Different Strokes
Just not cricket
Perhaps it’s just a cynical way to attract more than just 'cricket fans'
Michael Jeh
25-Feb-2013
Some of the responses to my previous post got me thinking: do cricket administrators consider the modern game an unattractive product? Why do I say this? Well, it must be. Why else would you need a host of other ‘sideshows’ to keep the public entertained? Is the cricket itself not enough?
Perhaps I’m old fashioned. Perhaps I’m one of the minority who still likes to go to a cricket match to actually … wait for it …watch a game of cricket. Why do I feel slightly guilty for admitting that? Because I know that I will cop some stick for not “lightening up” or for not moving with the times or for not embracing the ‘circus’ that cricket has become.
Boorish, drunken, loud spectators aside, we’ve now got a situation where the organisers themselves are almost admitting their product is so poor in entertainment value that they need to put on a ‘Variety Show’ between overs to keep us from falling asleep. Pop music played throughout a match, handicapped athletics races during scheduled breaks, cheap radio station promotions on-ground and PA systems that introduce every player as if they were announcing a heavyweight boxing fight.
If I wanted a rock concert or a children's show, I would have chosen to spend my money elsewhere. The cricket itself was enough to keep me riveted to every ball bowled. Obviously, people like me are not the ones that administrators want to attract to the stadium.
Full postEng v NZ: Two's company
Two special cricketers, Broad and Taylor
Mike Holmans
25-Feb-2013
After five months of close combat at both ends of the earth, England and New Zealand have confirmed what the formbook had told us before we started: England are better at Tests and worse at fifty-over cricket than New Zealand are.
Overall, the standard of play in the Tests was pretty low. Far too many batsmen on both sides simply gave their wickets away; several innings were rescued from ignominy by lower order bats shovelling manfully to get out of the hole dug by the alleged specialists. Every Test featured at least one team (and usually both) losing five top order wickets for under 80, more usually under 40.
A couple of those collapses were induced by magnificent bowling - Sidebottom at Wellington and Anderson at Trent Bridge would have demolished most batting line-ups – but most were evidence of inadequate technique or application. On the other hand, they led to matches which swung back and forth with alarming consequences for the blood pressure of partisan supporters. Rarely were the games dull.
But for me, the thrilling stories to come out of the Tests were the emergence of Ross Taylor and Stuart Broad, who started the campaign as rookies and ended as established players.
Full postGive the umpires a break
Optimally there should be four umpires per match but even with three rotating, umpires would spend only two sessions per day on the field.
Stephen Gelb
25-Feb-2013
Like my playing career, my umpiring career has been short and of very modest achievement. For the past 2 or 3 summers, I have occasionally filled in as umpire for my son Samir’s matches for Old Parks club in Johannesburg. This year he played for the under 13Bs and Cs in matches of 20 or 25 overs per side over 4 hours on Saturday mornings. It wasn’t exactly high-pressure, but you do have to follow every ball, and appealing was a big part of the boys’ game (they watch a lot of cricket on TV). Even so, by the end of a morning in the Highveld sun I felt totally knackered, though I’m reasonably fit and healthy (and not too old).
The experience has made me think about what real umpires have to do, how exhausting it must be standing in a Test, 6 hours a day, 5 days in a row, in the much hotter sun of Kingston or Kolkata, with the eyes of the world on your every call.
After the Australia-India Test in Sydney last January, marred by very poor umpiring – decisions and player management – by Steve Bucknor and Mark Benson, I wondered how much of the problem was the result of fatigue. Most umpire-related flare-ups – Darrell Hair, The Oval 2006 (and Adelaide, 1997), Rudi Koertzen, Hobart 2007 – tend to happen late in Test matches, with the game on the line and tensions high.
I suspect that umpire weariness leading to poor judgment was a big factor in these controversies. One of the ‘criometricians’ on the It Figures blog could check if there is a strong correlation between mistaken decisions and the stage of the match, but I bet there is. And it is worth asking Test umpires whether it is a problem.
