Paddy's Sports View

The banning of Danny Care is wrong

2012-01-04T16:56:00.001Z

The England Rugby Footballer Danny Care has been banned from this year’s 6 Nations tournament by the Rugby Football Union. He was arrested on suspicion of drink driving on New Year’s Eve and will face the courts later this month.

That Care has been extremely foolish is beyond dispute - the the Law rightly provides for tough sanctions in such cases and justice will no doubt be done in the courts. But for Care’s employers, the RFU and Harlequins, to take such extreme action strikes me as inappropriate and self-important. To say that it is none of the RFU’s business might be going a tad too far but I lean much more towards that view than I do to the view that the Rugby authorities have legitimately taken action.

Lets start with the admittedly hypothetical question as to what the RFU’s action would have been if it had been, say, an employee in the Twickenham Ticket Office who had been caught drink driving. Would the RFU have suspended that individual if the offence had occurred on a holiday day and at a time when the employee was not on RFU business? I very much doubt it. With a few exceptions our work lives and our private lives are kept separate – and rightly so. During my career there were one or two cases of drink driving amongst colleagues or acquaintances. Unless their job required these individuals to drive then the employer, Shell, took no action. Shell was not condoning drink driving in doing this it was recognising the important divide between what is their concern and what is not.

In Mr Care’s case it seems, as he himself in his statement suggests, that the “Role Model” card was being played by the RFU. Care says “I do understand the need for England players to be role models in the game and have tried to live up to that at all times” This is a good remark not least for the use of the short phrase “in the game”. England players have a deplorable record in recent times when on duty. “On duty” means on the pitch, of course, but also between matches when on tour. The players let themselves and their country down in this regard as recently a the last Rugby World Cup. But Care was not “On Duty” on New Year’s Eve and, frankly, it was none of his employers’ business what he got up to. Perhaps if he had danced naked in a fountain in Trafalgar Square chanting “The RFU Committee are Old Farts” his employer could have legitimately taken an interest. But in fact Care’s offence was a purely private matter between him, his family and his friends. He was emphatically not “On Duty”.

I do not know whether Danny Care has a legal case against the RFU for having suspended him and potentially ruined his career to punish him for an offence that was none of their business. And I can quite imagine that the pompous and absurdly over the top condemnation of Care by England’s stand in coach Stuart Lancaster will have gone down well in the Home Counties saloon bars where old fartdom still reigns. But it is for the law to take sanctions against Danny Care, and it will, not for the RFU top brass wallow in self-satisfied, pompous and self-congratulatory and damning rhetoric at a time when a kindly arm around the shoulder of the young man might have been more decent and effective.

Poppycock

2011-11-06T08:56:00.000Z

On Saturday November 13th 2010 England’s Rugby team played Australia at Twickenham. This reference is not about that match but about the date and the shirts. Take a look at the photograph of Chris Ashton scoring a try. Anything remarkable about it? True England appear to be playing in the wrong colour shirt and shorts but this is the RFU remember and for reasons best known to themselves they often send England out in the wrong kit. No the point here is the flower on Ashton's chest. It’s a rose – as you would expect. Do you see any other flower on display? No? No poppy then.
Now whatever venalities the RFU can be accused of a lack of patriotism or insensitivity to the importance of our Armed Forces past and present is not one of them. Indeed the military presence at Twickenham is usually very significant indeed as the “Help for Heroes” charity is often at the match. So if the RFU had thought it appropriate to put a poppy on the shirts of the England players last year because the match v the Aussies fell between Remembrance Day and Remembrance Sunday you can be sure that they would have done it. Whether it occurred to the Rugby bosses to do this I’ve no idea. But they didn't do it largely I suspect because there is no tradition of National sports teams wearing poppies - and there was no reason to create a precedent.

On Saturday November 12th 2011, the day after Remembrance Day and the day before Remembrance Sunday, England’s Football team take on Spain at Wembley and some bright spark thought it would be a good idea for them to wear an embroidered poppy on their shirts. There is no precedent for this any more than there was last year for the Rugby team. The suggestion has led to an unsavoury and unnecessary confrontation with FIFA who say that it would be against the regulations for this to happen. I have no view on whether this regulation is right or wrong but I do have a view as to whether the idea was a good one in the first place – or not.

Remembering our war dead is one of the annual rituals that helps define us as a Nation (that Nation is the United Kingdom, by the way, not England). I have always respected it and found it deeply moving – especially the service at the Cenotaph. And the Poppy is the traditional and highly respected symbol of our remembrance. “In Flanders fields the poppies blow, Between the crosses, row on row…” John McCrea’s 1915 poem was the spur for this. But in recent times there have been occasional media stories about the wearing of the poppy (or not) which have created rather more heat than light. A Newsreader’s decision not to wear a poppy was a cause celebre a year ago and his coining of the phrase “Poppy fascism” really riled some. Aside from my belief that the decision to wear a poppy (or not) is a personal one I don't feel particularly strongly about the issue. I wear a Poppy – but not in October, as some did this year, and not every time I venture out of the house in early November either!

So what is the objection to the England team wearing poppies on their shirts at Wembley? Traditions have to start somewhere I suppose - but do we really want to create one like this? Because you know what will happen. Next year there might be a full Rugby and Football programme on 10th/11th November. And the England cricket team might be playing a match somewhere. And all of these teams will feel obliged to wear Poppies because the tradition has been established and they don’t want the “Poppy Fascists” on their case. And before long anyone doing anything collectively at this time will feel obliged to follow the newly created rule that poppies are mandatory.   The key word here is “Collectively”. As I have argued wearing a Poppy is a personal choice and it is wholly inappropriate to compel anyone to do so - whether they be sportsmen or anyone else.

Now some might argue that the beneficiaries of Poppy Day are the Royal British Legion and that anything that helps them raise more money for a good cause is worthwhile. And similarly they could argue that to give the Poppy prominent display on an England team’s shirts will raise awareness of the Legion – as well as being a sign of respect for that cause. Poppycock!   The wearing of Poppies in early November is so widespread that I cannot believe that anyone can have missed it – and if they have eleven footballers wearing poppies on their shirts is hardly likely to make a difference. And will it raise any extra money for the Legion? I doubt that as well. The chances to give to the British Legion are many and varied - and anyway collectors could be present inside or outside Wembley Stadium on 12th November whether the players wear poppies or not.

So why should we invent a tradition that sports teams on or around 11th November should wear poppies? Eric Hobsbawm has said

“Invented tradition is taken to mean a set of practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly accepted rules and of a ritual or symbolic nature, which seek to inculcate certain values and norms of behaviour by repetition, which automatically implies continuity with the past.... However, insofar as there is such reference to a historic past, the peculiarity of 'invented' traditions is that the continuity with it is largely fictitious.”

And that, for me, along with the other arguments I have made in this piece, is enough.

Golden days for British and European Golf

2011-09-26T11:47:00.001+01:00

A friend who is a keen golfer and ardent follower of the sport reminds me just how successful British and European golf is at the moment. And for me the top sporting experience of the year was not any of England’s many and deserved cricketing triumphs, good though they were, but the four days my wife and I spent at Royal St George’s watching the Open Championship. This was sport at its peak both in respect of the quality of the golf played over the four days and the wonderful end game in which Darren Clarke was triumphant. Tiger Woods apart all of the world’s top golfers were at Sandwich and is was a delight to see some living legends of the game, like Tom Watson, as well as the impressive and precociously young rising stars like Rickie Fowler and the British amateur Tom Lewis. Oddly the British players who have risen to the top of the world rankings, Donald, Westwood and McIlroy and those close by – Rose, Poulter and Casey all had a poor Championship. But that was swiftly forgotten as we celebrated Clarke’s triumph. Golf crowds in my experience are generous in their applause and well-behaved (I’ve never been to a tournament in the United States) and that was certainly the case at The Open. To this the players responded and there were a few moments which would grace any sport – Tom Watson’s smile at the end of the second round not because of his play (good though it was) nor because of his hole in one at the sixth but because his playing partner, 20 year old Tom Lewis, had followed his opening 65 with a solid 74 to make the cut.

The “Tiger effect” on golf has been good, bad and ugly. Good because it undoubtedly raised the profile of the game. Bad because it detracted somewhat from Tiger’s contemporaries as so much of the media attention was on Woods. And ugly because it eventually emerged that the Emperor had no clothes (or no trousers anyway) and that beneath the commercially burnished exterior there was a disturbed, dysfunctional and struggling human being. Well behaved though they generally are pro golfers are not saints and from time to time they set a pretty bad example. The American team in the Ryder Cup has a simplistic chauvinism about it that is stomach churning to the more urbane European eye. When they had a pre-tournament pep talk from an Army major last year it inspired Phil Mickleson to comment “I feel proud to be part of a country that cares about the civil rights of people all throughout the world and not just in our own country,” Hmm!

The top golfers are multi-millionaires and used to a lifestyle that is beyond the imaginings of most of us. I have no problem with this because below that top tier are hundreds hoping to make it and not living in the lap of luxury whilst they do so. Ian Poulter recently tweeted when someone criticised his poor performance in a tournament “You think I'm going to lie here feeling sorry having worked in a pro shop for 7 years earning $200 a week. Enjoy what you work hard for.” A nice piece of honesty from Poults – and few would disagree with his sentiment. Poulter is the archetypical Ryder Cup competitor – fiercely proud and a great team man. Woods never really delivered in the Cup what his talent should have given – and the contrast between the striving for individual glory of Tiger and the authentic team focus of Poulter and the rest of his European colleagues has been marked. Golf is such an individual game that it takes something special to blend rivals together but with Britain and/or Europe holding the Ryder, Walker, and Solheim Cups (and GB and Ireland the Seve Trophy) we must be doing something right this side of the Atlantic! Long may it continue – and let’s hope that Donald, Westwood , Casey, Rose and our other very good British pros can find a way to follow Clarke’s triumph ( and those of McIlroy and McDowell) and bag themselves a Major or two soon.

The tough realities behind the nostalgia for County Cricket

2011-09-21T18:37:00.001+01:00

There has been plenty of highly charged and emotional stuff around since Lancashire’s victory in the County Championship. From me included! And this nostalgia, when you come down to it, is a big part of what is wrong with domestic Cricket in England. Its strengths – the sort of honest but blind devotion we see in this blog for example – are also its weaknesses. The irony will have escaped some but at a time when the England team is at its strongest point for years the County system is on its knees. It is ironic, but it is not paradoxical. The England set up has little if any connection with County cricket – its centrally contracted players rarely appear for their counties and County cricket is largely an irrelevance for England. “Hang on”, the cricket traditionalist will cry, “where do the international players come from if they don’t come from the counties?” Well one answer would be “Ireland, South Africa and now New Zealand” but that might be a bit too clever-clever and pat. Of course the England squad have all come from County cricket - where the heck else would they come from – it’s the only game in town! But that doesn’t make it the best game or even the right game – except to those who close their minds to change.

The stark reality is that virtually all of the 18 counties are bankrupt or close to insolvency. They are only kept alive at all by hand-outs of around £2m each from the ECB. And where does the ECB get its money from to distribute this largesse? Well you and me actually. Three big sources of ECB funding are the Sky contract, international match ticket sales and the bids that major County ground owners make to have the right to stage a Test match or a limited overs international. Let’s just run through the implications for the cricket fan of these three ECB income streams.

The Sky contract is exclusive – there is no live cricket on non-subscription television in Britain. None! So a cricket fan who wants to watch England’s Test match triumphs live will have to fork out a minimum of £50 a month across the year to see it on Sky. Our summer sport, unlike to an extent our winter ones (at least the international part of them) , is unprotected from the commercial priorities of Sky – this is regressive of course. The rich man in his castle pays the same to watch Sky television as the poor man at his gate. So if the poor man’s ten-year-old takes an interest in cricket he can’t just switch on the BBC or ITV or Channel 4 – he has to persuade his hard-pressed parents to cough up £50+ a month. Not very likely is it?

Then there is the price of international cricket tickets to consider - they are by far the highest in the world. You can watch five days Test cricket in Australia for the cost of one day at Lord’s or The Oval. And you could watch a couple of seasons for that same amount in India. Why so high? Because the ECB says so - and the ECB says so because it needs the loot for the Counties. A day at a Test match for a family of four this year would have cost around £350 for the tickets alone. Oddly enough I didn’t see many families of four at the grounds this summer.

What about the auction that the ECB runs for the right to stage international matches? Sealed tenders mean that for most of the games the keen applicants have to take a hard expensive punt to stand a chance. This has nearly bankrupted Glamorgan – to such an extent that they had to withdraw from staging a West Indies Test at Cardiff next year despite being awarded it. They couldn’t afford to pay for the privilege! And the MCC, owners of Lord’s, were forced into a trading loss last year by the blind bids they made to host Test matches. Its complete nonsense of course – most of all when you realise that the ECB only does it to gather money for the failing Counties! So Glamorgan bids high to stage a Test which generates income for the ECB who pass it back to the Counties – including Glamorgan. D'oh!

So we pay of the order of £36m per year to keep the counties afloat. But, as this blog correctly says, nobody goes to watch them play - in the County Championship anyway. That we follow it in other ways may be true but that is hardly the basis of a sustainable business! And whilst the final round of Championship matches was certainly exciting through most of the season most of the cricket watching public hadn’t a clue about what was going on. The competition even stopped for a month or so so that the more money-spinning limited overs competitions could take place. Conservatives argue that outmoded businesses that blunder on sustained only by public hand-outs and with out-of - date business models should be allowed to die. That is precisely what we have in our current County system. There is direct public money – via the Sports Council – and indirect via Sky or the ECB’s inflated ticket prices going to County cricket. It may not all appear on Mr Osborne’s public sector accounts – but it’s as much public money as the NHS or the welfare state.

I have argued that the solution for English domestic cricket is to have far fewer top tier domestic teams – about eight seems right - and far better competition. This need not be the end of the Counties (please follow the link to see my argument for an alternative County model). As with so much in life this is a battle between the modernisers who see the realities and the traditionalists who really do think that all is well. Act soon – or those past “Glories” will turn to dust!

Its been a very long wait for Lancashire

2011-09-16T10:52:00.001+01:00

My father was born in Stockport a few days before the battle of the Somme in 1916. The town may be technically in Cheshire but then, as now, many of its inhabitants saw themselves as Lancastrians – my father certainly did - not least in his lifelong support for Lancashire County Cricket Club. Like me Dad became a cricket fan at a very early age and by the time he was ten a Lancashire allegiance was engrained in him. Good timing, for in 1926 Lancashire won their first County Championship for 22 years and followed this with further wins in 1927, 1928, 1930 and 1934. A golden age indeed for the red rose County but thereafter, a solitary tied Championship in 1950 aside, no wins at all – until now.

Back in the 1920s one of the lynchpins of the Lancashire side was the Australian Test match fast bowler Ted McDonald. From 1925 to 1930 he was virtually an ever present in the side taking 970 wickets in 193 matches – an average of five per game. McDonald has a firm place in the Briggs family folklore because in 1930 he was photographed giving his autograph to a couple of young Lancashire fans – one of whom (the boy on the left in the cap) was my father. Not only did he sign Dad’s autograph book but he undertook later to get all of his team-mates autographs as well – on the cardboard frame in which the photo was placed. The original of that framed photograph is in the excellent cricket museum at Old Trafford.

Ted McDonald was unusual in playing in County cricket as an overseas player in the inter-war years he had to qualify and for two years he played in the Lancashire League before making his county debut in 1924. This followed a very successful tour with the 1921 Australians when he took 27 Test wickets at an average of under 25. It is intriguing to observe that he was already 33 years old when he made his first appearance for Lancashire and that his in final full season, 1930, he was 39. Not bad for someone described in Wisden as being “…far faster than the average English fast bowler”!

My father would have been thrilled with Lancashire’s success in the Championship this year. I only watched his County with him once but that was in the famous 1971 Gillette Cup final against my own County Kent. I was born in Kent and it was never even a subject for discussion that I chose to support the County of my birth rather than adopt my father’s team. We sat together for that enthralling match at Lord’s when Kent looked to be on the way to overhauling Lancashire’s modest 60 Over total of 224 until Jackie Bond took a famous catch to dismiss the on-fire Asif Iqbal. Lancashire has an astonishing record in One Day cricket with no less than 16 trophies between 1970 and 1998 – though none since. But for all this, in my father’s view, the only domestic cricket prize that really mattered was the County Championship and I am sure that if Dad was around today his smile would have been as wide as it was at Lord’s in 1971 – and he would be reminiscing about the games he saw the last time Lancashire stood unchallenged at the top of the pile way back in 1934.

That was never a champagne moment !

2011-08-02T17:19:00.001+01:00

The atmosphere in the Pavilion, never mind the rest of the ground, was electric at the Tea interval on the third day of the India Test match - the good burghers of Nottingham were sure that cricketing justice was not being done. Hence the booing. Not that a riot was on the cards - but the natives were restless. What we had just witnessed had defied belief. In short when the last ball of the over before Tea was hit towards the boundary the fielder, Kumar, dived over the boundary rope like a dying swallow. Seeing this batsmen, not unreasonably, assumed that a boundary had been hit. Kumar assumed the same. He picked up the ball and tossed it gently towards the wicketkeeper. Meanwhile the batsmen, Bell and Morgan, headed Pavilion-wards for a well-earned Tea. The keeper, Indian Captain MS Dhoni, caught the ball and threw it gently to the bowlers' end where the stumps were broken. Why did Dhoni do this? Well maybe he realised that the Umpires had not signalled a "Four" and that technically the ball was still in play and with the batsmen en route for Tea one of them (Bell) could be deemed to be Run Out. The Umpires then burst into action. Was Bell Run Out? Much radio chat with the third Umpire. Meanwhile Bell and Morgan were barred from returning to the Pavilion by one of the umpiring team! Back at the square the Umpires asked Dhoni if he really wanted to appeal. He said that he did. In the circumstances the Umpires had two options. They could have said to Dhoni that such an appeal was likely to be deemed later not to be in keeping with the "Spirit of Cricket" (unequivocally entrenched in the Laws of the Game). They didn't do this. They took option 2 which was to accept Dhoni's appeal and, inevitably, give Bell out.

There is a real sense of what is natural justice amongst cricket supporters. Instinctively we tend to know right from wrong. And this was wrong. The Umpires and the Indian team were roundly booed as they went to the Pavilion for Tea. It was loud, pointed and not open to misinterpretation. The forcefulness of this reaction no doubt supported the England team as they tried to cope with a gross injustice. Andy Flower and Andrew Strauss elected to go to talk with their opposite numbers Fletcher and Dhoni. And, as the later interview with the honourable and decent Rahul Dravid confirmed, the Indian team thought again and decided to withdraw their appeal. The brief version of what had happened can be summarised as follows:

1. Everything pointed to a four having been scored and the over having being finished – not least Kumar’s relaxed returning of the ball to Dhoni.

2. The breaking of the stumps was almost an afterthought. There was little urgency to it and it seemed little expectation, on the part of the Indians, that a run out had really been effected.

3. Bell and Morgan were already on the way to the Pavilion for Tea when the stump breaking took place. They clearly assumed that it was the end of the Over and the Session.

4. It eventually dawned on the Indians that in fact the ball had still been in play when they broke the stumps and that technically Ian Bell was run out. It was at this point that they appealed.

5. When the appeal happened former England Captain Michael Vaughan’s commentary on television was “[That was] a big mistake by Mahendra Singh Dhoni. I think this is [against] the Spirit of the Game.”

6. The Umpires then asked Dhoni a second time whether he wanted to pursue the appeal. Dhoni said he did. Bell was given out.

7. The Umpires and the Indians were roundly booed off the pitch not only by the majority of the crowd but by I would say a third of the members in the Pavilion where I was sitting.

8. During the Tea interval the Indians discussed the matter and, in the words of Rahul Dravid, they concluded that “If we took the letter of the laws of the game strictly [Bell] was out. But something was not right.”

9. The England Coach and the England Captain asked the Indians to withdraw the appeal which they graciously did. They might have done this anyway without the two Andys’ intervention. Who knows? Dravid’s remarks suggest so.

10. No announcement was made to the crowd and at first the Umpires and the Indian team were booed again. Then Ian Bell emerged and some amongst the members thought that England was playing hardball and refusing to accept the dismissal! Then, slowly, the truth emerged and in time the Indians were applauded for their belated sportsmanship.

Subsequent to this sequence of events the cricket Establishment has sought not only to praise Dhoni but to say that the "Spirit of Cricket" is enhanced by his actions. Well yes - but remember it was Dhoni and his team who created the mess in the first place! As Michael Vaughan correctly put it in real time on commentary the Indians were technically correct to appeal - but that appeal was plainly not in line with the "Spirit of Cricket”.

So to sum up. Technically Ian Bell was run out. But to pursue this offended natural justice as well as undoubtedly the "Spirit of the Game”. Dhoni, initially, pursued the appeal and the Umpires complied. They did not need to do this! Remember again the "Spirit of Cricket" is in the Laws and the Umpires would have been within their rights to advise Dhoni that his appeal conflicted with this Spirit. But this didn't happen. It was only when they were sitting in their dressing room having been booed from the field of play the enormity of the error that they had made dawned on Dhoni and his team that they saw sense (as Rahul Dravid pointed out).

The willingness of MS Dhoni to appeal in circumstances that were clearly suspect and unique was regrettable. The smiles on the faces of his colleagues as they went into Tea were reprehensible. That they subsequently, under some pressure, recanted is commendable. But let's cut out the bullshit. This whole problem came about because the "Spirit of Cricket" was initially, and in the heat of the moment, far from the mind of the Indian Captain. And it didn't feature with the Umpires either. Cricket's spirit has been rescued by England's Flower and Strauss and by India's Fletcher and Dhoni's reconsideration and welcome retreat.

The final (possibly!) coda to this affair was when the Test Match Special team of commentators and summarisers elected to give MS Dhoni the “Brian Johnston Champagne Moment” award for his withdrawal of the appeal. I found this so stomach-churningly obsequious that I “Tweeted” immediately from the ground “BJ Champagne moment choice is sentimental, craven, establishment-pleasing nonsense. Really bad.” On cool reflection I stand by this 100%. It was a match full of genuine champagne moments on the field of play – not least the brilliant third ball of Stuart Broad’s hat trick. That MS Dhoni had the wit and the sensitivity to reverse his appeal was commendable – but in truth I think that he had little choice but to do this if the match and the rest of the series was to progress smoothly. I was right among the cricket fans at Trent Bridge and at Tea they were incensed by what had happened and in unforgiving mood.

The day after these events the establishment closed ranks and the message in the media was disturbingly consistent – Ian Bell was dozy, naïve, careless or worse. MS Dhoni was a hero. The umpires were blameless. Yes, as I have shown, Bell and to an extent Morgan were a bit sloppy but the former had been batting through two sessions under considerable pressure and with the game in the balance. He played magnificently and was certainly entitled to his Tea! He saw Karma dive over the boundary and saw the subsequent body language of Karma and the rest and understandably felt there was no suggestion that a “play” of any sort was on. The Indians initially thought so too and when they appealed a quick word from the umpires to the effect that this was not a very good idea in the Spirit of the Game would certainly have sufficed. The umpires did not do this and this was very bad judgment on their part. It really was!

And Dhoni and the Indian team’s belated retraction of their appeal sullies the good record of Test Match Special – it was no champagne moment! No Way!

Beware the Sporting Trojan horses

2011-07-13T20:11:00.001+01:00

“Beware of Greeks bearing gifts”. Well I suppose in the current economic crisis in the Eurozone it’s more likely that our friends in the Aegean would be seeking gifts rather than bearing them – but you know what I mean. I refer to the truism that plausible and seemingly generous offers from some sources often have hidden complications – whether (in the case of cricket) it is Allan Stanford or Sky Television, sport and especially British sport and the broadcasting of British sport, is increasingly beholden to people whose values are not really ours and who can, and do, demand a lot for their largesse.

That the leaders of the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) are still in place despite the Stanford affair and other dramas has been a source of amazement – except, that is, to insiders who know that change at the top of the EBC is virtually impossible to achieve. Those who got us into the Stanford mess are still in power because those who put them there choose to keep them there to protect, as they see it, their own positions. Any rational observer of England’s domestic cricket scene could only but conclude that there are more than twice as many teams competing in top tier competitions than is affordable and logical. But on the irrefutable grounds that turkeys tend not to vote for a Christmas annihilation so the leaders of the eighteen First Class counties won’t vote to reduce their number. And they certainly won’t vote for a more radical Chairman who might actually do something about the mess that is English domestic cricket. So there is a Faustian (and probably unspoken) pact between the counties on one side and the current Chairman and Chief Executive on the other which maintains the status quo. The gift that these particular Greeks bear is the promise of funding to ensure that what are otherwise unsustainable “businesses” keep on going. No responsible business entity would pass good money to a subsidiary where they know that it will turn bad. But that is what the ECB does with tens of millions of pounds of money that they extract form you and me – directly though International match ticket sales or indirectly by way of our Sky Sports subscriptions.

Sky Sports is the jewel in the crown of BSkyB’s properties – a source of income to Rupert Murdoch’s News Corp that is invaluable to them. Murdoch’s (now rebuffed) wish totally to control Sky is in no small way attributable to the success of Sky Sports. But for the sports with which Sky has a contract for broadcasting rights the “Gifts” that this US/Australian “Greek” brings come at a price. True the income from Sky that the ECB receives is considerable but what Sky asks for in return is substantial to. Firstly a total monopoly of live TV coverage domestic and international. There is no live cricket on British television except that on Sky - and to see that you need a subscription that costs at least £50 a month. And if you think that you can get round that by going to the Pub think again. Sky have increased the costs to pubs and clubs to such a level that it is unaffordable for many. That’s why the Red Lion in your village doesn't show the cricket or Premiership football any more!

The second demand that BSkyB makes is on the fixture list. The answer to all the following questions is “Because that’s what Murdoch wants”. Why are there 43 days of International cricket in 2011? Why were there seven One Day Internationals in Australia last winter? Why is England playing five ODIs in India in October when surely the players deserve a rest. Why is the domestic Twenty20 fixture list so crowded? Why is England playing Australia in three one Day Internationals in 2012? Why will the next Ashes series be back-to-back in 2013 (in England) and 2013/14 (in Australia)?

The third demand is influence. He who pays the piper calls the tune. It is safe to say that no changes will be made to anything of significance in English cricket without Sky agreeing to it. It is indisputable that the income stream from Sky to the ECB to the Counties can only exist if the content for Sky is in place. The ECB has to deliver that content – predominantly Test matches, ODIs and international and domestic Twenty20.

The events of the past week which have brought the malignancy of the Murdoch empire into sharp relief present an opportunity for those who argue for change to English cricket to act. Because, as I have tried to show, the whole pack of cards is sustained only by the Sky deal. Remove BSkyB from the equation and sanity will prevail. It wont be easy – but it sure is necessary. Let’s run through the plusses. If English cricket returns to terrestrial television then cricket viewership figures would return to the levels they were when it was on Channel 4 in 2005. But there will be less money in the pot – so the ECB will be forced to so something about the unsustainable nonsense that is an 18 County structure. And for the ECB the benefit is that in a more principled media rights environment it would always be they not the broadcaster that called the tune.

Our summer sport should not be in hock to Rupert Murdoch. We should not have to pay £100 for a seat in the Grandstand at the Lord's Test match or £50 a month to watch it on television. We should have competitive cricket clubs at the highest level playing in fine urban grounds with predominantly top English players in their squads. Cricket should be run by and for cricket fans not for the benefit of dubious and squalid commercial enterprises for whom the only measure of success is financial. That’s what the “Spirit of Cricket” should mean.

The wit and wisdom of Graeme Swann

2011-07-06T10:28:00.001+01:00

Graeme Swann is a wag – and very funny he can be as well. His video reports from the Ashes tour were often hilarious and Swann’s intelligence as well as his humour shone though. So why would he make remarks as crass as he has as reported in n today’s newspapers? According to Swann Broad is

“one of the best bowlers in England, certainly in my top two, and I love his aggression and the streak of nastiness about him because you definitely need that as a bowler. I don’t want to see our fast bowlers opening a kitten sanctuary; I want to see them bowling bouncers and breaking people’s fingers.”

Professional cricketers, like all pro sportsmen, have two main fears. One is that they will lose their form and the other is that they will be injured. Either can lead to a loss of place in the team and to loss of earnings – even to premature retirement. For Swann to call on a colleague to break the fingers of his opponents is about as far from the spirit of the game as you can get. It happens – but I have never heard before one bowler call upon another to injure a batsman. I know what Swann means about fast bowlers – they do need to intimidate but they need to do this fairly and not to aim not at the player’s body or hands with a view to physically damaging them.

Sorry Graeme but this was an ill-considered remark and even though you said it lightly and perhaps didn't mean it it gives a bad example to all cricketers, especially young ones, as to what the game of cricket is all about.

Play up, play up and play the game

2011-05-05T16:05:00.002+01:00

And so the England management decides that one Public Schoolboy captain isn’t enough and they appoint three. The split between Limited Overs and Test Captaincy makes sense only in the context of crowded fixture lists and the giving of respite to the Captain. Strauss discharged his duties admirably in the absurdly overlong One Day series in Australia and in the grotesquely protracted Cricket World Cup after it. What damage to his mind and his family there was from this only he will know – and perhaps Andy Flower. I think that Strauss’s retirement from One Day Internationals is highly regrettable – he can play the game well. Cook is also a one day player of talent but was omitted from the arduous post- Ashes one day games. Lucky him because that decision has ironically brought him the captaincy.

The splitting of Twenty20 and ODI captaincy makes no sense at all. The formats are sufficiently similar for the special tactical nous of the One Day Captain (if there is one) being equally applicable in the T20 area. And there aren’t very many T20 matches anyway – so if Cook is the right person for One Day Internationals there is absolutely no reason why he shouldn’t also captain the T20 side.

With Collingwood’s departure from the scene England has now chosen a trio of men who learned their cricket in Independent schools and whose social background is identical. Maybe that is the background that the blinkered honchos of the ECB, headed by Old Rugbeian Giles Clarke, see as being desirable in a leader. There is also clearly now a hierarchy involved with Test match cricket at the top, ODIs next and T20 as the “apprenticeship” format. This is nonsense as well. In an ideal world the same man – and the best captain – should be England captain in all formats.

If you can play you can play – and if you can lead you can lead. As Geoff Miller put it back in 2008 when Kevin Pietersen was appointed: “In choosing a new captain, we were keen to identify a player who could lead the team in all three forms of cricket and bring fresh enthusiasm and ideas to the role of captain.” Miller was right then and the 180 degree swing away from that now is wrong – workload aside.

How to run the 2015 Cricket World Cup

2011-04-06T10:57:00.003+01:00

The Cricket World Cup 2011 is behind us and it will fade rapidly and disappear from our consciousness. Especially perhaps in England, South Africa and Australia - but even in the sub-continent where there was more to celebrate. Will the lessons of the tournament be learned by the participants and especially the International Cricket Council (ICC)?

For the ICC the 2007 Cricket World cup was a disaster. It dragged on from March 13th to April 28th and India and Pakistan failed to make it beyond the Group stages - unfancied Ireland and Bangladesh took the places in the next stage that had been pre-ordained for these two money-spinning nations. So for a month we had a tournament without India and Pakistan and the sub-continent, Sri Lanka aside, switched off. Never again said the ICC - so for the 2011 tournament no risks were taken. The eight main Test nations were virtually guaranteed a quarterfinal place, which they duly took. Although England made life difficult for a while by losing to Ireland and Bangladesh, which they weren't supposed to do! For India and Pakistan it was mostly plain sailing, as it was meant to be - and as the ICC's sponsors demanded.

So what of 2015 - the next tournament? First, you would think, there has to be an acknowledgement that we have twelve decent One-Day International sides. There is the top ten - the eight big beasts plus Bangladesh and Zimbabwe. The last mentioned might be a question mark but they are full members of the ICC and surely by 2015 their nation will have restored a semblance of normality and their cricket as well? Then there is Ireland who have performed brilliantly in the last two World Cups beating Pakistan and England along the way. And The Netherlands who ran England close this time around and are a team comprised of more then decent limited overs cricketers.

The ICC, however, has decided that Ireland and The Netherlands will be excluded from the 2015 tournament. It is to say the least discouraging to these two cricket nations whose improvement in recent years has been marked. And the decision makes to logistic sense either. There are virtually no disadvantages to having a 12-team tournament compared with a 10-team one. So what is the solution?

