Thursday 6 June 1991, Headingley. First Test, England v West Indies. The Windies team-sheet is a study in greatness, or at least in grandeur beginning imperceptibly to fade: Simmons, Haynes, Richardson, Hooper, Richards, Logie, Dujon, Marshall, Ambrose, Walsh, Patterson.
England's side has some old stagers with no illusions - Gooch, Lamb, Smith, Russell, Pringle - two established fast bowlers in Defreitas and Malcolm, an opening batsman, Mike Atherton, who has made three centuries in his first thirteen Tests and is already regarded as a future captain, and three debutants blinking softly in the Yorkshire gloaming: Steve Watkin, Mark Ramprakash and Graeme Hick.
Under rain-streaked skies, Viv Richards wins the toss and bowls. Hick, at three, doesn't have to wait long for his chance. After 22 minutes, Atherton is bowled by Patrick Patterson and he walks out. Few modern players have taken guard in Test cricket for the first time with quite as many runs behind them. In the seven years he has spent qualifying for England, he has made 2,000 runs in a season, a thousand runs in May, been named a Wisden Cricketer of the Year and has a top score of 405 not out for Worcestershire against Somerset, an innings so vast and rare that it was reported on the Nine O'Clock News.
He bats for 51 minutes, hits one boundary and is caught by Dujon from the bowling of Walsh for six, leaving England on 45-3. As Hick walks off, Mark Ramprakash walks out. They pass one another just inside the boundary rope.
Many years later, I had the chance to talk to Mark Ramprakash about that day. While he wasn't carrying quite the expectations that Hick was, he'd made his County Championship debut for Middlesex while still at sixth-form, struck a first class hundred at the age of eighteen and followed it with an innings of 56 in the NatWest final, which won him the man of the match award. Now he was twenty-one years old and playing for England.
What he remembered most was not just the unforgiving brilliance of the West Indies bowling, but how good their fielding was. After a while he'd looked around and thought, 'how am I going to score a run here?' Yet he made 27 of them, the third-highest total in an innings of 198 all out.
His knock was set in further context when England dismissed West Indies for 173, with only Simmons, Richardson and the great Richards, with 73, making double figures. From there the game assumed its real significance. When England batted again, Gooch scored 154 of the team's 252, an innings regarded now and perhaps forever as the best played by an Englishman in Test cricket, and ranked in the top two or three of all time. West Indies were bowled out for 162 and England won by 115 runs, a first home victory over the Windies for twenty-two years. They went on to draw the series 2-2 by winning the last Test at the Oval.
Mark Ramprakash scored 27 in that second innings at Leeds, too, and it would become, eleven years later, his final average. It was one of the strange symmetries that echoed through the careers of he and Graeme Hick: the shared debut, the shared trajectory, the notion of each being, in their way, an enigma. They are, and will probably remain, the last two players to score 100 first-class hundreds, the traditional mark of a kind of batsmanship and a type of career that has now passed. Two others in that Headingley game, Viv Richards and Graham Gooch, immediately precede Hick and Ramprakash on the list. Viv Richards was Ramprakash's batting hero, and each would end their career with 114 hundreds.
In the Ashes series just gone, Hick and Ramprakash opposed one another as batting coaches for Australia and England respectively. Each would have recognised in their line-ups some of the struggles that they endured, in James Vince's ability to get started and then get out, perhaps, or in Shaun Marsh's endless drops and recalls. People often wonder what batting coaches at that level actually do, aside from develop the world's strongest shoulders via the dog-thrower.
Last year, for Wisden Almanack, I spoke to Joe Root about his innings of 254 against Pakistan at Old Trafford. Root felt he'd been playing well going into the game, but remembered that Ramprakash had asked him whether he was 'still in one-day mode' after watching him give it away a little in the defeat at Lord's. Root at first disagreed, but then thought about it some more, and with Ramprakash, made some small but crucial changes to his technique against Pakistan's three left-arm quicks, each of whom bowled quite differently.
The result was that definitive innings, and Root was happy to acknowledge Ramprakash's unobtrusive but key role in it. That's what batting coaches do, although, like everything in cricket, it doesn't always happen and it doesn't always work. Having the knowledge to understand what to say, and the sensitivity of when a player may want to hear it said, are skills that can take a lifetime to develop, especially in the blizzard of noise that surrounds every international performance.
For a long time, I wanted to write a book about Hick and Ramprakash, a kind of double-biography which would begin at the Headingley game and somehow spin outwards to talk about England in the 1990s, and about notions of success and failure and what those twin states actually are. That one's just another on the great pile of 'books' destined not to exist, like Martin Amis' joke in The Information about the novels of its central character Richard Tull: 'Unpublished, then unfinished, then finally, unwritten and unthought of'. But I did get to write a chapter in The Meaning of Cricket, The Descendants, about it and about that day talking to Mark Ramprakash.
The era still feels like an extraordinary time. Joining the quartet of bowlers that Ramprakash, Hick and Atherton squared up to at Headingley would come Wasim and Waqar, Warne, McGrath, Muralitharan, Kumble, Donald, Pollock, Saqlain and many more. With that little lot, plus reverse swing and mystery spin, almost every bowling record would be shattered during a decade that looks, in hindsight, more like a reign of terror. It's easy to imagine Ramprakash and Hick, Nasser and Athers and Graham Thorpe and the rest listening to the discussions about Australia's Ashes attack, wearing the kind of smiles that are always best described as wry...
Tuesday, 16 January 2018
Wednesday, 10 January 2018
Australia player-by-player; Going at it home and away - final Ashes notes
Steve Smith said that he felt the series turned on Nathan Lyon's run out of James Vince on the first afternoon at Brisbane. The city was unseasonably cool, the Gabba pitch one England would have knelt down in prayer for, low and sluggish and about as typical of Queensland as Julian Assange. Vince was on 83 and cruising like a rich granny, England 143-2, ahead for the first and, as it turned out, last time. Smith was right, Brisbane was England's chance. How fleeting it was, and how suddenly it was gone...
David Warner
(441 runs at 63.00, HS: 103)
The mighty Bull turned righteous Reverend was uncharacteristically mild until the Ashes were won, visibly set on an unlikely (for him) strategy of seeing off Broad and Anderson then to feast upon white underbelly. He saw sense in Melbourne, where he scored 103 of Australia's first 135 runs, the only man to overpower a wicket that demanded players outlast it. It's a mark of Australian dominance that his final mark of 63 was good enough for just fourth place in their averages.
