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Michael Jeh

Does West Indies' World T20 win signal the death of their Test cricket?

The victory may boost grass-roots cricket in the Caribbean but not in the longer format

Michael Jeh
Michael Jeh
05-Apr-2016

At a time of rebirth, it seems incongruous to say the West Indies' triumph rings the death knell for their long-form cricket aspirations. Yet one cannot but wonder if that magnificent finale by Carlos Brathwaite spells the end of Test cricket, maybe even ODI success, for this mighty cricketing nation.

Inasmuch as West Indies played some of their most abject cricket towards the end of 2015 in Australia, in three short months, there has been the most remarkable turnaround imaginable. An Under-19 championship, and now the men's and women's T20 crowns.

Of course, the Test team and the T20 team share very little except the logo on the shirts. And yet, in a delicious irony, two of three Test players in the starting XI for the World T20 final, Marlon Samuels and Brathwaite himself, were the unlikely heroes at the death. There were times in the summer when the chances of Samuels ever playing any form of cricket for West Indies were possibly questionable. Eighty-five not out in a winning team? Never!

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Can Australian cricket embrace diversity in all forms?

Ethnic representation is no longer an issue, but attitudes towards gender equality and sexual orientation still have a ways to go

Michael Jeh
Michael Jeh
06-Mar-2016

"The delicate balance of mentoring someone is not creating someone in your own image but giving them the opportunity to create themselves"
- Steven Spielberg

Australian sport is being asked to look in the mirror and examine their attitudes to inclusion across gender equality and sexual orientation. It is a stilted conversation that many would prefer to avoid, partly because we may fear what we are likely to see in that mirror.

That opportunity will one day lead to equality is an uncomfortable truth that many predominantly male sports find difficult to confront. You only need to look at any junior national cricket carnival to realise that ethnic diversity is no longer an issue now - kids from South Asian backgrounds are more than proportionately represented (although those numbers are yet to migrate into first-class cricket, perhaps because of the premium placed on university education among that diaspora).

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Is it time for franchise-based Test cricket?

Considering the pace of change all across the game, maybe the idea is not all that far-fetched

Michael Jeh
Michael Jeh
06-Feb-2016

I recently attended the Brisbane premiere of the cricket documentary Death of a Gentleman. At the end of this most excellent film, I wondered aloud to my friends if the title was meant to be taken literally - was it the end of the true gentleman who is charged with the guardianship of the game of cricket? We soon discounted that notion on the basis that no one would reference in the name of a modern film the passing of a species that, like the legendary dodo, has been extinct for many years. Or the Loch Ness Monster, perhaps, a mythical creature that never was.

As I watched the film, which tried to answer whether Test cricket was on life support (or worse), I mused on my previous piece, and about whether administrators truly believe T20 will migrate fans to Test cricket. Those thoughts were a constant presence as the film progressed and the impossible politics of cricket played out in some sort of Machiavellian tragicomedy. Giles Clarke was thoroughly splendid in the comic role, all the funnier because he took himself so seriously.

However tempting it is to lampoon the ruthless chieftains who often treat the sport as if it were their private property, I'd like instead to put forth a bizarre idea that emerged from thinking about the future of Test cricket in the shadow of the T20 beast - the Franchise Frankenstein monster. Can Test cricket find salvation in the franchise model? Do acronyms like the IPL, BBL and CPL offer some hope of CPR for this elderly gentleman?

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Could T20 help bring fans to Test cricket?

Not really. The chances are higher of traffic the other way

Michael Jeh
Michael Jeh
18-Jan-2016

With local T20 Big Bash crowd figures now competing with ground attendance figures for global sporting events, the chatter in Australian cricket circles is around whether this is the beginning of the end for Test cricket, or whether it might drive a new audience to the long-form game.

I remain sceptical that T20 has the substance to migrate people to Test cricket. The reverse might indeed be true - I know a number of diehard Test fans who have embraced the Big Bash with gusto, possibly because their love of the game transcends the format, but I remain unconvinced that the traffic flow will ever be a two-way street.

Chatting to my 12-year-old son each morning as I drove him to the National Schoolboy Under-13 Carnival in Brisbane a week ago was illuminating. His team-mates and opponents will possibly be the future of Australian cricket in less than a decade. Perhaps due to the timing of the season, parents and children alike were utterly oblivious to Test cricket (anywhere in the world), while being consumed by the travelling circus of the Big Bash. There is no doubt that a poor West Indies team exacerbated this shift in interest, but it was interesting to be party to conversations where it became clear that especially for those families just being introduced to cricket, via their sons, the Big Bash was the only meal on the menu.

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Why senior cricketers need to learn from kids

If children can adopt a culture of respect and tolerance without inhibiting competitiveness, it can't be that hard to migrate that spirit into men's cricket at all levels

Michael Jeh
Michael Jeh
19-Nov-2015

Watching the Under-13 Queensland Schools State Carnival, my 12-year-old son drew my attention to Mark Nicholas' excellent essay, as he was preparing for his last game of the carnival, Metropolitan North v Wide Bay. As vice-captain of his team, he was drawn to Nicholas' comment that leaders play a crucial role in creating a new paradigm, a culture shift that moves away from the notion that sportsmanship and competitiveness are mutually exclusive beasts.

His observations were particularly poignant because they were made on the final day of the carnival. Having spent five days watching adult men run the event, he was receptive to any message that echoed the visible aspects of the cricket culture that the coach, manager, selectors and parents had been repeatedly emphasising throughout the week - that while winning was important, it was entirely possible, nay mandatory, to pursue that goal within the rules that govern everyday behaviours at school. Being a schools-run event, it was simply "business as usual". Normal school rules applied.

