Jon Hotten
Ishant lurches from hero to villain
Disaster may lurk and comedy may come, but Ishant Sharma brings a wholeheartedness to his team that should be valued above stats
Jon Hotten
16-Jul-2014
It had to be Ishant, didn't it? As the Trent Bridge track turned the final moments of the first Test between England and India into a comedy, he provided the punchline to Alastair Cook's slapstick spell by surrendering his wicket to a man who cannot buy a lucky break at the moment, who was not only bowling terrible rubbish but had been doing an impression to amuse his team-mates.
Ishant trailed back to the pavilion with the joyful, disbelieving whoops of the England players in his ears, reflecting no doubt that, once again, the game had chosen to rain down upon him.
Sure enough, google his name and the second suggestion to come up is "Ishant Sharma jokes". The results include: "21 Oct 2013... Ishant Sharma's 'miracle' 30-run over against Australia in the third ODI led to an avalanche of jokes on the internet" (MSN); "13 Feb 2014 ... IPL 7 Auction: Ishant Sharma jokes are trending on Twitter" (cricketcountry.com); "4 April 2013 Check out the 30 best jokes on Ishant Sharma" (IPLWA.com).
Full postThe Victorian-pitch blues
Occasionally these days, at the lower levels, we're brought face to face with the kind of cricket conditions our ancestors lived with
Jon Hotten
09-Jul-2014
The ground was utterly charming, hedged on three sides and with a ramshackle stone wall marking the boundary of the other, and the views all around were of the great chalk cliffs that edge the South Downs. From one, paragliders launched themselves into the thermals. A little inland, a castle stood on a hill above the nearby town. The outfield rose and fell with the bumps and swales of a seaside links. On a summer's afternoon, it was picture perfect. And then we took a look at the wicket...
It was tufty with sun-baked grass that moved queasily underfoot. It hadn't seen a roller in some years, if ever. Most terrifying of all were the small craters dotted all over it, filled with granules of loose black earth. They were quite easy to scoop up in handfuls.
It has been many years since I've played on a genuinely bad track, and it didn't need a Sky Sports expert's pitch report to reveal that here was one in all of its dangerous glory. The ball wasn't just going to disturb the surface under the lens of a super slow-mo television camera because in lots of places there was no surface, or at last not a solid one.
Full postPonting's pull
The former Australia captain's recent dissection of his meat-and-potatoes shot made for fascinating viewing
Jon Hotten
01-Jul-2014
A favourite shot is like having a best mate, an old pal always there to get you out of trouble. Robin Smith and the square cut. Sachin and his beloved straight drive. Geoffrey Boycott and the forward-defensive. Viv Richards and the whip through midwicket. Greg Chappell, maestro of the on drive… And rarely in the history of cricket has there been a love as ardent as RT Ponting's for the pull shot. He told the story of it in his Masterclass series that is currently running on Sky Sports, handled deftly by Ian Ward.
It was a rich and complex relationship, a tale of talent and its ceilings, of the origins of greatness. Ponting was a prodigy from the wrong side of Tasmania's second city, Launceston, a cricket obsessive who would sneak into the rooms at Mowbray while the senior teams were playing, to riffle through the kit, weigh the different bats in his hands. There was magic in them; he could feel it.
He was never going to be a tall man, and that was exacerbated by the fact that he was so good from an early age. He grew up competing against kids bigger, stronger and faster that himself. He knew well the feeling of facing up to bowling that should have been too much for him. By eighth grade he had his own bat contract. Soon Rod Marsh was calling him the best 17-year-old batsman he'd ever seen.
Full postThe importance of England v India
Why the upcoming series has all the makings of a historic turning point
Jon Hotten
24-Jun-2014
It doesn't feel polite to be writing about India while England are still engaging Sri Lanka with a potentially definitive day left at Headingley, but such is the nature of our summers now: hors d'ouvre and then main event. India are on their way, and England will feel their weight, both on and off the pitch.
It is hard to recall a time when so much has changed between two sides in two series. When India were last here, emotionally exhausted from the World Cup win and with the heavy narrative of Tendulkar's 100th international century distorting the significance of the rest of their batting, England won 4-0. Only the mighty Wall was still standing by the end, as India ceded the No. 1 ranking and its glowing golden mace to a side that was reaching what we can judge in retrospect to be a formidable but short-lived peak.
