So, it looks like Sachin Tendulkar will walk out to bat at Lord's tomorrow. The numbers are aligned, as everyone knows. Here's something I posted a while ago that I think holds true:
Sachin Tendulkar stands on the edge of the greatest feat of batting in the history of the game. When he registers the 100th hundred of his international career, he will achieve something that, like Bradman's average, will never be superseded.
It's human nature to try and measure achievement and to be driven to close to madness when it proves impossible. Time and its changes usually mean that it is. But Tendulkar's argument as the best ever is gaining weight.
It's a question of degree of course. Bradman's is measurable. He is, statistically, more than 30 per cent better than anyone else who has played. That's a stat that makes him not just the greatest cricketer of all time, but by the gap that he created, the greatest sportsman of all time. To draw facile comparison, Usain Bolt would have to run the 100 metres in six seconds to equal him; Tiger Woods would have to win another ten Major Championships.
Yet Tendulkar edges closer. One hundred international hundreds will put him more than 30 per cent clear of the next best, Ricky Ponting who has 68. Only one other player has 40 Test hundreds [SRT has 51] and that's Jacques Kallis. Yet Kallis has 'only' 17 ODI tons. There is Tendulkar and then there is daylight.
The Don of course scored with greater mass. If he had continued at his career rate, he would have made 100 Test hundreds in roughly 250 innings [Tendulkar has batted 290 times for his 51] but that presumes Bradman would have been able to continue. All of sport's geniuses, from Ali to Woods, have been slowed down and altered by life. No, what separates Sachin even from the Don is endurance.
Tendulkar has spent more than a year of his life playing ODI cricket, and a lot more than that in Tests. He has played the game internationally from the age of 16, and he's now 37. That's 57 per cent of his time on earth. He has played 626 Tests and ODIs in that time. Bradman played for 20 years, for a combined 234 Test and first-class games. The pace of life and the pace of the game is irrevocably different.
Efforts have been made to calculate what Bradman's average might have been had he played today, given the differences in bowling and especially fielding, and it comes out to around 77. What's unknowable is how modern life and the demands of the game would have impacted upon him. There is empirical evidence of Sachin's apparently unquenchable desire.
You'll get no argument from me if you want to surmise that Bradman could have scored a hundred international hundreds. But Sachin is actually going to do it, and given the likelihood of ODI cricket [and perhaps even Tests] surviving for long enough to prove that anyone can outstrip him, his record will stand forever, as distant and unreachable as anything of the Don's and as worthy of consideration as the greatest ever. It's hard to imagine that Bradman was better.
Friday, 22 July 2011
Sunday, 17 July 2011
Owais Shah plays the shot of the season
The other night at Chelmsford, Owais Shah played the shot of the season. It should not pass unacknowledged. It wasn't a new invention, not a flip or a scoop or a glide; it wasn't a power-mow, a skimming bomb, a cultured hoik. It wasn't from the MCC manual either, not because it lacked orthodoxy, but because it was simply unavailable to most players. It was a piece of skill so pure that very, very few people on earth could have executed it.
I doubt that even Shah expected the result he got. He'd just come to the crease with Essex chasing Kent's 183. The score was 9-1 after a couple of overs. The lights were on, the ball was swinging a little, Essex had to win to qualify from the group. Shah is skittish at the best of times, a fragile, scarred talent, and he began uneasily. Charl Langeveldt and Azhar Mahmood were bowling, taking the ball mostly away from the right-handers. Langeveldt sent one down on a good length, tailing out at about 85mph. Shah picked his bat up, stepped across his crease and shaped to push forwards. In essence that was all he did. As he finished the shot he accelerated a little into the briefest of follow-throughs.
At first, the ball looked to have popped up towards mid-off; maybe Shah had been done a little by the bounce and offered a simple catch. Yet instead it continued to climb. Shah watched it open-eyed. It went up and onwards into the evening sky, cleared the boundary and then carried the two-tier stand and departed the ground altogether. Shah looked down at the wicket. A few of the other players glanced at one another. The ball had to be replaced.
