Amidst all the dire weather we’ve been having lately, one thing that has brought a smile to my face was an article by Christopher Martin-Jenkins in The Times last week.
In it he wrote of his slow recovery from illness, which has involved chemotherapy, radiotherapy and a series of seven operations. He won’t, he says, be able to attend the first Test at Lord’s next week, but is looking forward to watching it on TV, with great anticipation: “Never, truly, have I so looked forward to a Test match.”
It’s an article that gladdens the heart, not just because CMJ is on the mend, but because his joyful anticipation of the start of England’s international summer crystallizes all that is good about cricket and being alive to see it.
Not only that, but with the weather set fair for at least the next few days, it seems, after a false start involving much rain and many interrupted days of county cricket, with the first Test against the West Indies only days away, like we might be getting a summer after all.
I wish I could be as optimistic as CMJ about the Windies’ chances, though.
Their preparation has been shambolic. They arrived in the the UK last week in dribs and drabs due to visa cock-ups, and an eleven minus captain Darren Sammy were comprehensively demolished by England’s second string in the Lions game at Northampton. True, their batsmen did put up a better showing in their second innings, and Darren Bravo’s 57, following on from his 51 in the first innings, gave the pundits a chance to dust off those Brian Lara comparisons. But one respectable innings total and a couple of decent individual performances won’t win you a Test match, and certainly not against a full-strength England side.
That’s not to say there isn’t talent in the West Indies ranks – far from it. Their seam attack in English conditions could cause the home side some problems, though our batsmen have been more vulnerable to spin recently, as that embarrassing winter tour in the UAE demonstrated. But even then, bowling out this formidable England batting lineup twice seems like a mighty big ask, and their own batting looks brittle and inexperienced; one fears Shiv Chanderpaul will once again be asked to bear a heavy load on those diminutive shoulders.
When this West Indies team takes the field at Lord’s, it will be notable more for its absences. Chris Gayle, of course, is the most high profile. To a neutral, the conflict between him and the West Indies Cricket Board has been a long-protracted soap opera, a jaw-dropping saga of board-versus-player pettiness and pomposity. That finally seems to have come to an end now, with Gayle likely to be selected for the limited-overs matches that follow the Tests, though it seems the board administration took one more opportunity to place Gayle on the naughty step when it questioned his attitude for requesting clarity regarding his international future before turning down a T20 contract with Somerset.
Other notable absences include Dwayne Bravo and Sunil Narine, who, along with Gayle, are currently making the most of lucrative contracts in the IPL, the tournament that to the WICB represents such a huge stumbling block on the road back to the glory days for its national team.
In an article in The Cambridge Companion to Cricket, published last year, Hilary Beckles, a director of the West Indies Cricket Board, wrote: “No previous generation of West Indian cricket leaders has had as divisive an impact on Caribbean development discourse as that of Lara and Gayle. The failure of their teams to compensate for the spreading sense of despair in West Indian socio-economic decline and political disillusionment led to an intensely critical perception of both as politically unfit for the role of leadership. The public feels, furthermore, that despite its insistence on the team having an important political role ‘beyond the boundary’, the game has been hijacked by an uncaring cabal of mercenary money seekers, players without attachment to traditional sources of societal concerns.”
This, in a nutshell, is the conflict that lies at the heart of the mess West Indies cricket is in. To reinforce the credo of country before self the WICB has taken a route that favours the dictatorial over the constructive, and as far as individual player selection goes has discarded the disruptive in favour of the malleable.
It’s not an approach that makes much sense. It seems counter-productive to dispense so drastically with experience for the sake of unquestioning obedience. There also seems to be a lack of transparency as to why certain players have been discarded. The most notable of these are two players currently plying their trade – and scoring runs – in English county cricket.
Ramnaresh Sarwan has so far been a valuable addition to Leicestershire’s ranks this year, and while he could have been forgiven for rethinking his decision to sign for the Foxes in light of April weather that required a minimum of three jumpers, he quickly figured out the best way to keep warm at a chilly Grace Road is to score runs, and lots of them. You’d think his 105 against Derbyshire a few days before the squad was announced, as well as a Test average of 40, might have put him in with a shout of selection, but it seems other factors might have told against him.
He cites his closeness with the West Indies Players’ Association, which has a long history of conflict with the WICB, as the likely reason. “There are a few in the Caribbean who have been targeted and I am one of them,” he says. “I am trying not to focus on it too much, I am just happy to be here at Leicestershire. I do not have to worry about any coaches telling my fellow players that he wants me to fail and that he does not want me in the team.”
Brendan Nash, dropped from the West Indies squad last October while vice-captain, became so disillusioned with his treatment by the WICB that he moved back to Australia to play grade cricket for Melbourne’s Doutta Stars, saying he had no intention of returning to Jamaica in the near future. He is now scoring runs for Kent, and like Sarwan his experience has proved invaluable. He admits now his international career is probably over, but is still not sure entirely why.
“Looking back on my five years in West Indies cricket, it is a structure that is designed to make you fail,” he said. “I think I speak for a lot of guys when I say they are unsure what they need to do and why some people are selected, whether they are just from the right island, or what.”
Given their bowling attack, and the erratic but undoubted talent of the likes of Darren Bravo, green shoots of recovery do seem to be appearing for the West Indies, and – credit where credit’s due – Darren Sammy has grown into the leadership role beyond that of specialist coin-tosser to instil some team spirit into his troops. But when coach Ottis Gibson states: “If we can take this Lord’s Test to four days, that will be great,” it seems those shoots may yet be rooted in shallow soil.
Come Thursday, England’s goal will be to make them wilt.
“I suppose it would be dull if one’s fortunes in cricket flowed along happily, roses all the way. But it’s most discouraging to do badly and worse, it preys on the mind. Unless runs come soon, it will become an obsession. It’s very hard to disassociate one’s human worth and one’s success with a lump of wood in one’s hand.”
In 1983, Peter Roebuck kept a diary of his year with Somerset in domestic cricket. With his death in controversial circumstances last November, It Never Rains… A Cricketer’s Lot has become increasingly hard to find. Written by a man who, by all accounts, was something of a difficult enigma, this is generally acknowledged to be his most honest and revealing book.
Cricketers’ diaries are ten a penny now, mostly consisting of ghost-written and vacuous PR speak that pay mere lip-service to revealing what goes on behind the heady heights of international success or the often-misleading glamour of a sportsman’s life.
