Friday sees the England team back in action after a break that scarcely warrants the term. To put it into context, they begin the ODI series in Bangladesh on October 7th. In 2017, they will finish their home international season on 29th September. It’s been pointed out before that England’s schedule is beyond ridiculous, and irrespective of all the other matters around whether England were to tour at all, it would be unsurprising if some within the England camp were hoping for it to be cancelled for no other reason than to provide a more meaningful break.
Some players are missing anyway of course, Alex Hales and Eoin Morgan deciding not to tour, while James Anderson is injured, and in so being thoroughly justifying the medical team once again who advised so firmly against his selection during the English summer. If this series feels like a warm up for the India tour, it’s not helped by the lack of any scheduled preparatory matches before the first Test in Rajkot; the implication that Bangladesh will provide what is needed is hard to avoid. Nevertheless, despite the debates over the security issues, Bangladesh as a cricket nation desperately needed it to go ahead. If England had not agreed to go, the likelihood of other countries visiting would take a big hit. There may be lots of criticism about how deserving Bangladesh have been over their Test status in the last decade, but losing home matches would be a body blow to the prospects of the game there. Cricket is not in the healthiest state it could be, and while Pakistan reaching the number one ranking (since overtaken by India) while playing in exile might be a notable achievement, it doesn’t mean it’s a template for others to follow.
This series comprises three one day internationals and two Tests, but few in England will be excited about it. That isn’t the point though, and while it is easy to play a game of whataboutery, whether it be concerning Ireland’s treatment or the actions of the ICC, for the game to have any chance, the weaker and poorer members of the international firmament need to play against the rest, and play at home. On my recent travels I had the opportunity to talk to a number of people from Bangladesh, hoteliers, ground handlers and so forth, and while this cricket tour is not something from which they expect to see any business, the very fact that it is happening at all was clearly uppermost in their thoughts. In difficult times even the most peripheral action can have an impact on the future and on the degree of confidence in the future. They need this, and they need it badly.
England will expect to win, and although Bangladesh’s progress is uneven, they are even more hampered by having not played international cricket since March’s World T20. In a time when the ECB are heavily criticised for grinding their players into the dust in an attempt to extract the maximum financial return, it is easy to forget that other countries might regard that as a nice problem to have.
This tour will be low key on the field, and all hopes are that it will be equally low key off it. Yet for England fans the selections of Zafar Ansari and Ben Duckett will be of interest, as will the performance of some of the bowlers given the challenges ahead. Chris Woakes has had the kind of summer he would have dreamed about, but rising to the challenge of sub-continental pitches will be something new to deal with. How he does that, particularly in the absence of Anderson, will provide an indication as to how competitive England will be in India. The same can be said of the spin attack – the recall of Gareth Batty doesn’t inspire great confidence in the potential amongst the younger players, but dealing with the here and now rather than chasing a future that never arrives is perhaps something England haven’t done enough of in recent times.
However it turns out on the field, this tour says more than just about cricket, and perhaps that is the most important thing. The debate about the rights and wrongs of players going, not going, how the ECB handled that, how the cricketing press responded to that has been done and not too many came out of it with a great deal of credit. The matches themselves can at least provide a respite from that.
First of all, I’m annoyed, not just a little bit annoyed, but completely and totally incensed by the treatment that our so called administrators have handed out to Durham and I’m not even a Durham fan. The ignominy of being relegated to the 2nd Division on financial criteria rather than cricketing prowess was not bad enough in the eyes of the incompetent fat cats running our board, oh no, they had to give them a massive f**k you as a coup de grace. Here’s your 48 point deduction – put that in your pipe and smoke it, oh and best of all, be grateful for it too, we saved you. Oh and we’re also revoking your Test status, although actually that is probably more of a blessing in disguise.
The circumstances of Durham’s financial demise have been well documented, but let me briefly cover it again, so there can be no doubt where the blame should lie. Back in 2003, Durham were an ambitious club, one who wanted to give fans in the North East, those who had previously been starved of international cricket access to the game without having to travel hundreds of miles to actually see live coverage. This fitted in nicely with the ECB’s stated mandate to spread the national game away from the traditional Test grounds and even their edict that all newly built grounds should have the capabilities and facilities to host Test Cricket.