Full post'Yeah, but it was only the West Indies'
West Indies can have a weaker-than-normal team and they can play badly, but they are still not “only the Windies”
Mike Holmans
25-Feb-2013
I looked at the fellow who had thus interrupted my purring about Michael Vaughan’s and Kevin Pietersen’s hundreds at Headingley last year and realised that he was too young to have 'blackwashes' burned into his brain.
I made my Test debut as a spectator at The Oval in 1976, seeing Viv Richards go from 200 not out overnight to 291 and being disappointed he didn’t break Garry Sobers’s record. For most of the next two decades, West Indies exercised global domination practising a kind of cricket the Pentagon would later call "Shock and Awe".
Full postMinority rules
Their interest in the cricket, marginal to begin with, has now clearly been washed away with the last 12 beers in the hot sun.
Michael Jeh
25-Feb-2013
Samir, with respect to your generous portrait of Australian cricket fans, I beg to differ.
There’s no doubt that Samir’s 'friends' exist in Australia, as is doubtless the case with knowledgeable cricket lovers from Mumbai to Manchester and exotic places in between. What I’m referring to is the loud, obnoxious minority, who by virtue of their sheer ability to make complete idiots of themselves, makes you think that they outnumber the genuine fans that Samir fondly eulogises.
There’s a pretty clear pattern though. In international matches, the behaviour tends to get progressively worse after the first few hours of play. Any early rowdiness, normally restricted to on-field happenings, becomes increasingly less cricket-centric as the day (night) wears on. The poor behaviour reaches a crescendo towards the end of the day before it easing off into a drunken stupor at the close.
This type of parochial Australian fan (who only care about beer, beer and more beer) are a particularly unedifying sight to those who’ve paid good money in the forlorn hope of enjoying good cricket. The mere glimpse of a $2 beach ball is greeted with a louder roar than the most sumptuous cover drive or delicate leg glance. If not for the giant replay screen, they’d miss all the highlights.
Full postNot out
I don’t expect that Mugabe will relinquish his hold on power anytime soon ..
Stephen Gelb
25-Feb-2013
In my first post I supported Desmond Tutu’s call for a cricket boycott of Zimbabwe, which has now begun. Obviously, I was very pleased that it was Cricket SA which (finally) took the first step. English cricket followed. Many governments have now explicitly criticised Mugabe. None of this may immediately remove him from power, but all are useful steps towards building an international consensus on the issue.
Next on the cricket front is the ICC meeting. Very good arguments for strong ICC action have come from writers in SA, the UK and India. I recommend especially Sambit Bal’s Cricinfo editorial and Andy Bull in the UK Guardian. But both still seem uneasy about ‘bringing politics into sport’. To repeat myself, sport is part of society, and society is shot through with politics. The ICC is part of international relations and this is also inherently political. National political parties and their competition have no place in sport, but sport cannot be quarantined from ‘politics’ in its wider sense of the exercise of power, at either domestic or international levels.
What about the ICC? Prima facie, Zimbabwe Cricket is financially and organisationally bankrupt, since every other public organisation in that country appears to be. The onus should be on ZC to demonstrate its viability, that its institutional capability (not simply its playing ability) still warrants a place at the top table. Does it have income other than the ICC’s handout? Can it mount adequate domestic competitions including at junior levels and home and away tours for the national team as well as lower level? These and similar questions need answers.
Full postAn apologist for the MCC
For those ignorant critics of the MCC who don’t really understand what it stands for, take a leaf from KP and reverse your stance!
Michael Jeh
25-Feb-2013
As an MCC member, I was quite indignant when I heard some cricket fans, cheering sarcastically at the great club’s response to the Kevin Pietersen switch-hit incident. Apparently they were surprised that the MCC could possibly have made a decision that was eminently sensible, reflecting a commonsense view of Pietersen’s outrageous talent.
To the ignorant, it seems a populist view that the MCC is made up of ancient people who are completely out of touch with the realities of the modern game. And ignorant they are. Nothing could be further from the truth.