The most notable break from this trend recently has been from the pen of Tasmanian cricketer (and now Australian opening batsman) Ed Cowan, and the direct and revealing honesty with which he writes of the fears and insecurities that can bedevil a professional sportsman is perhaps not so surprising given Roebuck was Cowan’s mentor.
I was never the biggest fan of Peter Roebuck’s cricket reporting. Most of it seemed skewed either by the grudge he bore against England after leaving the country in the wake of his conviction for caning three young South African cricketers, or controversial rabble-rousing, often for the sake of effect – a suspicion confirmed upon reading that he liked to draw up a list of ten contentious statements which he would then try to shoehorn into whichever article he happened to be writing that day. The apex (or nadir) of this journalistic approach came when he called for Ricky Ponting to be sacked as captain of Australia after the ill-spirited Sydney test against India in 2008. Shrill, bombastic and completely over-the-top, it came across initially as a reaction to be filed in the “knee-jerk violent enough to cause tendon damage” category, but there also remained the suspicion of cynical provocation. “Sacking the captain was the only story remotely dramatic enough to bring everything out into the open,” he wrote later, a statement which did little to disabuse me of this notion.
So, when I was finally able to get my hands on a copy of It Never Rains, it surprised me how much I enjoyed it. It is honest and without artifice. Absent is the bluster and the bombast, the grandstanding and the rabble-rousing; in its place is self-doubt and an outsider’s not always successful attempts to be comfortable in a team environment dominated by alpha personalities; a man trying to find his way (and himself) in a sport he’s not even sure he wants to succeed in. “It’s strange that cricket attracts so many insecure men,” he wrote. “It is surely the very worst game for an intense character… There must be some fascinating stimulation in the game to make so many of us, so ill-prepared for turmoil, risk its ugly changes. Otherwise we’d never tolerate its bounce of failure. And it is mostly failure, even for the best.”
The start of the 1983 season was, like the current one, ruined by rain, with the inevitable introspection that comes with much sitting around, waiting for play to be called off for the day or the match to be abandoned. Most of the concerns that cricketers fretted over then were the the same as they are now, and despite the eighties trappings of Austin Maestros, John Cleese and gammon and chips (no Nando’s in those day) there was still too much cricket, too much travel, burnout by season’s end, fretting over form and weather, the difficulty of having to adapt one’s game from a limited overs match one day to the resumption of the Championship on the next. Not much changes.
The glimpses of Somerset’s two big galacticos in those days, Ian Botham and Viv Richards, are fascinating when seen through Roebuck’s eyes, especially in light of the internecine warfare that was to tear the club apart three years later. Richards, especially, is portrayed as a force of nature, a man deeply admired but also to be regarded with respectful wariness: “I can remember the day in 1978, after our defeats in September, when he went into the bathroom and in his despair smashed his bat to pieces. You don’t meddle with people like that.” When Richards commiserates with Roebuck on his lack of runs, Roebuck is almost abjectly grateful for the concern, like someone finding himself sharing a cage with a man-eating lion that’s decided not to rip his face off.
It’s in the frank discussion of the depression that hit him that Roebuck was so ahead of his time, and it is an appalling indictment of professional sport, not just cricket, that it is only recently that cricketers and other sportsmen feel they can be open about an illness that has caused so many to suffer in silence. The search for form becomes futile, the walls of hotel rooms start closing in, the slog of a long season becomes a never-ending treadmill. The shadows descended upon Roebuck with a vengeance in July. “I’m stuck in a swamp, being sucked down and waving my arms around in desperation, hoping that someone will notice.” The day that was surely the darkest, Monday 1 August, contains only two words: “No entry.”
Roebuck had his demons. He had friends, who, during those black dog days of August in 1983, helped him beat them back for a time, but, in the light of the way he met his end, and the allegations that followed, there was no-one, it seemed, who really knew or understood him. He certainly seems not to have made it easy for people to get close to him.
And there’s the rub – reconciling the openness with which he wrote his 1983 diary and the controversy that dogged him until his death and which still surrounds him.
They say never speak ill of the dead. My experience in the funeral business has taught me the implications that often lurk beneath the euphemisms when it comes to remembering the deceased. “Straight talking”: boorishly opinionated. “Would give you his last penny”: easily taken advantage of. “Life and soul of the party”: raging alcoholic.
I’ll admit the gushing eulogies that appeared after Roebuck’s death, and in most cases the complete airbrushing out of the controversial events in his past, made me uneasy. One blog that did venture another view reeked offensively of homophobia – and that just made me angry. What troubled me was that even-handedness, a picture of the whole man, seemed in very short supply; it seemed easier to fall back on those timeworn cliches: “troubled”, “conflicted,” “complex”, “tormented”.
“He did not crave partners on an equal footing but followers,” wrote Derek Pringle. Perhaps, in his struggle with his sexuality, he found a refuge and ordering of his inner chaos within the strictly defined frameworks of mentor and pupil, master and apprentice, and in his role of father-figure to adopted African “sons”. But abuse of authority is abuse, regardless of gender or sexuality, and it is this need for control that seems to have been inextricably bound up with his sexuality, and which at times seems to have made others do what they would rather not do, that does not sit easily with me.
Roebuck could be open about his depression but feared the glare of the spotlight of public attention. When asked at one point whether he’d ever want to play for his country, he wrote: “I suspect I could tolerate the pressures of Test cricket; it’s the exposure I’m not so sure about.”
When he threw himself from the sixth floor of a South African hotel on the evening of November 12th, 2011, it would seem that this fear of exposure extended to his life off the cricket field as well.
I’ve not yet sat down and watched an IPL game all the way through this year.
I didn’t mean it to work out this way. There were things I wanted to see, such as Rahul Dravid’s swansong before he sinks gratefully into the rocking chair of retirement, Jesse Ryder’s timeout from New Zealand cricket after another boozy misadventure, the ridiculous ongoing KKR soap opera and gauging how badly they are doing by the point at which Shahrukh Khan stops turning up to their matches.
I have caught a few passages of play here and there, but the thing that’s struck me most, though, are the uncomfortable juxtapositions that have been occurring lately. One could even call them examples of dramatic irony. On the day that Chris Gayle went ballistic for Bangalore at the Chinnaswamy versus Pune Warriors – a scorching innings of 81 that included five sixes in one over off the hapless Rahul Sharma – Shivnarine Chanderpaul was determinedly grinding out the runs at Port of Spain to steady the Windies ship after a diabolical start where their first three wickets were lost for only 38 runs. These two innings, Gayle’s and Chanderpaul’s, and the 9,000 miles that separated them, represent the fault-line that divides the game. Sometimes, it feels as though you must be on one side or the other; as a fan, straddling that divide is uncomfortable, if not impossible.
