You lot don’t know what goes on behind the scenes. WordPress have changed the post drafting interface again. Jeepers. Leave it alone, peeps.
Anyway, enough of the moans, here’s your comments space for the third one dayer to be played in the venerable old stadium in Sharjah, scene of famous triumphs of the past, and an unimpeachable reputation.
The series is level at 1-1 as England revert to glorious inconsistency. The glimpses of something are there, almost tangible, but not quite. Alex Hales made his first ODI hundred in the second match in Abu Dhabi, while Jason Roy made a half century. We’ve rather been here before with Hales, when that T20 century against Sri Lanka made his future selection almost irresistible (but resist we did for six months), but the England man he reminds me most of, Ali Brown, made a century in his third international and it was, with a couple of exceptions, all she wrote. Hales will certainly be backed for much longer than Brown, and we should wait for Roy too. But as I noted on a separate Twitter feed on another subject, Quinton de Kock has eight ODI hundreds and isn’t 23 yet, while Hales is 26, and this is his first. I love watching Alex play, but the press have over-reacted again, pumping up his tyres, asking us to sort of forget some of his early struggles.
Bowling was also a concern after game one, but those extra runs and the early wickets certainly made the task easier. These guys have Wood and Finn to compete against in the not too distant future (Broad, I think, won’t be tried again) so competition is there, which is good.
Pakistan? Well who knows which team will turn up. They are like England at the moment, rather unpredictable.
We also have Day 5 of the Australia v New Zealand test, which looks nailed on a draw. There is Day 4 of the water polo match between India and South Africa.
Some upcoming news. TLG is nearly back from his manic workload and is working on a major piece, or pieces, on the cricket media – a subject we know nothing about. It’ll be broad in scope and take some work, so keep checking in. I’ve written up an introductory piece, with the interaction between the blog and the media its focus, while also finally announcing the top 10 worst journalists, as voted by you (and me).
I’d also like to thank all of you who contributed to the ODI pieces at the weekend. I’ll do a couple more bringing the pieces together, and perhaps one on T20s to coincide with the Pakistan v England series. And, I know you all want to see this, The Bogfather has written one of his poems (not the filthy ones he puts on Twitter) and it will be coming (oooo er) to you soon.
My Last ODI – Did Anyone Care? – A Dmitri Old Picture
Following on from yesterday’s piece on the Strauss interviews, I thought I’d do a little bit on the other issues that surround the game in this country. The chief of which is the curious case of mismatch of interest.
All through the World Cup there were people on the Twitter feed saying that they really didn’t care about how England did, because, in their words, we’ve always been useless at this sort of thing. Yet, whenever there is an ODI match in the UK, in the main (not always, I know) these are really well attended. People do like watching them, but at the end of the day, do they care? And it is that care that makes the task of Strauss very, very tough indeed. There are going to be no campaigns to sack a one day captain – and as I write that I recall Alastair Cook, but let’s treat that as a special case – and one day form is seen as being somehow inferior to being in test form. Whereas the rules of test cricket have not changed hugely, barely a year goes by without some tinkering with field placements, powerplays and, of course, the hugely lamented supersub is inflicted on ODIs. The format itself seems insecure.
We seem alone in caring so much about test cricket, but are we really? Are we equating attendance at a fixture with the amount the people care about it? After all, T20 matches are ten-a-penny, but are well attended, but are you as awfully upset if your team loses one of them, as you would be if your team lost a key longer-form game?
Test cricket does not have a world championship, so the idea of who is the best is determined on a rolling basis, which people find incredibly hard to understand how it works. At the moment the world ranked number 1 team is South Africa, who are being given a bit of a beating in India. England were number 1 for a year, in which their first series as top of the tree brought about a 3-0 defeat in the UAE. We are now ranked number 6. Whenever the reign of Strauss and Flower is brought up. being number 1 test side in the world follows. But at the same time, England were ranked number 1 in the world at ODIs too, and that’s never mentioned at all. We reached the final of the Champions Trophy, and choked in a T20 final masquerading as an ODI, and yet that’s dismissed. No-one placed any value on it.