This was pretty much as good as it got though for our friends in the Northeast. Firstly (and I could with some help here), the choice for Durham’s new shiny international ground was not in surburban Newcastle or even in the more populated Durham, but instead was housed in Chester-Le-Street, a town with a population of 26,000 holding a ground with the capacity of 16,000, the math’s simply didn’t add even back then and now look astonishingly slapstick in the cold light of day. Then there was the small matter of the fact that we already had 6 international venues fighting for on average 5 tests a year (if you account for Lords having 2 games a year) so with the addition of Durham, Hampshire and then latterly Cardiff into the mix, we suddenly had an surfeit of counties desperately hunting Test cricket at their grounds to cover new builds, redevelopment and general running costs with not enough games to go around. Seriously it doesn’t take a genius to realise that this was not going to end well.
So what was the ECB’s solution to this? Well I can think we can all agree that most sensible administrators would’ve sought to manage risk and spread the games as evenly as possible amongst each county to ensure financial viability; however the ECB is not a sensible administrator, it’s a greedy money grabbing pit of self interest, and instead chose a far more lucrative option. The ECB bods in all their wisdom decided that a bidding system would be a far fairer way to distribute the games and the money (for themselves obviously and not the counties). So here we had it, a bunch of increasingly skint counties desperately fighting over those games that weren’t going to be held in London in the hope of getting enough punters through the door to make enough money to survive into the next year, like a group of fat men desperately fighting over the last pork scratching. Yet the ECB sat quietly by, filling their coffers with well over £75 million worth of hard cash and not having to lift a finger. None of the risk, all of the reward, I say old boy.
So to the surprise of no-one, except the ECB, though they I doubt they cared that much, this house of cards came tumbling down in a heap fairly quickly. The writing had been on the wall since the start. Cricket has been in decline for some while, and whilst there are many debates as to the reasons behind this (I could and have written a whole article on this subject alone) one can easily surmise that a lack of cricket on FTA, the general disappearance of the game from the national news and the increased focus on the T20 tournaments meant that interest in Test cricket began to wane quickly. As the counties latterly realised this, it very quickly proved to be a bun fight in who could get the most popular games, with the counties throwing exorbitant amounts of money for an Australia or India game in the hope that they could get them to last 4 days so they could make some money, with the other counties counting the cost of getting a Sri Lanka or a New Zealand Test knowing that they wouldn’t even cover their costs. Indeed a certain Ex-Yorkshire chairman, better known to most readers in his new role had this to say back in 2011:
“The problem we have in England and Wales is we have nine Test match grounds and seven Test matches and nine into seven doesn’t go.”
“At the end of the day you are playing with high stakes and that’s a big risk business and at this present time, we are not in that.”
“I’m urging them to look totally at the way we structure cricket, the way it is financed and, going forward, how we are going to stage that,” he said.
“There are some big searching questions there to be answered.”
It’s of course very interesting to note that we haven’t heard a single peep out of Mr. Graves since he was made Chairman of the ECB, let alone hear the answer to these big searching questions. After all, it’s your boat now chaps, but I’m going to take the paddles with me in any case..
And so we now to get to the stage, where a county who followed the ECB’s edict to the letter (though I would conceive that they should have done more to position the stadium in a far more densely populated area) have been handed a massively draconian punishment for racking up serious debts that the ECB’s bidding system not only actively encouraged, but gave them no other option than to. Nicely played chaps, offer false promises with one hand and then crush with the other when the unpleasant reality sets in.
Except this isn’t really about Durham is it? Nor will it be about a Leicestershire or a Somerset, a Northamptonshire or a Sussex when the inevitable happens, and they teeter on the edge of administration. This is about business and that business is an 8-team city franchise, the savior of all English cricket in Colin Graves and his fellow cronies eyes. Sure they have had to go around the houses with the county chairmen, sure there have been meetings, promises counter promises, £1.5million promises but all this is a case of playing the waiting game in the expected hope that the county chairmen spend more time fighting each other and their members rather than noticing the smiling devil at their door. It is not inconceivable that by the time 2019/2020 comes around all of these clubs and many more will be on their knees and willing to accept any morsel their so called benevolent administrators are willing to toss them; oh as long as they are willing to give up some more rights to benefit those who the ECB deem worthy. The thing is that growing the game, as I and many others have said before, is simply not on the ECB’s radar not has it ever been, it knows nothing but the pursuit of financial gain and anyone who gets in the way will be simply cast aside or crushed. After all, Graves has put his neck on the line to make this City franchise competition happen and he is going to do everything in his power to make it happen, so what does it matter if the odd county goes bust along the way, that’s business for you?
