that so few of our players seem to have. He wants it. He ain’t going to shy from it.

There’s also this nonsense about our team being too nice, as if they’ve heard the KP stuff and done the opposite. As if Moores is being too careful. I don’t know what the heck is going on. What seems to be clear is that the previous regime has scarred a number of people. It’s the school equivalent of getting rid of the sadistic old senior master who dished out corporal punishment at a stroke, and getting in a supply teacher! You can say a lot, but there’s always that old sadist in the background! Look what happened to the last one who kicked up a fuss…

Vian summed it up superbly BTL on the Telegraph. And you know I don’t want to blow smoke up his you know what…

I don’t care whether Pietersen plays for England again or not. I do care that he should be available to play for England again. Not because he should or shouldn’t, but because it moves away from this beyond stupid consideration of England being about having the right sort of family, or whether someone is disinterested in the eyes of one person, or whether they looked out of the window or whistled after dismissal, and focuses on people who can score bloody runs, take bloody wickets and catch the bloody ball.

I want England players to be able to tell the coach he’s wrong without being labelled difficult, to play their own game and take risks without being labelled irresponsible by those who then praise them when it comes off, who are individuals with their own personalities and not automatons terrified to speak up, who can focus on their own ability within the team without someone who’s never picked up a bat piping up that it’s a team game (it isn’t. Not really), and who above all else knows how to get the best out of themselves without someone holding their hand throughout the entire process.

We DO have talented cricketers. Let them be all they can be, and stop treating them like unruly children. And if you don’t like someone, seriously grow a pair. No one likes all their work colleagues, that’s life. Get over it.

And as for the coach, whoever it may be, the hardest thing is to know when to shut up and please God don’t look at the data to tell you what’s bleedin’ obvious.

And one last thing. Enjoy it. Cricket is fun. Make it look like it.

Give that man a blog.

We have just watched a World Cup campaign where our team looked like they were studying for exams, that they had their heads full of stuff, had plans upon plans upon plans, and it was all about executing plans. It was, and looked like, a job for them. Something to pay the bills and something to get through. They give no idea that this is enjoyable, that the getting there can be fun. We’ve all spent long afternoons on playing fields (those of us who played of course) watching the oppo rack up a massive score as nothing comes right, you drop catches, you misfield, you feel out of your depth, and then you go out and bat, and that ball pings off the middle of the bat and flies for four, or you have a great day and you bring your team close to victory, or win unlikely games, or you take that screamer of a catch, and you think this is why. This is why I play the game. Because as much as I hate the bad parts, I love the good parts more. I enjoy it. I love it. I am not being naive, but I don’t see that. I just don’t see that from our guys, and I have before.

As a nation we will always fear losing more than embrace winning. That’s why a South African born (yes I used it) perturbed us, I’ve been laughed at for this before but I’m sticking with it. KP looks like he loves batting. He loves being the man who wants to win the game. He wants it to happen. He isn’t your man to bat for a draw. He isn’t particularly a man for a crisis. He’s the man you want when the game is in the balance. And he wants that moment. Most of our’s give the impression that in that position they don’t want to fail more than they want to succeed. KP is different. It’s not about process and executing plans, it is playing the moment. We don’t embrace that sort of attitude in this country, we run away from it. I maintain if Virender Sehwag were English, he’d have been constrained to the odd T20 and ODI appearance.

This diversion, now, comes because we’ve been abject in the World Cup. The ECB cleared the decks (don’t forget though, the Aussies did not want the Ashes this winter because of the World Cup – it’s not just the ECB’s fault) for this and now need to be seen to do something. KP is a nice distraction. I said to Ali Martin on Twitter that my main motivation to see KP play for England again is because it would anger so many people and Pam Nash would need to give up everything she owns. That’s not why he should play for England. He should never have been dropped. Those people that were responsible have been left to play their way and they’ve given us our worst ever World Cup performance. They gambled. They lost. They pay the consequences. Let the dice fall wherever they might now, and let’s get back to a proper selection policy, not vindictive shenanigans.

Giles Clarke (also taken in Hluhluwe)
Giles Clarke (also taken in Hluhluwe)

The Art Of Illusion

LordCanisLupus18 Comments

It got the ears up, didn’t it. It got KP onto The Verdict. It got people talking less about the debacle of our bowling and fielding performance.

KP has been thrown a lifeline.

Or has he?

We’ve had experience over the past 18 months or more about the ECB-speak. What is and isn’t being said. In the old days, we called this sort of examination in minute detail of every word Kremlinology. Now it’s dullard corporate speak. What does Graves mean when he says KP needs to play county cricket to have a chance of a selection? What does he mean by this key line:

“The first thing he has to do if he wants to get back is start playing county cricket. The selectors and the coaches are not going to pick him if he’s not playing, it’s as simple as that. At the end of the day it’s down to the selectors and coaches and what they feel is best for English cricket. They will make the decisions and I will support their decisions.”

So it is down to the selectors – a coach who doesn’t want him if everything we believe is true, a captain that probably doesn’t, senior pros that don’t, a couple of selectors who don’t and a Chairman who is adamant he doesn’t (by his utterances) all under the auspices of a line manager (his description) in Downton who has nailed his credibility to the decision last February. If it is left up to them Pietersen is never coming back. If the decision is truly their’s then Graves will support them.

