Jon Hotten
Monty, Ayn Rand and cricket
A certain rubbishy pop-philosophy "classic" may be more about cricket than you think
Jon Hotten
05-Nov-2013
Many years ago, during my brush with Further Education, I turned up to an English Literature lecture holding a book - not one of the set texts but a copy of Ayn Rand's doorstopper The Fountainhead. "Ah," said the prof, a splendid and wise old cynic who'd seen it all before, "a young man's book…"
At the time I thought it was a compliment, but then at the time I was a young man. And in truth, like a lot of young men at that time, I'd found my way to The Fountainhead not through voracious reading but instead via the Canadian power rock trio Rush, who had acknowledged "the genius of Ayn Rand" on their most famous record, 2112 (a dedication that has dogged them for 30 years, but then they were young men too when they made it).
The Fountainhead, just like Rand's more famous and even more batty subsequent novel Atlas Shrugged, is woven through with a personal philosophy that Rand called objectivism, which can kindly and loosely be defined as the notion that an individual's sole moral responsibility is to their own happiness (it can be defined a lot less kindly too, and at far greater length, but the usual soundbite is "far right").
Full postThe Lord's anomaly
There's something curiously wonderful about the fact that batting's big four - Tendulkar, Lara, Ponting and Kallis - never made Test hundreds at the home of cricket
Jon Hotten
30-Oct-2013
When Sachin Tendulkar hangs 'em up for the very last time in Mumbai, the statistical tsunami can begin in earnest. We have already felt the intimations of its force, and a career of such epic scale will delight generations of numbers geeks from now until kingdom come.
But the news that the great man will not tour England next year means that one of the game's oddest numerological anomalies continues, perhaps now into perpetuity. Sachin loves Lord's - he apparently has a house nearby and sometimes uses the indoor school - but Lord's does not love him back, at least on the field of play. Nor does it love Brian Lara, Ricky Ponting or Jacques Kallis, his fellow titans of the modern age. Of the 28 Test match innings that this towering foursome have played at the home of the game, they have, between them, a single half-century, Lara's 54 in 1995. In those innings they have made a combined 510 runs at an average of 18.22.
Yes, 510 runs, from the 54,308 that they have scored, have been scored at Lord's. A group that has between them passed 50 on 235 occasions and made 170 centuries, has raised a bat just once at the most famous crease of them all. It is beyond strange.
Full postThe declining value of the single
We wondered how T20 would affect the 50-over game. It appears that answers might be at hand
Jon Hotten
22-Oct-2013
Around the time that Andy Flower was building the team that would bring England's first global white-ball title back from the West Indies, he spoke, in his usual guarded fashion, about the increased role that the black-ops analysis unit at Loughborough was playing in his thinking about the game.
On being pushed, he offered only one seemingly bland stat to illustrate his point. The team scoring the most singles usually won a 50-over game. The team scoring the most singles in a T20 match generally lost.
What was becoming apparent at the time was that T20 cricket would push the boundaries of the possible by its simple constraint of resources. The fewer balls faced, the further you had to try to hit each one. An inarguable consequence of that logic has been that the art and science of batsmanship has evolved more in the last decade than at any time since its origins. The impact on the Test game has been clear: more results, more quickly than ever before.
Full postThe man who was concrete
No one who saw Chris Tavaré bat - or set at the crease, rather - will forget it in a hurry, even if the detail is blurred by its endless repetition
Jon Hotten
15-Oct-2013
There are some names that, as a young cricketer, you do not want, because they come loaded with a heavy freight. They are almost always familial. Consider the task of clambering clear of the moniker of Botham or Richards as Liam and Mali once had to do. The Don's son briefly changed his, so distorting was its effect on his life. They are names that do not stand simply for cricketers of note, but for something bigger: a way of playing the game itself.
Imagine then, that you are William Tavaré, who has signed a contract to play professional cricket for Gloucestershire. Because as surely as Botham, Richards or Bradman are names that come laden with meaning, then so is Tavaré. William is the nephew of perhaps the most extraordinary batsman to appear for England in the last 30 years, the motionless phenomenon that was CJ Tavaré.