The West Indies could have done with Gayle in their ranks during their hour of need, but he is where he is due to a chain of circumstances not entirely of his own making. In the form of the West Indies Cricket Board, it seems this unstoppable force managed to find its immovable object. There have been encouraging noises coming out of the Caribbean lately regarding a rapprochement between the two, but it seems wrong that Gayle should be in India while Chanderpaul takes the burden of his country’s Test hopes on his shoulders.
Kevin Pietersen too has entertained, but he has brought with him his own controversy, the way that only KP – genius, mould-breaker, shit-magnet – can do. He got himself into a bit of hot water the other week when he ascribed English attitudes to the IPL as jealousy. There was some confusion as to where and when (and if) the “jealousy” word was uttered, since Pietersen seems to have done more than one interview that day, but it provoked a fair amount of blustering and sputtering in the UK press. Coming so soon after his 151 against Sri Lanka at Colombo, lauded as one of the finest Test innings ever seen, and while English county cricketers ply their trade in freezing wet conditions on seaming spring wickets, it’s been another stark and discombobulating contrast. We’re not in Kansas anymore, Toto, and we’re not at The Oval freezing our extremities off, either, while waving arthritically to the pavilion for another jumper and a pair of hand warmers.
Judging by all the tub-thumping that occurs on Twitter and forums this time every year, there doesn’t seem much room for doubt in this brave new world – you’re either a clued-up progressive who moves with the times and accepts the IPL and all its various copycats as a logical, entertaining result of the sport’s snowballing commercialisation, or you’re derided as an antediluvian dinosaur (the term used to be “purist”, but you’re more likely now to be branded simply a snob) if you dare to venture a preference for the longer form. Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket has been cited many times in comparison as a similar gamechanger – once the dust had settled players were better paid, scoring rates in Tests became faster, the world did not end – but I’m resistant to the simplistic view that history repeats itself. True, both tournaments had their genesis through a desire for money and power, but the riches and influence have changed hands since Packer’s time. The lure of a large pay-cheque for a few week’s work continues to provide a headache for county and national administrators when it comes to fixture clashes and player availability. It’s an issue that’s grumbled about but continues more or less to be tiptoed around, lest the inevitable “restraint of trade” threat raises its head. You cannot blame Chris Gayle for helping his bank account by plying his trade in a variety of T20 tournaments. Hell, he’s great entertainment, and he’s making the most of the opportunities available to him. But he will be helping his country – and cricket – more when the WICB allows him back into the Test fold rather than treating him like a rebellious teenager.
The IPL isn’t Packer Version 2: it is less revolution than evolution, and whether it will prove a dead end in that respect is still too early to tell. Like the Titanic, it could end up being sunk eventually by the iceberg of indifference, a victim of its own hubris and bloated hype, as viewing figures and advertising drop off. Whether there will be any pickings left for cricket after it’s done pursuing its scorched earth policy through aggressive scheduling and self-interest is the main concern.
The death of Test cricket has been predicted before, and fair enough, it is still with us, but one could also say it’s these continually raised concerns that have reminded us of how much in the way of tradition and history we stand to lose. The erosion, though, has now reached a point of insidious acceleration. Pietersen was bought during the transfer window for this year’s IPL by Delhi in a deal reportedly worth US$2.3 million. For becoming the number one Test team, England received a cheque for US$175,000. Add to that the increasing frequency of two-Test series and the cancellation – sorry, “postponement” until 2017 – of the ICC Test Championship, and while it’s not quite barbarians-at-the-gates stuff, Test cricket’s fortifications could definitely do with some strengthening.
I do enjoy the IPL, albeit in moderation – like the coke-snorting yuppie who gatecrashes your party and drinks all your champagne, it does tend to go on a bit. I’m all for embracing change and accept that the game must adapt in this current economic climate. But some things are so valuable, you cannot measure them in money, and you cannot tear down a load-bearing beam in your house because the woodworm have taken a chomp at it and it doesn’t quite fit in with your snazzy new decor. It’s all about balance. Sure, you could probably make a home in the rubble if you needed to, but would you really want to live there?
It culminated in the doorbell going on Tuesday and my partner solemnly placing an Amazon package in my hands, and my fingers fumbling clumsily with scissors, sellotape and cardboard as I opened it. The packaging you want to open quickest always gives the most resistance.
In February last year, I was fortunate enough to be asked to write the article on blogs for this year’s Wisden Almanack. It’s sitting beside me as I type this – custard-yellow cover adorned with celebrating England fielders in fitting recognition of Team England’s ascendancy to number one Test nation. It has the reassuring heft of scholarship, tradition, and high quality writing, and for the first time has the name of Lawrence Booth on the cover.
After skimming briefly over my article to reassure myself it was really in there, and the last year of reading, note-taking, collation, near nervous-breakdowns, writing, rewriting and polishing hadn’t all been some fever-induced dream, I put the Almanack back down and spent the morning eyeing it nervously, circling it from a distance. These things can take some time to sink in. Then, predictably, the cricket fan in me gained the upper hand, and I started greedily perusing the other articles like a starving man at a gourmet dinner: the Five Cricketers of the Year (Tanya Aldred’s “cheese sandwich” line in her piece on Tim Bresnan has rightly been quoted numerous times), Gideon Haigh’s trenchant take on the ICC, Mike Yardy’s moving account of the depression which forced him home from the 2011 World Cup, and most notably Lawrence Booth’s hard-hitting view on the responsibility cricket boards must bear towards the well-being of the game… these are just a few of the many pieces of superb writing that you’d expect from the longest running and most famous sports annual in the world.
My article, “More rewarding than the facts”, is on page 161, if you fancy reading it.
There are a lot of blogs out there. Theodore Sturgeon once said that ninety percent of everything is crap, and this applies as much to blogs as anything else. But there is some superbly informed and passionate writing out there. I didn’t just want to do a list of the best, most of which the average internet-savvy cricket obsessive will already be familiar with. I wanted to highlight the ones that afforded an alternative window on what was happening in the cricket world at the time – writing that would make you think, raise an eyebrow, shake your head, or possibly even all three.
I also wanted to show that blogs and blogging, if not yet quite accepted as legitimate journalism, are at least attracting the attention of those in the sport’s upper echelons – something I experienced myself when Mike Atherton was kind enough to comment on my article on his interview with Mohammad Amir.