Cameron Bancroft
(179 runs at 25.57, HS: 82*)
Warner's tenth opening partner may soon yield to number eleven, Bancroft's series post-Brisbane both jarring anomoly and a stinging lesson in holed technique. He is only 25 and has time to regroup, while Australia will probably return to the even more youthful Matt Renshaw. Warner may reflect that his one stable partnership has been with Chris Rogers, gentleman of a certain age...
Usman Khawaja
(333 runs at 47.57; HS: 171)
Australia remain equivocal about Khawaja, who rather marvellously doesn't seem to bother himself with such trivia. The main criticism, expressed at length on commentary by Michael Slater, was that he didn't "give off enough energy" at the crease, whatever that means. It's nonsensical of course, as useful a piece of advice as when Ian Bell was urged (and tried) to "impose himself" on the opposition. Yes, someone who glares and re-fastens his gloves like Warner, or struts to square leg like Smith, is going to look more engaged than Khawaja, who is soft of frame and gently round-shouldered. But he gutsed out fifty in Perth and then unfurled majestically in Sydney, where his timing outshone his captain's.
Steve Smith
(687 runs at 137.40, HS: 239)
Let's not talk more about the Bradmanesque technique and what it may mean, and instead consider Smith's cricketing intelligence. He read the game like a great Shakespearian actor reads the Bard, with an innate feel for how it should be expressed. It may be a flowery analogy, but how else to explain the way Smith produced his fastest hundred and his slowest, how he altered his stance and his grip and the shots that he chose? He inhaled the game and breathed out pure cricket, and by the end had batted so long it had driven him slightly mad. His final hour at the crease became eccentric even by his standards; he lost some timing and scooped a nothing catch to Moeen with an historic fourth hundred a few runs away. Captains engage in a Yin and Yang struggle in long series. Smith already had the advantage in firepower when he was handed a cache of free ammo in the Bairstow 'headbutt' and Duckett pint fiasco. From then on, he simply had to smirk at Root to let him know the score.
Shaun Marsh
(445 runs at 74.16, HS: 156)
Sometimes the gods laugh... At 34, Marsh was a kind of Australian Graeme Hick, dropped and recalled so often even he couldn't remember how many times it had happened. Yet he arrived in form, his first ball hit the middle of the bat and at last the world was his. The story goes that Mark Waugh had liked Marsh since 2003, when Marsh brought up his maiden first class ton by hitting Waugh for consecutive sixes in a State game. Whatever the reason, the selectors got this, and a couple of other borderline choices, exactly right. In the Aussie rooms their batting coach, one Graeme Hick Esq, might have permitted himself a smile.
Mitchell Marsh
(320 runs at 106.66, HS: 181)
There's nothing like a bit of brotherly oneupmanship to stir the familial blood. Their mid-pitch celebration at Sydney when Mitch joined Shaun with a second hundred of the series was funny and touching, but you can be sure there was some grit in the pearl - little brothers fight hard not to be outdone. There was a weird familiarity to Marsh's uncomplicated batting - the cut, the pull, the beefy biff down the ground - and then it dawned: he's not unlike a prime-era Flintoff in approach.
Tim Paine
(192 runs at 48.00, HS: 57)
Great teams - very good teams even - feel solid; they have a kind of inevitability to them, with all questions answered. Tim Paine seemed so far away from being a part of it, and yet after the bolshy Wade, he was the perfect fit. Beyond an early drop, his glovework was smooth and his batting there if needed; a question answered so well it seems strange it was ever asked.
Pat Cummins
(23 wickets at 24.65, BB: 4/39; 166 runs at 41.50, HS: 44)
Unlike England, who turned up with two ageing thoroughbreds, a couple of punts and half a spinner, Australia had planned for eighteen months to get Cummins, Starc and Hazlewood on the field together. It was more difficult than it sounds - Cummins' five Test appearances prior to Brisbane had occupied six years, his first made in November 2011 and his second in March 2017. Still not 25, only now could Cummins' body withstand the rigour he put it through as a strongarm enforcer from brutal lengths.
Mitchell Starc
(22 wickets at 23.54, BB: 5/88)
Starc is almost two bowlers in one, such are the difference in angles when he goes over and around the wicket, and England really didn't need two Mitchell Starcs bowling at them... Full or short, it was that bone-chilling speed, the sort that has its effects on the central nervous system. The plan to destroy England's tail, which, when Stokes was in the side and Moeen batted at eight, brought so many runs, was lethally executed.
Nathan Lyon
(21 wickets at 29.13, BB: 4/60)
The least likely member of either side to be involved in a Daily Mail kiss-and-tell nonetheless pulled that feat off, the continuation of his equally unlikely but increasingly substantial career. It's not usual for a man with almost 300 Test wickets to have a semi-ironic nickname, but the GOAT continues to feed, especially on left-handers, and it was his run-out of Vince in Brisbane, and his first spell there, which edged Australia into the series. England's lefties need more solid plans for two years' time, because Lyon, Australia's unlikely lothario champ, will still be there...
Josh Hazlewood
(21 wickets at 25.90, BB: 5/48)
So evenly were Australia's wickets shared that Hazlewood took one of just two five-fers from the 89 that they knocked over. He is the least flashy of the pace trio, and in a way the Ur version of the player England want to produce: someone that bowls 90mph at the top of off stump, and stays fit while they do it. Hazelwood sent down some compelling, tireless spells, particularly in Brisbane and Perth, and his moustache remains the only truly indefensible thing about him.
With the announcement that "there will be no specific review" of England's performance from the ECB (compare and contrast to the internecene blood-letting of last time) it seems that the Ashes 2017/8 will be quietly swept under the carpet, least heard, soonest mended.
It is becoming a contest divided between home and away, still subject to the great anachronistic timescales of the era in which it was invented. A more stable proposition, and a more competitive one, may be to play a six-match series across both countries, three in England ending in September, three in Australia beginning in November, once every two years. In the event of a tied series, an away win would count double. Alternatively, there could be four Tests in England, three in Australia, and then vice versa.
