Eye on the Ashes
Goodbye to all that
‘I’d be upset if I wasn’t upset about it.’ Justin Langer.
Gideon Haigh
25-Feb-2013
Several times today the Barmy Army bugler Billy Cooper showed off a new addition to his repertoire: the Last Post. This is mine at Eye on the Ashes. I have filed a report for Guardian Unlimited, and a series round up for the newspaper, so here are just a few passing observations.
Andrew Flintoff spoke well at his press conference – as well as he has, at least. He wore his England cap, as he usually does: a statement of allegiance now that the statement of intent is irrelevant. He was asked some good questions, and gave no excuses. Christopher Martin-Jenkins asked him about England’s circumscribed preparation. Flintoff declined to use it as a prop for England’s meekness at Brisbane: ‘I was ready to play a Test match.’ The question remains, I think, whether he was ready to play a Test match against Australia in Australia.
Justin Langer, Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath bounced beautifully off one another. Langer, as ever, spoke in tongues, saying that he was upset on the eve of the match, although this did not upset him: ‘I’d be upset if I wasn’t upset about it.’ Unimproveable. Asked about what he would do with his cap, he said he thought it deserved the protection of thick glass, not the cap from the outside world, but the outside world from the cap, which stank to high heaven. ‘He’ll have to find something else to wear to bed now,’ said McGrath. In fact, I’ll miss Warne and McGrath for their comic timing as well as their cricket.
‘5-0,’ said McGrath, a propos of nothing, as he sat down
‘It’s nice that Pigeon got one right,’ said Warne.
‘I only got one wrong,’ retorted McGrath. Pure gold.
Ponting himself looked slightly flushed, maybe even a little teary. He admitted, in fact, to avoiding TV cameras on the field, as he had been feeling quite emotional.
Me, I'm beat. I’ve written more than 100,000 words in the last six weeks for various outlets, so I must confess to feeling a selfish pleasure at the last day of the series. The Australians have been scintillating to watch, like the Harlem Globetrotters in their skill; England have looked, not surprisingly, like the Washington Generals. I’m delighted for Warne, McGrath and Langer that they should have gone out under circumstances that became them. There is a sneaking satisfaction, too, that Rudi Koertzen is one series closer to retirement.
Full postNo Harm done
A fast bowler of enormous gifts, but a cricketer who makes Martin McCague look like a lionheart.
Gideon Haigh
25-Feb-2013
Steve Harmison bowled pretty well yesterday and fronted the media last night with rather more fight and aggression than he showed in his first over in Brisbane. ‘At the end of the day I don’t know what else we could have done.’ ‘At the end of the day I try my hardest’. That’s the trouble, really: from Harmison, it’s always at the end of the day. This is his 50th Test, and he is a middling first-change bowler: the personification of English underachievement.
Having loosened up, Harmison also gave a surly interview to Mike Atherton on Sky. Was he sad to be going home at the end of the match? No. Looking forward to putting his feet up. What would he be doing to make sure he was ready for the first test of the English summer? Didn’t know: waiting for Duncan Fletcher to tell him. I'll give him points for candour, but the sentiment was subtly revealing.
Full postA burning sensation
‘Awwwww, everyone else’s got a trophy
Gideon Haigh
25-Feb-2013
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Branson’s grasp of the Ashes, it is fair to say, is not sophisticated; but nor is the issue itself completely straightforward, because the trophy is twice incarnated, as the Ashes (Actual) and the Ashes (Symbol). For those who’ve just joined us, let me briefly explain.
The Ashes (Symbol) derive from the original death notice for English cricket in the Sporting Times after the Oval Test of 1882, placed there by Reginald Brooks aka Watkinshaw, a pioneering work of English sporting masochism but also a riff on the cremation debate. The first cremation in England wasn’t until January 1884 - the work of the latterday druid Dr William Price – and it was at the time of the Oval Test a proverbial hot potato.
The Ashes (Actual) were a colonial jest, a present to Ivo Bligh when he led an England team to Australia a few months later. Noone intended them to become a trophy for anything. Marylebone refers to them, rather endearingly, as a ‘love token’, for one of the instigators of the gesture, Florence Morphy, married Bligh: they became Lord and Lady Darnley.
