Not really an Ashes preview, but I thought it was as good a time as any to pick up the keyboard.

It’s the Ashes Down Under. The pinnacle of the game in my eyes. The ultimate location for the oldest test contest. The one that brought the mysticism of Radio 3 coverage, the “how did they get the highlights from Australia to England in that short a time” wonderment (I was a kid, I didn’t know about satellites) and being concerned that neither Hobart or Darwin got a test match when all the other state capitals did, and Melbourne twice in 1978/9. The memories of watching the first live coverage – no, not Sky in 1990, but BBC in 1983 – from the warmth of home and that decision against England when Mel Johnson blatantly cheated in not giving John Dyson out.

These memories are lost in time, like tears in rain. To quote Rutger Hauer. What do we have now? A farce within a charade within a comedy. An England team turning up, playing one practice match against themselves, and then straight into the first test. I seriously do not care if they somehow get it right on the night. This is bizarre stuff. You can give me all the assurances under the sun that you are taking this seriously, but that doesn’t exactly ring true. Hope is not a strategy.

For the first time since the Ashes were fully televised live I will not be able to watch. I don’t have TNT or Discovery + or whatever, and have no intention of getting it. Sky Sports is so infrequently switched on in my house it actually makes no sense keeping that. It’s not that I’m not interested in cricket, far from it, it is just that I am not THAT interested. I have had practice of following other series on text or maybe the radio, so not that arsed to see it. This isn’t just for cricket, but pretty much all sport these days. I was a total sports nut, now, although still of interest, I just can’t raise the enthusiasm any more.

A dozen years ago we were setting out on the test series that changed my life, and I never left my home to watch it. In fact, I really couldn’t watch us get annihilated. I think the most I got out of that actual series was liking one of the songs used in a montage. What happened after, well, the impacts are still being felt by me on a personal level even now. Even after a long time out of the cricket blogging game.

There is a lot about How Did We Lose In Adelaide and Being Outside Cricket of which I am immensely proud. I stood up for a lot of people, and realised I wasn’t alone in the way I felt about how cricket was run and the scapegoating of Pietersen after a diabolical tour. I don’t regret feeling the way I did, even though KP has been a less than sympathetic “hero” since that day. Indeed, another crass tweet which had the unfortunate problem of being true confirmed this. The establishment pulled in favour of the nice boy, and not the temperamental one. It promoted the posh figure and demonised the ostracised. It turned cricket supporters against each other. It put me on the path to mental gymnastics that I could not fathom. I’m paying for it now. One of the contributors if not the cause.

When I think of what went on, it seems mad. Like being woken up at 8am on a Sunday morning by a DM from Jonathan Agnew saying “Ha! You missed that didn’t you…”. Like one prominent journalist asking for a meet up, and for me to name the location, and I couldn’t be 100% sure if it wouldn’t involve violence. Like another meeting me for a drink and saying “I don’t know why you let Pam Nash bother you. No-one who matters reads her. They read you.” The interactions with clowns like Andy Bull, Russell Jackson, the chap from Liverpool Echo, Harry Gurney (now that was a man with an outsized opinion of his own genius), Derek Pringle and more besides. The mystery blocking by Simon Wilde. The friends on the up and then turned on you when you weren’t looking which included a lot of those who took the instruction to “move on” when told, lest it disrupt their ability to make money out of the game. Revolutions that lasted as long as their attention spans, and who were about a quarter as funny or perceptive as they thought they were. Their little clique, where we weren’t so much a noisy neighbour, as the nuisances to tell them they were who we knew they were.

I am ashamed of a lot I did. People who know me will tell you I am an introvert, someone who doesn’t like people feeling bad vibes towards me. For me to invite the attacks was massively out of character and the attention I got was as powerful a narcotic as any cigarette or alcohol. I wanted the anger to fire my anger, because my writing was better as a result. But did I need to be so bloody arrogant? So off with people? So trenchant. Nice pieces, things I genuinely loved about the game, never resonated. My rage machine did. I was, even I confess, a really good angry writer. I am a pretty decent emotional writer. When neither matter, I am ordinary. The fact is, I’m bluffing now. Although I love to write, I don’t and never have, thought I am any good. Other people tell me I am.

What I suspected at the time, and which has been confirmed, certainly post-pandemic, is I have mental health issues. I suffered a breakdown during covid, and since then I have had bouts of chronic and serious anxiety. It is a terrible feeling knowing that unless a miracle occurs I will never be able to go to a test match in England again – it was hard enough going to a county game last summer. I am terrified of crowds. Of Waterloo Station. Of people bumping in to me. Of queues. Of people. That means I just can’t face a test match, nor the airport for a tour if I could afford it. It’s absolutely crippling, and I hope solvable, but the issues have been with me for a long time now.

