The Long Handle
Why you should always back your local team
Even if that team is based 4130 miles away
Andrew Hughes
03-May-2014
As you grope your way along the unlit hallway of life in search of the kitchen of destiny, occasionally banging your head on the hatstand of fate, you face many dilemmas. Should you stick with that master's degree in Advanced Number Fondling to keep your parents happy or go for the diploma in Paper Aeroplanes now enrolling at the University of Time Wasting? Get married or remain happy? Shiraz or Merlot? That tie with those shoes?
But of all the difficult decisions a human being has to make in the course of a lifetime, perhaps the thorniest is choosing which sports team to support.
For some, the answer is easy. Every summer the streets of English holiday resorts are adorned with Manchester United/Chelsea/Manchester City/Liverpool shirts as people proudly display their lifelong support for the team that they last saw win on television.
Full postLet's talk about Mumbai
Why are last year's all-conquering Intergalactic Champions of T20 rooting around at the foot of the table?
Andrew Hughes
30-Apr-2014
By the time you read this, Mumbai may not be bottom of the IPL, although if they are not bottom of the IPL, they will certainly be next to bottom.
Wednesday's game with Hyderabad is a clash of the fallen titans, a primeval mud-wrestling match in which two lightly armoured, medium-sized dinosaurs squabble ineffectually to see who will be last out of the tar pit. As heavyweight bouts go, it's not so much a rumble in the jungle as a rustle in the undergrowth.
So what has gone wrong? Why are last year's all-conquering Intergalactic Champions of T20 rooting around at the foot of the table, hoping that a good showing in the Pepsi Play Nice Politeness League might offset their lack of proper points?
Full postThe truth about Farbrace
Don't tell anyone but he's a double agent
Andrew Hughes
26-Apr-2014
The official explanation for the hiring of Paul Farbrace is a straightforward one. Having begun a new era in English cricket by plucking the best CV from a tempting array of applications (Ashley Giles, Peter Moores, Kermit the Frog and Tony Blair) the ECB naturally wanted to recruit a high-quality assistant blame-taker to assist Peter in his three-year mission to stop England from getting any worse.
Paul Farbrace was the obvious choice. Kidnapped by SLC and forced to work for them, he sorted out Sri Lankan cricket from top to bottom in just three months before almost single-handedly winning the Asia Cup and the World T20.
Yet all this time, the saviour of Sri Lankan cricket was being held against his will by the evil masterminds at SLC, languishing in three-star hotel rooms where he existed on meagre rations and IPL commentaries. Every morning, an emaciated Farbrace begged his captors as they brought him his daily bowl of stale crusts and murky tap water.
Full postThe problem with human hands
Is that they're not designed for catching a cricket ball
Andrew Hughes
23-Apr-2014
I don't know if you've noticed, but a lot of catches have been dropped in the IPL. If you haven't noticed, well, a lot of catches have been dropped in the IPL. About 20 or so, at the time of writing, which, according to the complicated system of weights and measures that cricket fans apply to such things, is within a notch or two of "a lot".
During Monday afternoon's inter-thwacking interval, the presenter of the UK's IPL coverage, who fronts the show with the insincere smile and sarcastic mock bewilderment of a man attending the wedding of a family member he isn't particularly fond of, asked Mark Ramprakash and Aakash Chopra what it was all about.
This reminds me of the old criticism of Premier League referees. Referee A will incorrectly refuse to send someone off in a football match. Thousands of minutes of football later, an entirely different referee at an entirely different stadium somewhere else in Europe will correctly send someone off for the same offence.
Full postWhy Bangalore won't win the title
Because the cricketing gods won't let 'em, that's why
Andrew Hughes
19-Apr-2014
India's annual intercontinental multi-billion-dollar leather-sphere heaving contest is underway and already we are able to draw some conclusions.
First, that transferring a raucous colourful cricket circus to the edge of the desert is a little like relocating the FA Cup final to Venus. The venue may be ideal - no traffic congestion, minimal local taxation and plenty of room - but it is hard to deny that what you gain in parking space, you lose in atmosphere.
There is something about playing sport in a desert that sucks atmosphere from an occasion like a camel enjoying a post-trek drinkie. The opening game was, well, quiet. Normally at these things, you can't tell what the stadium announcer is shouting about, but on Wednesday I could hear every syllable of his repertoire, which mainly involved reminding spectators of the names of the two teams they had paid to watch.
Full postThe annual migration of the cricket hype
It's that time of year when the game turns dangerously sexy
Andrew Hughes
16-Apr-2014
Can you hear it? Turn off that episode of Ravi Shastri's Celebrity Moustache Challenge, muzzle the budgerigar, confiscate your daughter's violin bow and remove the plugs from all of your neighbour's power tools, open your living room windows and there, in the distance, you will hear a faint but ominous sound.