Full postA man who needs no introduction
It was hard to imagine Johnny Carson without Ed McMahon’s preamble: ‘And now, heeeeere’s Johnny.’ But does the world’s greatest Test wicket-taker really need an introduction as elaborate as he received today
Gideon Haigh
25-Feb-2013
It was hard to imagine Johnny Carson without Ed McMahon’s preamble: ‘And now, heeeeere’s Johnny.’ But does the world’s greatest Test wicket-taker really need an introduction as elaborate as he received today? Having given his hat to the umpire, dropped his bowling disc on the ground and begun the disposition of his forces, the SCG announcer thundered: ‘Change of bowling at the Randwick End. Ladies and gentlemen, would you please make welcome…[wait for it]…Shane Warne!’ Was this to distinguish him from Shane Watson, perhaps?
It’s fair to say that this was not a talent the announcer confined to Warne. When play resumed after rain, the umpires were greeted like long lost friends. ‘Ladies and gentleman, please welcome onto the SCG, Aleem Dar…and Billy Bowden.’ Such was the pause between the first and second names that one half expected Aleem Dar…and Sir Richard Branson. Not as silly as it sounds.
Full postPostcards from the SCG
They never keep tracks of the stats that matter.
Gideon Haigh
25-Feb-2013
GOING OFF IN BAGGY GREEN AND GOLD: Seen at Melbourne airport yesterday: the smiling images of Justin Langer and Glenn McGrath exhorting Aussie fans to ‘Go Off In Green and Gold’ this summer. A useful reminder: retirement not only denies Cricket Australia their services as cricketers, but as recognizable and marketable personalities. The rebuilding challenge was embodied in the photo’s third face: Shane Watson. Perhaps Central Casting was asked for a blonde called Shane. There’ll be one fewer in a week.
THE POWER OF GLOVE: They never keep track of the stats that matter. Today I decided to keep track of England’s glove touch rate. Strauss and Cook reached 20 in the ninth over; at one point, Cook was 0 not out with four glove touches. At this point I lost interest, but the standard rate seems to be something around two an over, usually between overs, with an occasional mid-over touch being the pretext for a particularly good leave outside off stump. Can anyone remember where this habit began? Does anyone feel, as do I, the urge to say ‘shazam’ whenever they see it? Do English cricketers now greet people socially with a jab of the fist rather than a handshake?
A BOUNDARY BEYOND: Most journalism is couched as criticism or complaint, so perhaps it’s worth saluting a worthwhile development in this series that may not be immediately obvious to viewers from afar. Cricket Australia have this summer finally reversed the steady tidal encroachments of the boundary rope. At each venue this summer, the rope has been in far enough to guarantee player safety but no more, so batsmen are working just a little harder for their boundaries and spinners have a little more margin for error. To the power of modern high-performance bats, this is an overdue corrective. Another testimony, perhaps, is the effectiveness of the short cover position, where Bell was caught in Perth, Collingwood in Melbourne and Pietersen might have perishing here: recognition that bats encouraging players to go through with shots for the sheer pleasure of the physical release might also tempt them into indiscretion.
Full postAn eye for cricket
How much has it enhanced our appreciation of these two giants of the game that we have been able to study them through television and its evolving technologies?
Gideon Haigh
25-Feb-2013
Tucked in the corner of the ‘Eyes, Lies & Illusions’ exhibition at the Australian Centre for the Moving Image is some footage from an old Kinora: a device, invented by the Lumiere brothers, in use a hundred years ago for screening short movies in the home. Its period of popularity was brief, for the movies themselves were very brief, usually about 25 seconds long, and the Lumiere’s new-fashioned cinematographe was about to sweep the world.
The display case promises ‘A Game of Cricket’, and what should pop up, between 25 seconds of a silently trumpeting elephant and 25 seconds of a smoke-shrouded dreadnought, but 25 seconds of Ranji and C. B. Fry, essaying a few strokes in front of what looks like Crystal Palace?
Ranji, sleeves buttoned to the wrist, signs a square cut with a little extra wristy flourish; Fry, brim of his sun hat tilted rakish upwards, moves as stiffly as a tin soldier. Alas, whomever out of shot was doing the bowling was not exactly landing it on a sixpence. Ranji gets two full tosses, and has no chance to show off his trademark glance; Fry flashes the errant bowler a severe look when he receives a wide one he cannot reach. Then it’s on to the battleship’s salvoes: reels being expensive, there was no chance to go back for more.
When Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath take the field in their final Test on Tuesday, how lucky we will be. Every ball, every moment, every tiny musing will be accessible and retrievable, in real time and replay. How much has it enhanced our appreciation of these two giants of the game that we have been able to study them through television and its evolving technologies?
Full postGentlemen and Players
Free Foresters represent a love of cricket strong enough to travel long distances at considerable expense to unfamiliar grounds and an uncertain welcome; what do the rich and pampered England cricket team represent?
Gideon Haigh
25-Feb-2013
In his press conference cum inquest after the Melbourne Test, Andrew Flintoff offered the praise for his team and its retinue that they were ‘a fantastic blend of people’, which made it sound like he had put together a particularly successful dinner party. On the other hand, the combination of personalities does matter in a touring side. Yesterday, after my daily 2000 words, I popped out to Yarraville to watch composite teams from the Victoria Turf Cricket Association, in which I’m a player, and Free Foresters CC, the wandering English amateurs, whose wanderings have brought them to Australia this summer.
Free Foresters are one of those English clubs - see also I Zingari, Incogniti, Frogs, Cryptics, Yellowhammers et al - whose provenance and purpose leave Australians slightly puzzled, engendering tremendous loyalty with apparently no more than a dazzling blazer (crimson, green and white), mysterious symbol (a Hastings knot, loosely tied) and paradoxical motto (‘United, Though Untied’). Its origins lie 150 years ago in the Forests of Arden, famous as the backdrop to As You Like It, and of Needwood, not famous at all, and known only to tree tragics.
Eighty-eight Foresters have played for and thirty-three have captained their country, including Douglas Jardine, Gubby Allen and Colin Cowdrey, even if this is now more a vestige of the Gentleman/Players distinction: star player on this sojourn is Cambridge blue 'Nutter', who made a stroke-filled 114 yesterday, before his father-in-law Phil the Farmer came in to save the day with a forward prod or two.
Australia does not have a wandering club tradition, believing in associations, grades, fixture lists and home grounds, although that’s a historical and geographical outcome rather than a deep cultural aversion: when club cricket was organizing in the twenty-five years or so before the First World War, Australia was a pretty hard country to wander round. With travel cheaper and people more prosperous, that could change: Perth-based Forester Jerome Griffin is in the process of setting up an antipodean chapter of the club.
Full postRudiwatch continued
I wasn't in a position to see a replay of Rudi Koertzen's refusal of the lbw appeal against Alistair Cook, so suspended judgement, and have only just caught up with it
Gideon Haigh
25-Feb-2013
I wasn't in a position to see a replay of Rudi Koertzen's refusal of the lbw appeal against Alistair Cook, so suspended judgement, and have only just caught up with it. Laughable. Perhaps there's something significant in Koertzen using his left hand, and he would give correct decisions if he swapped to his right. Umpires build reputations as 'outers' and 'not outers', according to the burden of evidence they expect for upholding an appeal. The trouble with Koertzen is that he seems completely unpredictable, giving everything one day and nothing the next. Anyway, happy new year and maintain your rage.
Full postThe Best-Laid Plans
"I just close my eyes and whang it down anyway, so there's not much planning there." Thus Matthew Hoggard, bringing the house down at his press conference last night, in response to the mysterious straying of England’s bowling plan
Gideon Haigh
25-Feb-2013
"I just close my eyes and whang it down anyway, so there's not much planning there." Thus Matthew Hoggard, bringing the house down at his press conference last night, in response to the mysterious straying of England’s bowling plan. And quite so: the plan is mainly of curiosity rather than strategic value.
Mind you, noone would be surprised were it Sajid Mahmood’s copy, as he was not bowling to any recognizable logic either. He has an athletic run-up, a good turn of speed, and bowls a remarkable variety of deliveries, including a change-up that reminds me of the pitcher Tommy Johns’, whose slower ball was said to be so slow that he could walk alongside it. But he is as raw as sushi: an international bowler must be able to bowl consecutive deliveries in the same place. If Martin Johnson hadn’t used it to describe Devon Malcolm, he would deserve the tag ‘Lightning’ for never striking twice in the same place.
Full postMost Read
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