Leg Side Filth

Well, thank Christ that’s over. Watching England’s joyous, enthusiastic celebrations at the Rose Bowl at the end of the current ODI series against Pakistan last night felt like the breaking of a fever, or the lancing of a boil – the relief is bliss, but you would rather the disease didn’t come back any time soon.

Don’t get me wrong, the cricket itself was fascinating and the fact it went down to the last game made it more so, but much of the fascination was from a morbid, rubber-necking car-crash perspective, given the background of spot-fixing, scandal and Ijaz Butt. I’m not going to go into all that again because I am really just glad it is over, as I’m sure you all are, as I’m sure the England team is. The only thing left to say is that I would love to welcome back a Pakistan team, bursting as it is with talent, but not until all corruption has been cleansed from its ranks. Signs are this is not likely to happen soon, but we live in hope. I am not one of those who advocate the scorched-earth policy of banning Pakistan entirely from the world cricket arena, but something tells me this is the last England-Pakistan series we will have seen for a long time.

Anyway, enough of all that.

2:30 this afternoon at The Oval gave us the ridiculous scenario of Mike Atherton, standing in front of a big screen, ready to introduce a film clip naming this year’s England Ashes squad, a clip produced with all the slick bombast the ECB could muster and giving us a list already in the possession of news editors ready to click “update” on their websites on the stroke of 2:30 while the great ignorant unwashed were still digesting the news.

In brief: Chris Tremlett and Monty Panesar are in; no room for Adil Rashid or Ajmal Shahzad. Shahzad is in the Performance Squad; Rashid is not. Another notable absentee – from both squads – is Ravi Bopara, who will be playing first class cricket in South Africa. I am very pleased to see Tremlett given this opportunity, as I’ve been a fan of the guy since I saw him at Trent Bridge in 2007, where he took 3-12 in India’s second innings when they only needed 73 to win. He got a lot of applause from the fans in the stands that day, and seems a bowler reborn this year after moving to Surrey after criticism that he wasn’t aggressive enough: I’m hoping his prodigious height and ability to bang it in will pay dividends on the hard, bouncy Australian wickets.

Monty Panesar is also back, and will add backup to Graeme Swann should they require two spinners at Adelaide or Sydney. He acquitted himself well at the WACA in 2006, taking 5-92, in a series that turned into a relentless drubbing for England. Australia are not the team they were back then, but England will still need to pull out all the stops to beat them; this will be no cake walk.

In other good news, Leicestershire’s own wunderkind batsman, James Taylor, has been included in the Performance Squad. I would have liked to have seen Nathan Buck picked as well – perhaps it is still too early for him – but Taylor will be in Australia, during the Ashes, and well, given an injury or two, who knows?

The countdown to the Ashes starts now. Am I excited? Oh hells yes.

Chris Tremlett bowling at Trent Bridge, 2nd Test against India, 2007

The match that took place at the Oval, August 20th – 23rd, 2009, was the last time Andrew Flintoff played Test cricket.

He didn’t play at Headingley and England were screwed. Kevin Pietersen didn’t play either which meant England were doubly screwed. Fred returned at the Oval and though he only took one wicket, he pulled off one of the great moments of the summer in his run-out of Ricky Ponting as England proceeded to regain the Ashes.

But regardless of what happened in that last Test, I’d already had my moment of magic that summer.

I’m talking about Day 5 at Lord’s. Some days are so damn perfect you couldn’t script them any better if you sat down and tried, and Monday July 20th 2009 was one of these.

My day didn’t start all that well: train was late, phone call from work about some irrelevancy, 40 minutes to get from St Pancras to the ground in time for start of play, urgent need to piss before taking my seat in the Mound Stand (5 minute bell rang as I was in the toilets). But I think that must have been the cricket gods’ way of taking pity on me and getting all the extraneous bullshit out of the way “early doors”, as they say, because I was settled in my seat just as the umpires were coming out.

It’s ironic now, after the fact, that I’d entered the ballot for Saturday tickets and hadn’t been successful, and even when Day 5 tickets had gone on sale I’d laughed and bought one with no real expectation that the match would even last that long. As it stood, unbelievably, Australia were still dragging their innings along by bloodied broken fingernails, with Michael Clarke and Brad Haddin the last twitching neurons in a short-circuiting batting order. The sun was out, and the wicket was still a belter.

Clarke had impressed me. There’s something about him that annoys the hell out of me, with his numerically-illiterate tattoos and his to-the-manner-born expectation of captaincy once Ponting hangs up his bat – but he had played some lovely shots the day before and showed doughty determination while wickets had fallen around him. Only Brad Haddin – a batsman I found myself warming to, not least after his hopping terror that the ball stuck in his pad was still a live one – had stayed with him.

It was perfectly possible that these two could pull off the runs needed for an improbable victory. Improbable-but-possible is usually enough to give any side a sniff of victory against England. Mitchell Johnson and Nathan Hauritz were still to come, so it could have been a long day.