What I recognise now from the post Ashes in 2014 was a mania borne out of anger, and I was out of control. I knew that this wasn’t me, but the focus I put on it turned me into a character that I wasn’t. The amount of people who looked at the actions through their prism telling me I wanted attention, I wanted to be a journalist, I wanted fame, were so wrong. I wanted attention from my crowd, no-one else. I never wanted a job in cricket, and as most of the snipers appeared to want to be in the game they couldn’t understand why I was doing what I was doing. As for fame, Lawrence Booth will tell you how I had to be convinced to meet him, and he wasn’t what he expected. That first meeting with him terrified me. I’d been horrible to him, and he was kind to me. I felt worse than I expected. The same with Nick Hoult and Chris Stocks. Both really good company, both I had been rude to as a keyboard warrior.

I changed my writing as my interest in test cricket waned, and the Tom Harrison, Andrew Strauss and all the others revolution has put in place the utter fustercluck we have now. Test cricket is still the best form of the game, and it’s not even close, but T20 and its bastard offspring the Hundred have led pretty much where we thought they would. 50 over cricket is arguably in worse shape than tests. In ten years, tops, we’ll probably see next to no test cricket, and we’ve been so conditioned to the arguments that we probably won’t be bothered when it happens.

I went to non-league football. I persuaded myself I really cared about it, but then the club that I fell for stabbed me in the back. I deserved it, for being a sucker enough to believe them. With it friendships were shattered, the seven or eight of us who went with the club through a couple of turbulent seasons were cast aside. The board has since been replaced with a soulless entity that has no clue what that club meant. While I had moved away, I still went up to see them, but when I was told to leave in October 2024 (or get a thump, if I didn’t), I saw two things. My angry writing (and believe me, it was toned down compared to before) still strikes nerves in a way I never understood, and that I can’t do that any more. I like my team down my way, but in the words of a song “I’ll never fall in love again” with something that can stab you in the back and the heart.

Which brings me back to the Ashes. A friend of mine is on the aeroplane out as I write to get his first taste of the Ashes in Australia. There are pangs of jealousy. I did that 20 years ago, and while the first trip was great, the second one was after both my parents passed away and I was a human wreckage. Then there is huge huge embarrassment. Even if I wanted to, even if I had the money, I could not do it. I could not get on the aeroplane, not because I am scared of flying, I am scared of the crowds at the gate. I would breathe faster. I would shake. I would shiver. I would get emotional. I would feel pain in the chest, nausea, stomach pain, ankle pain. Pure panic. It hinders my work, it hinders my recreation. If I don’t know where to park for a football match, I don’t go. I have become someone who can’t take advantage of what life has to bring.

Do England have a chance? Probably not. There is a lot of hopium about, but I don’t see it. Maybe the first test is a good opportunity, but there will still be four more. The bowling looks weak. Both in terms of recent performance (Gus Atkinson has to revert to mean) and in durability. Sure, Australia are down Cummins and Hazlewood, but they still have home advantage. The batting will do well for Australia, but there are too many question marks on this England team. I think it is more likely to be 5-0 than it is a 3-2 win to England, for example. We don’t play for draws, the weather probably won’t save us anywhere, and when the wheels fall off this England team, away from home, it becomes a procession. Especially in Australia. I hope I’m wrong, but hope is not a strategy.

The other stuff that surrounds it is dull to me. Malcolm Conn is still an irredeemable arse, and how British journos don’t just ostracise him, I will never know. It’s not an act. It’s the show. TNT’s coverage will probably be as awful as everybody else’s. The tests will probably last 4 days apiece, unless we make Australia bat again. We’ll see, as always, that we might be the whingeing Poms, but christ, it takes one to know one. They are still moaning about murray mints and ball changes. No, we aren’t moaning about a run-out. Without fail, Aussies seem to mention it first. No Australia, facts are facts. We may have been humped on out last three visits, but we have won an Ashes series overseas more recently than you have, But yes, you are a better cricket nation than us, which will always make us underdogs.

A mixture of me and cricket. Always what blogging was about. Deeply personal, life impacts, the pleasure, and there was some, and the pain. The pleasures have been working with Sean, Danny and Chris to make BOC required reading for a while, knowing it had a limited shelf life. The pleasures were the commenters, who saw what we were doing, who were fiercely protective of the “brand” and would provided a ferocious response to anyone brave enough to challenge us. You had to have your A game. Of course, this became “why would I bother with those idiots” in some quarters. We know. We saw you. We got to know what type of people you were. The pleasures were the camaraderie with certain bloggers and social media types. The pleasures were in watching test matches and knowing that this blog brought daily reports to you of them. Of our attempts to cover the women’s game. Of live blogging opening days of series. Of being a source of our views, that we knew resonated.

I am ashamed and proud at the same time. I know I did things I should not have, I know I was playing a role. I was scared and excited. I feared reaction, and yet needed it. All contradictions. If you asked me now would I have done it if I’d known what would happen? I honestly can’t answer that, but probably yes. Knowing that what praise we got was through gritted teeth, like getting pages in the Almanac. That was decent. I remember I pulled HDWLIA and was on the bus home when Lawrence DM’s me to ask me what the hell I was doing, as he’d just sent the Almanac to print, and we had a large part of the blog report. No word of a lie, I told him to delete it. He ignored me, but he did edit it! Because it mentioned that HDWLIA had gone. Crazy times. The shy attention seeker.

