Wko killed England Cricket?

Who killed England Cricket?

I, said the Aussie Quick,

with my fearsome pace,

I killed England Cricket.

Who saw him die?

I, said the Barmy,

with my little eye,

I saw him die.

Who gave up his Ashes?

I, said the Cook,

with my doleful look

I gave up The Ashes.

Who'll make the shroud?

I, said the Media,

with my caustic words,

I'll make the shroud.

Who'll dig his grave?

I, said the Public,

when I stay away,

I'll dig his grave.

Who'll be the parson?

I, said Sir Geoffrey,

with my rhubarb stick,

I'll be the parson.

Who'll be the Clarke?

I, said the Giles,

if it's not my fault,

I'll be the Clarke.

Who'll carry the can?

You will dear KP,

It was all your fault 

So you'll carry the can.

Who'll be chief mourner?

We will, said us all,

Mourning for our past

We'll be chief mourner.

Who'll carry the coffin?

I will, said the bag man,

through the lonely night,

I'll carry the coffin.

Who'll bear the pall?

We, said the Fans,

A forgotten tribe,

We'll bear the pall.

Who'll sing a psalm?

I, said the Tenor,

as did his feet..,

He'll sing a psalm.

Who'll toll the Bell?

I said little Ian,

I'll cut out the  pull,

I'll toll the Bell.

All the birds of the air

fell a-sighing and a-sobbing,

when they heard the bell toll

for poor England Cricket.

It's not Kevin Pietersen who changed....a look back to 2005

Back in April 2005, just before that glorious cricketing summer when Kevin Pietersen made his Test debut and helped England regain The Ashes, "The Cricketer" magazine ran a profile of KP by Emma John. I have returned to it nine years on and, in the light of Pietersen's career and a few months after his precipitate sacking by the apparatchiks of the ECB, it makes interesting reading. 

In early 2005 KP made his debut as an England cricketer in One Day Internationals in a tour of South Africa. He played six innings scoring 454 runs with three centuries and one fifty. Richard Hobson described his performances as revealing that he “thrives on a challenge” – in this early case the boos and stares from the players and supporters of South Africa who felt, understandably, that Pietersen had abandoned them. This was a view by many in or close to the world of cricket. Peter Oborne, biographer of Basil D’Oliveira and a journalist who always speaks his mind, summed up a commonly held view: “Pietersen ought to be a proud member of the post-Apartheid South African team and helping the country of his birth. Instead he’s barged into an England team where he doesn’t belong” he wrote at that time in the London “Evening Standard”.

Emma John met with Pietersen and found, unsurprisingly, that he was no shy retiring violet! “I’m a good-looking lad,” he told her, “I can pull anything off, Eh?” He was referring to his highlighted hair but he could have been talking about his personality – perhaps he was! In the interview it is clear that KP and his agent Adam Wheatley were very consciously building the Pietersen brand. It’s about the hairstyle, the clothes and the media exposure. He was not the first cricketer to do this, but to do it from the start and before he had even played a Test match was certainly new! 

At the ODI in Johannesburg Pietersen had shepherded England to a Duckworth/Lewis victory. He said this about it “I think that innings [of 22 not out] was one of the biggest I’ll probably play in International cricket. It just helped me settle down…35,000 people are booing you, every single person wants you out, every single person hates you.” This was a revealing insight into KP’s character. He found the opposition motivating not the reverse. He was, even then in those early days, determined to beat the system. And if there are some casualties along the way he’s not going to be too bothered. Tanya Aldred, writing in The Guardian, had said that Pietersen “…has a record of pissing people off. Jason Gallian, his captain at Nottinghamshire, threw his kit bag out of the window. His team-mates did not shed many tears when he left to go to Hampshire for the forthcoming season.” 

Emma John asked KP to explain his method, which was unusual for an English player developed as it had been in South African conditions. He said “In one-day cricket you have to be able to hit a ball into three different areas at once…I open up the off-side, I go down the ground, I open up the leg-side and I try to make sure I get a run a ball… My style doesn’t change” He said, however, that in Test cricket “…I won’t have to hit the ball through the leg-side all the time. There’ll be more scoring options all over”. Amazing confidence from someone who was yet to play a Test match!

This confidence Emma John describes thus “Listening to him, you cannot avoid the force of his self-confidence, as a fly cannot avoid a windscreen…He reminds me of a teenager, keen to appear grown-up and savvy but unable to hide his excitement” She asks KP whether he has any doubts “He looks almost surprised to hear the word… “I think cricket is a big-time confidence game and I don’t think I’ve got any doubts at the minute…” he says” 

Emma John wrote that Kevin Pietersen’s “…self assurance, along with the accent, is probably one of the most un-British things about him”. This is a view which in the light of recent events and especially in the context of England’s current struggles is very revealing. Over KP’s England career we became used to his extraordinary bravado. Sometimes it let him down of course. But so often it led to his playing an extraordinary innings which helped lead England to victory.” In 2005 Simon Briggs wrote this “[Pietersen] is a very independent character, as anyone who ups sticks and moves to the other side of the world is always likely to be”. England’s selectors must have known what they were doing when they picked him, warts and all, for his first Test match at Lord’s in that Ashes summer. He scored 57 and 64* and followed that with 71 in the first innings at Edgbaston… the rest is history. 

Kevin Pietersen’s “…cricket is a big-time confidence game” was a precociously accurate remark. England’s recent sad decline is not because they don’t have talented cricketers any more - it is because the experienced cricketers have lost their confidence. Look at how the batsmen new to Test cricket, Sam Robson, Gary Balance, Joe Root and Moeen Ali have all scored centuries recently whilst the established stars, Alastair Cook, Ian Bell, Matt Prior (etc.) have struggled. And some. And look how Cook’s pedestrian and cautious captaincy has all too often failed. Maybe like Kevin Pietersen back in 2005 the tyros don’t know how difficult Test cricket is! The air of gloom around the England camp during The 2013/14 Ashes and subsequently is palpable. I suspect that on tour KP tried to relieve the gloom in his own cocky way – and as a result fell foul of the Flower/Cook axis. They chose to see his behaviour as arrogance or disinterest. But the evidence from back in the spring of 2005 is that Pietersen, the Voortrekker made Pom, was never going to be the introspective English public-schoolboy that the England and Wales Cricket Board now sees as proper leadership material. And good captains, especially Michael Vaughan in 2005, knew that KP was a bit wayward and could be a trial sometimes. In the same way that Mike Brearley got the best out of Ian Botham back in 1981 so Vaughan got the best out of Kevin Pietersen in 2005. By 2013 KP was a highly experienced as well as a talented cricketer. If there was some falling off in his performance surely that could be seen as temporary. And if he was sometimes a pain in the arse on that Ashes tour – well it wouldn’t have been the first time! 