At the end of the day, I am just a fan. I’m an intensely private individual and I value my anonymity; like most introverts, I don’t crave the limelight and have little interest in self promotion. I am happier on my own or amongst a few like-minded cricket obsessives at Grace Road on a rainy April afternoon than I am at black tie dinners.
But when Wisden calls, you answer.
My main fear was that I’d miss some hidden gem, some piece of inspired lunacy or creative brilliance, but once I’d gathered my material, the gist of what I wanted to say took shape and my train of thought suddenly acquired a destination; the writing became the easy part. This was aided in no small part by the encouraging approval Lawrence Booth gave to my proposal, his helpful suggestions, and his assured touch as an editor. For the foreseeable future, the Almanack is in extremely good hands.
The best thing, though, about being published in the Almanack is seeing my name included in a list of contributors who, between them, have written at least a dozen of the books that currently occupy pride of place on my bookshelves. I finally saw sense in deciding not to pluck them all off the shelf and take them with me to the Wisden dinner to get them signed. To be listed alongside them and to be sitting amongst them on Wednesday night in the Long Room at Lord’s was an incredible honour and a dream come true.
Thanks must also go to Jarrod Kimber, whose article on the top Tweets of the year filled out the third page of my article. It was Jarrod who passed my details on to Lawrence and gave me this opportunity.
Finally, I’d be remiss if I didn’t mention the support and patience of my long-suffering partner, who once wryly observed that I can talk about cricket for four hours and not once repeat myself – and didn’t mean it as an insult (I think).
Cricket is a broad church which provides a welcoming sanctuary to a wide range of eccentrics and obsessives. I understand there was one such in situ at The Oval recently who mistook a pigeon for Jesus.
Me? Well, they let me write an article for the Wisden Almanack.
Typical, that I should be writing this as wind and sleet hammer at my window.
Last week, Leicestershire played Cambridge MCCU under skies that matched the light blue of the students’ caps. Tomorrow, the season proper begins with a championship match against Glamorgan. Given that storms have been raging up and down the UK all day the chances of a punctual start are looking slim.
I’d like to say that Leicestershire’s prospects this year are bright, but success in the FLT20 aside, last year’s results made for grim reading. Triumph at Edgbaston on Finals Day was a fantastic achievement, a testament to getting one over on the sleeping giants who underestimated them and then going all the way through a combination of never-say-die cricket and indomitable team spirit. It secured the county a place in the Champions League, and along with assistance from some generous benefactors, helped to drag the account books back into the black.
A replication of that success this year is statistically unlikely, although, despite losing James Taylor, Paul Nixon, Harry Gurney, and Andrew McDonald, notable components of that victorious outfit are still with us: Abdul Razzaq will be back for the 6-week campaign, Will Jefferson (if fit) will play his heart out, and never underestimate a team that has Josh Cobb bowling while Matthew Boyce patrols the boundary.
Becoming Twenty20 champions managed to take the sting out of finishing bottom of the Division 2 table of the County Championship.
But to be brutally honest, I’d gladly forgo any future success in T20 for promotion to Division 1. That, to me, and most supporters of county cricket, is the trophy that matters most. I look at what we have lost in terms of personnel and it is discouraging. James Taylor is again in the news, having hit 101* for Nottinghamshire against Loughborough MCCU. In comparison, Leicestershire were beaten in their encounter with Cambridge by 100 runs (granted, the stated intent was always to bat as if it were a four-day rather than a 50-over encounter, but the students seem not to have gotten that memo, accelerating markedly during their last 20 overs to set a total Leicestershire never looked in danger of chasing).
George Dobell wrote an excellent defence of county cricket at Cricinfo, arguing passionately for its preservation and against the raft of ridiculous regulations and requirements that currently hobble it – one such that directly affects Leicestershire this year involves the absence of Andrew McDonald due to the fact he has not played international cricket in the last five years. Dobell also takes well-aimed fire at David Morgan’s proposed cuts to the County Championship programme, and emphasises all that county cricket has given to team England in terms of talent and thus to the game as a whole. He notes, “The smaller clubs contribute just as much. Lowly Leicestershire, surviving on a turnover about 10% that of Surrey’s, have produced the likes of Stuart Broad, Luke Wright, James Taylor and Darren Maddy in recent years. Turn off their funding and that supply line will disappear.”
As a Leicestershire supporter, I’m proud of the success our players have gone on to enjoy. But that doesn’t help us win championships. I find myself with the same mixed emotions as this time last year: as the season starts, I see exciting young talent waiting to be developed and potential waiting to be fulfilled in the likes of Shiv Thakor, Rob Taylor, Greg Smith, and Ned Eckersley, and further Lions honours on the horizon for Nathan Buck, but I also see bigger clubs with bigger cheque-books hovering like vultures at the end of it.
It seems no matter how many England players we produce, we remain that most unfashionable of counties, the one everyone wants to leave. James Taylor has cited as the main reason for his move to Nottinghamshire his desire to test himself against first division bowling. One cannot blame him for making a move that will further his career, but given his talent, that he should have left was always going to be on the cards. Harry Gurney, too, had good reasons for leaving, due to a lack of opportunity in the four day game. But the fact remains that we are currently mired at the bottom of a division that’s regarded by many as a ghetto of losers, has-beens and never-will-bes, and this is why promotion is so vital, if we are to stop losing our best players.
Maybe it’s the weather, but I honestly did not set out to be so gloomy about Leicestershire’s chances this year. Aside from our promising young talents, Ben Smith, the county’s new batting coach, has arrived with a mission to transform Leicestershire’s batting in the four day game, and new signing Ramnaresh Sarwan, still feeling the sting of being dropped from the West Indies setup, is hungry for runs; hopefully the bad weather he’s experienced since he got here hasn’t dampened that zeal.
This year is likely to be another rebuilding year for the Foxes. Tomorrow, when the game against Glamorgan is due to start, the forecast is for overcast conditions but thankfully no rain. Here’s hoping at points during the season we see the sun.
I’d like to know what was going through Mahela Jayawardene’s head when he was given the captaincy of his country for the second time around in January.
Anyone who heard Kumar Sangakkara’s Spirit of Cricket speech last July knows Sri Lankan cricket has been in turmoil for some time now. The mess it’s gotten into hasn’t been as dramatic as that of West Indies cricket, but it’s been an unsavoury tale of internecine bickering, political interference and withheld payments. At one stage the ICC even had to step in to pay the cricketers, since the World Cup team haven’t been paid since last April.