Cut forward four years and both teams have gone through generational shifts. India's side is full of the thrill of the new; England are less sure that they are entering an era capable of matching the old.
Full postThere's a new columnist in town
Kevin Pietersen has both reach and voice, and he has a cause to unite around too
Jon Hotten
12-Jun-2014
Parsing the prose of Kevin Pietersen will soon become as irresistible as one of his Flamingo whips through midwicket. It's easy to imagine a hastily convened department at the ECB doing exactly that as, ahead of his autobiography later in the year, he began a new gig as a columnist at the Daily Telegraph this week (a choice that had a hint of mischief about it too, the Telegraph's pages being home to one of Pietersen's harshest critics, Derek Pringle).
With immaculate timing, the column arrived soon after Paul Downton offered an apology for breaking the confidentiality agreement signed upon the termination of Pietersen's central contract, and also in the week of the summer's first Test. #Boom! as KP might put it to his 1.78 million Twitter followers.
He is a formidable rival for the ECB. He has both reach and voice, and he has a cause to unite around too - not just his own treatment but his vision for how the game should be played. It's this that has rung out most loudly from his first sally into print.
Full postHow best can England use Buttler?
In England, a country yet to embrace the increasingly porous boundaries between formats, Jos Buttler could be the next star
Jon Hotten
04-Jun-2014
An alpha male with a bat in his hand, Jos Buttler is proving far more obliging off the field. It's hard to imagine the Kevin Pietersen of 2005, whose fastest-ODI-hundred record Buttler bludgeoned past at Lord's, agreeing that he wasn't quite ready to play Test cricket.
Buttler appeared happy to defer to Alastair Cook's view, only to find Peter Moores rowing back towards him before the final ODI of the series in Edgbaston. The mixed messages are symptomatic of England's uncertainty. They are like men standing on the edge of a cold swimming pool, bracing themselves to dive in. Buttler - and the rest of us - will know on Thursday whether they have taken the plunge.
It's easy to get caught up in day-to-day minutiae in arguments like this one, and yet Buttler seems to represent something more symbolic and long-term than a selection choice for the first Test of a summer. In part, he is the future rushing towards England, a country yet to embrace the increasingly porous boundaries between formats and the new career paths that players will take.
More importantly, Buttler, with his good-natured acceptance of England's desire for him to keep wicket, has put a rare resource entirely in their hands.
Full postA crossroads for Joe Root
Long hailed for his extraordinary talent, Root is still to quite make good. And England can't afford to give him the time they gave a young Ian Bell to blossom
Jon Hotten
28-May-2014
To slip briefly into ECB-speak, England are engaged in a programme of reconnection at the moment, so after a sparse crowd in Durham sat in gloom, both meteorological and metaphysical, and watched them get bowled out for 99, there was some talking to be done. Eoin Morgan continues to be impressively forthright. Lent weight by his position as England's best white-ball batsman, he is flinty and tough. There is something unforgiving about Morgan, a natural severity that separates leaders from followers.
The other face to front the media was a gentler one, that of Joe Root, who nonetheless sang the requisite song of contrition: "We don't want fans turning up for games and seeing a performance like that. It's quite embarrassing."
It was slightly odd to see Root adding to the England word-cloud (and sure enough "engaged" and "exciting" made their now-inevitable appearances there) but shorn of Alastair Cook by a groin twang; Stuart Broad, who is resting various injuries; Ian Bell, who did it last time; and Jimmy Anderson, rarely the chirpiest of souls in victory let alone a defeat brought about by poor batting, Root, at 23, had a measure of seniority.
Full postEngland and the IPL: a thaw will come
It's clear now that T20 cricket will not exist in isolation from the rest of the game, and the sooner the ECB realises it, the better
Jon Hotten
14-May-2014
Given the imminent referendum on independence, there are plenty of Englishmen schmoozing the Scottish nation at the moment. Few have done a better job than Alastair Cook's one-day team, who last week emerged from their first Moores II fixture in credit. They did everything right: splashing across the sodden outfield with a smile, making sure that the crowd saw some cricket and easing to an expected but needed win in the kind of truncated, chaotic game that they have often specialised in losing.