How odd and revealing it was that when the most significant thing that was missing from England’s performances on tour and in the run up to the 2014 season was confidence that the ECB chose to dispense with the services of England’s most confident player! All the signs of Pietersen’s character were there back in 2005 and you have to say he didn’t really change much over time. What changed was the willingness on the part of the cricket authorities to cope with this unusual talent. Shame on them.

Cook should go - but it's the head of the rotten fish that is England cricket that is really responsible for failure.

"I have never been a quitter. To leave office before my term is completed is abhorrent to every instinct in my body" so said Richard Milhouse Nixon in his resignation speech. He had held on to the bitter end and it wasn't pretty to watch. Alastair Cook's attempt to hang on to offce as England's cricket captain is in the same vein. Not quite as portentous, perhaps, but equally distressing. Nixon was a shit. Cook self-evidently is not. And therein lies the rub. Most of us - the unpleasant Piers Morgan aside - like Cook and want him to succeed. But he isn't succeeding either as a batsman or as a captain. Only his stubbornness and the embarrassment of the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) could combine to keep him in office any longer.

The ECB nailed their pro Cook colours to the mast in no uncertain terms at the time of the sacking of Kevin Pietersen:

"... the England team needs to rebuild after the whitewash in Australia. To do that we must invest in our captain Alastair Cook and we must support him in creating a culture in which we can be confident he will have the full support of all players, with everyone pulling in the same direction and able to trust each other."

This was I think an unparalleled statement in the history of sport. It effectively said that the failure in Australia was not due to poor performances and leadership but to the absence of a supporting culture in the dressing room. Those of us watching from a distance saw only the lousy batting, the dreadful bowling, the shaky fielding and the scramble-minded leadership. We saw a senior player, Graeme Swann, walk away from the tour halfway through when he saw his poor form likely leading to his being dropped. He didn't stay on to encourage the squad, which he easily could have, but did a runner. We saw another senior player, Trott, also leave the tour when the stress became too much for him. And so on. The leaders of that tour, the hapless Andy Flower and the introspectively inadequate Alastair Cook, were not blamed for the debacle. True Flower left having tried to hang on to his job, but he was kicked upstairs into a specially created and no doubt well paid sinecure at the ECB.

The "villain" of the piece post Ashes was Kevin Pietersen. England's leading batsman on the tour (not saying much, but true nevertheless) was the scapegoat for the failure. Here is not the place to revisit the Pietersen saga but it is right to point out that subsequent to Pietersen's dismissal, at home, and against much weaker opposition, England has performed almost as badly without him as they did in Australia with him. Clear evidence that it was not Kevin that was the problem, awkward sod that he sometimes was ! No, the problem is leadership.

In his seminal work "The Art of Captaincy" Mike Brearley said "... A leader or manager in any field, including sport, has to be able and willing to take in and think about the anxiety of those who work in the team."  The principal cause for anxiety in sport is failure, or expected failure. Trott and Swann reacted to anxiety by leaving the Ashes tour. Kevin Pietersen, allegedly, by behaving rather immaturely. And Flower and Cook ( no doubt aided and abetted by Graham Gooch and others) by mouthing platitudes about hard work. In a team sport there is double anxiety. Worry about individual performance and worry about the team. And when you are captain this is compounded. Anxiety for the captain in cricket comes because he is responsible, more than in any other sport, for the team's performance. And not just on the field. On the final day of the Lord's Test against India England in the shape of Joe Root and Moeen Ali batted responsibly for two hours, though Ali fell to the final ball of the morning. After lunch England batted like headless chickens and were rolled over playing dreadful shots. What happened in the lunch break? Did the captain tell the remaining players to ignore the Root/Ali approach and attack the bowling as if it was a T20 run chase?  Or did he say nothing at all and leave it to the batsmen to "express themselves"? Who knows?

After England's defeat in the fourth Ashes Test at Melbourne last December Alastair Cook was questioned by the media about his position as captain. This is a typical report after that press conference:

Cook made it clear he is no quitter, but understands judgments about his future as captain - little more than a year into his tenure - may yet be taken out of his hands. "I'm 100 per cent wanting to carry on. If someone makes that decision, and says 'we think there's a better man' or 'you're not good enough to do it' then I have to take that on the chin - because as a captain, you're responsible for the team."

That report is I think interesting in hindsight. Was it a cry for help from Cook in which, like Nixon, he said that he wasn't a quitter but that, also like Nixon, the decision was out of his hands? Public pressure and the threat of impeachment eventually dragged Nixon, kicking and screaming, from the Oval Office. Was Alastair Cook at Melbourne revealing that deep down he knew the game was up. That he expected to be sacked after the tour? And that deep down he probably thought that it would be right if it happened? If so the failure of leadership is not, subsequently, his failure but that of his masters in the ECB. If so Cook whilst sticking to the "I'm not a quitter" meme,  would probably have understood it if he had been sacked - and would probably been relieved that it had happened. The ECB had the chance to relieve Cook of a job for which he was unsuited and at the same time let him concentrate on his role as an opening batsman for which he most certainly was suited - and at which he had a proven track record.

The guilty party in this saga is the England and Wales Cricket Board. Their Chief Executive, David Collier, has recently resigned - the reasons for this are unclear and whether it is a reaction to recent failure I don't know - probably not. Mike Brearley in his great book tells the story of how he received a letter which said "There is an old Italian proverb: if you want to know that a fish is bad, look at its head". Well the head of the ECB is not David Collier, a capable apparatchik, but the Chairman Giles Clarke. The man who brought you Stanford. The man who took all live cricket off free-to-air television. The man who brought you £100+ Test Match tickets at Lord's, and plenty more. He's the head of the rotten fish that is English cricket - the man who takes all the decisions. (And the man who has conspired with the Board of a Control of a Cricket in India to take charge of world cricket - but that's another, and disreputable, story).

The non-quitting Alastair Cook stumbles on with personal and team failure compounding with every match. And the ECB is largely powerless to do anything about it because of their preposterous statement about "investing" in him and about "culture". "Loss of face" is not just something just from the East but alive and well at Lord's. As cricket fans we have no voice. We all like Cooky, but we all think that the time for him to go as captain is long overdue. Giles Clarke is in a corner but he's been there so often in the past that he'll escape. And English cricket will again suffer from his mountainous ego.

Sledging is "unfair play" - the umpires must stop it.

Sledging is an admission of failure. It says that we can't win within the laws of the game of cricket or by our own skills and effort. So we'll play "mind games" and try and get the batsman out by abusing and mocking him. I don't care that sledging is as old as the game. It is wrong. I don't care that some see it just as "banter" and a legitimate tactic or that it is part of the fanciful nonsense that is "mental disintegration". It is still wrong. In no other sport is it acceptable personally to abuse an opponent. And cricket is the sport that congratulates itself about its "Spirit" - abject nonsense.