If any of this gave Jayawardene a sinking feeling of “here we go again,” or even, in the words of Danny Glover in the Lethal Weapon movies, “I’m getting too old for this shit,” he hasn’t said. But since he’s regained the captaincy Sri Lanka have played positive, fighting cricket. Tillakaratne Dilshan found the captaincy crown an ill-fitting, weighty burden. He and his batting struggled under it; every time he went out to the middle he seemed to have storm clouds wreathed around his brow. He looked, as PG Wodehouse once wrote, like a man who has searched for the leak in life’s gaspipe with a candle. If ever there was the definition of a reluctant leader, Dilshan was it.
Mahela is cut from a different cloth; he doesn’t suffer fools but at the same time is his team’s even-tempered axis. Though it helps he has experience where this particular gig is concerned, leading by example seems a straightforward, reasonable requirement for the job as far as he’s concerned. When your country calls, you answer. The first Test at Galle in this series against England has been a masterclass of leadership and personal achievement. The prospect of failure becomes no longer an insurmountable obstacle to be crumbled before, but a challenge.
There was never the outright suggestion in the various previews that Sri Lanka would be a pushover for England after their UAE drubbing, but the many comparisons between the bowling attacks of Pakistan and Sri Lanka tended not to flatter Mahela’s men. After England were bowled out yesterday attempting an historic run chase of 340, it’s clear that what we were mostly guilty of was a gross underestimation of England’s ability to learn from their mistakes. The beatings will continue until morale improves. Or not.
Jayawardene may no longer have a Murali to turn to, but the last four days have shown that honest workman-like spin can trouble England just as well. Granted, the wicket was not quite as benign as some would have had us believe, but help for the spinners was more apparent during England’s second innings when they ironically made a better fist of things than in their first, when they were all out for 193 in under 47 overs. Their second innings was at least propped up by a magnificent century by Jonathan Trott – the slowest of his seven Test hundreds, the pacing of which was absolutely necessary – but their first was a baffling, kamikaze rush to disaster; if there was one consolation in seeing England batsmen give their wickets away through a slavish insistence on the sweep and a lemming-like urge towards self-annihilation, it was that at least they seemed in a hurry to put us all out of our misery.
Trott (along with Matt Prior and Ian Bell in supporting roles) aside, if England’s batsmen needed a masterclass on how to build an innings, Mahela Jayawardene provided them with a blueprint. The Baroque flourishes of Dilshan and other pyrotechnicians are not for him; his is a more Palladian architecture, with an adherence to first principles: balance, solidity, adaptability. Ornamentation and exuberance come after, when the edifice is sound. His batting is all clean lines, elegant simplicity, form through function. He came to the middle when Sri Lanka were in dire straits at 11-2, and on the rocks at 15-3; from then on it was a case of standing firm against the storm and keeping his side in the game with a magnificent 180. Of course, it’s not the first time he’s done this. His 115 against New Zealand in the 2007 World Cup – in which he started his innings with watchful circumspection and ended up pasting Shane Bond all round Sabina Park – is a particular standout. In Tests, he now averages 89.64 against England at home.
The components of England’s loss look unfortunate in isolation but disastrous when taken as a catalogue of mishaps, pratfalls and heat-addled shot selection. Mahela was dropped four times, Broad’s front-foot no-ball was revealed with tragicomic timing after the team had riotously celebrated bowling Sri Lanka out, and even England’s second innings seesawed repeatedly between hope and bathos as Jonathan Trott’s marathon innings was punctuated increasingly by his partners at the other end falling by the wayside through their own ineptitude – a Homeric epic interrupted constantly by advert breaks for double-glazing featuring second-rate comedians.
England must win in Colombo if they are to retain their number one Test status. The most worrying thing about this run of Test failures – four on the bounce now – is that while it’s tempting to look forward to a happier summer when England play the West Indies in May, the confidence of some players might be so shot by then, and the pressure on them to justify their selection so overwhelming, that Devendra Bishoo and Sunil Narine may end up causing them a very big headache indeed. After being put through the wringer in the UAE and Sri Lanka, it might just be a case of one spin cycle too many for England’s batting delicates.
On Monday evening, Sky Sports aired Michael Atherton’s hour-long interview with Mohammad Amir, the young Pakistan bowler sent to prison last year in the wake of the Lord’s spot-fixing scandal. Amir is currently serving a ban from all international cricket until 2015, and it is the first time he has told his story to the public since he pleaded guilty.
Mike Atherton is one of the finest and most perceptive commentators on the modern game. He wields an eloquent pen in fair and balanced fashion, wears his not-inconsiderable intelligence lightly, and while I may not always agree with everything he has to say, it’s a rare day indeed when I don’t admire the manner in which he’s expressed it.
So it’s fair to say I – along with many other cricket fans, judging by the buzz on Twitter – were looking forward to receiving (hopefully) honest answers to some tough questions.
But if it was a probing interrogation you were expecting, this wasn’t it. Playing Martin Bashir to Amir’s Diana, Atherton’s questioning of the young bowler constituted less a searching cross-examination than a series of gentle prompts to allow Amir to tell his story in what turned out to resemble a soft-soap PR exercise designed specifically to aid in the young bowler’s rehabilitation.
It’s hard not to be warmed by the first part of Amir’s story: his upbringing in the small village of Changa Bangyaal; his progression through the academy and the Under-19 setup; and the day he was told he would be playing for his national team, his description of being overwhelmed with pride at trying on his new Pakistan shirt for the first time, and of emotion at seeing his name and number on the back.
Talent like his comes along but seldom. It is every sports-fan’s favourite feel-good story: the penniless, gifted prodigy plucked from obscurity through a fortuitous combination of chance and a talent-spotter’s keen eye. Unfortunately, as we now know, with this story there was to be no fairytale ending.
I found myself watching Amir’s body language for signs of defensiveness and dissembling as the story proceeded into murkier waters: the approaches from captain Salman Butt; texts to and from “Ali”, the mysterious Dubai businessman unnamed until now; the hatching of the plot in Majeed’s car in the carpark of the Marriott Hotel the day before the Lord’s Test; the handing over of £1500 in cash.
And this is where my doubts started to creep in, when I really didn’t want them to.
Parts of Amir’s interview just don’t ring true for me. When first approached by Salman Butt about fixing, Amir says he responded with “bro this is forbidden… leave it, I am not going to do it”. However, the texts he sent to Ali before the Oval Test – including “for how much”, “but what needs to be done” and “so in the first 3 bowl whatever you like and in the last 2 do 8 runs” – are damning. That he could flip-flop between telling Salman Butt that fixing is wrong to exchanging incriminating texts with a dodgy Dubai businessman implies a willingness to succumb to temptation at best and an astonishing moral flexibility at worst. And despite the fact he knew, when he later accepted the £1500 from Majeed, that he had been asked to do something wrong, that “it was cheating cricket”, he still did not think to come clean at the ICC hearing in Doha.