I can’t speak for generations past but I’ve only ever experienced a club that views its role in the game with a mixture of irreverence, humour and a total devotion to the true spirit of the game. The Pietersen ruling was exactly what I expected – a commonsense decision that acknowledged KP’s genius and the fair contest between bat and ball. What’s so surprising about that?
And before you write me off as an apologist for the aristocrat Brit, perish the thought. A Sri Lankan-born Australian from suburban Brisbane is hardly the epitome of the posh Etonian with a double barrelled surname and a country estate in rural Hertfordshire. From my experience, the MCC is made up of a host of people who share one thing in common – a genuine love for the game and a real desire to see it embraced in far-flung corners of the globe.
Full post2010 – A county odyssey
A successful England Test team is a huge revenue-earner
Mike Holmans
25-Feb-2013
There’s an odd contrast between the people at county matches this season. A lot of players and senior administrators at the ECB seem wildly optimistic about the future, whereas those sitting in the stands are filled with trepidation.
Everyone knows that the structure of the English season will change from 2010 onwards, but in what way? Will the ECB come up with a structure which people will want to support and patronise, or will they end up pleasing no-one by scheduling too few first-class games to satisfy the traditionalists only to discover that expanding the limited-over programme results in little or no growth in overall attendance figures as people pick and choose how to spread their cricket-watching budget?
The basic problem is that hardly anyone watches county four-day cricket. It costs vastly more to stage in terms of player salaries and staffing of the grounds than it ever takes in through the turnstiles. Even if you allot all of the income from membership subscriptions to the four-day account, every county makes a huge loss on the first-class game.
Full postTo BEE or not to BEE?
The real problem is deficient corporate governance, affirmative action is simply the context for the fight
Stephen Gelb
25-Feb-2013
I thought of writing this week about Kevin Pietersen’s reverse-sweep, but I’d rather discuss the issue for which he first became famous: affirmative action, which we call BEE, black economic empowerment. Last Wednesday Cricket South Africa announced new ‘transformation’ guidelines, ending the practice whereby its president approves the national team’s racial composition.
This follows the furore in March when CSA President Norman Arendse allegedly (he denies it) forced the replacement of Andre Nel by Charl Langeveldt in the team to tour India. The media and popular reaction then was: We won’t be fielding our best side! Race quotas are all very well lower down, but not for the national team! This ignored the facts. Langeveldt had performed better than Nel in the subcontinent, and Nel was no longer in the Test XI anyway. He had been replaced by Morne Morkel, so the argument was actually about the reserve seamer spot.
The new guidelines have provoked a sigh of relief, together with moans over some of the recommendations: Politics has not been fully exorcised from cricket!
Full postZimbabwe's apartheid
Unlike white South Africa, neither Mugabe nor his supporters seem to care much about cricket, sport generally, or their image in the West
Stephen Gelb
25-Feb-2013
I am writing this on June 16th, Youth Day in South Africa but better remembered, by those of us old enough, as Soweto Day. Thirty-two years ago, schoolchildren began to protest in Soweto township and were met by police bullets, a landmark moment in the resistance which led to our liberation in 1994.
An icon of that struggle, Archbishop Desmond Tutu, gave the Spirit of Cricket lecture at Lord’s last week. More than anyone else, Tutu has been our post-apartheid moral conscience. A cricket fan since his teens, he is the first fan to be asked to give the annual lecture. Since this is a fans’ blog, it seems entirely appropriate for this debut piece to be a homage to him.
The headlines after the lecture focused on Tutu’s support for a cricket boycott of Zimbabwe, though his lecture was not explicit about this. Nonetheless he is right, even if official South Africa – and the ICC - disagree. Our president is notorious for insisting on ‘quiet diplomacy’. Our cricket board sent SA and SA ‘A’ teams to Zimbabwe last August, and included Zimbabwe in our domestic competitions last summer, as used to happen in the 1970s when Zimbabwe was still Rhodesia.
The old anti-apartheid slogan ‘No normal sport in an abnormal society’ applies. Six-digit inflation? People dying of starvation? A ruling party that threatens to take up arms if it loses an election? Zimbabwe is an abnormal society, a society at war with itself.
Full post