Any sport - indeed almost anything - needs to accelerate to match the speed of the culture it lives in. The era of five Tests once every four years in each country is creaking unsteadily towards its end.
David Warner
(441 runs at 63.00, HS: 103)
The mighty Bull turned righteous Reverend was uncharacteristically mild until the Ashes were won, visibly set on an unlikely (for him) strategy of seeing off Broad and Anderson then to feast upon white underbelly. He saw sense in Melbourne, where he scored 103 of Australia's first 135 runs, the only man to overpower a wicket that demanded players outlast it. It's a mark of Australian dominance that his final mark of 63 was good enough for just fourth place in their averages.
Cameron Bancroft
(179 runs at 25.57, HS: 82*)
Warner's tenth opening partner may soon yield to number eleven, Bancroft's series post-Brisbane both jarring anomoly and a stinging lesson in holed technique. He is only 25 and has time to regroup, while Australia will probably return to the even more youthful Matt Renshaw. Warner may reflect that his one stable partnership has been with Chris Rogers, gentleman of a certain age...
Usman Khawaja
(333 runs at 47.57; HS: 171)
Australia remain equivocal about Khawaja, who rather marvellously doesn't seem to bother himself with such trivia. The main criticism, expressed at length on commentary by Michael Slater, was that he didn't "give off enough energy" at the crease, whatever that means. It's nonsensical of course, as useful a piece of advice as when Ian Bell was urged (and tried) to "impose himself" on the opposition. Yes, someone who glares and re-fastens his gloves like Warner, or struts to square leg like Smith, is going to look more engaged than Khawaja, who is soft of frame and gently round-shouldered. But he gutsed out fifty in Perth and then unfurled majestically in Sydney, where his timing outshone his captain's.
Steve Smith
(687 runs at 137.40, HS: 239)
Let's not talk more about the Bradmanesque technique and what it may mean, and instead consider Smith's cricketing intelligence. He read the game like a great Shakespearian actor reads the Bard, with an innate feel for how it should be expressed. It may be a flowery analogy, but how else to explain the way Smith produced his fastest hundred and his slowest, how he altered his stance and his grip and the shots that he chose? He inhaled the game and breathed out pure cricket, and by the end had batted so long it had driven him slightly mad. His final hour at the crease became eccentric even by his standards; he lost some timing and scooped a nothing catch to Moeen with an historic fourth hundred a few runs away. Captains engage in a Yin and Yang struggle in long series. Smith already had the advantage in firepower when he was handed a cache of free ammo in the Bairstow 'headbutt' and Duckett pint fiasco. From then on, he simply had to smirk at Root to let him know the score.
Shaun Marsh
(445 runs at 74.16, HS: 156)
Sometimes the gods laugh... At 34, Marsh was a kind of Australian Graeme Hick, dropped and recalled so often even he couldn't remember how many times it had happened. Yet he arrived in form, his first ball hit the middle of the bat and at last the world was his. The story goes that Mark Waugh had liked Marsh since 2003, when Marsh brought up his maiden first class ton by hitting Waugh for consecutive sixes in a State game. Whatever the reason, the selectors got this, and a couple of other borderline choices, exactly right. In the Aussie rooms their batting coach, one Graeme Hick Esq, might have permitted himself a smile.
Mitchell Marsh
(320 runs at 106.66, HS: 181)
There's nothing like a bit of brotherly oneupmanship to stir the familial blood. Their mid-pitch celebration at Sydney when Mitch joined Shaun with a second hundred of the series was funny and touching, but you can be sure there was some grit in the pearl - little brothers fight hard not to be outdone. There was a weird familiarity to Marsh's uncomplicated batting - the cut, the pull, the beefy biff down the ground - and then it dawned: he's not unlike a prime-era Flintoff in approach.
Tim Paine
(192 runs at 48.00, HS: 57)
Great teams - very good teams even - feel solid; they have a kind of inevitability to them, with all questions answered. Tim Paine seemed so far away from being a part of it, and yet after the bolshy Wade, he was the perfect fit. Beyond an early drop, his glovework was smooth and his batting there if needed; a question answered so well it seems strange it was ever asked.
Pat Cummins
(23 wickets at 24.65, BB: 4/39; 166 runs at 41.50, HS: 44)
Unlike England, who turned up with two ageing thoroughbreds, a couple of punts and half a spinner, Australia had planned for eighteen months to get Cummins, Starc and Hazlewood on the field together. It was more difficult than it sounds - Cummins' five Test appearances prior to Brisbane had occupied six years, his first made in November 2011 and his second in March 2017. Still not 25, only now could Cummins' body withstand the rigour he put it through as a strongarm enforcer from brutal lengths.
Mitchell Starc
(22 wickets at 23.54, BB: 5/88)
Starc is almost two bowlers in one, such are the difference in angles when he goes over and around the wicket, and England really didn't need two Mitchell Starcs bowling at them... Full or short, it was that bone-chilling speed, the sort that has its effects on the central nervous system. The plan to destroy England's tail, which, when Stokes was in the side and Moeen batted at eight, brought so many runs, was lethally executed.
Nathan Lyon
(21 wickets at 29.13, BB: 4/60)
The least likely member of either side to be involved in a Daily Mail kiss-and-tell nonetheless pulled that feat off, the continuation of his equally unlikely but increasingly substantial career. It's not usual for a man with almost 300 Test wickets to have a semi-ironic nickname, but the GOAT continues to feed, especially on left-handers, and it was his run-out of Vince in Brisbane, and his first spell there, which edged Australia into the series. England's lefties need more solid plans for two years' time, because Lyon, Australia's unlikely lothario champ, will still be there...
Josh Hazlewood
(21 wickets at 25.90, BB: 5/48)
So evenly were Australia's wickets shared that Hazlewood took one of just two five-fers from the 89 that they knocked over. He is the least flashy of the pace trio, and in a way the Ur version of the player England want to produce: someone that bowls 90mph at the top of off stump, and stays fit while they do it. Hazelwood sent down some compelling, tireless spells, particularly in Brisbane and Perth, and his moustache remains the only truly indefensible thing about him.
Home and away with the neighbours...