The pace of the game, and its importance, didn't really leave much time for reflection, but that shot was a small miracle of timing and striking. It didn't really help Shah, or Essex, either. He made 27 from 20 balls, and Essex lost by 15 runs. The main talking point afterwards was a catch Scott Styris claimed and had disallowed, yet Shah's shot will stay in the memory for longer than any of that.
Owais's racehorse temperament has cost him with England, but this was a glimpse of the possible. Perhaps only Sehwag could play a shot like it - Shah's was that good.
I doubt that even Shah expected the result he got. He'd just come to the crease with Essex chasing Kent's 183. The score was 9-1 after a couple of overs. The lights were on, the ball was swinging a little, Essex had to win to qualify from the group. Shah is skittish at the best of times, a fragile, scarred talent, and he began uneasily. Charl Langeveldt and Azhar Mahmood were bowling, taking the ball mostly away from the right-handers. Langeveldt sent one down on a good length, tailing out at about 85mph. Shah picked his bat up, stepped across his crease and shaped to push forwards. In essence that was all he did. As he finished the shot he accelerated a little into the briefest of follow-throughs.
At first, the ball looked to have popped up towards mid-off; maybe Shah had been done a little by the bounce and offered a simple catch. Yet instead it continued to climb. Shah watched it open-eyed. It went up and onwards into the evening sky, cleared the boundary and then carried the two-tier stand and departed the ground altogether. Shah looked down at the wicket. A few of the other players glanced at one another. The ball had to be replaced.
The pace of the game, and its importance, didn't really leave much time for reflection, but that shot was a small miracle of timing and striking. It didn't really help Shah, or Essex, either. He made 27 from 20 balls, and Essex lost by 15 runs. The main talking point afterwards was a catch Scott Styris claimed and had disallowed, yet Shah's shot will stay in the memory for longer than any of that.
Owais's racehorse temperament has cost him with England, but this was a glimpse of the possible. Perhaps only Sehwag could play a shot like it - Shah's was that good.
Tuesday, 12 July 2011
Guest post with the Bored ones...
Have done a little thing with the BCCI boys, thanks to Naked Cricket...:
As Rahul Dravid was adding the last few of his 12, 314 Test match runs over in West Indies, it was interesting to watch the volume of ‘advice’ from Indian fans that came streaming through the Twitter feed.
As Rahul Dravid was adding the last few of his 12, 314 Test match runs over in West Indies, it was interesting to watch the volume of ‘advice’ from Indian fans that came streaming through the Twitter feed.
If you’d never seen Dravid bat and instead formed an opinion of him from these screams from cyberspace, you might have pictured a timid schoolboy who’d been dragged unwillingly to the crease, where he was now cowering somewhere between the stumps and square leg bent only on surviving the remorseless onslaught of Darren Sammy, rather than the imposing, infinitely skilled player that he is.
What Mike Atherton has in common with Mick Mars
One played 115 times for his country and is the cricket correspondent of The Times. The other is a member of Motley Crue and once accidentally shot his own girlfriend. One published an autobiography in which he revealed that he didn't like Raymond Illingworth. The other published an autobiography in which he revealed that he believed in aliens. One has a child named after a guitar, Les Paul. It's unlikely that the other has a son called Gray-Nicolls.
There is however some common ground between Michael Andrew Atherton, 43, of Failsworth, Lancashire, and Robert Alan Deal [no, Mick Mars is not his real name], 60, of Los Angeles California. When the histories of their respective occupations are written, neither will quite inhabit the upper echelons frequented by great men, yet both have had their moments too. Athers, for example, resisted Alan Donald for 12 hours in Johannesburg. And Mick Mars wrote Girls, Girls, Girls.
And then there is ankylosing spondylitis, an auto-immune form of arthritis that affects the spine. Yesterday it was announced that researchers have isolated the genetic mutation that causes the disease, which has impacted the lives and careers of both Athers and Mick Mars.
