Different Strokes
Hip, hip Hoggard!
After that tour, Nasser Hussain said Hoggard was a dream to captain because he was the kind of guy who would run through walls for you – he never gave up
Mike Holmans
25-Feb-2013
Somewhere between Hamilton and Wellington, two crew members were thrown overboard from the good ship England and told they’d have to swim for it. Steve Harmison swam strongly enough to catch up and be hauled back on board, but with the announcement that he will not be getting a central contract, Matthew Hoggard’s Test career looks over.
As a Hoggard fan I am saddened; as a Yorkshire fan, hopeful that he will think it worth carrying on to keep taking 40 or 50 championship wickets a season at 24; as an England fan, I’m delighted that the transition was timed so brilliantly. It was pretty obvious from the first few times we saw him that Jimmy Anderson would one day take over as our premier swing bowler, and the performances he’s put in this year are evidence of a baton being passed with an efficiency the Great Britain 4x100m track teams could usefully study. Just as the Hoggster runs out of steam, the lad from Burnley is off and running hard
Full postFreddie's back
At a time when some other notable players are battling demons, Andrew Flintoff just seems to be revelling in being back on the park again
Michael Jeh
25-Feb-2013
From an Australian viewpoint, they don’t come much better than Freddie Flintoff. If the Brits were feeling particularly generous, they might even consider making him an honorary Aussie! We’d love to claim him.
Seriously though, it’s great to see the old Flintoff back in full swing. It’s not just his talent that stands out a mile - to me, Flintoff stands for everything that is good about cricket. He’s almost an Errol Flynn-type character.
Full postSolving England’s keeping conundrum
The last regular England keeper to be a rabbit was George Duckworth back in 1930 – but with all-rounders like Gubby Allen, Walter Robins, Maurice Tate and Jack White in the team, you can afford a keeper who can’t bat, and England are not in that
Mike Holmans
25-Feb-2013
"Pick the best keeper." Spoken by a Nottinghamshire member at yesterday’s Pro40, this mantra meant “Pick Chris Read for England”, but more generally it implies that selectors should not waste their time considering wicketkeepers’ batting.
I’ll come back to the batting, but is there an accepted definition of the best keeper?
Keeping for England, Read has not impressed me because he minimises obvious errors rather than maximising chances. He didn’t drop as many as Matt Prior (on his first go-round) but there were a few that he ought to have gone for but didn’t, thus making it look as though first slip was at fault; the new version of Prior has no such qualms.
Full postSimple Symonds
By all accounts, Symonds just wants to be left alone to hunt pigs, catch fish and hit big sixes
Michael Jeh
25-Feb-2013
Will he or won’t he? Brisbane’s newspapers and airwaves seem to be full of conjecture about whether Andrew Symonds will walk away from his Cricket Australia contract or not. Public opinion is surprisingly split - a local newspaper poll had a rough 50-50 response as to whether he deserved his Darwin punishment or not.
For someone like me who works in the area of “elite athlete welfare”, the Symonds incident is all-too-common, not just in cricket and not just in Australia. It is a product of a sporting landscape that takes young people away from the things that ‘ground’ them and offers them fame and riches without necessarily checking to see if they have the support structure around them to help them deal with it.
Full postWhy Gelb doesn't worship the Don
I may be a cricket-obsessive and I may be helping in a very marginal way to produce the ‘cricket world.’ But I am not a cricket fanatic or fundamentalist, it is not a religion for me
Stephen Gelb
25-Feb-2013
On Wednesday last week, August 27th, our Cricinfo ‘handler’ Avi sent us four ‘Different Strokers’ a message asking “No Bradman tributes?”, and reading in full “I must say I’m a little surprised.” Fox has now admirably filled the gap, but my first reaction to Avi was surprise of my own, as it had never occurred to me to write something about Bradman, that day or any other. Avi’s message made me wonder why I had not thought of it – as a cricket-obsessive with a cricket blog, should I have written a tribute, or at least thought of it? The result of my self-reflection is my own small and indirect tribute to the Don.
Bradman has been a legend to me for over 40 years, since I started reading Wisden at age 10 or 11. Of course I’ve only ever seen him bat in some film footage, but I own several auto- and biographies and have read dozens of articles. I can reel off a list of his achievements, and just recently was amazed to learn from "The List that he was top run-getter in only 6 of his 11 Test series. He was outscored five times? By whom? But until last week I would not have been sure of his birth-year, let alone his birth-date.
