Rob's Lobs
Of greed and stupidity
So the Indian board have backed Cricket Australia’s decision to charge agencies for the privilege of reporting matches, have they
Rob Steen
25-Feb-2013
So the Indian board have backed Cricket Australia’s decision to charge agencies for the privilege of reporting matches, have they? Two outlandish wrongs never did come remotely close to making even a semi-acceptable right.
The immediate and shameful result of this utterly indefensible policy – and I say this even more as a fan than a journalist with a defensive axe or three to grind - may well be a blackout for the most eagerly-anticipated and poignant feat of the century to date, arguably in any sport: Muttiah Muralitharan’s attempt in Hobart later this week to harvest the seven wickets he needs to overhaul Shane Warne’s Test-record tally.
The broader picture is even more scandalous. In heedlessly, greedily following the lead of the Rugby World Cup organisers over the use of photographs on the web, and the flat racing authorities in Britain before them, Cricket Australia have chosen to ignore an inescapable verity. To wit, the written media provide the best free advertising in town. When newspapers here were asked to stump up a fee to print racing cards a few years ago, a one-day blanket blackout by the editors was all it took to force a rapid rethink and red-faced retraction.
Full postMachine-made humanity
To retain credibility, professional sport, its practitioners and audience, deserve as much justice as is humanly possible
Rob Steen
25-Feb-2013
The arguments are likely to plague sport in general for some time yet, not least in the aftermath of last month’s rugby union World Cup final, where a potentially decisive England try was ruled out, possibly in error, after an extensive consultation between referee and TV official. One camera angle told one story, another told a different one. Nobody’s perfect; not even the machines. But they’re still cleverer than us mere mortals.
During the closing stages in Mohali today came a priceless example of why we cannot trust the players – if we ever could. As Rohit Sharma chased a boundary-bound blow from Shahid Afridi, he reached down, collected the ball and threw, but not before his right hand touched the hoarding. When the camera alighted on Sharma a moment or two later, he was wearing a bemused expression of purest innocence. But he knew his hand had made contact, and one assumes he knew the law. The only conclusion to be drawn therefore, at least from one’s armchair, was that he thought he’d got away with it. Fortunately, he didn’t. Fortunately, in the interests of fairness and legitimacy, umpires seldom take fielders at their word these days. Why should they? That said, to pretend that rises in salaries have been accompanied in inverse proportion by a decline in manners and honesty is to buy into the hoarily romantic old theory, and wholly unproveable assumption, that previous generations were more honourable.
Full postDunkin’ Duncan
Here was the perfect subject: a scorned public figure with a year’s salary and a hefty publisher’s advance in his pocket, nothing to lose and an axe or 50 to grind.
Rob Steen
25-Feb-2013
So Andrew Flintoff’s dad is angry that Duncan Fletcher has told the world about his boy’s drinking habits. And Geoff Boycott is angry at what he regards as Fletcher’s “hypocrisy” in letting a few cats out of the bag after spending half a dozen years keeping everything behind closed doors. And David Graveney’s a bit peeved at being painted as something of a slippery, two-faced arch-pragmatist. And Chris Read is doubtless feeling a mite aggrieved at having had his suitability for the loftiest stages questioned. You don’t say. Wow.
The Daily Mail isn’t one of the planet’s best-selling newspapers for nothing. They know what they’re doing in Kensington. Snapping up serialisation rights to the former England coach’s autobiography was a guaranteed winner. Here was the perfect subject: a scorned public figure with a year’s salary and a hefty publisher’s advance in his pocket, nothing to lose and an axe or 50 to grind.
Boycott’s displeasure is the most laughable. As he admits himself, he wasn’t above firing a few darts during the course of his own literary ramblings. Like Fletcher, only immeasurably more so, Boycott felt as if it was him against the whole wide world (bar his mum and a portion of the Headingley faithful). That’s what made his books so readable and engrossing, regardless of one’s sympathies. Given that sporting autobiographies almost invariably throw up more anodyne tosh than the average party conference speech, we should be grateful for the exceptions.
Full postBoth v Chappelli (Part 31)
On the other hand, this is a grave time in our planet’s history
Rob Steen
25-Feb-2013
It’s hard to decide what was less flattering about contemporary society. Cricket’s foremost Ians still squabbling over a bit of argy-bargy in a Melbourne bar 30 years ago, or Fleet Street’s erstwhile inhabitants seeing fit to publish details of the latest renewal of public spatting.
For those not up to speed, the story goes something like this, allowing, of course, for the protagonists’ differing shadings and embellishments. One March evening in 1977, shortly after Australia had won the Centenary Test at the nearby MCG, the 21-year-old Ian Botham, then on a winter scholarship at the University of Melbourne, apparently overheard Ian Chappell, 12 years his senior, taking the pee out of the Poms. Not being one to turn so much as half a cheek, the fiercely patriotic Botham may or may not have threatened Chappelli with something glassy, then punched him to the floor.
According to one of Botham’s accounts, this sent Chappell “flying over a table into a group of Aussie Rules footballers, whose drinks were scattered to all parts (Needless to say, he replaced those drinks pretty quickly!)” After a parting shot from the former Australia captain, Botham tore after him into the car park and vaulted a bonnet or two, before belatedly realising there might be more productive ways of expending energy.
Full postWhen the Law is an ass
How reassuring, then, to read the comments of Syd Millar, chairman of the International Rugby Board, who believes his sport should be “freed up a bit” and “produce more options for players”
Rob Steen
25-Feb-2013
Nine months of continuous Test, ODI and Twenty20-watching can play merry hell with the enthusiasm levels. Then, shortly after the curtain finally descended on England’s relentlessly suffocating 2007 campaign, along came Saturday’s wrestling match in Paris to remind us why rugby will never usurp cricket - much less soccer, as has been ludicrously mooted in the British media - in the planet’s pecking order of athletically-inclined obsessions.