So it is time to sit back and watch the cricinfo score updates and see stupid stuff on Twitter. That’s the Ashes now. For me a sideshow. An outlier. A game that matters to someone who doesn’t. As the title of the song from the lyrics of this article bame goes, I am just spinning around. My head is all over the shop. Life is really nice outside of London, but the hubbub is not when I am in it. That’s where we are right now. If you are still excited I am truly envious of you. I wish I could care as much as that again. Maybe I will if it is close. But life is so different now, sport is so commercial and so not for me any more, that it just doesn’t seem likely.

Thanks for reading my self-indulgent claptrap. Be well everyone. I can be found on my various non-league blogs, a load of nonsense called Stuff, and on Twitter. Thanks to all. Not goodbye, but maybe more of see you if it gets better. The prospect of that is slimmer than my chances of getting back down to under 92kg (which I did 18 months ago).

Thanks.

Dmitri.

I have taken the unmitigated liberty of posting on this, my old home, but which I have not contributed for a couple of years. It’s been a while of mad transition in my life, moving out of London, devoting my sporting life to non-league football, and losing a stack of weight through necessity! About time. The other thing that has happened is I have just lost the appetite to watch cricket. I don’t hate it, I just felt the game, and its authorities rather had contempt for the likes of me and weren’t backwards in coming forwards about expressing their love of money more than their pastoral care for the sport. That’s OK with me, because after all, I am just one person and responsible for my own choices and my own life. I still follow Surrey, even though I live in Hampshire now, and I still like test matches, and have no strong feelings either way on Bazball. It’s good to watch, it’s maddeningly reckless at times (and has cost us one test series, possibly two), but best of all it really winds Australia up! That’s the best bit.

But why now, why today to write on here. Well, as I was scouting around past anniversaries on the internet, I was alerted to something that reminded me of this time of year in 2014. I suddenly remembered that February 6th was the anniversary of starting this site. I mistakenly thought it was 10 years ago, but forgot there was one year of How Did We Lose In Adelaide before that all kicked off, while it was well and truly kicking off. Then I wound my brain forward and remembered, we had two other anniversaries – on 4th was the KP Announcement, but I had missed that, but the 9th. Oh yes. The 9th was the day that Paul Downton and the ECB, frankly, told all cricket supporters who didn’t agree with their high-handed, nonsensical thought processes, to in the words of my piece at the time

“There in lies the true inner feelings that the ECB have stated loud and clear. Pay your ticket money, your sky subscriptions and shut the fuck up.”

Know Your Bloody Place

As the years have rolled on, we did warn you. At the time too many were saying “they meant Piers Morgan” to which I replied, they should have said “Piers Morgan” then, because there were thousands of others who were as up in arms, but the ECB lumped them all together and caused me to go into apoplexy. Of course, the Cook Crew were keen to back the ultimate wisdom of Mr Difficult Winter himself, and were shown to be the sheep they were when he was booted out a year later after a spell where he couldn’t stop putting his foot in his mouth, breaching a confidentiality agreement, bowing to the obvious about Cook in ODI cricket about 9 months too late, being in charge of the Team England at the 2015 World Cup and then being sacked. That he has found a form of redemption at Kent has been good. I don’t wish anyone permanent ill. I was calling that out for the stupidity that it was.

He was replaced by Tom Harrison, who, and I hate to say I told you so (no I don’t), but I BLOODY WELL TOLD YOU SO, was the ultimate drowning man clutching at serpent syndrome. This empty suit, this evangelical, overpaid, overrated, greedy mad man has wrought so much damage on English cricket, we should make his reign a world heritage site for hubris. When he went, no-one wept. Not even he did as he trousered an obscene bonus and walked straight into another job, no doubt to cheese them off (It’s the Six Nations, isn’t it? How is he going to recast that? Reduce the games to 20 minutes a side and have 9 players?). When he came in , he used that magnificent first presser to kill off the KP kraken, allow Andrew Strauss to bring his personal grievance into team selection (remember that ridiculous job offer for the ODI team for Pietersen) and just show us it was plus ca change time.

Meanwhile, he embarked on the Hundred. A decision that caused a schism in the sport, and had me on the other side, as usual, from him and his money-grabbing caretakers of the sport. I may have gone over the top, and even been far too angry about it in hindsight, but when you see stuff you love being vandalised and you having no control over it, that’s hard to take. I couldn’t keep quiet. Until I was beaten.