Because, let’s face it, in ODI cricket all that counts is the World Cup. It’s the importance of that once in four years championship that conquers all. The main reason, one could call it a priority reason, Strauss gives a stuff about white ball cricket, if you ask me, is that we are at home in 2019 (and the CT in 2017) and failure there would make him (and not the suits above him) a laughing stock. It’s why the next world event, the World T20, is barely given a passing mention. It’s in India, we don’t play well there, so who cares?
Can you make people care?
The grave danger is that you might not be able to. Caring is about losing, not about winning. Everyone feels nice when their team wins, but caring is about how you feel when they lose. I’m a Brian Lara fan, so when Warner was 244 not out after one day, and playing like a God, and he’s a player I’m not that fond of, I would care immensely if he lost the record to him. If it were Hayden’s 380, I’d be willing Warner on, but only to make 381. I’d care because I loved Lara. Now, as you know, what the ECB have done over the past 18 months meant that I have ceased to care about how England perform, so that on many occasions, my sense of misery after they lost has diminished. Getting that caring back is much harder than losing it.
But even during my peak times of fandom, did losing hurt that much? In tests, oh yes. If asked what was my lowest moment in sport while I was at the venue, it probably would have to be Stern John’s goal in the Play-Off Semi in 2002. I gave enormous amounts of time and money to my club, knew that goal would likely mean the break-up over time of that squad, and we lost our shot at the Premier League. But running it close was the Adelaide test of 2006. While some make light of it with their “it never existed” meme, the agony over six hours of watching that demise is still immensely painful. There are pieces to be written about it still, but it was shattering.
He never bloody hit this, Bucknor – A Dmitri Old Picture….
I have been to a few, not many, ODIs, and the most memorable, if you will, was the England v New Zealand game at The Oval in 2007. This was the Elliott/Sidebottom game, when Collingwood upheld an appeal, but New Zealand somehow won by one wicket in the last over. It was an exciting game, it was won off the last ball, I believe, and yet….. I’ve never been back to an ODI. Both Sir Peter and I were of the same mind. It was a great game, but it never mattered. It’s almost fandom-lite. You can watch a spectacle, admire it’s good parts, tut-tut at the bad, but you never gave a stuff. Not really.
This is where the fandom gets personal. I watched the Ashes series this summer with a bit more detachment, and thus found it hard to fathom why fans were going so mad over two wins on green tops (I think the Cardiff wicket was fine for both teams, actually, and was a superb win by England). I would have been more delighted if we’d won in UAE as that would take some doing, just as India in 2012, Australia (for all their faults) in 2010-11 and the wins in Pakistan and Sri Lanka 2000-01. And yes, Australia at home in 2005 with that team, which, remember, one tweeter memorably said he’s wished had never happened! All supporters are different.
Care does need to be taken, because ODIs are too frequent, too many played with not enough riding on them, quite often without main stars who are rested. If authorities treat them like this, then why should anyone care? While people go on about tests lacking context, the only context that seems to matter on ODIs is how often can we put them on while keeping grounds nice and full. When you have a billion people across India, with ODI grounds a plenty, that special occasion might be a local thing. In England, the ten or so we put on a year are often tucked on to test series, and seen as the dying embers of a tour.
I come from an era when the county final on the first weekend of September was a massive occasion. Then, when people pointed out that bowling first nearly always won you the game, people found holes in it. The glamour of the occasion died. It’s now a sad, pale imitation of what it once was. Yet that is the format of the game that gets the crowds in at international level! It was failing well before the T20 era, before anyone lays the blame firmly at that door.
It’s not just cricket. Millwall, my team, got to the FA Cup Final in 2004. For a fan like me, the win at Old Trafford against Sunderland was a highlight of my supporting life. Never has 45 minutes passed so slowly. We were well beaten in the final, and as we got our buses back to the car parks in Cardiff, a load, and I mean many, Manchester United fans walked past us, almost solemn, almost disinterested. I said to them “cheer up, chaps, you won the FA Cup!” because people of my age saw this as a highlight of any season. One snapped back “We’re supposed to win this sort of competition”. Clearly, in Arsenal’s invincible season, winning the Cup wasn’t enough. It didn’t matter to them. In one instant, the new football was laid bare. I’d denied it was really true, denied it when I went to cup ties and the attendance was shocking, denied it when clubs played reserve teams, but it was true. Something I cared about, didn’t matter. I’ve scarcely cared about the Cup since (I do believe Manchester United have never won the Cup since).