Atherton wrote in yesterday's Times about the discovery [unfortunately it's behind lovely Rupert's paywall] and about how the condition imposed itself on his game. By the age of twenty he was suffering badly enough for him to undergo special exercise and treatment, and he played with it throughout his career. It was usually referred to as 'a bad back', which is somewhat understating the case. Athers is one of life's stoics, but in addition to putting up with Ray Illingworth, Glenn McGrath, Wasim and Waqar, Brian Lara, the press and just 31 wins in those 115 games, it's no surprise that his increasingly hunched, purse-lipped, white-faced presence at the crease appeared to offer him so little pleasure.
Mick Mars' suffering was somewhat overwhelmed by the gargantuan feats of debauchery that Motley Crue fessed up to in their book The Dirt, but in one memorable passage he refers to ankylosing spondylitis as 'a grey ghost' that he he imagined hovering over his body, causing it to gradually lock up. His spine has fused and he is now three inches shorter than he was as a young man. He has had a double hip replacement, which has eased pain so debilitating he once tried to kill himself by walking out into the sea.
After Athers was caught rubbing dirt on the ball in 1995, the The Times accused their future correspondent of 'failing to uphold the values to which his society aspires'. He had to endure Jimmy Tarbuck calling for his resignation. In his next innings he made 99, and in his press conference quoted Roosevelt: 'It is not the critic who counts, not the one who points out how the strong man stumbled ... The credit belongs to the man who is in the arena; whose face is marred with sweat and dust and blood.'
Both Atherton and Mick Mars have managed that, although Athers would probably accept that a little mild ribbing is due given that he has jumped the fence and become an occasionally caustic critic himself. He wrote yesterday that he hoped the new research meant future generations of Athertons would not have to go through the same thing. Let's hope they can bat though. Or write Girls, Girls, Girls.
There is however some common ground between Michael Andrew Atherton, 43, of Failsworth, Lancashire, and Robert Alan Deal [no, Mick Mars is not his real name], 60, of Los Angeles California. When the histories of their respective occupations are written, neither will quite inhabit the upper echelons frequented by great men, yet both have had their moments too. Athers, for example, resisted Alan Donald for 12 hours in Johannesburg. And Mick Mars wrote Girls, Girls, Girls.
And then there is ankylosing spondylitis, an auto-immune form of arthritis that affects the spine. Yesterday it was announced that researchers have isolated the genetic mutation that causes the disease, which has impacted the lives and careers of both Athers and Mick Mars.
Atherton wrote in yesterday's Times about the discovery [unfortunately it's behind lovely Rupert's paywall] and about how the condition imposed itself on his game. By the age of twenty he was suffering badly enough for him to undergo special exercise and treatment, and he played with it throughout his career. It was usually referred to as 'a bad back', which is somewhat understating the case. Athers is one of life's stoics, but in addition to putting up with Ray Illingworth, Glenn McGrath, Wasim and Waqar, Brian Lara, the press and just 31 wins in those 115 games, it's no surprise that his increasingly hunched, purse-lipped, white-faced presence at the crease appeared to offer him so little pleasure.
Mick Mars' suffering was somewhat overwhelmed by the gargantuan feats of debauchery that Motley Crue fessed up to in their book The Dirt, but in one memorable passage he refers to ankylosing spondylitis as 'a grey ghost' that he he imagined hovering over his body, causing it to gradually lock up. His spine has fused and he is now three inches shorter than he was as a young man. He has had a double hip replacement, which has eased pain so debilitating he once tried to kill himself by walking out into the sea.
After Athers was caught rubbing dirt on the ball in 1995, the The Times accused their future correspondent of 'failing to uphold the values to which his society aspires'. He had to endure Jimmy Tarbuck calling for his resignation. In his next innings he made 99, and in his press conference quoted Roosevelt: 'It is not the critic who counts, not the one who points out how the strong man stumbled ... The credit belongs to the man who is in the arena; whose face is marred with sweat and dust and blood.'