But magic happened; Flintoff happened, thundering down like the wrath of god on anything human standing between him and the stumps. He got Haddin with his 4th delivery for 80 with a ball that was only a few overs old and he sent it down consistently over 90 mph. Jesus christ it was beautiful. The noise was tremendous. We were all on our feet. The floor was sticky from 4 days’ worth of spilled beer and Pimms. I didn’t care. I didn’t care about anything but the fact I was here, and I was watching something that suddenly felt fraught with impending significance.

Clarke was tempted out of his crease by Swann with the 2nd ball of his over. Canny bit of bowling – Clarke walked down the wicket to the 1st ball of Swann’s over and I knew that’s how he would get out.

Mitchell Johnson was better with bat than with ball by an order of magnitude. His 50 came and went without me noticing until I looked up at the scoreboard and thought “shit”.

Fred again, got Hauritz, poor brave Hauritz with the dislocated finger, clean bowled him for 1. When he bowled Siddle he turned towards the Mound Stand and spread his arms and did that Colossus thing and we all went bonkers. Five wickets. Name on the board. Absolute magic. By this time I’d given up taking pictures because I just wanted to cheer and roar the lining of my lungs bloody along with everyone else.

Mitch’s resistance ended when Swanny got him for 63 and the reaction of the crowd was relief, disbelief, and crazy celebration. Fred was mobbed by the team and there was no way anyone in the crowd was sitting back down again.

It was all over by 12:40. England won, first time since 1934 against Australia at Lord’s.

The mood afterwards was one long cigarette after the orgasm of England’s victory. People were milling slowly about at the back of the Pavilion waiting for the Australian team; the museum was shut because there was a press conference going on inside; the amount of people just standing around was insane and no one seemed in any hurry to leave.

Fred’s career ended after England’s Ashes victory at the Oval and he went under the knife, yet again, for another procedure on his rickety knee. Increasingly, as time and rehab dragged on, his return to any sort of cricket became an ever-receding pipe dream, and while the announcement of his retirement from all forms of cricket on Thursday 16th September was criticized for its timing, coming as it did on the climactic day of 2010’s county championship race, it really came as no surprise to any of us.

Say what you like about Flintoff – the messianic wicket celebrations, the residency in Dubai, the polarizing dressing room presence – but he was a player who was, if not one of the all-time greats, a cricketer who gave England fans moments of genuine greatness, a man who gave his all every time he stepped onto the field.

No matter how many energy drinks he might pimp in the future, no matter how many witless reality TV shows he may appear on; none of this will ever make me forget his tremendous exploits as an England cricketer, and in particular that day at Lord’s when he ripped the heart out of the Australian team and gave England belief once again.

Farewell, Fred.

Last week was my final visit to Grace Road for the season, for the Championship game against Gloucestershire.  This will not be the last match I’m present at this year – that will be Melbourne in December, for some Antipodean tourney England are participating in – but it was attended with the same familiar, gentle tug of melancholy that I feel every year when I watch cricket in September at my second home.

I’d missed the first day – Leics had notched up 295 – and after a delayed start due to bad light Gloucestershire resumed on 54-2, Nathan Buck having taken the 2 wickets the evening before in a fearsome opening spell. Hamish Marshall was the only man who showed any semblance of resistance with an innings of 61, as Gloucestershire collapsed to 159 all out, and Leicestershire at stumps were cruising nicely on 147-1 with a lead of 283 and young Greg Smith in complete control of the bowling on 70.

Returning to the ground the next day I watched Smith raise his bat upon making a superb maiden 1st class ton – and certainly not his last for the county – and when Matthew Hoggard finally declared at around 3:15 in the afternoon, young Greg was on 158* and Gloucestershire needed 488 to win, ending the day on 78-5.

Greg Smith celebrates his maiden 1st class century

I have to confess I didn’t quite understand the logic behind the timing of Hoggard’s declaration: 400 would have been more than enough, and he did not seem in any particular hurry even after Smith had brought up his 150; add to that the fact that pretty lousy weather was forecast for Day 4, and there could have been a few faces with egg on them if they’d been unable to knock off the last 5 wickets.

The weather on Friday was indeed bloody awful, but the last 5 were eventually dispatched. Standout performers for the Foxes were of course the lad Smith, England bowler in waiting Nathan Buck, and that redoubtable warhorse Claude Henderson, with help from the county’s next all-rounder in the making, Jigar Naik, but really, it was a top-notch team effort. The result now is that Leicestershire have a mathematical chance of promotion (for “mathematical” read “negligible” but hell, keep hope alive, eh?) as they head to Wantage Road for the last match of the season on Monday.

While I only attended 2 days of the Gloucestershire match, as is usual with my visit to Grace Road, there was more to enjoy than just what was happening on the field. I chatted to the usual suspects, enjoyed the banter, kept my ears pinned for developments on the backroom/board front and on who was going where and who’d been offered what in the shape of a contract for next year. A members’ forum on the Wednesday evening after play yielded no real answers on the current boardroom crisis, though in truth none were expected; recriminations continue to fly back and forth between the board and ex-chief executive David Smith, and the situation remains muddy and unresolved.

With all that hovering in the background I was determined to just enjoy the cricket. The result gave me and the rest of the Leicestershire supporters something to celebrate and the overall goal of promotion is an elusive but tantalising possibility.