As the years went on, I became further outside. My anxiety and panic means the thought of attending a T20 or test match strikes me with terror. About as much as the cost of it! Also, I don’t like events where I can’t eat what I want, drink what I want etc without being held hostage by rip off merchants flogging “beer” at nigh on £8 a pint. It’s this culture in sport that turned me to non-league, where you are accepted and part of the firmament. It brings me closer to sport, to the players, to the administrators and the management. You feel part of it, not a consumer, but almost a participant. Not in the playing way, of course not, but as part of the collective. County cricket had this, to a degree, but it didn’t make money for its true stakeholders, the owners, administrators and players, so it had to go. It is in its death spiral, and unless it reclaims some of the key ground lost to franchise drivel, will always be second fiddle. If we loyalists accept that, and enjoy the competition for what it is, and not worry about justifying it in a defensive way, we have a chance of enjoying something we like. Take it from me, I don’t see the best players in football, but the competition is much much more exciting. It depends what you want to watch sport for.

So I outside the cricket the public wants. That’s fine by me. I came at peace with that a couple of years ago. I will never forgive those who chose to oppose my view in snivelling devotion to a cause against a player they hated. KP has been tiresome since he went into media, but he’s entitled to his view. Horrible to feel powerless, isn’t it, when you hate his media appearances and can’t get rid of him out of the comms box isn’t it? When the decision doesn’t seem to reflect the majority of your public’s opinion? How you just wish he wasn’t there? That your majority view rules. Well that’s how it felt to be cheated of two more years of Pietersen in the test and ODI arena. He wanted to miss meaningless ODI series for the IPL, but now we see South Africa send a second team to New Zealand to play a home T20 series, and the West Indies haven’t fielded their best test XI in 20 years. Still we hear the plaintive cries of the need to protect the premier form of the game, but England, maybe Australia aside, it just isn’t, because it doesn’t make any money.

I gave my soul, and some of my sanity, to cry out repeatedly against what was happening. KP was they symptom, not the sickness – no-one cared. It was a power play, showing that the ECB controlled this, not you. You did not matter. Remember how Gary Ballance was the saviour until he wasn’t? That it seems to be, even post-retirement, that there wasn’t that much smoke to fan the flames of the dismissal (don’t talk to me about the book – six months after) is even more disconcerting. I could see what was coming. It was Tom Harrison. It…..was…..Tom……Harrison. You were warned.

I am relatively well, the whole era damaged me mentally, I know that. I don’t miss the day to day involvement, although I still love writing. I don’t have TNT so don’t get to follow the winter cricket, and my job is so much more time-consuming that despite working from home a lot, I barely follow home series on TV (yes – I am serious about home working despite what tedious liars tell you, so are most of us). I still love reading about the game, collecting old Wisdens and Playfairs, wallowing in the history of test cricket. I have no interest in T20. Once you’ve seen one six battered 100 metres, or the juggle catch on the boundary called the greatest ever, you know another one will be along somewhere next week being called the same. I don’t care who wins, I have no emotional investment. Following Phoenix Sports tells me how much emotion means. I do feel that for Surrey. But not enough. And not in T20.

So 10 years ago Paul Downton told us what he believed, what Giles Clarke, Hugh Morris, and the cadre of supine media who got in behind them thought. The fans were trash, to be milked, to be talked down to. If I played a small part in raising a voice, it would not have been in vain. But I am on the negative side of that ledger. What it brought me, and which I have been crap at recently, is the comradeship with Danny, Sean and Chris on here. We are all fans of cricket, we all care about different things in the game, and we probably disagree on more than we agree. But we are united in one thing. When Downton said what he said, we knew which side of that particular ledger we were on.

10 years confirmed. OUTSIDE CRICKET.

There will be plenty said about this Test, the blow by blow accounts of what happened and why. It was genuinely remarkable, and the problem with the grade inflation of besteveritis is that all the superlatives have been used up on far lesser events and performances, leaving many to reach for the same words for something that did astonish.

Yet it should not be forgotten in the afterglow of praise for England’s approach of somehow extracting a win from a terrible pitch that plenty were queuing up to criticise as reckless both England’s approach to the second innings as they lost wickets, and also the declaration itself as far too generous.

Perhaps it is confusion, that Stokes and McCullum really mean it when they say they are prepared, as Warne would have put it, to lose to win, but there was a strong logic in what they decided that went far beyond simply dangling a carrot.

England could not have won the game had they batted on and only offered Pakistan a chance if they wanted to take wild risks. The final five wickets might have fallen in a heap, but the chiselling out of the top order batsmen required there to be the genuine prospect of a successful run chase. It wasn’t a matter of chucking everything on red and hoping for the best, it was a hard headed calculation as to the best prospect of winning. Had Pakistan chased it down, it still would have been a fine pursuit, but it wasn’t generous, it merely opened up a possibility sufficiently widely that there was little choice but for Pakistan to try to win given the time available, and that is what brought England in with a chance of bowling them out.

This isn’t always going to work, but it probably is England’s best chance of regular success. They aren’t an outstanding team by any means, and some of the stalwarts who have bought in to the new ethos are coming to the end. England will collapse in a horrible heap from time to time, but that was happening anyway, there was little to lose by trying this, and thus far it is working. That it won’t work every time is not the point – it can’t be argued that there will be criticism when it goes wrong given that there was plenty of criticism here even when it went right – in fact absolutely perfectly.