It isn't the grumbling of Ecuadorean volcanoes or the rumble of Russian tanks moving towards the Ukrainian border on a non-provocative heavily armoured peace mission. That noise you can hear, that peculiar suppressed roar that has the planet aquiver, is the annual migration of the cricket hype.
The hype has spent the last few months in Australia, attracted to the Antipodes by the Ashes, but at this time of year, it flies north to Asia for the hype mating season: a colourful, chaotic, dew-soaked explosion of gaudy shirts, shouting, roaring, tweeting, partying and sweating, along with the occasional cricket match.
Full postThe ICC's reply to Wisden's frowny face
Decentralisation of wasteful expenditures should go a long way in improving the governing body's image
Andrew Hughes
12-Apr-2014
Like Test cricket, the Wisden Almanack is a relic of a bygone age that makes no concession to modernity. It weighs the same as an armadillo or a large turtle, and is just as difficult to get through a letterbox; it costs £50, for which sum you could purchase the collected works of Shakespeare, Byron, Keats and Katie Price, and it is printed in a tiny, illegible script by a team of specially trained house spiders.
Yet the year is not complete without this slice of lemon-flavoured, metatarsal shattering, statistic-packed loveliness, and every spring, the world cricket congregation await the annual sermon from the vicar of Wisden, hanging on his every word, before filing out of the church complaining that the last vicar had a much kinder face and that things haven't been the same since they started printing the bible on recycled paper.
This year, the Reverend Booth gave us a thundering condemnation of greed and avarice that had the wicked shaking in their well-polished shoes. But to show that the modern church of cricket is capable of tolerating dissenting views, he invited a representative of the opposition to exercise their right of reply, and a Mr Giles Faust took up the offer.
Full postSri Lanka upset all calculations
Just when you stop trusting them, they pull off a grand triumph
Andrew Hughes
09-Apr-2014
There are 196 sovereign nations on Earth, and, since my plans for an underwater octopus-styled lair with nuclear submarine docking, shark enclosure and jacuzzi have been rejected by the International Maritime Underwater Lair and Deep Sea Abode Planning Committee, like most people, I am forced to choose one of them to live in.
This need not imply, however, that by choosing to reside within the squiggly borders of a particular geopolitical entity, that we are endorsing said nation. For instance, I continue to live in England because having finally mastered the intricacies of the eccentric English public transport system, I am far too lazy to begin wrestling once again with the rules governing the purchase of an off-peak inter-city all-day return ticket in a new country.
This does not, however, mean that I am obliged to cheer for England in any of the many flag-waving contests that modern life continually thrusts before us. The perfect cure for a case of nationalism is to sit through the whole of the flag-brandishing lap of grins that opens the Olympics, whereupon you will come to realise that your particular nation is merely one of a yawnsome number of republics, federations and islands, all with interchangeable flags and indistinguishable national anthems.
Full postPresenting the new IPL sponsors
Fans of the million-dollar league aren't going to watch it go broke, are they?
Andrew Hughes
05-Apr-2014
Thanks to a splendid, if slightly damp, World T20, the shortest format has reasserted its superiority, popularity and all-round loveliness this week, but on Thursday I read worrying news on the IPL pages of ESPNcricinfo. A cloud of financial gloom, laden with dangerous implication, is looming over this year's bling and biffing extravaganza, and threatens to drench our favourite annual cricket parade in a monsoon of money misery.
Or to put it another way: five IPL teams can't find a sponsor.
This is a slightly embarrassing. The owners of these particular cricket collectives are used to a world in which a crowd of desperate CEOs gather outside their hotel and follow them from meeting to meeting, screaming, pulling their hair out and generally carrying on like One Direction fans, in the hope that one day, if they hand over enough gold coins, it just may be their company logo on Ashok Dinda's trousers, just below his left knee.
Full postEngland's bubble-bursting excellence
After a four-month odyssey of defeat, the players aren't the only ones in need of self-analysis
Andrew Hughes
02-Apr-2014
After the Calamity in Chittagong, it is clear that Team England need to make some significant changes to their strategy. For one thing, the long faces and abject apology shtick isn't sustainable. There's only so many "reallys" you can add to the word "sorry" before you begin to look a tad insincere. In fact there are few things more irritating in life than a person who is continually apologising. So knock it off, Ashley.
Secondly, the long faces are a bit of a problem. It looks like England are in for a reasonably prolonged spell of defeat and disaster, so the onus is on the players to give their supporters something more interesting to look at than sulks, scowls and pouts. Stuart and chums should not forget they are primarily entertainers and their responsibility to put on a show does not end merely because they are being spanked by Nepal.
I suggest they look back to the 1980s and 1990s for inspiration. How about practising a few wry grins or having a chuckle with the umpire about the general absurdity of the human condition? If you're 3-0 down with one to play, Stuart, why not give us your impersonation of Tim Bresnan trotting in to bowl whilst munching on a pork pie, or have Matt Prior fly a Lancaster bomber over Lord's or get Joe drunk and encourage him to try to paddle across the Thames on an inflatable duck.
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