In 2015 the Cricket World Cup should comprise 12 teams. Recognising the need for the ICC and the member countries to maximise their income streams there should be a Group phase with the twelve teams divided into two six team Groups. This would mean 30 matches in total in the Group stages which with two matches per day and allowing for travelling and rest time would last about three weeks. Then the top four teams in each Group would progress to the Quarterfinals and so on. Another couple of weeks maximum. A five week tournament - long for sure but much shorter than 2007 or 2011 (19th February - 2nd April). The key would be the scheduling of the Group matches. By playing two matches per day the overall duration is limited - but with Australia and New Zealand crossing five time zones and allowing for a mix of Day and Day/Night matches the television clashes can be minimised. It's perfectly feasible. Over to you ICC !

MCC to sell Lord's and move to Stratford

2011-04-01T03:28:00.003+01:00

St John's Wood 1st April 2011

The world of cricket was rocked to its gleaming white boots today by the news that the Marylebone Cricket Club, its most revered institution, is to sell its iconic Lord's cricket ground and move to a ground share with West Ham United at the Stratford Olympic Stadium. Speaking to the media Secretary and CEO Keith Bradshaw said "I'm sure this news will be a surprise but when we looked at the options this was the one, by far, that was best for our members - who after all own the club". Bradshaw revealed that each of the MCC's 20,000 members will walk away with £150,000 as a result of the sale to the new property development company "Warner-Grace Enterprises". "Lord's is a huge site in a prime area of London. The ten twenty-storey blocks of luxury apartments will fully exploit the location. Each will have a £15million penthouse and with the average price being over £5million for the other flats this is an offer too good to be true".

The whole of Lord's will be demolished except the Pavilion, a listed building which will be become a Hotel, Casino and restaurant complex. "The Long Room will become the main gaming hall and we plan to use other rooms, like the dressing rooms, for poker and other games" said a spokesman for the new "Compton Edrich Casino" company. The Media Centre will also remain and become a health and fitness centre and Gentlemen's Club.

The MCC became aware of the development potential of the whole Lord's site as it progressed extensive plans for the Nursery End. What came as a surprise was not so much the very high value of the total Lord's Real Estate but the fact that Westminster Council encouraged the development and said that planning permission would not be a problem. A Council spokesman said that in this difficult times assets must be fully exploited and the current use of Lord's was clearly sub optimum. Lord's future as an International venue has also been under question as a result of the recent decision of the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) to award Test matches to County grounds like Cardiff and the Rosebowl rather than the "Home of Cricket".

The partnership with West Ham is based on the fact that the football club will only need its new stadium for ten months of the year. "There is a window of opportunity for cricket for nearly eight weeks in the summer" says West Ham Vice Chairman Karen Brady "and the MCC's plans to play lots of Twenty20 matches at our new home should bring the money in". She confirmed that there will, however, not be any Test matches at the ground when the MCC moves to East London.

Welcoming the move the England and Wales Cricket Board said that it would relocate its premises from Lord's to Dubai. "As the ICC has shown the tax advantages of a move to Dubai are very strong" said ECB Chief Executive David Collier "and we believe there may also be some financial benefits to English cricket as well. We will miss Lord's but nothing is forever and I am delighted that the MCC has been so forward-looking in making this decision." The move has also been welcomed by Arts and Culture Secretary Jeremy Hunt. "This is very much a "Big Society" decision. In the 21st Century we have to work together at all levels to further our society aims. In truth Lord's was rather elitist in the past and I am delighted that much needed housing supply in London will be enhanced and that more productive use will now be made of these acres of NW9."

Construction on the new "Lord's Village" will begin immediately the main 2012 fixture has been completed - the Olympic Archery tournament. Asked when the final Lord's Test match would be played Mr Bradshaw replied "Good question - I'll come back to you on that one. Need to check with the ECB"

Lets stop raging against the dying of the light of county cricket

2011-01-02T11:49:00.001Z

The subject of the need for reform of English domestic cricket is unlikely to make headline news – even on the sports pages. But in the circles where those of us who obsessively care about the game move there is no question more divisive pitching, as it does, the traditionalist against the moderniser in an often rancorous battle of words. For example in an article in the Kent County Cricket Supporters Club Magazine last summer I argued that the current “18 county model for the county game is broken beyond repair” and that we need an 8 team franchise structure based on established international grounds. It wasn’t a particularly original proposal - the “Cricket Reform Group” and others have been arguing for something like this for years. However to suggest to the Kent faithful that Kent county cricket would have to be downgraded to a semi-professional domestic second tier was tantamount to blasphemy for some. In the next edition of the magazine I was accused, by the County curator (archivist) no less, of being “disingenuous”, “misguided”, “promoting nonsense”, of being someone who doesn’t care about the “history and traditions of the game” or the “distinguished past” of the counties. I am, according to this self-appointed guardian of cricket’s traditions, promoting “elitism” and, finally, “barmy”!

Whilst Kent’s curator knows what he doesn’t like, and uses intemperate and insulting language to let us know about this, he fails completely to offer any alternative suggestions as to how we put right the mess that is County cricket. Ironically Kent CCC is one of the most obvious examples of one of the many problems of the current county system. The county’s finances are a shambles, attendance at many of their matches is pitiful and they simply do not have the resources to compete effectively in the top tier. It was no surprise that they fell back into the Championship’s second division after an embarrassingly unsuccessful 2010 season. Kent has also alienated its most loyal supporter group – its members – by implementing swingeing increases in annual membership costs and failing to respond to members’ complaints about having to pay a minimum of £200 per annum to maintain their membership rights. Kent is not the only County that wouldn’t have any financial future at all without huge subvention from the England and Wales Cricket Board - indeed this is the rule not the exception in our antiquated and unsuitable domestic structure.

Support for the need for change comes from an unlikely source in yesterday’s Daily Telegraph. Shane Warne, who of course played for and captained Hampshire, says that “It is time to cut county cricket from its traditional base of 18 teams back to 10”. He makes the excellent point that a ten team structure with say 16 players per squad would make 160 top cricketers in all compare with the 360 at present - among which, according to Warne, are “plenty of people who don’t deserve contracts” and that some sides in the second division are “not even club standard” ! Warne is right of course – although no doubt he would also be accused of being “barmy” by some of cricket’s old-school. I’d be happy to engage in a debate as to whether ten, eight or even less is the right number for a top class domestic system. William Buckland in his seminal book on the subject of English cricket “Pommies” thinks that a five team domestic structure is ideal – half again of Warnie’s suggestion. Whether it’s five or eight or (at a pinch) ten can be debated. But it sure as hell isn’t 18!

In the article I referred to above I tried to present a positive view of how cricket at England’s beautiful festival grounds like Tunbridge Wells and Arundel might be sustained and evolve. My guess is that the crowds for matches between Kent and Sussex (for example) wouldn’t be much less if the two counties were playing good quality semi-professional cricket compared with playing in the current substandard so-called “first-class” competition. Change isn’t easy and there would be huge regrets that the shire counties no longer hosted matches in the primary domestic competition. But the counties wouldn’t disappear and in the same way that good quality rugby continues to be played at historic clubs like Blackheath, Rosslyn Park and London Scottish despite the fact that they are not top tier any more so it would be with cricket’s counties. The Old Farts of Rugby had to bow to the inevitable and whilst I would not argue that the the 12-team Aviva Premiership is perfect its establishment did not lead to the destruction of those clubs who couldn’t make the transition to the new much more sustainable and commercial top flight. So it would be with cricket and nobody is served by nostalgically clinging to the past and raging against the dying of the light.

A vintage year in Sport? Yes but, no but…

2010-12-14T11:26:00.001Z

“Prats – talking, writing and pontificating about things of which they know nothing are the curse of modern sport. And I definitely include prominent former sportsmen; in fact they are the worst of all.” Andy Ripley

Andy Ripley, that fine and fearless man of Rugby, and a great deal more, died this year at the tragically early age of 62. Andy was not an establishment man - and yet he did more for sport as a player, commentator and administrator than all of the men in suits he mercilessly mocked put together. Quite what he would have said about the myriad sporting scandals that have grabbed the headlines in the six months since his death can only be conjectured – but you can be sure that he would have had a point of view. There is hardly a sport that hasn’t featured on the front pages as well as the back for all the wrong reasons this year. Drugs, violence, greed, cheating, bribery, corruption, disloyalty and just plain stupidity have been almost daily occurrences and no sport has been free of the whiff of scandal. So I offer below, and to the memory of Andy Ripley, a cynic’s antidote to the Awards season when sportsmen (they are mostly men) some of whom we know to be self-indulgent and avaricious prats, will dress uncomfortably in designer suits to pick up one gong or another. “And the award goes to Bloggs – fresh from kicking the teeth in of another second row forward at Twickenham.” “And the Personality of the Year is Blank – fresh from demanding a 50% rise on his already obscene weekly pay packet”. “And the Trophy goes to Dubbin whose contacts in the world of illegal betting wish him well”. And so it will go on.

If some of the players are hypocrites and the commercial organisations which sponsor the awards short-sighted what about the gullible rest of us who lap it all up? Those of us who paid Sky serious money to watch that grotesque parody of sport that was the Haye v Harrison fight. Those of us who hailed the arrival of new fast bowling talent on the Pakistan tour and paid good money to watch it – only to find that that talent was being paid by someone shady to cheat. Those who paid thousands of pounds to go to South Africa to watch England’s grossly over- hyped and overpaid Football team, incompetently led and devoid of any team sprit or focus fail so utterly and miserably. Those of us who fell for the Tiger Woods brand and watched used his image being used to sell anything from razors to golf holidays – only to find that the brand was bogus. Those of us who were fooled into thinking that an exceptional England bid for the Football World Cup in 2018 would be judged on rational grounds – only for it to be contemptuously dismissed by a FIFA committee with zero ethics and greedy hands. Those among us who remember the glory days of Formula one when brave men of integrity competed fairly for trophies surely look askance today at this scandal-infected pseudo-sport headed up by a man who not only successfully bungs his way with Heads of State and Prime Ministers but also says that Adolf Hitler was a man who "was able to get things done", and that “democracy has not worked out for Britain”. Those of us who played Rugby in days of yore, when the nearest thing to a scandal was the stuffing of a few used fivers into the socks of “amateur” players before a match, will recall that in those halcyon days Doctors were not employed at the Stoop to cut players’ lips. And sometimes they never learn. In 2006 Floyd Landis was being awarded victory in the Tour de France only later to be stripped of his title for a doping offense. Roll forward to 2010 and the “winner”, Spanish cyclist Alberto Contador, may suffer the same fate as Landis if the investigation into his positive test for using a banned substance leads to his guilt being confirmed. This is a sport which has long since lost any semblance of respectability – and yet Rupert Murdoch’s News International has ploughed tens of millions of dollars into “Team Sky” seemingly oblivious of the fact that the whole sport is rotten to the core. British Tennis is not exactly rotten – but what a shambolic ongoing failure there has been over decades to create a domestic structure which produces professional players of even the most modest quality. Great Tennis nations like Lithuania, Ukraine, Poland and Austria are just some of the countries that have humbled Britain’s best in the Davis Cup in recent times. And we await, as we have done most of my lifetime, the day when we once again have a Grand Slam champion. Hosting the world’s finest tennis tournament well is one thing – actually creating a domestic system that produces decent players seems beyond us.

There has always been an element of “If you can get away with it” in sport – its only human nature after all. But it is the scale of the abuse that is breathtaking today. Just as the Captains of Industry condone things that their predecessors would never have tolerated (John Browne and Tony Hayward’s cavalier approach to Health and Safety at B.P. for example) so sporting administrators and sportsmen behave in ways that would have been unthinkable decades ago. Can you imagine that one of Giles Clarke’s distant predecessors at the top of England cricket would have been as comprehensively conned as Clarke was by Allan Stanford? And can you conceive that in the distant days of Alan Hardaker the Football League, as it then was, would have allowed great Clubs to become the playthings of absentee owners in the Gulf States, or Russia or the USA? In the past Football Clubs had businesses which served the sport – today all too many of them have sport to serve the business. That sports need sound financial underpinning is right – but when the raison d'être of a Club becomes financial, just as if it was a commercial organisation no different from a factory, then we get the sort of vulgar shenanigans we have seen at Liverpool and Manchester United with their phony owners wearing and besmirching Clubs’ proud colours and for whom a Shankly or a Busby is probably an item of headgear. And what would those who ran the Rugby Football Union in distant days have thought of the current mob who in recent times have sent England’s team on to the Twickenham pitch dressed in purple or “anthracite” rather than white – not because there was a colour clash with their opponents but just to sell a few more replicas in the shop.

Sport is for all - and major broadcast sport has to be universally available. In 1966 at Wembley or 2003 at Sydney or 2005 at The Oval the nation was glued to its TV sets as English sportsmen triumphed in major competitions at the highest level. But at The Oval in 2009 or Adelaide last week only those with expensive satellite subscriptions could join in the fun – a deplorable failure of governance. The blame is shared between those who run English cricket and a supine Government which accommodates them. Government can be a force for good in sport, and should be. Tony Blair’s successful involvement in the bidding process for the 2012 Olympic Games, and David Cameron’s no less commendable attempt to secure FIFA 2018, are examples of how political leaders can help. But Blair’s venal decision to accommodate Bernie Ecclestone’s peddling of tobacco brands early in his premiership and Cameron’s recent refusal to insist that The Ashes are returned to terrestrial television shows that political expediency can all too often trump public interest. Even worse is Education Minister Michael Gove’s apparent decision to remove funding of £162m which had been allocated to school sport through many hundreds of successful “School Sports Partnerships” – a decision which will not only be bad for the health of the nation’s children but will also largely banish sport to the elite and mainly private schools. And if we can’t trust our political leaders to protect our interests and those of our children we certainly can’t trust our sporting head honchos. To take cricket as one example how do those at the top of the International Cricket Council, the Board of Control for Cricket in India, the England and Wales Cricket Board, the Indian Premier League and the rest get away with always putting profit before principle? And that’s in the sport which so ludicrously congratulates itself on having a special “spirit”! Top of this ignoble list is of course the Pakistan Cricket Board which has consistently brought the game into disrepute for as long as can be remembered. The spectacle of mendacious officials of this Board posturing, prevaricating and libeling this summer was in many ways even worse than the sight of the on the pitch duplicity of some of their players.

There are a couple of golfers, Lee Westwood and Graeme McDowell, on this year’s BBC Sports Personality of the Year short list and few would begrudge either of them the award if they are chosen. The Ryder Cup was a triumph, in the end, for Europe and these two contributed much to the result – and McDowell also won a Major this year. But let’s not delude ourselves that everything in the garden is lovely in this sport either. At the Ryder Cup we were treated to the unpleasant spectacle of the Captain of the American team using military symbolism to “inspire” his team and an Army Major spoke to the team on the eve of the event “I want these guys to be accountable to each other and have each other's backs, and basically that's what happens in the military” said Corey Pavin. Phil Mickleson commented afterwards, with absolutely no sense of irony at all, that he felt “…proud to be part of a country that cares about the civil rights of people all throughout the world and not just in our own country,”. You couldn’t make it up! Meanwhile these pampered multimillionaires flew around in their private gas-guzzling airplanes from tournament to tournament living a life as far removed from the average golf spectator as it is possible to imagine. The bizarre tendency for sporting enterprise to associate itself with the military is not confined to professional golf. Rugby Internationals at Twickenham now have obligatory military displays and there is a presumption, like that of Corey Pavin, that spectators and competitors should support this. As Richard Williams writing in “The Guardian” put it recently “There is something disquieting about this gradual blending of sporting and military culture, with its underlying assumption that all spectators at any given event…necessarily share the government’s view of the rightness of what our forces are doing overseas.” Indeed!

That some members of FIFA have been corrupt should have surprised nobody – especially those who remember the vices of the International Olympic Commission over the year. Power corrupts – and the opportunity to use one’s position on these bodies to enrich oneself corrupts absolutely. Unlike FIFA the IOC may no longer have personally dishonest individuals at its top – but in its decision making it has long since foregone the moral high ground – if it was ever there. The conspiracy to provide a cloak of respectability around the degenerate gang which rules the People’s Republic of China with Beijing 2008 showed that the IOC hasn’t moved on one iota from Berlin 1936 – and that money echoes far more loudly than principles in the IOC’s fetid corridors. Will London 2012 and Rio 2016 be scandal free? Let’s hope so - but don’t hold your breath.

The further sports move away from their followers and spectators the more likely it is that they will forget that we the paying public have a stake in what they do. The ECB disadvantaged millions of cricket fans at a stroke when they awarded live international cricket to Sky. Manchester United, Liverpool, Chelsea and Manchester City alienated countless thousands of their fans when they sold the clubs down the river to foreign owners who then, in some cases, incurred massive debts. And they compete with one another in spraying their money around in an obscene way – not helped by the greed of players and their agents. It has just emerged that the Manchester City player Carlos Tevez is paid £286,000-a-week tax free at Eastlands - To do the sum for you this is just short of £25m a year gross (very gross!). Nobody would wish to return to the days of the maximum wage – when Jimmy Greaves (worth ten of Mr Tevez) lived in a grace and favour one-bedroomed flat in Chelsea for which he paid thirty shillings a week out of his £20 a week wage. But Greaves and his teammates related to the supporters who went to watch them in a way that the Tevez’s and the Rooney’s never could. And that matters.

Top level motorsport is the same. The leaders of Formula one have taken the sport a million miles away from the ethos and values of the past making it unaffordable for the ordinary spectator to attend a Grand Prix and increasingly holding races in locations where the coffers are unlimited. So great circuits like Estoril or Kyalami are unused whilst absurd and uninteresting new constructions built with oil or vanity money add congestion to an already overcrowded calendar. If you think that nighttime races around the brightly illuminated streets of Singapore give a bad example environmentally then what about FIFA’s incredible decision to award the 2022 World Cup to Qatar? The Qataris plan to build air-conditioned stadia to allow the matches to take place at the height of a Gulf summer – when temperatures of 50 degrees in the shade are common. Just down the road from the grounds a gas-fired power station or two will be cranked up to maximum to provide the electricity that this scandalously wasteful nonsense needs.

As you settle down to watch the BBC’s Sports Personality of the Year next Sunday accept it for the superficial, selective and sycophantic spectacle that it is. Cheer when cheers are due – the England cricket team, Tony McCoy, Lee Westwood and the others who have done us proud. But as a counter-balance remember the wise words of Andy Ripley “I’ve finally settled on my little maxim for life. You can earn a living from what you get - but you only get a life from what you give”.

The Legends of Kent cricket

2010-11-20T12:25:00.002Z

Twelve is a magic number – there were twelve Apostles of course and twelve Gods of the Greek Pantheon – and now twelve Legends of Kent cricket are to be commemorated in the redevelopment of the St Lawrence Ground, Canterbury. It’s a nice idea – each of those chosen will have a permanent tribute in stone in the “Walkway” of the new home of Kent cricket. Quite how the 12 will be chosen isn't clear at this stage but as a member of the County for more than 40 years I hope that along with other members I will be in the loop somewhere. Let’s have a first go a putting a list together for others perhaps to comment on. I’ll just list the twelve name that I would select without explanation and see if other Kent aficionados would challenge my choices. So here goes (in no particular order):

FRANK WOOLLEY
COLIN BLYTHE
TICH FREEMAN
LES AMES
GODFREY EVANS
COLIN COWDREY
ALAN KNOTT
DEREK UNDERWOOD
MIKE DENNESS
BRIAN LUCKHURST
JOHN SHEPHERD
ROB KEY

What do you think?

Let’s have domestic cricket that matters in England…

2010-11-01T12:45:00.001Z

Asking for sanity in Cricket Administration sometimes seems like asking for sobriety in the Drones Club – the call won’t so much fall on deaf ears but on narrow minds obsessed with their own political and personal games and incapable of seeing reason. In his first communication to members of MCC since becoming President Christopher Martin-Jenkins said in relation to the absurdly over-crowded domestic fixture list of 2010 “Happily a more balanced county programme is under discussion for next year…” Unhappily these discussions, as we now know, came to naught and 2011 will be as daft, fixture-wise, as 2010 was.

The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has a “Structure group” and those interested will note that this group has recommended shortening the domestic season – but not until 2012. We are in deckchairs on the Titanic territory here. Views vary as to how many of our current counties are in crisis but more than half of them seems a reasonable guess. That crisis comes in some cases from incompetent and even dysfunctional management. But even where the County management teams do know what they are doing their hands are tied by the commercial realities of modern-day domestic cricket.

A day at the India Test match at Lord’s next year will cost you around £100 per head – so a family visit for one day taking account of travel costs might cost £500. Why? Well chiefly because the ECB needs money to recycle to the Counties. We will be denied live International cricket on terrestrial television next year and for the foreseeable future and will need A Sky or Virgin subscription costing £600 to see it. Why? Well chiefly because the ECB needs money to recycle to the Counties. The amounts varied but each of the County P&Ls benefited from around £2million from the ECB in 2010 –remember this is OUR MONEY taken from us in ticket sales (the highest prices in the cricket world by far) and subscription TV costs.

Cricket is the most traditional of games which is why when change comes enthusiasts sometimes go into “Shock/horror” mode. Over my 60 year cricket watching life (so far) the introduction of One Day domestic cricket in 1963, a Cricket World Cup in 1975, domestic Twenty20 in 2003, an International T20 tournament in 2007 and the IPL in 2008 have (inter alia) all been seen, incorrectly, as presaging the end of the “game as we know it”. In fact cricket has proved to be more resilient that the doomsayers believed and Test cricket, for many the apex of the game, survives. County cricket is, however, another matter.

In 2010 there were 151 domestic Twenty20 matches in England mostly between the traditional 18 counties. And despite the fact that all too many of these matches were sparsely attended the same overkill will apply in 2011. In addition each county played thirteen mostly ill-attended 4 Day Championship matches and at least twelve 40 Over games. The rational for retaining this overheavy structure in 2011 is that “that many counties have already entered into commitments to playing staffs and other expenditure for 2011 and that cash flow from membership and ticket sales are vitally important in the current difficult economic climate for the 2011 season”. So despite the fact that the cricket-watching public voted with their feet to stay away in large numbers in 2010 they will be offered exactly the same fare in 2011. If at first you don’t succeed do nothing and hope for the best!

English domestic cricket needs a new, fresh look more urgently than ever and to delay doing this is short-sighted and foolish. From 2012 onwards what is needed is not a tinkering with the fixture lists but a revolutionary redesign to the whole domestic structure. We need a maximum of eight top-class domestic teams playing matches that matter both because of the quality of the cricket and the fact that world-class players (including England players) will be on display. We need far fewer and far better 4 Day and one day matches – 50 (not 40) Overs and T20. Each match should be marketable as an event at a ground with top class facilities in a competition that matters. Some of the eight city-based franchise teams might be built on the infrastructure of existing counties – but they don’t have to be.

This proposal does not mean the end of county cricket – it means that the eighteen counties would revert to being a third semi-professional and amateur tier in regional groupings which would also include the existing minor counties. A new county structure of 38 counties in this way is perfectly viable and would require few if any hand-outs from the ECB. If it took its lead from Australian grade cricket it would provide not just satisfying cricket in its own right but also act as a nursery for England-qualified cricketers who would progress onwards to the city-franchise teams if good enough. We would still be able to watch Kent v Sussex at Tunbridge Wells or Leicestershire v Derbyshire at Grace Road, but within a financial structure that would be viable and would endure.

Thanks Johnners - and thanks Aggers.

2010-10-15T14:00:00.004+01:00

Johnners would have loved it. Brian Johnston was a man of comparatively simple pleasures and all were present in abundance at the launch party last night of the new book about him by Jonathan Agnew – “Thanks Johnners”. There were Thesps and entertainers galore: Simon Williams, Roger Lloyd Pack, Tim Rice, Lesley Garrett… his old friends from Test Match Special like Christopher Martin-Jenkins and Peter Baxter as well as, of course, the Author himself – young Aggers. But above all there was family – the Agnews and the Johnstons en masse including Jonathan’s octogenarian parents and Johnners widow Pauline – frail at 88 but with that sparkle in her eye that must instantly have attracted BJ to her when they met way back in 1947. Stephen Fry, who wrote the Foreword to the book, would also have been there but sadly had to attend the funeral of an old friend in Chester.

The unique charm of Brian Johnston is well summed up in Stephen Fry’s contribution to the book “Charming, gallant, funny, courteous, kindly, perceptive, soldierly, honourable and old-fashioned” - old-fashioned in the right way Fry stresses! Everyone at the party had at least one personal Johnners story and each of these confirmed Fry’s assessment of the character of the man. As a schoolboy, back in the early 1960s, I brandished a copy of one of Johnners’ early tomes in front of him for his signature. He looked at me with faux astonishment “Good Lord you actually bought it!” he said.

I must leave an assessment of Aggers new book until I have actually read it – but the signs are promising. I remember when the word leaked out that Agnew had been commissioned to do the book Andrew Johnston, Johnners second son, looked a little doubtful as there had already been a number of very good biographies of his father by Tim Heald, by Johnners’ eldest son Barry as well as BJ’s own various autobiographies and memoirs. But the Johnston family seemed very happy with “Thanks Johnners” and Jonathan Agnew thanked them generously for their cooperation.

Johnners was above all an entertainer and that is a rare thing in sports commentary today. How many writers and correspondents on sport write or talk first about the politics, the money and the darker side of our national sports? Even Aggers, solidly and commendably in the Johnners tradition of entertaining commentary, had to deal all too often this summer with the seamier side of cricket -match-fixing and the like. His distaste for all this was evident but his professionalism in tackling it, which as BBC cricket correspondent he had to, was commendable.

Many cricket fans would argue that cricket is different in that it is rarely predictable who is likely to be an enthusiast for the great game. The theatrical connection is long-standing - even Hollywood has a cricket club going back to the 1930s founded by the actor C.Aubrey Smith - who had played one Test match in 1889. The eclectic nature of the support for the game was shown by the guests at the book launch many of whom has been on TMS’s “View from the Boundary” - originally an interview spot conducted by Johnners and now one of Jonathan Agnew’s favourite parts of the programme. That’s why Lesley Garrett was at the party. By coincidence I had seen one of Ms Garrett’s concerts last week in Liverpool Cathedral, of all places, where it was the highlight of a Pensions conference! She seemed very surprised that there was someone at the book launch who had been at the Cathedral - but she was charmingly pleased that I had enjoyed it so much. Lovely lady!

There is a continuity of style about Test Match Special that enthusiasts like me treasure. The torch has been passed almost effortlessly it seems, from hand to hand: Alston, Swanton, Arlott, Johnston, Mosey, Blofeld, CMJ and now Aggers. None of these great commentators were star cricketers – though Blowers might have been and Agnew was better than his three Test matches and three ODIs record suggests. But what they all have is the special ability to talk to the listener so that it is almost as if the commentator is sitting next to him in a deckchair at the match. On Sky TV we do get very insightful comments from their gaggle of ex-England captains but there is rarely the segue into fantasy that has always been part of TMS’s style. And there is never the geniality and the hospitality either – I doubt that the Sky box is a very welcoming place whereas the TMS commentary box is always an attraction – and not just for the cake.

Aggers expressed his real concerns last night about where the new TMS commentators are going to come from. There are few training grounds any more with commentary on domestic cricket having almost completely withered on the vine. Blowers is 71, CMJ is 65 and even Aggers is 50! True Johnners carried on well into his eighties so we can hope that the “A Team” will be with us for some time to come as well. But isn’t there somewhere an embryo Johnners or Aggers waiting for his or her chance? Don’t tell me we don’t make them like that anymore!

Dachau an inappropriate choice for sports team bonding

2010-09-29T10:33:00.004+01:00

It started with Steve Waugh’s 2001 Aussies who visited Gallipoli on their way to defend The Ashes in England. In his autobiography Waugh made it clear why they went – he described the visit as a “true bonding experience”. I thought at the time that there was something very tacky indeed about using a memorial to the fallen as a prop for the team bonding of a sports team. But Gallipoli sits understandably deep in the Australian psyche and although it seemed wrong to me to that a visit had been factored it into the team’s pre Ashes build up I kept quiet. Then in 2009 the England squad under Andrew Strauss made what seemed to me to be a gratuitous visit to Flanders to attend a specially arranged “...ceremony to commemorate the English cricketers who had died there” – as Strauss put it. As with the Australians eight years earlier team-bonding was the objective. And now, in the build up to another Ashes tour, the England squad has again been to a memorial – this time that at the site of the Dachau Concentration Camp near Munich.

I would argue that learning about The Holocaust is essential to the development of a rounded personality for us all and believe that the subject is rightly taught in schools and that it is important that it features in the Arts in films like “Schindler’s List”. The decision to visit sites like Auschwitz or Dachau is, however, a very personal one and many of us would prefer not to do it. If we do decide that it is appropriate for us to go to such a place my guess is that we would prefer to do so quietly, respectfully and with our very closest family – partners and children. For some such a visit might take place as part of a relevant common interest group - the children of Holocaust survivors for example. But surely nobody could conceive that it would be appropriate to expropriate a concentration camp memorial as a bonding tool for a sports team?

It defies belief that the England and Wales Cricket Board should think that it was right for the England cricketers to visit Dachau as a group. Unlike Gallipoli or Flanders, for which some slightly specious Australian or English cricket connection could be found, Dachau has a personal resonance for only a small number of British citizens. That it has meaning for all of us as a symbol of man’s inhumanity to man is undoubtedly true but that is something that we should explore as individuals – using a visit for a team building experience is crass and offensive.

Andrew Strauss said after his visit to Dachau “Following our trip to Flanders last year, this was an opportunity for the players to spend time away from the cricketing environment, learn more about the wider world and develop ourselves both individually and collectively.” Few would question that it is good preparation for a major sporting contest to strengthen the bonds between members of a team and that non cricketing activities can help do this. However the use of a Holocaust memorial site is grossly inappropriate and thoughtless and the ECB should have had the sensitivity to exclude it from the England team’s Bavarian adventures.

Whither the "Spirit of Cricket" now ?

2010-09-04T10:50:00.007+01:00

We are used to living in a world where the rhetoric of slogans rarely matches the reality of experience. My old employer Shell had at least stopped using its tag line “You can be sure of Shell” a while before it became quite apparent that you couldn’t. But the LibDems shamelessly propagated their “Change That Works For You. Building a Fairer Britain” as they secretly finessed themselves closer to the Conservatives for whom, as we can now see, “fairness” is hardly a convincing battle cry. And in sport can there be a more dubious motto than that now inculcated into the Laws of the Game and presumptuously adopted by the Marylebone Cricket Club – the “Spirit of Cricket”.

The preamble to the Laws of Cricket says “Cricket is a game that owes much of its unique appeal to the fact that it should be played not only within its Laws but also within the Spirit of the Game. Any action which is seen to abuse this spirit causes injury to the game itself. The major responsibility for ensuring the spirit of fair play rests with the captains.” Fine words albeit hugely hubristic ones. The first bit of overweening pride here is the peddling of the myth that cricket in some way sets itself apart from other sports. Its appeal is “unique” and when it is played there is some sort of quasi-spiritual imperative which means that it is played is a spirit which goes beyond its laws and rules. Poppycock! Indeed there is a reasonable argument to say that professional cricket is uniquely dysfunctional compared with other sports. Take sledging for example. Few if any sports have institutionalised verbal abuse of one team’s players by those of the other as cricket has. Perhaps it is marginally less prevalent today than when Shane Warne was ritually foul-mouthing England’s batsmen. But it hasn’t gone away. Examples are legion but Matthew Hayden, A devout Catholic apparently, showed the style with his tirade at Graeme Smith when he came to the wicket a few years ago "You know, you're not fucking good enough. How the fuck are you going to handle Shane Warne when he's bowling in the rough? What the fuck are you going to do?" And former Aussie captain, Steve Waugh, publicly supported the practice of sledging giving it the fancy title of "mental disintegration". I don’t know of any other sport where sledging is an accepted part of the game – but I do know that this practice alone makes a mockery of the so-called “Spirit of Cricket”.

If on the field misbehaviour, not just sledging, in cricket is worse than in many other sports it leaders hardly set a noble example in their behaviour. When financial carrots dangle is there a cricket board Chairman who doesn’t salivate? If the “Spirit of Cricket” had meant anything in practice then the grotesque spectacle of the England and Wales Cricket Board prostrating itself in front of the gruesome “Sir” Allan Stanford would not have happened. And does anyone seriously think that “moral” considerations play any part in the decision making of the Indian Premier League – notwithstanding MCC’s absurd links with this venture? The links were lauded by Lalit Modi the League’s Chairman back in 2008 "I am happy that the Indian Premier League will adopt MCC’s doctrine on the Spirit of Cricket” Modi said at the League’s inception - and the MCC issued similarly pretentious sounding statements at the time. Mr Modi is, of course, currently suspended and answering a raft of accusations of corruption! Some spirit!

