Rob's Lobs
All hail Lord Snooty
He may not have captured imaginations like Sachin, nor won as many games as Anil, nor enchanted as many purists as VVS, not erected as many walls as Rahul, but Sourav, more than anybody, has embodied the new India.
Rob Steen
25-Feb-2013
So this is it. Forget Anil Kumble’s exit. Forget that this could conceivably be Rahul’s final Test. To know that Nagpur is currently staging Sourav Ganguly’s five-day farewell is to know that an era is well and truly over.
He may not have captured imaginations like Sachin, nor won as many games as Anil, nor enchanted as many purists as VVS, not erected as many walls as Rahul, but Sourav, more than anybody, has embodied the new India.
Full postA one-sided coin
The “winner-takes-all” concept may make for riveting entertainment, but it is not one that bears even a passing resemblance to fairness
Rob Steen
25-Feb-2013
The question was posed with all the innocence of youth. “Looking forward to tomorrow night, are you Rob?” wondered one of my students yesterday. What followed was the often contradictory sound of a middle-aged boy grappling with snobbery, conscience and the dilemmas thrown up by a world changing rather too rapidly.
“No” was the short, unhesitating answer. The prospect of tuning in to this evening’s $20m showdown in Antigua, of watching a match whose individual feats will only ever appear in one edition of Wisden, one in which the slightest human frailty can only prove costly in the most literal sense, is not one that fills me with any pleasurable anticipation.
Full postPlay it again, Allen
This could be the latest step on the road to winning back the love of these unbrotherly islands for a game that once defined them and, much more important, united them.
Rob Steen
25-Feb-2013
In 1735, an advert proclaimed that a London XI, selected by the Prince of Wales, would meet one from Kent, chosen by the Earl of Middlesex, for a prize of £1000. In 1751, Eton Past & Present challenged the Gentlemen of England for the even princelier sum of £1500. We have almost come full circle.
The Stanford Series has attracted scorn ever since Sir Allen helicoptered to Lord’s carrying a briefcase stuffed with more dollars than Elvis Presley’s estate earns in, ooh, a month. With the credit crunch biting and recession dawning, that scorn has been augmented by distaste, hence Kevin Pietersen’s insistence that he will not tolerate any excessively jubilant celebrations should England beat the Stanford Superstars in next Saturday’s $20m winner-takes-all finale. Oh, that John Terry were so sensitive towards his fellow man every time he haggles over whether he should be paid £135,000 a week or £140,000.
Full postIn search of wisdom
The current economic crisis assailing the wider world was born of short-termism and greed
Rob Steen
25-Feb-2013
So it has come to this. Just as the United Nations stamped its feet and shouted itself hoarse but was unable to prevent the United States and Britain from invading Iraq, so the ICC, for all the harrumphing and tub-thumping of David Morgan and Haroon Lorgat, is proving entirely impotent in preventing the BCCI from jackbooting the primacy of international cricket for six. To scream or to cry: that is the question. Laughter certainly doesn’t come into it.
The trouble with an Englishman portraying Lalit Modi as the devil incarnate, or lamenting even the teeniest aspect of this Indian-led revolution, is that it leaves him wide open to charges of racism, or jealousy, or both. As someone who has spent a goodly chunk of his journalistic career lamenting the Anglo-Antipodean duopoly, befriending south Asians, bemoaning the patronising treatment of Sri Lanka, advocating the ICC relocate from Lord’s to Kolkata and expressing undying gratitude for the way India’s obsession with all things flannelled and foolish has kept the planet’s most anachronistic ballgame alive and kicking, I reject the first charge with every bone, fibre and cell in my body. But am I envious of the fact that cricket means so much more on the subcontinent than it does here? You bet.
Full postA tide in sore need of turning
England needs spinners who spin rather than roll, who give it a real tweak, who put revolutions on the ball
Rob Steen
25-Feb-2013
Derek Underwood’s ascent to MCC President prompted the Times to run that immortal photo of the match-winning, Ashes-squaring wicket taken by “Deadly” when he trapped John Inverarity leg-before at The Oval 40 years ago. What made it unforgettable was less that Inverarity may well have had as good a case for wrongful dismissal as he has always insisted, but that every fielder bar one is in the frame.