View from the boundary

I saw an awesome day’s Test cricket at Lord’s on Saturday. Jonathan Trott knocked off the run needed to take him to 150 in a record-breaking stand with Stuart Broad, who with his maiden Test hundred seems to be rediscovering his stroke play in timely fashion for the Ashes. England ended on 446, Pakistan were blown away for 74 all out and following on, finished the day on 41-4. For £75 a ticket, I saw a lot of wickets for my money.

Then I got home and switched on the television.

I saw that the News of the World had broken a story (cleverly, too late for other papers to jump on, so all the other Sunday morning cricket reports were purely about England’s superb bowling performance), the facts of which are now burned onto our appalled sensibilities. It concerned a dodgy Pakistan players’ agent, £150,000 in used 50 quid notes, and three no-balls delivered on Days 1 and 2, in varying degrees of obviousness, by Mohammad Amir and Mohammad Asif, with the collusion of captain Salman Butt.

I loathe the News of the World with every fibre of my being. Their offensive, emotive brand of sensationalistic journalism sparks a brand of rage in me not much else does. In a crass opinion piece they not only devalued Broad’s maiden ton but sank low enough to mention his dead stepmother, Miche, to whom Broad’s thoughts turned on reaching his century: “Sorry Stuart, it means nothing.” A small boy, “pulling at his dad’s coat tails full of excitement”, his dreams betrayed, was also mentioned. I am surprised they didn’t manage to shoehorn in a drowning puppy, or accuse the Pakistan team of throwing cats into wheelie bins. Yes, I would think it’s fair to say my loathing for the News of the World is pretty much boundless. To coin a phrase, I wouldn’t wipe my arse with it if it was on fire.

But let us be honest, the evidence looks pretty damning. The only thing that could possibly have looked more suspicious about Mohammad Amir’s first no-ball was if Salman Butt had already had his hands full of sawdust as the bowler began his run-up. And the worst thing about it all is: how much of what we saw in this series, or indeed any other which Pakistan have taken part in over the last few years, is real? Test cricket is in the crapper, attendance-wise, but it does not need this type of publicity.

If there is a tragic figure in all this, it is, by common consensus, Mohammad Amir. Michael Holding was on the verge of tears on Sky Sports as he discussed how the career of this amazing young talent is now in doubt. Ramiz Raja thinks that due to his youth it is “possible he could have been drawn [into wrongdoing]”, and former Pakistan coach Geoff Lawson has reminded us not to judge these players “by the standards of our own country, when their situations are vastly different”. The possible threat of kidnapping and violence towards players’ families has also been mentioned.

Immediate reaction from cricket lovers such as myself ran the whole emotional gamut from disbelief, anger and sadness to “ban the whole bloody lot of them”. But it is clear that there are several things that need to happen.

Firstly, the ICC need to grow a pair. Pakistan cricket is worth saving, but not in its current corrupt state. Past punishments imposed by the Pakistan Cricket Board have been arbitrary and meaningless; vested interests and political manoeuvrings take precedence. Not only does the PCB need to get its house in order, but the ICC need to take charge when scandals like this threaten to ruin the international game.

Sadly, there are those in the ICC who have their own vested interests, and so this will not happen. And let’s face it, it doesn’t say much for the effectiveness of the ICC’s Anti Corruption Unit if it takes a reporter from a red-top scandal rag with a suitcase full of cash to expose only the tip of what may turn out to be a very large iceberg. Haroon Lorgat, the ICC’s current appointed deckchair-arranger, has given a statement saying that if any of the players are found guilty, “the appropriate punishment” will be handed out. At this point, such a promise sounds merely like empty bluster, and pretty meaningless given the ICC’s inability – or unwillingness – to tackle the root of the problem.

Of course, whether Giles Clarke has any right to be on his moral high horse in his refusal to shake Amir’s hand or look him in the eye during the post-match presentation is another question, considering the marked contrast between this and his welcome of a Texan, now being investigated for fraud, and his perspex box of dollars. Stony-faced and unsmiling at spot-fixing’s sullying of this series at the Home of Cricket, he obviously had no problem with Allen Stanford’s sullying of the Nursery ground by landing his gold-plated helicopter on it.

Unfortunately it seems, as with so much else, everything comes down to money – or lack of it, in the case of Pakistan’s cricketers.

While the angry bastard in me rages at corruption, nevertheless, the romantic in me clings to Stuart Broad’s comment that “whatever the true story is, I have absolutely no doubts that Pakistan were giving everything to try to win that match. It was proper competition, as it has been throughout the series”.

So while it may turn out that I have not been the only one who got my money’s worth from this Test I will also remember Trott and Broad’s partnership and Swann’s bowling for what they were – fine achievements that may have been over-shadowed by this story but not blotted out by it. Cricket is too precious to me for my enjoyment of it to be sullied by venality. And besides, there is an Ashes series to look forward to.

Mohammad Amir bowls (a legitimate delivery) at Lord's

A midweek start to a county championship match at Grace Road is usually a moribund affair, but not so yesterday as Leicestershire took to the field for the first day’s play against Surrey. Unfortunately, though, this had more to do with recent events off the field than on it.