Both Atherton and Mick Mars have managed that, although Athers would probably accept that a little mild ribbing is due given that he has jumped the fence and become an occasionally caustic critic himself. He wrote yesterday that he hoped the new research meant future generations of Athertons would not have to go through the same thing. Let's hope they can bat though. Or write Girls, Girls, Girls.
Wednesday, 6 July 2011
Kumar, cricket, life
Next week, the Beeb start a four-part serial on the weather, and how it has shaped British history and culture in big ways and in small. To a long, long list, add the unforgiving rainclouds that dogged Sri Lanka's tour, because it was during those interminable breaks that Kumar Sangakkara wrote his Spirit of Cricket lecture.
It was a lecture delivered in the manner of his batting, with a sure and certain lightness that disguises the treatment being meted out. It was immaculate stuff, sometimes magical, always resolute. The headlines have flowed from it; Peter Roebuck has called it 'the most important speech in cricket history' [a piece of hype it didn't need]; a Sri Lankan minister's initial response was a threat [always the first refuge of the despot, not to mention of the tosspot too].
Yet what was really lovely and resonant about it, and what will ensure that it remains a glowing memory long after the wrangling over board politics are done, was the way it showed cricket and life as symbiotic and intertwined. For Kumar, for Sri Lanka, for many other of us too, one cannot be unwound from the other.
First there was Kumar the kid, six years old, delighted to have his house filled with 35 Tamil friends his father was hiding during race riots, innocently oblivious to 'the terrible consequences' should they be discovered. A few years later, a communist insurgency meant that: 'the sight of charred bodies on the roadsides and floating corpses in the river was terrifyingly commonplace.'
His first cricket coach, rather charmingly still known to Kumar as 'Mr DH De Silva', was ambushed and shot on a tennis court, only surviving because the gun pointed at his head jammed. Then came civil war and suicide bombs, more darkness and more terror. What Sri Lankans yearned for was 'a miracle that would lift the pallid gloom and show us what we as a country were capable of if united'.
It came, the miracle, at the 1996 World Cup, where a disparate, almost rag-bag collective led by 'an overweight, unfit southpaw' became a team that not only won the World Cup but that redefined the way the game is played. 'It inspired people to look at the country differently... it helped normal people get through their lives'.
The team came together and then the country too. And what brought the team together? Well, good old Darrell Hair and his no-balling of Murali in Melbourne in '95: 'few realised it at the time, but the no balling of Murali for alleged chucking had far-reaching consequences. The issue raised the ire of the entire Sri Lankan nation. Murali was no longer alone. His pain, embarrassment and anger were shared by all. No matter what critics say, the manner in which Arjuna and team stood behind Murali made an entire nation proud.'
Cricket and life, life and cricket. After all of the death, all of the riots, the exploding bombs, the non-firing guns, one man no-balls another in Australia at Christmas and a change comes along.
It's not that simple of course, and Sangakkara does not suggest it was, but its impact is undeniable, indelible. After '96, cricketers occupied a new, higher place in Sri Lanka. With power and money came responsibility.
Sanga recounts well the first text message, received by Sanath Jayasuriya in a dressing room in New Zealand, describing 'waves from the sea' flooding in to coastal towns. Back home days later, the players visited the hastily established camps. 'In each camp we saw the effects of the tragedy written upon the faces of the young and old. Vacant and empty eyes filled with a sorrow and longing for homes and loved ones and livelihoods lost to the terrible waves. Yet for us, their cricketers, they managed a smile.'
Incredibly, there was more. Next came Lahore, which Sanga recalled with such poise and humour in his speech that the words lose some of their effect on the page alone, but even here, when death was as close as the bullet that ripped into a seat where his head had just been, Sanga's reaction, on seeing Tharanga Paranvithana stand up after being shot, was: 'I see him and I think: “Oh my God, you were out first ball, run out the next innings and now you have been shot. What a terrible first tour.” Life and cricket again, a smile in the dark.