Underwood, understandably, has taken the opportunity to lament the decline of British spin, pledging to do everything in his power to save that endangered species, the left-arm spinner. Mind you, if truth be told, his own brand of left-arm deliveries, which made him the only English slow bowler to take 200 Test wickets, relied more on pace, cut and damp pitches than loop, twirl or devil.
Full postThe sweet taste of humble pie
If Durham land their first Championship pennant, Steve Harmison will be able to spend at least the next couple of months blowing enthusiastic raspberries in the general vicinity of the press box.
Rob Steen
25-Feb-2013
All right, so there’s still a few yards left, but in all likelihood, sometime on Saturday, barring any small miracles at Trent Bridge or Taunton, the final day of this summer of foul weather and fairly glorious uncertainty will see Durham breast the tape first and hence carry off the County Championship pennant for the first time. In which case, we will have witnessed one of the more improbable turnarounds in recent cricket history. As a consequence, Steve Harmison, the man whose wickets are currently serving as a modicum of compensation for the agonies north-east soccer fans are enduring at the hands of the fast bowler’s beloved Newcastle United, will be able to spend at least the next couple of months blowing enthusiastic raspberries in the general vicinity of the press box.
Tucking into humble pie is part of a journalist’s lot. The tendency to be pressed into seeing the world in white and black, and ignoring those endless shades of grey, all too often incites rash, often inflammatory judgements that dispense with humanity while expertly, if barely, skirting the laws of libel. And because he can be so good, so intimidating, so damned irresistible, Harmison has attracted considerably more than his fair share of invective. The fact that, at heart, he is both articulate and a complete sweetie somehow makes him an even easier target.
Full postChampioning the cause
Last week, glory be, the ECB, not always the fount of all wisdom, got something wonderfully right
Rob Steen
25-Feb-2013
This has been a season of endings for British flannelled tomfoolery, some less mourned than others. For Michael Vaughan and Chris Adams as, respectively, England’s pre-eminent Test and county captain of the decade; for the first-class careers of Darren Gough and Graeme Hick; for Oxford and Cambridge’s inordinately prolonged status as first-class opposition; for the BBC as a serious player in broadcasting cricket. It has also probably marked the beginning of the end, thanks to a court ruling in France, for the Kolpak Era. But someday, one trusts, we will also look back on it as the end of a new beginning. And no, I’m not referring to anyone called Kevin.
Last week, glory be, the ECB, not always the fount of all wisdom, got something wonderfully right. In hiking the rewards for winning next year’s County Championship from its present £100,000 to £500,000, over ten times more than the next fattest domestic prize, it attempted to equip what some regard as a dodo with a pair of working wings. It also took a giant step for cricketkind by sending out a welcome and only slightly overdue message.
Yes, it implicitly acknowledged, Twenty20 is the flavour of the month, possibly the age; yes, it probably will transform the game’s finances for evermore; yes, it may well reverse more than a century’s worth of custom by making clubs more profitable to play for than countries. Nevertheless, it explicitly insisted, Test cricket, for which the Championship provides the training and manpower, remains the game’s highest and most important means of expression. Which will come as a relief to traditionalists and purists alike, contemptuous as so many are of the shorter format, not to say fearful that it might swallow all other variations whole.
Full postThe pain of Dwayne
The prospect of seeing Smith in England colours one day is by no means an unattractive one
Rob Steen
25-Feb-2013
So there IS some justice in the world. Recent events in Darfur, Georgia and Zimbabwe had not given rise to a surfeit of optimism but at least Shivnarine Chanderpaul has been anointed as ICC Player of the Year. And how he deserves it. Partly for rekindling the spirit of Horatio, partly for services to that most old-fashioned of sporting virtues, namely patience, but mostly for the inspiration he will, one hopes, provide for Caribbean cricket.