No one who saw Chris Tavaré bat will forget it in a hurry, even if the detail is blurred by its endless repetition. If David Steele was the bank clerk who went to war, Tavaré was the conscientious objector who took arms. Tall, angular and splayfooted, a thin moustache sketched on his top lip, he would walk to the crease like a stork approaching a watering hole full of crocs.
Full postThe enigma of Harmy
The gap between his greatest and lowest moments frustrated spectators, but it also indicated the possibilities he could offer
Jon Hotten
08-Oct-2013
Two retirements took hold of the Twittersphere on Sunday. The first, of Rahul Dravid, provoked a tearful consensus and an outpouring of affection and respect. Dravid, as a cricketer and as a man, has been treasured. The second, of Steve Harmison, produced no such universal sentiment. Indeed, as Paul Frame, a sharp observer, noted, Harmy's announcement didn't even receive the uncomplicated love that Matthew Hoggard's had earlier in the summer. He did not enjoy the ceremonial farewell and instant celeb afterlife of his pal Andrew Flintoff, nor the rueful what-might-have-beens of Simon Jones, the last of the 2005 pace attack still playing professional cricket. Harmison, it's clear, represents something more complex. He is a lightning rod for opinion.
As outsiders, we know nothing of the private man. His public image has been formed by his actions on the field, where the great peaks and troughs of his cricket have marked him out. There are few players, especially bowlers, whose highs are as distant from their lows, whose statistics are as open to interpretation as Steve Harmison's. The story behind his 226 Test match wickets at 31.82 can be read more ways than Shakespeare; there are silences between those figures as pregnant as Beckett's or Pinter's, and to stretch the literary analogy to breaking point, he has been part Lee Child, part Tom Sharpe. Where do you start with a bowler like Steve?
Perhaps with that gap between best and worst, between Sabina Park and Brisbane, between 7 for 12 and a wide to second slip, because both thrum with resonance in the memory. The psychologist Daniel Kahneman has written about the function of the Availability Heuristic in decision-making. Often, our judgements are based on the most easily recalled piece of information. Well, Harmy certainly got those sorted out: both his greatest moments and his lowest are indelible in their way, and reflect how we think of him.
Full postThe myth of team togetherness
They say all great sides have it, but perhaps it is a result of success, not a contributor to it
Jon Hotten
30-Sep-2013
Reviewing Andrew Strauss's Testing Times: In Pursuit of the Ashes on its publication in 2009, David Hopps wrote that "Andrew Strauss could have a very fine book in him - but only after he retires."
As David noted, only then would he be free to stop tiptoeing around his central contract and tell it like it is - or at least like it was.
The book is now here, complete with the obligatory punsome title, in this case Driving Ambition (perhaps hoping for the odd frenzied shopper to mistake him for one of the Top Gear team during the last minute X'mas rush). It's being serialised by the Daily Mail, an acknowledgement that a captaincy that began and ended in KP "crises" has some tasty ingredients.
Full postWhen dream dies, fantasy takes over
What men in lycra who believe they are pro cyclists can teach us about cricket fandom
Jon Hotten
24-Sep-2013
The shaded lanes and tree-lined avenues of dreamy Surrey are the setting for a strange and very modern war, or according to the Daily Telegraph they are, anyway. A reporter dispatched to the roads around Box Hill that made up the Olympic cycling course in 2012 came back with an intriguing dispatch about "the army of amateur cyclists" laying siege to the area every Sunday, clogging roads, spitting at drivers and upsetting the locals as they live out their sporting dreams. They wear replica kit, ride expensive bikes and take to their arena with the same gladiatorial mindset as Wiggins, Cavendish and a bunch of other pedal-pushers we had barely heard of just a few years ago but who are now, like their acolytes, ubiquitous.
They even have an acronym, bestowed by the Wall Street Journal no less: Mamils - middle-aged men in lycra. What's interesting about them is not the endless and apparently intractable argument over who should cycle where, but the psychology, the collective culture. There's a distinct element of fantasy to it all.