So if Jimmy Anderson is a serial Sledger that reduces him in my mind as a cricketer and a man. And if this led to the altercation with Ravindran Jadeja at Trent Bridge then it is most regrettable. Jimmy is a fine bowler - and as we saw at Trent Bridge no mean batsman either. He is a brilliant fielder in any position. When fit, which he mostly is, he has to be the first name on any England team sheet. He doesn't need to sledge and it's about time he stopped it. And he shouldn't put fuel on the smouldering fire which is England/India team relations. Play hard, but play fair - and verbally abusing your opponents just ain't fair. 

It's not that sledging offends the "Spirit of Cricket" that we should oppose it. The "Spirit" has long since been the fictional fantasy of men in blazers of a certain age. They preen and posture and often hide behind a concept which is largely ignored by players and administrators alike. The Laws of Cricket have long been sufficiently clear that unfair play is unlawful. Let's agree that unfair play indisputably includes sledging. And let's give the Umpire Yellow and Red cards to use when a player, in their sole judgment, offends. 

Our domestic cricket system doesn't produce quality Off-break bowlers any more. Why?

It used to be only wrist spinners we couldn't produce, but now we can't produce any spinners at all it seems. A couple of slow left armers - one (Monty) who is putting himself out of contention and another, Kerrigan, whose form is patchy and who couldn't hack it at all when given a chance last year. 

We once had a decent Off-break bowling tradition. Laker, Mortimer, Allen, Titmus, Illingworth..... Most counties had at least one decent Offie. Now? Some bloke from Kent who isn't ready but has replaced another bloke from Kent who they no longer pick. Let's do some maths. There are 20 or so Counties and University sides each with a player catchment zone of say 50 players (Squad, 2nd XI, Youth, top clubs). That's 1000 players. Add in the Minor Counties and you have what - another few hundred? And all this hasn't produced even one credible successor to Graeme Swann! Why? And which heads should role? 

Alastair Cook could learn from Mike Denness

Sport can be brutally cruel at times. It is the flip side of the joy of the winner - the grief of the loser. The penalty miss in the shoot out. The broken gearbox in a Grand Prix. And the depression of the batsman when he gets out - again - for a low score in a Test match. For cricket is so exposed. The long walk to the crease and the even longer walk back. In front of 15,000 people with the dressing room full of your mates who will look down when you enter and avoid eye contact because they are embarrassed for you. And that is where Alastair Cook is, and has been for what seems a long time.

Cook failed again at Trent Bridge. On a flat batter's wicket he contrived to find another way to get out, bowled off his thigh pad. When a sportsman of quality loses form we tend to grab at the cliché that "Form is temporary, Class is permanent" - and of course that is true. But that doesn't explain the loss of form - it just acknowledges the hope that it won't last. Well sometimes it can last a very long time! Take the Tottenham Hotspur and Spain striker Roberto Soldado. At top Spanish Club Valencia over three seasons he scored a goal in 50% of his games. At Tottenham last season he made 28 appearances and scored only six times - solid from the penalty spot, hopeless from open play. The number of times he got the ball in a scoring position and blasted it over the bar became almost comical (not if you're a fan it didn't of course!). 

As fans we don't want sportsman to fail, and in that, I think, lies part of the problem. When Cook came out to bat yesterday there was not one England fan at Trent Bridge who wished him anything but well - and therein lies the rub. We were tense, it was tangible, and it must have communicated itself to Cook. And he was tense. He knew the truth - he was only opening for England in this Test match because he was captain. Any other player in his sort of trough of performance would have been dropped - ask Nick Compton about that! It's an unforgiving world. 

Beyond the fact that he is captain Alastair Cook is the shining white hope for the recovery of England cricket from the disaster of The Ashes. When the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) decided to sack Kevin Pietersen this s what they said:

"The England team needs to rebuild after the whitewash in Australia. To do that we must invest in our captain Alastair Cook and we must support him in creating a culture in which we can be confident he will have the full support of all players, with everyone pulling in the same direction and able to trust each other."

This is not an equivocal statement. Cook was to be the hero, and KP the discarded villain. The ECB was choosing to "invest" in Alastair Cook who would create a "culture" of support. It doesn't actually mention winning matches, just being a jolly bunch. It is presumed, I assume, that winning will result if the team is happy. Well England has now gone nine Test matches without a win (including the one underway which will be at best a draw). This is some way behind the woeful 18 matches under Mike Gatting from January 1987 to August 1988 but it's halfway there. The discarding of Pietersen may have improved dressing room morale (has it?) but we are yet to see that in results, though it's early days in the new era to be fair.

Another sporting cliché that is being aired at the moment is that winning is addictive. Winning teams are more likely to win their next match than losing teams. If you think you will win you probably will. The reverse also applies - at team level but absolutely at the level of the individual. Soldado must have felt that his goal scoring touch had deserted him last season. And he expected not to score. So he didn't. Even when a one-legged striker would have. Alastair Cook won't admit it, he's too proud too, but he expects to fail. So he does. In calendar year 2014 he has played seven Test innings scoring 97 runs at an average of 13.8. His confidence is shot. You can see it in his body language. And what sort of "culture" does the captain's continued failure create in the dressing room. Supportive, no doubt, but I don't think rallying round a failing batsmen who continues to fail was what the ECB had in mind.

Back in 1974/5 the estimable Mike Denness dropped himself for one match after a short run of failed performances when captain of England. He returned and scored a match-winning 188 in his comeback match. It was a gutsy thing to do and a classic, and rewarded, action by that most decent of men. Cook is a decent man as well but my guess is that the ECB hierarchy would do everything in their considerable power to stop him from taking a break. Not because he is not the best man to open for England at the moment (he self-evidently isn't) but because they have openly "invested" in him as the main thrust of their strategy for the future. And because they (the ECB suits) would lose so much face if Cook walked away - even temporarily.

Sport is cruel and Alastair Cook is suffering at the moment. It is sad to watch. Maybe all will come right in England's second innings at Trent Bridge. But if it doesn't there is a strong case for Cook immediately to take a breather from international cricket. He IS a classy player - his overall record is beyond dispute. But he needs time away from the spotlight to recover his self-confidence and his form. Mike Denness showed him the way.

The unusual use of the Passive Voice in Luis Suarez's statement.

This is Luis Suarez's apology. The key phrase is:

"..,the truth is that my colleague (sic) Giorgio Chiellini suffered the physical result of a bite in the collision he suffered with me."

The technical term for this type of phrasing is the Passive Voice. In the passive voice, the subject of the sentence is neither a do-er or a be-er, but is acted upon by some other agent or by something unnamed. The subject (Chiellini) "suffered...a bite". Had Suarez used the Active Voice he would have said something like "I bit Chiellini". 

Obviously even the use of the Passive Vpice is an admission of responsibility because if Chiellini was bitten, and Suarez says he was, there is only one person who could have done it!

