Nick Hoult

With No Emotion, You Can Really Make My Head Spin

LordCanisLupus23 Comments
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4 Day Test Cricket Would Have Saved Us – And Given Us A True Boring Game

OK. I went off one one last night. As the lagging keyboard on the laptop got worse, so my anger rose. These people, these so called guardians of the game, transient here today gone tomorrow sorts, convinced of their own views to such an extent that they couldn’t give a shit what you think, are actively floating the four day test idea. More than actively floating it, they’ve put a date on it (the year after an Ashes series). I have had a brief read of an article on Cricinfo which suggests this four day idea isn’t particularly new:

The four-day idea has been championed since 2003 by Andrew Wildblood. “Don’t be scared to fail. We’re going to die wondering if we don’t do something soon”

Andrew Wildblood? No, me neither. It seems as though he was a former senior vice-president for International Management Group. Now I wonder who worked there? Who might be in a position of power?

Tom was Senior Vice President for the leading international sports agency IMG…

Original old groupthink, eh. But importantly, according to Lawrence Booth in the Mail today, Costcutter Colin is claiming considerable credit, as he has been its champion. He consulted no-one I know of in the lead up to floating this nonsense, has not consulted anyone I know of since then, and if form goes its way, has no intention of meaningful consultancy with anyone, certainly not paying customers, before we see a final decision.

I had little hope for both these two when they came to power. Yes, Downton and Clarke are a pairing not to yearn for, in any way, but both were bumbling morons with little to suggest they were going to go headlong into a pitched battle with the existing customer base outside a difficult winter and a disinterested player. After that war, and the disaster at the 2015 World Cup both had shown the scars and were taken from the frontline. We heard plenty of nonsense, but good grief, they didn’t think they could do everything.

Harrison shows all the traits of a zealot. Graves shows all the signs of a dictator. Empowered by making the county turkeys vote for Christmas they weren’t going to stop at that. Where those who loved the ECB’s bastard child, the Blast, were labelled as obsessives by these charlatans, now we will see the term “traditionalist” used as an insult. If you quite like your five day tests, with the capacity to absorb some loss of time, to enable results on all forms of wickets, where roads have to be true roads, and still can provide some excitement, then you will gradually be filed under the Luddite category, and not being innovative, flexible or with the times. We aren’t suddenly going to get four day 420 over test matches. Leave off. We’ll get four day 360 over tests if we are lucky. We’ll make the game more exciting by having all the things that get disparaged in county games of yore. Limited first innings. Declarations of a ridiculous nature. The higher the level of the sport, the less teams are prepared to lose in the pursuit of a win, especially in an Ashes series, for example.

So let’s take a look at the quotes in the Guardian I posted last night.

ECB has no firm position on the staging of four-day Test matches. We can see benefits that more compact scheduling might deliver but are sensitive to the potential effects of any change to the traditional format. Careful consideration is required to support the right decisions for the wider game, and on-field matters are key.”

ECB does have a firm position. Both Graves and Empty Suit want them. They put the position, get the others to agree, usually with coercion and meaningless consultation and only something that might cost them their jobs can stop them. The weasel words in this are not those after the first 10. It’s the first 10. No-one I can recall, has really called for 4 day test matches. Many many more have called for a Test Championship, but somehow, some way, a format  has never stuck, and ironically one of the arguments against is “what if the Final is a draw”? Well, to make that event less likely, let’s shorten the game. That should work. Hey, as soon as the Gruesome Twosome open their traps, it’s game on.

It’s not shortening test matches, it’s “compact scheduling”. Or as I call it, taking your punters for mugs. And as far as these people are concerned, they’ve already carried out their “careful consideration”. They don’t just put these things out there by chance. They get a journo, in the same stable as Shiny Toy, an advocate for all these ECB ideas, to put it out there. We have had enough experience of Nick Hoult, a top journo, to know he doesn’t make this shit up. These things seem to be done for a reason. I’d plump for kite flying.