A few weeks later, Kumar encountered a soldier, a man who experienced situations like Lahore many times. 'That soldier looked me in the eye and replied: “It is OK if I die because it is my job and I am ready for it. But you are a hero and if you were to die it would be a great loss for our country.” I was taken aback. How can this man value his life less than mine? His sincerity was overwhelming. I felt humbled. This is the passion that cricket and cricketers evoke in Sri Lankans. This is the love that I strive every day of my career to be worthy of.'
Kumar Sangakkara is the man who has expressed this, but Sri Lanka has many more remarkable cricketers, both on and off the field. They don't teach you the kind of stuff they know in a centre of excellence. To them, cricket means everything and, in the right way, nothing. There's an old maxim that usually holds true: if you can play like it means nothing when it means everything, then you will be okay.
King Kumar averages 56 in Test cricket for a reason, and it's not just because he has a good eye. The cricket boards can politik away; Sangakkara's speech was about much more than that. It was about cricket, and about life.
It was a lecture delivered in the manner of his batting, with a sure and certain lightness that disguises the treatment being meted out. It was immaculate stuff, sometimes magical, always resolute. The headlines have flowed from it; Peter Roebuck has called it 'the most important speech in cricket history' [a piece of hype it didn't need]; a Sri Lankan minister's initial response was a threat [always the first refuge of the despot, not to mention of the tosspot too].
Yet what was really lovely and resonant about it, and what will ensure that it remains a glowing memory long after the wrangling over board politics are done, was the way it showed cricket and life as symbiotic and intertwined. For Kumar, for Sri Lanka, for many other of us too, one cannot be unwound from the other.
First there was Kumar the kid, six years old, delighted to have his house filled with 35 Tamil friends his father was hiding during race riots, innocently oblivious to 'the terrible consequences' should they be discovered. A few years later, a communist insurgency meant that: 'the sight of charred bodies on the roadsides and floating corpses in the river was terrifyingly commonplace.'
His first cricket coach, rather charmingly still known to Kumar as 'Mr DH De Silva', was ambushed and shot on a tennis court, only surviving because the gun pointed at his head jammed. Then came civil war and suicide bombs, more darkness and more terror. What Sri Lankans yearned for was 'a miracle that would lift the pallid gloom and show us what we as a country were capable of if united'.
It came, the miracle, at the 1996 World Cup, where a disparate, almost rag-bag collective led by 'an overweight, unfit southpaw' became a team that not only won the World Cup but that redefined the way the game is played. 'It inspired people to look at the country differently... it helped normal people get through their lives'.
The team came together and then the country too. And what brought the team together? Well, good old Darrell Hair and his no-balling of Murali in Melbourne in '95: 'few realised it at the time, but the no balling of Murali for alleged chucking had far-reaching consequences. The issue raised the ire of the entire Sri Lankan nation. Murali was no longer alone. His pain, embarrassment and anger were shared by all. No matter what critics say, the manner in which Arjuna and team stood behind Murali made an entire nation proud.'
Cricket and life, life and cricket. After all of the death, all of the riots, the exploding bombs, the non-firing guns, one man no-balls another in Australia at Christmas and a change comes along.
It's not that simple of course, and Sangakkara does not suggest it was, but its impact is undeniable, indelible. After '96, cricketers occupied a new, higher place in Sri Lanka. With power and money came responsibility.
Sanga recounts well the first text message, received by Sanath Jayasuriya in a dressing room in New Zealand, describing 'waves from the sea' flooding in to coastal towns. Back home days later, the players visited the hastily established camps. 'In each camp we saw the effects of the tragedy written upon the faces of the young and old. Vacant and empty eyes filled with a sorrow and longing for homes and loved ones and livelihoods lost to the terrible waves. Yet for us, their cricketers, they managed a smile.'