Cricket Australia's sale of rights to BT Sport has resulted in a predictable car-crash for viewing figures. The series was essentially invisible in one of the competing nations. Numbers for the Perth Test, Andy Bull reported for the Guardian, were 82,000 per day. For Melbourne it's possible there were more people in the ground than watching on British TV.With the announcement that "there will be no specific review" of England's performance from the ECB (compare and contrast to the internecene blood-letting of last time) it seems that the Ashes 2017/8 will be quietly swept under the carpet, least heard, soonest mended.
It is becoming a contest divided between home and away, still subject to the great anachronistic timescales of the era in which it was invented. A more stable proposition, and a more competitive one, may be to play a six-match series across both countries, three in England ending in September, three in Australia beginning in November, once every two years. In the event of a tied series, an away win would count double. Alternatively, there could be four Tests in England, three in Australia, and then vice versa.
Any sport - indeed almost anything - needs to accelerate to match the speed of the culture it lives in. The era of five Tests once every four years in each country is creaking unsteadily towards its end.
Tuesday, 9 January 2018
Philby in exile; England player-by-player: More Ashes notes
I read a book review the other day describing the final years of Kim Philby in Moscow: "drinking himself insensible and reading accounts of cricket matches long since finished in old copies of The Times." He was yearning for a version of England that existed only in his mind, and in the names of players that he would never see. It evokes a very English kind of melancholy, too, a mix of nostalgia and longing that cricket, with all of its transience and meaning, represents perfectly.
In a weird way, the Ashes depends on something similar. Each new version of it relies for its heft and its significance on all of the other series that lie underneath. Without them, it's a just another tour in the endless round of modern cricket, a fleeting entertainment gone as soon as the next thing comes along.
So it's worth asking where the Ashes 2017/8 sits, a series that ended, uniquely, with one of the captains asleep in the dressing room; a series that in its dying moments was called "one sided and tedious" by the editor of Wisden, Lawrence Booth, and "the most boring Ashes in living memory - a one-sided plod on useless pitches" by Phil Walker, editor of Wisden Cricket Monthly. The august, yellow side of town is unequivocal, although the glee of the green and gold, and the understandable pride in their achievement, must be weighed against it.
The truth, as usual, is probably somewhere in the middle. The pitches were drear, and England lacked the skills needed to compete on them. There is a public spin from within the camp that Root's side had "a foot in the door" in most games but could not get the damn thing open. The stats do not back that up. They are monolithic and irrefutable:
Australia scored 2,982 runs to England's 2,585, and took 89 wickets to England's 58. Australia's wickets cost England 51.42 apiece, England's cost Australia 29.05. Of the Australian batsmen, Steve Smith, David Warner, Usman Khawaja, Shaun Marsh, Mitch Marsh, Tim Paine and Pat Cummins had a series average higher than their career average. Of English batsmen just Cook, Malan and Vince had the same (and the latter didn't take much exceeding). Starc, Cummins and Lyon took their wickets at less than their career average, and Hazelwood equalled his.
Steve Smith scored as many hundreds in seven innings as England's top six managed in 54. Australia's batsmen passed fifty twenty times and converted nine into hundreds. England's passed fifty thirteen times and made three hundreds. Every frontline Australian bowler took their wickets at less than thirty. England (look away now, here comes the real horror show) saw only Jimmy Anderson do the same. Broad and Woakes, the other bankers, conceded 1020 runs between them and delivered 21 wickets. Moeen and Mason Crane had a combined 6-768. No wonder England could claim that every Test went into its final day - Australia spent most of them batting.
Anyone reading the match reports as Philby once read his, in the light of rueful exile and months later, may not experience quite the yearning that a gentle and inconsequential day in the Shires brought to his endless winter in Moscow. For England there is an alien hostility to cricket down under that is starting to feel insurmountable. Australia's unrepentant mercilessness in everything from conditions to the media should chill them most of all.
Alastair Cook
(376 runs at 47.00, HS: 244*)
The reaction to Cook's Melbourne epic felt sentimental and laudatory, a signal response to his fading greatness. He ends the series as the sixth man in history with 12,000 Test runs - and so few players have experienced those heights, it would be folly to predict how Cook will react. Without the pressure of runs from any putative rival, England will have to settle for the hundreds that arrive like rainy day buses - not as frequently as you'd like, but all the more welcome when they do.
Mark Stoneman
(232 runs at 25.77, HS: 56)
Like Michael Carberry before him, Stoneman was shockingly and relentlessly exposed to bowling far above his pay grade. He should be extended the opportunity to continue that Carberry never got, although anyone imagining that Boult, Southee and Co. in New Zealand will be some kind of reward for his doughtiness may need a rethink. I'd recommend a chat with Alan Butcher about how to play the throat ball - back in Alan's day every county opener got plenty of exposure to it, and he had to face Sylvester Clarke, its ultimate exponent, in the nets, too...
James Vince
(242 run sat 26.88, HS: 83)
I crave Vince's batting like an alcoholic craves that first drink of the evening. If his cover drive had a voice it would sound like Marilyn singing happy birthday to JFK. But for every boozer, the morning dawns like needles in the eye and the damage must be picked through. There is no coherent argument to be made for his retention: instead it is a romantic one. Put simply, if Vince ever managed to bat for two or three sessions of a Test, he may produce something that would live in the memory eternally.
Joe Root
(378 runs at 47.25, HS: 83)
The conclusion at Sydney must feel like a fever dream to Root, its symbolism forgivably lost on a captain frazzled by two endless days in furnace temperatures. His last innings, bravely compiled while semi-conscious with gastroenteritis, was of course an unconverted fifty, his fifth of the series. That stat plods after him, its footfall growing louder. When England's one day side staggered from the wreckage of the 2015 World Cup, Eoin Morgan rebuilt a gun-shy and risk-averse team into a sleek and dangerous unit. Root could learn from his ODI skipper's flint-eyed and ruthless authority.
Dawid Malan
(383 runs at 42.55, HS: 140)
Malan had the wit to make a slight but significant adjustment to a more open stance, and his off-side play was a revelation, beautiful in its moment. He likes a scrap, and does not appear to have the major flaw that might be exposed with a move to number three, a growing possibility for next Summer.