So, to get back to cricket and the ODI priority. Strauss has seen 50 over cricket’s importance diminish over the last 15-20 years, so there’s no domestic base to give a stuff. T20 matters a little, but does it really? You’ve got 14 games a year to play of that. At international level, the series have on context, with players often rested due to crazy schedules. The competition only seems to matter when there are a mass of teams on your shores battling it out, and even then you constrain who can play there. Why make such a fuss over something we don’t seem to give a fuss about? Why prioritise something that the people who watch may never think is a priority? Good luck Andrew.
I was researching a piece I intended to write last night, when the news from Paris started to filter in. I find, like most of you no doubt, that stories like this consume you, so the piece took a back seat. Now I’m struggling to remember what I’d heard, so if this doesn’t have some flow, forgive me. Naturally, last night’s events hit home. That’s us out there, eating and drinking, going to concerts, watching sporting events. The world is a potentially horrible place.
This piece is on Strauss and his ODI comments.
I wasn’t concentrating on cricket much towards the end of the week, which is a bit of a problem for a cricket blogger! Work and social stuff took over, but I couldn’t help but notice some of the reactions on here, and on Twitter, to a round of interviews that Andrew Strauss conducted during the 1st ODI (or just before). So last night I listened to the Agnew interview and the one with Nick Knight.
The confusion I had was I thought the line to take from these interviews was that Strauss would prioritise (and he used that word a lot) “white ball cricket” because if we didn’t we would fail again in the World Cup in 2019. Many of you on here took this to mean that players could miss tests to play in the IPL or perhaps the Big Bash to get experience of top quality, pressure-filled cricket (Mike Walters in the Mirror certainly did). This certainly wasn’t dampened down immediately, but then, yesterday Strauss made it clear that he was not suggesting that England would weaken their test team to allow this to happen.
“I can’t foresee any circumstances in which we would weaken our Test team in order to allow a player to play in the IPL or any other franchise-based competition.” Strauss…BBC
The cynical among us, and that numbers me, might note that the two day period between the airing of these interviews, when the position wasn’t made crystal clear, and the clarification offered yesterday was deliberate, to see how the position went down when allowed to float, or Downton-esque and a cock-up. Whereas Downton was a buffoon from the outset, I’m absolutely convinced that Strauss is, if nothing else, a sharp operator. Leaving that position open (ish) was probably quite an astute move to see if some of the big beasts roared. I don’t think, for one minute, Andrew Strauss wants Joe Root and Ben Stokes to play in the IPL (the only two test certainties that will play international white ball cricket and possibly get picked). Jos Buttler might also be sought to play in the IPL but his status as a test player is in jeopardy. The test team is our money-spinner and to mess about with that, even in the early season test series, opens the door to much in the way of consternation. Remember when we rested our bowlers against the West Indies at Edgbaston a few years ago? Some people went mad!
KP’s interjection at this point, while understandable, probably wasn’t well judged. I’ll leave it there at this point and may return to it later.
The thing that concerned me was Strauss and his non-stop mentions of the word “prioritise”. What does this actually mean? Strauss claims that the model to follow appears to be the Australian one, where they can play well in both formats of the game at the same time. He takes the message that Australia prioritise the game in the right way and his takeaway is that we should seek to specialise our white ball cricket. This, clearly from where I am sitting, means two almost separate units, with very few players playing in all formats of the game.
Let’s leave T20 cricket as an outlier at this time. That’s a format of the game Australia have never succeeded in because they seem to play another different team entirely for that (and pretty much have treated it like a joke – but a productive one – see David Warner). Australia’s ODI winning team lined up as follows:
Warner (current test opener), Finch (specialist), Smith (current test batsman), Clarke (then the test captain), Watson (then the test middle order bat), Maxwell (played tests, but seen as specialist), Faulkner (played tests, in their thoughts), Haddin (then test keeper), Johnson (test bowler), Starc (test bowler), Hazlewood (test bowler).
