Jarrod Kimber

Ottis Gibson wakes up and knows something is wrong. It all feels different now. He checks his wallet; it’s lighter than he thinks it should be, but it’s still there. His phone is switched off, but it hasn’t been taken. His clothes have been pressed and are hanging up in his stylish and comfortable modern-looking hotel room that has a view of the ocean. All of his belongings are neatly stacked in the corner. His computer is charging on the desk next to a complimentary fruit basket and two bottles of water. Still he senses something is wrong. His mobile phone won’t turn on. The hotel room phone has no ring tone. No matter how much he tries he cannot get the mobile Wifi code to work. His door is locked shut, more than locked, it’s like there is a dead bolt from the outside. The balcony of his room is at least 12 stories high, and it is far from any other balconies for him to jump to. Ottis is trapped. He picks up the folder with the hotel’s amenities list in it as a last ditch effort to escape or contact the outside world. There is none. As he closes the folder in a defeated way his hand runs over the raised lettering on the front. His hotel is called the International Continental Club. In a dramatic and slightly over the top way his eyes put together the first letters of each word. I C C

He now knows why this has happened to him, he screams in a masculine but still fairly high pitched way as he looks straight up for inspiration. Ottis is then back on his bed, sweating, panting, and clutching ferociously at the sheets. It was a nightmare. None of this really happened. Just to be sure Ottis checks his mobile, which is still on and was locked mid-way through a rooftop level of plants v zombies. The hotel phone has a dialtone. And his front door is easily opened. Sure his wallet is still a bit lighter. That makes sense though. Ottis relaxes and prepares for another day as coach of the West Indies cricket team. He runs some hot water and puts some toothpaste – the white stuff that helps people with sensitive mouths – on his toothbrush, and runs it under the warm tap to move it evenly over the brush. Then he instinctively raises the toothbrush towards his mouth to brush his teeth, only for the brush to crash into his face, he tries it again for the same result. The hotel bathroom is now fogging up, so he has to wipe at the mirror to see his reflection, he sees that his mouth cannot open, that his lips have literally been sewn together. He slowly runs his hands over his lips and he knows who did it. “I should’ve never doubted the efficacy of the obviously flawed, untested and inconsistently implemented DRS. I knew they’d make me pay, but I never knew they’d go this far. Damn you, ICC” is what Ottis Gibson would have screamed in that foggy hotel bathroom had his lips not been surgically sewn together.

A cricket match starts at 5pm. Every one learns of this by word of mouth and the players are ready to play a match next to Galle fort. The game starts with XI players on each side, two umpires and a scorer. They use a tape ball, marking out the pitch by drawing lines and using someone’s sandals. If a ball is hit out of the ground, it’s replaced in less than two seconds. The umpire is strict with no balls and wides, maybe too strict. The batting team stands at point while the game goes on so that when a batsman is dismissed the next batsman will face within 30 seconds. It’s fast and hectic, there are no crowd sponsors nor media interest. It’s a high-quality amateur game played by cricket lovers.

I’ve only seen one of these games up close, but from this one game I’d say that the quality of cricket in Sri Lanka is high, and when people who love the game and have no agendas are running it, it can be administrated well.

Unfortunately at the top end of the game Sri Lankan cricket couldn’t be run much worse. Of late the Sri Lankan players have been thrown into two largely useless and forgettable tournaments, the tri-series in Australia and the Asia Cup. This is how they prepared for a Test series against the number one Test team. With no first-class warm ups and seemingly endless weeks of ODIs. But what is way worse is that they did some of this unpaid. It’s partly because of the US$20 million SLC lost (they also lost the disk auditing why they lost the $20 million) while hosting what the ICC describes as “the most successful world cup ever”. Or the fact the board is roughly $45 million in debt. It’s hard to see success when a small cricket board loses $20 million on what should have been a money-making event.

The last day of a Test Match is often like a town that has lost its main industry. The structure is still the same, but the town has that eerie walking-dead feel to it. There are many reasons why people don't come, but they're all nonsense. It's massively underpopulated, better seats are available, you don't have to line up for food as long, it’s cheaper and you're guaranteed to see the end of the match. I've been lucky over the years, I've seen a Warne hat-trick, an incredible Kallis hundred, and Freddie Flintoff bowl Australia out in one match and throw them out in another.

The best part is often not even the cricket. The last day is your chance to see a carnival atmosphere at a Test match. Everyone from the players to the security guards are more relaxed. Things are being packed up, players mingle with fans and weirdness can happen.

On day five at Galle, I ended up being given a beer by the president of the SLC, was cheered on for my suits by the Sri Lankan support staff and walked past the trucks that were clearing out the toilets.