The Passive Voice is often used in apologies. So we hear "I'm sorry if anyone was offended"  rather than the Active "I'm sorry if I offended anyone". It's a sort of watered down apology. The use here is rather bizarre - maybe it happened in the translation. The "I deeply regret what occurred" is also a bit less powerful in that it regrets the incident rather regretting that he caused it. 

A lifetime ban on Luis Suárez is the only penalty

Those of us who follow sport closely are rarely surprised by dysfunctional sporting behaviour. There is hardly a sport, certainly a professional one, where cheating, abuse, gamesmanship and other excesses don't rear their heads from time to time. And some sportsmen (its usually men) seem particularly prone to misbehaviour. But nothing, absolutely nothing, can compare with the Uruguay and Liverpool striker Luis Alberto Suárez Díaz .

On the pitch Suárez is part genius and part villain. Not a warm and cuddly villain either – the flawed genius who sometimes misbehaves. This is a man who does things that even the worst offenders over the years would never have done. When he dives (and he dives!) it is with a cheat’s insouciance . When he fouls another player it is the same. Yellow and Red cards galore. Other players do this of course but not many also indulge in racial abuse of another player (as Suárez did with Patrice Evra for which he was banned for eight games). And none has been banned (for ten games) for biting an opponent as Suárez was after he attacked the Chelsea player Branislav Ivanovic. Astonishingly Suárez had previous as a biter – when he was with the Dutch team Ajax he bit PSV's Otman Bakkal on the shoulder an offence for which he was banned for seven games. And now he's done it again. The bite on Giorgio Chiellini of Italy was blatant assault. No excuses can be made – certainly not by or for a man who has twice been banned for similar offences. That is was perpetrated on the large stage of the Football World Cup means that there is nobody in the world of football can now doubt (if they did before) that Luis Suárez , talented footballer though he is, has no place in the game. A lifetime ban is the only penalty that can be applied – and if the Brazilian authorities charge Suárez with assault as well that would only be justice and what he deserves.

 

Thoughts on the mind games of cricket and the "Mankad"

Cricket is a funny old game! Like most sports at the top of the professional game it can be a metaphor for life. The battles. The ambition to succeed. The tricks. The highs. The lows. The scope for individual triumph. The benefits of teamwork. The moments of glory. The moments of pain, and so on. I have been pondering the reasons why cricketers seem uniquely vulnerable and susceptible to mental illness and I think that I may have worked it out. Every top player is minutely under the spotlight and his failure at any one moment is difficult to recover. Other sports have this to some extent of course - the missed penalty, the missed putt - but cricket has it potentially for every ball. The batsman, say, gets out first ball to a dreadful shot. He has to endure the long, lonely walk back to the Pavilion -  if he's lucky in silence if not to jeers. The bowler bowls the first ball of a crucial Test match to second slip! Or has a debut of such abject quality that he never gets picked again. The dropped catch. The sloppy fielding moment. The failure to come to terms with an opponent's sledging. 

Steve Waugh called the process of breaking an opponent down "mental disintegration":

'In international competition everyone is talented and fit and has natural ability, but the one who wins is the one who can focus on the job at hand and play the mind game the best.'

That is true of cricket but much less so in other sports. At least in so far as to "play the mind game" means not just building your own confidence but breaking that of the members of the opposing team. Jonathan Trott was seen as being vulnerable and was targeted by the Australians  in the recent Ashes tour and we all know what that led to. Can you imagine a professional golfer in a play-off for a "Major" verbally abusing his opponent? But that is what happens in cricket all the time. It was a crucial element of Waugh's career and of course of that of Shane Warne. 

The preposterous "Spirit of Cricket" doesn't help at all and in fact it adds another unnecessary layer of pressure. I have argued consistently that the whole concept is pretentious flimflam - beloved though it is by men in suits of a certain age for whom Lord's is home. So the recent " Mankad" of Jos Buttler by Sachithra Senanayake, though a perfectly legitimate dismissal under the rules of the game, launches an avalanche of criticism. For some slightly obscure reason while the running out or stumping of a batsman who strays from or doesn't make the crease is wholly uncontentious if that happens at the bowling end in the "Mankad" circumstances it is seen as not quite the right thing to do. Very odd! Either it is within the Laws or it is not (it is by the way). In which case why put it into some grey area of doubt? The bowler in this recent instance "warned" the batsman earlier. He only did this because he knew that this type of dismissal would be seen as not quite proper. Would a wicket-keeper warn a batsman who strayed from his crease when batting? Of course not.

Cricket is not uniquely honourable over and above other sports - indeed in many ways, as with sledging, it is uniquely dishonourable. There should be no grey areas. Either a "Mankad" is a legitimate dismissal or it is not. If it is then to effect it should be applauded in the same way as we applaud a good catch, or a good runout or a good ball which smashes the stumps. 

Downton blows it early doors - the ECB won't like that !

Writing in the Daily Telegraph today Nick Hoult says "As  a man who spent many years working in the corporate world in the city it is a surprise Downton has landed himself in trouble with lawyers."

Not really - in my experience. Most people in the Financial sector are not involved in making public statements about anything. A small minority work in PR or have to front up in public because of the seniority of their positions at the top of firms but I don't think that Downton fell into either category. His error was a communications error. He said the wrong thing. It was naivety in a media interview that caused the problem. 

The surprising thing is that the ECB is notorious for its control freakery! The reason that most statements and interviews are so bland and predictable is that coaches, captains and players are told  what to say. The ECB always controls the message. Downton has had ample time to go through the Board's extensive media training programme with its mock interviews and its copious instruction on how not to answer a question! Indeed it is arguable that Media Relations is one of the key requirements of the job Downton was appointed to.

Most of us assumed that Downton's more open response to Jonathan Agnew's questions about Pietersen was a deliberate policy on the part of the ECB to say more about the affair in response to criticism. It seems not and that he was winging it! Messrs Clarke and Collier won't like that one bit! Not least because of all the jobs in the ECB  hierarchy this job was the one most concerned with media relations. First up Downton, I'm afraid, has blown it.

A very odd season for Tottenham!

Even for the most long-standing and “seen it all” Spurs supporter this has been, to put it mildly, an odd season! Statistics don't tell the whole story of course but there are some odd stats which tell a lot. Spurs should finish sixth providing they avoid defeat in the final match versus Aston Villa on Sunday. This means that five teams – Man City, Liverpool, Chelsea, Arsenal and Everton will finish above Tottenham. Spurs results against these five tell a story:

Played: 10

Won: 1

Drawn: 2

Lost: 7

Goals For: 2

Goals Against: 27

Points gained: 5

Points conceded: 28

So of Spurs 67 or 69 points only 5 will have been gained against the top teams. But it is when you look at the other 28 matches that another reason for Spurs underperformance in 2013/2014 becomes clear. A top team should generally beat those teams below them at Home and avoid defeat Away. In the main this was achieved with some notable exceptions:

Home losses to Newcastle and West Ham. Away losses to Norwich and West Ham again. And draws with WBA (at home) and Hull and West Brom away. These were mostly careless results caused by defensive frailties or poor finishing. Of the 20 teams in the league Spurs scored fewer goals than seven of them and let in more than ten. This suggests a failure to score and a tendency to concede that was inconsistent with a top club.