On Monday, news broke that captain Matthew Hoggard had written a letter, also signed by coach Tim Boon, to the board demanding the resignation of chairman Neil Davidson. This was the latest development in a shemozzle that has been ongoing since chief executive David Smith resigned back in June citing interference from the board in team selection: one instance allegedly being the insistence of Davidson on the selection of spinner Jigar Naik to play at a T20 game versus Yorkshire, despite Naik being unfit to play.

Since then allegations, recriminations and petty insults have flown back and forth between Davidson and Smith, and a petition drawn up by Leicestershire members demanding a Special General Meeting calling for a vote of no confidence in Davidson and the board was rejected on the grounds that it did not conform to club rules: namely that three pages of the petition did not contain the resolutions, and that the petition itself was handed in to the offices at Grace Road rather than the secretary’s office which is, inexplicably, in Nottingham. Some may call these legal technicalities, others, loopholes; however one wishes to describe them, the rejection of this petition looks petty, despotic and a thinly-veiled stalling tactic designed to avoid a frank and open discussion of issues which have plunged the club into a crisis unprecedented in its history.

When David Smith resigned he stated he wished to call an extraordinary general meeting to discuss these issues but did not hold out much hope of raising one as “unfortunately our members seem to be passive”.

Well, not any more. Despite an indifferent weather forecast, attendance was most definitely up yesterday, and as dark rain clouds moved in over Grace Road I sat amidst a lot of extremely angry members irritated not only by Davidson’s evasiveness and his unwillingness to have things discussed in an open and democratic manner, but by the rejection of their petition, an arrogantly defensive letter sent out several weeks ago by Davidson to the membership that was a mixture of personal insult and rank hypocrisy, and the fact the situation has deteriorated so much that coach, captain and players have been moved to make their feelings clear.

We clustered round the TV in the Meet as Davidson was interviewed by a Sky Sports News reporter and I would be lying if I said that what I heard did not irritate me in the extreme.

Firstly, Davidson said he did not interfere in selection “on a week-to-week… day-to-day basis; it’s when we lose matches we should win and we lost all our home games in Twenty20 this year bar one which was rained off”. He also cited the county’s record in this year’s CB40 tournament, using the example of Leicestershire losing twice to Scotland, “who’ve lost by nine wickets to Afghanistan”. What he strangely neglected to mention was that Leicestershire have won six of their eight Twenty20 matches away, the Foxes stand a mathematical chance of promotion in the county championship, and the day after their defeat by Afghanistan, Scotland beat them by six wickets: Afghanistan are a promising and emerging Associate nation, and Scotland are capable on their day of beating better opponents than Leicestershire. Davidson thus in the space of one sentence managed to insult Leicestershire, Scotland and Afghanistan: no mean achievement but perhaps not an overly desirable quality in a spokesman for the club one is a member of. (I should confess that a large part of my anger stems from the fact I am Scottish, a Leicestershire member, and have nothing but huge respect and admiration for the Afghanistan cricket team, so for Davidson to piss me off any more than he did yesterday would have taken some beating.)

Davidson also took Hoggard and Boon to task for “setting a very poor example to our fine young players about how they should behave at a cricket club,” saying it was up to the members to decide the fate of the chairman; lip-service at best to any illusion of democracy considering the rejection of the first petition.

He also stated he would have preferred this whole sorry brouhaha to be conducted behind closed doors, which, given what has been aired in the press, is hypocritical at best.

There is obviously more going on behind the scenes than the majority of the Leicestershire membership are privy to, which underlines the absolute need for a special general meeting, a view former chief executive Mike Turner – having held his peace until now – holds strongly.

At the time of writing, signatures for a second petition have been gathered, and this will be presented to the board within the next couple of days. The Leicestershire board will also meet to discuss the fate of Davidson, who is currently on holiday in Italy. The board can ask him to step down as chairman, but only a vote by the membership can remove him from the board. So we shall see.

In the meantime, I should mention there was a cricket match going on. As well as having a rough day off the field, our lads did not fare much better on it as Leicestershire’s nemesis, Mark Ramprakash, made merry with the bowling to score his 113th century and his 7th against the county. It was a display of batting that was assured, professional, and a joy to watch: a stark contrast to the ugliness that currently simmers at Grace Road and which must be dealt with swiftly if the club is to move on and continue developing its own not inconsiderable talent.

Ramps on his way to 179

I like Trent Bridge. It’s a Test ground with the intimacy of a small county ground. The crowd is close to the action, the old pavilion holds court companionably over the new stands which complement and do not overshadow it – a pleasant contrast to the desecration of Old Trafford through the addition of the red Duplo brick home to the prawn-sandwich brigade that is “The Point” – and the floodlights are the best in England.

The last international I saw here was last year’s day-nighter against Australia which saw Ricky Ponting score an imperious 126 that propelled his side to victory and threatened England with a 7-0 whitewash in the post-Ashes ODI series. England lost that game in part because their fielding was shoddy and Matt Prior’s keeping bloody awful. (As a side-note, this was the second day-night ODI I was supposed to have attended at Trent Bridge, but the whole “day-night” concept of the 2008 Eng v South Africa match was effectively kiboshed by Stuart Broad – he took  a superb five-for, SA were all out for 83, Matt Prior and Ian Bell knocked off the runs and the match finished at 5:35PM.)