Jonny Bairstow
(306 runs at 34.00, HS: 119)
This series proved why Bairstow is right to have resisted the notion that he should give up the gloves and find a place higher in the order as a batsman. Firstly his keeping was exemplary. He gave a funny interview about the amount of squats he'd done during the series - many thousands behind the pegs - yet it was tribute to his fitness that he'd just taken a wonderful late catch having kept all day. Secondly, six is plenty high enough, and seven ideal, for a player with a short backlift who goes hard at the ball - his nick-off after refusing a nightwatchman in Sydney was the perfect case in point.
Moeen Ali
(179 runs at 19.88, HS: 40; 5 wickets at 115, BB: 2/74)
Yes Moeen had a poor series, compounded by a side strain and a ripped spinning finger. Yet his treatment by mainstream and social media leaves a bad taste. Last summer he was the hero. Suddenly he was being pasted for not being something he never was in the first place, if a sentence with so many negatives can make any sense. He is a batsman who bowls, yet is expected to be a bowler who bats. To have played against type so successfully for so long is a confidence trick of sorts, and once Moeen's was dented he faced a harrowing time. Sadly, what could have been a significant career for all sorts of reasons is being damaged by misplaced expectations.
Chris Woakes
(114 runs at 16.28, HS: 36; 10 wickets at 49.50, BB: 4/36)
More culpable than Moeen, Woakes was brought to bowl briskly and aggressively - his primary skills - and managed neither. His speeds may have been fastest on the gun, but, banged on the wrong length into slow pitches, it became merely fodder. The notion that he may be a new ball bowler for England once Broad departs was, for now, exposed. Perhaps the most disappointing of the tour party.
Stuart Broad
(136 runs at 15.11, HS: 56; 11 wickets at 47.72, BB: 4-51)
There were notes of Animal Farm early in the series, as Broad, like noble Boxer the horse, strained in the harness for little effect. From memory, Boxer collapsed while building a windmill, and Broad seemed as though he may go while tilting at one - the oldest enemy of all... Yet he dragged it back with force of personality and some formidable discipline. Accepting his limitations, he bore his burden - his 195 overs were exceeded for England only by the ageless Anderson. His late career batting, conducted from somewhere near square leg and often almost behind the stumps, displayed similar fortitude, and some flair. Should get to 400 wickets, and the acclaim he has earned, in New Zealand.
James Anderson
(17 wickets at 27.82, BB: 5-43)
In his spare athleticism and astonishing fitness, Anderson resembles Roger Federer, another preternaturally young sprite. He sent down 223 overs, more than anyone but Nathan Lyon, at an economy rate of 2.11, and took 17 wickets at his career average. With everything from the ball to the pitches ranged against him, it was the work of a supreme, and supremely driven, craftsman.
Of the youth and bit-part men, Craig Overton emerged with perhaps the most immediate future. Surely a strapping lad like him has another yard to come - with the right technical coaching at least. Tom Curran also had something about him, but that something is sadly not pace. He may well become a batsman who bowls, although whether that will be at Test standard, rather than in white ball cricket, is debatable. The reality for Mason Crane, for all of the positive notices, was 1-193. He bowled as many decent deliveries as you could expect from a 20-year-old leg spinner promoted way above his station, and should at least avoid the fate of Scott Borthwick. Jake Ball fell from favour after a lame performance at Brisbane, and will have to take a ticket at the back of the queue. Ben Foakes assumed the traditional and ghostly role of the spare keeper. Does he exist in corporeal form? Who knows... Gary Ballance may have to accept the firm hint being offered: If he couldn't get a game with this lot, a rethink is due. His refusal to accept a deep-rooted flaw in his technique might have finished him at this level.
Tomorrow: Australia...
In a weird way, the Ashes depends on something similar. Each new version of it relies for its heft and its significance on all of the other series that lie underneath. Without them, it's a just another tour in the endless round of modern cricket, a fleeting entertainment gone as soon as the next thing comes along.
So it's worth asking where the Ashes 2017/8 sits, a series that ended, uniquely, with one of the captains asleep in the dressing room; a series that in its dying moments was called "one sided and tedious" by the editor of Wisden, Lawrence Booth, and "the most boring Ashes in living memory - a one-sided plod on useless pitches" by Phil Walker, editor of Wisden Cricket Monthly. The august, yellow side of town is unequivocal, although the glee of the green and gold, and the understandable pride in their achievement, must be weighed against it.
The truth, as usual, is probably somewhere in the middle. The pitches were drear, and England lacked the skills needed to compete on them. There is a public spin from within the camp that Root's side had "a foot in the door" in most games but could not get the damn thing open. The stats do not back that up. They are monolithic and irrefutable:
Australia scored 2,982 runs to England's 2,585, and took 89 wickets to England's 58. Australia's wickets cost England 51.42 apiece, England's cost Australia 29.05. Of the Australian batsmen, Steve Smith, David Warner, Usman Khawaja, Shaun Marsh, Mitch Marsh, Tim Paine and Pat Cummins had a series average higher than their career average. Of English batsmen just Cook, Malan and Vince had the same (and the latter didn't take much exceeding). Starc, Cummins and Lyon took their wickets at less than their career average, and Hazelwood equalled his.
Steve Smith scored as many hundreds in seven innings as England's top six managed in 54. Australia's batsmen passed fifty twenty times and converted nine into hundreds. England's passed fifty thirteen times and made three hundreds. Every frontline Australian bowler took their wickets at less than thirty. England (look away now, here comes the real horror show) saw only Jimmy Anderson do the same. Broad and Woakes, the other bankers, conceded 1020 runs between them and delivered 21 wickets. Moeen and Mason Crane had a combined 6-768. No wonder England could claim that every Test went into its final day - Australia spent most of them batting.
Anyone reading the match reports as Philby once read his, in the light of rueful exile and months later, may not experience quite the yearning that a gentle and inconsequential day in the Shires brought to his endless winter in Moscow. For England there is an alien hostility to cricket down under that is starting to feel insurmountable. Australia's unrepentant mercilessness in everything from conditions to the media should chill them most of all.
Player by Player: England
Alastair Cook
(376 runs at 47.00, HS: 244*)
The reaction to Cook's Melbourne epic felt sentimental and laudatory, a signal response to his fading greatness. He ends the series as the sixth man in history with 12,000 Test runs - and so few players have experienced those heights, it would be folly to predict how Cook will react. Without the pressure of runs from any putative rival, England will have to settle for the hundreds that arrive like rainy day buses - not as frequently as you'd like, but all the more welcome when they do.