It wasn't a disastrous seaosn – there were ten or eleven home wins to celebrate and ten away – no other team won more away games in the entire league! But what all of the above points to is still pretty depressing:

• An almost complete failure against rival top clubs (One point against Man City, Chelsea and Liverpool combined and one goal scored to 25 conceded!). 
• Some sloppy results against teams we should have beaten comfortably.

Despite this gloom I think that there is a basis of a very good team trying hard to get out! But then I always think that!

 

 

 

“A Half-Forgotten triumph, The Story of Kent’s County Championship Title of 1913”

To Kent fans of a certain age, like me, the "Golden Age" of Kent cricket means the glorious 1970s when the County Championship was won three times and there were no fewer than seven trophies in the various limited overs competitions. But earlier in the century, when the County Championship was the only game in town, Kent won it four times in eight years - 1906, 1909, 1901 and 1913. This book tells the story of the last of these triumphs - what was, as it turned out, to be Kent's last win in any competition for fifty-four years.

In 2014 we are looking back a hundred years to the start of the Great War and as we do so we will also be telling the story of 1913 - a year that was the end of an epoch in more ways than just at Kent cricket. The Edwardian era ended not with the death of Edward VII in 1910 but with the outbreak of the War in July 1914. Few among the thousands who cheered Kent's Championship win could have had any premonition that life for all was to change irrevocably less than a year later. Of those who played for or against Kent in 1913 twenty were to perish in the Great War - including Colin Blythe, one of the main architects of the victory, at Passchendaele in 1917. 1913 was, as Florian Illies called it in his extraordinary best-seller the "year before the Storm" and it is surely with this in the back of our minds that we read Moseling and Quarrington's excellent book.

The format of "A Half-Forgotten Triumph" is to take Kent's games chronologically - match by match. The research is comprehensive and there are copious quotes from contemporary reports - all of which are meticulously referenced. Along the way there are a few digressions which add colour to the text and are interesting in their own right. For example the (eventually) sad story of Albert Trott an umpire in Kent's match against the MCC, and one of the five cricketers to play Test cricket for both England and Australia in the nineteenth century, is told in a long footnote.

Just how important County cricket was at the time shines through almost every page. There were no tourists in 1913 so not only was public attention only on the County game but all of the star players took part in every match if they were fit to do so. Frank Woolley played 28 matches for Kent that season and Colin Blythe 31 - bowling 1043.1 overs and taking 160 wickets at 15.48. The opening Day ("Ladies Day") of the match versus Nottinghamshire in Canterbury Week had an attendance of over 13,000 at the St Lawrence Ground. And there were stars on view as well. Percy Fender, JWHT Douglas, Wilfred Rhodes, Gilbert Jessop, Jack Hobbs, Sydney Barnes, Herbert Strudwick, Plum Warner, Patsy Hendren... Oh for a time machine to go and see some of these in their prime! On the boundary edge there were a few great cricketing names as well - Lord Harris, the formidable Chairman of Kent's Committee, Arthur Conan Doyle a member of Tunbridge Wells CC, W.G. Grace (who needs no introduction) all make fleeting appearances.

Well we may not have a time machine but this marvellous book is the next best thing. The authors in a separate chapter called "The Social Scene" describe the cricket weeks, the wandering clubs like the Band of Brothers, the Club Balls and the many grounds at which Kent cricket was played. Did you know that there was talk in the MCC of playing a Test match at Dover? Me neither! The authors do not dig too much into the changing and problematic cricket scene that was underway at the end of that Golden Age. Derek Birley in his "A Social History of English Cricket" said that "By 1914 pressure to turn what was a gentlemen's pastime into a business had exposed the weaknesses of the [county] system" and once the nasty affair of the Great War was over this was to be revisited and eventually we were to arrive at where we are today where Mammon calls every tune. But why not slip back a century and wallow a bit in Kent's triumphant year. Were those the days? Well maybe they were - but all too briefly!

This review by Paddy Briggs first appeared in the Spring 2014 edition of "The Journal of the Cricket Society"

The strange organism that is English cricket.

English cricket is a strange organism. Administrators, players, media all break asunder and then reform into a mutual back-slapping society again. Writers who condemned players suddenly find they are their best friends again. Coaches who were sacked for failure become "special advisors" to the people who replaced them. Men who cataclysmically failed as Captains re-emerge spouting platitudes about "people feeling comfortable enough to express themselves the way they want." Administrators blame their best player and abandon him as a scapegoat. And really good cricket writers don't even mention the KP "Elephant in the room" presumably because they are forbidden from doing do. And so we bollock on, hiding our manifest failings, rewarding failure with sinecures and hoping that something will come up. 

Time for change at the top in England cricket

 

Sometimes its not the big disasters which do for leaders in sport but the accumulation of incompetences. True André Villas-Boas left Tottenham after a 0-5 drubbing at the hands of Liverpool but this was the “final straw” which followed a series of lacklustre results – the 0-3 home loss to West Ham perhaps being the nadir. So it is with England cricket. The Ashes was a disaster, and it mattered. The leaders of England cricket then got into a recriminating frenzy aimed not at themselves or the other guilty parties such as Captain Cook and Coach Flower but bizarrely at Kevin Pietersen. Through leak, innuendo and off-the-record briefing they pointed the finger at the easy target of someone who had “previous” and who was perhaps not blameless in Australia but who performed as well as any other England player on that disastrous tour (not saying a lot I know, but it says something). And whatever else KP might have done he did not quit the tour half way through!

Since Pietersen last played for his country in the Sydney Test match England has now played 18 matches in the two limited overs formats. The record is 13 losses and 5 wins. The losses include against Australia, the West Indies, New Zealand, South Africa and now, humiliatingly, The Netherlands. This rather suggests that KP’s departure from the team has made things worse not better! At the end of the match against the Dutch Jonathan Agnew put it clearly:

"What a shambolic end to a shambolic performance to end a shambolic winter.There really are some questions to be answered here. Realistically, can they give the job to Ashley Giles now?"

Giles himself said this:

“It's disappointing and embarrassing There has to be a certain amount of complacency…there can be nothing else for it…all we can do is apologise and to the people watching at home.”

If the team was complacent then it is Giles who must take the can. It’s unlucky if, like Tim Sherwood at Spurs, you're the wrong man in the wrong job at the wrong time. Neither man has really cut his teeth at the highest level and each was pitched into a job ill-prepared for it.  