Outcome is everything. Its like the shot that just clears a fielder for six; there will be praise for it being a great shot, but if it falls two feet short and is caught, there will be cries that it was reckless. Same intent, slightly different outcome, but it is unhelpful to say the least to criticise the intention based on how well it turned out.

Yes, if they try this in the Ashes it might go wrong. Or it might go brilliantly. Either people buy in to what they’re attempting and accept it is a high risk but thoroughly calculating strategy, or call for them to do it completelt differently and traditionally overall. There’s not that much middle ground, and it’s certainly not reasonable to criticise the overarching strategy when it doesn’t work only to be adulatory when it does.

We know Test cricket is in trouble. This is a way of saving it for the future. Stokes has talked about his determination to do something to popularise the best format of cricket there is, and he deserves everyone’s support for that, because it’s really important, and a damn sight more so than a three match Test series.

You’re not going to find me having a go at them when this goes tits up and England get hammered, not even if it’s in the next Test. I love every element of what they are doing and I want more of it. And we are going to lose matches.

I made a flippant observation this morning that Ben Stokes would make an outstanding Sunday 2nd XI captain, but within that is a serious point – the creativity required for that thankless task is something he possesses in spades. It is genuinely a high compliment.

Strap yourselves in, we’re in for a hell of a ride.

England have just bowled New Zealand out, and need 296 runs to win. Which makes this a good point to think about where England are generally, before what happens next in the final innings of this series.

Because 296 is a hell of a lot of runs on a wearing pitch, and New Zealand are surely not only favourites, but really strong favourites. And that’s the funny thing – this is a big ask for England, and supporters, commentators and journalists are so thoroughly caught up in the new England approach that they have started thinking this is extremely gettable. It probably isn’t, but it’s absolutely marvellous to see how the arrival of McCullum, and quite likely Rob Key who appointed him, has entirely changed the mindset of not just the England team, but everyone who follows the England team. Anything is possible. And we now really think anything is possible. It just might be too.

And that’s the reason for writing this up now, because England haven’t magically become a good side overnight – all the flaws in the batting line up are still there, the fragility of the techniques of the top order bar Root is little different to before. And if England fall in a heap and get hammered today and tomorrow, that really shouldn’t affect the perception of what is a fairly seismic shift in the way everyone is looking at the game.

With the same batting line up a year ago, the degree of optimism about England’s chances would have been subterranean, now viewers and spectators are eagerly awaiting England having a right good crack at it.

It’s extraordinary. Kumar Sangakkara said yesterday that he was jealous of the members of this England team, and would have loved to play in it. Fear of failure appears to have been thrown into the bin. They aren’t going to get it right all the time, and there are going to be some pretty horrendous collapses to come as a result, but there were horrendous collapses anyway, match in, match out, there’s little downside from where England have been loitering over the last couple of years. Equally, the reckless abandon needs tempering occasionally with a slightly more rational approach – Ben Stokes’ first innings was more than freewheeling it was reckless slogging and cost him his wicket. No matter, Stokes is more than bright enough to have realised that, and has shown before he’s more than capable of being downright defensive of circumstances permit. The difference is that England seem to just believe they can win from anywhere, and that entire attitude can take them a long way.

And goodness me is it good to watch. Some might think it’s not Test cricket as we know it, and they’d have a point, but when Test cricket itself is under threat from shorter and shorter forms of the game, to have the best and longest format become not just intriguing and fascinating, but thrilling on a constant basis, then that might just be the way to have everyone with a passing interest in cricket open mouthed in disbelief. Anecdote is never data, but I’ve had friends enthusing about the cricket in the past couple of weeks in a way I’ve not heard for years. People without Sky (and that issue doesn’t go away, no matter how the ECB would like to ignore it) following closely and considering the highlights as appointment viewing.

Which means that for the first time in quite a while there are genuine grounds for some guarded optimism. Not just about the England team, because the state of the game that is drawn from to comprise that England side is still in considerable trouble, but about cricket itself in this country. That’s not to say all our troubles are over, it’s scratching the surface. But if we’re quick to point out the problems we should also acknowledge when something offers a ray of hope, and in the space of a couple of weeks, a couple of appointments appear to have provided that.

For Stokes has made an extremely bright start to his captaincy, and not just because England have won a couple of Tests. He appears engaged and willing to gamble. It’s been years since an England captain appeared so willing to show such trust a spinner not called Swann, and in this Test at least, Jack Leach has repaid that faith. The spinner has for years been the last option to turn to when all else has failed – hardly surprising that whoever the spinner was didn’t feel entirely confident or backed.

You can see the same in the rest of the bowling attack – partly because England have by hook or by crook scored runs this series and they’ve actually had a rest for once. And their role has been less about trying to pull the fat out the fire and to sit glowering as the batsmen make a right mess of a chase no one ever believed they had a chance of in the first place. But also because they are hunting their opponents down to then turn it over to batsmen who are itching to have a crack at whatever target they’re set.