So at Trent Bridge on Saturday I was expecting something tasty. By the end of it I wouldn’t say I felt disappointed, what with England on the cusp of victory, but there were a few things that left me feeling vaguely pissed off.

First, there was the matter of the follow-on. Pakistan had one wicket left, and needed 8 to make England bat again. As it happened, Umar Gul punched Jimmy Anderson through the onside for 4 first ball, second delivery was an lbw shout that was turned down on height, and the next ball cracked off the middle of Gul’s bat to the boundary: first objective achieved for Pakistan in a quest that was pretty much only about temporary survival, but that clawed back a little respectability for the team nevertheless.

Umar Gul hits it for 6

At this point I was still labouring under the delusion that had Pakistan fallen short of these 8 runs Strauss would have made Pakistan bat again. Well, thank christ I’m not England captain, because according to a Sky Sports interview with Paul Collingwood before the start of the day’s play, he said England needed to be “ruthless” and bat again, that a lead of 200 or so would not be enough. Upon watching this later I may have been stricken with a brief fit of Tourette’s; I can’t remember. It’s more than likely, though. It was the use of the word “ruthless” that set me off. I have much respect for Strauss as captain – his man-management, his unruffled demeanour at the crease, his uninspiring yet safe-as-houses technique with the bat. If this sounds like damning with faint praise, it really isn’t – he and Andy Flower have done good things for England’s standing in the international game, though one could argue that that successful captain-coach partnership exists as much by accident as design due to Kevin Pietersen’s upsetting of the apple-cart back in January of last year. But one thing Strauss also is as a captain is conservative. I’m not sure when “ruthless” became a euphemism for “playing it safe and taking no unnecessary risks”, but there you go.

So England batted again, which is pretty much what they were going to do anyway, even though the conditions were as ripe for swing and seam as they were the day before. Pakistan’s fielding once more let the bowling down, yet despite Cook being under the microscope it was Strauss who fell first through some peerlessly acrobatic comedy from the Akmal brothers – Umar at second slip muffed a simple chance and juggled it to his brother who, after a moment’s hesitation, and remembering he had a pair of wicket-keeping gloves on – dived forward and took the catch. It was a piece of actual and near-ineptitude that was almost beautiful in its balletic cack-handedness: you couldn’t have choreographed it if you tried.

Asif tried to entice an edge from Cook by bowling the same line to him outside off-stump but it was a rank leg-side delivery that enticed the edge to Kamran Akmal. There’s been talk of Cook suffering with a back injury that may need surgery at some point in the future. While I hope all goes well with that, a break from the game might do him good because he looks completely bloody clueless at the moment.

I have no idea how Pietersen racked up his first 10 or so runs and to be honest I don’t think he did either, though he and Trott were both pretty watchful for the rest of the session, and Trott looked less fidgety than usual. This pleased and disappointed me, because I find Trott’s tics, foibles and incessant gurning and muttering quite fascinating to watch. Still enough scraping to keep us all entertained, though, as he dug his trench and was in the process of installing a latrine and duckboards as everyone else was pissing off back to the pavilion for lunch.

Scratch scratch scratch

I decided to attempt eating my own body-weight in mini sausage rolls, and pondered ice cream. The old couple behind me carried on with the same dialogue they’d been having all morning.

Woman (listening to commentary on radio while peering through binoculars at commentary box): “Is that Warne?”

Bloke: “No, it’s Gower and Hussein. Bumble’s on the left.”

Woman: “Where’s Warne?”

Bloke: “Well, I don’t bloody know. He’ll be on next, won’t he?”

Woman: “I can’t see through your binoculars. They are useless.”

Bloke: “So stop asking for them then. And anyway, it’s your eyes that are useless.”

Half an hour later:

Woman: “I think it’s Warne on now. Is that Atherton sat on the left?”

Bloke: “No, you daft woman. It’s Ramiz Raja.”

I’m usually lucky enough to be seated near such eccentrics. It is great. These are my people.

It was a good delivery from Gul that took Pietersen’s inside edge after lunch, ironically when he was starting to look more comfortable, and he was unlucky that Kamran Akmal got to it: it was a superb diving catch to the left that would have completely eluded the keeper in normal circumstances. Just when we were starting to see Kamran Akmal in a new, more appreciative light he dropped a regulation catch off Gul’s bowling which really should have done for Collingwood, warping from the sublime back to the inept in the space of one ball and reassuring us that, rather than being the target of bookmakers at Sydney, he really is that piss-poor as a keeper. A full and straight delivery that kept low dismantled Trott’s stumps, leaving him wandering off gurning in puzzlement at the wicket’s sudden propensity for variable bounce, and England were 64-4.

Trott's shattered stumps

It was unrealistic to expect that Morgan and Collingwood would reprise their partnership from the first innings. Collingwood was scratchy and went for 1 off 19 balls, and while England now led by 244 runs Pakistan must have thought they were still in this match if they could get England’s lower order out quickly as Prior came to the crease.