The acid test of whether the “Spirit of Cricket” actually means anything in reality is to compare behaviour on and off the field today with how things were before the whole idea was dreamed up. Is there less ball-tampering or sledging? Do batsmen “walk” more when they nick the ball and it is caught? And are cricket’s leaders more concerned with behaving in a principled way than once they were? I would argue that the reverse is the case and that the practical effect of the “Spirit of Cricket” has been zero – PR flimflam aside. This summer the MCC’s “Home of Cricket” was heavily decorated with “Spirit of Cricket” hoardings and Pakistan’s Test matches were overtly branded as “Spirit of Cricket tests”. How ironic, then, that it was at Lord’s that, in the words of ICC CEO Haroon Lorgat, a betting scam which “had the potential to be the worst corruption case in cricket since that of Hansie Cronje” took place.

Defenders of the “Spirit of Cricket” would no doubt say that the concept is aspirational - that it sets a standard of behaviour intention to which all cricketers should aspire. The problem with that is that it is little more than a vague and high-minded slogan which maybe gives a warm glow of comfort to some deluded souls but is largely ignored in reality. What really matters is having clear rules and regulations that are unequivocally stated and properly policed. The ICC does this and it will no doubt be reviewing these rules and their application in the light of the Lord’s debacle. And these rules need to be inculcated into the behaviour of all cricket’s officials not because they relate to some noble cause, like the “Spirit of Cricket”, but because they are non-negotiable conditions for participating in cricket at all. If you can’t manage your players in such a way that they don’t tamper with cricket balls, cheat, abuse and insult opponents and fix matches or incidents within matches then you don’t get a licence to play at all.

It may seem be a sad refection on the modern world that cries of "Play up! Play up! And play the game!" (which is essentially what the “Spirit of Cricket” is) fall onto deaf ears. But it is worth remembering that only 35 years after Henry Newbolt’s Vitaï Lampada, from which this line is of course taken, Douglas Jardine was ordering his bowlers to threaten Australian batsmen with intimidatory bodyline bowling. And that it wasn’t by a reference to some “Spirit of Cricket” that this practice was outlawed but by a change to the Laws of the game. “Plus ça change, plus c'est la même chose!”

There’s betting – and there’s betting

2010-08-31T13:08:00.004+01:00

Michael Vaughan tweets: “Off to Aussie to film a TV commercial for Betfair... for The Ashes. Quite ironic with what's been going on…” Indeed it is Michael and whilst we can make a clear distinction between what Betfair does (and what you are doing) and the seamy illegal side of gambling that has reared its ugly head the irony that you identify is a real one.

Yesterday I asked John Stern, the distinguished editor of “The Wisden Cricketer”, whether it was time for Sky to drop their slogan “It matters more if there is money on it”. Stern said “…therein lies the massive conflict of interest. Spot/spread betting (legal) [is a] huge backer of pro sport”. Now I am not much of a gambler – I can always find better things to do with my hard earned money than passing it to a bookie. But I can see that sport and gambling are inextricably tied together – and indeed they always have been. The noble sport of Cricket started in an era of gentlemen’s wagers and indeed it is arguable that the game might not have got off the ground at all without gambling.

Today every ground has betting facilities and betting advertising – as at The Oval in the photograph. To regret this development is I’m afraid naïve – as John Stern says betting is everywhere in sport. So if the culture is one in which gambling is encouraged, and it is, then how do we judge what seems to have been going on in the shady world of illegal gambling and the fixing of cricket matches or incidents within these matches? Is there not a tinge of hypocrisy about on the one hand actively encouraging betting companies like BetFair to be involved in cricket (as Michael Vaughan is doing) whilst on the other hand condemning players’ involvements in gambling?

The answer to my question is, of course, that there is a world of difference between legal gambling and the sordid world of match or spot fixing. The boundary is clear between what is legal, if a bit distasteful (the modern obsession with having a punt) and the grotesque negation of the true spirit of sport that is so gruesomely on view at the moment. Personally I have never thought that it is the case that “it matters more if there is money on it” and I find the slogan offensive and insulting. Would England’s win in the World Twenty20 or the 2009 Ashes have mattered more to me if I had had a successful bet on these outcomes – not at all? Others may take a different view – that is their choice – but there are few situations where I would feel the need to place a sporting bet. At a race meeting perhaps – but that is about it.

But what is apparently taking place all over South Asia, and elsewhere, is not the occasional ten quid each way on a horse in the 3:30 or a punt on the result of a cricket match. It is systematic illegal gambling on a huge scale with the prizes so large that it pays the criminals involved to try and fix outcomes. In order to put the fix into effect these people have to have access to the players and have to make it worth the while of the players to do what they ask. So middlemen, like Mazhar Majeed in the current case, somehow inveigle their way into the players’ sphere and manage to recruit some of them to do the necessary. Which brings me to the main point – this is a comprehensive failure of management by the Pakistan Cricket Board. Four years ago at the Oval we saw what happens when a squad of players is incompetently managed by officials. I wrote at the time “The root cause of Sunday’s Oval fiasco was a lack of proper leadership when it mattered most. Inzaman-Al-Haq should have said to his players “Look guys we are not happy about the ball-tampering allegations but the right time to progress this is after the match. Let’s get on and win it”. When he failed to do this Bob Woolmer or Zaheer Abbas or the ineffable Shaharyar Khan should have stepped in and said something similar. Instead there was vacillation and they all bowed to player power”. Four years on and it is self-evident that Pakistan’s cricket management is as useless as it ever was.

Finally let me express some sympathy for the 18-year-old Mohammed Amir whose highly promising career is likely to be ruined by this affair. At 18 you should know right from wrong but if you are in any doubt at all you should have someone to turn to. That someone could not be his Captain as it seems that Salman Butt was himself up to his neck in the spot fixing affair. But what about the team manager Yawar Saeed? One question that should be asked of Saeed is this. “Before this tour began did you hold a briefing session with the players to warn them of the possibility of illegal approaches by match fixing middlemen? In particular did you speak with the very young players on their first big tour, like Mohammed Amir, and warn them of the dangers. And did you say to them that if they saw or heard anything that made them uncomfortable then they should come straight to the team management for advice.” If no such briefing was held by Saeed and his team at least part of the blame for this debacle lies on his shoulders.

Schumacher should go quietly

2010-08-02T17:02:00.004+01:00

In Formula one, as in other sports, the statistics can sometimes lie. Look at World Championship successes and you won’t find the name of Stirling Moss – but few would not place him in the top five of F1 drivers. Similarly do Michael Schumacher’s seven world titles make him the best of all time? Perhaps not – my own top three would put him on a par with Senna and Clark - but I wouldn’t want to call the order. And others would make justifiable cases for Fangio (who I never saw) Stewart, Prost and Lauda to be somewhere on the podium.

The case for Schumacher is a persuasive one – he had not only more world titles but also more pole positions, podiums and fastest laps than any other driver – albeit that his career until his first retirement was one of the longest spanning sixteen seasons. Quite how Schumacher maintained exceptional performances over such a long career it is difficult to pinpoint but it was probably a mixture of genius and effort. The effort was his absolute commitment to the cause – an obsession with fine tuning the car to allow him to get the very best out of it. Schumi was the driver every mechanic and engineer wanted in the cockpit – his analysis of performance after a few test laps was exceptional and practical – and at this he got better and better as the years progressed. But it was the genius that really set him apart – it is no exaggeration to say that, all other things being equal, Schumacher was half a second a lap faster than the field. Unbeatable at his best – and he was usually at his best. 91 wins out of 249 starts (36.5 %) is an astonishing record. Senna, by comparison, won 41 out of 161 (25.5%), Clark 25 out of 72 (34.7%).

After his retirement in 2006 Schumacher continued to attend Grands Prix and carried out some ill-defined role at Ferrari. I saw him at a few Grand Prix and the spark was gone and the smile was false. He obviously missed doing the thing that he was obviously on Earth to do – to drive a Formula one car. So when Ross Brawn ill-advisedly offered Schumacher a drive, in the world champion team remember, for the 2010 season it was no surprise that Schumi jumped at the chnace. And Mercedes were deluded into thinking that their name on the car, and Schumacher in it would enhance their brand. In fact the reverse has happened - from being half a second a lap faster Schumacher is half a second a lap slower than the front runners - something he never experienced in the whole of his 16 year career. True the Mercedes is well off the place – how shrewd Ross Brawn was to sell out when he was on a high at the end of last season, and how smart Jenson Button was to fly the coop. But although the car is no great shakes Schumi’s team mate Nico Rosberg has consistently out-driven his much older partner. Rosberg is a decent driver but arguably far from ever likely to be a world title contender – he has yet to win in 82 races. But at 25 he has, unsurprisingly, the reflexes of a still young man whilst Schumacher, at 41 has simply lost the edge he once had. No disgrace there – but modern Formula one is not a sport for old men.

At the Hungarian Grand Prix Michael Schumacher was in a battle for tenth place with Rubens Barrichello and it was doubtless the realisation that he was nowhere near the head of the field and that he was certain to be an also ran once again for the twelfth race in succession that made him squeeze Rubens almost into the wall. Schumi has previous of course and this has never made him as popular a champion as he might have been if he had always been more sportsmanlike. That he was a flawed genius we knew – but the number of incidents was fairly small and in 249 races during which he was mostly competing to win it is perhaps unsurprising that ambition occasionally took over from fair play. But at the Hungaroring yesterday there was absolutely no excuse and Schumacher has tarnished a comeback that was already looking an embarrassing failure. Have a look at the footage of the incident and I’m afraid Ross Brawn’s defence that "Michael was defending his position, trying to encourage Rubens to go around the outside. I don't think for a moment that he saw Rubens there and thought 'I will squeeze him' is phooey. Schumacher knew exactly what he was doing and he should be ashamed of himself. Time to go Michael – sooner rather than later.

Enjoy the 800 Murali - and prepare for disappointment !

2010-07-23T15:35:00.002+01:00

"There is also the Frindallian camp of stattos who complain about Murali’s wickets in the ICC Super Series" says John Stern Editor of

The Wisden Cricketer

Not just the stattos John. Cricket historians can find not one shred of evidence to support the view that the ICC XI v Australia was a legitimate Test match:

(1) Every other match of the (to date) 1965 Test matches has been between nations (West Indies a nation for cricket purposes).

(2) When a similar issue arose back in 1970 for the England v Rest of World series the ICC decided that the matches were not proper Test matches. It took them a couple of years to make the decision - but they made it.

(3) The fact that the match was billed as a Test match is irrelevant. So were the 1970 matches so billed.

(4) The ICC has continued to fly in the face of the professional advice they have received from the Association of Cricket Statisticians and Historians (ACS) that the match cannot be regarded as a Test mach for records purposes. The ACS hasn't fought its corner on this as strongly as it should - but I know of no member who actually believes that the match was a test match - other then to say that it must be if the ICC says it was!

(5) In the fullness of time the decision will undoubtedly be changed - it is just plain wrong. It was initially taken to pump up the commercial appeal of the event and it has subsequently stayed in the records because the ICC is too stubborn and fearful. Are you going to tell Warne that he has six fewer wickets than he thought that he had, or Hayden one fewer centuries – or Murali 795 not 800? Thought not. But one day someone with balls will do it!

Tri-Nations rugby is a big treat for the Rugby nut

2010-07-19T15:03:00.003+01:00

The All Blacks have looked pretty impressive in the first two Tri-Nations matches comfortably beating last year’s champions South Africa in both. With the 2011 Rugby World Cup only a little over a year away New Zealand look to be clear favourites – especially as they will be on home soil. But then the Kiwi side is always the favourite for the quadrennial event but, the first tournament apart, they have contrived to underperform every time and have only reached one other final – that of 1995 when they lost to the Springboks. Mind you the New Zealand public seem to be able to cope with these failures well - partly by going into self denial and partly by declaring themselves the rightful champions anyway (see Photo above "All Blacks Champions of the World" was taken in Auckland a couple of years ago not long after South Africa won the world cup)!

Watching the Tri-Nations is always a pleasure – the standard is astonishingly high and there are no more passionate sporting encounters than those between the three combatants. Pretty it isn’t - and the crowds aren’t exactly imbued with notions of fair play either, winning is everything. The boos from the New Zealand faithful every time a South African took a kick at goal would have given the Twickenham old farts apoplexy but I guess that it is par for the course down under.

Most sports have changed a lot over the years but none more so than Rugby – despite that fact that I was a player for twenty-five years and a fan all my life I have no idea at all about some of the modern rules. But the core skills are the same and players like Carter and McCaw, Habana and Roussouw would have been stars in any era. And did you see the final All Black try by Israel Dagg (crazy name, crazy guy) at Wellington. Wow!

One change which I believe is far from a step forward is the fact that the international game is now a 22 man squad affair. Both sides used 21 players last Saturday and that is now the norm. Call me old-fashioned but isn’t Rugby meant to be a 15-a-side game and isn’t part of the challenge to get your fifteen players working effectively as a unit? And isn’t fitness part of the challenge as well – surely you shouldn’t come on the field at the start if you are not fit for 80 minutes? Of course replacements should be allowed for genuine reasons (injury or illness) but do so many tactical substitutions really add much to the enjoyment of the game? The fact that a player is knackered should hardly be reasons for his substitution – if he didn’t have the stamina for 80 minutes what’s he doing on the pitch? Can you imagine what Willie John McBride would have said about this! I’m told that the pace and physical demands of the modern game are such that replacements are essential – this is, of course, a circular argument. Without tactical replacements teams would have to pace themselves as they always used to – and players would only be picked if they were 80 minutes fit. And, what’s more, caps would be more earned and more valued.

The next Tri-Nations is the Australia v Wallabies match at Brisbane next Saturday – I have a feeling that the two sides will be competing for runners up this year and that the All Blacks might be the first unbeaten winners of the tournament for seven years. They do look a bit tasty.

The British Grand Prix - Forty six years on!

2010-07-11T11:04:00.003+01:00

I went to my first British Grand Prix exactly forty-six years ago today in 1964. As a seventeen-year-old obsessed by Formula one it was difficult to contain my excitement that I was actually going to see the stars close at hand. It was a golden age – there were five once or future World Champions in the field – Jack Brabham, Graham Hill, Phil Hill, John Surtees and the man who, for me, was and is the greatest of them all – Jim Clark. Clark won the race comfortably and there was an all British podium when he was joined by Graham Hill and Surtees.

To say that I saw the drivers close at hand is not a romantic memory. The photograph of John Surtees in the cockpit of his Ferrari I actually took in the paddock that day. True I had managed to wangle a pit pass from somewhere – but in those days that was not too difficult. We sat on a grassy bank for the race eating a picnic – and we had a panoramic view of the Brands club circuit where all the action was. And if we wanted a closer look we were able to get within a few feet of the trackside – there were hardly any fences. Jim Clark had won the 1963 Drivers Championship by miles – the first of many for Colin Chapman and his pioneering Lotus team. And he and the other top drivers gave you value for money as well – one of the races was for saloon cars and Clark won it in a Lotus Cortina – every boys dream as an aspirational car!

I don’t subscribe to the commonly held view that “Formula one is not what it was” back in the days of Clark and Hill and Surtees. True it was a much more accessible and affordable sport back in the 1960s and every race mattered more - there were only ten races back in 1964 compared with nearly twice that this year. And it was undisputedly a sport then whereas today it is also a billion dollar business. None of the cars on the grid on that sunny day 46 years ago had any advertising on them – or was there perhaps a discrete Esso roundel somewhere on Clark’s Lotus?

The 1964 British Grand Prix was largely accident free but that was the exception not the rule in those days – and accidents often had lethal consequences for drivers and sometimes spectators as well. Of the 24 drivers on the grid that day a third were later to lose their lives in racing accidents – McLaren, Anderson, Bandini, Bonnier, Siffert, Taylor, Revson and, of course, Jim Clark. The improvements in safety over the years have meant that one can, these days, watch a race without fearing for the lives of the competitors. That was certainly not so in the 1960s. This fact alone makes it difficult to compare the drivers of different eras – you have always needed to be brave to drive an F1 car - as well as skilful. But back in the earlier days of F1 you needed a quite extraordinary courage and a great deal of luck if, like John Surtees or Jack Brabham you were to be able to survive and look back from a decent old age. But Surtees for one would sadly have to argue that there is no ground for complacency – his eighteen year old son was killed in a freak Formula Two accident at Brands Hatch just a year ago.

I have been lucky enough to go to many Grands Prix over the years following that initial event back in 1964 – and it rarely disappoints. Sometimes one is lucky enough to get close enough to smell the oil, the grease, the fuel and the sweat. And to see the tension on the faces because despite its modern complexity, technology and hype it is, in essence, still all about the drivers. If you could have a (part-celestial) dinner party with Fangio, Ascari, Clark, Stewart, Lauda, Prost, Senna, Schumacher and Button at the table you’d find that they have almost everything in common despite their hugely different competitive eras. You might need to keep Ayrton and Alain at the two ends of the table though!

A nation within a nation ?

2010-07-06T11:16:00.003+01:00

I will be at Lord’s next Tuesday for the first day of the Pakistan v Australia Test match – and I’m looking forward to it. I’ve been a neutral at many Limited Overs matches over the years but this will be my first Test when England is not playing. I’m genuinely neutral and just want to see some good cricket. But whilst I am a neutral the same won’t apply to many thousands of spectators – if the Edgbaston Twenty20 tasters are anything to go by.

At Edgbaston, and no doubt also at Lord’s and Headingley, the grounds will be mainly populated by unmistakable Pakistan supporters. These are not, of course, the equivalent of the travelling "Barmy Army" - here on a cricket supporters’ visit from Karachi or Lahore. No - they were nearly all young people of Pakistani descent who are, I suspect, mostly born, bred and living in Britain - and with British Passports tucked away back home. And when England plays Pakistan later in the summer it will be the same – large swathes of green clad fans will be cheering on England’s opponents. Now in a country with Britain's freedoms these Pakistan supporters are entitled to support whatever sports team they like. That is their right. I just wish that, in sporting terms, they could be committed to the country of their chosen future rather than the country of their ancestors. I wish that they shared the pride of many in their communities when a cricketer of Asian origins (Ajmal Shajad for example) gets into the England team.

Now before anyone tries to "Colonel Blimp" me for holding these Tebbitian views let me explain a little further. If, at my advanced years, I emigrated to Australia (a country I like very much) and even became an Australian citizen it would not stop me from supporting England in The Ashes. Contradiction? Not at all. You do not cast off your personal allegiances of fifty years or more just because you relocate to another country. Once a Pom, always a Pom. But if I had children born and educated and working in Australia I would expect them (encourage them) to support the Aussies.

Sport, even cricket, is essentially trivial but in the case of nationality and allegiance sport can be a force for good, binding people of different backgrounds and cultures together in a common cause. When Amir Khan won a silver medal in the boxing at the Athens Olympics I rejoiced along with him and his family who, whilst of a very different background to me, are all now as authentically British as I am. And there is certainly no more patriotic Englishman than Nasser Hussain (or his late father Jo for that matter) notwithstanding their Indian origins.

So sport can be a force for good in binding people together whether it be in the England team (with their disparate national and cultural backgrounds) or those who support them in the stands. So why if you were born and raised in (say) Bolton of parents who emigrated from Pakistan would you support Pakistan and not England? It is emphatically not the same as your choice as to whether to support Bolton Wanderers or Manchester United. The reason any of us supports one club football team rather than another are many and varied and rarely even remotely contentious. But to openly reject supporting the national football or cricket team - the one that represents the country of your birth and of your nationality is a very different matter. All too often the failure of a young person, born in England and who grew up here, to support our national sports teams is an act of protest and a sign that he is, to a degree, alienated from his country. And yes, notwithstanding the triviality of sport, that alienation does matter and is potentially very disturbing.

Now this argument begins to get a bit heavy. Had the young Yorkshireman (born and bred in Leeds) Mohammad Sidique Khan chosen to express his discomfort with the British way of life by wearing a Pakistan cricket shirt and cheering on Pakistan few would have given his actions a moment’s thought. But that was not Mr Khan's choice - he chose to express his alienation as a suicide bomber on a Circle Line train in London on 7th July 2005. Mr Khan's actions were those of someone on the lunatic fringe of the alienated but they stemmed, nevertheless, from the same basic causal roots as the entirely innocent actions of those Britons who choose to support Pakistan rather than England at a cricket match.

I have never believed that, in Britain, cultures should be subsumed into some bland, generic "Britishness" that is predominately white and Anglo-Saxon and has broadly "Christian" values. I enjoy the diversity of modern Britain and don't want it to change back. But I do believe that this diversity can co-exist with a common pride in our nation and our nationality that all can share whatever our backgrounds. And I also believe that to support our national sports teams, irrespective of our origins or roots, can be a spur to the reduction of alienation and to unity. The less alienated any of us feels the more likely it is that the extreme expressions of alienation, such as that which happened in London on 7/7/05, will be less likely to happen again.

To return to cricket. The MCC is congratulating itself for having sponsored the Pakistan/Australia encounters this summer and in purely cricketing terms few would argue that these are not worthwhile matches – especially as Pakistan cannot play international matches at home at the moment. Having said that did anyone at the MCC think about the broader implications and consequences of this sponsorship? The organisers of these matches obviously chose London, Birmingham and Leeds as the venues because of the large numbers of people of Pakistani origin in these regions. But I wonder if the MCC and others responsible for the matches would agree that they have provided another context for the open expression of a Pakistani nationalism by British citizens? For the vast majority of these people the support will be benign – but moves which legitimise this nationalism in a fairly harmless way for the majority also provide a legitimised context for much less benign expressions of nationalism by a minority. Recently the “Centre for Social Cohesion” released details of the profiles of 124 individuals convicted of Islamic terrorism offences in Britain since 1999. This showed that 69 per cent of offences were perpetrated by individuals holding British nationality.

Now it may be that some of the British Asians so strongly supporting Pakistan versus Australia will switch allegiance to the country of their birth and nationality and support England in the upcoming Test matches. But I doubt that it will be many of them! In effect the Pakistan v Australia matches overtly acknowledge – even celebrate - that we have a nation within a nation in Britain and many of us, however liberal our views and welcoming of cultural diversity we are, will regret this – and worry about it.

This article is a revised version of an article that originally appeared in the cricket fanzine “Yes, No, Sorry” in 2006

World Cup memories of 1974

2010-07-04T12:09:00.003+01:00

One of the great Football World Cup finals was in 1974 when Germany played The Netherlands and won 2-1 despite conceding a penalty in the opening minute. That was Cruyff v Beckenbauer and Neeskens v Muller of course – and was the first of two near misses for that great Dutch team. History might just repeat itself in South Africa. Surely the Holland side will be too good for Uruguay and this exciting German team has a decent chance of beating current tournament favourites Spain?

In refreshing my memory about 1974 I looked at Brian Glanville’s seminal history of the World Cup – and came across this curiosity.
It was a group game between Italy and Argentina and was, as Glanville put it, “…a nightmare and a humiliation for the Italians”. Here is how Glanville described one of the key features of the match:

“Quite what possessed Valcareggi, the Italian manager, …to set his own creative inside-forward, Fabio Capello, to mark [Housman – the Argentina winger] heaven knows. At all events Capello, turned by this error into a full-back, was run ragged by Housman, who scored a lovely goal…Too late Valcareggi understood what was happening [and] pushed Capello upfield…”

Fabio Capello, 2010 version and presumably 36 years wiser, might have remembered his old Manager’s errors when picking his England team and deciding on playing formations. Wasn’t it a lack of creativity, a stiflingly predictable playing system and some curious team selections which helped scupper England? The truly creative players – Walcott, Lennon, Rooney, Wright-Philips even Defoe and Crouch unperformed because they were either discarded or given the wrong things to do. Just like Fabio himself way back in ’74 perhaps? Odd isn’t it?

Tunbridge Wells - a model for the future of English cricket

2010-06-05T10:39:00.004+01:00

Even the most trenchant of critics of County cricket (guilty as charged) would have to admit that a day of festival cricket such as that at Tunbridge Wells yesterday is an unalloyed joy. Writing in a splendid new publication which celebrates the Tunbridge Wells Festival Christopher Martin-Jenkins says that “the county festival weeks are a small but precious part of the English way of life” – nobody amongst the many hundreds at Tunbridge Wells yesterday would challenge that claim.

The sun shone throughout the long afternoon – curiously the match started at midday apparently to allow the Kent players time to recover from their previous night’s journey from the Rose Bowl. But no matter there was plenty to keep the faithful happy in the marquees that stood proud on one side of the ground - how appropriate it is that Shepherd Neame brewery are one of Kent’s main sponsors! We settled early into our comfy seats in the Tunbridge Wells Cricket Club tent and there was a palpable feeing of mellow contentment around well before the Nottinghamshire openers, Hales and Patel, took guard. Hales, a 21 year-old Englishman (hooray!) playing in only his twelfth first-class match is prodigiously talented. He took the Kent bowling apart and it seemed at one point that he would perform that rare feat of a century before lunch. That wasn’t to be and in fact he eventually fell for 95 off 121 balls with thirteen fours and two sixes. But it was festival cricket of the most entertaining kind – as was the rest of the Nottinghamshire innings – they reached 393 for 8 off 103 overs of which more than half were of spin from Treadwell and Bandara. Hugely compelling cricket!

CMJ emphasises the fact that cricket festival days like yesterday’s are about more than just cricket and he contrasts the pleasures of Tunbridge Wells or Arundel or Cheltenham with the “echoing caverns like The Oval or Edgbaston”. These grounds, says the Sage of Sussex, “come alive on the big international occasion but … too often seem glum and empty when they play host to the homespun atmosphere of the County Championship game”. Indeed they do – which, in my opinion, does not however mean that our mainly urban big grounds have no part to play in the domestic game. On the contrary. For cricket of the very highest standard you need facilities for spectators of the very highest standard as well - and that is where the current out-dated and financially unsustainable model of professional cricket in England needs to be radically changed.

If the quintessentially English festival cricket is undoubtedly worth preserving, which it is, but the current 18 county model for the county game is broken beyond repair (also true), then how can we create something that not only maintains the valuable and enjoyable heritage of Tunbridge Wells etc. but also establishes an affordable, high quality and commercially viable and popular structure for the domestic game? The answer is clear. You create eight cricket franchises on the IPL model based on the established international grounds at which world-class Twenty20 and four-day cricket would be played. For example Surrey would be one of the franchisees and through the season there would be regular top flight domestic cricket at The Oval which would pack in the punters for the one-day games and probably produce quite respectable crowds for the four-day tournament matches as well. Only the best of English domestic cricket would be on display and this would be the development arena for future international players – as well as being the home bases of current international players so far as the crowded Test and Limited Overs International calendar allowed.

Below the franchise tier you would, in this model, establish a county structure which combined the counties from the ten non international grounds with the twenty minor counties. These thirty counties, divided into (say) four regional structures, would play the highest quality cricket but they would not be fully professional. An affordable mix of gifted English amateurs, old pros and young Turks - along with one or full professionals (on the League cricket model) would deliver an intriguing and very watchable mix of cricket that could well attract the sort of crowds that we saw yesterday at Tunbridge Wells. The competitions would be worthwhile in themselves both as challenging sport but also as a genuine nursery for young English players who, if good enough, would progress to the fully professional franchises. These new counties, with hugely reduced wage bills and other costs compared the current system, would be financially viable and only require the most modest of subvention from the ECB. And crucially they would offer up festival cricket at some of England’s loveliest grounds which spectators would relish going to see.

Dance of the Elephants at the ECB?

2010-05-18T17:24:00.003+01:00

The admirable Stephen Brenkley is suggesting in the Indy that Giles Clarke's days as ECB chairman may at last be numbered in the light of the furore over the Indian Premier League's abortive plans to expand into England. Brenkley goes on to suggest that if Clarke is forced out (a very big if) then David Morgan might return to the ECB as his tenure as ICC President expires soon. Morgan was of course Clarke's predecessor at the ECB - which prompts thoughts of the old music hall song "The music goes 'round and around Whoa-ho-ho-ho-ho-ho…it comes out here".

Whether there will really be another dance of the elephants at the top of English cricket we must wait and see. Giles Clarke has the hide of a pachyderm himself and if Stanford didn't account for him, which many thought it should have, will the IMG and the ghost of Lalit Modi succeed? Clarke can pretty much always call upon the County Chairmen to rally to his aid in times of stress - although his power to tempt the more impoverished counties to stand by him by throwing more money at them are much more limited these days. The "IPL in England" plan, although fairly grubby (no surprise there then) had an inescapable logic to it. Based on the Indian model the idea was to create eight or so proper Twenty20 franchises based at England's largest county grounds. There was nothing at all original about this plan - this scribe, for example, has been flogging the idea for years. It makes such sense that only the terminally conservative could disagree with it.

England's triumph in the World Twenty20 surely whets the appetite for a domestic T20 competition of similar quality. In short lets have eight quality teams playing at quality venues in a focused and properly paced tournament that we will all want to go and see. Sound familiar? So if Clarke is soon to fall on his sword what we must hope is not that another friend of the poor and underprivileged shires, David Morgan, returns to succeed him but that someone with the ambition and commercial nous to see that change is necessary in cricket as well as elsewhere in our society comes forward. I'd give the estimable Keith Bradshaw the job - if MCC could spare him and if he'd relish the challenge of sorting out another bunch of Poms!

It's The Sun what won it!

2010-03-29T13:04:00.002+01:00

Embargoed until 1st April 2010

The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) and News International Ltd (NIL) are delighted to announce a new long term partnership to the benefit of cricket. NIL has agreed to provide generous financial support to the ECB for the next five years in return for an exclusive sponsorship arrangement for the England cricket team.

With effect from mid 2010 the England team will be renamed the “Sky England” team and the shirts of the players will carry the “SkyBet” emblem and the slogan:

It matters more when there's money on it!

The ECB is pleased to welcome Mr James Murdoch onto its Board to take up the position of Joint Chairman with Giles Clarke. Mr Murdoch, who is Australian, said at the launch of the new initiative that “Sky is delighted further to cement its relationship with the ECB and hopes to bring a good dose of Aussie pragmatism and endeavour to sharpen up England’s cricket prior to The Ashes 2010/2011. The last thing sponsors and advertisers down under want is another bunch of Pom no-hopers like last time - so we’ll all be working together to try and put England in a position to at least draw one of the Test matches.”

The ECB and NIL have also announced an exciting new domestic competition for 2010. To be called “The Sun Ten10” this will be a new ten over per side knockout cup for the Counties. Explaining the reasoning Giles Clarke said “As the name suggests this is aimed particularly at sports fans for whom the attention span required for the longer form of the game (Twenty20) is a bit too long”. There will be plenty of innovations to make this the most exciting form of the game yet. After the “Power Play” over there will be the “Sun Play” over umpired by two Page three ladies and the innings climax will involve a lucky Sun reader bowling the final over. Each ball will provide a betting opportunity with the odds (“3-1 he hits a sixer”) being announced in the ground and with live betting online and on TV.

The ECB and NIL have also announced the creation of a “Cricket Heritage” department at the University of Essex under the direction of Times correspondent Michael Atherton. James Murdoch explains “Athers will be looking to establish a fully sustainable cricket research and study centre with the highest standards of Corporate Social Responsibility and which will protect the image and reputation of the game far better than that effete lot at the MCC are able to do. The true greats of the game will be immortalised at the university including the “Shane Warne Research Centre into cricket language” and the “Hansie Cronje Department of match result management”.

Giles Clarke added “We are often erroneously criticised for not caring about the heritage and history of the game. This centre will, for example, have a resource about the greats of the past - like David Bradman and Fred Hobbs - as well as lots of old stuff about the cricket games they played in the past – like Test Matches and County cricket.”

Guest speaker at the launch Shadow (for the moment!) Sports Minister, Hugh Robertson, said “I’m sure that in years no come the ties between the ECB and NIL will become even stronger. A future Conservative Government (I feel emboldened to say the future Conservative Government!) will stand foursquare behind both of these great institutions who share a common goal in favour of free enterprise not in empty free-to-air enterprise! Indeed in years to come I’m sure that as England moves on from triumph to triumph it will be true to say (as it will surely be for me in a few weeks time!) ‘It was The Sun what won it!’”