Arguably Australia had two out and out white ball specialists, and one (Faulkner) who has made his name in that game (but I’m sure is in their thoughts for test cricket). This may change given the retirements – Wade will probably be ODI keeper instead of Nevill, Khawaja isn’t, I think, seen as an ODI batsman, and it remains to be seen if Burns can force his way into the white ball arena. Voges isn’t an ODI player for the future. But what is clear from the above is there isn’t the separation of powers that Strauss seems to think is vital.
Looking at their opponents in the final, New Zealand, the specialists were Ronchi and Elliott. Vettori was playing ODIs to end his career (having been a prolific test player) but all the others are in the test reckoning. There really aren’t that many “specialists” like a Kieron Pollard or a Quentin de Kock.
Strauss wants to bring this specialism to the fore and I think it is dangerous. One of the names he mentions is Jason Roy. At this stage he’s shown ODI promise without delivering the big innings, and it is a great credit that England are going to stick with him. I remember how we treated Ali Brown, and I still get livid about it. We wanted a pinch hitter, but when it went wrong he got slagged off. I think it is too soon to give up on Roy as a potential test player. I don’t think he’ll get there, but in red ball cricket, he has been a bloody important player for Surrey. He plays that innings in Surrey’s line-up that demoralises the opposition. He will fail, but sometimes he will succeed. Strauss appears to be pigeon-holing him as a white-ball specialist very early. The same may happen to Alex Hales. What if we have a new player who comes in as an ODI player, is whisked off to T20 competitions, and yet he could be a test player in the making? All through this I look at how we’ve treated James Taylor to the point that at this stage, we don’t really have a scooby (clue) what he is.
I don’t have to tell you that I’m not a fan of Strauss. I’m also not going to pretend that he’s another Paul Downton. There’s a lot of good thinking in what Strauss is telling us, but he’s a politician to his boot-straps, and management consultancy is in his DNA. The latter seems to make sports journalists go weak at the knees. A man only has to come in, spout out about culture and environment, talk about processes and evaluation, and set low goals, and suddenly he’s a guru to be listened to, a beacon to follow. I call it Lancastrianisation. The aim is stuffed back donkeys years, and when you get there, well……
So much has been written about the Rugby World Cup that it’s almost become a spectator sport. Look at what Lancaster and the RFU did, and do the opposite might be a better lesson to learn. They cut off the talent pool by putting in restrictions on selection, they identified a lot of players (who weren’t good enough), they took multiple second place finishes and close losses as evidence of progress, they then brought in a wild card to show they were innovative, and made last minute changes to the team, and they collapsed in a heap. The journalists in that sport, a lot who make cricket writers appear like meek and humble people, have hardly aimed fire at Lancaster. If half the vitriol that Paul Ackford aimed at Sam Burgess for example had been aimed at Lancaster, well…..we might actually be admitting where the problems lie. Meanwhile, the head honchos in the RFU remain. So while cricket gazed on admiringly at this nonsense, they perhaps need to “refocus”.
What I also found funny was Strauss saying that prioritising ODI cricket for a World Cup would be a new approach. Now it is if you do it a long way out, but in 2014-15 we played no test cricket for six months. We prioritised the ODI game and yet it didn’t work. So prioritisation isn’t new, it is now a different kind. But that’s classic management speak – the past is not to be referred to, and all things have to be new. There has to be change. Change. A word I never want to hear muttered by a manager or administrator again in my life.
Managers also make tasks sound harder than they might be. Strauss sets the bar low (we had a miserable World Cup – while forgetting we got to the Champions Trophy Final last time around) and then makes it sound like the way out is absolutely nigh on impossible. If you fail, well you tried, if you succeed, you are a genius:
“If someone is playing in the Test team or very close to the Test team, then that’s a harder decision to make. But let’s be honest – we’re not going to make massive strides in white ball cricket without making some hard decisions along the way.
“I think we have to be prepared to do that and I personally believe we can make those strides and not do it at the expense of Test cricket.”