Do not get me wrong, Prior’s ton has underlined why he is the best wicket-keeping option for England in Test matches, but mostly all it did was make me angry. Lots of things make me angry, and one of them is Matt Prior. He was responsible for running out Morgan – it was Morgan’s call, there were three runs on no problem, but Prior sent him back while using the cunning “if I don’t look at him, then it’s not my bloody fault if he’s three quarters of the way down the wicket, is it?” ploy while completely ignoring the hard-running ginger Irishman.

Add to that the colossally infuriating go-slow from 95 to 100, while Finn gamely blocked out most of 8 overs after Prior took a single off the first ball – lather, rinse, repeat – and well, let us just say it wasn’t an innings for the ages. During all this the chap in front of me managed to munch his way through a large chicken sandwich in laborious, chomping slo-mow, the number of pigeons on the practice wicket increased from one to five, the couple behind me seem to doze off and all of us lost the will to live and didn’t care. I was half hoping the bastard would get bowled on 99.

“Do you think Strauss will declare when he gets his ton?” someone asked, hopefully, and with desperation.

“Well, he’s not going to wait until he gets another one, is he?” was the answer, and we all laughed, and sobbed, at the same time.

Prior did get that ton, the pigeons flew away, and the bloke who’d just finished the chicken sandwich belched noisily and stood up to applaud as the declaration came.

Finn and Prior last wicket stand

Pakistan needed 435 to win and finished the day on 15-3. I was disappointed that they seemed to capitulate again so easily. It seemed like declaration bowling from them at times during the latter part of England’s innings, and I felt sorry for young Mohammad Amir, pushed out as nightwatchman like a lamb to the slaughter, head down, trudging slowly out to the middle, wishing he were anywhere else but here. Their body language betrayed them as being certain of failure the same way as at Headingley they were terrified of success.

I have grown quite fond of this young team over the past months. But they need a wiser head on shoulders that have borne the burden of situations like this before, and thus it was no surprise to read, the morning after their 354-run defeat, that Mohammad Yousuf has been drafted back into the squad.

As for England, Jimmy Anderson was mighty, Morgan proved himself a Test batsman, and Prior still makes me very angry. “I am an aggressive runner between the wickets,” he blustered in an interview afterwards, “and I make no apologies for that.” Alrighty then!

At the very least I’m hoping he bought Finn a few pints…

Judging by Pakistan’s showing in the first of their neutral Test series against Australia at Lord’s, Headingley better be baking hot with bright sunshine and a dry pitch or they are pretty much screwed. Chasing a total of 440 was always going to be a pretty stiff task, but yet again, and with depressing predictability, a crumbling middle order failed to follow the example of Salman Butt in batting with anything resembling responsibility and Pakistan were bundled out to the tune of a 150-run loss. In hindsight, Butt’s innings of 63 and 92 look positively heroic.

Add to that captain Shahid Afridi’s resignation minutes after the end of the match and the confusion that followed – even Ricky Ponting had to ask a reporter what the heck was going on – and Pakistan cricket is in crisis. Again. I am saddened by Afridi’s resignation, though seeing the way he batted I understand his reasons  – “I have struggled to adapt to this form of the game,” he said – but quite what the resignation of the captain is supposed to do to the morale of a team that’s just been thrashed within 4 days is anyone’s guess.

I was at Day 1 of this Test, and while the weather was bloody cold, and the walk from Baker Street tube station seemed to take longer than last year, the upside was that things were looking pretty good for Pakistan at stumps. Mohammad Aamer was bending it like a banana. That added to the devastation caused by Mohammad Asif either side of tea, and Simon Katich’s gritty stickability and Michael Clarke’s elegant innings aside Pakistan looked in a strong position with Australia 229-9.

Michael Clarke drives

Day 2, and the days thereafter, were an utter disaster for Pakistan. The team is not short on young talent but they batted like Ritalin-deprived four-year-olds with attention deficit disorder, the captain being the most obvious culprit. Their abject display turned an intriguing match into an all-out drubbing. 148 all out first innings followed by an Australian second innings that set them 440 to win – yeah, all we misty-eyed romantics liked to fool ourselves there was a chance Pakistan could pull off the impossible and make history, but then we woke up.

A few of the main points that emerged for me from this Test:

Pakistan Cricket: Situation Normal, All Fucked Up.  Afridi never wanted to be the Test captain. He didn’t bat like he was the Test captain. Now he has resigned as Test captain. Salman Butt is the new captain. He will be Pakistan’s third captain in three Tests. As I said on Twitter while the Pakistan run chase was rapidly going tits-up, sometimes I think I have it tough being a Leicestershire fan; if I was a Pakistan cricket fan I’d be running myself a hot bath and looking for the razor blades.

That said, Mohammad Aamer: how good could this kid become? General consensus is that Wasim Akram wasn’t even as good as this guy when he was his age. That is, quite frankly, terrifying. Umar Akmal didn’t give us the big innings we’d have liked to have seen from him at Lord’s but we all know he is an exceptional talent. He will get his name engraved on the honours board at some point in the future, this is certain.