Try telling a bunch of 12-year-olds that a winner-takes-all final is not meant to be a competitive event. Despite a 7.30am start, the boys were beside themselves with anticipation. As if the coach had read Nicholas' piece (he hadn't), he was able to harness those competitive juices and prepare his young charges to play in their first final without feeling the need to tap into white-line fever. If these coaches, dealing with young boys who have poorly developed pre-frontal cortexes (the part of the brain that, when fully mature, helps to regulate impulsive behavior), can elicit 100% compliance, surely it is entirely possible to expect grown men to behave similarly at any level.

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Sledging: where does one draw the line?

There's no easy answer. And the sooner administrators, coaches and players (including the young) figure that out, the better

Michael Jeh
Michael Jeh
25-Oct-2015

"I know my comments were over the top and I apologise to all that I have offended, but as a cricketer, it's how our minds work... It was not meant in a menacing way. It was just a chirp that often happens out on the field of play, and as men, you take the blow on the chin and get on with the game."

This was the response from Zimbabwe batsman Mark Vermeulen to a recent incident that led to him being banned from all cricket in Zimbabwe after he made racist comments in a Facebook post. Sounds so innocent doesn't it: a chirp. How cute and harmless. It almost puts the onus back on the victim to stop being such a sook. After all, if you want to be a man "you take the blow on the chin and get on with the game".

What happens when it's not men but 12-year-old boys instead? Are they too meant to take it on the chin, learn to play cricket like "real men" and get on with the game? I was driving my son to junior cricket on Saturday morning and we were discussing this very incident, including the casual, off-hand downplaying of it by Vermeulen, and he asked me when a boy becomes a man in this crazy, mixed-up, cricket sub-culture. About an hour later, by Vermeulen's definition, my boy crossed that threshold into manhood.

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Cummins may need to go old-school

If the injury-prone fast bowler wants a long career he may need to learn endurance by bowling sustained spells in domestic cricket

Michael Jeh
Michael Jeh
02-Oct-2015

Patrick Cummins. The kid can bowl fast. Very fast, in fact. It's just that he can't bowl very fast for very long. The pace he generates matches the hype and excitement he has generated in Australian cricket circles, but perhaps his road to Damascus needs to be the old-fashioned sort, paved not with diamonds but with grit and stones. Given this latest injury setback, it is clear that modern science doesn't agree with him. While his talent is too rich to be spurned, his body clearly doesn't respond to "cotton-wool" treatment, so what's the next step for this likeable young man?

To put it into context, Cummins has played all forms of international cricket with virtually no interstate cricket credentials. Not unless you count Under-19 cricket. His meteoric rise is despite his bowling action. The twisting forces he generates to produce extreme pace have proved counter-productive to him staying on the park for any prolonged period, despite the best efforts of a highly qualified medical team, which is still unable to come up with a programme that works. There is no suggestion of negligence or blame here - just making the observation that if the lad is to make a career for himself, he may be best advised to switch strategies.

Built light and slim, my body needed to bowl and bowl and bowl. I went from fifth grade to first grade in a single season, largely down to a huge workload. I learned to read my body and know when to ease off
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Have standards in first-class cricket dropped?

Poor shot selection and the reluctance to bat long indicate that some countries and players are not giving long-form cricket enough attention

Michael Jeh
Michael Jeh
08-Sep-2015

Many of the post-mortems of Australia's Ashes loss focused on team selection. Granted, the selectors may have got things slightly wrong when they swapped one Marsh brother for another, or left Peter Siddle on the sidelines for too long, but in terms of the actual squad they selected to tour England, it is hard to quibble with their logic. Even before the tour started, I believed Ed Cowan would have been better value than Shaun Marsh on seaming English pitches when some old-fashioned grit may have been required, but after consecutive hundreds by Marsh in the warm-up games, I began to doubt myself. Hindsight may have vindicated me but it was anything but a convincing argument.

Kumar Sangakkara insinuated as much when the curtain drew on his magnificent career, suggesting that weaker first-class competitions were not Australia's problems alone. Personally, I can only speak for the Australian and English scenes, albeit from a distance. I was never good enough to crack first-class cricket in Australia, and the few times I played at this level for Oxford University, Combined Universities and MCC could hardly be described as "a promising career cut short".

What strikes me now is the vast difference in the way batsmen especially approach the long-form game. Shot selection (or not playing a shot) hints at a mindset and coaching philosophy that lends weight to my suspicions that first-class cricket standards have dropped significantly, albeit balanced by a significant improvement in the short-form skills. The fielding is vastly improved, the bowlers have more variety but less patience, and the batsmen who grind it out are being filtered out as they progress through club cricket.

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What do WAGs have to do with it?

Having families on tour ensures happiness and stability. Why would that contribute to defeats?

Michael Jeh
Michael Jeh
22-Aug-2015

As an educator involved in running "life balance" programmes for elite sport, I am intimately acquainted with research and evidence around the fact that most athletes perform significantly better when in stable relationships that help them live as "normal" a life as possible. The notion that the two spectacular collapses at Edgbaston and Trent Bridge can in any way be attributed to the presence of WAGS on tour flies in the face of common sense and athlete-welfare knowledge.

The cricketers (and coaching staff) were the first to admit they played poorly. Hard hands, playing away from the body, not enough patience… all cricket-related skills that temporarily deserted this team. It happens. Cricketers and their partners are understandably bemused at the suggestion that there may be a causal connection between the presence of the latter and nicking Stuart Broad to second slip.

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