I find what has happened to Durham today and will in time happen to other counties very sad, but not in the least bit surprising, after all if you stick your head in the crocodile’s mouth for long enough, one day it will bite. My guess is that it would be fair to say that the dinner of many of the county chairmen might not taste so juicy tonight as they reflect on the fact that with ‘friends like these, who needs enemies’…
The county season is in the books. There’s at least a fortnight between now and the next England international game. So it seems an opportune moment to bring the new poll to you for your enjoyment and completion.
It has to be said that I haven’t had cricket on my mind much this week. I was in Rio de Janeiro for the first half of the week, in what looked like possibly the best beach cricket location in the world (certainly after the rain that blighted my visit had compacted the sand) at Copacabana, but with the crap weather I had a chance to contemplate some stuff that I could include. I thought, and I’ve blatantly nicked the idea from Awful Announcing, that we consider a Mount Rushmore of Outside Cricket. The four characters that have shaped the Outside Cricket agenda, if there is an agenda, the most. It could be a player, it could be a writer, an anouncer, an administrator, a coach. It can’t be one of us, that’s the only stipulation. I would like you to nominate four individuals to be cast in stone!
Of course, eyes will focus on the Worst Journalist result. A keenly fought contest, the reigning champions have been sacked within the year – Pringle winning in 2014, Selfey last year – so who are we going to curse this year.
The International Summer
England’s Test Player Of The Summer (Top Three) –
Best Overseas Test Player Of The Summer (Top Three)
Best Test Innings Of The Summer (Top Three)
Best Bowling Performance (Individual) Of The Summer (Top Three)
Journalists & Commentators (Bloggers do not count, cricket press, writing for papers, magazines and cricinfo)
Best Three Journalists (rank order)
Worst Five Journalists (rank order)
Best Commentator
Oh No! Why He Is On? Worst Three Commentators
Mount Outside Cricketmore
Your four people to be inaugurated onto the mountain…
Open Space –
Your overall comments on the summer….
Comments on the blog –
What do you like, what don’t you like, what would you like to see more of, would you like to write? All here…
You can send these to Dmitriold@hotmail.co.uk or comment below. I will bring you the results somewhere near 1 November, so you have time. But quick responses are often the best ones.
So, the squad for Bangladesh has been announced, and for a sweet while there isn’t the mechanisms of an additional T20 competition to be debated over and over again, I give thanks for small mercies.
First thought is that it’s a bit of a strange squad, even with the India tour in mind, a team of 17 for 2 Tests seems a bit OTT to me, but probably reflects England’s uncertainty in conditions that aren’t conducive to the game plan of playing 4 seamers and hoping they’ll gel enough to take enough wickets to disguise the lack of a middle order that we have.
First things first, I massively think Hameed is a big talent, but we might have a Sheep replica in the fact he scores at quite a low rate (from memory that was the same criticism aimed at Compton and also at times with Trott). We might be 24-0 off 12 overs but is that pushing the match forward with the flimsy middle order that we have, well I’ll leave that for you to decide. 65-4 off 25 overs isn’t a brilliant position. I personally think Hameed will end up taking Cook’s position in the future, but both opening the batting together, that I’m not so sure about..
As for the spin options, despite being a Middlesex fan, I’m not desperately disappointed about Batty being picked. Liam Dawson was always the vanilla ‘let’s cover all bases’ pick that England made when picking Samit Patel for the UAE tests. Not bad at things, but hardly a master at either. Jack Leach would’ve been a far more progressive pick but we do have James Whittaker as Chief Selector, so progressive is unlikely to ever take priority. Batty will do a decent job, and despite being a bit of a dick (sorry Middx bias again) he’ll do a decent job if called upon. I can’t see Duckett or Ansari playing in the Tests, which is a shame as both are very talented.
Oh and just a small note around how the gutter press, yes Paul Newman, John Etheridge and the rest of the idiots, have treated Eoin Morgan in the last week. It’s been nothing more than jingoism gone mad, I’m not a massive fan of Morgan, but to call him out for not singing the national anthem (slight clue is that he’s Irish and if Ireland had been given a fair go at international cricket, then I doubt we’d been in this situation) and because he prefers the IPL to the county game. This is nothing more than blame storming, no-one really knows the background to Morgan’s decision, but to see the bile from so-called experts is more than disappointing. I guess Brexit means Brexit in some people’s eyes…
Be interested to hear what everyone else thinks…
As a side note TLG is away in Indonesia and Dmitri has been snowed at work and is away from Sunday this week, so apologies if posts are slightly sporadic over the next week, and we’re not even going to touch the FTA debate judging from comments from the last post!