So what did we learn. We’ll focus on specialists – so I’m assuming that’s Willey, Woakes, Roy, Billings, Hales, Topley and the skipper, Morgan. Perhaps Buttler if it’s decided that tests aren’t for him, and perhaps Bairstow if he drops out of the test team. The portents are not good – Luke Wright and Ravi Bopara are two that come to mind – but if Strauss is serious about attitudes to the game, then fine.
Nick Knight, in his interview on Sky, raised the T20 World Cup, which seems to be something hardly mentioned in the corridors of power. So the management consultant assured us we had great talent and had a real chance. But the words he spoke at the end of the piece were the ones that sparked the rage in me….
“I think we’ve pretty much identified the group of players we want to work with in the short term. It’s important we give them opportunities to develop.
“It would be wrong to be searching in very different directions right now. Of course, that doesn’t mean it’s a closed shop in the long term.”
The World T20 is in March. We have a T20 player scoring hundreds. He’ll have plenty of big game T20 experience. He’s absolute class. He’d walk into this team in normal circumstances. I’ll quote Peter Miller from his excellent podcast with Daniel Harris last night – England would rather lose cricket matches than pick Kevin Pietersen. For that, KP is correct when he says:
As you might have guessed, TLG and I have been busy, and in my case in particular, lacking a bit of oomph to continually update the blog. This doesn’t last, you all know that, but we will be back soon.
Today is the second ODI, and comments can be added below. At time of writing there’s rain about so the start is delayed. The first ODI showed, in my view, that there’s still a bit of an issue chasing targets, which we have a couple of years to fix in advance of the Champions Trophy being played here in 2017.
Congratulations to Surrey on their promotion, clinched with a Gareth Batty hat-trick. I saw the pretty insipid first day’s play with Benny Bowden and it was lovely to meet him and chew the fat. He has told me who needs to be number two in my Test Centuries review. Surrey looked listless on Tuesday, and Ansari took four on the day. Chesney Hughes impressed me with his play.
As for today, we’ll hear the talking points. Are Roy and Hales an opening partnership? Are we wasting Moeen Ali? Is Jos Buttler mentally shot? Are we fed up with talking points? Is it becoming boring playing Australia? Have you read Alec Swann’s review of Death of a Gentleman? Do I need to seek help as I sort of agreed with Michael Henderson’s piece in the Cricketer?
Oh well. Enjoy whatever the day brings….
(quick note from TLG to apologise for my absence recently. This is my busy time of the year unfortunately, and I’ve been away most of the last few weeks. October is even worse. But I do have a couple of “different” posts to write. One I’ll do today and activate tomorrow. Because guess what, I’m away again. Arrrrgggh.)
There was almost something poetic about Jonny Bairstow’s knock today. In a nutshell it summed up so much that had gone wrong in the past. That Adil Rashid was there at the end as well, was strangely appropriate. Two talents somewhat unfulfilled at the international level. Two “what ifs”. Two players seemingly relishing their chance to shine.
Today’s win is one of the really good ones. It’s the one dug out of adversity, when you are, to all intents and purposes, dead in the water. You are left 45 for 5. The rocks on which we are building this revival had gone – Hales had failed at the top of the order, Root had gone at three, and then so did Morgan. With no Buttler to fall back on, it was now up to rookie Sam Billings, and fallen young star Jonny Bairstow. As I drove back from Costco in Croydon, in the middle of a rainstorm I heard the two lads put the partnership together to cement the innings and give us a shout. When Billings went, Bairstow piled on. I got back to see the end. Bairstow with cool hitting getting us home, and yes, with a bit of luck too, with the drop by Santner almost certainly costing the New Zealanders the match.
But the symbolism of a talent, abused and ignored by England for so long, bringing a new era home was not lost on me. Bairstow had become the world’s most experience drinks carrier. He was called up rarely, often without much in the way of top class cricket under his belt in the weeks building up to his appearances. He’d come into teams either shot of confidence, or knowing he wasn’t there for long. He’d been over-sold when he made a 95 at Lord’s against South Africa, or that 50 at Cardiff. But he’d be in and out more times than an Hokey Kokey convention and he withered. Today was brilliant. Absolutely brilliant. I’m thrilled for him, and I’ve not said that about a cricketer in ages. I thought it was reminiscent of the KP innings against Australia at Bristol in 2005 – maybe not as violent, but every bit as important because this won a series, this continued momentum, this set down a bit of a marker, and it was against pretty large odds. Good luck.