Quite how Dale Steyn beat him to the Test award beats me. In 2008, our Shiv has batted 13 times in Tests, against South Africa, Sri Lanka and Australia, the three strongest attacks in the game, remaining unconquered on six occasions, each of which has seen him tally at least 65. He has passed 50 eight times, and averages 101. In South Africa his series average was 82.33; the next most consistent West Indies batsman was Marlon Samuels (52), and only one other team-mate averaged more than 22. Against the Ozzers he averaged 147, scoring one fewer 50-pluses than the rest of the side combined. In all – and here’s the best bit, the clinching bit – he has endured for 2,267 minutes, ie. 37.78 hours. Which gives him an average of 174 minutes per crease visitation: all but three hours.
Full postOf winners and nice guys
Both Hick and Gough deserve our respect and gratitude
Rob Steen
25-Feb-2013
And so they face the final curtain. For one, coaching at Malvern College appears to beckon, and perhaps a few more pounds in the ICL; for the other, who knows? I’m A Celebrity, Ballroom Dancer of the Year and Truemanesque folk hero status in Yorkshire, probably, but there’s a lot he, too, could pass on to youngsters, and even more in terms of attitude than yorkers. But how will posterity treat Graeme Hick and Darren Gough? It is hard not to suspect that the one who deserves the greater respect will be quicker to vanish from the collective memory.
Let’s get the stats over and done with first, which means a spot of jaw-dropping in Hick’s case. His choc-a-bloc swagbag contains 136 first-class hundreds (eighth on the all-time list); 178 in toto (second only to the boy Hobbs); in excess of 64,000 runs, including more than 22,000 in List A matches, with power to pass Graham Gooch’s record tally; more than 1200 games and 1,000 catches. Readers of the 2058 Wisden will doubtless revere him in the way we do Grace and Hobbs.
Gough’s figures are even more impressive, and all concern his derrings and doings for country rather than county: most ODI wickets for England (236); second-best strike-rate (35.9); ninth most Test wickets (229, though Steve Harmison and Andrew Flintoff will soon relegate him from the Top 10); second-best average, 28.39, behind Angus Fraser among England bowlers claiming 100 Test scalps since Viv Richards hammered Bob Willis into retirement in 1984; an Ashes hat-trick; kick-started the Nasser Hussain era with 72 wickets at 21.20 in 15 Tests spanning five series against West Indies, Sri Lanka (away), Pakistan (away and home) and a Flowered-up Zimbabwe in 2000-01, all of which would have been won but for a horrible post-tea collapse in the final session of the streak; most impressively of all, only Fred Trueman has bettered his Test strike rate (51.6) among Poms harvesting 80-plus victims since the First World War.
Full postStop shopping at Tresco
Whether Kevin Pietersen’s powers of persuasion are extensive enough to compel a change of heart remains to be seen, but, for now, the prospect of translating domestic form to the international arena still appears to fill Trescothick with about as
Rob Steen
25-Feb-2013
Calling England followers. Let’s be optimistic out there. Bit by bit, with the Ashes less than a year away and, even more important, a first series win in India for 23 years in the offing, the pieces seem to be plopping into place.
Freddie’s back and firing with one-and-a-half barrels, which is about as much as could reasonably be expected when you consider how little he’s played over the past 18 months; Matt Prior is grasping his second chance with the determination that marks out life’s winners; Stuart Broad is starting to bowl with the belief that underpins his batting; he may still insist on not looking where he’s bowling, but Jimmy Anderson has taken bigger strides than anyone this year; as evidenced by a greater trust in his own bowling than any of his captains has had, KP is blessed with the positive mindset that fuels every lucky leader.
Full postMost Read
Writers
Terms of Use|Privacy Policy|Your US State Privacy Rights|Children's Online Privacy Policy|Interest - Based Ads|Do Not Sell or Share My Personal Information|Feedback
© 2024 ESPN Sports Media Ltd. All rights reserved