Mental attitude is always cited as being important in any sporting, or indeed life, endeavour. It is rare to see it change quite so hugely in such a short period. But it does work. The great Australian and West Indies Test sides carried on winning for a fair while after their finest players departed the scene, because they expected to win, and did, until they stopped running in thin air and finally realised there was nothing underneath them except gravity.

Jonny Bairstow is another who appears to be thriving. He has always been the most sublimely talented of players, but one who has failed to fulfil that talent on a regular basis. His interviews have always been the epitome of spiky aggression, but in years past they have also tended to be extremely defensive. Not any more, he’s embracing every moment, and goodness me his liberation is a sight to behold.

Ah, England have lost a wicket to a quite brilliant run out. Never mind, we move on.

England did this with their white ball team some years back, almost overnight changing their entire attitude to one of unbridled aggression to the point of declaring war. But few thought the Test team would do the same. There were hints last time New Zealand came over with McCullum in their side, and a series of rampant attack took place. But not even close to this level. Perhaps the most similar example in microcosm was the arrival of Kevin Pietersen into the 2005 team, when instead of prodding and poking at Shane Warne he kept depositing him into the stands. Even in defeat in that Lord’s Test, it signalled a shift in approach.

England will lose Tests. They might lose a lot of them. The players aren’t going to be averaging 50 where they were averaging 30. But it might just get the best out of them, and structural change takes a long time. But above all else, the England players look like they’re having a ball, and so do the supporters.

Cricket should be fun. My God this is fun.

I love Test cricket in the Caribbean. It just feels right. Glorious sunshine, steel drum music, 2pm starts. After the Ashes, it is a huge improvement.

Since 1974, England have won just one Test series from ten attempts in the West Indies. You would be hard pushed to find many English cricket fans who don’t think that this series will follow this pattern. The hosts might be without such legends as Richards, Holding or Lara, but defeating the current England team hardly requires that level of talent.

Behind the scenes, the England team must be a mess right now. They currently have no head coach, head selector, or even a Director, England Cricket. It’s not immediately clear who’s in charge, or who will still have a job in a month’s time. Paul Collingwood is acting as interim coach, but I don’t have much faith that he can do anything to turn things around. I loved him as a player, but he has been on the England men’s Test team staff for six years now and it would be hard to identify any positive impact he could have had in that time.

Changes have been made on the field as well. Both openers from the Ashes have been dropped, with Zak Crawley and Alex Lees being the latest ones to try their luck. Ben Foakes replaces Jos Buttler, who is currently resting in preparation for the IPL. Malan and Pope have also been left out of the playing squad, meaning that just four batsmen (Crawley, Root, Bairstow and Stokes) survive from England’s disastrous tour down under.

The headlines have all been about Anderson and Broad’s exclusion from the team. I have to say that I don’t really care about this decision for two reasons. The first reason is that I don’t think that it massively alters the chances of England winning this series. If the batsmen struggle to post scores of 300 or more, it doesn’t really matter which bowlers you select. The second reason is that I am, and I realise this is an unpopular viewpoint, a huge proponent of rotation. Keeping every player both physically and mentally fresh is vital in cricket (and every other team sport), not least after the past two years of bubbles and quarantines. To be honest, I’d have also rested Ben Stokes as he is currently considered unfit to bowl. Rotation also gives other bowlers the opportunity to step up and make their own mark.

That said, the signs from the four-day warmup game agains a West Indies President’s XI were not exactly promising. Ollie Robinson and Mark Wood both picked up injuries, although Wood did return to play in the second innings. Despite facing an inexperienced and largely unimpressive batting lineup, England’s bowlers only took 17 wickets in the game. Without Anderson and Broad’s experience, or the injured Jofra Archer’s pace, the signs look ominous for the first Test.

The only real saving grace for England going into this match is that the West Indies aren’t that great a team either. England’s last four Test series have been against the three teams at the top of the ICC’s Test rankings (India, New Zealand and Australia). The West Indies are sitting at number eight. Were I a boorish owner of a convenience store chain, I might even go as far as to call them ‘mediocre’. The truth is that the West Indies are still probably favourites to win this series, so what does that say about England?

If you have any comments on the series, or anything else, leave them below.

I was thinking this morning I would write a piece about the love of cricket inspired by the feats of great players, not specifically about Rodney Marsh as the news of his death came through, but in one of those reflective moments when those you are familiar with as a child leave us. I was in two minds about doing it, there’s nothing worse than seeing such news breaking and immediately thinking of how to make it about me, or us. And then the shocking news of Shane Warne came through as well. I can’t write a tribute to them, I’m neither capable nor do I deserve to.

I didn’t know either of them, never met them, never anything more than seeing them across the field or on the television. I’ve no story about queueing for an autograph or a quick chat in a bar somewhere, they were and ever will be strangers to me. So plenty will tell their tales of when they did, while the chroniclers of cricket history will place them in their appropriate position as giants of the game, statistically and in terms of their impact. And we will read their wise words and nod in appreciation, as we should.