Further consultation will therefore take place before far-reaching decisions are made. “We would welcome more insight on the effects for players and fans in order to help the game make a fully-informed decision on any proposal,” added the ECB’s spokesman. “It is important that cricket is prepared to innovate in all formats of the game where it can help drive interest, accessibility or improvement.

I’d be more impressed with your commitment to consultation if you hadn’t already flagged what you want, haven’t got a firm proposal to put to anyone on over rates, floated this two years ago, been told what was wrong with it, and still have no clue what to do, but you plough on regardless because, let’s be frank, you need your space for the new T20 competition that has hardly grabbed the imagination because we don’t really know how you intend to make it work. Meanwhile you’ve signed a massive deal with Sky who aren’t going to be too impressed if “compact scheduling” means less international cricket. So what precisely are you going to consult with us. A fait accompli from the brains of IMG, in alliance with ISM, and flogged to you by a Costcutter genius. People who are in their posts with not one vote cast by the paying public. Happy days, eh?

Also, when someone innovates and drives accessibility, my hand gets even tighter over my wallet.

Let’s finish with the final words of the ECB on this matter.

“Above all, ECB is committed to a healthy and competitive future for Test match cricket, here and around the world.”

The Big Three money grab never really happened, did it?

Scheduling 15 Ashes tests in 2 years never really happened, did it?

L’Affaire Pietersen never really happened, did it?

Playing injured bowlers never really happened, did it?

If they are committed to it, Lord help us.

Actually, it’s not the end. I can’t let this lie…

Last year Graves said about four-day Tests: “Every Test match would start on a Thursday, with Thursday and Friday being corporate days and then Saturday and Sunday the family days.

There’s your sporting leader (and sounds like there’s plenty of open-mindedness), right there. Care about those corporates, let the rest fend for themselves. It’s as if the “family” days are where these keen fans can take over those wonderful corporate facilities, and stuff you ordinary Joe if you want to be there for the first two days. I can’t believe a man steeped in cricket could ever think like that. The first two days are for low-grade bribery, the last two are for the peasants. What a leader. What a clown.

 

Unpleasant

LordCanisLupus52 Comments
And don't come back....
You are either Inside, or you are guessing

It has been quite a day, hasn’t it? The line that the ECB spun last night, that the Graves position yesterday was not, in fact, an opening of the door, but merely a restatement of current positions is eroding before our eyes. Nick Hoult’s latest piece in the Telegraph seems to paint a very different picture, and even Selfey’s article gave the game away because he writes it as if there is a chance KP might come back before defending Downton et al. Other articles in The Guardian, here and here, intimate that the existing ECB line last night might be a little, er, premature. I don’t know – maybe someone really in the know can keep those of us outside really informed. Then we might not get so up in arms, eh?

There are clearly, it seems to us trying to figure out what the hell is happening through the prism of our journalistic corps, divisions in the ECB; differences of approaches and perhaps personalities and nuances to do with timing of posts being actually filled. Nature, and bloggers like me abhor vacuums. There’s something afoot, because we’ve seen it before. We remember how Cook was disposed of, the modus operandi of putting something out there, getting the reaction, and moving from there. We aren’t out of the World Cup, yet this looks like jostling for positions to me. The World Cup had better come right or there could be more of this on the way. In the absence of clarity, in the absence of the full context, we’ll try to fill in the blanks.

This blogger, as you know, has a job, watches cricket when it fits in with his life, and has many other things to do. I do not pretend to be a journalist, and I doubt you will ever find a claim to it on here, it’s not my job and I do this because, believe it or not, I enjoy it.

I’ve written on the sport I really enjoy and am thoroughly saddened by in the past year or so. I indulge in speculation based on comparing articles with what I hear, with what I’m told, with what I read, trying to cross reference where I can, but time is limited. I watch the sport, have a vast back catalogue of books, dvds, magazines and podcasts. I’m a cricket nut with not enough time. I also think I know a little, not a lot, about human nature. I am not friends with any cricketer. I hear gossip, much of it told to me by the way, by people who might know. If this is guesswork, then so bloody well be it. But it’s guesswork based on caring, based on looking and reading and trying to draw conclusions. You know, the sort of thing we all do.