An Open Letter to Ben Bradshaw, Secretary of State for Culture, Media and Sport

2010-03-21T13:35:00.002Z

Dear Mr Bradshaw

Five short years ago the nation was enthralled as England and Australia fought a titanic battle for The Ashes culminating is a nerve-wracking but, for England, successful outcome at The Oval Test match. The final day of that match achieved record television viewing figures of 8.4 million free to air on Channel 4 and there was no doubt that cricket in the United Kingdom received an enormous boost from these events. In 2009 we again had an enthralling Ashes series but by now live television coverage of international cricket in Britain had been with News International’s subsidiary “Sky Television” for four years requiring a subscription of around £600 per year to be seen. Not surprisingly, despite a cricket match of great tension and excitement last August, the live television viewing figures were less than a quarter of what they had been in 2005. In November 2009 an independent report into “listed events” led by broadcaster David Davies recommended that the Ashes join the free-to-air list. We now have the England and Wales Cricket Board’s (ECB) response to this proposal.

The ECB’s “Statement on Listed events” is a statement of such disingenuousness that it demands the most robust of responses. But in a way this long and self-centered attack on Mr Davies’s sensible proposals is helpful because it reveals what some of us close to the game have known for some time – that cricket in these islands is not in safe hands under the inept direction of the ECB. The ECB says that “…placing the home Ashes Test match series on List A would bring about a devastating collapse in the entire fabric of cricket in England and Wales from the playground to the Test match arena” – an astonishing admission of the Board’s governance failure since 2005. It is worth reiterating the point that only five years ago “The Ashes” were on free-to-air television. Over those years, we are now informed, the ECB has placed itself in a position that it is only by continuing the arrangements with Sky that a “collapse” in the “fabric” of English cricket can be averted!

The ECB narrowly avoided placing itself even more in hock to questionable commercial interests when its plans to establish a long-term arrangement with Texas billionaire Allen Stanford were brought to an abrupt end when the American was taken into custody on a fraud-related charge by the FBI last June. The Stanford affair was further evidence that rather than address the very real cost issues faced by cricket in England and Wales in a responsible and courageous way the ECB would prefer to seek funding from any source – however questionable – to try and keep afloat a ship that has been holed below the waterline for a long time. And in cricket as elsewhere he who pays the piper calls the tune – which has led, and will continue to lead, to crowded fixture lists, meaningless matches and player “burn-out” just to provide television events for which advertising can be sold by Sky.

Professional domestic cricket in England and Wales is one of the principal recipients of funding from the ECB and the £137.4m “probable loss” (from “The Ashes” leaving Sky) over four years 2014-2017, alleged in the ECB’s statement, is coincidentally not far away as a sum from the approximately £36m that the ECB hands out to the eighteen first class counties every year. The counties in their turn have a wage bill for players of roughly the same amount. This funding shores up a county system of great historical significance and nostalgic and emotional resonance – but one which is not only unaffordable but wholly unsuitable to the sport in the 21st Century – and in particular to the needs of the England team. Neither Australia nor any other of England’s international rivals has such a bloated and underperforming professional domestic structure as the English county system. The case for a far smaller and better second tier structure for English cricket (international cricket is the first tier) is overwhelming. If the ECB’s income is reduced as a result of the move back to free-to-air television of “The Ashes” it ought to be a blessing in disguise for English cricket. Not only will the numbers able to see international matches return to the level that they were as recently as 2005 but it may force the long-delayed and vitally necessary root and branch review of professional cricket in England and Wales. The outcome might be that the governance of the game in future is not vested in an ECB board overwhelmingly made up of County cricket officials (who bring obvious vested interests to maintain the status quo with them). It might also mean that we move to a more manageable and far higher quality second tier of perhaps six or eight teams (the Australians have six and the Indian Premier League has eight) which would be commercially viable and attractive both for Twenty20 and for the longer forms of the game. And which would be far more focused on being primarily the feeding ground for England at an international level and far less an employment opportunity for players from overseas who are not qualified to play for England.

I hope that the ECB’s response to your Department’s consultation document will paradoxically provide you with ample evidence to endorse rather than to turn down David Davies’s proposals re the televising of “The Ashes”. The case the ECB makes is flimsy and wholly unbalanced and it is worthy of nothing more than rejection out of hand. I hope also that both the tone and hypocritical content of the ECB’s response will inspire you to commission a proper parliamentary enquiry into the governance of cricket in England – not least because, via Sport England, substantial public funds are passed to the ECB and represent the major source of their expenditure on grassroots and community cricket!

Yours Sincerely

Paddy Briggs

Where I was when we won The Ashes

2010-02-23T12:00:00.004Z

I’d been to the first three days of the match glued to my seat and not missing a ball. England had been pretty dominant but, as always, and especially against the Aussies nothing could be taken for granted. Australia, chasing 546, were 80 without loss overnight and if they batted for two days they would win. At Cardiff they’d batted us out of the park: 674 - 6 declared in 181 overs with four (nearly five) century makers. These boys could bat and the pessimist in me said that all records are made to be broken. But for me, whatever happened, this wasn’t to be an “I was there” moment. Every year we have a week in the Lake District and Sunday was to be the first day of that week – the day that we drove north for five hours or so to our timeshare near Keswick. There was no choice – we would have to miss the day’s play and rely on Test Match Special.

Now I am a good spectator when I am actually at an England match but a very bad watcher on television or listener to the radio when the match really matters. And nothing matters more than The Ashes especially when we have a chance of regaining the Urn. I’d watched much of the final day at The Oval in 2005 from behind a settee and I wasn’t likely to be a nerveless listener in the car this year either. We are somewhere on the M25 as play begins and Aggers is off. Katich and Watson seem to be coping alright in the first couple of overs. Then huge noise from the car speakers - LBW appeal from Swanney “Looked plumb to me” I cry – it was! Aus 86-1. Three balls later Broad traps Watson – I flash my lights at oncoming cars to let them know that the Aussies are two down! But then Ponting and Hussey dig in to some effect. I try turning off the radio and listening to Puccini to try and induce a wicket but they are still there at lunch. 170-2.

We’re making good progress and are somewhere near Stoke. I’ll turn TMS back on after “Nessun Dorma” in Act3 - "Nobody shall sleep...” sings Pavarotti – “well I bet they aren’t sleeping in Kennington” I quip nervously. On goes the radio – thirteen post-lunch overs bowled and still no wicket then pandemonium in the ether – Fred has run out Ponting! Follow that! Strauss does and Clarke goes for a duck and the car veers dangerously towards the hard shoulder, 220-4 and England are surely now on their way. And so of course it proves. We arrive in Keswick just in time for the last rites, Harmy’s two in two balls, the celebrations and Strauss’s well-urned moment in the sun. Time for Pavarotti again I think –“Vincerò! Vincerò! Vincerò!”

Tall tales from Table Mountain

2010-02-23T11:52:00.004Z

The debacle of the Fourth Test Match at The Wanderers, when England capitulated in a shameful fashion, rather clouds what up until that event had been a good tour in South Africa. Not one player, Collingwood as ever excepted, came away from Johannesburg with any credit at all. The surprise for me was that from what I saw at Newlands England had the momentum after a second great escape to add to their fine win at Kingsmead. The South African squad, officials and supporters were on the floor after Graham Onions played out that final over to save the third Test - but to their credit the Proteas came out fighting in the final Test and thoroughly deserved to tie the series.

With the great and the good

At Newlands I saw much of the match from the comfort of the Presidents’ Suite. Now before my loyal readers think that I have gone over to the other side and joined the free-loading cricket establishment let me explain. André Odendaal, the CEO of Western Province, is a cricket administrator of principle – a man who as a young student in Stellenbosch in the 1970s wrote a precocious and brilliant analysis of the venal consequences of apartheid on the game of cricket in South Africa. This was essential source material for me when I was writing my biography of John Shepherd who was the first black man to play first-class cricket in the Republic in that decade. André read the first draft of the relevant chapter and has subsequently been very supportive of the book. My wife and I were his guest at Newlands and this allowed me to rub shoulders with the “great and the good” of English and South African cricket. These are my impressions.

The ECB leadership was at Newlands en masse including the triumvirate of Giles Clarke, David Collier and Dennis Amiss. They sat together for some of the match prompting the thought "See no evil, hear no evil, speak no evil" as they fiddled with their Blackberries whilst England’s bowlers burned and toiled under the ferocious third day sun. By lunch on the fourth day South Africa were 397/4 and gearing up for a declaration which they undoubtedly thought would give them ample time to bowl England out and win the match. This was the moment when Giles Clarke had to thank his hosts - which he did graciously whilst adding that he confidently expected England to bat until stumps on the fifth day and draw. There was a nervous laugh in the suite from those of us who thought that this was, to say the least, highly improbable - but Clarke added to his many talents that of prescient seer when England remarkably and courageously did exactly what he said they would. At the moment of triumph, as Onions survived the final ball of the match, Clarke stood and embraced Dennis Amiss – rather unconvincingly it has to be said, I don’t think that the two of them had had many “kissy, kissy” moments before.

Our Saffers and their Saffers

The company in the suite was hospitable, cosmopolitan and very interesting. At one point when Trott and Pietersen were (briefly) batting together I turned to another English guest and said “Well Robin it’s our Saffers against their Saffers again!” This prompted an elderly and genial Afrikaner sitting behind me to ask whether I knew where the England team stays when they are in South Africa. The answer, of course, is “with their parents!” – a good joke. The South-Africanisation of English cricket at County and International level was inevitably a subject for debate in Cape Town. Four of the England side were born in the Republic and have one South African parent – Strauss, Prior, Pietersen and Trott - and all could well have played for the Proteas if they had chosen to do so. The same applies to the talented wicket-keeper Craig Kieswetter who is half Scottish and is qualifying for England. It was the Kieswetter case I was keen to discuss and I had the opportunity to do this over lunch one day with the former Proteas vice-captain Craig Matthews who is now a South African selector. He told me that a firm approach was made by Cricket South Africa last year to Kieswetter to try and persuade him to choose the country of his birth and nationality rather than England – especially as Mark Boucher is reaching the end of his career and an opening is around the corner. But the young keeper has plumped for England and there is no doubt that one of the reasons is Cricket South Africa’s affirmative action policy. As Matthews put it if a decent non-white wicket-keeper emerges on the scene he would almost certainly get the nod ahead of Kieswetter. South Africa’s rule is that there must be at least four non-whites in every Proteas team. Matthews supports this affirmative action policy and thinks it is all too easy to blame this policy for the loss of cricketers like Pietersen and Trott to England. I agree with him and whilst there is an inevitable distortion to free selection consequent on the policy it is certain that without it fine players like Amla, Duminy and Prince might have struggled to get their chances. But as there is only one wicket-keeper in any side you can see why Kieswetter would rather take his chances in England - and who would blame him?

Divine intervention?

There was a distinctly ecclesiastical feel to the Presidents box at times during the Test with not just the local Rector an ever-present but a phalanx of bishops and even the Archbishop of Cape Town as well! But sadly I missed the most distinguished man of the cloth of all – the great Desmond Tutu was only there on the first day when I was with the hoi-polloi in the stands! The rector explained to me that cricket and the church are closely interlinked because both require enormous acts of faith from the congregation/spectators. As those final excruciating moments of the Test were underway I noticed that the Bishops were unusually quiet and asked them if they were interceding with the almighty to grant South Africa a wicket. I thought it inappropriate to remind them of the foolishness of this task because as we all know God is an Englishman!

Magnificent support

Andrew Strauss rightly paid tribute to the England supporters after the match and the Barmy Army and the rest were indeed magnificent. The attendance at Newlands was an all-time record for a Test match – bolstered by the thousands of England fans who had made the trip. Who says that Test cricket is dead? The leader of the Army Vic Flowers (aka Jimmy Saville) was as colourful as ever and even agreed to be photographed with Mrs B – a proud moment for her (see picture). The Waterfront was heaving every night and the Barmies had commandeered one of the pubs for their revels which were good-humoured and must have inflated the hostelry’s takings exponentially. I have seen the Army all around the cricket world, even in Karachi a couple of times, and they are a unique and valuable asset to England cricket. They need to be treated in a more grateful way by the ticket-issuing authorities in England – not least at Lord’s which could do with being a bit less stuffy!

And now for the rest of the cricket year…

England are still work in progress. But they have a good coach and an intelligent captain and, Jo’Burg notwithstanding, they have a good team ethic. England are within an ace or two of being a side that has a decent chance of defending “The Ashes” in Australia. Swann has been a revelation but a genuine fast bowler is needed to augment the swing and precision of Anderson, Broad, Onions and Sidebottom. And they still need to find a number 3 – Trott, Bell, and Collingwood are all good but middle order batsmen and Pietersen is a natural number 4. Perhaps Cooke or Strauss should drop down to three and we should bring in another, and preferably right-handed, opener? KP needs to find his form, of course, but after the year he has had I wouldn’t blame him for his less than sparkling tour of South Africa – although I wish he would eschew the IPL – some chance! But the core of a very good team is there and it is right for us to be optimistic.

Why Bill Frindall is turning in his grave

2010-02-21T12:52:00.004Z

Cricket lovers around the world have always eagerly awaited the appearance of “The Wisden Book of Test Cricket” which records in detail the facts and figures of every Test match played and all the associated statistics. It was in many ways the doyen of cricket statisticians Bill Frindall’s greatest achievement. Bill sadly died a little over a year ago and the latest volume of the book’s, dealing with Test matches played in the first decade of the 21st Century, has been edited by Steven Lynch. In his brief preface Lynch makes an appropriate acknowledgment of Bill Frindall and says that the new volume is “…decided to his memory” and he hopes that “…I have managed to produce a book of which he would approve” – a forlorn hope I’m afraid Mr Lynch.

Bill Frindall would be turning in his grave if he spied page 259 of the book on which the so-called “Super Test” between Australia and an “ICC World XI” is recorded as if it was a proper Test match – which Bill Frindall and all others who really care about cricket statistics and records know that it was not. Bill summarised his views unequivocally in the 2006 Playfair annual which he edited “…simple logic dictates that “international” records should be exactly that – “contests between nations”” – as the International Cricket Council’s regulations had properly stated for decades. Wisden’s rationale for including the match is that it accepts the “…governing body’s right to rule on its status”. This is arrant nonsense of course – if those who are experts on cricket statistics, Bill Frindall and all other respectable cricket historians included, know and can prove that the match wasn’t a proper Test match then that is the end of the matter – whatever the ignorant apparatchiks of the ICC might say!

The ICC should simply admit a mistake and remove Test status from this match which was “…a game bordering on the farcical.” (Frindall again). There is a precedent – the games in the 1970 international five match series between England and a “Rest of the World” side were deemed as authentic Test matches at the time but the ICC swiftly revised its view and in 1972 declared that the matches were unofficial – i.e. that the performances would not count in official Test match records. They subsequently confirmed that only matches between the national representative teams of countries which have "Test status" can be official Test matches. There was no equivocation on this ruling – Test matches are only played between countries (including the West Indies as a surrogate country for cricket purposes). One collateral effect of the ruling was that Test cricket records had to expunge the Rest of the World 1970 series – the principal casualty of this ruling was the Glamorgan batsman Alan Jones who played for England in one of the matches but now lost his status as a Test player. Another was Derek Underwood who would have taken 304 rather than 297 Test wickets if the 1970 matches had been deemed official. Geoff Boycott would have scored 23 not 22 Test centuries and Garry Sobers would have had 588 more Test runs (and two more centuries) to his name.

Alan Jones has understandably always regretted losing his Test match, and Underwood is disappointed that he is not a member of the 300+ Test wickets club, but one suspects that even they would reluctantly accept the logic of the ICC’s then ruling. If the 2005 “Super Test” is similarly retrospectively declared not to have Test match status the implications for the records of the participants are not so severe. Shane Warne would still have 700 Test wickets (just – he would go from 708 to exactly 700!) and Matt Hayden would have to be satisfied with 29 not 30 Test centuries. Those who argue that the participants in the “Super Test” thought that they were playing in an official Test match – for so it had been billed – have a point. But the participants in the 1970 series thought the same – it was also billed and marketed as Test cricket.

Test cricket is, according to some pessimistic observers, under threat from the burgeoning of Twenty20 around the cricket world. But one thing that Test cricket has which any other from of the game lacks is historical resonance. Between March 1877 and August 2009 no less than 1931 proper inter-national Test matches were played - as Wisden’s newly updated Test match records books splendidly record in easily readable detail. By any logic the “Super Test” has no right to be accorded the same status as these 1931 real Test matches and it shouldn’t be there. Time for the ICC to act.

Whither The Wisden Cricketer?

2010-01-28T13:19:00.002Z

I already have a pretty good collection of “The Cricketer” magazine which I found to be an invaluable resource when I was writing the biography of Kent and West Indies stalwart John Shepherd. I recently had the opportunity to augment – indeed to complete – the run when I bought a large number of the late Bill Frindall’s copies of the magazine at an auction. Founded by Pelham Warner in the early 1920s The Cricketer was always an authoritative and comprehensive record of the game of cricket – initially mainly from an English perspective but later it had a genuine world view. Re-reading copies more than thirty years after the events was enjoyable and even addictive – and the quality of the writing was always good.

A few years ago “The Cricketer” lost its independent existence when it was merged with the very different “Wisden Cricket Monthly” and became “The Wisden Cricketer” (TWC). Little of the original character of “The Cricketer” remains in TWC, good magazine though the latter definitely is. TWC is a strongly commercial publication with in your face use of colour and photographs and well-written, but comparatively superficial, articles and features. For in-depth writing about cricket you need to look elsewhere – either in specialist periodicals like the excellent bulletin of The Cricket Society, or – once a year – in Wisden’s Cricketers’ Almanack. “Wisden”, despite sharing its name by licence with TWC, is quite independent of the magazine and there is no editorial or other connection.

In 2007 “The Wisden Cricketer” was acquired by Rupert Murdoch’s BSkyB Publications Ltd and it seems that it may presently be subject to the same in-depth review that affects Sky’s other magazines like “Sky Magazine”, “Sky Movies Magazine” and “Sky Sports Magazine” (said to be is the highest-circulating sports magazine in the world) which are sent “free” to subscribers. The satellite subscriber magazines, although free, do have a cover price and there is apparently a complicated and not entirely transparent tax advantage in this for Sky. As far as TWC is concerned it is an anomaly in the stable in that it is sold through conventional outlets, and by subscription, and does not have any overt Sky branding on it.

TWC has generally been pretty independent and under its able and often outspoken editor John Stern it has not dodged controversy – of which there is plenty in the world of cricket! It hasn’t, however, recently been particularly forthright on the subject of the likely inclusion of “The Ashes” in the “listed events” that government requires to be on free-to-air television. Sky TV, of course, would be a loser if this actually happens.

In recent market research amongst its readers and subscribers TWC has clearly be exploring its brand and identity options. Will it continue to use the “Wisden” name despite the fact that it can arguably not be seen to adhere to the independent cricket observer character that has always marked Wisden? Indeed will Wisden’s owner Bloomsbury be happy to continue to licence the use of the Wisden name for the magazine given that is has little or no control over TWC’s content, style or editorial position. A straw in the wind might be John Stern’s editorial in the most recent “The Wisden Cricketer” (February 2010). At the end of the first paragraph Stern writes: “What do you do in the winter?” people often ask me. Well, given half the chance, switch on Sky Sports and enjoy.” A Pretty obvious bit of pro-Sky puffery you might think!

So what is the future for “The Wisden Cricketer” and will the memory of its great independent predecessor “The Cricketer” now fade forever? I can’t personally see BSkyB wanting to miss the opportunity of using a magazine in its stable more overtly to promote Sky Sports and this might perhaps lead to the magazine being rebranded “Sky Cricket Magazine” and it becoming a more overt adjunct to Sky’s TV cricket coverage. Alternatively, but much less likely, might BSkyB dispose of the magazine – perhaps even to the Bloomsbury subsidiary “John Wisden and Co”, publishers of Wisden? If the former happens then there will be a gap in the market for a wide circulation but totally independent magazine on cricket – as “The Cricketer” once was. But whether anyone would anyone have the courage, and be prepared to take the commercial risk, of jumping into the gap? Unlikely I think!

The drama of Colly's finger

2010-01-02T13:51:00.003Z

In fielding practice today at Newlands Paul Collingwood wasn't going to concede lack of fitness to anyone. He took the high catches as well as the rest and barracked any of his collegueges who gave anything less than 100%. But the likelihood has to be that Colly's injured digit will keep him out of the Cape Town Test. What a truly committed cricketer Paul Collingwood is - but even he may have to accept that you don't bat, bowl or field against a wounded Proteas side on their favourite ground carrying a nasty injury...

Campaign by Kent members gathers momentum

2009-12-24T09:33:00.002Z

The campaign by a group of members of Kent County Cricket Club to persuade the County to rethink their 2010 membership structure and subscriptions is gaining momentum. Helped by the running of stories in the national media, including in today’s Times, the campaign is well on its way to gaining the 100 signatures it needs to call for a Special General Meeting of the county to discuss the matter.

The campaign was launched shortly after Kent’s current membership received details of the County’s proposals for 2010. In 2009 you could be a member of Kent for £128 (£115 if you were over 65). For 2010 this was to be increased to £200 with no senior discount at all. An increase of 56% or of 74% for seniors. Various categories of membership were to be abolished including that of Country member, Senior (Over 65) and Student (18-23 for full time students). Within days of the protests starting Kent relented on the Country member category and re-introduced it at a 50% discount but at the time of writing the other categories remain abolished and the minimum membership cost for ordinary members is still £200.

Members have pointed out that neighbouring county Sussex has full membership available for as little as £100 and that most other counties have similarly affordable deals. In the case of Sussex the membership offer is “tiered” with the £100 deal including “only” One Day games and with a top membership category at £210 to include the County Championship games. There is no such choice available to Kent members who are offered a take it or leave it “All matches” membership at £200

The outcry has come particularly from members who, for various reasons, can only attend a few matches each season but value their membership and the right to wear the county tie and sit in the members areas at the grounds when they do attend matches. Many of these members are not interested in Twenty20 so the inclusion of these games in the new package is of little value to them. The opposition is understandably strong from older members who have seen the greatest increase and it is often the case the these members find it difficult to attend more than a few matches each years - and also that they are not amongst the most enthusiastic supporters of Twenty20. Many pensioner members struggle on fixed incomes and the extra £85 they are being asked to pay is unaffordable. This means that many long-standing members will simply drift away from the county and that their membership subscriptions will be lost entirely. The result is that the income generated from the sale of membership may even decrease despite the swinging subscription increase.

The campaign has opened a dialogue with the club on this matter and it is hoped that Kent will rethink their whole 2010 membership offer and avoid the cost of having to arrange a Special General Meeting. The introduction of a “tiered” membership structure similar in principle to that of Sussex seems the likely way forward.

English cricket should welcome David Davies’ recommendations

2009-11-12T10:14:00.002Z

It has now been confirmed that David Davies has recommended that The Ashes should be shown on terrestrial television as a “crown jewels” event and everyone involved with English cricket should welcome the news. They won’t of course – expect a strong anti reaction from the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) who will their future income streams being under threat. But in fact the news is just the shot in the arm that English cricket needs and not only the fans should celebrate. Because it should prompt a root and branch review of the finances and governance of cricket in Britain so that a fit-for-purpose domestic structure is established along with a far greater spectator/viewer imperative than currently exists.

The ordinary cricket fan has been the principal casualty of the disproportionately commercial bias of the ECB in recent years. Ticket prices for international matches are by some margin the most expensive in the world and with the only alternative for the fan requiring a satellite or cable subscription, which may cannot afford, cricket has slipped in the public interest compared with that glorious summer of 2005. That year, of course, The Ashes were on free-to-air Channel 4 and the viewing figures were huge. This year, although the cricket was almost as enticing as in 2005, the viewers were hardly surprisingly far fewer in number.

Why does the ECB seek to market its valuable international cricket properties to the highest bidders disregarding, in the process, the needs of the ordinary cricket fan? The answer, of course, rests not with the drive for income per se but with the grossly overblown expenditure that the ECB indulges in. This brings us, inevitably, to the subject of the structure of domestic cricket in England and Wales. The only way that an 18 county domestic structure can exist (just!) is if its costs are subvented by handouts from the ECB. These handouts amount to around £2million per year per county and we all know what the counties do with a significant proportion of that money and who the eventual beneficiaries are – and that they are not qualified to play for England!

It may seem slightly perverse to argue that the likely reduction in ECB income that the Davies recommendations will mean is actually good for the game. But if, as is likely, it forces the whole basis of the financing and operations of the ECB to be reviewed then only good can come out of it. And the start point for all this should be the ordinary cricket fan who wants affordable international cricket and, I would suggest, a far higher standard top-tier domestic cricket structure. A structure that is above all a developing ground for players who have the ability to get through to the international team and who are given the opportunity to do so in domestic competitions which are not primarily, as at present, nice little earners for itinerant cricket mercenaries!

The ECB still cagey about it's "staging agreements"

2009-11-10T13:47:00.004Z

Cricket lovers will be aware that the playing field for the allocation of major international matches to England and Wales cricket grounds is far from level. The ECB’s Major Match Group, chaired by Lord Morris of Handsworth, has confirmed that an Ashes Test match will take place at The Oval in 2013 as a part of their “long term staging agreement” - and Yorkshire also has such an agreement with the ECB which guarantees international cricket at Headingley until at least 2019. It is not known whether any other grounds have similar long term deals with the ECB and the ECB won’t tell! An ECB media spokesman told me “You would need to contact the individual venues. We don't release this type of information” – quite why this should be is not clear. What have they got to hide? The Oval and Headingley’s advantageous arrangements are no doubt linked to their ground redevelopment plans which needed to be underpinned financially by guaranteed international cricket at the venues.

This of course brings us to Lord’s which as it stands may not even get an Ashes Test match in 2013 (although one has been promised for 2016). Lord’s has ambitious plans for its redevelopment including taking the capacity up to approaching 40,000. But these plans can surely not go ahead unless the MCC has some certainty about the long term future of international matches at the ground. MCC members and the general cricket-loving public alike will be wondering whether the ECB and the MCC can do a deal which will allow Lord’s plans to proceed. And visiting sides will also, I’m sure, be hoping for a successful outcome – how many players from around the cricket world would happily forgo a Lord’s Test match in favour of the Rose Bowl, the Riverside or Sophia Gardens!

Boxing demeans us all...

2009-11-08T10:10:00.004Z

I wonder how many of those who watched the Haye versus Valuev fight yesterday remember the opening ceremony of the Atlanta Olympics in 1996 when the shambling figure of Muhammed Ali struggled nobly to light the Olympic flame.

In Atlanta, and since, Muhammed Ali’s suffering from “Pugilistic Parkinson’s syndrome” was visible for all to see. Like other great champions before him – Jack Dempsey, Joe Louis and Floyd Patterson amongst many others – the effects of repeated blows to the head over years in the ring was finally taking its toll. It would be churlish to deny David Haye his moment in the spotlight and no doubt he will now climb aboard the gravy train big time before he throws in the toel for good. But will it by then be too late? It may take up to fifteen years for the damage of repeated concussion to emerge in the way that it has with Ali and countless others.

Defenders of boxing often argue that many other sports are dangerous and that that the death or serious injury rate in the sport is lower than in (say) mountaineering or sky diving. This argument misses the point completely. It is only in boxing where you will have your head pummelled continuously for more than thirty minutes by an opponent whose primary purpose is to knock you senseless. That is the point of the sport – to strive sufficiently to injure your opponent that you beat him physically into submission. The world of professional boxing is an anachronism in modern sport in that attacks by one fighter on the head of another are a normal part of the tactics - and it is this aspect of the sport that is its biggest source of controversy and shame. Whilst contests in many contact sports (like Rugby, for example) can be tough and very physically and mentally demanding there is no legal sport, other than professional boxing, where the primary intention is to put your opponent in a comatose state. Boxing legitimises and glorifies violence. There is a glamour, of sorts, in boxing of course but a pretty vulgar one with “A list” celebrities occupying the ringside seats only intensifying the repulsion that many of us feel that modern society still tolerates this vulgarity.

Estimates indicate that around 900 people have died from boxing related injuries over the past seventy years or so – it is, therefore, no surprise that all medical authorities have called for the sport to be banned. The American Medical Association puts the case very clearly “All forms of boxing are a public demonstration of interpersonal violence which is unique among sporting activities. Victory is obtained by inflicting on the opponent such a measure of physical injury that the opponent is unable to continue, or which at least can be seen to be significantly greater than is received in return. This particularly applies to professional boxing”. But it is the individual cases that really bring the barbarity into sharp relief. Take, for example, that of the former world Middleweight champion, Gerald McClellan, who sustained a brain injury in a fight in 1995 as a consequence of which he is now deaf, blind and confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life. Yes such things could happen accidentally in other sports – but in boxing, as the AMA rightly says, the causing of such injury is deliberate.

There are multi-million dollar purses in boxing at the top and nobody can blame David Haye and others for reaching for them. With money at this level is it surprising that the sport survives, despite all the medical evidence against it? And is it surprising that it is the sport with historically more corruption and criminality in it than any other? The history of professional boxing is littered with the debris of fixed fights, dysfunctional and greedy promoters and crime syndicates. Surely sport should not be part of this shady world at all. Sport should set an example to society not reflect back its darker images. The charter of the Olympic Games says that “The goal of Olympism is to place sport at the service of the harmonious development of man, with a view to promoting a peaceful society concerned with the preservation of human dignity.” Boxing fails this test.

Brains and Brawn in Formula one

2009-10-18T10:45:00.002+01:00

Unless something very strange happens in the Brazilian Grand Prix later today it now looks certain that the Brawn F1 team will win both the Constructors’ and the Drivers’ Championship this season. It is the most remarkable, and in many ways pleasing, outcome in the history of the sport. Remarkable because before the season began nobody gave Brawn a prayer – not the experts, not the fans and certainly not the bookmakers. One preview by a long-in-the-tooth and distinguished writer about F1 said about Brawn that “…they must surely struggle near the back of the field” and The Guardian’s Maurice Hamilton predicted that Jenson Button would finish 14th in the championship and Rubens Barrichello 16th. The bookies agreed - Jenson was 66-1 and Rubens 125-1 to win the Drivers’ title and Brawn were 80-1 to win the Constructors’! The outcome is pleasing because in a sport not over-burdened with people at the top who you would admit to having as friends Ross Brawn has always been one of the good guys.

I was reasonably close to Ferrari for a few years in the late 1990s and the early part of this decade. I visited Marenello and met all of the key players including the then team boss Jean Todt and the drivers – Schumacher, Irvine and Barrichello. It was a hugely impressive operation – Schumi was a genius (if a slightly flawed one), Todt a clever and calmly effective leader and Schumacher’s team-mates, first Eddie Irvine and then Rubens, were personable and rightly popular. But the guy I rated most highly was Ross Brawn who was Ferrari’s Technical Director. He was quiet, modest and articulate and when he spoke you listened – not just because he knew what he was talking about but because he seemed to be telling you the truth. My love affair with Ferrari was somewhat tarnished in 2002 when Todt ordered Barrichello to let Schumacher through to win the Austrian Grand Prix – the sort of gamesmanship that gives sport a bad name. I was at the race and Brawn was clearly uncomfortable with what had happened – although he kept his silence.

Ross Brawn is a pleasing exception to the rule that F1 team bosses and the sport’s senior administrators have to have about as many morals as a tomcat on the prowl. So for Ross to triumph this year is truly a delight – and the same applies to whichever of Jenson or Rubens is crowned world champion. My patriotism favours Button, but my heart leans towards the veteran Rubens. He was the loyal number two at Ferrari and this was at times highly frustrating for him – as at the A-Ring in 2002. He has always had the talent to be World Champion, but aged 36 at the beginning of this season and with a drive in an unknown car the bookies weren’t far out in their assessment that it was the longest of long-shots. If Rubens wins today at his home Grand Prix in Sao Paulo, and Button and Vettell fail to score many, or even any, points (the likely outcome) then a fabulous fight to the finish between the two Brawn drivers in Abu Dhabi is a mouth-watering prospect. Whatever happens Ross Brawn has comprehensively upset the complacent Formula one applecart this year and shown that you don’t have to have giant corporate backers and sponsors with bottomless pockets to win in this most commercial of sports – and this surely pleases all of us whose Formula one memories go back to the days when it was possible for the private entrant like Raymond Mays, Tony Vandervell, Colin Chapman or Ken Tyrell to win.