Something is profoundly rotten in the realm of England cricket (it is at Tottenham as well – but that's another story!). The England management style from the top is full of control-freakery which constricts rather than liberates coaches and players. The cynical making of Kevin Pietersen the scapegoat for The Ashes disaster was wrong in every way – not least because it distracted England from the job in hand. Which was to try and recover some form and some dignity.

The England “plan” followed over the past few years has been to throw money at the problem. The best paid cricketers in the world (IPL aside). A team of support staff which outnumbered the playing squad. The men who oversaw this project were ECB Chairman Giles Clarke and CEO David Collier – both covered with Teflon and still in their jobs!

We lost “The Ashes” because an ill-chosen, badly coached, incompetently-captained and rather arrogant and unpleasant team were outfought, out thought and (yes) out-sledged by Australia - and they have been unable to recover since. Giles Clarke and David Collier bear the ultimate responsibility for England's shambolic and continuing fall from grace. Once Clarke had sacked Andy Flower (not unreasonably) he then ducked the obvious next step which was to sack Alastair Cook as well. Instead he chose to say that Cook, clearly part of the problem, will lead the recovery! And to suggest that Cook's failure was in some way attributable not to his own self-evident inadequacies as a Captain but to Kevin Pietersen is characteristic Clarke mendacity. Pietersen is generally liked by the younger fans who cricket needs for the future, but he is disliked by Clarke's generation - especially those with red and yellow ties who sit in the power seats of English cricket. So he was dispensable.

England in the Caribbean and Bangladesh have been awful – the odd highlight like Hales’ batting aside. It is a different squad to the Test squad but has the same brittleness and, as Ashley Giles admits, the same complacently. So what is the solution? I wish I knew. But I do know this if this was an enterprise anywhere else than England cricket the men at the top would fall on their swords. It needs new brooms in the top jobs – people who are prepared to take on the complacency and unsuitability of our antiquated domestic cricket system. Men who are prepared to stand up and be counted and not hide behind PR Speak and not require their players to do so. Change has long been overdue. Lets have it. Now!

Getting cricket into the little boy's the soul

The little boy, holding tightly onto his mother’s hand, was on his first trip to London. A few weeks earlier as a family they had gathered around their new television with its tiny screen to watch the Coronation. Now he was to be allowed to see the sights for himself. Buckingham Palace. Westminster Abbey. And then, if he was very good, Lord’s Cricket Ground. The first Test Match against the Australians had been in Nottingham just after the big Royal event and that was the first time the little boy had seen a live transmission of a cricket match. His mother wouldn’t miss it because her hero was playing - the dashing Denis Compton. She had cried when he was out for a "duck" to that fearsome Mr Lindwall. "It’s not fair she cried, poor Denis". And two weeks later it was Lord’s and now Denis would surely get his revenge. But that was tomorrow and now they would go to the ground and maybe get a glimpse of the players?

The boy’s father had said that Mr Brown might be playing and that the boy must be sure to say hello if he saw him because Mr Brown had been at school with his Uncle Geoff. The sun was shining as they emerged from the Tube and headed down the Wellington Road and round the corner to where the famous Grace Gates stood. There was rather a stern looking man standing outside the gates but the boy’s mother wasn’t to be put off. "Hello Sir", she said, "Could you tell me if Mr Compton is here?" "Well I should hope so Madam as he’s playing tomorrow and even Mr Compton takes a net sometimes. Well speak of the devil here he is now!" The boy’s mother jumped with excitement because there heading towards the Gates with a rather hobbling step was the great man himself. "Oh Mr Compton will you say hello to my boy?" "Hello young man and how old are you?" "Six sir" "And do you like cricket?" "Oh YES sir, very much indeed. Please sir would you sign my autograph book?". "I’ll do better than that - if you give me the book I think I can get the whole team for you".

The boy’s mother was in a slight swoon – she said later she was sure that she could smell her Denis’s Brylcream he was that close. The gateman turned to her "Well he was in a good mood Madam. If you go inside you can sit on that bench and wait for him to return". And then there he was again and with him was a tall man in cricket whites but with a funny white silk scarf around his neck. "Hello Youngster, here’s your book and this is Mr Brown" "Gosh!" said the boy "My Dad says you knew my Uncle Geoff at school". Freddie Brown smiled and looked at the boy’s name on the book cover. "I should say so. Good man - couldn’t play cricket though!"

And that is how cricket got into the little boy’s soul.

 

 

Remembering one of the glory days from the 1970s, and this was one Kent didn't win !

They were the Glory days of course - the 1970s. Has a team so dominated a decade in any sport as that great Kent team? There was the memorable County Championship win in 1970 - to be followed by two more in 1977 and 1978. There were Gillette or B&H wins in Lord's Finals in 1973, 1974, 1976 and 1978. And Sunday League wins in 1972, 1973 and 1976. That's ten trophies in nine years! But my memory is of a glorious failure not of one of these successes. In 1971 Kent reached their second Gillette Cup Final ( they had won the competition in 1967 - the first bit of silverware for 54 years!). Kent had beaten Northants (Cowdrey 98), Yorkshire (Shepherd 4-26), Leicester (Denness 85, Woolmer 4-37) and Warwickshire (Luckhurst 84) on the way to the final where they were to face Lancashire.

I was born in Orpington in West Kent in Cowdreyland. Colin went to the same church from his home in Bickley. I was never going to support any other County than Kent. But my Dad was a Lancastrian who as a schoolboy and young man had been a regular at Old Trafford in the inter-war years. Lancashire were the holders of the Gillette Cup and had a formidable side in what was still the early days of limited overs cricket. Almost every player in that Lancs side was a star. "Bumble" Lloyd and his maestro namesake Clive. Harry Pilling, knee-high to a grasshopper but gritty and determined. Farouk Engineer - wicketkeeper and explosive batsman. "Jolly Jack"Simmons who bowled flat and miserly and a top class pace attack in Lever and Shuttleworth. They were led by the shrewd Jackie Bond - worth a place in the side for his captaincy alone.

My Dad hadn't seen much of his beloved Lancashire for years so a Lord's final would be special. My membership of Kent allowed me to get tickets - hard to come by in those days of packed houses for every match, especially a Final. We sat together in the top of the Warner Stand, me discreetly wearing my Kent colours and Dad sporting a Red Rose. 

Lancs won the toss and batted. There was an early wicket when John Dye bowled Wood for a duck. Though Pilling hit out a bit Bumble was slow and Asif Iqbal controlled, as of course was Deadly Derek Underwood. Between them Deadly and Asif bowled 24 overs for only 62 runs. Shep (1-38) was economical as well. Clive Lloyd hit 66 but it was only really a late assault from Jolly Jack and his spin partner David Hughes that gave Lancashire a respectable total of 224. My Dad looked gloomy. The Kent batting line up was strong even though Cowdrey was missing from it. Luckhurst, Denness (the new captain), Asif, Knott, Shepherd, Woolmer, Julien...Formidable.