Why the anger? Well, a journalist today, who we all know, and I’ve been pretty civil to on here and, from communicating on social media I quite like, posted this on my Twitter feed.

My giddy aunt.

Here’s why I put a picture of Doug Ibbotson on my blog feed, (and it only really seems to appear on my dashboard, which you don’t see, and on blog posts copied onto Twitter) John. Because the edition of Wisden Cricket Monthly in around 1988 it comes from had it, and the thought that a journo today could have a photo like that as his identity pic, complete with pipe, amused me. Plus, as you say John, he was a damn fine journalist. As was David Foot. As was Neil Hallam. The brilliance of the county scene in those WCMs is a million miles away from what we get today in our cricket magazines. So maybe it’s a little nod to a previous era. And maybe, just maybe, a pic of an old journo with a pipe is pretty damn good. I’m not comparing myself to him, I’m not thinking I’m a journalist, and I’m certainly not meaning the use of the pic in any mean-spirited way. I do hope you are not implying that. And please don’t invoke the old “he’s more of a journalist…” stuff because I know he was. Because I’m not.

I’m sorry if you find this blog “quite unpleasant”. I plead guilty to this being guesswork in the main, because I’ve not pretended to be ITK. But you aren’t exactly playing by the rules on your side either.

I actually have a fair bit of time for John Etheridge. I’m surprised he picked on this as something to try to beat me with. Come on, sir.

Right, got that off my chest.

By way of a public service, I managed to capture some of the BTL comments from the Selvey article that got deleted. I have reproduced some of them here. If the author wishes me to take them down, then please let me know and I will be happy to do so. I stored a few others, but they haven’t been deleted yet.

Bag of smoke…
“That theme of course was Kevin Pietersen, the fruit-fly, the pest that will not go away.”
Don’t sit on the fence, Mike.
Honestly, it makes you wonder doesn’t it, about the supposed impartiality of so-called ‘journalists’? Since when was it acceptable to so nakedly express one’s opinions of a player like this? I suppose it beats the normal innuendo, but quite how Selvey thinks this sort of thing is acceptable is beyond me. It’s faintly amusing that he should be so hostile towards our best ever batsman (going on statistics…), whilst affording the current shitshower of an England team and its hierarchy every courtesy.
This bit too made me chuckle – could it be any more matey? Proof, if it were required, that Selvey is essentially a mouthpiece for Downton. What a puppet.
“Downton takes no offence, thinks it was merely something clumsily expressed and in no way malicious :but it is grist to the mill at a bad time.”

Bagsofsmoke again..

“…the fruit-fly, the pest that will not go away.”
Don’t sit on the fence, Mike…
Since when is it acceptable journalism for a correspondent to be so nakedly hostile to a player? I understand you don’t like the man, but afford him some respect, Mike, as England’s best ever batsman. You sound like Etheridge. Since when is this sort of journalism acceptable in the Guardian?
Ah, it all becomes clear. I forget that you’re essentially a puppet, a mouthpiece, for the execrable Paul Downton. Proof, were it required, that that is the case:
“Downton takes no offence, thinks it was merely something clumsily expressed and in no way malicious :but it is grist to the mill at a bad time.”
Gluck
How can His Lordship still be considered a journalist anymore? Is he angling for a job as ECB PR chief (and pray, how would we tell the difference?)
Sorry about the fonts going all over the place….
The Slogfather…
Well.. I’ve waited until now to become an ‘under’, as well as having been a long-term ‘outsider’… but having read this from ‘lordselfie’…
The reality is that the new (yet to be confirmed) ECB (or whatever the next name becomes) Chairman, has now rattled a few cages within the press…
Following on from this, it would/should appear, that the current Team management and overlords (DowntownShabby, MooresThePityful, ForGodsSake -er, HisGreasyGilesness and TheFlowerpotman) are being found out…
There is no team management, just jobsworth incompetence – but then we’ve known that for many a month…
Sadly, most of the mainstream press (with a few notable exceptions) have chose to ignore reality.
So us, being the (outside) meek, shall inherit this dearth…
Others were saved but remain, lots more I missed….