I’m not going to go into huge detail on the game. I’ll leave that to thelegglance who is going to do a series review in the next day or two. But a series win is important, but in the whole scheme of things not that important. It was the manner in which we played, it was seeing some of our talent set free. I love that more than anything. Adil Rashid was excellent with the ball today. Mark Wood looks like he loves it out there. Jos Buttler is a man with talent to burn. Eoin Morgan and Joe Root are the rocks at 3 and 4. It’s a team to get behind. It’s a team that enthuses.
On to the Ashes. And the return of those who were noticeable by their absence. ABC will return. They have a momentum they have to ride with, not destroy. We’ll be watching. Carefully.
After the day-night nonsense on Friday, there’s a very short turnaround for game 3 of this compelling series. The teams will do battle at the Ageas Bowl and England won’t want to remember the last time we met at that venue….
This game was just before the Champions Trophy, and the score of 359 was an asbolute blockbuster for this country. Now it seems around par. What the hell is going on? I seem to recall Jonathan Trott getting a bit of stick for his century at just over a run a ball, but then again, we sort of blamed him for most things in ODIs when he was a decent performer. But with the euphoria of the last two matches, Jonathan Trott appears to be the Betamax to this team’s VHS. It’s odd how things have turned in two years.
There also was the clue for Guptill’s double ton in the World Cup writ large in that fixture. He went off in the last 10 overs. It was a great batting wicket, he got in, he cashed in. Also, it can’t be helped, but Jade Dernbach posted some mighty fine numbers in that game.
So to the game at the Ageas. England will be forced to make a minimum of two changes. Chris Jordan being ruled out was no surprise as he was shunted down the order, clearly inhibited by his injury, but Liam Plunkett’s absence falls into the “oh damn” category. While his bowling has been no worse than the others, his punchy hitting in the last two games has shown a real liveliness, and he gave England hope when there was little on Friday. Damn. Craig Overton has already been called up, and there’s speculation on the wires over the other, with many wanting Footit to have his day.
As it is, tomorrow might see two of the squad members play, with Mark Wood and David Willey surely in line to play (otherwise, why are they in the squad?) There then remains the question over whether Sam Billings keeps his place. It would appear slightly strange to drop him as his replacement would need to be James Taylor and he’s not a number 7. Or he shouldn’t be. We don’t want Buttler coming in at 7, nor Stokes, so there is a logjam there. I’ll let them call that one.
After a hammering in Game 1, the New Zealanders showed their batting class, and had the real difference maker on the day, Trent Boult, in their line-up. McCullum might be due a big one if he can just cut out the 100% give it a lash approach, but that’s the joy with this team; they can hurt you in so many ways.
Here’s hoping for another belter. Comments below.
It was good to see the people coming out of the ether to discuss thelegglance’s piece with us today. It was an excellent discussion and gave us some food for thought. There’s a key point not to treat the print media as a homogenous unit, but the old guard are certainly in the firing line. One read of Pringle’s article in this month’s Cricketer which speaks again of KP’s propaganda machine and of Strauss calling him a c–t being quite endearing, is just embarrassing. I’ve been advised by more than one source to stop letting this sort of thing wind me up. Well, if I didn’t, you lot wouldn’t be here………
2nd ODI – New Zealand 398/5 (Taylor 119*, Williamson 93, Guptill 50) beat England 365-9 (Morgan 88, Hales 54) by 13 runs on DL Method.
Dmitri on duty tonight as thelegglance is having a break from the match reviews for the evening.
I did not get to see the first innings of the match. I missed Ross Taylor’s century, the hitting, the accumulation, the posting of the second highest score in ODI history in England. 398 for 5. I will leave it to others to describe the bowling, which judging by the commenters on here, wasn’t up to much, with the inability to take wickets still a major concern. The Oval clearly put up a road for the day’s entertainment judging by what I’m watching as I start the match report.