It's something all amateur sportsmen are prone to (and I'd love to know if it's as prevalent in the female psyche). I've played cricket with a couple of people who have admitted to commentating on themselves while they bat. Most club cricketers will come across the ersatz pro several times per season, the guy with his mannerisms stolen from the TV, the big sledges delivered with apparent seriousness, his vocabulary packed with the jargon of the elite dressing room. He brings a mood of deathly earnestness, or even worse humourlessness, to the crease, lost as he is somewhere inside this entirely constructed version of himself. You get the feeling he'd quite like to be interviewed out on the pitch at close of play, even if it involved talking to Nick Knight.
Full postWhat autobiographies tell us
Each era of cricket gets the autobiographies that reflect its culture. So what are the current crop of cricketers saying?
Jon Hotten
17-Sep-2013
Jonathan Wilson and Samir Chopra last week blogged on the state of the cricket novel. The notion of cricket's literary hinterland in both fact and fiction has also had plenty of attention. But what about the cricketing autobiography? Exactly where are we with that, these days?
Just as every man at 50 has the face he deserves, so each era of cricket gets the autobiography that reflects its culture. By their titles shall we know them. England's modest record and off-field trauma during the gory decade of the 1990s saw its wares pitched in a minor key, with a tentative hint of revelations within: Mike Atherton went for Opening Up, Alec Stewart Playing For Keeps, Graham Thorpe Rising From The Ashes, Nasser Hussain Playing With Fire. One of Phil Tufnell's was called simply You're Having A Laugh, a bravura hook dripping with sardonic potential.
The race to frame the still-nascent lives of the 2005 Ashes heroes resulted in a combination of bullish triumph - Michael Vaughan's Calling The Shots (how long we'd yearned to do exactly that with the Aussies) and Kevin Pietersen's Crossing The Boundary - and the more esoteric creation of a modern myth - Andrew Flintoff's Being Freddie (followed a mere year later by Freddie Flintoff: My World and three years after that by the valedictory Ashes To Ashes), and Duncan Fletcher's Behind The Shades.
Full postDoes size matter?
Not all sports have been able to withstand the forward march of human advancement, but cricket continues to accommodate players of all sizes
Jon Hotten
10-Sep-2013
As England flapped listlessly on Australia's hook during the death throes of the second ODI at Old Trafford, Steven Finn came to the crease, a giant beanpole in England's comedy red garb (is there another kit design in all of cricket that makes its wearers look more like they're on their way to work in a fast-food outlet?). He had some sport, too, clearing the ropes before perishing from another skier. Finn is six feet eight inches in height, and the bat looks strangely diminished in his hands. There is an incongruity to seeing a lofty man at the crease.
Kevin Pietersen, at six feet four, is taller than every player ahead of him on the all-time list of Test run scorers: he has incorporated the advantages of his height into his technique like no one before. As the human race continues its generational increases in size it's natural that there will be more players of Pietersen's height moving up the list. But will there be an upper limit?
One of the geniuses of cricket is its scale. For some reason, the distance of 22 yards works perfectly with the size of the bat and the ball and the players. Through the game's history it has allowed bowlers of all sizes and speeds to compete with batsmen of all heights and girths on an equal basis. No one has yet bowled so quickly or advanced from the crease so far as to challenge the dimensions of the arena.
Full postFinch offers a glimpse into the future
Of all of the records in the game, T20's are the most breakable, because the format is the youngest and its limits are not yet in sight
Jon Hotten
02-Sep-2013
The evening after Aaron Finch's bravura knock at the Ageas Bowl, a commentator on the radio - and I can't remember who, or I'd name and shame - said that Finch had set "a record that might never be broken".
The reality is, it's a record that'll be lucky to survive five years. It might fall the next time there's a T20 international. Rarely has there been a record that has felt less permanent. That's not to impugn Finch's achievement. It's just that an innings like his is simply a hint at the future, a visionary glimpse of what batting in the most concentrated format might become. If a man can face 63 deliveries and hit 14 of them for sixes in 2013, what will the slugger of 2023 be capable of? Or the bruiser of 2030?
Of all of the records in the game, T20's are the most breakable, because the format is the youngest and it is also self-contained, suggestive of a future of specialisation. The limits are not yet in sight (although the maths is: perhaps we will talk one day of "perfect" overs, where each ball goes out of the ground, a feat not commonplace but certainly viable for the batter who dedicates his career to it).
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