Angelo Mathews hasn’t convinced me he’s a Test No. 6 batsman.

He probably doesn’t have to as Mahela Jayawardene and Graham Ford haven’t yet come up to me for advice on the batting line-up. But while he has the skill to bat at five or six in Test cricket, he doesn’t structure his innings well. Lots of young allrounders have his problem. They can bat, but because of being a bowler as well it’s as if they just haven’t learned how to pace and build a proper Test match innings.

Shane Watson still has that problem today, he can bat, but making a big Test match hundred is really hard for him. That said he has turned himself into a batsman by the sheer number of smaller contributions he makes.

Cricket is one of the few sports on earth that relies heavily on a non-humanoid living organism to shape the outcome of the game. The main playing area is actually alive. Every Test match is dictated to by a plant life form that bleeds. Cricket is part sci-fi and part gramnivore.

This is something that should never be forgotten, especially when you’re in some drunken conversation where someone calls cricket boring. “Oh, is your favourite sporting endeavour played on a Monocotyledon surface that evolves independently as the game progresses?”

When the pitch is like this it makes captains use weird field placements. Using three slips and a gully as a form of attack is largely useless on pitches like this. Both captains have had to improvise. Ever since Andrew Strauss had two short midwickets I’ve been waiting for either captain to use three, or even four. The ultimate Graham Gooch field. It’s not happened, but other odd fields have.

Watching England win Tests had up until recently become my profession. I’ve seen them win a couple of Ashes, and defeat Pakistan, West Indies, Bangladesh, India and Sri Lanka. All up close and personal. It’s meant that I’ve been an often reluctant watcher on their journey to No.1. Their gritty, well-planned effectiveness has played out in front of me so many times you start to see the reasons why it exists.

To become No.1, England have done a bunch of things right.

They hired Andy Flower who is a brilliant cricket coach. He’s even got the face of a cricket coach, someone who can only smile for seven seconds a week. I can’t see how England would’ve made it to No.1 without him in charge. Anyone who doesn’t believe cricket coaches do much after watching Flower scruff this team and hurl them to No.1 is trying to stay in the dark days.

Blogging is a terrible word. It’s worse than chillax or yogalates. There is no way of saying “I better blog that” without making it sound like what you’re doing involves something that you shouldn’t do with a crowd watching.

I mean it’s just writing. Bloggers don’t tap the keyboard in a different way to other writers. The structure, opinions and wording might be different, the grammar and spelling are frightening (at least mine is), but bloggers still pull their pants on one leg at a time, if they ever need to leave the house that is. A valid opinion doesn’t need to be formed in an air-conditioned press box, it can be written just as well on a grease-stained keyboard in the basement of your mother’s house.

Blogs offer a sort of freedom that professional writers never get. Few are reading them to start with, so the abuse is going to be less. There are generally no editors, word counts or need to fit inane quotes in. They are just one person’s thoughts; unedited and unruly.

Doug Bracewell hits a good length, Hashim Amla is a bit late on the drive, Rob Nicol desperately lunges left, Martin Guptill claims the catch, Amla doesn’t move and the umpires refer the catch.

Somehow Bracewell manages to accidentally not overstep and we’re looking at the catch/incident. The first angle doesn’t quite show us anything. It cuts off brilliantly so that you can see there is a ball, there is a hand, there is another hand, and there is a random lot of dirt that blows through like it’s tumbleweed in some forgotten film.

The next angle teases you into believing that there is something you’ll be able to see, and then Nicol desperately dives in front of the ball. Of course, the angle is so far away and Guptill’s shadow so badly placed that we may have never known anyway.

Genetic sexual attraction is as fancy way of saying that you’ve fallen in love with a relative. It doesn’t happen often, and most of us will never truly understand how a sister and brother or father and daughter, can have romantic feelings for each other, yet alone act on them.

Cricket has a similar syndrome that few fans could ever truly understand. Most fans want their side to be the best of the best. They want to be able to gloat to everyone who had the misfortune of not being born in their part of the world. They want to go into each series thinking that the opposition will be little more than road kill for their heroes. There are other fans including those who truly want cricket to be the real winner. And even those other sick fans who prefer their side to lose just so their natural pessimism is proved to prophetic.

Then there is the TRD fans.

The ball was the perfect length to be sent into orbit.

If a batsman were to place the ball roughly in a spot where a lucky slog to the leg side would win him the game, he would have picked that exact location.

All Misbah-ul-Haq had to do was keep his shape (the commentators love that one now), clear his front leg, use fast hand speed and time the ball for Pakistan to win the match, and series.