If Amir was so certain then of the wrongness of what he was doing, then surely at some point the thought “I have to tell someone about this” would have presented itself. One would have had to have been delusional to think this continued collusion would never be found out, and surely at some point you’d think getting caught would have become a far more terrifying prospect.
I have sympathy for Amir’s youth, and am willing to allow for the fact he was naive and scared, but a cynic might also say that playing the naïveté card would most definitely be to Amir’s advantage in terms of rebuilding his career and reputation. In a follow-up article in The Times the day after the interview, Atherton conveys explicit belief in Amir’s story that he was blackmailed into going along with the fix, and that money was never a consideration.
And this is something else that bothers me.
Mike Atherton is a former England captain and a man who cares deeply about the sport. He is also a compassionate human being, who believes that Amir should be given a second chance: would there were more like him willing to extend forgiveness to those who are honestly repentant. But he is also a Sky Sports commentator and one generally expects one’s commentators to maintain a certain amount of impartiality.
Perhaps there is some sense of responsibility here, of redressing the fact that it was News Corporation, owner of the now-defunct News of the World as well as of a controlling stake in Sky, who were indirectly responsible for curtailing Amir’s career and landing him in prison with a six-month sentence and five-year ban. In his Times article Atherton writes that Amir’s downfall was the “unintended consequence” of an undercover reporter with a briefcase of cash putting pressure on a fixer to produce results and thus provide evidence of corruption. One of the ironies noted by many at the time was that it took a tabloid to achieve what law-enforcement could not do, given the various legal complications surrounding entrapment.
With this interview and his impassioned article, it would seem Mike Atherton has firmly nailed his colours to the mast as the vanguard of a campaign for clemency for the disgraced bowler. Any pretensions to playing devil’s advocate are removed when he writes:
“It seems to me that there are only two interpretations that follow on from Amir’s version of events. Either you believe him, which doesn’t in any way exonerate him from the guilt of the no-balls at Lord’s, but does provide some context and understanding of the hole he found himself in and the pressure he was under – context that suggests that much of the basis upon which he was imprisoned and banned from the game was false. Or you don’t believe him.
“Instead, you believe Majeed, who said in his conversations with the journalist that Amir was corrupt. And you believe Butt, who used the opportunity granted by Amir’s guilty plea and silence at court, to round on him and describe him as far removed from the innocent naïf that others have painted him as.”
In other words, you believe the unquestioned villains of the piece, the men for whom sympathy is rightly in very short supply, over the word of a naive young man led astray by those he trusted and too frightened to do anything other than to go along with them, and shame on you for doing so.
Forgive me if I don’t believe it’s that clear-cut. What if you don’t believe any of them?
Of course, Amir cannot change his story from when he pleaded guilty, but some of his answers seemed glib and rehearsed, tripping off the tongue with a familiarity gained through having said them many times before. Clearly he and his legal team have left nothing to chance. This in itself, of course, is no indication of guilt, but when you choose to defend yourself through the media, image is everything, and there were many who, rightly or wrongly – including myself – doubted his sincerity at various points in the interview.
It hardly needs pointing out, of course, that whether or not you believe him – and whether or not you want to do so – will be down as much to your emotional response as to the cold hard facts of the case.
The very essence of sport lies in the emotions it provokes in those who follow it. It is nothing without honesty of effort and sincere striving for victory on the part of those who take part in it. We should not hold sportsmen to be less flawed and less venal than we are, but we do. Athletes can be ruthless, unpleasant bastards who make the lives of those around them hell, but as long as they are accomplishing superhuman feats in their chosen sport through their own honest effort and ability we look up to them as gods. To throw a game or influence the outcome of it through dishonest means, especially where money is involved, in whatever context, is to the sports fan the ultimate betrayal.
Mohammad Amir bowled two no-balls. No one died. But in the context of sport, for many what he did is unforgivable.
I want to believe this young man. I want to believe he has a future. But if or when he ever steps onto a cricket field again, will we be able to trust him? Will we all be whipping out our mental tape-measures to compare the extent to which he overstepped at Lord’s to any no-balls he might bowl in the future? Is it ever possible he will play again without suspicion, no matter how much goodwill we may extend towards him? Pakistan’s cricket board and fans may very well feel the same way. It is easy to mourn the loss of Amir’s talent to the sport, but without him Pakistan cricket has moved on, with the recent series win over England a symbolic turning of the page.
Another thing the interview and article have failed to do is reassure me as to the extent of corruption in the sport.
In November of last year Atherton reported in The Times that the day after Amir pleaded guilty, a member of his family was approached in a mosque in Lahore and threatened. “And they wondered in the ICC hearing in January in Doha, Qatar, why Amir did not come forward and reveal all to save himself from a more serious sentence,” he wrote. During Amir’s sentencing, Justice Cooke said: “The reality of those threats and the strength of the underworld influences who control unlawful betting abroad is shown by the supporting evidence in the bundle of documents, including materials from the Anti-Corruption and Security Unit of the ICC”.
And yet in Tuesday’s article Atherton concludes instead: “The notion of an overarching syndicate or mafia-like organisation is clearly false. Fixes that happened were clearly based on friendships and loyalties within the team and would have been known only to those involved”. Given this all serves as an unpleasant reminder of the recent case of Mervyn Westfield and, before that, the highly suspect Sydney Test of 2010 and the allegations of absconding wicket-keeper Zulqarnain Haider, which is it? How far does the corruption spread?
None of this has given me any reassurance about the scale of corruption in cricket, or of Mohammad Amir’s part in it. If this was the intended purpose of the interview then, despite Atherton’s admirable willingness to see the best in his interviewee – one may question his judgement, but certainly not his compassion – for me, at least, it has created only more questions.
Fulsome tributes have been paid this week to two greats of the game. In one case it’s been a celebration; the other, farewell.
Viv Richards turned 60 on Wednesday. Today, Rahul Dravid announced his retirement from international cricket. Richards is a reminder of a once combative, proud nation, a conquistador with a cause; Dravid the consummate gentleman and understated technician, the velvet glove with the concrete core who gave his team backbone when it needed it while flashier performers stole the limelight.
Both men were major players in the forging of their countries’ national sporting identities and the casting off of the remnants of colonialism; both men were two of the greatest there have ever been.