Mark Stoneman
(232 runs at 25.77, HS: 56)
Like Michael Carberry before him, Stoneman was shockingly and relentlessly exposed to bowling far above his pay grade. He should be extended the opportunity to continue that Carberry never got, although anyone imagining that Boult, Southee and Co. in New Zealand will be some kind of reward for his doughtiness may need a rethink. I'd recommend a chat with Alan Butcher about how to play the throat ball - back in Alan's day every county opener got plenty of exposure to it, and he had to face Sylvester Clarke, its ultimate exponent, in the nets, too...
James Vince
(242 run sat 26.88, HS: 83)
I crave Vince's batting like an alcoholic craves that first drink of the evening. If his cover drive had a voice it would sound like Marilyn singing happy birthday to JFK. But for every boozer, the morning dawns like needles in the eye and the damage must be picked through. There is no coherent argument to be made for his retention: instead it is a romantic one. Put simply, if Vince ever managed to bat for two or three sessions of a Test, he may produce something that would live in the memory eternally.
Joe Root
(378 runs at 47.25, HS: 83)
The conclusion at Sydney must feel like a fever dream to Root, its symbolism forgivably lost on a captain frazzled by two endless days in furnace temperatures. His last innings, bravely compiled while semi-conscious with gastroenteritis, was of course an unconverted fifty, his fifth of the series. That stat plods after him, its footfall growing louder. When England's one day side staggered from the wreckage of the 2015 World Cup, Eoin Morgan rebuilt a gun-shy and risk-averse team into a sleek and dangerous unit. Root could learn from his ODI skipper's flint-eyed and ruthless authority.
Dawid Malan
(383 runs at 42.55, HS: 140)
Malan had the wit to make a slight but significant adjustment to a more open stance, and his off-side play was a revelation, beautiful in its moment. He likes a scrap, and does not appear to have the major flaw that might be exposed with a move to number three, a growing possibility for next Summer.
Jonny Bairstow
(306 runs at 34.00, HS: 119)
This series proved why Bairstow is right to have resisted the notion that he should give up the gloves and find a place higher in the order as a batsman. Firstly his keeping was exemplary. He gave a funny interview about the amount of squats he'd done during the series - many thousands behind the pegs - yet it was tribute to his fitness that he'd just taken a wonderful late catch having kept all day. Secondly, six is plenty high enough, and seven ideal, for a player with a short backlift who goes hard at the ball - his nick-off after refusing a nightwatchman in Sydney was the perfect case in point.
Moeen Ali
(179 runs at 19.88, HS: 40; 5 wickets at 115, BB: 2/74)
Yes Moeen had a poor series, compounded by a side strain and a ripped spinning finger. Yet his treatment by mainstream and social media leaves a bad taste. Last summer he was the hero. Suddenly he was being pasted for not being something he never was in the first place, if a sentence with so many negatives can make any sense. He is a batsman who bowls, yet is expected to be a bowler who bats. To have played against type so successfully for so long is a confidence trick of sorts, and once Moeen's was dented he faced a harrowing time. Sadly, what could have been a significant career for all sorts of reasons is being damaged by misplaced expectations.
Chris Woakes
(114 runs at 16.28, HS: 36; 10 wickets at 49.50, BB: 4/36)
More culpable than Moeen, Woakes was brought to bowl briskly and aggressively - his primary skills - and managed neither. His speeds may have been fastest on the gun, but, banged on the wrong length into slow pitches, it became merely fodder. The notion that he may be a new ball bowler for England once Broad departs was, for now, exposed. Perhaps the most disappointing of the tour party.
Stuart Broad
(136 runs at 15.11, HS: 56; 11 wickets at 47.72, BB: 4-51)
There were notes of Animal Farm early in the series, as Broad, like noble Boxer the horse, strained in the harness for little effect. From memory, Boxer collapsed while building a windmill, and Broad seemed as though he may go while tilting at one - the oldest enemy of all... Yet he dragged it back with force of personality and some formidable discipline. Accepting his limitations, he bore his burden - his 195 overs were exceeded for England only by the ageless Anderson. His late career batting, conducted from somewhere near square leg and often almost behind the stumps, displayed similar fortitude, and some flair. Should get to 400 wickets, and the acclaim he has earned, in New Zealand.
James Anderson
(17 wickets at 27.82, BB: 5-43)
In his spare athleticism and astonishing fitness, Anderson resembles Roger Federer, another preternaturally young sprite. He sent down 223 overs, more than anyone but Nathan Lyon, at an economy rate of 2.11, and took 17 wickets at his career average. With everything from the ball to the pitches ranged against him, it was the work of a supreme, and supremely driven, craftsman.
Of the youth and bit-part men, Craig Overton emerged with perhaps the most immediate future. Surely a strapping lad like him has another yard to come - with the right technical coaching at least. Tom Curran also had something about him, but that something is sadly not pace. He may well become a batsman who bowls, although whether that will be at Test standard, rather than in white ball cricket, is debatable. The reality for Mason Crane, for all of the positive notices, was 1-193. He bowled as many decent deliveries as you could expect from a 20-year-old leg spinner promoted way above his station, and should at least avoid the fate of Scott Borthwick. Jake Ball fell from favour after a lame performance at Brisbane, and will have to take a ticket at the back of the queue. Ben Foakes assumed the traditional and ghostly role of the spare keeper. Does he exist in corporeal form? Who knows... Gary Ballance may have to accept the firm hint being offered: If he couldn't get a game with this lot, a rethink is due. His refusal to accept a deep-rooted flaw in his technique might have finished him at this level.
Tomorrow: Australia...
Tuesday, 2 January 2018
The Bull and the Chef, in Shadow and Sun; Weapon of Choice... More Ashes Notes
Each Spring, the EKKA comes to the Brisbane showgrounds. There, Australia's prime beef goes on parade. It's a strange and awesome display of meat and muscle, and it's easy to see why they regard David Warner in the same way, why they call him 'The Bull'. Even as he stomps to the crease, or re-fastenes his gloves for the many-thousandth time, he gives the impression of bunched and barely restrained power. The Bull is emblematic of a certain national characteristic, a successor to Slater and Hayden as the top-order enforcer. Hayden had a shot he used to call "the bowler killer". Dave Warner has a few of his own.