Sorry everyone. The travails of the real world have put a hold on new postings. I’m thoroughly busy in the office, Southeastern are a disaster area, and when I get home I find I want to veg out on the sofa. So cricket has taken a little bit of a back seat.
So here we are. Chris is still in foreign lands. I’ll be far far away for most of next week, so we’ll see if Sean or any of our guest writers can fill in the breach in the meantime.
So, to avoid SimonH’s excellent ICC post getting cluttered up with even more comments, let’s have your views on the news coming from the meeting of county chairmen today. Were they all mouth and no trousers – and Yorkshire, I’m looking at you. How far will the south east resistance go – Kent, Sussex and Surrey reputed to be the ones to stand up to Mr Mediocre and the Empty Suit? Can #39 avoid licking so many ECB boots that he comes down with cherry blossom poisoning (an Only Fools and Horses joke)? Watch as other media giants push each other out the way to crawl to the ECB. It’s been a spectator sport all right.
Simon H is the man I look to for updates on the governance of the game. Here is his take on the events of this week….as always, many thanks to Simon for his time and effort in putting this together…. He e-mailed me this last night and there’s an update at the bottom to reflect further events.
SUITS, NOT BOOTS
It’s been a stellar few days for those of us (and we number literally in our half dozens) who find cricket governance fascinating. The administrator-media complex that runs the game have produced three stories at more or less the same time, so here’s some attempt to sort out what’s been going on:
The ICC.
As LCL has already written, there has been an ICC board meeting in Dubai. I’m very much a newcomer to trying to understand the ICC and don’t claim any great expertise here. Firstly, those who remember the world pre-1990 may remember something called Kremlinology. This was how outside observers tried to understand the goings-on in the USSR without virtually any official sources – no minutes, no press releases, no interviews, no diaries, no leaks, no non-attributable briefings, no former members pontificating in TV studios. The ICC offices in Dubai feel very much like the Kremlin, except they’re uglier and less drafty.
So, from a handful of statements that have appeared, and from the sterling work of the handful of journalists who are interested, what can we glean? This was an ICC board meeting, featuring the heads of domestic boards but not, as far as I can gather, Shashank Manohar. The formal ICC meeting is next month (I thought it was going to be in Singapore but it now seems to be in Cape Town). ICC board meetings don’t appear to generate any minutes (not that they are ever anything less than next-to-useless) and I don’t think they have any formal power. However, informally, they seem to matter a great deal in preparing issues for the ICC meeting proper.
The big story emerged, of course, on the first day in the lack of a majority for the draft two-division plan for Test cricket. The plan needs seven FMs in support and only had six. India, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe were the four against. This was apparently ‘understood’ without a formal vote and was used to prevent the plan even being discussed. Therefore, a measure backed by 60% of the FMs, presumably most of the associates if anyone bothered to ask them and 72% of players according to a FICA survey (although that may be deserving of some scepticism) has been quashed. The most that seems possible is a play-off between the top two in the rankings (hands up who’d like that to Pakistan – and India). Money talks and democracy walks in cricket governance.
That headline story may mask that other measures won approval at the board meeting. ODI and T20 leagues were supported. This will necessitate ODI series being standardised at three matches of each – and every team will have to play the other top thirteen at least once in a three year cycle (hmm, I’ll believe that when it happens). The leagues will be used for qualification to ICC tournaments. It was also agreed members retain control of Test fixtures and the ICC continues to have no power here. Most importantly, there appears to be some move towards revenue-sharing with England, Australia and South Africa keen to pool their TV revenues and other boards welcome to join. This has the potential to be massively important and needs more discussion among cricket-followers. Cricinfo report that changes in the Indian TV market are the driving force behind this and a sharp decline in those revenues is expected. There has been an assumption that sharing means it would be equal – but that remains an assumption.
