Different Strokes

Another game, another loss. 3-0 down with four to play, England need a miracle. Failing that, what can be divined from what we have seen so far, apart from the obvious fact that India are a lot better?

At least the third game wasn’t quite as embarrassing as the previous two. If they continue to improve at this rate, they might win a game before the series is out. It is frustrating because the players in the team are actually pretty good. Individually, these boys can play: where it goes wrong is when they all have to do it together, because the team does not know how to function collectively.

That is not an allegation that the team is faction-ridden or fighting amongst themselves – they at least appear to be a harmonious bunch – but that the cogs of the machine rarely mesh together and produce something more than a bunch of independently-spinning axles.

But I am convinced that each individual in the England team is a good enough player. Changing the personnel is unlikely to have much effect (although I have no idea at all why Alastair Cook is in the one-day squad). The selectors should now leave well enough alone and let them work out how to win a game which is not at Chester-le-Street or The Oval.

There are two things which England need to do to improve their fortunes. First they need to break Yuvraj Singh’s ankle, kneecap, wrist or whatever other body part will force his absence for the remainder of the series. The other is to admit that the experiment of having Ian Bell opening the innings has proved to be a failure.

I admit that I am always bemused by Yuvraj’s success. There is no guarantee that an overseas signing will light up the county championship, but few turn out to be as disastrous as Yuvraj was at Yorkshire. So dire was he that he was relegated to the Second XI, and even there he did little of note. A nickname was rapidly coined, though it does seem a little awkward now to be referring to a man who keeps making one-day hundreds as 'Yuseless'. He has yet to shake off the tag when it comes to Test cricket, but in the one-day arena he is as clean a striker of the ball as you could wish for - unless you happen to be bowling to him – and his spin bowling is more than handy.

England need to get rid of him, and soon. Fair means having failed to dislodge him, the only alternative is skulduggery. Getting him arrested on some trumped-up criminal charge and held for questioning until mid-December would be effective, as might arranging to have him discovered in flagrante with the wife of the chief of selectors, but in the end you can’t beat some good old-fashioned violence.

Ian Bell has eight hundreds and nineteen fifties among almost 3000 Test runs at an average over 42. He is as delightful to watch when on song as Mark Waugh was, the ball sent skimming to the boundary with delicately-timed, seemingly effortless strokes, classy as a Waterford crystal glass containing a martini as dry as the Atacama.

Tonight, Australian cricket has proved a point to itself and to me. Australia played the AllStars team led by Adam Gilchrist in a T20 match at the Gabba. It was meant to be a sort of practice match and a sort of exhibition match.

Normally, Australia doesn’t DO this practice/exhibition thing very well. Anything that is not played to win is something that most Australians find hard to get their heads around. It’s just not in their nature not to be super competitive. If it means firing one past Grandma’s nose in the Backyard Test, well, she asked for it. That’ll teach her to get on the front foot and drive me on the up past the rubbish bin and over the bbq!!

That’s why I wasn’t quite sure why I was at the Gabba tonight. It’s normally not my cup of tea to watch a meaningless T20 game with nothing at stake, surrounded by rowdy patrons on a Friday night. But I’m glad I went.

It was a game played at high intensity and at a blistering pace. Shaun Tait was slinging it down at 150 k’s and Michael Dighton from Tasmania hit a six first ball over third slip. It was that sort of pitch. Peter Siddle, after 8 weeks on the slower pitches of India, let fly with a few searing bouncers that went straight over the keeper’s head for five wides. And he smiled.

In theory, England and their new captain are on a roll after beating South Africa in September. While conceding that England looked almost competent during that series, I feel it only reasonable to point out that they win ODIs at home quite regularly and the trouble invariably starts overseas. It’s not so much that the wheels come off when they play abroad as that the wheels fall victim to airport baggage handlers and never arrive.

The dismal history notwithstanding, England fans are obliged to clutch at any straws of optimism which offer themselves before the games get underway and grim reality sets in. We can try hoping that India will be so drained after beating Australia in the Tests that they will do a South Africa and roll over and play dead, but since they are replacing almost the entire batting line-up with fresh faces anxious to impress, it’s a faint hope. However, that means that for the first time in living memory the Indians will not be five times as experienced as our lot and may lose their heads once or twice and give England a chance to blow an easy win rather than being crushed as per usual.

There are seven ODIs to endure, so I suggest we play a bit of bingo to keep our spirits up. Just keep this list handy while you’re watching and see your score mount:

Ian Bell gets well set but fails to push on for a ton - 1 “I’m not thinking about the IPL. I just want to do my best for England." - 1 James Anderson goes for more than 16 in death over - 2 Paul Collingwood drops easy catch - 3 Commentator reacts to above with “You don’t see that very often.” - 1 Yuvraj Singh hits Stuart Broad for six sixes again - 50 Broad hits Yuvraj for six sixes - 100 Patel takes Patel’s wicket - 10 Ravi Bopara makes significant contribution - 25 Ian Botham says that Pietersen should be batting at 3 - 1 Luke Wright plays but scores no runs and doesn’t bowl - 2 Harbhajan Singh hits team-mate - 10 Peter Moores ascribes latest loss to players’ existential angst - 20 Run out as Pietersen attempts impossible single to get off the mark - 2 Fellow-commentator patiently explains Laws to Botham - 5 Three Indian fielders collide underneath Flintoff skier - 3 Alistair Cook plays while series still alive - 50 Umpire Bowden dislocates shoulder while signalling six - 20 Pietersen caught off switch hit - 4 Reference to Stanford as cameras pan across to England WAGs - 1 Batsmen forget about third powerplay (or are all out before taking it) - 10 Play interrupted by insects or birds - 2 David Lloyd mispronounces “Guwahati” - 3 Zaheer Khan gets revenge by bowling Matt Prior with giant jellybean - 40 Steve Harmison bouncer clears boundary - 6 Elephant stops play - 100 Gautam Gambhir given out caught off elbow - 15 Graeme Swann wins car and complains it is neither pink nor Ferrari - 8 England win dead-rubber game - 1 England win game while series is alive - 100

The election of Barack Obama prompts a thought or two. Before he could become the first African-American President of the USA, smaller mountains had to be climbed by other African-Americans. Long before there could be a black president, Jackie Robinson had to be the first black major league player in baseball, our sister bat-and-ball-sport.

Professional sport is one of the things which drives ethnic integration in a society. In the end, teams which want to win will hire the best players no matter what colour they are. Bigoted fans who initially object eventually come round when the “wrongly” coloured player keeps winning games for them, and so society gradually evolves.

The English population contained very few non-white people until the government encouraged large-scale immigration from the Caribbean and South Asia after World War II. Those immigrants’ children grew up in England, and by the late 1970s some naturally became good enough at cricket to be hired by counties.

When Roland Butcher, Norman Cowans and others were picked for England in the early 1980s, a number of people choked on their gin-and-tonics and said these players were not English and should not be playing for England. In one sense they had a point because the players had not been born here, but the true nature of their objection was proved by them not protesting about, for instance, the Zambia-born Phil Edmonds. The press was full of articles debating what it meant for English cricket, what it meant for the national identity and so on.

Perhaps now, finally, after way too much prevarication on the issue, the ICC might finally take a stand on what the ‘Spirit of Cricket’ actually means. It’s clear that no such spirit operates in the real world. It’s just a fancy set of words that mean nothing to the cricketers and officials who are meant to uphold that spirit.