Enjoy the 800 Murali - and prepare for disappointment !

"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

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!

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 ?

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

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

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?

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!

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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

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"

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...

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

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

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?

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

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!

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

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!