The background to much of this appears to be a rapidly souring relationship between Manohar and the BCCI. The head of the BCCI has been visiting Srini and playing the card straight from the Srini handbook – threatening boycotts of ICC events, starting with the 2019 CT. Resentment at funding for the CT compared to the T20 WC has been cited – Manohar disputes their figures and the chances of any of us knowing who’s right are as great as a recall for Nick Compton. The internal politics of Indian cricket are something we’d all better learn to start taking an interest in:
And although it’s hardly been mentioned, all this would seem to leave Manohar’s plan of handing back 6% of India’s 22% ICC revenue-share as dead in the water….. which I rather suspect was, ultimately, the point.
City-franchises
Not to be outdone in farcical cricket governance, the ECB have been building up to their very own D-Day. The interminable debate about city-franchises has led many to tune out of the issue – but the crunch meeting is soon upon us as September 14th looms. The proposal needs a two-thirds majority and Nick Hoult, who’s reporting on this has been in a league of its own, reports the ECB are close to achieving the numbers they need.
This isn’t the place to debate again the merits of city-franchises. Whatever one thinks of the idea, the methods of the ECB are the issue here. They’ve presented county chairmen with five options – but to discover these “options”, the chairmen have had to sign ten year gagging clauses. We may discover what these options are later next week once this meeting is done. The ECB’s conception of options might turn out to look rather like that expressed here (starting at 14:55):
Then there is the role of our media chums. Curiously, a number of writers who have taken a not exactly critical line of the ECB in recent years have suddenly discovered a rampant enthusiasm for city-franchises. One got an extended holiday with his mate out of it. Others have been convinced more easily. They get to know confidential ECB survey evidence that has not been published. They don’t know how that survey was conducted, and whether the results are worth the paper they’re written on, but they’ll repeat them anyway:
They’ll use their Twitter accounts and magazines they’ve somehow come to edit as platforms for not debating an issue but prosleytizsng a cause. Maybe they are genuinely convinced? Maybe after the nonsense of the last two years, they don’t deserve any benefit of the doubt……
Finally, Nick Hoult captures in a nutshell what lies behind all this:
Some have already decided it’s because Morgan isn’t English enough. That’s all they needed to know, they’ve known it in their bones all along when he wouldn’t sing the national anthem or miss the IPL to watch it rain in Ireland.
Some are reading Strauss’s comments about not going giving opportunities to others as trying to pressurise Morgan and as a veiled threat. I’m not exactly Strauss’s greatest fan, but I think these were more anodyne statements of the patently obvious. The captaincy will now presumably be between Root and Buttler. We’ve seen there are some doubts about the former as captain before and there has been some talk of resting him in the Bangladesh ODIs. Some may also suspect he would raise more issues about the Test captaincy. Smart money may be on Buttler.
Will others follow Morgan and opt out? If they do, Morgan is damned for influencing them. If they don’t, Morgan is damned for thinking he’s something special. Maybe KP’s intervention might produce some desire among the ECB to show that he was wrong and they will forgive Morgan. Maybe…
SATURDAY UPDATE FROM SIMON…
I should say this was written late yesterday afternoon and quite a bit happened just afterwards. Newman’s article for one. the discovery of Dobell’s podcast for another:
Reading Sharda Ugra on Cricinfo has also opened up a new interpretation of the two-division plan – that the ECB and CA were trying to drive the less attractive parts of their schedule off the roster just before negotiating new TV rights’ deals. It’s a new argument – but if trying to judge whether they are more motivated by short-term greed or a sudden conversion to the principles of meritocracy, which one – based on their recent track record – seems more likely?
You can read the rest. Jarrod lets the BCCI and Anurag Thakur have it with both barrels.
Here at Being Outside Cricket, well especially me, I bow to Simon H when it comes to matters of ICC and world administration. It’s tough to keep up with the machinations of our press and ECB goings on without keeping an eye on what is happening in the international game. But what we all know is that India control the game – and Indian fans save your admonishment because this is realpolitik not some cosy fancy “good for the game” nonsense that I’m fed by people who want more of my cash to be able to watch the sport we all love. For that’s what this is all about. As Gideon Haigh says, what are fans other than something to be monetised? Sport has always been about money and entrenching power. The “product” on the field is a definite second.
But hey, you say, if the product is rubbish then no-one will watch? Well, yes, to a degree. I happen to think that “modern football” of the last 20 or so years, while technically much better, is far less exciting. It’s why I don’t go to my team any more – I was bored watching defensive, fearful football, with losing more feared than winning enjoyed – and yet the Premier League is doing better (supposedly) than ever in the money stakes. India have the IPL – I really couldn’t tell you who won it, was it Bangalore? – and it rakes in a fortune. The Indian national team is a money printing machine, and while they have the cash they do not have one vote on the table. They have THE vote.