Monty Panesar and the Afrikaaners

2009-10-17T16:07:00.002+01:00

Division 2 cricket County Championship side Northamptonshire have been captained in 2009 by the South African Test cricketer Nicky Boje and with him in the side have been fellow Springboks Rike Wessels, Johannes van der Wath and Andrew Hall. In a recent article in The Guardian Mike Selvey suggests fairly unequivocally that England and Northamptonshire spin bowler Monty Panesar has been the victim of a “lack of respect” from the overseas players at the county (all of them South Africans) and he hints that this has been manifested by chats about Monty between these players in their common language - Afrikaans. These chats have been overheard by visiting South Africans from other counties.

Now Selvey has his finely-tuned ear always to the ground when it comes to picking up the scuttlebutt in the world of cricket and I doubt that he would have reported the story unless he had pretty firm evidence that the gentle Monty’s difficult cricket year has not been helped by his being at times in an alien environment in his own county dressing room. The idea that in the once genteel environment of English County cricket, a place that over the years has welcomed players from all over the cricketing world, there is now the possibility of Afrikaner-speaking cliques demeaning fellow players is a pretty nasty thought. At Northants itself many of us will remember with pleasure the contribution that Panesar’s fellow Sikh, Bishan Singh Bedi, made for many years. Bedi was a popular figure at the County Ground in those distant days and he also had a foreign captain, the Pakistani Mustaq Mohammad for some of that time. It wouldn’t have happened in Mushie’s days, but perhaps times have changed and maybe it is now the smart thing to do when two or three Afrikaners are gathered together to put down a colleague. Possibly especially so if that colleague, like Monty, comes from a distinctly different background and wears a Patka.

How's this for Renault's Corporate Social Responsibility?

2009-09-23T17:56:00.002+01:00

When in 2002 the Benetton Formula One team morphed into Renault it was clear that what the French car giant was seeking to do was to secure brand value from the move, in return, of course, for funding. Constructors' and Drivers' championships in 2005 and 2006 will undoubtedly have given the brand a major boost and whilst it is never easy to draw a direct and quantified line between success of this sort and brand equity there can be little doubt that Renault's substantial investment will have paid off. But the recent revelations about what Simon Barnes of The Times called "…worst single piece of cheating in the history of sport" will not just have damaged Renault's F1 credibility beyond repair but also have done almost irreparable damage to the corporate brand as well. Let's see why.

Like most major corporations Renault trumpets loudly its commitment to "Corporate Social Responsibility" (CSR). Here is what they say on their website:

"Renault maintains relations with a wide range of stakeholders, including customers, suppliers, local communities and residents, associations, and international organisations… These relations are based on two guiding principles: dialogue and transparent, loyal behaviour. Renault’s commitment also extends to the key social issues linked to the automotive industry, such as sustainable mobility and road safety (sic), and to initiatives for civil society."

Fine words, albeit words that are easy for a skilled copywriter to craft. Much more difficult of course is to walk the talk - to actually put into practise what you say you believe in. Major corporations can always be tripped up by determined investigators who can usually find some Achilles heel where practices don't match up to the high ideals of its stated CSR policy. But in Renault's case this was not some quiet little known business where standards were slipping - it was one of the most visible manifestations of the corporate brand - Formula One.

Now it may be that the big chiefs of Renault feel that they had in a way contracted out the running of the Renault F1 team to Flavio Briatore and that their big corporate hands are squeaky clean. Briatore has been banned from F1 activities indefinitely, and Pat Symonds, the former chief engineer has been suspended from the sport for five years. They even feel that they are clear to continue with their F1 involvement with their reputation untarnished because the World Motor Sport Council has only given the team a suspended sentence - in effect no punishment at all.

But if CSR does mean anything at all surely Renault at the very top must accept that this has been a shocking breach of their CSR policy by one of the most visible parts of their empire? It is reasonable to ask whether Renault's CSR commitment to transparency and to road safety applied to their F1 team. If it did then how to they feel now? And if it didn't then surely it should have!

Michael Vaughan to join a winning Test Match Special “A” Team

2009-09-18T18:44:00.003+01:00

On the fallow day between England’s failure to defend a total of 299 on Tuesday and their even more woeful attempt to get a similar total on Thursday, both at Trent Bridge, I had the pleasure of spending some time with the Producer of Test Match Special Adam Mountford. Now attentive readers will know that I have a wee bit of previous with Mr Mountford but he, to his credit, offered an olive branch and we eventually got together deep in the heart of the Vale of Belvoir for a spot of lunch. And very enjoyable it was to for whatever the doubts may have been when Mountford took over from the long-serving Peter Baxter in 2007 can there be any doubt that this has been a bit of an Annus Mirabilis for the programme and its producer?

Test Match Special (TMS) is one of the very few iconic programmes on the Radio where the programme brand is its strength and where the presenters or performers may come and go but the core values of the brand stay constant – or should. The “Today” programme, “Woman’s Hour”, “Desert Island Discs” and of course “The Archers” are among the few in this category and TMS is up there with them. But one of the problems with icon status is that listeners are fiercely defensive about the programme and often very reluctant to accept changes. This was certainly the case with TMS and Mountford was accused of dumbing down and of being too willing to adopt the tabloid style culture of Radio 5Live. These accusations were mainly attributable to the choice of commentators and summarisers that he made in his first months in charge. Radio 5 has been criticised for having “homogenised” voices with one presenter’s accent and tones being indistinguishable from another. There is some truth in this gibe and when Adam Mountford introduced similarly cloned voices to TMS there was adverse comment - can you distinguish your Mann, from your White from your Pougatch? Not to mention the estuary tones of Phil Tufnell – a celebrity superstar replacing our much loved old grump Mike Selvey! Oh my Johnners and my Arlott of long ago – how you must be looking on at it all from on high with horror!

Those of us who remember the early days of TMS can recall how the programme gradually evolved from rather stilted and formulaic cricket commentary into what Jonathan Agnew has described as a “roomful of mates chatting away”. Would this survive in the new regime and in particular how would the Ashes Tests of 2009 be produced – would strict ball by ball commentary endure and would those carrying it out be our old chums – Aggers and Blowers and Jenkers? (Christopher Martin-Jenkins really was called “Jenkers” by Brian Johnston but somehow this didn’t survive the great man’s passing!). So when I sat in my seat in Sophia Gardens on Wednesday 8th July, the first day of the 2009 Ashes, and tuned in to TMS’s build up to that first day’s play it was with some trepidation. I needn’t have worried. At Cardiff we had all three of the TMS heavies as well as the hugely experienced Aussie game-caller Jim Maxwell. Not only that but the “A” team of summarisers was there as well – Boycott and Marks and the superb Ian Chappell. And when Tufnell took his turn he held his own admirably and soon showed that he is a clever reader of the game with an engaging communications style and a strong voice – albeit one that now seemed a bit more “Radio 4” than I remember from when he was crowned King of the Jungle! Mountford says that four commentators is probably one too many in any one match – although it was certainly justified for the first Test. So for the foreseeable future we can expect some rotation between Aggers, CMJ and Blowers and also the occasional match for the very good Simon Mann. The experiment with Arlo White and Mark Pougatch as Test match commentators is unlikely to be repeated – although they will continue to work on limited overs matches. And the summarisers rota will comprise Boycott, Vic Marks and Phil Tufnell – to whom can now be added Michael Vaughan, something that was finalised by the BBC at Trent Bridge where the ex England captain made his debut on TMS.

The Ashes listening figures were, Mountford believes, around six million – more than three times the number of viewers for Sky’s television coverage. It is surprising how vague the listenership figures are for BBC radio and it is virtually impossible to be anything like precise about the numbers that tune in to TMS. Within the BBC itself the programme is high profile with senior suits from the DG downwards listening to and taking an interest in the programme. I sensed that Mountford rather relishes this even though the degree of attention must be a bit wearing at times. Perhaps the uniqueness of TMS and that fact that it is one of Radio’s Jewels in the Crown has ensured that if there ever was a risk of serious dumbing down and absorption into Radio5 Live this has not happened. The innovations are really quite modest, Tuffers for Selvey, on pitch interviews before the start of a day’s play and greater responsiveness to listeners who text or Email the programme. The much reported interviews with Lily Allen and Daniel Radcliffe may be seen as an attempt to go pop but there has always been a tradition on TMS of interviews with those who are famous for other reasons and have an interest in the game - and Aggers is very good at these interviews and for most listeners I suspect that there is no problem with them. Mountford said that 75% of the messages after the Lily Allen interview were positive and given that a fair number of the traditional TMS listeners had probably never heard of her this was a good result.

As with any live unscripted programme there are elephant traps for the unwary and Mountford has had one or two dodgy moments. My own personal moment of disgust came during the New Zealand Lord’s Test Match in 2008 when former New Zealand captain Jeremy Coney said of incoming batsman Ross Taylor that he was “From the South Pacific in the sense that he is not a New Zealander at all” and moments later couldn’t identify “which of the islands” Taylor came from. In fact Ross Taylor, whose mother was from Samoa, was born in Lower Hutt in North Island and is very much a New Zealander. Mountford describes Coney as having made an “error of judgment” and there the matter rests – although I am sure that I am not alone in feeling that there is no place on as iconic a programme as TMS for an expert summariser who reveals prejudice or ignorance, or maybe both, on air.

But whilst errors of the Coney type are unacceptable that does not argue for blandness or over-sensitive political correctness. You want some creative tension and we did get this year from time to time – particularly between Boycott and the commentators and especially Jonathan Agnew. CMJ, Aggers and Blowers are mostly very polite to one and all and so was Jim Maxwell. Vic Marks and Ian Chappell were also very courteous – as was Matthew Hayden who summarised in the later Tests and did an excellent job. The genial Tufnell didn’t really wind anyone up or try and start an argument and on his Trent Bridge showing nor will Michael Vaughan – good though his debut was. So for the future Mountford, who has clearly been treading rather carefully this year, might want to have a bit more attack from time to time in the box and move a little bit away from the blandness-risking “Radio Old Chum” style.

BBC Radio has negotiated a home matches broadcasting contract with the ECB that will keep TMS going until 2014 and most overseas tours will be covered as well. But the upcoming Champions Trophy in South Africa will not have ball by ball and listeners will have to rely on updates from Alison Mitchell on Radion 5Live – or watch Sky. The international matches against South Africa will have the full TMS treatment though and the core “A” team will be in the Republic for the Test matches along with the local commentator Gerald de Kock.

Adam Mountford resents the suggestion that he was a parvenu who was out of his depth when he took over from Peter Baxter pointing out that not only that he had been Baxter’s assistant for five years but that during that time he had produced a number of matches and tours himself. Nevertheless I sense that he was seen as a bit different by the rather cosy, public-school educated and supremely self-confident TMS team that he now had to lead, and that this was a bit of a problem. It may be that he has had to rein in his instincts for change in order both to keep the team together and to deflect the critics who had him in their sights for a while. But his success in 2009 has surely silenced some of the doubters and raised his credibility and profile both within the corridors of power in the BBC and with his TMS “chums”.

3000 people, no dogs - and precious little sense either!

2009-09-09T18:32:00.003+01:00

As a previous winner of “The Wisden Cricketer” (TWC) letter of the month award (note to friends – the Cockspur Rum was excellent and there is none left) I naturally always look at the prize-winning letter each month with particular interest. Now John Stern, TWC’s estimable editor is a sensible sort of chap (I flatter him not because I want a review of my John Shepherd biography in his organ, although that would be nice, but because he is genuinely on the side of the good guys on cricket). Given his commonsensical approach I can only assume that behind his stern (sorry!) and rational facade there is a cove with an impious sense of humour. Why else would he publish Jack Endacott’s hilarious “defence” of the County Championship – I think that on this occasion the editor’s tongue has been not unadjacent to his cheek!

But given the letter’s prominence I had better gently demolish the arguments in it and, whilst I have no wish to be unkind to Mr Endacott, in the search for truth I am afraid that I have to show why he is, on this matter anyway, deluded. Let’s start with the assertion that a “crowd” of 3,000 is in some way something worth boasting about. True it is way up at the top end of the spectator count for County Championship matches – most of this years hundreds of days of Championship cricket will be watched by a ‘“crowd” nearer to the “one man and his dog” than they will be to Taunton’s three thousand. The County Championship is England’s premier domestic cricket competition but compare it with the premier competition in other major sports such as Football, Rugby Union and Rugby League and it is nowhere. Indeed to get crowds as low as this in Football you would have to go down to the lower reaches of Division 2 of the Football League – the fourth tier of the professional game! And comparable matches in the two Rugby codes get proper crowds of at least three or four times the Taunton masses. Limited overs county cricket fixtures do, of course, sometimes attract much larger attendances – but it is the County Championship that Mr Endacott is writing about and which he claims is the “bedrock of the game”.

I have mentioned before veteran sports writer Frank Keating’s mournful assessment of the modern County Championship but it is worth quoting again:

“…another summer of what has tragically become a drawn-out primeval charade, the English County Championship. For decade upon decade it was a cherished adornment of the summer sub-culture, certainly for my generation when heroes were giants and giants were locals. About a quarter of a century ago the championship began fraying and then in no time unravelling. It is now a pointless exercise, unwatched, unwanted, serviced by mostly blinkered, greedy chairman-bullied committees and played by mostly unknown foreign and second-rate mercenaries.”

Keating is right on all counts. Somerset’s eleven for the two matches that Mr Endacott enjoyed contained no fewer than six players who are foreigners and not qualified for England plus a couple of old internationals who won’t play again (Trescothick and Caddick). So the home team had just three players in it that might, if good enough, one day play for England! Yes it is true that “No England player would have made it without starting in [the Championship].” But they had little choice did they – it’s the only game in town! But is it the best that English cricket can do to prepare players for Test cricket – of course not.

The County Championship is the bedrock of only one thing – and that is the County system itself. Without it the structure of domestic cricket in England would unravel, and not before time. The model for the future is indisputably one that has far fewer teams, higher standards of competitiveness, a minimum number of overseas players and which is largely self-financing without the need for huge handouts from the ECB. A six or eight team domestic cricket structure with proper competition in both the four day and the limited overs games with matches played in proper grounds offering spectators decent facilities is what is needed. Our national fondness for nostalgia and sentiment and our often dogged determination not to see the bleeding obvious even when it is staring us in the face has kept the County Championship, a Victorian invention, just about extant even into the third millennium. And the vested interests at the ECB and the eighteen counties are such that the replacement of the “charade” will not be easy – but if England is to be properly competitive, and consistently so, as a cricketing nation the time is ripe to try.

Grim stuff at The Oval and Lord's

2009-09-08T10:58:00.004+01:00

For my sins I saw nearly every ball of the first two One Day Internationals live at The Oval and Lord’s – and a pretty depressing experience it was as well. Not because England played poorly or that Australia didn’t play much better but because the matches lacked edge and were almost entirely bereft of memorable moments. At The Oval there were only two innings over twenty which were scored at more than a run a ball (Wright and Rashid) and only Rashid and Bracken bowled well enough to be given ten overs by their captains. In 100 overs there was just one six and fours came at less than one every two overs– it was pretty dire stuff England’s belated run chase excepted. Indeed it was only during the last nine overs of England’s innings that the crowd was stirred up at all – most of the time they were eerily quiet with the monotony only broken by the odd nutter in fancy dress. And so it was at Lord’s as well – a match almost completely without excitement or interest. Not one six in the match and even fewer fours than at The Oval – and only one innings of merit, Mitchell Johnson’s excellent (and match-winning) 43 off 23 balls.

The very first competitive and professional One Day match in England took place in May 1963 at Old Trafford and in the first Innings Lancashire scored 304 runs in 65 Overs – a rate of 4.68 an over – not bad although admittedly there were no fielding restrictions in those days. Forty-six years on Australia and England scored at much the same rate in their two recent matches. So what has happened to the much heralded acceleration in ODI scoring rates which was predicted followed that extraordinary match at The Wanderers in March 2006 when South Africa scored 434 in 50 Overs and Australia chased the total down scoring 438-9? Well I think what has happened is Twenty20. England has played 22 Twenty20 internationals from 2006 onwards and Australia about the same. So whereas pre Twenty20 the 50 Over game was the only limited overs version of the game and it was, therefore, the place where improvisation and attack was rife (there were 26 sixes and 87 fours in that Wanderers match) now it is Twenty20 where the excitement takes place and it is on that stage that the batsmen try and take hard-hitting control.

Frankly at the first two matches of this seven match ODI series neither side really seemed to know what they were doing. Ravi Bopara opened the England innings and presumably he was expected to hit hard in the initial power-play overs. In fact his strike rate was only 56 and his patchy 49 took him 28 overs. Michael Clarke took 72 balls to make his 45 with only three fours and the promising Callum Ferguson looked like a Test player, and potentially rather a good one, rather than a limited overs biffer in his two innings.

Shane Warne said recently that “ODI cricket should go. It has evolved into Twenty20 - cricket only needs two forms of the game.” You can see where the great Australian bowler is coming from and there is certainly evidence to support his view that natural selection has given us Twenty20 and that ODIs are dinosaurs. The cricket aside the two days at The Oval and Lord’s were enjoyable – the sun was on our backs from time to time and there was a glass or two of something cold readily to hand to anesthetise us from the happenings on the field of play. I will always enjoy a day at the cricket not just a few hours which is the Twenty20 model. But if we want spectators to have an enjoyable and competitive limited overs cricket day there are other models worth trying. How about two innings of 25 overs rather than one of 50? Or maybe double header Twenty20 matches like they sometimes play in baseball. Twenty20 is baseball’s bastard cousin after all so perhaps we could adopt a few more of their ways and means.

The next ODI is at the Rosebowl tomorrow and tickets are still available - should you decide to invest £60 a pop I hope you get some decent cricket for your money. I won’t be there. Struggling with the traffic in darkest Hampshire after the match at 11:00 pm was never a good idea so I’ll watch it on TV – unless, that is, I decide to join the vast majority of Sky Sports enthusiasts who will watch England v Croatia from Wembley instead!

Sky’s the limit for English cricket

2009-08-29T15:37:00.002+01:00

James Murdoch’s recent attack on the BBC will have surprised nobody – anyone who dares to inhibit News International’s ability to make money (and the BBC certainly does that) can expect to be in the firing line. Viewers and listeners (and we must now included surfers) of the Beeb’s output get astonishing value for money and whilst it is part of the national character to diminish our establishment, including the BBC, would any of us really hand broadcasting over completely to the likes of Sky? Which brings us to cricket. On the final day of the Oval Test match in 2005 Channel 4’s free to air coverage got 8.4 million viewers – and that on a working Monday. This year Sky’s subscription only satellite and cable transmission was watched by 1.92 million fans – and on a Sunday to boot. Whilst cost was not the only factor in play it was obviously by far the most important.

At the ICC’s celebratory two day centenary conference in Oxford last month the generally genial tone of the proceedings was only upset at one point. The distinguished and candid Australian cricket writer and journalist Gideon Haigh was chairing a panel which was discussing the role of the media in cricket. Haigh made the point that the move away from free to air live international cricket in Britain meant that the millions of serendipitous viewers – the ones who are not a died in the wool cricket fans but just occasional dippers into cricket if it is of interest – would not be able to do that this year unless they had a Sky Sports subscription. The figures above prove that Haigh was right - literally millions of potential viewers could not see the coverage. Haigh’s point was that if it is part of the England and Wales Cricket Board’s (ECB) mission to widen the appeal of cricket in Britain (it is) then not to have free-to-air access to live cricket is a funny way to go about it. When Gideon Haigh had made his point he was shouted at by a voice from the back of the room where none other than ECB Chairman Giles Clarke began an uninvited harangue. Clarke’s rant was mainly directed at the BBC and their alleged failure to bid when the television contract came on offer. It was an unpleasant moment which Haigh handled will skill and Clarke eventually shut up – but his bias in favour of Sky and against the national broadcaster was clear to all present.

This summer News International’s flagship British newspaper, The Times, has been the “Official newspaper of England Cricket” – quite what this means other than that spectators at the Test match grounds receive a free copy and that the ECB’s link with the newspaper is advertised I’m not sure - presumably The Times pays for the privilege. If so it does suggest that the cosy relationship between the ECB and Sky applies also to other media owned by News International. He who pays the piper calls the tune and whilst I would not wish to imply that independent-minded writers and broadcasters in the Murdoch stable like Mike Atherton, Simon Barnes, Nasser Hussain and Christopher Martin-Jenkins would ever kow-tow to the ECB party line they are also unlikely to cut off the hand that feeds them. The ECB is the piper and its paymaster is substantially the “Dirty Digger” and his empire – witness the nine limited overs matches between England and Australia which are to take place in the coming weeks all, of course, covered live on Sky. If sporting considerations were paramount rather than television income rights then would there really be quite so many one day matches? Of course not.

There is plenty to criticise about the structure, priorities and administration of English cricket at present and in many ways The Ashes triumph was in spite of rather than because of the best efforts of the ECB’s management team. We need all the media to hold the ECB objectively to account without fear or favour. This includes Sky and The Times and the Sun – and it also includes Britain’s leading cricket magazine “The Wisden Cricketer” which is also now a Sky/Murdoch medium. In The Times 24 page Ashes supplement this week there was no mention of the fact that a major difference between this years Ashes and those of 2005 is that far, far fewer people will have seen them on television. Nor was there much discussion of the dearth of batting options that the England selectors had which almost led to the recall of Mark Ramprakash because the County system is patently failing to deliver. Indeed Chris Martin-Jenkins will have comforted the ECB by his assertion that the County game “…provides the players for a national squad that cannot operate in a vacuum,” and that “Jonathan Trott’s wonderfully composed debut…proved that the [county] system still produces tough cricketers.” I suspect that Trott’s toughness was honed more in the South Africa that he grew up in rather than on the County grind! No - for an objective view of county cricket you needed to go to The Guardian’s supplement where Mike Selvey wrote insightfully that “…the structure of domestic competition has to be raised. A new level created in fact. A proposal might be for a six-team competition…with neither overseas players nor Kolpaks or any other flags of convenience. Each to play the other once over four days. Elite players will be made available where possible. It will never happen…too many vested interests.”

Mike Selvey is right – there are too many vested interests and these interests, the counties and the News International media especially, conspire together with the ECB to ensure that the real structural changes that English cricket has needed for so long will be very difficult to achieve. And the one downside of the splendid Ashes win is that it might allow Giles Clarke and his cohorts at the ECB and in the counties to argue that all is well in their kingdom. It’s time for a proper review of the whole fabric of English cricket and for the ECB at the top to acknowledge that everything they do must be subservient not to their media paymasters’ wishes nor to their eighteen county electorate – but to the overriding need to have a successful England team, not just one that has a few fleetingly happy moments.

Triumph of the Lions not the vanities

2009-08-24T11:52:00.001+01:00

Would you Adam and Eve it? You wait a couple of decades for a home Ashes series victory – and then two come along in succession! The disparity between the individual talents of the two teams seemed wide - Australia were by some margin the stronger and arguably only Strauss, Broad and Swann (for Watson, Johnson and Hauritz) would have got in the Aussie squad at The Oval. But when it came to the crunch England was, say it softly and out of Punter’s earshot, better led. Was it Napoleon or Montgomery who when choosing a General asked “Is he lucky?” – probably both. Well the luck did seem to go Andrew Strauss’s way at crucial moments but this was not a series win where chance played a disproportionate role. The two Andys, Flower and Strauss, gelled as a team and their bouncebackability was as much cerebral as it was inspirational. And despite the best efforts of the ECB to fire everyone up with phoney chauvinism England’s coach and captain quietly moulded a good team without needing to resort to flag-waving or clarion calls to arms. If Flower and his players were lions led by donkeys they were lions nonetheless and the triumph was all theirs.

The final day at The Oval was full of real imagery on the field of play which will stay hard burnt on the memories of all who saw it. The extraordinary sight of Ricky Ponting, bloody but unbowed, with visible stitches on both lips and with bruises to match was genuinely moving - for Freddie Flintoff to execute a run out of the Aussie Captain was almost a coup de grace. England’s celebrations whilst understandably wild did not ignore their worthy opponents and Strauss paid Ponting and his team a very proper tribute at the end of the match - Ponting was similarly gracious. Over the course of the series the Australian coach Tim Nielsen and his captain made some puzzling calls culminating in the bizarre decision to go into The Oval Test match without Nathan Hauritz. I also think that they were unwise to jettison Philip Hughes so early in the series and well though Shane Watson played he was never likely to be a game changer – which Hughes could well have been.

England overcame injuries to key players, the loss of form of most of their batsmen and a defeat at Headingley which would have taken the stuffing out of most previous England teams to bounce back with determination and style at The Oval. No praise can be too high for Bell, Trott, Swann and Broad who were the major contributors to England’s Oval victory. But it was Strauss who really set it up by his determined batting (130 runs off 292 balls and nearly six hours at the crease) and above all by his leadership. There are two huge challenges remaining for Andrew Strauss – to retain The Ashes in Australia in 2010/11 and then to take England to a Cricket World Cup victory in 2011. Don’t write off his chances of doing both; he’s unlikely to be distracted by IPL dollars remember!

Cut out the jingoism - let's watch the cricket

2009-08-22T09:04:00.002+01:00

The England and Wales Cricket Board’s extraordinary capacity for getting in wrong, and for vulgarity, was on view yesterday afternoon and with characteristically crass timing. Stuart Broad had just had the session of his life, Australia were on their knees at 133-8 and the crowd was buzzing. We were all chatting and supping and clapping and cheering – not necessarily in that order - when from nowhere a singer with a microphone appeared at the Vauxhall end. When I say “singer” in fact he was (allegedly) from the Royal Opera House to which grand institution I fervently hope he has now returned. The last thing we need was an attempt to get us to sing along to Land of Hope and Glory – we’d just seen a smidgeon of glory from young Broad anyway and we were well full of hope it goes without saying. The crowd, to their credit, did not hurl fruit at the hapless Tenor but just carried on as if he was not there. Nobody joined in and he slunk away – not his fault of course; some halfwit at the ECB thought that it was a good idea. Hmmm!

This series has been characterised by attempts by the England cricket authorities to hype it up. Draw a veil over Cardiff – although the singer in the silver suit will surely live in infamy as the worst performer ever to appear at Sophia Gardens. But the one sided nature of the official flag waving is improper in the extreme. At the beginning of play we have had a row of kids waving the flag of St George to greet the players – and opposite them another row of kids… waving the flag of St George. And around the ground it is the same, not an Aussie flag in sight. And before play the big screen has shown a grossly over-the-top video designed (one assumes) to fire up the patriotic fervour of the crowd. Message one to the ECB; when it’s The Ashes we don’t need firing up. Message two to the ECB; the more extreme your jingoism the more it might just fire up the other side to stuff you. Especially if they are from Down Under.

Low Key fun at Edgbaston

2009-08-16T12:00:00.003+01:00

Driving home after the Twenty20 Finals day at Edgbaston yesterday it occurred to me that, paradoxically, this was the longest day I have ever spent at a cricket match. I write chronologically not metaphorically – the allegorical “longest day” will always be day five at the Adelaide Test in 2006 – an experience regrettably never to be forgotten (or forgiven). But back to Edgbaston. From 11:30am to around 10:00pm there was some entertaining cricket on display – mostly not of the highest class but enjoyable nevertheless. The crown seemed strangely subdued and the attempts to hype the day up with a “Wild West” theme, curious pyrotechnics and the rest fell rather flat. The IPL it was not! But no matter there was much to enjoy – and much food for thought as well.

The enjoyment first. How splendid to see Marcus Trescothick in such wonderful form. In his two innings he scored a total of 89 runs off only 47 balls and he hardly played a false shot. It was interesting to compare Tres with Luke Wright who superficially has some of Trescothick’s talent – he certainly shares Tres’s confidence at the crease. Wright scored 38 runs off 33 balls but his timing and placement was often awry whereas Trescothick’s was sublime. I like Wright – he has an engaging competitive spirit and plenty of talent. But he is no Trescothick – but then who is? There were also good and patient (by Twenty20 standards) innings from Sussex’s Goodwin and Kent’s Stevens in the semi finals the former in a winning and the latter in a losing cause. Kent lost because they crossed the line from thoughtful aggression in the Power Play overs (which would have been good) to reckless violence (which was not). Rob Key set the tone with his supercilious taking of three paces down the wicket to Willoughby - which on one occasion caused the bowler to pull out of a delivery. This was mindless and rather unpleasant stuff from Key who you may recall was being touted by some as a potential England limited overs Captain earlier this year. Not on this showing he isn’t. Also enjoyable was the terrific teamwork of the Sussex side who were worthy winners and the sight of two twenty-one year old English leg-break bowlers, Beer of Sussex and Waller of Somerset. I am glad they got their chances on the big stage of a Twenty20 finals day and they looked very promising indeed – let’s hope they continue to get the opportunities to develop their skills in the big league.

Now the food for thought. On a long day like yesterday there are plenty of gaps in the day in which to play cricket selection games – not least to try and spot players who might help England develop as a competitive international team. Wright we know about and his young Sussex colleague Rory Hamilton-Brown looks a very good cricketer. Kent’s Denly, about whom many speak positively, lasted only three balls but Tredwell bowled tidily – but the young leggies aside there wasn’t much else for the England selectors to get excited about. Not least because 19 of the 44 players (43%) weren’t even English! Here’s one team that I did pick from the four counties:

Van Jaarsveld
De Bruyn
Wessels
Kieswetter (wk)
Kemp
Boje
Hall
Van der Wath
Parnell
Thomas
Willoughby

Not a bad line-up you might think – rather stronger in its bowling than its batting but plenty of all-round talent there – and everyone a South African! Somerset and Northamptonshire led the way with no fewer than six non-England qualified players in their line-ups. Kent had four and Sussex three. It was especially pleasing that Sussex won because not only did they have the least number of mercenaries in their side they also had six young (under 30) England qualified players as well. Well done them.

Where are England's young batsmen ?

2009-08-14T16:42:00.002+01:00

Apparently England’s middle order on the evidence of the Headingley debacle ain’t much cop so we need to change it and bring in new batting talent at The Oval. And, it would seem, the cupboard is so bare that we need to consider that excellent “prospect” (c 1990) Mark Ramprakash or the roly-poly promising ex-tyro (c 2001) Rob Key. There is young Trott (a stripling of 28) to throw into the pot and he has the benefit of never having failed at Test cricket – unlike the other two. He hasn’t played Test cricket either – but give him time.

Let’s roll back the years to 1956 – a randomly chosen point in time when the Australians were also around. In that year England’s top order (1-6) included from time to time Peter Richardson, Cowdrey, Graveney, May, Compton, Watson, Sheppard, Washbrook and Trevor Bailey. Not a bad bunch to perm from in the event of injuries – which is what happened. England retained The Ashes reasonably comfortably and all of these batsmen played their part. But what if these batsmen had all suffered a collective touch of the “Boparas” (a bit like the yips in golf but with more sledging). What talent could the England selectors have called upon in extremis? Well there were a few decent batters around in the counties – Brookes, Insole, Wharton, Kenyon, Horton, Mickey Stewart, Parks, Leary, Milton and others – and there were a few promising youngsters at the Universities as well- like MJK Smith, Eagar and Walton at Oxford and Dexter and James at Cambridge. True Washbrook was recalled at the age of 41 which suggests a Ramps-type moment by the selectors (of whom he was one) – but in truth there was no shortage of batting talent all over England in those halcyon days.

So what of the scene in 2009? I have put on my anorak and delved deeply into Wisden and can reveal the state of English batsmanship circa 2008. Please bear with me for some data. 369 players batted in the first-class County Championship last year of whom 96 (26%) were foreigners and not qualified to play for England. A further 94 of the England qualified players were 30 years old or more and most of these had either had their chance or were patently never going to be good enough to get a Test opportunity. This leaves us with 179 players under 30 and England eligble. If we exclude the bowlers and any batsmen who averaged less than 40 in the Championship we are left with the following 22 players who might be considered good enough and young enough to be termed a “prospect”: Clare (Derbyshire), Smith (Durham), Bopara, Foster and Maunders (Essex), Snell (Gloucestershire), Brown (Hampshire), Horton (Lancashire), Cobb (Leicestershire), Morgan and Scott (Middlesex), White, O’Brien and Peters (Northamptonshire), Patel (Nottinghamshire), Trego (Somerset), Newman (Surrey), Prior (Sussex), Bell, Trott and Ambrose (Warwickshire), Moore (Worcestershire) . If we exclude Bopara, Foster, Prior, Bell and Ambrose (who we know about because they have already played Test cricket) that leaves us with just young 17 batsmen who might possibly be potential Test cricketers – less than one per First class county!

