What we have lost

I watched Graham Napier bat for Essex in a Pro 40 game the other day. He made 60-odd from about 40 balls at number three. I got that deflated feeling when he was dismissed because he has that extra dimension, that indefinable something that marks him out.

He doesn't do it often, according to his average. Essex don't seem to be able to decide where to bat him. You could drive a truck through parts of his technique. Yet his talent is rare. It even sounds different when he hits the ball.

Napier is thirty now, so he might be lost to England beyond the T20 format. But perhaps more than anyone else, he exposes the paucity of vision in our one-day cricket.

The 50 over side has not just been moribund against Australia this summer, or at the last World Cup or the last Champions Trophy, or even at the ones before that. It's been a generation of utter mediocrity, of wasted time and wasted careers. In a decade when batting has been redefined, England have singularly failed to identify players who can push out past the norms and conventions.

England's selectors tend to spend a lot of time looking at what players lack, at what's not there. It's the orthodox view. Instead, they could start from the point of the problem and work backwards. They could ask, 'who can hit the ball?' and build on that. Identify what's there rather than what's not.

Napier's probably not good enough to make it as an international player now, but he is talented enough. There's a subtle difference.  The same could be said of other hitters: Ian Blackwell, Dimi Mascarenhas, Ali Brown, James Benning. 

Yesterday Rory Hamilton-Brown, who's 22, walked out at Hove and smacked an average Notts attack around for a while. There's plenty that Brown can't do against better bowling, but he hit the ball harder and cleaner than anyone else except perhaps Dwayne Smith. It's a place to start, and god knows, watching England peck around for 250-odd ad infinitum, a start is what we need. 

And Napier can bowl at 90mph, too...

NB: Napes is on TV again now, playing for Essex against Somerset. He's sporting a fierce pair of sideys. He's just yorked Marcus Trescothick and hit Justin Langer on the shoulder first ball. 

One size fits bugger all

Ian Blackwell got the first hundred of the season yesterday. But that wasn't the figure that caught the eye. Blackwell says he's lost 10 kilos over the winter, although he 'declined to give' his actual weight. Still north of 13 stones one would guess. He's a big-boned lad.

Blackwell has left Somerset, where he lurked as a village blacksmith of a player, for Durham, where he's a batting all-rounder. 'I think [Somerset captain Justin] Langer wanted me to be a bit fitter,' he said. 'He also told me he had an issue with my throwing arm, which I disputed. I didn't see myself fitting into the mould'.

So 10 kg lighter, Blackwell has buggered off - a case of heeding the message but blaming the messenger.  'He could not bring himself to use the first name of the Australian,' reported the Times. David Hopps went as far as calling him 'a wasted talent'. Blackwell was seen in conversation with Geoff Miller at Lord's, no doubt assuring him he can fill in where Samit Patel ['fat, unfit and lazy' - KP] has missed out.

All of which implies that Blackwell will play better if he's thinner, rather than just more dedicated. The truth is somewhat different, however much the legions of fitness trainers and conditioning coaches who surround pro cricketers would like it. Cricket is about fitness for purpose.

Virender Sehwag could be thinner. So could Shane Warne - who could also knock the smoking on the head - and so could Jesse Ryder. Not to mention Inzy, for whom no net session was complete without a wicker chair for him to sit in while he awaited his turn to bat. Where's the evidence that says they'd be better if they shed the timber?

Cricket - sport - is a meritocracy. Talent doesn't always apply itself to the hardest working or to conventional thinking. It's alright to be fat if you're good. The doctor himself, WG, played his last first class game this week in 1908. He'd only been playing for 43 years. Not bad for a big lad.