Their different generations make the reflections and memories so different, Rod Marsh for me was the permanent presence behind the stumps for Australia when I was a child, listening to the commentators (also largely sadly gone now) talking about how he was a truly special exponent of the art of wicket-keeping, which to my young ears was simply irritating, because he was an Aussie, and the reason they were talking about that was because he’d just flown in front of first slip to take a great catch, and thus yet another English wicket had fallen.

Warne was of course much later, and part of that dominant Australian team that ripped England to pieces for a decade and more. As a near contemporary, today’s news perhaps appals more, but in his case it was his sheer vitality, and larger than life presence that makes it such a shocking thing to hear about.

In both cases, they formed the backdrop of the rhythms of a game that is an ever present part of the lives of so many of us, the flow of opposition cricketers who evoked a feeling of grudging admiration and considerable irritation as they weaved their magic on hapless English victims – and it was always English in those days where matches between other teams were never shown on television. So to that extent it was always every couple of years you’d renew televisual or ground acquaintances who would proceed to ruin your summer most of the time.

Perhaps that’s why as an English person the fondest memories either came later or in other circumstances. Marsh might have had a fantastically brilliant career, but for me it was his shaking of his head, crossing of his arms and clear unhappiness at the Trevor Chappell underarm incident that raised him from opposing-far-too-good-player-how-irritating to three dimensional character. I doubt I saw that incident at the time either, but was familar enough with it at the time I was watching him. And of course towards the end of any great player’s career you start to appreciate them more than was previously the case.

Warne too, his brashness when he announced his arrival with that ball, was bound to wind up pretty much every English supporter, especially so when he backed that brashness up, again and again. There was that dawning horror in all England supporters as he became rather obviously far more than just a show-off, but in fact on his way to being one of the all time greats. And doing it for years. Saving his best for England, which invariably makes an Australian the pantomime villain, the one we adore but daren’t admit it. Thus it was that his last series in England, the 2005 Ashes ended with him becoming something of an honorary national treasure, the chants of “We only wish you were English” alongside the clear and abundant pleasure he was taking in being part of such a special series, even on the losing side. And perhaps it was partly because he was on the losing side he received that transparently warm and affectionate farewell from the English crowds. Either way, he deserved it.

And ultimately, isn’t that the point? Cricketers rise and fall, are new and exciting or veteran and grizzled, but what they leave behind even more than the runs, wickets and catches they score and take are the memories – the honour of watching them, the laughter or the frown when they end up on the front pages as well as the back. Feet of clay the lot of them, imperfect as all human beings are. Marsh was fantastically sardonic as a radio commentator, Warne endlessly frustrated because he could so often be banal, before suddenly being so extraordinarily insightful to the point you were hanging on every word.

But didn’t they seem fun? Characters you’d want to share a pint with and just listen to all evening long, at least while still upright. I can’t pay any kind of meaningful tribute to them, and the loss for their families is too much to take as it always is. But they have been part of the soundtrack of our lives, and maybe that’s as high a praise as can ever be offered. Cricket is poorer for their loss, but we’re all poorer for their loss.

The words are hopelessly inadequate. They’re the best I can do. I’m upset at the news of two people I didn’t know. And so are very many others.

Despite England making a semi final appearance in the T20 World Cup, the English media (cricket and otherwise) has been focussed on the sordid goings on at Yorkshire County Cricket Club. This is tragic because this situation was eminently avoidable. It’s difficult to comprehend just how many things must have gone wrong for things to reach this point.

Yorkshire CCC are, deservedly, getting a kicking. If you sent eight men to sabotage an organisation from within, they would struggle to do so more effectively than the Yorkshire CCC board in the past year. Their ignorance was seemingly only matched by their arrogance. As each revelation came out, they just kept digging themselves deeper and deeper. They were clearly incapable of running a cricket club.

ECB chief executive Tom Harrison has watched from the sidelines whilst this slow motion trainwreck has taken place and done sweet fuck all. He has defended his inactions with the following statement:

“What we were asked to do was join the Yorkshire panel to be part of the investigation, which clearly we cannot do. We are the regulator, we either run the investigation in its entirety ourselves or we let our stakeholders run an investigation in the entirety itself.”

Let us take one single aspect of Azeem Rafiq’s experience: In August 2018, he made several complaints to Yorkshire CCC officials at a meeting attended by a PCA representative. This was reported in the Guardian (and quite possibly elsewhere), two years later in September 2020. That is also when the Yorkshire CCC investigation into Rafiq’s allegations began. The ECB’s Anti-Discrimination Code states that it is a breach of the code for an organisation to “fail to provide an effective, timely and proportionate response.” Yorkshire CCC literally did nothing for two whole years. There could not be a clearer breach of the ECB’s code. Nor, frankly, of basic human decency.

It is a very simple charge to prove, with independent witnesses. There is no reason why this specific matter could not have been dealt with by the ECB immediately after it was first reported, rather than waiting over a year. The ECB instead chose to wait until after the ‘independent’ report was completed. When that started, it was due to be finished within about two months. Instead, the final report wasn’t delivered to Yorkshire CCC for just under a year. Even when that happened, the ECB granted Yorkshire CCC a full two months to hand over the report.