To see him bat at Melbourne was to marvel at what he has become. On a pitch that made parts of the Mojave desert looked nuanced and inviting, he scored 103 of the first 135 runs Australia made, 83 of them before lunch on day one, and in the second innings made his slowest half century. In all he faced 378 deliveries, the most he's ever squared up to in a single Test.
Warner is a freak with a freak career, the first man since 1877 to represent Australia before he'd played a first-class match. He arrived at a feverish time for the game, a year or so after the IPL began, and he batted feverishly too, so much so that the notion of a Test debut was laughed at. Only the great Sehwag saw what he might become (well perhaps also Warner's long-term coach Trent Woodhill) but Sehwag was the one with a platform to point out that Warner's style would translate. In his second game, on a Hobart greentop, he carried his bat for his maiden hundred, the sixth player in history to do so in the fourth innings of a Test.
Regardless of the Ashes win and the arrival of the new Bradman, it is what you might kindly call a transitional time for Australian batting. The Bull has had ten opening partners in seven years. Like his opposite number Alastair Cook, he went into the series knowing he would probably have to deliver if his side were to win.
The second half of Cook's career has a kind of symmetry with Warner's entire one. When Andrew Strauss retired at the end of the 2012 series with South Africa, Cook had played 83 Tests, and had 6,555 runs at 47.89. Since then, he has played 68 matches with twelve different opening partners, making 5,401 runs at 45.00. Warner's 70 Tests across almost the same span have yielded 6,090 runs at 48.72.
As the Ashes began, they had claim to be the two most established opening batsmen in Test cricket. Cook was the only opener in the top 10 of all-time highest run-makers, too, but for more than a year had been working on the technical aspect of his game with Gary Palmer, a coach outside of the ECB set-up until he was invited to Australia to work with some of the younger batters as well as Cook. Palmer is not an entirely holistic coach: he has firm views on technique and a gimlet eye for the fine detail of it. Cook has compared their work to that which a swing coach does with a golfer.
Although Palmer felt that by Perth Cook's batting was in shape, the player himself was having darker thoughts about the end. For the older batsman, knowledge is a double-edged sword. Experience cuts both ways, and all of the accrued scar tissue leaves its mark. The certainty of youth is a distant memory, replaced by an understanding of everything that can go wrong, and of the fleeting nature of what goes right.
The dead-loss pitch, Cook's technical work, his gathered fortitude and the late arrival of some luck produced an innings that will be remembered as a bittersweet classic, filled with personal meaning.
Meanwhile, the Bull, usually bristling with aggression, had appeared beset with his own uncertainties, not in technique or psychology, but in approach. He had been weirdly passive in the first three games, perhaps conscious of the stakes; the hail mary picks of the Marsh brothers and the form of Smith had bailed him out. Warner had seemed content with the un-Bull like game plan to see off Anderson and Broad rather than attack them.
It just wasn't him, and the Melbourne pre-lunch blitz, fired by adrenaline, had been coming. And yet this wasn't the rampant Bull of old. He hit the ball along the ground and into spaces, he ran hard. It was an attacking, fast hundred, but it was full of control too. To counterpoint it with that second innings 86 showed a psychological range that has been developing for a long time.
Warner eschewed the booze a long time ago, too. His marriage and family centred him as a man. They stopped calling him the Bull. They changed his nickname to Reverend. But Australia, in Australia and on their landmark day for cricket, needed that demonstration of bullish power. They got it, and they got more. On a wicket that has rightly been condemned to the dustbin of history, the Bull and the Chef showed how to survive in the shifting light and shadows of a career opening the batting.
Between them stood the ghosts of twenty-two men, fallen openers that they have so far outlasted. The Bull and the Chef may be Yin and Yang as players, but together they would have made a hell of a pair.
The endless, circular Duke's versus Kookaburra debate and the wider one about the balance of bat and ball was drawn further into focus by the Melbourne drop-in (dropped in from where, we should be told... Hell, apparently). There is a solution, maybe slightly avant garde in the slow-moving world of Test cricket, but perhaps worth trying. Instead of one make of match ball, offer a choice at the toss.
It would work like this: the winning captain could select whether to bat or bowl, or alternatively what ball they would like to use. The losing captain then gets choice of whatever's left. For example, Smith wins the toss and chooses to bat. Root then decides whether to use a Duke's or Kookaburra ball.
The system would add some more variety and nuance to the start of the game. At Melbourne, Smith would, I'm sure, still have elected to bat, figuring that even a Duke's ball would not tilt the advantage towards the bowling side. In more marginal circumstances, the choice of ball may be more valuable than whether a team bats or bowls first, and so a captain may change their thinking.
The value of the toss would also be recalibrated, meaning a chance event has less effect on the game's outcome.
I'd propose one other change too, one that would put more power in the hands of bowling sides. At the moment a team gets two new balls in the course of 80 overs (or 160 overs until a third). Why not allow a captain to take the second new ball whenever they want during that 160-over period - if they thought it would be an advantage to have it after 30 overs, then they could, but that ball would then not be replaced for another 130 overs.
It would add a tactical dimension, allowing a captain some flexibility to try and dislodge a partnership, or blow away a tail. On flat wickets it may be a gamble worth taking or one that could backfire, but it feels as though it's time to allow the bowlers a little redress in an age of the bat.
It's now the law to write about Bradman's technique in every Steve Smith piece, but there's one part of the theory that hasn't yet been aired. Tony Shillinglaw, the man behind the modern dissection of Bradman's method, has argued that the Don's 'Rotary' style is physiologically easier on the body. Although Bradman batted for Herculean periods, sometimes days on end, his concentration was rarely affected. Shillinglaw reasons that Bradman got less tired than other players, and therefore found concentration easier to maintain.
Smith half-joked at the end of the Melbourne Test that he would have liked another hour out there, and considering he'd left the field during the game with the stomach bug that was going around the Australian dressing room, he would probably back Shillinglaw up.
NB: I've had the pleasure of writing about Gary Palmer and Tony Shillinglaw, plus another man outside of the mainstream, fast bowling coach Ian Pont, for the next issue of Wisden Cricket Monthly.