In many ways, since each pursuit has embraced Mammon, the paths taken by muddied oafery and flannelled foolishness have diverged starkly. For all the unflattering evidence of its own World Cup earlier this year, cricket is as good to watch now as it has ever been, probably better. Yet despite a vibrant World Cup full of upset formbooks and torn-up predictions, rugby union is becoming unwatchable. No ballgame has suffered so much damage from professionalism. And rightly so. After all, no other ballgame sets such store by physical prowess and legitimate thuggery. Self-expression? Not much room for that, matey.
Full postEngland's Brave New World (Chapter 382)
Despite the drubbing in the final ODI, England have a lot of positives to take from the series win in Sri Lanka
Rob Steen
25-Feb-2013
Let’s forget, for the moment, all those horrid stories about performance-boosters, match-fixers and vengeful umpires. If anyone fancies making a movie about the sporting year of 2007, they could do a lot worse than call it Daze of the Underdogs. Or even The Year They Bashed the Bookies.
Ireland beat Pakistan at the World Cup; Gretna FC, representing a town hitherto known only for servicing impatient marriage-seekers, skipped up to the Scottish Premier League; Catalan Dragons, from the rugby league coldbed of France, reached the Challenge Cup final; Argentina’s rugby unionists beat the French and the Irish to qualify for the World Cup semi-final. As I write, the perennially unfancied Colorado Rockies (18 wins in their last 19 games) are marching towards baseball’s World Series armed with a bunch of rookies. And England, perhaps least probably of all, have just taken an ODI series in Sri Lanka armed with a worn-out KP and a non-ringing Ian Bell. And no Fredster.
Full postGoodbye ugly duckling, hello Swann
He still needs no encouragement to open those slim shoulders and clout balls to all parts but now, as today’s innings underlined, he can place and flick, pace and judge
Rob Steen
25-Feb-2013
Bruce Springsteen records with the E St Band every half-dozen years or so. Joni Mitchell’s last sheaf of original songs is nearly a decade old. To bring home new creations from both sources on the same day is the stuff of an ageing hippy’s dreams. There was no option, therefore, but to mute the Sri Lanka-England ODI on Sky. It made, as you might guess, for a distinctly surreal experience. Then again, teaching resumes tomorrow, and too much reality, as Woody Allen put it, won’t sell tickets in Kansas.
What struck me was how fresh it all seemed, how inspiring to those who, like myself, are currently obsessing about age (well, my 50th is 53 days away). Bruce, Miami Steve and the gang machine-gunning their way through some thrillingly rocky rock-outs that make them sound 25 rather than 55; Joni, now in her sixties, running the customary gamut of jazzy-funky-folky assaults on the planet’s vices, even an update of Big Yellow Taxi, but this time with added venom (signing a distribution deal with Starbucks certainly demonstrates an enduring sense of humour).
Full postTime to forgive Ramprakash
How can an England team without Ramprakash be truly representative of the nation’s cricketing talent
Rob Steen
25-Feb-2013
Firsts are not always good things but, with the exception of Worcestershire’s ground spending most of the summer doing a passable impression of the River Avon, the newly-done-and-dusted English season has been chockfull of extremely pleasant firsts.
First trophy won by Durham, the youngest first-class county (and nearly a second). First List A total to come within a four of 500 (Surrey, unfortunately, had the misfortune to do it in mid-April, after which the only way was down, as it proved). First sighting of an English legspinner capable of hitting Test hundreds since BT Bosanquet (and how sweetly, touchingly, apt that Adil Rashid should be a bequest to the nation courtesy of Yorkshire CCC, so long a no-fly zone for British Asians). First sighting of a gunslinging, matchwinning Caribbean fast bowler since Courtney hung up his holster. Pity Ottis Gibson is within sniffing distance of his 40th year, right?
Full postTime to crunch more numbers
Now, thanks primarily to the broadcasters’ thirst for the telling stat, we have a whole new ball game: longest six, most dot-balls, even speed off the bat
Rob Steen
25-Feb-2013
To paraphrase Pete Townshend, meet the new prejudices - same as the old prejudices. As expected, the ICC World Twenty20 has succeeded in polarising aficionados in much the same way as the advent of the limited-overs format did in 1963 and, when the international version emerged, in 1971.
To say it is strictly a generational thing would be far too simplistic, as the support of the likes of Ian Chappell and Scyld Berry confirms: the debate has pitted those realistic enough to be concerned for the game’s future against those who would rather it had never stooped to alleged bastardisation in the first place.
Full postReality bites for Flintoff
Two years ago, when comparisons with Ian Botham were all the rage, most Poms were convinced that Our Fred’s career graph would maintain its inverse relationship to that of His Beefiness
Rob Steen
25-Feb-2013
And then there were four. Of the England XI that defeated Australia at Trent Bridge to take a decisive 2-1 lead in the 2005 Ashes series, only Michael Vaughan, Ian Bell, Kevin Pietersen and Matthew Hoggard are now likely to figure in the forthcoming Test tour of Sri Lanka. And so the curse continues. Who would have thought that those fluffy white clouds over Nottingham would contain such a grisly grey lining?
True, the team management have yet to formally announce that Andrew Flintoff’s persistent ankle problems will keep him off the plane, but his withdrawal from next month’s one-day series suggests this may only be a matter of time. The sensible option would be to give him the winter off in the hope that he can return against South Africa next summer with all cylinders ablaze, but even that may be overly optimistic. To watch him grimace, groan and hoick his way through the Twenty20 was as pitiful as it was painful.
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