The counties differ widely in the extent of their reliance on overseas players in their batting line ups. Top of the list is county champions Durham for whom 54.4% of their runs last year were scored by non-England qualified players. Next are Kent (46%) and Derby (40.2%). The counties which eschewed mercenary batsmen were Worcestershire (just 1.6%), Warwickshire (4.5%) and Glamorgan (5.7%). As far as reliance on the old lags is concerned top of the list were Surrey for whom 57% of their runs were scored by players over 30 like Ramprakash, Butcher and Afzaal. Middlesex also had a bit of a Dad’s Army – more than half their runs were scored by players like Nash, Strauss, Udal, Shah and Joyce all the wrong side of 30.

Of course if you have batsmen in your team who are not going to play for England because of non-qualification or a mixture of age and limited ability they block off places for developing young talent. The Counties which had the highest percentage of their runs scored by English players under 30 were Essex (an admirable 66%), Sussex (60.5%) Hampshire (59.4%) and Glamorgan (55.2%). Those countries who most restricted opportunities for young players either by employing overseas players and/or by sticking with aging professionals were Kent (just 23.1%), Surrey (24.8%) and Somerset (26.1%).

The seventeen players mentioned above are not household names but the circumstantial evidence from 2008 is that they just may be good enough as well as young enough to be considered for England. But the rest of the hundreds of players in the counties, players whose employment is substantially underwritten by grants to the counties from the England and Wales Cricket Board, are either bowlers or if they are batsmen they don’t come into the frame for selection. A very sorry state of affairs indeed!

KP The Biography of Kevin Pietersen - a review

2009-08-11T11:38:00.001+01:00

By early summer 2009 Kevin Pietersen has played 52 Test matches in just four years scoring some 4500 runs at an average of around 50. Whilst for KP to cash in with an “autobiography” in 2006 after just a year in the game was premature for there to be a provisional biography now is perhaps not unreasonable. Except that “KP Cricket Genius” is a “cash-in” as well – clearly timed to appear before the 2009 Ashes series and also to attract buyers whilst the KP England captaincy affair is till fresh in the mind. One day, no doubt, someone will write an in-depth and thoughtful analysis of the phenomenon that is Kevin Pietersen. Wayne Veysey’s ill-written, woefully edited, cliché-ridden little book certainly isn’t that. Full of typos, gratuitous factoids, hero-worshipping hyperbole, needless insults and wearying repetitions the book may appeal to the semi-literate KP fan – but cricket enthusiasts looking for real insights into Pietersen will have to wait.

The book could be required reading on a sub-editing training course – as an example of what can happen if editors are slipshod. Sensitive readers will be shaken by the frequent use of the abbreviation “X1” for a cricket eleven instead of “XI”, by the occasional use of the term “cricket player” rather than “cricketer”, by the ignorant assertion that in South Africa all black people were called “coloured” and by countless other inaccuracies and solecisms. To some extent this is a shame because to be fair there are some insights into KP’s character and background and the description of (for example) the struggle between Pietersen and Peter Moores is good. But the insults really should have been edited out. To say that Andrew Flintoff was once “…boozing his hefty Lancashire contract up the walls of Preston’s public houses” is crass and Ian Botham’s lawyers might be interested in Veysey’s allegation that Beefy got “fat and complacent in the second half of his career”.

The best thing in the book is Clive Rice’s thoughtful foreword but Rice’s assertion, that Pietersen “knew full well that in South Africa he wouldn’t be given a chance because of the stupid quota system” is as ignorant as it is offensive. KP would surely have made it in South Africa despite the quotas, just as fellow-whites AB De Villiers, Johan Botha, Albie and Morne Morkel, Roel Van der Merwe, Dale Steyn, Paul Harris and others have recently made it. This key aspect of Pietersen’s life demands more balanced and sensitive treatment than it gets in this pot-boiler.

For England the game is already up at Headingley

2009-08-08T07:58:00.002+01:00

Cricket historians might like to suggest when was the last time that the result of any Test match, let alone an Ashes Test match, could be predicted with absolute certainty after the first day. The bookmakers have Australia at 12/1 on and England at 9/1 against and that is about right. With the weather set fair there is no doubt that Australia will win the Headingley Test - I'll go further and say that they will win comfortably within three days. If you have tickets for Monday or Tuesday make other plans now!

Sport is played in the head far more than it is with the ball or the bat or the racquet or the club. From the first ball today (Strauss palpably lbw although not given out) it was clear that the Aussie heads were clear and their minds fully focused. England didn’t really seem as if they wanted to be there at all. They weren't not trying - absolutely not - in some respects they were trying too hard. But the essential connect between tactics, technique, temperament and self-belief was missing. Australia on the other hand had it in spades. They had a plan - bowl line and length and bat with confidence - and they executed it admirably. Ten decent cricketers and one great one combined into a formidable force- only one of the team (Watson) was not involved in at least one England wicket that fell. For England the sum of the parts of eleven decent cricketers managed, not for the first time, to be far less than what their individual talents should have delivered.

And so for England, at Headingley anyway, the game is up. Perhaps the writing was on the wall before the start with all the curfuffle over the fire alarm at their hotel and Prior's injury. With backroom staff to cover every requisite - in numbers that far exceed the number of players - wouldn't it have been ironic if there had been an unfulfilled need for a reserve wicket-keeper? Keepers can get injured just before play begins you know - it happened in the last Test match! But really none of this would have mattered had England's batsmen "relaxed and enjoyed themselves". The clichés always say that no matter how big the occasion sportsmen should "play their natural game" and "go out and express themselves". England looked like they'd been invited to a party where the refreshment was grapefruit juice and there were going to be readings from Proust and music by Birtwistle.

Over much of this Ashes series Australia has played the better cricket. England won well at Lord's, inspired by Flintoff, but Australia was far from humiliated. At Headingley there has been no inspiration at all from an England side who look demoralised and dead in the water. Factor in a motivated and determined Australian team inspiringly led, from the front, by a Ricky Ponting who clearly wanted to answer the drunken, booing rabble in the stands in the best way possible. By performance. Well done Aussie.
　
　
　

How the ECB gave two fingers to their landlords at Lord's Cricket Ground

2009-08-04T15:35:00.002+01:00

Rhetoric and reality in the ECB brand

Dabblers in the arcane arts of Brand management know that a brand is not necessarily valued as the owners of the brand like to think that it should be. A brand's value is the sum of the perceptions of all of those that relate to it. The England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) would like you to think that the pillars of the ECB brand are:

Effective leadership and governance
A vibrant domestic game
Enthusing participation and following especially among young people
Successful England teams

(It's on the ECB website if you don't believe me)

Those of us perceiving their brand more objectively would see the reality:

"Leadership" which gave us the chaos of the England captaincy.
"Governance" which gave us Stanford.
A domestic game which is overblown, unaffordable and of poor quality
"Enthusing participation" which gave us international cricket thrown off free to air TV.
An England team which fails - or at best flatters to deceive.

As we know the ECB is a self-perpetuating oligarchy absolutely impervious to change - other than changes which in some way "benefit" those that vote at its top table meetings - basically the eighteen county chairmen. It is this reality which explains most of the damaging decisions, from Stanford to the Sky TV deal, of recent years. And it is the only explanation why, post Stanford, Giles Clarke and David Collier held on to their jobs despite the clamour from most of the thinking world of England cricket supporters for them to go.

The ECB turns on the MCC

The ECB's decision-making frequently defies logic and is the antithesis of good governance. And just when you thought that it might be safe to go back in the water the shark that is the ECB decides to turn viciously on one of its own - their landlord at Lord's the Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC). Now the perception of the MCC is like that of the ECB some distance from the reality. MCC is seen as being a fusty institution populated by ageing old buffers and clinging on to the relic that once they were the most powerful force in world cricket by far. The elitism, the long waiting list, the red and yellow ties and (much worse) blazers seem to communicate that the brand of the club is struggling to get into the twentieth century - let alone the twenty-first.

There is some truth in the charge that the MCC is clinging on to its past. The fact that the "Laws of cricket" are still nominally the province of a British private members club is a silly anachronism. Similarly the MCC's pompous claim to be the guardian of the "Spirit of Cricket" is neo-colonial and arrogant - as well as arrant nonsense. The fact that the MCC spends hundreds of thousands of pounds of its members money on its absurd and self-appointed "World Cricket Committee" - a talking shop and dining club for senior ex players like Tony Lewis, Geoff Boycott, Rahul Dravid, Alec Stewart, Steve Waugh and Mike Gatting - is a ludicrous hangover from the days when MCC really did run world cricket. But ignore for a moment all this hubris. What the MCC does supremely well is run the finest cricket ground in the world.

Lord's is Sans Pareil

My visits this year to the Riverside and to Sophia Gardens completed my full set of seeing Test cricket in every ground in England (and now Wales). I have, over the years, also been lucky enough to see England play (and surprisingly often win) in Australia, New Zealand, West Indies, Sri Lanka, Pakistan, India and South Africa. I've been to some amazing grounds - the massive MCG, the charming Adelaide, the scary National stadium in Karachi, the delightful Basin Reserve, the deafening Wankhede
in Mumbai and Cape Town's marvellous Newlands amongst them. But it is not national pride that convinces me that, home or away, there is nowhere to touch Lord's. At home Lord's is by far the biggest ground and by far the best equipped with the best drainage and ground care systems. It has the best seating (a lot under cover) the best catering and the best sight lines for spectators. It has a world class museum, an excellent shop - and so on. And architecturally it is beyond criticism - the Media Centre, the Mound Stand and the Grandstand are fine and, in sports stadia, unequalled examples of modern architecture - and the wonderful and well-persevered Victorian pavilion is a gem. And note I haven't even mentioned the heritage and the history.

Over the years I have with pleasure taken guests to Lord's for Test matches - guests from India, New Zealand, Australia and the West Indies all of whom have loved every minute of the experience. The place is full of history - but it is a modern ground par excellence as well. The MCC is rightfully proud of the achievement that is Lord's. But, as ever, the club is not standing still and detailed plans exist to take the capacity up from 29,000 to nearly 40,000 - double the capacity of any other British cricket ground and nearly treble that of some.

The ECB turns on Lord's

Whatever you may feel about the hubris of the MCC nobody can surely deny that Lord's is England's finest venue by far for cricket - nobody, that is, except the apparatchiks of the ECB who clearly don't believe this - or if they do have other agendas to pursue. In 2012 Lord's has no Test match for the first time in living memory. In 2013 there is a Test match against New Zealand in the run up to The Ashes but (would you believe it?) no Ashes Test match at Lord's (the Queen will have to go to Durham). And so it goes on. Whilst The Oval is guaranteed a Test match every year for the foreseeable future no such guarantee exists for Lord's. This means that the MCC's development plans for the ground will have to be put on hold - any chance that we might get a ground in England offering Australian style ground spectator capacity (perhaps at low Australian level ticket prices) is effectively abandoned. True MCC might still get a Test match in 2012 and an Ashes match in 2013 - but only if they put together a sufficiently attractive financial bid. The "home of cricket" may get egg all over its face if other grounds, maybe backed as Cardiff was in 2009 by funny money from some local government slush fund or by the immense personal wealth of a high roller like Rod Bransgrove at Hampshire who would love to bankroll an Ashes match at the Rose Bowl - and to hell with Lord's.

Why?

In trying to understand the ECB we always have to ask the question Why? - and the answer is usually the same. Because the County Chairmen perceive that a particular course of action is in their interests. Vote for Giles Clarke - done! Vote to reject a sensible proposal for a nine-team franchise Twenty20 tournament in favour of the inane eighteen county status quo - done! And so on. So the ECB's facile commitment to take Test cricket around Britain will get the nod - even if it means we have Test matches at Cardiff rather than Trent Bridge and now Durham rather than Lord's. Logical - of course not. Corrupt - I couldn't possibly comment, but you may think so!

Freddie writes his own scripts !

2009-07-20T16:25:00.003+01:00

Never mind the smart analyses. Never mind the psychobabble. Never mind the medical theories and the insider stories. Freddie writes his own scripts and the Flintoff clan, massed in numbers throughout the Lord’s Test, seemed not surprised at the heroics. And nor really were the crowd for whom he is way beyond folk hero status. The timing of his announcement about this being his last Test series just before the second Test match seemed a bit crass and a diversion from the real business at hand. I wasn’t the only commentator to think that perhaps Fred might have waited until the end of the Ashes. But little did we all know that in the honest and straightforward world of Andrew Flintoff once he has made up his mind about something he wants to tell us all about it. And little did we also know that far from being a distraction this would be the motivator that drove Fred on – and which was one of the key factors in England’s splendid Test win.

Fred’s 5 wicket haul finally shut the door on a tenuous Aussie fightback – and it got his name on the bowling honours board at Lord’s for the first time as well. And the only time that I saw Ricky Ponting smile today was when he went over to Freddie and shook him warmly by the hand after the presentation ceremony. Andre Flintoff is not the greatest batsman of his era nor the finest bowler. But his happy knack of playing the vital innings or taking the vital wicket, combined with his unaffected charm and his lack of pretension have made him, if fit, the first name on the teamsheet through most of his career. We have three more opportunities, we must hope, to see Fred in England’s Test match colours – don’t bet against him playing a pivotal role for the rest of the summer aching and sore though he may be for much of the time. Nobody puts bums on seats like Andrew Flintoff – and no-one is more deserving of our thanks both for his achievements and for his unique and utterly beguiling style.

The ECB has killed their Golden Goose

2009-07-12T13:14:00.001+01:00

When Michael Vaughan resigned as England’s Test Captain, and simultaneously Paul Collingwood stood down as limited overs captain, Kevin Pietersen was the obvious if courageous choice to replace them both. He was by some distance England’s best batsman and commentators close to the game all agreed that he was a thoughtful cricketer with a good tactical brain. The skunk-haired tyro had gone and KP’s personal life had settled down with his marriage to the sensible and supportive Jessica Taylor. That is was a choice that required courage came not from the risk that Pietersen would not be worth his place in the team, nor that he lacked tactical awareness, although his captaincy experience was minimal and he would clearly have to learn on the job some aspects of the role. The risk of Pietersen’s appointment was the mirror image of its potential potency – KP is utterly unlike anyone who has ever been an England cricket captain in the past. His fellow South African Tony Greig had a similar southern hemisphere approach which was the reverse of the Cowdrey/May tradition – although his style was not dissimilar to that of Hutton or Illingworth. But Greig grew up in a Cape Province and his father was Scottish – this was the world of English speaking white South Africa and although the culture was obviously different to that of the old country those differences were not huge. Kevin Pietersen, on the other hand, grew up in Pietermaritzburg which was in the heart of Voortrekker country – and that is very different indeed.

To those who may be unfamiliar with white South Africa the differences between those of British Isles origins and those who are Afrikaners are enormous. Language and religion – those most decisive of differentiators are different and so are attitudes to life in general. It is no exaggeration to say that someone like Tony Greig would have far more in common with the British than he would with his Afrikaner fellow South Africans. And Kevin Pietersen, his English mother notwithstanding, grew up in a solidly Afrikaner environment. His strong father seems an archetypical Afrikaner and the values that he instilled in the young Kevin must have been much more South African Dutch than they were South African English. Far more Hansie Cronje than Graeme Smith.

When the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) appointed Pietersen as captain they could not have been unaware that his personality and style were completely un-English. True KP had proclaimed his allegiance to England and had an England cricket tattoo on his arm. But one of the reasons that he had already sharply divided opinion among the cricketing chattering classes was that inbred into him was an “in-your-face” competitive style which came in no small measure from his Pietermaritzburg upbringing. This is seen as arrogance and a bit show-poneyish by those for whom Peter May or Colin Cowdrey were the epitomy of how a cricketer should behave. But those on the other side of the argument argued that this was exactly what England cricket needed. In the same way that England only won an Ashes series when they appointed a Southern African coach if we were to do this again, and maybe even win a Limited Overs tournament as well, we need the shock to the system that Kevin Pietersen would bring.

So the ECB took courage in their hands and appointed the very foreign Kevin Pietersen as England’s captain. Results came in immediately with a Test match win and a One Day series victory against South Africa. KP also handled the communications duties of an England captain with aplomb and he looked to be an inspiring captain on the field as well. His body-language was excellent and the England players were clearly responding to the KP enthusiasm. The tour to India was more difficult on the field but Pietersen did well in the hugely different circumstances post the Mumbai attacks. But KP wanted to be in charge, which is what he was taught as a child - there can be only one leader in a team. The trouble was that the England coach Peter Moores thought that he was in charge as well and he was not only a hands-on manager but he had a personal style that was anathema to Pietersen. Moores had been comfortable in the supremely English and rather deferential world of Sussex and this, combined with a pride and bloody-mindedness which came perhaps from his North-country upbringing was a recipe for conflict with Pietersen. The ECB had to choose whether to back their captain or to back their coach – and in the end they backed neither! KP was sacked and Moores dismissed as well.

From the moment that Kevin Pietersen lost the job as England captain he has seemed a totally different person – hardly surprisingly, nobody likes being humiliated. True his natural talent has seen some decent performances but he is indisputably not the same man he was. The smiles, when they come, look forced and in the interviews what were once self-confident statements of intent now sound like parroted platitudes. And at Cardiff we saw a side of Pietersen that suggests that the ECB have more than just the loss of an original and potentially inspiring captain to answer for. KP’s first innings showed that he still has the ability to play a long and careful innings if the circumstances require it – 69 runs off 141 balls is snail-like but it was appropriate, up to the point when he got himself out. Petersen’s shot against Hauritz was not a misjudgment – all batsmen do this from time to time. It was a predetermined unorthodox swipe at an innocuous wide ball that would have been out-of-place on a school playground let alone in a Test match.

It would take a combination of Freud, Jung and Brearley to even begin to understand what is presently going on in Kevin Pietersen’s mind. His second innings dismissal was bizarre not because of the foolishness of the shot, as in the first innings, but because KP usually knows well where his stumps are. Leaving a ball, which then bowls you happens of course but rarely to someone of Pietersen’s natural cricketing talents. Was it fear that led him to leave a ball he could easily have blocked? Who knows – but what is clear is that England’s best batsman has lost the plot and that his mind and his emotions are in turmoil. And the cause of this malaise is clear as well. In the world of competitive sport in which young Kevin grew up you have to win and you have to take personal responsibility for your actions. If you make mistakes you learn from them. Draw a line and start again. That Pietersen made a mistake in his feud with Peter Moores and in the near ultimatum that he gave his employers at the ECB is true. But the ECB, and especially Hugh Morris the ECB’s “Managing Director”, should have been far more understanding and considerate and should have reflected that the change in England’s cricket fortunes that they wanted from the Pietersen appointment would not come if they summarily dismissed him. If they had wanted the May/Cowdrey style of Andrew Strauss the ECB had a couple of earlier occasions when they could have appointed him but they chose the very different Andrew Flintoff and then Kevin Pietersen instead. Strauss’s captaincy at Cardiff has been uninspiring and has been a contributor to England’s downfall. Would things have been different if Kevin Pietersen had still been in charge - I have not the slightest doubt that they would. Not only would Pietersen’s leadership style have been likely to make the Aussies think more that the rather diffident and apologetic Strauss. But KP would have led from the front and by example. If he had been captain it is inconceivable that he would have played the shots that led to his dismissal in both innings.

So the ECB have not only denied themselves the chance of having a competitive Ashes series with Pietersen and Ponting standing foursquare up to each other at every match. They have also turned off and discomforted their best batsman and it is by no means impossible that we have already seen the best of Kevin Pietersen and that instead of being the force that leads England to real international success he becomes little more than a long footnote in modern English cricket history. And if that happens the suits in the ECB offices at Lord’s should be thoroughly ashamed of themselves.

Five counties down, thirteen to go for Marcus North

2009-07-11T09:13:00.003+01:00

“Look mate, you have to be patient if you want to wear the Baggy Green” says Marcus North* when asked how it feels to make an Ashes debut at the age of nearly 30. North impressed with his solid innings of 54* yesterday in a partnership with Michael Clarke which finally killed any remote chnace that England might have had to force a win the first Test match at Cardiff. Asked whether his County experience had helped him North was clear: “Look, my time at Durham in 2004 definitely taught me how to bat on English pitches like this one at Cardiff, then my move to Lancashire in 2005 helped me develop further. Obviously also my spell at Derbyshire in 2006 was very valuable. In 2007 I moved to Gloucestershire and put some firm roots down and played almost a full season for them in 2008. I am also grateful to Hampshire for letting me play for them this year in preparation for the Ashes”.

Asked what he thought of the English county system North was very enthusiastic “It’s bonza mate. Most of us are at a bit of a loose end during the Aussie winter which is our “off-season”. Professionals need to hone their skills and you only have to pick up the phone to one of the counties and offer your services and they jump at the chnace. Mike Hussey showed me the way. He played for Northants, Gloucester and Durham before he played for Oz and reckons that without this experience he might never have got the call-up. Obviously the standard isn’t that high and the games can be a bit of a bore but it’s quite tough now that there are so many South Africans at the counties. I suggested to young Hughesie that he give it a go at Middlesex before The Ashes got underway and they were only to pleased to help. Watch Hughesie go next week on familiar ground at Lord’s!”

* Marcus North's words were crafted for him by Paddy Briggs

Never mind the cricket - try the Chardonnay

2009-07-10T15:05:00.004+01:00

The self-congratulatory air in and around Sophia Gardens this week, from Simon Jones to Max Boyce and every Taff in-between, has been stomach churning. Add in the truly ghastly singing by all the male singers who couldn’t be prised away from the microphone (Katherine Jenkins was wonderful though) and you have an event of cloying sentimentality to remind us English why we only under duress cross Offa’s Dyke. That Glamorgan has a cricket tradition I happily acknowledge and that from time to time they have delivered quality players for England (even an England Captain) I thank them for as well. But in truth this tradition gives them no more right to host an Ashes Test match than Gloucestershire or Leicestershire or Sussex or Kent or any of the other counties which play at small country grounds. Quite what the economics of the Welsh Development Agency’s decision to subvent the redevelopment of Glamorgan’s ground are will no doubt remain opaque. In Cardiff this week in the media there was plenty of unaudited bombast about how much money one Ashes Test was bringing to the City. Unaudited and unchallengeable like most of these things it will no doubt become an urban myth that the millions spent on the SWALEC stadium will be covered by all the English and Aussie fans that descended on the city and tried to drink it dry. The Glamorgan board is congratulating themselves about how little the SWALEC cost compared with other grounds – maybe so but surely they could have spent these millions more elegantly; this is a modern ground utterly devoid of any architectural merit. The Pavilion looks like a 1960s secondary modern school.

At the ground my impression was that by far the majority nationality was English and that the Aussies outnumbered the Welsh comfortably. Plastic daffodils and leaks were not much in evidence but there were plenty of Kangaroos. Now this may all sound churlish and bigoted and I apologise for that. But whilst it is true that the organisers have put on a decent show (the flat wicket aside) so they should have – that is a necessary condition of hosting a Test match anywhere. Had this Test been at Trent Bridge or Old Trafford (with their historically far superior claims and their bigger grounds) then of course we know for sure that they would be well organised – they’ve done it for a hundred years or more. And had it been at Durham with their bigger ground and far stronger claim (they have after all already successfully hosted Tests) then few would have complained. There was even a strong argument that the Rosebowl was well ahead of Cardiff in the queue to host a Test. The process by which Cardiff was selected to host an Ashes Test ought to be thoroughly investigated – not by the complicit members of the England and Wales Cricket Board and all their past and present Morgans and Morrises but by an independent body concerned about the way public money is spent. But I doubt that it will happen.

Underpinning the finances of Cardiff’s Test match adventure, aside from public money, was the determined pursuit of commercial sponsorship and of corporate hospitality in particular. That’s the modern world of sporting profit and loss - offensive though it might be for ordinary fans to see hundreds of guests at events who are there to be entertained not by happenings on the field of play but by the food and drink in the corporate lounges. At Cardiff these free-loaders have been given the best seats in the “Really Welsh” (sic) Pavilion and when one of the best passages of play was underway after lunch on the second day, with Freddie Flintoff challenging young Philip Hughes, these seats were virtually empty (see photograph). So were the rows of the pavilion occupied by cricket fans eagerly anticipating the Ashes Test match? Or were they there for the food and the wine and only eventually returned to their seats to sleep off their lunches. You decide!

The Ponting and Katich masterclass

2009-07-10T10:18:00.001+01:00

NOTES FROM AN ASHES SUMMER (5)

I hope that Kevin Pietersen and the rest of the England top order were watching intently as events unfolded at Cardiff yesterday. Not just at the Ponting and Katich batting masterclass during the last two sessions of the day but also the splendid attack launched by the England lower order in the morning. In their vastly different ways Broad, Anderson and Swann (for England) and Ricky Ponting and Simon Katich (for Australia) showed how to bat on a pudding of a pitch. There are two approaches and international batsmen of quality should be able to follow either. If the wicket is benign and the attack no better than adequate then depending on the state of the match you either get your head down, use your technique and experience and quietly graft your way without taking any risks to a decent score. If, however, you want to dominate the bowling and the state of the match requires that you do this then you can become more adventurous and try and take the attack apart.

On Wednesday afternoon with England 97-3 at lunch Pietersen and Collingwood needed to restore their side’s position so grafting was necessary. They did this well, survived the next session and took England to 192-3 at tea. A few overs later Colly lost his concentration when on 64, and with an Ashes hundred for the taking, he edged a catch to Haddin off an innocuous ball from Hilfenhaus (228-4). Then with the score at 240 Kevin Pietersen played the most gormless shot I have ever seen in cricket at any level to put England back in trouble. All the good work of the afternoon session was undone in two shots – one ill-advised and the other just plain brainless. Back in 1965 the great Ken Barrington was dropped from the England side for taking seven and a half hours to make 137 against New Zealand. And a year later Geoffrey Boycott suffered the same fate for his exceptionally slow batting against India. Pietersen’s wilful, self-centred and grotesque dismissal at Cardiff was surely just as culpable as Barrington and Boycott’s tardiness. Will the England selectors of 2009 have the courage to follow the lead of their predecessors of forty years ago? They certainly should.

Back to the masterclass. Ponting and Katich soon realised that the much hyped slow turner apparently due to appear at Sofia Gardens was either a myth or was a long time a-coming. England were bowling OK but nothing was helping the swing or pace of Flintoff, Anderson or Broad and there was nothing in the pitch for Panesar or Swann either. If they kept their heads they could put Australia into a decent position by the close, and knock on to biggish personal scores as well. Where Colly and KP had blown it from a similar position Punter and Kat clearly weren’t going to do the same. Today if the weather holds and there is no sudden deterioration in the pitch there is no reason at all why Australia can’t push on entertainingly and have a lead of perhaps 150 by the close – and they can win the match from there.

This Cardiff pitch is not fit for competitive Test cricket – at least on the evidence so far. It seems that fears that the pitch would break up and Glamorgan would be shamed by a three day Test (or less) lead not only to the sacking of a groundsman but to a gross over-compensation by his successor. You could play a Durban 1938 length Test match on this pitch and not get a result. Just like in Adelaide in 2006 when after four days the curator was lambasted by all and sundry for the run-rich and bowler unfriendly pitch he delivered in the second Test of the 2006-7 Ashes series. Well we all remember what happened on that fifth day – the pitch didn’t crack up but England did! And don’t write off the possibility of the same happening at Cardiff 2009. This Test match is far from over!

The 2009 Ashes begin at last!

2009-07-07T11:11:00.004+01:00

Mock ye not! Certainly I won’t be laughing at Glenn McGrath for his 5-0 (to Oz of course) Ashes whitewash prediction – not with my record as a Nostradamus anyway. Only a few weeks ago I predicted confidently that The British Isles Rugby team (aka The Lions) would be beaten by at least 20 points in each of the Test against the Springboks. The final points tally over the three Tests was Boks 63 Lions 74 by the way in case anyone forgets to tally it up. And how wonderfully well the Lions played from that moment in the first Test when they looked down and out at 7-26 early in the second half. Moral victors in the series? Well not quite – South Africa perhaps just about deserved to win but The Lions did all of the inhabitants of our little group of British islands proud didn’t they?

And so to Cardiff. Well I’ve vented my spleen enough about the iniquity of the choice of venue for the first Ashes Test – so now I’ll just head for the M4 and hope for the best. Having discovered laverbread on my last visit to the Principality I’m looking forward to breakfasting again on this mouth-watering dish. At the opening ceremony we are apparently going to hear “Hen Wlad Fy Nhadau” along with “Advance Australia Fair” with the British National Anthem with its reference to Her Maj (Head of State in both participant counties in The Ashes contest) not featuring. I wonder if this is the first sporting occasion when not one member of the home team could understand a word of the “home” anthem – let alone sing it.

Rumours abound about the Cardiff wicket and whether there is a cunning plot underway for Panesar and Swann to roll the Aussie over with their twiddlers. Decent bowlers both but I really do doubt that they strike fear into the hearts of our friends from down under. There will be one or two young Australian batsmen appearing in an Ashes Test for the first time – as a certain Don Bradman did 79 years ago at Trent Bridge. Wisden wrote of the young Don that summer that he was “A glorious driver, he hit the ball very hard, whilst his placing was almost invariably perfect. He scored most of his runs by driving, but he could cut, hook, or turn the ball to leg with almost the same certainty.” Bradman was 21 years old that summer – about the same age as the tyro Philip Hughes this year. I’ll try and put the mockers on Hughes by making the comparison with the Don but it really does seem that he has the same range of shots as his illustrious predecessor. Has he the nerve as well? We shall see.

It is customary to say that bowlers win matches and so it is on the bowling attacks that many commentators are concentrating in there pre-Ashes pieces. I’ll do the opposite and suggest that the key players, other than Hughes, will be the indisputably great Ricky Ponting, the reliable and solid Hussey, the now in-form North and the almost Gilchrist- like Haddin who could be the reason that Australia will have the edge. Mind you if Strauss, Bopara and Pietersen all strike form on the same day – backed up by Cook and Colly and the rest England might post the occasional formidable total themselves. I also have strange gut feel that Ian Bell is going to feature some time during the series and that he will do well – but that as near as I’ll get to a prediction.

Well “Iachydd Dda” to you all – let’s hope for some fine cricket this week!

Lions led by money men....

2009-06-18T10:18:00.004+01:00

I’ll be watching the telecast from Durban on Saturday – of course I will you can’t break the habit of a lifetime. But I find the whole bonanza of a modern Lions tour grotesquely overblown and rather vulgar.

I reckon that I was at the very last Lions international that really mattered – at Ellis Park back in 1997. In those days the Lions were still called the “British Lions” of course – the correct colloquialism for what was, and always had been, the “British Isles” rugby team. And in those days rugby was still (mostly) an amateur sport. The excitement came from the fact that top class rugby would be played by two teams most of whose players played only for the love of the game. And the team had still its traditional name without anybody, least of all the Irish players, really caring that some ignoramus might think that the “British” in the “British Lions” referred to a country rather than to geography. But now so as not to upset a few dim-witted Irish nationalists we have to use the ghastly solecism “British and Irish Lions”. What nonsense.

The Lions famously won that tour in 1997, but they haven’t won since (one lone Test in Australia aside) and the last tour to New Zealand was an embarrassment. But whilst the tours have become more and more one-sided the hype and the commercialisation has escalated. The replica Lions shirt in the RFU shop costs £99.99 - a mark-up, I suspect, of perhaps £95 over the production costs. And the advertisement from Thomas Cook offered tours starting from £1999 to see one "Test" and £2499 to see two. And that pretty much sums up the rationale for this year's commercial bonanza in South Africa.

The Lions in 2005 were not humiliated by the All Blacks because of the deficiencies of Alastair Campbell nor by the mistakes of Clive Woodward. They were beaten because a southern hemisphere side will never again be beaten by a rag, tag and bobtail assemblage of British Isles players, however individually talented these players may be.

The South Africans are full time professionals both individually and as a unit. The hastily assembled Lions cannot possibly be expected to gel together as efficiently and skilfully as the Springboks – they will be lucky to avoid defeat by less than twenty points in any of their matches against the Boks.

In the days of amateur international rugby there was a logic and, yes, a romance about the Lions that led to some heroic achievements. But in the professional era a side which plays together continuously for a year or more, as the South Africans will have done, will have a huge edge over a mishmash of players who cannot possibly be as familiar with one another as their opponents will be.