An era of glasnost has been declared. There will be, we're assured, a new openness around the team, an atmosphere that reflects the pride and joy that comes from representing your country. Fans and media are the declared beneficiaries.
There remains one distant border where this fuzzy light will not shine, however, and that is the IPL. If the hand of friendship is being extended there, it's being extended on the quiet, far from public view. A cold-war chill persists publicly, perhaps hardened by the presence of the establishment's own Voldemort, Kevin Pietersen, in Delhi. One of the many irks that led to his estrangement was his ardent advocacy of the tournament.
Full postThe last of the long run-up
The sight of a fast bowler running in from a distance, sometimes starting in a position only vaguely related to the position of the wicket, is a thrilling one. And it's increasingly rare now
Jon Hotten
07-May-2014
One of the first days of county cricket I saw was at Hove, where Imran Khan and Garth Le Roux, Sussex's feared and noble quicks, took it in turns to rush down the slope towards the sea, the ball a fuzz of red from our side-on view.
What stayed with me was the sheer theatre of it all. Both Imran and Le Roux had great manes of hair that trailed behind them as they ran in from somewhere near the boundary: they looked like thoroughbreds on the gallop, throwing their heads back with a haughty kind of disdain as the hurried, discomforted batsmen thrust and parried. Then they would begin the walk back to their mark. Imran especially would amble as if he was out for a Sunday stroll. It was all part of it: the batsman had to contend with this dreadful, slow build-up to the next delivery, the agony extending and extending until Imran would at last spin on his heel and charge back at great speed, his final leap and coil full of that equine grace.
It was the era of the long run. Almost every fast bowler had one, and if they didn't have a long run, they would certainly have a quirky one. Michael Holding, the "Whispering Death" of legend, came in from so far out that even on the full boundaries at The Oval his mark seemed to be just a few yards from the fence. He appeared to skim the earth as he approached, the ground passing a hidden kinetic force up into his feet as his stride got longer and longer. Malcolm Marshall had a run-up like a scythe, a great semi-circle that he would inscribe with knees and elbows pumping madly. Bob Willis ran in a semi-circle too, his bowling arm waggling behind his back, his great mop of hair - tribute to his idol Bob Dylan - alive above him. Jeff Thomson turned sideways in his final few strides like a man about to launch a javelin. Dennis Lillee came in front-on until the very end, a bright headband dividing the jet-black locks above and below it.
Full postThe player England will miss the most
In the new era, England will find it hard to fill the huge hole left by Graeme Swann's retirement, on the field and off it
Jon Hotten
30-Apr-2014
England assembled at Loughborough last week for the famous fitness tests, an apt way to begin the Moores era. As Gideon Haigh noted wickedly, it is a group that "controls the controllables, achieves the achievables and eats the edibles". Awaiting them on the to-do list is not just the selection of a new team but the creation of a new way of playing, and beyond that, a new way of feeling. They have lost - well, given away - their batting match-winner, and yet the player whose absence demands the most reconstruction is not Kevin Pietersen, but Graeme Swann.
The spinner's retirement has so far been obscured by the debate around his exit, which was sad and undeserved. Some have grumbled about the method and moment of his leaving, but he was bowled into the ground by a team that had built their strategy in the field around him. He was the fulcrum of the side, the man who offered the endurance and control to play three seamers and seven batsmen alongside him. So impactful was Swann's late-blooming career that no one in Test cricket took more than his 255 wickets in the five years or so that he lasted; he re-popularised the big, drifting, ripping offspinner; he became the first great exponent of DRS. He was the scourge of left-hand batsmen and "not-outer" umpires alike.
He took two wickets in his first over on debut, in Chennai, beginning a trend for striking within his first six deliveries that persisted almost until the end. It was uncanny. He was a natural cricketer, his ebullient talent obvious in his batting: the purity of his striking belonged higher up the order, but he was anchored by a rather winning dislike of the short stuff. He never fancied that, and didn't bother to pretend to, either. He was a tremendous catcher at second slip, another tell of the genuinely gifted player.
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