No aspect of this has been conducted in an effective, timely, or proportionate manner. Not by Yorkshire CCC and, crucially, not by the ECB. If the “regulator” is not minded to follow its own code of conduct, why would any of the clubs it is purporting to regulate?

Speaking of the ECB’s Anti-Discrimination Code, it is very interesting to compare it to their Anti-Corruption Code. In matters of matchfixing and gambling, it is considered a serious and explicit offence to refuse to cooperate with an investigation or fail to report an approach which you have witnessed. Now consider how many players, coaches and administrators refused to help the Yorkshire racism investigation. If they had acted in this way in a matchfixing inquiry, they could face up to a five year ban. It is clear, from both the text of the rules and the application of the rules, that the ECB place almost no importance of the issue of racism within the sport compared to the threat of intentionally losing a match.

This is not to say that the ECB have done nothing to combat racism. They required that the England team wore t-shirts with the motto “We stand together against racism”. They tweeted a lot about the ACE Programme. They promoted Black and Asian players disproportionately often before and during The Hundred. Such PR can be important. The idea that you ‘fake it until you make it’ with regards to equality isn’t entirely ridiculous. There will have been Black and Asian parents and children who will have gone to their local cricket clubs after the various promotions, press articles and social media posts that the ECB have offered in recent years. Marketing is fine, but it also has to be backed up by real action to be worth a damn. All of those campaigns, including the most recent #BlackHistoryMonth posts, have now been overwhelmed by reporting on Yorkshire CCC.

Let us not forget that the ECB have had their own issues regarding racism being discussed in the media. Ismail Dawood, John Holder and Devon Malcolm have highlighted that the ECB has not added a single Black or Asian to the first-class umpire and match umpire lists since it was formed in 1997. Their handling of past cases of racist abuse has also been in the spotlight. Although England bowler Craig Overton and Yorkshire head coach Andrew Gale were punished for on-field racist abuse, both were found guilty of a lesser offence. The ECB has never publicly explained why both players didn’t face the more serious Level 2 charge of racially abusing an opponent, with the greater penalties that would apply. In fact, Ollie Robinson might be the only person ever to be punished by the ECB where racism was considered an aggravating factor in his punishment.

Given Tom Harrison’s assertion that the ECB either runs investigations itself or lets the counties do so, one might wonder whether any action took place regarding allegations of racism within county dressing rooms made by Michael Carberry and Ebony Rainford-Brent, amongst others. Outside of matters relating to Azeem Rafiq and Yorkshire CCC, there hadn’t been any mention of investigations by other counties or the ECB in the press until after politicians started intervening.

Which brings us to the title of the post: Who watches the watchmen? The ECB has been at best passive when faced with evidence of racism within English cricket, and have arguably been complicit in suppressing and minimising the reports that have made it into public view. Given that they are (or consider themselves) the regulator of English cricket, who regulates them?

The answer, it appears, is the counties. The ECB is overseen by its 41 members, with representatives from the 18 First Class Counties, the 21 Cricket Boards of the non-First-Class Counties, the National Counties Cricket Association and the MCC. This would appear at first glance to be a colossal conflict of interest for a body which is supposed to act as regulator for the counties. If the Yorkshire CCC board’s reluctance to see the experiences of Rafiq as racist abuse is respresentative of other counties, and there’s little reason to suppose this is not the case, it isn’t surprising that the ECB apparently considers dealing with such issues as a very low priority.

The circular structure of English cricket, with the ECB both governing and being governed by the counties, means that the counties are essentially self-regulated. They have the power to set the rules, decide what the punishments will be, and who will be allowed to judge them. There is also no one who people can escalate their complaint to if the ECB fails to thoroughly investigate allegations made to or about them.

I believe that this inherent flaw within the ECB cannot be remedied without changing its entire structure. Fundamentally, the ECB is supposed to be run for the good of cricket at all levels within England and Wales but there is no one ensuring that they do this. They make decisions with no consistency, and they also have the ability to suppress or selectively release information in order to support whichever argument they are making. At this moment in time, only Parliament and the DCMS committee seemingly have the ability to hold them to account.

In order to address this, I would form a board of trustees to challenge the ECB. It would contain representatives from all aspects of the sport that the ECB governs, from fans to players (through organisations such as the Cricket Supporters Association and the Professional Cricketers Association), from amateur to professional, from men’s to women’s cricket. They could have monthly meetings with the ECB board, so that the board can justify their actions (or inaction). If they are not satisfied with what they hear, or receive a complaint regarding the ECB, they could have the power to investigate and, if necessary, punish wrongdoing.

There is no doubt that the ECB (and many counties) will be dealing quickly and firmly with allegations of racism in the near term, with even minor accusations becoming national news. However, the attention of the media will largely stray elsewhere and I see few reasons to think that they won’t revert back to their previous pattern of minimising and hiding complaints. If fundamental change is going to occur, it must happen now. Otherwise, in a few years, English cricket will likely go through this ordeal all over again.

Once is enough.