Incredibly, there was more. Next came Lahore, which Sanga recalled with such poise and humour in his speech that the words lose some of their effect on the page alone, but even here, when death was as close as the bullet that ripped into a seat where his head had just been, Sanga's reaction, on seeing Tharanga Paranvithana stand up after being shot, was: 'I see him and I think: “Oh my God, you were out first ball, run out the next innings and now you have been shot. What a terrible first tour.” Life and cricket again, a smile in the dark.
A few weeks later, Kumar encountered a soldier, a man who experienced situations like Lahore many times. 'That soldier looked me in the eye and replied: “It is OK if I die because it is my job and I am ready for it. But you are a hero and if you were to die it would be a great loss for our country.” I was taken aback. How can this man value his life less than mine? His sincerity was overwhelming. I felt humbled. This is the passion that cricket and cricketers evoke in Sri Lankans. This is the love that I strive every day of my career to be worthy of.'
Kumar Sangakkara is the man who has expressed this, but Sri Lanka has many more remarkable cricketers, both on and off the field. They don't teach you the kind of stuff they know in a centre of excellence. To them, cricket means everything and, in the right way, nothing. There's an old maxim that usually holds true: if you can play like it means nothing when it means everything, then you will be okay.
King Kumar averages 56 in Test cricket for a reason, and it's not just because he has a good eye. The cricket boards can politik away; Sangakkara's speech was about much more than that. It was about cricket, and about life.
Thursday, 30 June 2011
Scale and the women's game
I thought quite hard before posting this [yes, a rarity I know], because it is not intended as criticism, and it's about women's cricket. But having watched quite a lot of the recent quadrangular series here in England, I believe it's a point worth making, because no part of the game, men's or women's, can afford to stand still.
A couple of years ago I fluked my way into the chance of facing England's opening bowlers, Katherine Brunt and Anya Shrubsole, in the nets at Loughborough. Reading it back now, it's a pretty fair reflection of what it was like, and it was a nice experience to have. But it's not an experience that can be easily translated into the middle, under match conditions on an outdoor pitch, and those are the ones that count.
The staging of international games before men's matches is an excellent idea in terms of exposing the women's game to the market, both live and on TV. But it also exposes the differences between them, and more importantly, the differences in scale that are affecting the chances that the women's game has to develop into something that can stand up in the way that women's tennis or women's golf can.
And it is a question of scale, not skill. There is lots of subtle skill in the women's game, but in the modern era the appeal of a well-placed, hard run three, for example, is limited. The women play in arenas designed for men, and it's the arenas that need to change in order to let the game evolve. Elite women golfers are given courses set up for the dynamics of their game, and the cricketers should be too.
I think they should experiment with a 20-yard pitch, as well as a smaller playing area. A shorter pitch would address the balance between bat and ball. A delivery of 75mph travelling 20 yards asks more serious questions of the batter than one travelling 22. Once the quicker bowlers have come and gone, the change bowling - which is horribly exposed at the moment, especially on television - would be sharper too. Batting and bowling would be toughened up, and it's no real problem to re-mark wickets to make the change.
Limited overs cricket gets people through the gate because there are lots of big hits. Just as Tiger Woods can strike a golf ball a hundred yards further than the top women players, so men can clear longer boundaries in cricket. Again, it's a question of scale. The women's game deserves to have its own version of big hitting. It should be able to accommodate the female Gayle or Sehwag, as well as the more classical players that it currently does. The ropes just need to come in a few yards.
At Bristol last week, both women and men's sides used the same boundaries, and by happy chance, England's men and women both made 136. The women's total included eight fours and no sixes, the men's - in a sub-par performance where Bopara and his chums managed to dry up almost completely - also hit eight fours, but five sixes too. Sri Lanka knocked those off in 17 overs, with 14 fours and a six. In reply to England's women, Australia made 114, with seven fours.
The women's game deserves its chance - perhaps the playing field should now be made level.
NB: Scale can go the other way too: I blogged on the problems of Will Jefferson here.