Full postThe Don takes on the rest
At a time when we are reminded that the great man narrowly missed out more than one triple figure landmark, averaging 99 with the bat and a mere 92 in life, Australia has been reminiscing about his achievements and trying to get a handle on "just how
Michael Jeh
25-Feb-2013
In a recent post, we explored the issue of some cricketers transcending national loyalties and being embraced by the cricket world in general. In this respect, Sir Don Bradman is probably the only one that has unequivocally achieved that status. Perhaps Sir Garfield Sobers approaches that level of worship but even his considerable aura doesn't hold a candle to The Don.
At a time when we are reminded that the great man narrowly missed out more than one triple figure landmark, averaging 99 with the bat and a mere 92 in life, Australia has been reminiscing about his achievements and trying to get a handle on "just how good was he?"
Most cricketers seem to acknowledge that his status as The Greatest Ever is unquestioned. Neil Harvey seemed to think that in the modern era, The Don would average 199.9 whilst others, less prone to getting carried away have merely reiterated the theory that he would still be a stand-out figure in any age.
We'll never know. How good was he? Twice as good as everyone else? Twice as good as those he played against or twice as good as anyone he'll come across in the modern game? Trying to transplant Bradman's genius on to the contemporary stage is an impossible task but it makes for some interesting debating points.
Full postWhen Butcher cut loose
In bright sunshine, I waited for the traffic gridlock to die down, floating around the streets listening to the post-match interviews on the radio, a beatific smile on my face and humming David Bowie: “We can be heroes, just for one day.” Life felt
Mike Holmans
25-Feb-2013
In my post on the iniquities of the career average, I mentioned Mark Butcher, and it occurs to me that it’s about time somebody rang down the curtain on his Test career. He hasn’t retired and he wasn’t dropped: he missed the last three Tests of the 2004-05 series in South Africa through injury but was ignored once fit again.
Butcher was identified in his teens as a promising talent, and his ascent to the England ranks was virtually inevitable, but once there, although he played a couple of good innings against South Africa and one against Australia, it was apparent that he was not up to the job. His defensive technique was no match for Test-class pace bowling and he played spin the way a guitarist would play the bagpipes.
Full postAfter Y2K
The noughties just seem like a decade of high octane, high performance
Michael Jeh
25-Feb-2013
If the 1990s is to be remembered as the era of the great spin bowlers, the next eight years must surely belong to the wicketkeepers. Ian Healy and Jeff Dujon could never have imagined that their legacy has been embraced by the next generation who have turned that position into a genuine all-rounder role. Just about every country, England and West Indies notwithstanding, have a wicketkeeper who now wins matches regularly by his batting alone. Even trawling through the history books, I can’t remember an era when that was the case.
The decade began with the scandals involving Hansie Cronje and Mohammad Azharuddin. It brought home the dangers of a game that was in some sense a victim of its own television popularity. With so many meaningless ODI tournaments being televised around the world, it was a fertile environment for a particular type of gambling that allowed players to perhaps comfort themselves that they weren’t actually throwing a match. They were merely engineering a small period of play within the context of a longer game. Or so they believed.
Full postWay forward for ICC
Instead of trying to defend the status quo, the ICC should undertake an orderly retreat aiming to leave itself with enhanced authority over diminished territory.
Stephen Gelb
25-Feb-2013
So the ICC has postponed the Champion’s Trophy for a year. After South Africa withdrew on Friday, postponement was inevitable. Cricket SA’s announcement came immediately after a meeting with the ICC’s top two officials, both South Africans, and it seems inconceivable that the latter didn’t tacitly approve.
The Champions Trophy controversy reflects the ICC in crisis. Not a crisis of leadership – because of the removal of the Australian MD, as argued by Malcolm Conn in a typically Aussie one-eyed take –– but a structural crisis. Its governance processes have become outdated as the power relations in world cricket have shifted. An unfashionable German guy with a beard long ago referred to this sort of problem as the inevitable consequence of the contradiction between the forces and the relations of production.
Full postA test for the ICC
If the world’s cricket administrators are sincere in wanting to preserve Test cricket as the pinnacle of the game, it’s not a Test championship that we need to rekindle interest but action to restore the balance between bat and ball
Mike Holmans
25-Feb-2013
The England-South Africa Test series showed Test cricket at its best and worst.
The Edgbaston Test was almost as good as Test cricket gets. South Africa gradually established a strong position, then there was an aggressive counterattack from Pietersen and Collingwood which put England in the box seat, bringing forth a truly great innings from Smith to win the game and series. All it lacked as a match were some good spin bowling and two or three more South African wickets to make the last hour tenser. If Test cricket were always like this, grounds round the world would be packed.
On the other hand, though, we had Lord’s.
Full post