We can sit here and moan all we like. This is the real world. We have ONE jewel in the crown – our team plays a massively lucrative series against Australia – but non-India years in the accounts are not good. We’ll see how down they are when we get the next season’s accounts, but revenue was well down in 2015 from 2014, and that was from India to Australia, and they are bound to be a lot worse compared to 2015. Money men, and it’s usually men, who run cricket, don’t tend to do altruism, and in many cases don’t take a long-term view.
One thing with the Giles Clarke interview in The Cricketer is that where there is lots of plaudits on himself for securing a lucrative TV contract without which the professional game in this country could not have survived – his words – he has seen a growth in international player’s wages in the UK which has not been matched by a growth in the game itself. You only have to look at clubs in my area merging or folding (our team did because we had no younger players, and the constant strife the counties put themselves in while paying players money they can’t afford. It’s come to the point where the game in England depends on whether a TV company is going to pony up the money to pay for it. At some point the sports rights market is going to be saturated and people won’t pay any more. Take the fact the US Open tennis has been dropped by Sky, for the cost, I read, of ONE Premier League fixture. Cricket better not be still standing when the music stops and the chairs are all taken.
It’s OK for us diehards to say “that Pakistan series was great and we should have more of them” because Sky don’t want that stiff. They’d have Australia and India alternating if they had their way. They’d have an IPL in England if they had their way. And that’s the issue for us, and increasingly on a global scale. TV calls the tune, and more importantly, Indian TV money (not influence, as the way they are advised to broadcast shows the power the BCCI holds) does, and that’s a lot of money.
There were a lot of rumblings when Shashank Manohar swept on the scene, stopped Giles becoming the head of the ICC, made some very nice international noises which were in contrast to Srinavasan, that all wasn’t all it seemed. A number of the constituent parts of the BCCI weren’t so keen on hearing about THEIR revenue being nicely shared around the world for the “good of the game”. I could just imagine out constituent Premier League clubs doing just the same – a bit like how the top boys react when the Champions League is being reformed, The top boys want the riches for themselves. The assured cash flow. To hell with fairness and competition.
Now, it appears, at the ICC council that the Indian board aren’t going to be as fulsome in their altruism as we first thought. Part of me says why the hell should we. If we were in their shoes, we wouldn’t be. If any part of this impinged on counties, we’d have no chance of changing the rules. So don’t be slagging India off for doing what we would do.
Two division test cricket would only have worked if we truly believe England, India or Australia would have been allowed to be relegated. If you believe that, then you should check the bottom of the garden for fairies. Cricket is bankrolled by India, so what they say will pretty much go. The IPL has pretty much destroyed, if it needed much help, test cricket in the West Indies as it always clashes with their season. The best West Indian players get to “choose” whether to earn a reasonably small sums in an uncompetitive team on dreary wickets in the Caribbean, or pocket a small fortune in playing in a competitive if ultimately relatively meaningless “league” in India. That’s tough. Don’t spend too long thinking about it.
The game is run for naked self-interest. We got angry, rightfully so, and we should never not get angry, at this. Of course we do. We’re bloody diehards. But we aren’t who boards care about. We’re the ones taken for granted that we’ll still be there when it all falls apart. We’ll still cough up our Sky Subs, our match tickets, even our memberships just to watch the game.
I hope Simon will write a piece on the meeting – if not, I’m sure he’ll comment – but the ICC haven’t surprised me in the slightest, and I’ll bet deep down they’ve not surprised Jarrod, Sam, Gideon, and all those others out there who railed against the machine. What they have done is make things a little less comfortable, but when there’s money to be made, and cash and power to be invested in themselves, personally, now, I’m afraid mere diehards can go do one…..
So @ianuragthakur you can save cricket. Or you can be just another person who behaves selfishly with a game loved by billions. Your choice
Just listened to the Ugra clip on Cricinfo headlined “BCCI standing with the “small guys”. Really? REALLY? Because they are voting against a two-tier system when they themselves virtually operate one themselves (no tests against Bangladesh at home until the FIRST one in Spring next year). I’m sorry, you’ll have to come up with a better rationale than that.