The hope comes from Graves being a new broom, that’s all. While this isn’t the unequivocal stuff that has come from the halls of Lord’s before, it is also odd that the timing is this comes on top of another performance of incredible incompetence overnight. One could, if one was being cynical, say that this is a neat diversionary tactic. A bloody stupid one, because the main thing people seem to be saying is this fatally undermines Downton – as if the performances in the World Cup haven’t damned that strategy enough to destroy this man’s ill-fated tenure – and I can’t believe that was the intention.

Of course, the anti-KP faction will latch on to the interview where he says he won’t pull out of the IPL (and why should he trust these liars) and say that it was the bowling last night (and largely over the last year or so) that was at fault not the batting, so KP isn’t the difference. I’m not saying this for one minute, but you are the lot being diverted, not me. My eyes are clearly on what happened last night, and what happens in the ECB hierarchy, not your personal parlour game over whether KP would have won us any of the games so far. More on that when we are finally eliminated from this tournament, because we still have a chance, even if it is remote now.

The usual supsects can do their usual thing. The elephant remains in the room. The strategic direction these clowns set is now reaping its own reward. But throw the remaining deluded people the KP meat to slabber over as an illusionary tactic isn’t big, isn’t clever and after the nonsensical leak earlier in the week, not even that good a piece of news management.

Happy to hear your views. Are you of the same cynical mind as me….

Phoney Baloney

LordCanisLupus16 Comments

It’s been a tedious couple of days. We’ve got Steve James in the Telegraph bemoaning the format of this World Cup tournament, when they can’t actually come up with a decent format of their own (and no, the everyone plays each other route isn’t the answer either – as I’ve said in a previous post. It has major flaws). The Rugby World Cup has similar mismatches and no-one wibbles on about that, but James isn’t going to go down that avenue. We play a few weeks on end, and then get to a QF stage which has only been livened up because Group A was constructed by evil beings (two out of Australia, Wales and England – didn’t two of these three make the SFs last time around, or is my memory that crap?). Oh, I don’t know. It seems fashionable to knock it. Maybe Journos and TV comms people don’t want the horror of an all-expenses paid month and a half’s work watching a great sport in some great locations. Yeah. walk a mile in my shoes and moan about that!

Talking of moans, Bob Willis has dropped the disruptive dressing room line, and the Delhi Daredevil failure trump on Kevin Pietersen. Hands up, I like Willis as a pundit – I know I’m in a minority – but come on sir, this is pure laziness. What KP has done to put people’s backs really up is the muppet line about county cricketers. Because he’s more blunt than the likes of Atherton and in his own day, Willis, about it, and uses an insulting term, he’s the devil incarnate. Please spare me the hypocrisy. Once the vast majority of established test players make the international circuit, they treat county cricket with contempt. Don’t pretend KP is the first one to say it. Stop playing the man, and play the ball. But they can’t, because deep down, he’s saying what they think. It’s much easier to scream “look at him” than address why we can’t have a competition to rival the Big Bash, or to come up with any other ideas.

A reminder to all to complete the World Cup competition. 30 questions, points to be earned, abighead to be crowned at the end. Come on, have a go, it won’t hurt.

For the World Cup I intend having a game thread for as many games as possible. I hope to do a bit of statto work, and also some comment at the no doubt stupidity of some of the comms and the press. We’ve seen it today, with Mitchell Johnson, who really gives off the impression of not being present with all lights functioning, reacting angrily to some phoney baloney stuff from Mr #stayhumble. I can’t be arsed. Life is too short.

There’s not a lot to add really. I’m a little more calm after the events of last weekend, and the dismantling of past works, but still not confident enough to say why and how. I did like Zephirine’s attempt a joining the dots on TFT. In fact, one of my main worries was that the baseball player who I named the character after, and is the face in the pictures, might one day sue for using his image for commercial gain (no, made no money out of it). It was meant as respect and admiration (although one of the pics was his police mug shot) for a man I saw in Vermont trying to get back to the top. He hasn’t. Good try.

Here’s a number for you. 1. The number of players for England who have made a century in a winning cause while chasing a total in World Cup history. Name him.

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.

Welcome to Being Outside Cricket. Meet the new boss…..

The Big Issues

LordCanisLupus2 Comments

OK. This blogger has something to say.

  • I did not agree with the sacking of Kevin Pietersen
  • I think Paul Downton is an abject disaster in his role at the ECB
  • I think the press did not do their job properly in the wake of the KP sacking, preferring personal prejudice over professional ethics
  • The big three stitch-up is a disaster for the game
  • Alastair Cook’s return to form is not guaranteed. There are slumps, and then there are slumps that last the best part of two years. Don’t be fooled by any runs in the West Indies
  • KP’s book, in hindsight, did him no favours. That isn’t to say that it didn’t have important things to say.
  • The current coach of England is a typical England appointment. Nice man, company man, safe man.

That’s the first principles of this blog. I won’t be able to recapture past glories rapidly, but I’ll be here, writing away, to my hearts content, even if none of you listen.