Speaking of the honours board, aye, we all had a bloody good laugh at the fact that while Ricky Ponting and Shane Warne’s names are nowhere to be seen, Shane Watson and Marcus North’s names are (initial reaction from many on Twitter on news from Lord’s that Shane Watson’s was the first name on the new neutral honours board: “Burn it”). But you have to hand it to Ponting, when the front-line bowlers weren’t doing the job – when the ball wasn’t swinging or seaming the bowling was utterly innocuous – it was the part-timers who delivered. While the whole four/five bowlers debate goes on as regards England’s Ashes line-up, Ponting seems to like the challenge of conjuring something out of nothing in a way I can’t imagine Andrew Strauss would. Jonathan Trott and Kevin Pietersen can turn their arm over (there’s also Collingwood’s off-cutters but that shoulder is a worry) but that’s not really seen as a serious option.

Ricky Ponting is still a sore loser. While all the talk was of that elbow barge between him and a celebrating Mohammad Aamer, no one seems to have noticed the fact he walked deliberately into Mohammad Asif’s upraised arm while the bowler was celebrating with his team mates with his back turned. There is no way Asif could possibly have seen him. It’s like that bit in the Simpsons where Bart starts windmilling his arms around and says: “If you get hit, it’s your own fault.” Lisa responds: “Ok, then I’m going to start kicking the air like this. And if any part of you should fill that air, it’s your own fault.” For christ’s sake!

Mohammad Asif

Finally, the debutants. Azhar Ali and Umar Amin showed promise in the second innings but given their youth and inexperience, their inclusion was always going to be a gamble. It’ll be interesting to see if they can bounce back at Headingley.

Tim Paine, who I bigged up in my last post, did a sterling job with the gloves on debut. Tidy and athletic with a couple of good diving stops he pulled off a smart stumping to get rid of Salman Butt in the second innings. He was nervous as hell when I watched him bat on the first day – “I couldn’t feel my feet,” he said afterwards – and this was reflected in his 7 runs off 46 balls, but he did a lot better with 47 in the second innings and there is no question he belongs at this level. Brad Haddin should watch out, because this kid’s going to be breathing down his neck from now on. Steve Smith, orthodox legspinner, unorthodox batsman, also acquitted himself well with 3 wickets, and given he is only 21, shows every sign of maturing into a fine cricketer.

Paine gets a boundary

Who knows what Headingley will bring? For once I’d like to see a settled Pakistan team give a good account of themselves while making good on all the talent and potential the team possesses. The weather doesn’t bode well, with overcast conditions, rain and even thunder forecast for the next few days, but it’d be nice to see a decent contest rather than a one-sided hammering. We’ll see.

At 10:30 tomorrow, Tim Paine will become the youngest Australian Test wicket keeper since Ian Healy.

Handed a Cricket Australia contract back in April in recognition of his performance in last year’s ODI series against England, the 25-year old will be looking to cement his place as heir apparent to an injured Brad Haddin, who has been forced to sit out this two Test series against Pakistan with an elbow injury.

Paine’s form in this year’s ODIs hasn’t been on the same stellar level as that 111 he made at Trent Bridge, and he seemed to struggle as opening partner to Shane Watson, though he made 44 at Old Trafford and 54 at Lord’s. His batting seemed to me to be a mixture of the laboured and reckless, as if he wasn’t sure how to approach or pace his innings, causing him to over-complicate the job in hand before letting impatience get the better of him. It was as if he was thinking too much about the future – the weight of expectation after last year’s performances, the Cricket Australia contract and his ambitions to become Australia’s Test keeper when Haddin hangs up his gloves – rather than concentrating on the now.

I know this is a horrendously over-used cliché, but he needs to relax and keep it simple. Batting further down the order – he usually occupies the number 6 spot for Tasmania in Shield cricket – and without pressure to score runs quickly will help him. His keeping is a work in progress: the tour match in Derby was his first time keeping to the red Duke ball and he dropped Chris Rogers who went on to make 93, but that will improve through time and practice (cf. Brad Haddin, Matt Prior, Alec Stewart and others not seen as “natural keepers”).

I’m a fan of Paine – I watched him in the nets at Old Trafford last year for the rain-aborted Twenty20 International against England and admired his enthusiasm and aggression at Trent Bridge, and I’m hoping he’ll do well in this series.

Tim Paine in the nets at Old Trafford 2009

Also, his 82-year-old grandmother will be watching in the stands, and that will be a pretty big incentive, too.

Good luck, Tim.

“The Pakistan tourists are coming!” screams the splash page for the Leicestershire County Cricket Club website. “The team features Shahid Afridi… wicket keeper Kamran Akmal and leg spinner Danish Kaneria… opener Salman Butt and Mohammed Aamer…”

Well, out of those listed only Salman Butt was playing, captaining a 2nd string Pakistan team against a 2nd string Leicestershire team (Nadeem Malik captaining, 30-year-old Steve Adshead with the gloves). Two days with a maximum of 100 overs per innings – this was only ever going to end in a draw, but it was a disappointment to the small number of us who did turn up that there was no Afridi, no Akmal brothers, no Mohammad Aamer: it was all a bit of an anticlimax, to be honest.

Having a nice sit down - it was that kind of day

Contrast this with an almost full-strength Australian side playing at Derby on the same days, and the rumblings of discontent were audible among the usual suspects who turn up (rain or shine, including yours truly).