A couple of years ago I fluked my way into the chance of facing England's opening bowlers, Katherine Brunt and Anya Shrubsole, in the nets at Loughborough. Reading it back now, it's a pretty fair reflection of what it was like, and it was a nice experience to have. But it's not an experience that can be easily translated into the middle, under match conditions on an outdoor pitch, and those are the ones that count.
The staging of international games before men's matches is an excellent idea in terms of exposing the women's game to the market, both live and on TV. But it also exposes the differences between them, and more importantly, the differences in scale that are affecting the chances that the women's game has to develop into something that can stand up in the way that women's tennis or women's golf can.
And it is a question of scale, not skill. There is lots of subtle skill in the women's game, but in the modern era the appeal of a well-placed, hard run three, for example, is limited. The women play in arenas designed for men, and it's the arenas that need to change in order to let the game evolve. Elite women golfers are given courses set up for the dynamics of their game, and the cricketers should be too.
I think they should experiment with a 20-yard pitch, as well as a smaller playing area. A shorter pitch would address the balance between bat and ball. A delivery of 75mph travelling 20 yards asks more serious questions of the batter than one travelling 22. Once the quicker bowlers have come and gone, the change bowling - which is horribly exposed at the moment, especially on television - would be sharper too. Batting and bowling would be toughened up, and it's no real problem to re-mark wickets to make the change.
Limited overs cricket gets people through the gate because there are lots of big hits. Just as Tiger Woods can strike a golf ball a hundred yards further than the top women players, so men can clear longer boundaries in cricket. Again, it's a question of scale. The women's game deserves to have its own version of big hitting. It should be able to accommodate the female Gayle or Sehwag, as well as the more classical players that it currently does. The ropes just need to come in a few yards.
At Bristol last week, both women and men's sides used the same boundaries, and by happy chance, England's men and women both made 136. The women's total included eight fours and no sixes, the men's - in a sub-par performance where Bopara and his chums managed to dry up almost completely - also hit eight fours, but five sixes too. Sri Lanka knocked those off in 17 overs, with 14 fours and a six. In reply to England's women, Australia made 114, with seven fours.
The women's game deserves its chance - perhaps the playing field should now be made level.
NB: Scale can go the other way too: I blogged on the problems of Will Jefferson here.
Monday, 27 June 2011
Cricket versus nature versus nurture
So England take their counter-intuitive leap into the dark with Alastair Cook at the Oval tomorrow. A man with an ODI strike rate of 71 will be opening the batting for the foreseeable future. Just like Oscar Wilde's wallpaper, either that strike rate will have to go, or he will.
Cook will be asked to play against nature in ratcheting up his hitting. The question is, by how much? It's an odd and indefinable one to answer, but it is a question that cricket asks all the time because, as the old cliche goes, it's the sort of sport that reveals character as often as it builds it.
Samit Patel is another man fighting his nature. The state of the fat professional cricketer is probably more complex than it's given credit for. It's pretty simple to get in the gym and re-engineer yourself if you want to, with all of the help that's on tap, so when it doesn't happen there have to be reasons why. On saturday, Patel, who has achieved some sort of arbitrary minimum standard that doesn't seem to have included losing much timber, was run out not attempting a run.
It was a slack dismissal for a slack cricketer. There are guys like Patel all across sport, guys whose efforts are approximate, who seem ambivalent to their talents and opportunities. They're almost there but not quite. Beneath the self-deprecating grins and all the rest of the image projection is something fragile, something fearful, something preventing them from taking that final step through the door. It can be tough to contemplate finding out what lies at the end of yourself.
Patel appears to be fighting a battle like that one; perhaps it's easier for him at the moment to have people say 'if only' than it is to find out. Bring in the shrinks. Not far from Bristol, scene of Samit's latest stand, an even more majestically-upholstered enigma has appeared like a galleon in full sail.