So Kent needed 225 at 3.75 an over. It didn't look too difficult a task. But early wickets fell and when Kent were 68-4 it looked a tough ask. Asif and Knott restored things but a crazy run out saw the back of Knotty 105-5. At which point Asif upped a gear and played with the freedom that on his day made him one of the best in the world. When he was 89* it looked that he would carry Kent home but then Bond took one of the catches of all time. Simmons bowled a bit wide. Asif's eyes lit up and he played an expansive lofted cover drive. Bond leapt in the air and took it one-handed to his right. My Dad, quite a taciturn man usually, leapt to his feet "I think we'll win now". He was right. Kent folded in fourteen balls and Lancs won by 24 runs.

The sun shone throughout that glorious day. The cricket was at times sublime. The tension was palpable. The crowd was engaged - and my Dad had a story to tell, and didn't he love telling it! Kent were to have many an equally happy day over the rest of the1970s so I can't complain. Anyway "I was there" - and as the years pass that memory will never fade.

Macavity’s not there

CRICKET SOCIETY NEWS BULLETIN

APRIL 2014 (No. 555)

NOTES FROM THE EDITOR (John Symons)

 

Can We Have Our Ball Back Please Mister?

(and while we’re about it - what about our game as well?)

So, the England football team which set off for the World Cup with high hopes has returned, having lost 2-0 to Chad; 3-0 to Mongolia and 5-0 to Tuvalu. The captain has been wheeled out to Press Conferences but none of the Manager, Assistant Manager, Fitness Coach or Chairman of the FA has felt it necessary to say anything in public. The kit manager has made a sheepish appearance to say not very much but that’s all. Oh — and the Manager has apparently resigned but isn’t prepared to talk about it and Wayne Rooney has been dropped forever for unspecified reasons. Far-fetched? Yes, for football but does it ring a bell in terms of cricket?
Cricket has ever been the worst administered sport in the world but now seems to display a real contempt for the paying spectator. The public doesn’t care about ‘dirty washing’ but does want to ensure that when they fork out their ever-increasing sums of money to watch a Test team in action, they understand what is going on and why. An informed spectator-base is one that will go along with decisions, even if they seem bizarre, in the knowledge that those who run the game are being straight with us.

Andy Flower, whose attitude to interviews seems to have been one of indignant surprise that anyone should dare to ask him questions, has gone but is going to have something rather nice lined up for him in the background. There’s going to be a new Head Coach — note, not Team Manager and doubtless, the usual suspects are being lined up. But it’s not about individual coaches and their work, it’s more a feeling that there is a real ‘closed shop’ operating at ECB level. Steve Harmison put his name forward when the post of an England Selector fell vacant. He didn’t mind not getting the job — Angus Fraser is a hard act to beat and looks a really good choice; what was insulting was that the only acknowledgement that Steve received was an automated Email noting his application — nothing else. The England overall supremo Hugh Morris, of whom it might be felt as Kitty Muggeridge waspishly said of David Frost, ‘He rose without trace,’ has trotted off to Glamorgan without a farewell comment. He was succeeded by Paul Downton, presumably with attendant white smoke, after years out of cricket but with lots of tips as a stockbroker. Geoff Miller stood down as Chairman of Selectors, also in mute fashion and was replaced by James Whitaker. Now that seemed a quite sensible progression until his now infamous interview. Normally affable and sensible, he looked like a startled rabbit in the headlights when asked only slightly difficult questions and if Sebastian Faulks is looking for fresh material in his revamping of P. G. Wodehouse, he need look no further than that performance, playing regularly on YouTube. It might explain why, one supposes, that no one from the England camp, except the players, ever comes out to talk any more. And the great panjandrum Giles Clarke? Like all the others — Macavity’s not there.

I really wanted to write something positive this month as Spring looms on the horizon and an old man’s thoughts turn to the cricket field but I feel, like so many others, adrift at a distance from the game. County members watch in dismay as another hotel rises and they still sit in stands without roofs. A regular correspondent from Durham was prescient when he predicted that Ben Stokes would be a success but he also saw that when it happened, no one at Durham would be able to watch him play in the future. Foreign mercenaries fly in and out with no real contact with supporters and decent players who have come through the ranks are being dispensed with, as clubs find it more profitable to feature younger players who are subsidised from the ECB. Men who might have matured and become even better are on the scrap heap at 28. I wish I could find reasons to be cheerful but at the moment, it’s difficult.

As E M Forster never wrote — Only Disconnect — that seems to be the motto of the modern English game.

John Symons.

(Please note: the views expressed in the Cricket Society News Bulletin Editorials and Notes are those of the author and not of the Cricket Society as a whole.)

The charade of England advertising and interviewing for the "HeadCoach" job. It's a done deal.

Ashley Giles knows he's got the England "Head Coach" job as does every reasonably close observer of the England scene. The ECB is going through the charade of advertising the post and interviewing candidates for reasons best known to itself. But don't be fooled. The decision to appoint Giles was taken before Flower was pushed out. The job was downgraded to "Head Coach" in part to give Flower a sinecure in the set-up as a sweetener when he was forced to quit the "Team Director" job. 

Giles coaching experience is limited and he would not be on any other nation's short list. Even Bangladesh! We will now have novices in the two jobs closest to the team - Ashley Giles and his boss Paul Downton. Difficult to see either of them standing up to Giles Clarke who has tightened his grip further by having two men totally beholden to him in these roles. 

TMS Podcast shows the cricket establishment closing ranks on the KP affair

The discussion on Test Match Special between Graeme Swann, Stephen Brenkley (Independent) and John Etheridge (The Sun) chaired by TMS's Simon Mann is now available as a podcast here:

http://www.bbc.co.uk/podcasts/series/tms

It is an interesting chat touching on England's Ashes debacle and looking forward to the period ahead when, as we know, three recently centrally contracted players will not be available. Trott, through illness, Swann who has retired and of course Kevin Pietersen who was summarily sacked after Australia.

The establishment is visibly closing ranks on the KP affair and this applies to all three of the participants in the podcast. First the myth that Andy Flower resigned of his own accord was maintained by them. They all like Flower and are clearly party to the official line that he, Andy, walked away. Well did he walk, three weeks after saying he wouldn't, or was he pushed? Draw your own conclusions but for me once what Etheridge referred to as "People very high up in the ECB" had decided on KP they decided on Andy Flower as well. This, of course, means ECB Chairman Giles Clarke the "high up" who takes all the key decisions. That they let Andy down gently is admirable given his service and success. But they knew he had to go - so he went.