To see him bat at Melbourne was to marvel at what he has become. On a pitch that made parts of the Mojave desert looked nuanced and inviting, he scored 103 of the first 135 runs Australia made, 83 of them before lunch on day one, and in the second innings made his slowest half century. In all he faced 378 deliveries, the most he's ever squared up to in a single Test.
Warner is a freak with a freak career, the first man since 1877 to represent Australia before he'd played a first-class match. He arrived at a feverish time for the game, a year or so after the IPL began, and he batted feverishly too, so much so that the notion of a Test debut was laughed at. Only the great Sehwag saw what he might become (well perhaps also Warner's long-term coach Trent Woodhill) but Sehwag was the one with a platform to point out that Warner's style would translate. In his second game, on a Hobart greentop, he carried his bat for his maiden hundred, the sixth player in history to do so in the fourth innings of a Test.
Regardless of the Ashes win and the arrival of the new Bradman, it is what you might kindly call a transitional time for Australian batting. The Bull has had ten opening partners in seven years. Like his opposite number Alastair Cook, he went into the series knowing he would probably have to deliver if his side were to win.
The second half of Cook's career has a kind of symmetry with Warner's entire one. When Andrew Strauss retired at the end of the 2012 series with South Africa, Cook had played 83 Tests, and had 6,555 runs at 47.89. Since then, he has played 68 matches with twelve different opening partners, making 5,401 runs at 45.00. Warner's 70 Tests across almost the same span have yielded 6,090 runs at 48.72.
As the Ashes began, they had claim to be the two most established opening batsmen in Test cricket. Cook was the only opener in the top 10 of all-time highest run-makers, too, but for more than a year had been working on the technical aspect of his game with Gary Palmer, a coach outside of the ECB set-up until he was invited to Australia to work with some of the younger batters as well as Cook. Palmer is not an entirely holistic coach: he has firm views on technique and a gimlet eye for the fine detail of it. Cook has compared their work to that which a swing coach does with a golfer.
Although Palmer felt that by Perth Cook's batting was in shape, the player himself was having darker thoughts about the end. For the older batsman, knowledge is a double-edged sword. Experience cuts both ways, and all of the accrued scar tissue leaves its mark. The certainty of youth is a distant memory, replaced by an understanding of everything that can go wrong, and of the fleeting nature of what goes right.
The dead-loss pitch, Cook's technical work, his gathered fortitude and the late arrival of some luck produced an innings that will be remembered as a bittersweet classic, filled with personal meaning.
Meanwhile, the Bull, usually bristling with aggression, had appeared beset with his own uncertainties, not in technique or psychology, but in approach. He had been weirdly passive in the first three games, perhaps conscious of the stakes; the hail mary picks of the Marsh brothers and the form of Smith had bailed him out. Warner had seemed content with the un-Bull like game plan to see off Anderson and Broad rather than attack them.
It just wasn't him, and the Melbourne pre-lunch blitz, fired by adrenaline, had been coming. And yet this wasn't the rampant Bull of old. He hit the ball along the ground and into spaces, he ran hard. It was an attacking, fast hundred, but it was full of control too. To counterpoint it with that second innings 86 showed a psychological range that has been developing for a long time.
Warner eschewed the booze a long time ago, too. His marriage and family centred him as a man. They stopped calling him the Bull. They changed his nickname to Reverend. But Australia, in Australia and on their landmark day for cricket, needed that demonstration of bullish power. They got it, and they got more. On a wicket that has rightly been condemned to the dustbin of history, the Bull and the Chef showed how to survive in the shifting light and shadows of a career opening the batting.
Between them stood the ghosts of twenty-two men, fallen openers that they have so far outlasted. The Bull and the Chef may be Yin and Yang as players, but together they would have made a hell of a pair.
Weapons of Choice
The endless, circular Duke's versus Kookaburra debate and the wider one about the balance of bat and ball was drawn further into focus by the Melbourne drop-in (dropped in from where, we should be told... Hell, apparently). There is a solution, maybe slightly avant garde in the slow-moving world of Test cricket, but perhaps worth trying. Instead of one make of match ball, offer a choice at the toss.
It would work like this: the winning captain could select whether to bat or bowl, or alternatively what ball they would like to use. The losing captain then gets choice of whatever's left. For example, Smith wins the toss and chooses to bat. Root then decides whether to use a Duke's or Kookaburra ball.
The system would add some more variety and nuance to the start of the game. At Melbourne, Smith would, I'm sure, still have elected to bat, figuring that even a Duke's ball would not tilt the advantage towards the bowling side. In more marginal circumstances, the choice of ball may be more valuable than whether a team bats or bowls first, and so a captain may change their thinking.
The value of the toss would also be recalibrated, meaning a chance event has less effect on the game's outcome.
I'd propose one other change too, one that would put more power in the hands of bowling sides. At the moment a team gets two new balls in the course of 80 overs (or 160 overs until a third). Why not allow a captain to take the second new ball whenever they want during that 160-over period - if they thought it would be an advantage to have it after 30 overs, then they could, but that ball would then not be replaced for another 130 overs.
It would add a tactical dimension, allowing a captain some flexibility to try and dislodge a partnership, or blow away a tail. On flat wickets it may be a gamble worth taking or one that could backfire, but it feels as though it's time to allow the bowlers a little redress in an age of the bat.
Smith and the Don, Redux...
It's now the law to write about Bradman's technique in every Steve Smith piece, but there's one part of the theory that hasn't yet been aired. Tony Shillinglaw, the man behind the modern dissection of Bradman's method, has argued that the Don's 'Rotary' style is physiologically easier on the body. Although Bradman batted for Herculean periods, sometimes days on end, his concentration was rarely affected. Shillinglaw reasons that Bradman got less tired than other players, and therefore found concentration easier to maintain.
Smith half-joked at the end of the Melbourne Test that he would have liked another hour out there, and considering he'd left the field during the game with the stomach bug that was going around the Australian dressing room, he would probably back Shillinglaw up.
NB: I've had the pleasure of writing about Gary Palmer and Tony Shillinglaw, plus another man outside of the mainstream, fast bowling coach Ian Pont, for the next issue of Wisden Cricket Monthly.
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