Clad in always flattering red spandex, hair teased into a mad omelette of tints and highlights, Mark Cosgrove opens the batting for Glamorgan, geographically and figuratively separated from the players he outshone as a kid - he was the Bradman Young Cricketer Of The Year in 2005. He's now about as popular with Cricket Australia as Simon Katich is, and they don't seem as inclined to unravel his mystery as England are with Patel's.
It's a mystery of a different kind, because Cosgrove seems at one with his nature. He is a supremely gifted batsman in all formats, easily as good as Usman Khawaja, far superior to David Warner, and with a touch of X-factor about him. He may not be an athlete, but his hands and eye are lethally fast. He parted company with South Australia last year at their behest ['we were unable to help him fulfill his full potential'] and then went to Tasmania to score a shedload of runs as they won the Sheffield Shield ['at times it looked like he was batting on a different wicket to the rest,' said his coach].
No, Cosgrove's problem is one of image - external rather than self. Quite patently he is worth the few extra runs he may give away in the field. It's just that Australia, in a rebuilding phase, can't be seen to be sanctioning a free-spirited attitude like his, which is ironic, given that his attitude is very Australian in its way. Cosgrove's self-image, unlike Patel's, doesn't need breaking down. I'd bet he'd be a lesser player without the excess pounds, because those pounds are expressing his need to be different and free.
There are no pat answers; a man's nature is complex, for all the nurturing it gets.
Cook will be asked to play against nature in ratcheting up his hitting. The question is, by how much? It's an odd and indefinable one to answer, but it is a question that cricket asks all the time because, as the old cliche goes, it's the sort of sport that reveals character as often as it builds it.
Samit Patel is another man fighting his nature. The state of the fat professional cricketer is probably more complex than it's given credit for. It's pretty simple to get in the gym and re-engineer yourself if you want to, with all of the help that's on tap, so when it doesn't happen there have to be reasons why. On saturday, Patel, who has achieved some sort of arbitrary minimum standard that doesn't seem to have included losing much timber, was run out not attempting a run.
It was a slack dismissal for a slack cricketer. There are guys like Patel all across sport, guys whose efforts are approximate, who seem ambivalent to their talents and opportunities. They're almost there but not quite. Beneath the self-deprecating grins and all the rest of the image projection is something fragile, something fearful, something preventing them from taking that final step through the door. It can be tough to contemplate finding out what lies at the end of yourself.
Patel appears to be fighting a battle like that one; perhaps it's easier for him at the moment to have people say 'if only' than it is to find out. Bring in the shrinks. Not far from Bristol, scene of Samit's latest stand, an even more majestically-upholstered enigma has appeared like a galleon in full sail.
Clad in always flattering red spandex, hair teased into a mad omelette of tints and highlights, Mark Cosgrove opens the batting for Glamorgan, geographically and figuratively separated from the players he outshone as a kid - he was the Bradman Young Cricketer Of The Year in 2005. He's now about as popular with Cricket Australia as Simon Katich is, and they don't seem as inclined to unravel his mystery as England are with Patel's.
It's a mystery of a different kind, because Cosgrove seems at one with his nature. He is a supremely gifted batsman in all formats, easily as good as Usman Khawaja, far superior to David Warner, and with a touch of X-factor about him. He may not be an athlete, but his hands and eye are lethally fast. He parted company with South Australia last year at their behest ['we were unable to help him fulfill his full potential'] and then went to Tasmania to score a shedload of runs as they won the Sheffield Shield ['at times it looked like he was batting on a different wicket to the rest,' said his coach].
No, Cosgrove's problem is one of image - external rather than self. Quite patently he is worth the few extra runs he may give away in the field. It's just that Australia, in a rebuilding phase, can't be seen to be sanctioning a free-spirited attitude like his, which is ironic, given that his attitude is very Australian in its way. Cosgrove's self-image, unlike Patel's, doesn't need breaking down. I'd bet he'd be a lesser player without the excess pounds, because those pounds are expressing his need to be different and free.
There are no pat answers; a man's nature is complex, for all the nurturing it gets.
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