Viv was a warrior: every match he played in a fierce skirmish between bat and ball which he regularly won. He may have called his bat his sword, but during his greatest achievements – 291 against England at the Oval in 1976, 182 not out at Bridgetown in 1981, fastest Test hundred against England in Antigua in 1986, to name but three – he wielded it like a hammer.
Dravid, though he may have laboured in Sachin’s shadow, was no mere shield-bearer. Like the man himself, his achievements, and the manner of their making, do not shout; it is only when you take the time to look at them that you realise their unarguable greatness. Second highest run-getter in the world in Tests; first Indian to score consecutive hundreds in four Test innings; possessor of five Test double hundreds; first player to score a century in all Test-playing countries… you will read many such lists today, and you will marvel at the numbers and at the longevity. There’s something gratifying about the fact his retirement comes while his performances in the England series last year are still so fresh in the memory, a series in which he shone while his team mates struggled. It’s always tempting to hope an old campaigner has one last fight in him; Dravid has walked away now while the decision is still his to make.
Aggression and eloquence; calmness and sheer force of personality; the battering ram and the Wall: Viv Richards and Rahul Dravid are two sides of a priceless coin that may no longer be in circulation, but that has given the sport such a store of riches to look back on.
Viv’s post-retirement career has not been smooth. Stanford ambassadorship; the travesty of the ground in Antigua named after him exposed as an unusable sand-pit during the England series of 2009. Such is the fragmented, troubled nature of West Indies cricket, the bickering between players and board and of the islands’ administrations with each other, that a man whose deeds could be used to inspire so many of the nation’s up-and-coming talent now chooses to steer well clear of any political involvement.
Dravid, similarly, is too valuable a statesman to be lost to the game, but whether he will feel similarly wary of the endless politicking of the BCCI and ICC remains to be seen.
All nations need their legends, reminders of what a country has achieved and of the heights it can reach again. Cricket in India and the West Indies is in a period of transition. India have yet to properly embark on their rebuilding; the West Indies have been in this phase for a long time but it has mostly been a case of one step forward, two steps back. If Viv Richards was the bullet fired at the heart of English and Australian superiority, the gun West Indies cricket is now wielding seems pointed squarely at its own feet. It says something that the only West Indian player who currently approaches Richards’ genius and swagger – Chris Gayle – is not even playing for his national team.
Whatever happens, the legacy of Dravid and Richards will remain untouchable. What they have given us, we will always have.
Of course time moves on. Sport, like so many other walks of life, is no country for old men. When Jeff Beck and Eric Clapton first heard a 20-year-old Jimi Hendrix play at a concert in London in 1966, they felt they should retire. Perhaps Dravid reached the same decision while watching Virat Kohli flay Lasith Malinga around the ground during that jaw-dropping 133 not out in that Commonwealth Bank Series group game in Hobart that got so many talking.
In common with many other England fans, Dravid, as sportsman and individual, has always appealed to me more than Tendulkar. Sachin’s greatness is such that he has been raised to the level of archetype, icon, god; as a person, he is essentially unknowable. There are obviously depths, but they are closely protected. That this is down to the hysterical adulation which greets his every achievement is understandable. Dravid has always seemed more human, more accessible. Erudite and well-read – with a wide range of interests including history, politics and nature conservation – he is a man who is blessed with an extraordinary sporting gift but who also recognises the importance of the world beyond the boundary and his place in it.
During his Bradman Oration in Canberra last December, Dravid quoted the Don’s words about leaving the game better than you found it. The game may or may not be better – there are compelling arguments for both – but it is different. Dravid said today that he would play in this year’s IPL (if you want a symbol of how much the sport has changed, look no further) and then he will decide on his future. It would be nice if he could stay involved with the sport in some way. Because cricket without the continued benefit of Dravid’s wisdom – and his clear-headed recognition of the challenges it now faces – would be so much the poorer.
Eoin Morgan won’t be accompanying the England squad on their forthcoming tour of Sri Lanka.
While Kevin Pietersen suffered the lion’s share of the critics’ scrutiny throughout the just-concluded UAE tour (has there ever been a modern-day England batsman laden down with so many ridiculously high expectations?) he at least redeemed himself with a return to runs and the old KP swagger. Morgan failed consistently in all formats. So, in the Test series – an ignominious 3-0 loss – did every one else who purported to be a batsman, but unlike Pietersen and Strauss, the slack the selectors were willing to extend to Morgan could only extend so far.
The wafts outside off stump; the dilemma of whether to go forward or back; that increasingly-exaggerated trigger movement of a man lowering his privates into a scalding bath: this is a man who is in desperate need of runs and confidence. Andy Flower has signalled his disapproval of Morgan’s likely decision to honour his IPL contract, but whether it’s a 20-over match in the steamy heat of Bangalore before 40,000 screaming fans, or a cold April day at Taunton, the bloke just needs to feel bat on ball. Morgan’s IPL stint last year had less bearing on his selection for that summer than his 193 for the Lions against Sri Lanka: an innings in which predicted shoo-in Ravi Bopara (who turned down an IPL contract) could only manage 17.
Morgan’s non-selection for the upcoming Tests in Galle and Colombo, however, does signal a pragmatic ruthlessness on the part of the selectors. For once this is not a change born of panic, or a we’re-making-this-up-as-we-go merry-go-round of addle-brained chop and change. Perhaps taking a leaf from Australia’s book, the England management have a goal in view and a plan in mind. Nurture where necessary; jettison the expendable.
In Australia’s case this meant axing Simon Katich from Tests, giving Cameron White the bum’s rush from T20s – both as captain and as player – and ending Ricky Ponting’s ODI career. Regardless of the seeming unfairness of a couple of these decisions, you can’t say new chief selector John Inverarity does things by halves. It’s an approach that has borne already ripening fruit, with a potent pace attack comprising new blood and rejuvenated older campaigners, a gritty opener in Ed Cowan to complement Dave Warner’s freewheeling pyrotechnics, and new keeper Matthew Wade putting pressure on the increasingly out-of-favour Brad Haddin.
India’s future development remains stuck in neutral so long as their selectors refuse to make such bold moves; you get the feeling their re-ascendancy to the top would be under way already if they had a Flower or Inverarity at the helm.
Of course, as far as England and Eoin Morgan go, one wonders whether the IPL is really the demon it’s made out to be. Runs for Morgan for his Kolkata team could come in useful; England after all have a T20 world title to defend in September.