I’m really sorry to do this. But let me just put this excerpt from The Cricketer out there. It’s not a great copy, but it is readable. A piece by Simon Hughes (aka #39).
News Hughes. We were there. We documented it. We commented it. Don’t lie to us. Don’t omit Strauss. Don’t pretend that this was informal – he gave up money to have a go, and Graves spoke out on the radio – and don’t pretend Pietersen was the author of that sordid episode as the comment “went off in a huff” implies.
This is why I do what I do. I can’t abide this distortion. It treats the public like idiots. This excerpt is from the Power List piece on COLIN GRAVES. This incident made Graves look like an imbecile. Not the most powerful man in cricket. Strauss finished KP’s career, probably in alliance with about three other people. Graves was made to look a clown.
#39 getting high on his own power trip. This is nonsense.
As Chris so elegantly described in his last post, England are somewhat riding the crest of a wave with our current ODI team’s performance, something that none of us thought we would be saying after the nadir of the 2015 World Cup and a million miles away from the “look at the data” comments post Bangladesh hiding. Hales, Roy, Root and Buttler have all stood up with the bat and can be counted amongst the top level of ODI batsmen and we also now have a battery of fast bowlers that can cause the opposition all sorts of problems on most pitches around the world. Credit where credit is due, Morgan, Bayliss, Farbrace and Director, England Cricket have woken up, smelt the coffee and have encouraged the England players to play attacking cricket without worrying about being dropped for playing what could be perceived as a reckless shot. This has led to a settled team playing very good white ball cricket; Yes there will be times when our batting collapses in a heap trying to be too adventurous but I’m sure most would be happy to accept this in the overall scheme of moving our white ball cricket forward.
Naturally, I am finally glad to be able to witness an England team playing this attacking style of cricket and looking to push the boundaries (whatever that means, it seems to be uttered in every post match interview), but what I am struggling to understand is why England haven’t rested Root or Moeen, who have played all formats all summer. Yes, I agree it’s good to have consistency of selection and results have shown that, but not if it burns out two important players in what is likely to be a packed and arduous winter. Surely it would have been good to have seen more of Dawson, Malan or Duckett so England can pick their best team for the Champions Trophy from a pool of 18-20 players rather than grind some of our better players into the ground and then hope and prey they don’t get injured; after all, we’re all too tiresomely aware of England’s bad habit of sticking with a certain formula and then throwing someone else into the team in a panic when someone loses form or gets injured just before a major tournament. C’est la vie, just my opinion anyway.
So from the positive to the slightly negative and without wanting to be churlish, Pakistan have looked like a side that either wishes it was back on the plane or perhaps more worryingly that they are setting out to play the type of outdated cricket that England were quite rightly criticised for during the Peter Moores reign. Scores of 350+ are now the norm rather than the exception, especially with pitches more akin to ‘bowlers graveyards’ being readily prepared all around the world, so Pakistan’s cautious approach to the first three ODI’s has been somewhat mystifying, though naturally their comedy fielding hasn’t exactly helped matters either. One could rightly point out that the lack of a substantial domestic competition in Pakistan has hindered them massively (despite the advent of the PSL), as it has enormously, but that isn’t much compensation to those fans that were looking forward to an even contest between the two teams. Unfortunately, I can only see another couple of easy wins for England in the next couple of games, which I hope doesn’t take the gloss off what was a very good Test series.
Anyway for those that want to comment on the 4th ODI, please do so below:
I used to be a Surrey member. I’ve been a supporter since the 1970s, when I followed my deceased grandfather’s teams rather than my Dad’s (Dad was Kent), and thus can’t be accused of the old “bandwagon” tag. But I did become a member for about six years from 2001 onwards, and spent some great days at The Oval, as well as going to Guildford and Whitgift over the years.
I had some leave to take and thought the Lancashire fixture looked like one to be at. For me Surrey v Lancashire will always bring me back to a magnificent tense Day 4 back in 2002, when Ramps took us home against a pretty decent Lancashire attack (Chapple, Flintoff and Hogg). This year’s match saw two teams looking up and down, as the table is very congested in the middle, with only Middlesex, Yorkshire and Nottinghamshire really sure of their fate (safety/relegation). All eyes look at Hampshire and what one win might do to the competition, so although Surrey lay in third place, they had played more and could not afford a slip-up. A win would guarantee survival, more or less.
Being Outside Cricket 