The only justification for the continued existence of the Lions is the commercial bonanza that a Lions tour creates. For me that is insufficient reason for the tour to go ahead - and certainly there is no case at all for international caps to continue to be awarded for these one-sided and irrelevant matches.

John Shepherd - The Loyal Cavalier

2009-06-18T06:43:00.003+01:00

John Shepherd – The Loyal Cavalier
by
Paddy Briggs

Published by ACS Publications

John Shepherd was a leading allrounder in first-class cricket in England in the 1970s and 1980s. He was a loyal servant of Kent for seventeen seasons and of Gloucestershire, as player and coach, for seven more. 'Shep' was born in Barbados where his natural talent was spotted and nurtured by Everton Weekes, one of the 'three Ws'. He was brought to England by Kent in 1965 and his successful adaptation to county cricket led to awards as the leading allrounder in English cricket in 1968, Wisden Cricketer of the Year in 1979, and to recognition in five Tests for the West Indies.

Paddy Briggs brings a journalist's eye to Shep's early years in the Caribbean, his brief Test career, his controversial involvement in tours to Southern Africa in the apartheid era, his clumsy sacking by Kent in 1981 and his late‑flowering achievements with Gloucestershire in the 1980s. In a thoughtful and challenging “Introduction” Paddy also unravels some of the complex influences on cricket in Shep’s years in the game and draws some telling contrasts with cricket today. Throughout his career Shep was the most loyal of players and colleagues: his gloriously cavalier batting made him a special favourite with fans. His loyalty and effort are well‑described in a candid telling of his story.

The book was successfully launched on a gloriously sunny day at Tunbridge Wells this week. The popular Shep drew a long line of well-wishers (and book buyers!) to the marquee of the Kent Supporters Club.

Signed copies of "John Shepherd - The Loyal Cavalier" are avaialable @ £12 post free from the author, Paddy Briggs, at 40, Broom Park, Teddington, Middlesex TW11 9RS. Cheques made out to P.S.Briggs please

Fine catch by one of the MCC faithful...

2009-06-10T15:23:00.004+01:00

The modest celebrations of the MCC member who took a fine catch in the Pavilion at Lord's on 9th June 2009. Your correspondent is extreme left standing to applaud (and relieved that the ball didn't come to him)!

Hats off to Lord’s, thumbs down to England

2009-06-06T07:03:00.002+01:00

NOTES FROM AN ASHES SUMMER (3)

Hats off to Lord’s, thumbs down to England

The orange Dutch hats were thrown high in the air last night to cap a famous and fully deserved victory for the team from The Netherlands against hosts England in the opening match in this year’s ICC World Twenty20. We were denied the pleasures of hearing and seeing Alesha Dixon perform as the opening ceremony was cancelled for “Health and Safety” reasons (quite what these reasons were we weren’t told). For a moment I did wonder if a hastily arranged song from a new “Three Tenors” group had been substituted, but no - it was only ICC President David Morgan, ECB Supremo Giles Clarke and the Duke of Kent who were on the makeshift días in front of the Pavilion. Morgan and The Duke made speeches of predictable banality (we were spared Clarke) – and then, at last, the stage was set for the real business of the day. That we saw play at all we must thank the MCC who have installed permanent floodlights at the home of cricket that not only look elegant but work superbly -they weren’t supposed to be used yesterday but the skies were leaden and without them I suspect we wouldn’t have had a full match. Similarly the modern Lord’s drainage system is so good that within minutes of the rain ceasing the ground was fit for play – a stark contrast with Headingley a couple of weeks ago.

At the end of the eleventh over England was 100-0 with Bopara and Wright coasting along nicely. A score of approaching 200 seemed in prospect but the Dutch were not wilting and stuck to their task to good effect. The final nine overs delivered only 62 runs with just four boundaries - and there was not one six in the whole innings. Shah, Morgan and Collingwood were out to particularly inept shots and with all due respect to his talents Rob Key was not the figure you might hope to see coming to the wicket when you are 144-4 with 22 balls to go. He duly failed to hit a boundary off any of the eight balls he received. Note for Morgan: if you are going to decide before the ball is bowled that you will play a reverse sweep do check that there isn’t a fielder standing in the way! Surely given the good start a team of (mostly) experienced professional cricketers should have been able to put the game out of reach of a Dutch side many of whom play only for the love of the game. The killer instinct was missing, as was the injured Kevin Pietersen, and England’s total was respectable when it should have been unreachable.

That the Dutch won was mostly, I think, attributable to their greater will-to-win and self belief. The batted with enterprise and skill attacking the bad balls and hitting four towering sixes in their innings (one of which might have woken up a few people in the MCC President’s box). By the time it dawned on England that they really good lose the match it was almost too late – the Dutch paced their chase wonderfully well. In the end there was a nail-biting final over and there could have been any one of three results off the final ball. But the Dutch deserved their win and England added a new item to their list of disappointments in international limited overs cricket by losing to a “minnow” for the first time. The Dutch have an expression “Goed is wel, maar beter wint” which in a sporting context roughly means “It’s alright to play well, but you need to play better than that to win” – a lesson England could certainly learn.

A typically English farce at Hove

2009-06-05T10:21:00.003+01:00

Back in 1956 John Osborne wrote a play, The Entertainer, which captured brilliantly the muddle and complacency of Englishness. The story of an aging Music Hall artist, Archie Rice, in a third-rate and crumbling theatre, was a metaphor for what many felt to be an England with an anachronistic leader (Eden) presiding over a country which was once famously described by an American Secretary of State as a nation which had “lost an empire and failed to find a role.”

It may be rather fanciful to describe last night’s Twenty20 match at Hove as a metaphor for anything but at the end of the farcical proceedings I couldn’t help feeling that there was something utterly English, and particularly something which typified the state of English cricket, about the proceedings. For those who missed it the match was between Sussex and Kent and it took place on the home county’s rather ugly little ground at Hove. The ground appeared to be perhaps half full – maybe a little more – a disappointing crowd for what should have been a money-spinner between local rivals. It was a day/night match starting at a time which would allow spectators to come from work and it was also televised live by Sky. It was pretty lacklustre stuff from the start with only a small amount of excitement generated in Sussex’s uninspiring innings of 131-3 with only thirteen boundaries. The star performer was the West Indian Dwayne Smith who scored a decent 69 not out off 59 balls but the Kent bowling looked far from threatening and Sussex really should have scored more and taken more chances with plenty of wickets in hand. As the dull Sussex innings proceeded it became clear that there was a problem with the lights – only two of the four floodlight masts appeared to be working. The culpability of the Sussex County Club was clear, although they will no doubt pass the blame to others. But the facts speak for themselves – they failed to provide proper floodlighting for a high-ish profile and televised day/night match!

But whilst Sussex’s administrators should this morning be wriggling with guilt those in charge of the cricket proceedings on the day, on and off the filed, should feel embarrassed as well. No decision was made about an agreed limit to Kent’s innings (it was clear that they would not get 20 overs in). So the Kent batsmen knew only that if they batted for five overs there would be a match but that how long the match would last was, literally, in the lap of the Gods – and of the umpires. Everything was stacked in Kent’s favour. With the end of the match fast approaching all they needed to do was attack the bowling so that they were well ahead on the Duckworth/Lewis rule whenever the match ended. The loss of a couple of wickets wouldn’t have mattered too much if they could pile up the runs quickly. Instead the two openers Denly and Stevens plodded along at less than six runs an over and with only eight boundaries in the eleven overs they were at the crease before the light became too bad and the umpires called the players off. Unbelievably Kent managed actually to be a couple of runs behind the D/L par score when this happened so despite not having lost any wickets they lost the match! It was tactically inept, spineless batting which defied comprehension.

And so this absurd and derisory spectacle came to an end with the home side winning a match that they should have lost and the visitors being denied points by their own ignorance and incompetence. The Sussex administrators, the umpires and many of the players seemed confused by the proceedings which were a parody of competitive sport and about as far removed from the excitement of the Indian Premier League as it is possible to get. And the metaphor? Well nobody took charge, the spectators were kept in the dark (quite literally, some of them), the match descended from one which was dull and unambitious into a farce. All very English you might think in these cheerless old times. Oh Dear!

OCCASIONAL NOTES ON AN ASHES SUMMER (1)

2009-05-11T11:44:00.002+01:00

The 2009 “Ashes” summer opened for me with a most unexpected early skirmish. Mrs B and I were en route to the launch party for Peter “Test Match Special” Baxter’s charming new book of reminiscences “Inside the Box”. We were trying to find the hidden entrance to the Lord’s adjacent Danubius hotel when I was aware that someone else was similarly lost and confused. “Are you looking for the Baxter bash?” I said cordially to the chap. “Yes. Round the corner I think” he replied “I’m Adam Mountford by the way”. Mountford (pictured), as TMS fans will be aware, took over as Producer of the programme from Baxter in 2008. Now in my occasional scribblings about the great cricket institution that is Test Match Special I have, I admit, been less than polite about the direction in which it has sailed under Mountford’s tyro stewardship. But, as far as I can recall, I have never directly abused or insulted said Adam in any way. So imagine my surprise when after I had introduced myself Mountford took a deep breath and launched into an unprovoked verbal assault on me and my scribblings as we continued to navigate our way towards the hotel entrance. The essence of Mountford’s accusations was that I should be more sensitive to the feelings of those that I write about – presumably starting with him!

Thoughts along the lines of Harry Truman’s “If you can't stand the heat, get out of the kitchen” spring to mind for although I am still learning my craft as a sports writer one thing that I have learned is that it is a pretty rough profession at times. Michael Henderson referred to Radio 5 Live in a recent article in The Guardian as “Radio Halfwit” and described comments on a Test match by one of that channel’s presenters as being of “…mind-boggling stupidity from the kind of folk who gave the station its reputation.” Now Mr Mountford hails from Radio 5 and is overseeing the integration of TMS into Radio 5’s style – a process regarded by Peter Baxter and most of the traditional TMS team with horror. As Baxter says in his book TMS is popular “…precisely because it did not sound like the Rest of Radio 5”.One of the TMS veterans told me at the book launch that Mountford is only doing what his masters have told him to do - although this has led to accusations that the programme is dumbing down. Few TMS aficionados welcome this process and you can be quite sure that the old TMS team are appalled by any suggestion that TMS needs to move down market - I have heard Henry Blofeld close to apoplexy at the thought as you can imagine.

My criticisms of the Mountford approach to Test Match Special are far from a lone voice in the wilderness so quite why he harangued me so strongly I’m not sure. I told him in response that many of us feel that he is in danger of ****ing up TMS and that that would be a disgrace. We then parted rather roughly and steered clear of one another for the rest of the evening. When I told one TMS stalwart what had happened he suggested that Adam Mountford was not over-burdened with social skills. Hmmm!

If I have never wittingly personalised an attack on Mountford the same perhaps might not be true of all my writings on the ECB Chairman Giles Clarke – a bête noire of many (all?) of us who really care about England cricket. Clarke was also at the Baxter book event and perhaps emboldened by a glass or two of Veuve Clicquot I introduced myself to him - “I’m afraid I have been rather rude about you in my writings” I said to him by way of introduction. “That’s alright”, he said, with what I think was a smile – he was perfectly affable to me. Clarke has a reputation for not always being the most charming man in the room but he treated me perfectly courteously and whilst I cannot claim that he is my new best friend I think that, as Blowers might say, I have more chance (albeit slim) of being on his Christmas Card list then I do of being on the prickly Mr Mountford’s!

Seeds of revolution sown in the Long Room

2009-04-28T16:23:00.003+01:00

The remarkable success of William Buckland’s iconoclastic book “Pommies” in reaching the short list of four in the Cricket Society/MCC “Book of the Year” Award 2009 will have surprised some of the more traditional members of the two venerable sponsoring institutions. If they are inspired by Buckland’s success actually to read the book they will find that it is a devastating, well-researched and cogently argued assault on England cricket’s decades of failure. Central to Buckland’s argument is the comparison he makes with cricket in Australia – in every single area of cricket performance and governance England’s approach and structure lags far behind what have for years been the successful norms down under.

For Buckland’s book to reach the short list was a triumph for those who have argued for years that just tinkering with England’s archaic cricket structure will not work. A revolution is needed, and Buckland provides the rationale and the reasoning to support the case for a radical insurgency of action – and as a result that may now be at last be about to happen. Chief amongst the author’s contentions is that the traditional county structure of eighteen County Clubs is unsustainable. He advocates that there should be only five “second tier” teams (International cricket is the first-tier) based on five English and Welsh regions. The current county structure would be abandoned entirely in the interests of creating genuinely competitive second-tier cricket and of ensuring that the huge revenues of the ECB are spent far more effectively than at present.

Although “Pommies” did not win the award at the presentation ceremony in the Long Room at Lord’s on Monday 27th April (that went to the rather more traditional book of reminiscences by Cricket Society President John Barclay “Life beyond the Airing Cupboard”) the book is now very firmly launched as a major contribution about the future of cricket in England. The MC of the event was Christopher Martin-Jenkins – one of county cricket’s most vocal and passionate supporters. In his speech CMJ spent as much time on “Pommies” as he did on the other three shortlisted contenders put together and even he had to admit that “perhaps” the case for fewer first-class counties has its merits. There may be room for give and take somewhere between the extremes of Buckland’s revolution and CMJ’s hints of more gentle and measured approach. But William Buckland is unlikely himself to be too keen on compromise. For, as he so emphatically puts it at the end of his book:

“Despite the example and the lessons [of Australia] we [in England] remain clinging to the flotsam of the past like deluded children. That’s why they call us Pommies”

Twenty20 – The Future?

2009-04-11T15:07:00.002+01:00

If it ain’t broke don’t try and fix it? True of course but has the success of Twenty20 in its present form clouded thoughts as to whether the construct as we now have it is the best that we could have? These thoughts have been promoted by watching the Melrose Sevens in Scotland and considering why Sevens Rugby is such a success – without it in any way damaging the value of the “real” rugby game (80 minutes and 15-a-side). The answer in respect of Rugby Sevens is that it is an abbreviated form of the game in every way. It lasts 14 or in some case 20 minutes rather than 80. It has seven-a-side rather than fifteen. It eliminates things like line-outs which could slow up the action. In short it is a close cousin of fifteen-a-side rugby without the pretence that it is just a sidestepping variant of the big game. It’s a sport in its own right.

Consider the Rugby precedent for cricket. The parallels are clear. Twenty20 has 40 overs rather than 100 in traditional limited overs matches. It lasts a few hours rather than a day (or more). And yet it is still an eleven-a-side game. Why? With eleven batsmen available in just twenty overs wickets are somewhat devalued. Even if you are 30-4 after five overs you still have six batsmen available to help you out of the mire. Slog your way into trouble and you can finesse your way out of it. But what if wickets were given more value – the bowlers, currently seen as being economy rather than wicket-taking operatives, would surely come back into their own?

So why not make Twnety20 6-a-side rather than eleven? Suddenly the game changes and ironically it changes back in the direction of traditional cricket (with its battle between bat and ball) rather than further away from it. With six-a-side batsmen might thrash and slog a wee bit less because their wickets would be rather more valued. And if you legislated that of the fielding side all five players (i.e. other than the wicketkeeper) would bowl four overs each what fun that would be! The Captains would have to decide when to bowl their star batters who don’t normally bowl at all – and the batsmen would have to “go for” these bowlers in order to take advantage of their more limited bowling skills.

Warming to the theme there would be no need for field restrictions or power plays. With only five outfielders the captains would have to think hard about field placement. Putting them all on the boundary wouldn’t work because with the opponents only having six batsmen you have to go for wickets don’t you? Indeed the fielding captain would have a great challenge in respect of handling his bowling attack given that he knows that all of his players must bowl. Why not – bowlers have to bat, so why not have a rule that in the shortest from of the game batsmen have to bowl?

The recognition that Twenty20 is a different game from traditional cricket is surely not too great an intellectual leap to make. The creation of a revised version of the game that restores the balance between bowler and batsman and makes wickets valued (which in proper cricket they must surely always be) is a step forward. And the idea that all cricketers have to bat, bowl and field like panthers is surely an appropriate interest-raising novelty – and good for improving the for the athletic image of the game. Worth a try – why not?

ENGLAND AND WALES CRICKET BOARD FRANCHISE INVITATION

2009-04-01T11:22:00.006+01:00

ENGLAND AND WALES CRICKET BOARD FRANCHISE INVITATION
1ST APRIL 2009

The "England and Wales Cricket Board" (ECB) is calling for suitably qualified sports institutions to bid for one of eight Superpro franchises which will commence operations in the 2010 cricket season.

The Superpro franchises will receive substantial financial support from the ECB including assistance towards operating costs, capital investment programmes and promotional and other expenses. In return each franchise will offer the ECB the following:

At least one sports stadium and associated infrastructure capable of hosting international cricket matches attended by at least 30,000 spectators - and preferably 40,000.

State of the art and suitably staffed coaching facilities including an indoor cricket school, medical and fitness facilities etc. To include a Head Coach of international standard supported by coaches covering all physical and mental aspects of the game of cricket.

A squad of players identified as meeting the highest standards as measured by cricket's "Centre of Excellence" and all of whom are on contracts for at least two full seasons. The squad would be expected to comprise around 18 players of whom no more than two should not be qualified to represent England now or within the next two years.

Teams selected for the Superpro franchise will compete in Four-day and Limited Overs tournaments during the English cricket season. These tournaments will be well sponsored and well funded. Each Superpro franchise will be allocated three players who are currently on England central contracts and these players will appear for the Superpro franchise, at no cost to the franchisee, whenever international commitments permit.

With the establishment of the Superpro franchises ECB support for existing County Cricket Clubs will cease. It is expected that some existing County Clubs will wish to bid for a Superpro franchise along with other suitably qualified institutions such as Football, Rugby and other sports clubs.

Applications to the ECB at Lord's Cricket Ground.

Who is responsible for the corpse of England cricket?

2009-03-31T18:13:00.005+01:00

Events of the last few months, which has seen England cricket descend into a shambolic mess, almost defy comment or parody. If we forensically try and identify the guilty party I suspect that it will turn out to be rather like “Murder on the Orient Express” where it transpired that everyone had killed the victim and there was no single culprit. But in keeping with the mood of these difficult economic times, when most of us point the finger at the well-heeled fat cats at the top of the pile as being to blame for the mess we are in, I personally have no hesitation in naming the Chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) Giles Clarke as the main reason for our cricket malaise.

Clarke must go
Rants passim have covered Clarke’s elitism (he referred to those with no access to satellite TV as “less fortunate members of society”) ignorance (which led to the nonsense of Stanford), and complacency (he has failed completely to get to the heart of English cricket’s problems with reform of the unsustainable county structure). To this list we can now add gross insensitivity. Clarke sits on top of a hierarchy but seems to have no feelings for the inter-personal issues down the line – Vaughan, Collingwood, Moores, and Pietersen. And he can’t opt out by saying, as he did, that the coach/captain spat was "… a matter for Hugh Morris". The buck doesn’t stop with Mr Morris or even Morris’s boss David Collier. It stops with Clarke - and he better wake up to the fact soon. For the first time in living memory the flagship BBC current affairs programme Newsnight covered the English cricket disarray – and Clarke should have been there to face up to Jeremy Paxman and tell it as the ECB saw it - not leave it to his predecessor but one Lord MacLaurin.

England’s Ashes chances have been weakened
You are left numb by all the shenanigans and the conclusion that you come to is that England cricket has some sort of death wish. Shane Warne said shortly before the hurricane hit Lord’s that if “If England play well and win a couple of series …then I think you’ve got a real good chance and [The Ashes] should be one hell of a series”. But now, whilst Australia certainly struggled a bit at home they seem reborn in South Africa with some startlingly good new young players. Who would now confidently bet on England regaining The Ashes this summer? With KP in charge (and I mean IN CHARGE) I would have been reasonably confident. Whilst he is a different character in many ways from Graeme Smith he shares his fellow South African’s will to win and bloody-mindedness. Just what you need successfully to take on Ricky Ponting – as Smith has so recently shown. Andrew Strauss is a good bloke and a fine cricketer. But I don’t expect to see him in Ponting’s face in the same way that KP would have been and my guess is that Punter will not be quaking in his boots at the prospect of facing Straussy.

The Establishment versus the maverick captains.
Over the years there has always been a struggle in England selection circles between the competing claims of the more establishment figures and the riskier but bullish appeal of the less respectful and non-conformist captains. Colin Cowdrey (Tonbridge and Oxford) versus Ray Illingworth (Pudsey and the University of Life). Mike Brearley versus Tony Greig. Mike Atherton versus Nasser Husain and so on. For the ECB to take the risk of appointing Kevin Pietersen was surprising – that they failed to manage him and ditched him pretty unceremoniously after only five months is not.

Trying to cheer up
My usually sunny disposition has been dealt a blow recently and I’m sure that this is some thing that I share with most of my blogs knowledgeable readers. So as we go around with our countenances dull I suspect that for most of us it is more in sorrow than in anger. I’m angry that just when it seemed we would be safe to go back into the stands to watch a brave and buoyant England take on the old enemy under a leader with charisma and style instead we will start on the back foot. The performances in the West Indies have shown what happens when you have shambles at the top - the lack of spine, focus and intent has been deplorable. I’ll never forgive Giles Clarke for so incompetently and thoughtlessly landing us in this almighty mess. I wonder if he really cares?

Grounds for concern
Somewhat lost in the deluge of publicity about the England captaincy and coach was the announcement from the ECB about the allocation of Test matches to grounds in the future. This included the statement that Lord’s will not automatically get even one Test match per year from 2012. This came as a bolt out of the blue to the Marylebone Cricket Club and if followed through it will scupper their redevelopment plans completely. These plans, which would have seen significant investment and a substantial increase in seating capacity, were predicated on Lord’s having at least one Test match per year - plus some of the other big occasions such One Day Internationals and domestic finals as at present.

One of the many good things in Williams Buckland’s excellent book “Pommies” was his contention that one of the things that holds England cricket back is the low capacity of our main cricket grounds compared with the Aussies. Australia’s smallest ground Perth is bigger for Ashes matches than England’s largest, the current Lord’s. The redevelopment of Lord’s would have a least meant that we have one decent -sized ground but that now looks unlikely to happen. Buckland recommended that we should have fewer but much bigger international grounds – the ECB looks to be going for the exact opposite and no doubt if Giles Clarke gets his way we’ll have a Ashes Test match at Taunton in 2013 - his predecessor David Morgan shamelessly got one for Cardiff this year after all!. Morgan’s fellow member of the Taffia, Hugh Morris, explained the ECB’s thinking: "It's important for people in different parts of the country to see cricket.”. Indeed it is Hugh boyo – and the best way to do that is to get bigger grounds - and to get International cricket back on terrestrial television!

An earlier version of this blog appeared in the cricket fanzine Yes, No, Sorry.

Meet John Shepherd at Tunbridge Wells

2009-03-25T12:39:00.002Z

Kent CCSC members have a special opportunity to renew acquaintance with Kent stalwart and favourite John Shepherd on the first day of the County Championship match versus Essex on Tuesday June 16th.

Paddy Briggs (a Kent CCSC member) has written a biography of Shep and it is being published in early June. Both Paddy and Shep himself will be in the Supporters Club Marquee at lunchtime on the first day of the match to meet members and to sign copies of the book which will be on sale.

MCC Members want an enquiry into the England and Wales Cricket Board

2009-02-26T13:05:00.007Z

Some members of the Marylebone Cricket Club have called for an enquiry into the affairs of the ECB and hope to rustle up enough support amongst fellow members to call a Special General Meeting (SGM) of the Club.

The activist members are calling for an SGM “to approve the creation of an MCC Board of Enquiry to investigate the affairs of the English Cricket Board (ECB) and recommend a Cricket Constitution that is appropriate for the governing body of our national sport”

The allegations, which can be seen in full on the website accessible by visiting mccmembers.co.uk say that English cricket is under “…the unregulated control of a private company that is neither publicly accountable nor properly constituted” and that “recent events prove the ECB is guilty of bringing the game into disrepute”

Paddy’s Sports View has previously described the deteriorating relationship between the MCC and their tenants the England and Wales Cricket Board. Clearly a significant body of members want to use the MCC’s status as a guardian of the sport of cricket aggressively to challenge the ECB’s role, particularly in the light of the recent debacles of the England team’s captaincy and the Stanford affair. As this blog has also argued the ECB has no mechanisms whereby it is accountable to anyone in English cricket other than the Chairman of the eighteen First Class Counties along with the Secretary of the MCC. The MCC however as a private members club is owned by and accountable to its members. So whilst there is no forum, other than in the media, whereby the ECB can be held to account by ordinary cricket followers the MCC Committee is constitutionally required to call an SGM if 180 members support a request to do so.

In the event that the MCC Committee is required by sufficient members to call an SGM the meeting would not be in the public domain but it is likely that everything discussed at the meeting will become public knowledge. The MCC’s membership is a broad church and is by no means made up only of establishment figures! A robust debate of the ECB’s recent actions, constitution and performance can be expected with no holds barred. Whilst the ECB cannot be required to attend any such meeting some of the Board’s members are themselves alos members of the MCC and may choose to attend and to speak.

That a number of members of MCC are so aggrieved by the ineptitude and questionable governance of England cricket carried out by Giles Clarke, David Collier and others is admirable and their attempts to get 180 members in total to support their call for the membership fully to discuss the matter deserves support.

Open Letter to David Collier

2009-02-22T14:59:00.002Z

Dear David

It seems that you feel that you have no reason to resign over the Stanford debacle and that Giles Clarke and the rest of the ECB board support you – well they would say that wouldn’t they?

A recent poll in The Guardian reported that 86% of respondents thought that Giles Clarke should resign. And even allowing for a bit of bias from the medium and statistical error that shows what the vast majority of the cricket loving public in England think as well. And as Clarke himself has made clear the monkey sits as much on your back as it does on his. After all you are the senior employee of the ECB and you had a clear accountability for the Stanford deal.

The overwhelming tenor of the comments in the media, on cricket websites and throughout the country is that this scandal is one too far for the ECB and that the responsibility lies fairly and squarely with Giles Clarke and with you. You might argue about the minutiae of the due diligence carried out on Stanford and whether it should have covered more that just his ability to pay. You may argue, as you have, that you "believe therefore that I could not have done more at that time and I don't think the board could have done more.” Few objective observers would concur with that self-promoting claptrap.

David the time has come to go. Your position is untenable. "You have sat too long here for any good you have been doing. Depart, I say, and let us have done with you. In the name of God, go."

Sincerely

Paddy Briggs

Scandalously the ECB is accountable to those they pay, not those who pay them

2009-02-19T14:46:00.005Z

The series of disasters at the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB), culminating in the Stanford scandal, can at least in part be attributable to the fact that the ECB is accountable to those they pay, not those who pay them. It is a tenet of proper systems of governance that leaders are accountable to their paymasters or their electorates – whether it is a vote of shareholders or of politicians from time to time an election takes place which holds business and political leaders to account, nominally at least. At the ECB the reverse applies.

Only a couple of weeks ago the chairmen of the First Class counties, plus a representative from the MCC, re-appointed Giles Clarke as Chairman of the ECB. The evidence against Clarke, well articulated by his rival Lord Marland and others, was damning and had it been the cricket loving public in Britain who were making the choice he would have been out on his ear. But it wasn’t. It was the Chairmen of the counties and like turkeys they weren’t going to vote for Christmas. The Christmas they wanted to avoid was the proper and structural review of English domestic cricket that the ECB has been ducking for years. Such a root and branch review, which Jonathan Marland would certainly have instituted, would have properly investigated not just the way that the ECB is funded and the rather opaque corporate structure that it has, but also and most importantly how that money is spent. The likelihood that a proper and honest review would have recommended a substantial reduction in the number of First Class counties in England and Wales is high. And that is where the turkeys come in.

There can be little doubt that Giles Clarke will have given behind-the-scenes assurances to the counties that there futures are secure and that ECB funding will continue – at least so long as he remains Chairman. Such an overblown future for English cricket has been condemned by many objective observers who are not themselves reliant on ECB patronage. Even Lord MacLaurin, no enemy of the ECB, has called for the number of counties to be reduced from 18 to 12 and many other critics of the present system would go much further. William Buckland in his thoughtful and well argued book “Pommies” said that second tier English cricket (currently the County system) should have no more than five or six teams in it – in line with the systems that exist in most of the rest of the cricket world.

The counties fear of radical change combined with the patronage they have received from Giles Clarke has probably protected his position for the time being - even though his hands and those of his CEO David Collier are tainted by their association with Stanford. Unless these two fall on their swords - and the loss of a substantial salary (in Collier’s case) and munificent perks and privileges (in both cases) are such that they will no doubt fight to the end to avoid this honourable step. And the County chairmen? Will they really continue to contemplate their own navels and look away from the ugliness that hangs over the ECB at present? Don’t bet against it!

Giles Clarke's position is unsustainable

2009-02-18T15:17:00.002Z

The "temporary restraining order on charges of major fraud" in respect of Sir Allen Stanford shows beyond any reasonable doubt how ill-advised Giles Clarke and the rest of the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) were to get themselves involved with this dubious individual. But whilst these revelations are perhaps the most damning to the prospects of Clarke remaining at the helm of English cricket they are just one in a long line of errors of judgment and taste that has seen the ECB descend into a fetid and morally indefensible pit. The failure to permit live International cricket on terrestrial TV, the squandering of the ECB’s substantial income on an unsustainable and moribund county structure and the total inability of the ECB’s management to apply firm and sensitive leadership over the England captaincy are by no means the only examples which along with the Stanford fiasco have dragged England cricket into the mire. Clarke must go.

MCC members in anoraks - shock horror

2009-02-17T10:16:00.003Z

"Cricket is a leisure activity and we have to decide whether we want a number of anoraks at matches or a large crowd who are keen to be entertained." Giles Clarke recently re-elected Chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board.

Mr Clarke was commentating on the MCC’s embryonic plans to hold floodlit Test matches at Lord’s Cricket Ground – something that will be technically feasible once Lord’s new retractable floodlights are operational and providing a solution is found to the problem of getting a Test match ball of a colour that can be picked out by fielders against a dark sky.

In these straightened times one would have thought that Clarke would have wanted to encourage all cricket lovers to come to England matches, anoraks or not. But as Richard Williams in “The Guardian” has pointed out there is a possibility that Clarke’s “Casual dismissal of anoraks could be interpreted to include most of those occupying the seats in the [Lord’s] pavilion”.

Put aside for a minute the grave sartorial implications of an MCC member being allowed to occupy a pavilion seat in an anorak and assume for a moment that Clarke did indeed mean those of us privileged to wear the egg and bacon tie and sit in splendour in the magnificent pavilion of the world’s greatest cricket ground. If Williams is right that Giles Clarke has us in his sights then the evidence to support that this is so is compelling. The MCC has a £200million redevelopment plan that will see the capacity of Lord’s increase substantially from around 30,000 to nearer 40,000 spectators - further widening the gap between what is already England’s largest cricket ground and the rest. This plan will be funded from MCC’s own resources and borrowings and for this to be viable some certainty about the future of international matches at the ground is required. But whilst the ECB, whose home is at Lord’s, is fully aware of the MCC’s plans their reaction has been less than encouraging.

Rather than supporting MCC’s plans to create a cricket ground that is not just full of history but actually can be full of a world class sized crowd the ECB looks to be going in the opposite direction. The ECB’s Managing Director of England Cricket Hugh Morris, explained the ECB’s thinking at the end of last year when he said that the ECB’s new “international staging agreements” will guarantee Lord's only two Tests from 2012-2016. "It's important for people in different parts of the country to see cricket” said Morris – this from the organisation that has cast live international cricket from terrestrial television for the foreseeable future by renewing their deal with Sky! It defies belief that the ECB could shun Lord’s in this way whilst giving longer term deals to the much smaller grounds at The Oval (23,500 capacity) and Headingley (planned capacity 20,000) until 2022 and 2019 respectively.

Back to the anoraks. The ECB’s contempt for Lord’s is no doubt built on a dislike of what Giles Clarke and his mercenary band see as the presence of a superior elite amongst its owners at MCC. Members do not pay to attend international or any other matches at the ground – other, that is, than by paying our annual subscriptions and none of the cash from this source finds its way into the ECB’s coffers. We also, in defiance of ICC and ECB rules, may take into the ground a modest amount of alcoholic drinks to accompany us through the long cricket day. Many MCC members feel strongly about the inadequacy they see in the ECB’s governance of cricket “The ECB is not properly accountable and no constitution exists that should reflect its role as a public body governing a national sport” as one outspoken MCC member puts it. There is no love lost between many in the MCC and their tenants at the England and Wales Cricket Board.