I’ve never been one of Ravi Bopara’s biggest cheerleaders, but I do think it’s right and fair he is given another opportunity, and while Samit Patel will doubtless lose out to Ravi for the no 6 position, his inclusion in the squad signals recognition of a renewed commitment towards playing for England at the highest level and to leaving the hotel buffet and the Bounty bars the hell alone. I liked Samit’s little cameo in the final T20 which included a lusty six back over the head of Saeed Ajmal; I liked too the clap on the back from KP as he went off. The team were apparently informed after this match who would be going to Sri Lanka; by this point Morgan must have known his time was up.
Perhaps a 50 in the ODIs or the T20s could have saved him. Perhaps not. It’s been a back-asswards tour; players noted for their ability against spin (Morgan and Bell) have failed and England were whitewashed in the format in which they are currently the world’s best. They then proceeded to give expectations another hefty kicking when they clean-swept the ODIs, a format the opposition were expected to favour. By all accounts spirits were high when the England team landed at Heathrow today; that might be tempered slightly when, as is most likely, South Africa wrest away that number one spot when they take on New Zealand in the 3-Test series starting next week.
Sri Lanka would seem the easier prospect after Pakistan. England will have momentum, two warm-up games and no Saeed Ajmal to keep them awake at nights. But after this series I’m predicting nothing, only that Andy Flower has no doubt planned for every eventuality.
“Playing for pride”: the refuge, some cynics might say, of the loser, the has-been, the fighter past his prime, the team for whom a campaign has not exactly gone according to plan. Playing for pride is the only thing you have left when the main prize is gone, and England find themselves in this position going into the third Test at Dubai on Friday.
I don’t think anyone seriously believes England were arrogant enough to expect that this tour would be a cakewalk. The more cautious among us might have been fairly philosophical over the loss in the first Test: “ring-rusty”, “long lay-off” and “challenging conditions” were just some of the reasonable explanations bandied around to excuse the team’s flat-footedness against spin – though the sour grapes directed at the legality of Saeed Ajmal’s doosra threatened to turn into a very bitter vintage indeed in some sections of the media.
To paraphrase Oscar Wilde, to lose one Test might be regarded merely as a blip; to lose two starts to look like a malaise.
It would have been reasonable to expect England to learn from their Dubai disaster and come back and win at Abu Dhabi. They almost did. Ultimately, though, we were treated to the horrifying spectacle we thought we’d left behind us after the horror days of 2006-7 and more recently Jamaica in 2009; a procession of veal-eyed batsmen stumbling through a dark smog of panic and indecision, misjudging spin, misreading length, and unsure whether to play forward or back as if they were in the throes of some kind of nervous hokey-cokey breakdown.
A target of 145 started to look like 300 when they were 5-56; by the time they were all out for 72 it resembled some mythical, unattainable object, like a phoenix egg, or a pot of gold at the end of a rainbow. You have to laugh, but to do so, you’d have to block out numerous flashbacks and the memory of sitting curled up in the corner of the living room in a foetal position.
The bowling was fine. Monty Panesar, back in the side after 29 Test matches, made his comeback in some style with 6-62 in Pakistan’s second innings, and has surely nailed down a spot in the side for the upcoming tour to Sri Lanka, where, the curators assure us, raging turners will be laid on for our bamboozlement. Stuart Broad, too, has had an excellent series so far, making up for all those wasted deliveries banged in short against Sri Lanka last summer while drunk on delusions of being England’s “enforcer”. His 58* with the bat was handy, too.
Once again, as in Dubai, it was the batsmen who let the side down. The false hope of a 139-run partnership between Cook and Trott in England’s first innings was dashed in their second. I’m sure you’ve digested the match reports in all their disbelieving horror. Cook and Strauss are too similar as an opening partnership, given their molasses-like commencement of the run-chase; Ian Bell still cannot read the doosra; Eoin Morgan continues to show plenty of confidence off the field but not much on it; Trott’s inability to bat at 3 due to requiring close proximity to a toilet meant it was all Trott’s trots’ fault, and the not-insignificant fact of having captained England to victory in two Ashes series and the number one position is all that seems to be saving Strauss from a more intense examination as to his current inability to score. Meanwhile, Kevin Pietersen is still not English enough. This, in a nutshell, is how England’s shambolic performance was summed up in various quarters the day after, with a bit of added subtext (because let’s be honest, you’d have to be insane to seriously consider dropping Pietersen even given his current dip in form).
Andy Flower has acknowledged the cries that something must be done by saying he is not afraid to make changes. The majority view seems to be Ravi Bopara in for the struggling Morgan, but I cannot see how Bopara would be a significant improvement other than that he offers another bowling option. Given the panic that swiftly infected England’s run-chase, it’s hard to see how Ravi could have rescued them. Morgan deserves one more chance, though that swivel-wristed bossing of the bowling he displays in ODIs seems to have gone strangely AWOL in Tests.
One could say a change more immediate and effective would have been to put Swann or Broad in at 3 in place of the ailing Trott instead of the discombobulated Bell, but then it takes two to make a partnership, and there were precious few of those. Flower, though, is not one for snap decisions, so I’ll be surprised if he makes one now regarding Friday’s lineup.
Credit, of course, must go to Pakistan. I’ve not once seen the word “mercurial” applied to them in the last couple of weeks, and that has been entirely to their credit. The leadership of Misbah ul-Haq has been a prime factor in this. He is cut from the same captaincy cloth as Strauss; he is calm and unruffled, tends towards the conservative at times, but leads by example and is a fine ambassador for his team. As well as a superb spin attack, the team has two bright young stars for the future on the batting front as well in Asad Shafiq and Azhar Ali, and the PCB are now mulling over whether to retain Mohsin Khan as coach, or hire Dav Whatmore: to shake things up now with a new coach could potentially undo the progress the team has made since the dark days of 2010 – days which everyone would like to forget.
* * *
I see the shortlist of players up for auction in the IPL on the 4th of February has been announced, and glancing down the list of names I was surprised and pleased to see the name of Mal Loye, formerly of Northants, Lancashire and (briefly) England. Loye was released from Northants at the end of last year, and while it’s understandable given his absences due to injury were getting longer, I always felt he was treated rather shabbily by the England selectors after his fireworks in the 2007 Commonwealth Bank series, and should have been given another chance. Any IPL franchise with a spare $50,000 could do a lot worse than snap him up. You might not get many matches out of him before bits of him start seizing up and falling off, but you’ll be guaranteed at least a couple of DLF maximums over square leg off the quick bowlers, and who wouldn’t pay to see that?