As far as KP is concerned all three of the participants frankly did not have a kind word to say about him - bar acknowledging the obvious that he is a great cricketer. Even this was watered down by a suggestion that he is "in decline" - not a view that all fans would agree with! Swann said that he and KP were not friends. The journalists indulged in a big of mostly non-specific gossip about how difficult KP can be. All rejected the idea that management was at fault. But the reality of course is that KP can be managed. Michael Vaughan did it. Duncan Fletcher did it and for a time Andrew Strauss and Andy a Flower did it. Do you recall any "issues" during the triumphant 2010/11 Ashes tour when Kevin scored a decent 360 runs at an average of 60? Me neither.

Graeme Swann repeated what he has said previously that there were no particular problems with KP whilst he was still with the recent tour . When Swann went home after the third Test that, implicitly, was when the problems began and the team "fell apart". What were they? Well on the face of what we heard it was about a bit of boorishness by Pietersen on a few occasions. Well we all deal with stress in different ways - maybe KP whistles and is silly. But that is hardly a hanging offence!

Andy Flower left in no small measure because he cataclysmically failed to manage the England team on tour. During that tour two players walked away. One batsman (Cook) fell from being one of the world's best to not being worth his place and the rest mostly batted cluelessly. The bowling wasn’t much better and England failed to finish off Australia all too often. Through it all Kevin Pietersen played as well as anyone, which isn't saying much but he did finish as England's top scoring batsman. And he is the scapegoat!

In the weeks to come we will see England try and recover some dignity as a cricketing force in the Caribbean and then in Bangladesh in the World T20. Whatever happens Ashley Giles will be appointed Head Coach and then in the summer he and Alastair Cook will try and restore some pride in English cricket. It's a tough ask. And they will do it without the one man who can turn a game on its head with the bat. Because the establishment has chosen to do so. The Aussies, laughing themselves into frenzy though they no doubt are, must think we are mad. Perhaps we are!

Can England change its domestic cricket to reflect the new world? Lets start with T20

In my study I have a complete run of Wisden dating back to the first published in 1864. Those prior to the Second World War are all facsimiles from the brilliant Willows Publishing so please don't assume that my “collection” suggests millionaire status! But the run is a wonderful thing for a cricket lover, especially a writer,  to have and I wouldn't be without it. The majority of the pages of these 150 volumes cover the English County Championship from its early days in the mid 1890s through to today.

In my childhood the County Championship still mattered and when Kent won it for the first time for 57 years in 1970 it was one of the more exciting moments in my sporting life – and it still is. By then of course “Limited Overs” cricket was well established. The Gillette Cup had arrived in 1963 and it

“…fired the imagination of the public to such an extent that Lord’s was full to overflowing for the Final on a sombre September day when rosettes and banners gave the game a new dimension…”

as Gordon Ross put it at the time in “Playfair” (that other essential cricket Annual). In that season the matches were 65 Overs per side so there was good value in store for the fans with 130 completed overs in prospect in a full day. The Limited Overs goose was to continue to lay golden eggs for some time and inevitably the Gillette was joined in 1969 by the “Sunday League” a 40 Overs per side competition which did not start until after Morning Worship had been completed. Cricket purists were not over-welcoming of this 80 Overs per day event. Gordon Ross was less than enthusiastic and quoted theatrical impresario C.B. Cochrane in the 1970 “Playfair” annual:

“You give the public not what you think they ought to have, but what they want”

Increasingly what the public wanted was limited overs cricket and when the “Benson and Hedges” (“B&H”) Cup (55 Overs) arrived in 1972 it was clear that this was the future of the domestic game – not least because compared with the County Championship that is where the money was.

So three limited overs competitions became established alongside the County Championship which struggled on as as a sort of purists’ eccentricity watched only by aging fans many of whom regarded the one day game with contempt – not least when coloured kit came in and it could be dismissed as “Pyjama cricket”. But the golden goose started to stutter a bit and the golden eggs became even less frequent so that by the new Millennium, and with the B&H finishing, something new was again perceived to be necessary. In the 2003 Wisden the Editor described the imminent arrival of Twenty20 like this

“The new knockabout Twenty20 Cup is a valid experiment in itself, which shows cricket noticing at last that some of its followers have other commitments”

Well, as they say, the rest is history. We, the English, invented something and within a few years it was copied and enormously enhanced and improved by other countries. That may have happened before!  “Enhanced and improved” – in this point of view means that the Indians (especially), the Australians (initially reluctantly), the South Africans and just about every other country where cricket is played launched commercially successful T20 tournaments. In ten years a lowish key English experiment has revolutionised world cricket – except, it has to be said, in England!

No country decided that their T20 tournaments should have 18 participating teams! None decided that matches should be played in country grounds without a big spectator catchment area and with inadequate facilities (often even no floodlights!). All knew that the number of teams (“franchises”) should be limited to say eight. That the matches should be played at night in big city grounds each of which had a huge catchment area. That they could not simply build on whatever moribund domestic team structure they had but start afresh.

Here in England in 2014 there will be 18 T20 teams again this year. And there will be fixtures at all of the tired old County grounds: Grace Road, Brighton, Taunton, Derby, Chelmsford, Northwood (Northwood??), Arundel (Arundel??) and the rest. That’s 126 matches spread over three months before we even get to the knockout stages. (That is not a misprint. 126 matches). What might once have been a golden goose has become a preposterous monster!

Part of the British way is eventually to get around to the idea that others might have perfected our institutions over time rather better than we have. It takes time though – time measured often in decades (or more) rather than a year or two. Keith Bradshaw when he sat on the ECB Board as representative of MCC worked with others to put together a sensible domestic T20 proposal. It involved eight or ten teams (“Franchises”) playing an IPL style tournament over a prescribed shorter period of time. It made total sense copying the successful model of the IPL and the Australian “Big Bash” (etc.). It went down like a lead balloon with the ECB not because it was ill-thought through, or commercially unwise (on the contrary) but because it moved away from the 18 County system.

English cricket is riddled with prejudice and rancid with nostalgia. We meander every year through the delusion that Four Day County cricket matches matter when across the whole season the moribund County Championship gets fewer spectators than the Football League Division Two gets in one day. The recent match between Chesterfield and Fleetwood was watched by 6,500 spectators. That would be close to a record crowd at Taunton ! And for T20 as well – it would be unthinkable for the County Championship. Note: I’m not comparing our County system with the top of the Football leagues (The Premier League) but with the bottom.

So what’s to do? Well Keith Bradshaw was on the right track and as a starter we should adopt that idea pronto for T20. I’ll address the longer form of the game in a later blog but suffice to say that the current 18 Team domestic structure is not right for the four day game any more than it is right for T20. But for now lets state the case for a proper, exciting, focused T20 tournament played at the biggest city grounds at a time that people can watch them. Oh and let us remind ourselves again of Cochrane’s maxim:

“You give the public not what you think they ought to have, but what they want”

That quote was in Playfair 44 years ago. Must be time to take note of it. Even in England !