The Chairman of MCC, Charles Fry, remains hopeful that sanity will prevail and that he can persuade the ECB that they should give long term security to Lord’s for at least one Test match per year well into the 2020s and beyond. Fry has been a behind-the-scenes supporter of Giles Clarke in the recent contest for the ECB chairmanship in which Clarke secured a pyrrhic victory. Whilst many of us would have preferred, in the overall interests of English cricket, that Fry had joined those who wanted Clarke cast aside we must hope that his alliance with Clarke will at least secure for MCC the reward that Lord’s will be confirmed as an international venue for the long term.

Bill Frindall – the last, best defender of the integrity of cricket’s records

2009-01-31T09:50:00.007Z

The world of commercial imperatives and ignorant expediency that is the governance of International cricket will be sighing in relief at the passing of Bill Frindall – the last and best defender of the integrity of cricket’s records. Unlike the unspeakable apparatchicks of the International Cricket Council (ICC) Frindall was determined that the well-established principles that governed the designation and status of matches, especially international matches, be rigorously applied. So when the ICC created the so-called “ICC Super Series” in October 2005, an event which comprised one six-day match and three fifty over matches between Australia and an “ICC World XI”, Frindall was in the forefront of the campaign to deny these matches official “One Day International” (ODI) and “Test Match” status.

The ICC had decided that the commercial prospects of the “ICC Super Series” would be enhanced if the matches were given the same status as official contests between countries and that performances in them would count in the Test and ODI records of the players who took part. This “decision” flew in the face of precedent and logic – Frindall called it “witless” and argued, irrefutably one would have thought, that the international records should only cover “contests between nations”. Bill declared that the six day match, a game which he said was “bordering on the farcical”, would not be included “…in any international records that I compile”. The Playfair Cricket Annual, of which Bill was the long serving editor, strictly applied this rule but sadly other cricket records such as those of Wisden and Cricinfo have not followed Frindall’s lead.

The best tribute that the world of cricket could pay to Bill Frindall would be to recognise that on the matter of the status of the failed hoopla of matches in the “ICC Super Series” Bill was one hundred percent right. Cricket’s international records should now officially be revised to exclude these matches - the Bearded Wonder would smile forever in eternity if common-sense prevails in this way!

Blues for the Clarets in the Carling Cup

2009-01-27T11:39:00.007Z

It was an inspiring and moving experience to be present at both of the Carling Cup semi-final matches between Burnley and Tottenham Hotspur and whilst as a Spurs supporter I was of course pleased that Tottenham scraped through, triumph is the last of the emotions I feel. This was football at its best and, in many ways, football as it used to be. Whilst the prima donnas of the top clubs in the Premiership fill the tabloid columns and the shenanigans surrounding there ownership creates headlines on the financial as well as the sports pages Burnley v Spurs was all and only about football. It was as far removed from the grotesquery of Manchester City’s owners trying to buy Kaka and success as it is possible to get.

The core attraction of football, the quality that gave rise to the perhaps overused descriptor "The Beautiful Game", is its simplicity and the way that this allows spectators instantly to relate to the action. We saw two five goal matches at White Hart Lane and at Turf Moor – ten goals in 210 minutes of pulsating football. The goals, one every twenty minutes or so, were the just rewards for effort and ambition – especially so in Burnley’s case. Football, above all cup football, can be a great leveller and no more so than in this clash in which one team, Spurs, had many players who individually earn more than the total staffing costs of the Burnley squad. I use “earn” with a slight sense of irony because although there was no lack of effort from Tottenham on the two nights few of the players really justified their big transfer fees or their mega earnings. With far lesser resources at his disposal Owen Coyle has created a team that completely outplayed Harry Redknapp’s bunch of stars for much of both games.

At the Lane Burnley were by far the better side in the first half and deserved their one goal interval lead – it should have been more. Then in a twenty minute spell in the second half Spurs played their best football of the season to score four goals and seemingly put the tie out of Burnley’s reach. But from the start at Turf Moor there was no feeling of doom, gloom or resignation on the part of the Burnley faithful – nor, crucially, among the players either. There is a symbiosis here which Alastair Campbell (yes that Alastair Campbell) referred to prophetically in the programme: “Winning 3-0 against a Premiership side of course won’t be easy. But if the players don’t believe it nobody can. And if the players do believe it, then so can we”. Well win 3-0 is exactly what Burnley then did – over 90 minutes. And had this been a European two-leg tie rather than the Carling Cup that would have been it – Burnley would have been on their way to Wembley. But quirkily the rules of this competition meant that they had to play another thirty minutes without conceding a goal – and that was just beyond them and Spurs escaped with the latest of strikes from Pavlyuchenko and Defoe.

If you are a seeker-after of justice then don’t be a sports fan – that’s not always how it works. The Burnley team and their superb supporters certainly deserved to go to Wembley not just for their efforts and their style but also for their skill and bloody-minded determination not to give up – and for their belief. They have two more chances this season in the FA Cup and possibly in the play-offs from the Championship. I won’t be the only Spurs supporter wishing them well. On March 1st whilst I’ll be hoping that the Tottenham All-Stars win the Carling Cup I will have a slight embarrassment that the Spurs are there at all and a memory of two semi-final encounters that transcended sport and restored my faith in human nature, if not in natural justice.

Brearley’s time has come

2009-01-12T11:44:00.003Z

Cometh the hour cometh the man and of England cricket could there be any doubt that the hour is nigh and that there is a desperate need for capable and moral leadership at the top? Under the malignant Chairmanship of Giles Clarke the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) has plumbed new depths – as the events of the past few months in respect of the England captaincy have shown beyond doubt. I use the timeframe “Months” not “Weeks” because it stretches back to the day in early August when Michael Vaughan and Paul Collingwood stood down as captains of the England Test and One Day sides respectively. To stand down in the middle of a series is not unprecedented but for men of Vaughan and Colly’s status and integrity to feel that they had no alternative but to fall on their swords says clearly that all was not right in the England set up.

Where were the man-management skills in the England playing set up when we needed them? Surely if the relationship between Hugh Morris, Peter Moores, Vaughan and Collingwood had been as it should have been then any need for change in the captaincy would have been anticipated and handled in a less panicky way. Vaughan’s stress and disappointment was for all to see in his tearful press conference – he didn’t (quite) lose his dignity but there is no way that he should have felt obliged to walk the plank so publicly in the way that he did. The Test series was already lost – surely Vaughan could have been given support by the ECB hierarchy for one more Test match - and then any issues over the captaincy could have been dealt with in a calmer environment at the end of the series. And Collingwood was treated an a pretty cavalier way as well – he was clearly pushed, he didn’t jump, when the ECB decided that they wanted one captain in future and that he was not that man.

Whilst Hugh Morris as Managing Director of England Cricket was the man with the monkey on his shoulder above him was the highly paid CEO of the ECB, David Collier and the controversial Chairman of the board Giles Clarke. What role did they play in the whole affair – and more recently what role have they all played in the extraordinary events of the past couple of weeks with Kevin Pietersen?

“A fish rots from the head” – as the Russian proverb has it, and it’s a pretty apposite comment on the main reason for the rotten state of English cricket at the moment. The head of English cricket since September 2007 has been Giles Clarke, who is Chairman of the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) – and the charge sheet against him is a long and damning one. Fortunately his tenure runs only to March 2009 and the 18 first-class counties will have the chance to send him packing shortly. This is why they should:

Elitism. He referred to those with no access to satellite TV as "less fortunate members of society” and sold us down the river to Sky.

Ignorance. He is a businessman, with no real knowledge of the game, which led to the vulgarity of Stanford, and the continued confusions on Twenty20.

Insensitivity. He sits on top of a hierarchy but seems to have no feelings for the inter-personal issues down the line – Vaughan, Collingwood, Moores, Pietersen...

Complacency. Whilst Clarke is blusteringly bullish on frivolities like Stanford (etc.) he has failed completely to get to the heart of English cricket’s problems with reform of the unsustainable county structure.

There has to be someone of substance out there to challenge this man or he will be re-elected unopposed for a second term. Mike Brearley, since retiring from the First Class game in 1983 has concentred on his second career as a psychotherapist and he has until recently never held an executive role in the game. He has, however, written wisely and often both as a journalist and, particularly, in his seminal book “The Art of Captaincy”. His knowledge and track record as a leading thinker on cricket is not in doubt. Nor is his moral integrity and courage – as he showed, in particular, back in 1968/9 over the D’Oliveira affair. Brearley was the previous President of the Marylebone Cricket Club – a role he performed with distinction showing that he love for the game and his understanding of what matters on and off the field are undiminished.

Mike Brearley would make an honourable, skilful and respected chairman of the ECB and I have little doubt that if he stood against Giles Clarke he would be elected by the 18 counties (plus the MCC) who vote on the appointment. If ever there was a time when there was a need to restore harmony in English cricket and have the game driven with somebody who has other criteria of judgment than just the commercial/financial it is now. Cometh the hour cometh the man indeed!

Leading England cricket over the cliff

2009-01-08T07:48:00.006Z

In those increasingly distant days when I was corporate man (sort of) management training courses often liked to characterise management style in shorthand. One of the theories, which I always rather liked, was the idea that as individuals we can all be seen as being more or less task oriented and more or less process oriented. In general an extreme propensity to focus pragmatically on the task in hand is unlikely to be compatible with an individual also having a strong emphasis on ensuring that the correct processes are followed – and vice versa. It’s not quite as black and white as that, but as a quick description of different styles it is quite handy. Organisations need both types and ideally amongst their more senior people they need those with a blend of task and process orientation. In reality the head honchos in any hierarchy are far more likely to be process focused whilst the more junior staff are more likely to be effective if they concentrate on the task in hand. But at all levels in the hierarchy you will find those who will cut corners and bend the rules in order to achieve an immediate goal – and also those who will be anxious to stick rigorously with the process - and sometimes miss opportunities as a result.

OK enough of the management speak – what’s this got to do with cricket and the role of the captain in the game? Well for me it is reasonably self-evident that the captain of a cricket team should be primarily task oriented – indeed you could argue that this is the case for any sportsman at any time. Ask Steve Waugh or Roger Federer or Tiger Woods. But the Captain has not only to focus on the task in hand but get his team to do so as well – and in modern sport there are plenty of distractions around. Steve Waugh’s recipe sounds like a pretty good one “Captaincy is about empowerment, about making your players responsible for their actions and, in turn, accountable. It’s about treating everyone equally but differently by recognising there are varied characters and personalities who need to express their individual flair and instincts inside the ultimate team vision”. If that makes the job sound difficult then Mike Brearley makes it sound even more so “The captain…is bound to be the recipient of emotional demands and pressures from those he is responsible for. A good leader or manger is interested in what makes people tick, particularly when they seem to be difficult or withdrawn or under-achieving.”

Steve Waugh and Mike Brearley were both great captains – albeit that they have very different personal styles. But neither was an instant success. Although they had both led other teams before becoming an international captain the demands of the bigger job are such that in a way nothing really prepares you for it. And when Kevin Pietersen took over from Michael Vaughan just before the Oval Test against South Africa match in August 2008 he was even less prepared – his captaincy experience was virtually nil. Chutzpah and adrenalin carried KP to a fine win in his first Test match as captain and he followed this with a wonderful 4-0 win in the one-day series as well. Piece of cake. Except of course that it couldn’t last and the team fared less well in India – although there were not too many criticisms of KP’s captaincy, more of the failures of key players in the team like Bell and Panesar. But in his first matches as captain Pietersen can be seen to have done pretty well – not least when account is taken of the fact that the role had been thrown rather unexpectedly at him after Michael Vaughan’s sudden resignation.

Now let’s return to the management theory about task and process leaders. KP looks like the archetypical task leader to me. This is not to say that he lacks a tactical cricket brain nor that he doesn’t have an “ultimate team vision” as Steve Waugh called it. But Pietersen seems like the sort of man who really wants results and won’t let anyone stand in his way. More Shane Warne than Steve Waugh - although nobody would really call Waugh anything less than task focused! But Waugh probably wouldn’t have said about the role of the cricket coach that the “only coach a cricket team needs is the one to transport them from their hotel to the ground” as Warney once famously remarked. And one suspects that Kevin Pietersen would strongly agree with his friend Shane – and that that has been the cause of the recent trouble in the England camp. KP and Peter Moores were two girls trying to share the same stove – and that never works!

So then we have an imperative for our captain to be strongly task oriented, but not to the exclusion of the need also to be a hands-on motivator of men in the Brearley mould. What about process? Well in reality isn’t that someone else’s job? If the skipper is leading his men into battle and leading by example as well isn’t that enough? If he has a good cricket brain and a good feel for tactics on the field of play, as well as being able to inspire his team and the disparate individuals in it, can’t we leave the process management to someone else? The answer has to be yes. So when recently KP chose to pick a fight and one that seems at times to have been fought by surrogates and in the media, surely the process folks in the England hierarchy should have intervened? Maybe Hugh Morris did make the ‘phone call to KP and say to him something like “Kevin. We are hearing what you say about your relationship with Peter Moores. Please don’t do or say anything precipitate and when you are back in England lets get urgently together to discuss it. The ECB appointed you as captain for the long term and we want you to succeed. But we really must follow a proper process in respect of the definition of roles – including yours and of the coaching team. Please hold fire and we will sort it out together as soon as possible.”

If Hugh Morris did make a call along the lines that I have suggested and KP chose to ignore such a reasonable plea then KP is culpable and deserved to have been sacked. But if the ECB apparatchiks fumbled and flustered when they saw what KP seemed to be up to in relation to Moores and if this led them to private denunciations of KP’s insolence and arrogance but not to a serious attempt to avoid disaster then it is the ECB officials who are seriously to blame. On TV yesterday both Nasser Hussain and Lord MacLaurin were critical of the behaviour of Kevin Pietersen. Hussain said "Definitely, Kevin Pietersen himself should have gone about this in a much more professional way. You can't just sit on safari in South Africa and issue ultimatums to the board about the England cricket captaincy," and MacLaurin said "It is a mess and it is very sad the captain was away in South Africa but as I understand it he put a pistol to the head of the ECB and said, 'Back me or sack me', and I think the ECB were absolutely right. The ideal solution would have been to put Peter Moores and Kevin Pietersen in a room and said, 'Sort out your differences'. Sadly they were unable to do that."

We don’t yet know the full story. Whether the process management of the ECB failed - perhaps because it has been a holiday period and communication was difficult we don’t yet know. Whether KP was really as crass as suggested by Husain and MacLaurin we don’t know either. But if you accept the principle that you want your suits to manage all the processes well whilst you equip your captain and your team to win cricket matches then on the face of it it is the process managers who have completely failed in this instance. Unless it really is true that KP has acted with a total disregard to appropriate behaviour – in which case the suits shouldn’t have appointed him in the first place! As Nasser Husain also perceptively said "The ECB knew from his history what sort of guy (Pietersen) was. He was abrasive, he took people on, he asked questions of people. When he took over the captaincy, he was going to be in your face. They must have known that eventually it was going to come to a clash between Pietersen and Moores and they should have been able to react to that."

England cricket is rotten at the very top

2009-01-07T10:31:00.004Z

The departure of Moores and KP must surely be the final nail in the coffin of the incompetent and malignant regime of Giles Clarke and David Collier at the ECB. It actually defies belief what damage these two have done to the good name of England cricket and if they had any decency they would go – NOW!

The charge sheet against Clarke is long and shaming. It isn’t only the Stanford debacle that must be laid firmly at his door. Far from it. He has single-handedly ensured that by his complete failure to manage his staff, starting with the otiose Collier and including the selectors and above all the Coach that he couldn’t run the proverbial piss up in a Brewery. Whilst Clarke was gallivanting with Stanford and his tainted millions England cricket was sailing into very squally waters indeed.

The finances of the ECB are huge, but under Clarke no serious effort has been made to correct the imbalance which exists between the money that is needed to create a credible cricket infrastructure in England, and the ridiculous handouts that sustain the untenable County system. In short Clarke wastes our money.

The next charge is in respect of the media rights to England cricket. Surely the imperative has to be to ensure that the maximum number of TV viewers can see the game – not to maximise revenues. Clarke’s ignorant and abusive diatribes at the BBC were uncalled for and counter-productive. The BBC has walked away from covering England international cricket largely because Clarke, in his pursuit of riches from Sky, gave them no encouragement and his arguments otherwise are utterly disingenuous.

It is the vulgarity of the man and all that he does that sticks in the gut. The departure of Michael Vaughan had all the hallmarks of an organisation riddled from the top with people who haven’t a clue about man management. The failure to create a hierarchy within which the Coach and the Captain worked harmoniously together is also a direct consequence of the Clarke/Collier axis’s incompetent management behaviour and style.

The enduring memory of Giles Clarke will be Stanford which reduced the game of cricket to a fairground attraction and did untold damage to the reputation of the game. It was the antithesis of the Spirit of Cricket.

I’m very sad to see Pietersen go – rather less so to see the departure of Moores. But let’s put the monkey fairly on the right shoulder – stand up Giles Clarke and wave goodbye.

Kp versus Moores - only one winner!

2009-01-05T10:43:00.004Z

The English cricket establishment finds it hard to cope with a Captain with cojones. Vaughan had them, but was quite a diplomat and had a strong ally in Duncan Fletcher. Pietersen runs on a supreme self-confidence which comes in no small part to never having been part of the flaccid and unambitious world of English cricket – especially English county cricket. KP used Nottinghamshire and Hampshire simply as necessary tools to realise his ambition to play international cricket. Once he achieved this he has never looked back. KP’s leading by example started in his very first Test match when he top-scored in each England innings at Lord’s in the first Ashes Test of 2005. He almost immediately became part of a triumvirate who were the real inspiration behind England’s Ashes triumph (Fletcher, Vaughan and KP). Of course other players played out of their skins in 2005 – but KP was absolutely key to the regaining of the Ashes as much from his attitude and style as from his contributions on the filed of play.

Moores is a product of the English County system as player and coach. This system is moribund, outdated and complacent. It produces people like Moores – jobsworths with no real thirst for a fight and none of the get up and go we see from Australia and South Africa.

KP, like Tony Greig before him, doesn’t think much of county cricket and doesn’t think much of the putrid English cricket establishment. He is a winner and he doesn’t want banal and pedestrian plonkers like Moores in the dressing room!

Saving Stanford

2008-12-21T12:11:00.001Z

Playing games whilst tyrants rule...

2008-12-02T10:40:00.001Z

Cholera is rife. Urban residences are without water. There is a total lack of effective government. Inflation is at 231,000,000%. A tyrant holds on grimly to power. Famine is widespread. Life in Zimbabwe is cheap.

The West does not stand idly by and many individuals and agencies are doing what they can to try and alleviate the suffering of the Zimbabwe people. But their hands are tied because Mugabe and his henchmen do little to help humanitarian movements and charities make progress.

What as observers of the chaos and the disaster can we do? We are not powerless and there are both practical and symbolic actions that we can take both to help Zimbabwe's stricken population and to demonstrate to the military backed Mugabe regime that nothing can be normal in our relations with his benighted country. Which brings me to cricket...

Can you believe that over the past two weeks properly sanctioned and approved international cricket has been taking place in Harare? The full international Sri Lankan cricket team has played five One Day Internationals against Zimbabwe in the country's capital. There is no secret about this grotesque and offensive parody of the so-called "Spirit of Cricket". Under the auspices of cricket's governing body the International Cricket Council "Sri Lanka Cricket" has seen fit to play sport in Zimbabwe at a time when the country is in total turmoil.

Behind tightly guarded gates cricket was played whilst in the city and beyond there was starvation, death and destruction. This grotesque charade brings the good name of sport and of cricket in particular into disrepute. The Sri Lankan Government and cricket authorities have done themselves no favours in the wider world. And the International Cricket Council (ICC) have not only seen fit to authorise this charade but have even sent a delegation to Harare to watch the cricket and to

"...establish the current state of cricket in Zimbabwe as it relates to the management and development of the game and also to conduct an assessment of the policies and programmes executed with the view to restoring the senior team to Test cricket."

What planet do the apparatchiks of the ICC come from? Can they seriously believe that there is any case for playing international cricket with and in Zimbabwe at this time?

"What do they know of cricket who only cricket know?"

Can England's cricket failures learn from British Olympic success ?

2008-08-18T18:27:00.004+01:00

Will the England and Wales Cricket Board study the success of British Olympic competitors in Beijing and learn any lessons from them? More likely it won't even occur to the top people in the ECB that to make a comparison could be fruitful - in recent times the only comparative outsider at the top of English cricket (Ian MacLaurin) gave up in disgust. And one of the reasons was the cliquey, clubby insularity of the ECB board members all of whom had a vested interest in perpetuating the absurd 18 County system - a system that has so demonstrably failed to deliver.

England has yet to win a Cricket World Cup and has abjectly failed in the last couple of World Cup events. England's one-day side is easy meat for almost anybody and we have failed to create one single One Day player of true quality (the imported Kevin Pietersen is not, of course, a product of the English domestic system). In the Test arena it is not much better. Again KP is the only player we have that other countries would covet. The ECB was blinded by the successes of 2005 and was bereft of a plan to build on them. In 2005 twelve players ably led and skilfully coached worked together as a unit for a few glorious weeks and managed to make the team bigger than its collective parts. Not one player has pressed on from 2005 (KP again excepted) and the 2006/07 Ashes tour was a shameful shambles. To succeed the inspiring and clever outsider Duncan Fletcher the ECB appointed a County stalwart in Moores who has done no more than preside over decline. Michael Vaughan has walked away from this whole farrago in disgust, and who can blame him?

Back to the Olympics. The British rowers and cyclists and sailors and boxers are succeeding for a whole variety of reasons that the ECB could learn from. Well coached and motivated they also have a work ethic that would mean that they would look down with scorn on Pedallo excesses and their like. Every medal-wearing interviewee has paid tribute to his or her coach - and every coach has paid tribute to the efforts of their charges. That's why they win. There are no distractions like phoney dollar-spinning frolics in the Caribbean to look forward to - "just" the honour or representing your country. Compare that with, say, Steve Harmison telling England that he would personally pick and choose the games that he would appear in. And the ECB cravenly going along with this.

But it does, as things so often do in sport, also come back to money. Whilst the ECB squanders its substantial resources from TV rights and ticket sales by handing them to 18 counties these very counties are in return contemptuous of the needs of England cricket in their selfish pursuit of spurious glory. So what if half a County team (or more) is not even English - that's better than the Arsenal isn't it? Can you imagine the British Olympic Association funding the development of athletes who are going to appear for another country and compete against Britain? Of course not. Then why do we tolerate this in English second tier cricket? It's amateur and insular and run by ignorant men with narrow vision. Thank God for the Olympics.

What's wrong with England cricket ?

2008-07-23T07:52:00.002+01:00

I am amazed how the bloggers on the blogosphere, including some that should know better, think that England's problem is one of selection. They roll out their tired old diatribes about the inadequacies of one player or another and then honour us with their XI, as if they have some extraordinary insights denied to mere mortals (like the Selectors, for example). The twenty or so cricketers in the frame for England at the moment are all decent cricketers and you should be able to perm any eleven from the twenty and get a side that will win you matches - even against the toughest opposition. So why don't we win?

The answer is to do with leadership and motivation, pride and cojones (or the lack of them). Under Duncan Fletcher and Michael Vaughan twelve players (all of whom, bar Trescothick, are still in the frame by the way) fought like tigers and played, at times, like Kings. They built a relationship with the spectators in the packed grounds and vicariously via the media with millions around the country. Every over, every session, every day and every match mattered to every single one of them. Each player did what he was best at and every player fought like hell to support his team-mates. When Geraint Jones had a few problems at Trent Bridge an interviewer asked Fred Flintoff whether there were doubts about Jones - "Not in our dressing room there aren't" he said.

The focus, the pride, the ambition, the courage, the flair and the style (day one at Edgbaston for example) of England in 2005 was quintessentially Australian! England out-Ozzed the Aussies over those glorious weeks. Roll forward to today and a squad made up of broadly the same (or the same type) of players under the same Captain is nowhere. Outplayed in every department at Headingley and out-battled by a cojones-full Saffer side at Lord's. Was the Second Test eleven that much worse than England 2005? I don't think so. Cook is a different player to Trescothick but no less talented. Monty is a better bowler than Gilo. Ambrose looks to be as good as Jones. Anderson, on his day, is on par with Simon Jones. And so on. Nothing much wrong with the selection of the England sides in the first two Test matches in my opinion - quality players all (I leave out Pattinson whose selection was an aberration which hopefully won't be repeated).

So what's wrong? Well lets start with the ECB and their unspeakable head Giles Clarke. Clarke has his eye not on the ball of creating an environment within which England cricket prospers but solely on the main chance of $$$$. The Stanford deal is an obscenity with no cricketing justification whatsoever. I for one don't begrudge the players their chance to get rich. But not like this. Inevitably every England squad player will have at least part of his mind on Antigua, and when a part of your mind is distracted then you are sub-optimally using the rest. Even Michael Vaughan, no Twenty20 star he, started to play a bit of Twenty20 almost as soon as the Stanford deal emerged. I don't blame him for that, but it was a distraction that our Test Captain could have done without. So Clarke, and his sidekick Collier, instead of focusing on a challenging series of international matches that really matter, home and away, spent their time trying to screw as much money out of cricket as possible whilst keeping the counties happy. They would have been better advised to read William Buckland's "Pommies" which brilliantly gets to the truth of what is wrong with English cricket and suggests that we need to be more Australian, not just in style and ambition, but in our domestic structure as well. I agree.

I am unimpressed by Peter Moores who seems far too much of a county insider to me. Fletcher had some county experience that he used shrewdly, but he was a winner because he wasn't hidebound to the so-called traditions of English cricket at all. And, glum old bugger that he could sometimes be, he built a partnership with Michael Vaughn and the other senior players in the squad which won The Ashes. Not a bad model!

So what to do? Firstly try and get Clarke and Collier to focus on the real job in hand - or get rid of them if they can't. Second get rid of Moores - he looks like a loser and that rubs off on the side - and get a foreign coach of real quality (welcome back Rod Marsh?). Third select a squad of the best twenty cricketers in England with a balance of youth and experience (welcome back Ramps) and every single one of whom can play cricket in any of the three forms of the game. Work with this squad in every which way - boot camps not excluded if that is what the coach thinks will help! Fourth get rid of the selectors. Give your new top coach full control over selection - aided by a small team of experienced talent spotters if you like - but make the coach an Alex Ferguson or an Arsène Wenger. Finally make Michael Vaughan the Ricky Ponting of England - captain of all the England sides in any form of the game and the honoured, trusted and respected leader.

Beijing 2008 - Count me out

2008-07-10T08:45:00.004+01:00

For four years in the late 1980s I lived and worked in Hong Kong – it was an exciting time. Hong Kong’s political future had been decided by the signing of the Joint Declaration with China in December 1984 and the Territory would revert to Chinese sovereignty with effect from 1st July 1997. But although that deal had been signed and sealed the future for the around 5 million people of Hong Kong was far from certain. Among the professional and business classes there was an imperative to secure citizenship of a safe haven country such as Australia or Canada, mainly as an insurance policy in case all went belly up after the handover. You could understand the concern – whilst some changes were underway in China it was still a largely closed country with aged autocratic leaders and not even the smallest semblance of an elective democracy. It was also still very economically backward, although change, especially in the cities, was gradually gathering momentum. The fear for the Hong Kong people, many of whom were themselves escapees from Communist China in the years after the revolution of 1949, was the insanities of Mao’s “Cultural revolution” would one day return – and that Hong Kong would not be able to escape the impact as a sovereign part of the People’s Republic.

For a couple of years I travelled frequently into China and especially to the Capital Beijing. Progress was underway – smart new hotels were being built and western businesses were scurrying around like bees round a honey pot. The attraction, of course, was China’s principal resource – a potential workforce of over a billion people which was both a massively attractive market in the long term as well as a source of cheap labour for multinational manufactures. Form 1986 to early 1989 I found it stimulating, if at times a little bizarre and frustrating, to be watching the changes underway and to be working with mostly quite young people who were the drivers of this change. Amongst the many things I did at the time was to make a TV documentary with China Television which I fronted in vision – it was shown on prime time TV and had an audience of over 300million – a humbling and sobering thought!

Whilst the most visible signs of change were the gradual presence of western brands on display in the cities there was also a very tangible change in expectations amongst the young people that I met and worked with. True their main hope was that they would be able to accrue personal wealth as the moribund and arthritic pillars of the centrally planned “Marxist” economy began to be dismantled. Suddenly it was OK to aspire to be rich. But whilst the main ambition was to become as wealthy as their contemporaries across the border in Hong Kong, and to be able to create a life of comfort for their families, many of the young people I met also believed fervently that China needed to change politically as well. The two underling necessities were for the gerontocracy to fade away and for democratic processes gradually to be introduced. There was admiration of the West not just for our riches but also for our freedoms. Indeed the two aspects of a modern society – a social democratic system which was essentially capitalist at its core was seen only to be possible if there was a representative democratic system in existence in parallel. Capitalism was the most successful economic system yet developed by mankind – but absolute laisser-faire was not desirable. There had to be checks and balances to prevent exploitation and corruption – and to allow a measure of all joining in and benefiting from the earnings from growth.

Freedom of expression was at the heart of the necessary changes that the young people I met were seeking. And looking at the rest of the world it was an almost irrefutable fact that freedom of expression, including freedom of the media, was a necessary condition for economic change. So in early 1989 when I went to Beijing I found a gathering hope on the part of many of the young Chinese I came into contact with for a raft of changes in their country –political as well as economic. Incidentally it is important to stress that the people I me were not students – they were young people, often very well educated, in business and the media. In mid April these aspirations tuned into action when pro democracy protesters started to gather in and around Tiananmen Square in Beijing. The following week I was in the City and visiting the offices of China Television in connection with the film that we were making with them. In the Square that week the numbers reached around 50,000 – an impressive and moving site and amongst them were many of the young people that I had got to know over the previous two years or so.. Back in my hotel I tuned into CNN to see what the rest of the world was saying about what I could see with my own eyes. But every time the CNN presenter said “And now China” the screen went blank and the sound went away – only to return a few minutes later when the China story had finished – censorship in action and the first time that I had experienced it and very chilling it was! At the end of that dramatic week I flew back to Hong Kong – I was never to return to China that year and I have never been back since.

At the end of May Chinese troops began to mass around Tiananmen Square and on June 3rd they moved in. The death toll from the action remains a State secret but probably a thousand or more protesters and some soldiers died on those fateful days. I never knew how many, if any, of the dead or wounded were young people that I had got to know. But what I did know was that something indescribably evil had happened and although my own connection with the events was tenuous I had been in Beijing and in Tiananmen Square at a fateful time, and I would never forget it.

Since 1989 we have all witnessed the economic miracle that is modern China and thousands of Chinese and no small number of westerners as well, have become very rich indeed on the back of China’s wholehearted embrace of capitalism. But whilst the pursuit of wealth goes on almost untrammelled and western companies exploit the Chinese market and benefit, as they had hoped, from the low labour costs of Chinese workers, there has been little or no change in the repressive political system that operates in this autocratic dictatorship. Nearly twenty years after Tiananmen China remains a tightly controlled one-party and totalitarian State in all areas of life, except the economic. Human Rights abuses are endemic and, externally, state inspired Chinese imperialism keeps Tibet firmly under their thumb and state-inspired capitalist imperatives lead Chinese companies to operate anywhere that money is to be made irrespective of the Human Rights implications and ignoring sanctions – Sudan just one example of this .

Back in 1936 another totalitarian State used an Olympic Games to demonstrate their power and promote their nationalism and their ambition. At the time Avery Brundage, President of the American Olympic Committee was against the boycott, stating that he believed that politics played no role in sports, and they should be considered two different entities during Hitler’s Olympics. 72 years on the same solecisms are being spluttered by Olympians and Politicians alike who expect us to go to Beijing to celebrate a Games in a country, which like Nazi Germany back in 1936, has no respect at all for the values that are supposed to underpin the Olympic movement. One of these values is “Cooperation with public and private organisations to place sport at the service of mankind”. In Beijing, as in Berlin, the IOC is placing sport at the benefit not of mankind but of a evil totalitarian regime some of whom were directly involved in Tiananmen and all of whom cover up to this day what really happened. Count me out.

© Paddy Briggs July 2008