It would help if the club advertised these things better. A small advert in the Leicester Mercury ain’t gonna pull the crowds in. There was the same low attendance for the West Indies tour-match last year due to lack of advertising, which compounded itself farcically with the start day being rescheduled to a day earlier than originally advertised on the club website,  resulting in marginally better attendance on Day 2 as folks who’d booked the day off work in advance rocked up and wondered why play had already been underway for a whole day.

The thought also did occur to me that there would have been a delicious irony had Australia played at Leicester instead, given Ricky Ponting’s much publicized love of the city, but never mind.

It wasn’t all exactly thrills and spills, but then I’m usually happy as Larry sitting on a bench in front of the Meet digesting my sandwiches during a particularly somnolent lull in play during a 4-day county game, the run-rate flat-lining, eavesdropping on the old codgers arguing over whether Sobers or Miller was the better all-rounder, has anyone seen Pete and is his sciatica improving, and  how scientists have discovered watercress can cure cancer, apparently – enough to keep me occupied. I felt sorry though for the occasional visitors and the clutch of Pakistan fans who turned up – young kids, some teenagers, a couple of families – in all likelihood with the hope of seeing Afridi et al do their stuff.

Saeed Ajmal bowls

The day wasn’t completely devoid of anything interesting – Greg Smith, returning from completing his studies at Durham University, signalled his intent to challenge for a place in the 1st team with a useful knock of 87 before being skying an easy catch to Saeed Ajmal at square leg, and Josh Cobb was involved in a farcical runout when looking set on a score of 23, which included 5 fours. Wayne White again proved his value to the side, finishing on 65*.

Josh Cobb looked in good touch before being run out

I didn’t go to Day 2, but by all accounts I didn’t miss much: Leicestershire closed their innings on 296 and their bowlers toiled all day for little reward, with four out of the seven wickets due to the Pakistan batsmen retiring to give someone else a hit.

So what did we learn of Pakistan’s form going into the first Test at Lord’s on Tuesday on the basis of their match at Grace Road? Not a heck of a lot. What did we learn from Australia’s match against Derbyshire? That Chris Rogers should probably be playing in the Australian Test team.

Hmm.

There’s been much debate over the last few days about whether Bangladesh should be playing Test cricket. Geoffrey Boycott has famously made his opinion on this known – an emphatic negative – and the day after he voiced this patronising piece of codswallop Tamim Iqbal hammered a Lord’s century, so that kind of back-fired in a “point and laugh” kind of way.

All I’ll say on this matter is that England are as capable as any minnow of playing like complete muppets, and no-one ever suggests they should be stripped of Test status.

Anyhoo, on Saturday I moseyed up to Old Trafford to watch Tamim in action on Day 2 of the 2nd Test. England were 5 wickets down; Bell and Prior were at the crease. Bell brought up his century and worryingly guaranteed himself a seat on the plane for Australia. Prior’s innings I can’t remember a damned thing about, other than that he seemed to grind to a halt during the 90s and time slowed to a considerably less-exciting approximation of the Incredible Hulk when he’d rip doors off cars in slow-mo in that old TV series; every one of Prior’s singles seemed executed in a burst of barely-restrained apathy. To say I was relieved when he got out 7 short of his 100 may be an exaggeration, but not much of one.

England were eventually all out for 419; Shakib took 5 wickets; the sun shone; the temperature started to climb.

When Tamim Iqbal and Imrul Kayes came out to open the Bangladesh innings I said to myself, “Even if Tamim only scores 20 or 30, it doesn’t matter, because I will have seen him bat, and it will probably be the most exciting 20 or 30 I will see this year.”

I got what I wished for, and then some. Destiny and I have a peculiar understanding when it comes to cricket, but I’ll write about Eng v Australia, Day 5 at Lord’s last year, some other time.

Let’s just say I’d prayed for England to bat first, which they did, and then when wickets started falling and they ended up 5 down at the end of the first day I sighed with relief that Prior and Bell had halted the collapse.

Tamim didn’t piss about when he came to the crease, but then he never does. His batting is a peculiar form of art, and the combination of Sehwag-type aggression and Pietersen-style virtuosity creates a style of batsmanship that is very much his own. Although he brought up his 50 with a 6 smashed over long-on off the bowling of Graeme Swann, this was a more measured innings – if that is possible with Tamim – than that explosive knock at Lord’s, though any pretence at watchfulness deserted him when he got into the 90s, swinging wildly at several deliveries like a man with a rolled up newspaper being harassed by a particularly aggressive wasp. The shot that brought up his century was a boundary smashed with glorious abandon off the toe of his bat through point, and even though he went soon after, edging a wide delivery from Anderson to Matt Prior, I knew I’d seen something very special indeed.

There were other reasons to remember this day. I found a Jack Fingleton book I’d been looking for at the LCCC book stall. An attempt to construct the world’s largest beer snake was kiboshed not long after the plans were formulated. At one point a bloke in blue body paint dressed as a smurf ran on to the field and was promptly tackled by the stewards, who kept his hat as a trophy.

But that’s not why I’ll remember last Saturday.

All hail Tamim Iqbal. Long may you entertain.