Now England’s chase is something we’ve wanted to see. They’ve gone for it. You know that it hasn’t been reckless, but it’s been focussed, it’s been a study in hitting and technique, and it is an even better example of the change of mentality that this ODI team seems to have in these early days of full reconstruction. They set the highest score that England have ever made in the second innings of an ODI. They did it with decent contributions down the order.
I can only really comment on what I’ve watched. The best sign was the innings of Eoin Morgan. He’s taken a hell of a lot of stick over the winter, even though he made an ODI hundred in Australia which his predecessor as captain hadn’t looked like doing for years. Sure, he wasn’t in top form, we knew that, but his 88 today was brilliant. It looked almost “risk-free” but if he’d continued he’d have beaten Buttler’s record. It’s back-to-back 50s for him, the first being mightily undetected in the last match which was crucial in the rebuilding of the innings.
The openers showed great promise, although Jason Roy’s dismissal annoyed me a touch. Fact is, that I’ll have to get over it with the way this team looks like it is setting up to play. Alex Hales made a decent half-century, but left you wanting more. One day I see that bloke clicking, being the sort you cannot bowl to, and beating Robin Smith’s record. Good grief, that needs to go, even remembering how much I liked Judge. Joe Root was a bit daft. I’m saying this early, I know, but all but one of his ODI tons came batting first, and while the other was a winning effort, it was in a chase of 240-odd. He’s our Kane Williamson. But you don’t come off every time.
Jos, even when he’s not in miracle mode, played well until nicking off. There’s the itch you can’t scratch that maybe he’s one or two places too low? Obviously not everyone can bat in the top 4 slots. If he did, he’d threathen that record too. Ben Stokes will also come off.
Then came Rashid and Plunkett. Then the rain. Then cricket being cricket.
There can be just two reasons for the equation of 13 balls to score 34 balls. Rigidity of rules so that the game finishes at a specified time, which is nonsense if all you are giving yourself is half an hour. London Transport, when it works, does run past 21:20. If it’s the Resident’s Association of Kennington, the sort that moaned when Surrey planned to build a hotel where the old relic Laker and Lock stands are, but seem to look out of their windows a lot when play is on, then stuff them. Their property values aren’t going down for 20 minutes play. Oh, I’m sure there’s plenty of rules is rules muppets out there, but get over yourselves.
Before the rain Rashid and Plunkett rode their luck but hit some superb shots. They kept a dead game alive. They are the reason we can get back to liking this team, those of us who need more than just Chef platitudes and to be told that the test team is now back in the fold. Rashid appears a totem for the past regime. A higher risk pick in a low risk management structure. Plunkett’s 44, completed in the farcical 13 ball period, was a brilliant sight. He’s a lost talent, through injury and other things, but we remember his batting being not bad stuff first time around. Rashid then fell to wonderful fielding. This game could have had such a great finale.
In defeat this England team won more admirers. That speaks volumes. We’ll forgive, always, those that give it a go, a reall good go. Not reckless abandon, but positive intent. Not fear of failure, but being positive, attacking, aggressive with the bat. This is something I can get behind. I don’t usually do “heroic failure” but we can all see progress here.
Lastly, I thought I’d address some of the stuff I had this morning. Frankly, if you read my Meantime London Lager fuelled riposte to the Pringle “irrelevant” jibe, and the main point you took out of it was that I resented business travel, then there’s not a lot I can do. I thought the piece was framed, even in my alcohol-induced blind rage, to say we pay our way, we feel the pain not only personally, but financially, and it isn’t our job to follow the team, but our passion. Now, I am not saying the hacks are not equally as passionate, but they are the envy of many by getting paid to travel the world to watch the game. Therefore, when those in that fortunate, privileged position decide that those who pay their wages are irrelevant, is the point that all but a few seemed to grasp. Thelegglance has a think piece on this which we’ll release over the weekend.
Oh, it’s not about me being criticised. I dish it out, so I have to take it. But it doesn’t mean I won’t defend myself.
Being Outside Cricket 