The Long Handle
Don't give up the day job, Sanath
Multiple choices of headgear, Mr Jayasuriya. Tsk tsk
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
A few months back the ICC proposed that governments should not be fiddling about with cricket. Everyone said this was a splendid idea and signed up to it hungrily, like dieters pledging to drop three dress sizes for their summer holidays.
Unfortunately it's now 2013, and Sri Lanka's government still has its fingers in the cricket pie. This is fairly naughty, but we shouldn't be too harsh. We all know it's hard to stick to resolutions. Giving up the cupcakes may help unclog your arteries and enable you to see your toes, but it leaves a terrible empty feeling come afternoon tea-time.
If the ICC has its way, being the Sri Lankan sports minister would be no fun at all, like being the British sports minister. She doesn't get to pick Manchester United's defence, she can't design the England rugby team's shirt, and she's not even allowed to sack Giles Clarke. Her job involves handing trophies to sweaty people, trying to pretend she's interested in cycling, and making sure she doesn't tweet anything silly before a better post comes along.
Full postBruised knees, fallen bails - why the fuss?
Surely sudden movements by tiny bits of wood can't be distracting batsmen, can they?
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
Modern cricketers have many skills. They can sit without flinching while a man with seven nose-piercings carves inky scribblings into their forearms. They can encapsulate the existential absurdity of the human condition in 140 characters or less (including lols, exclamation marks and spelling mistakes). They can autograph a pint-sized bat without taking their eyes off the game they are supposed to be involved in.
And they're very good at standing with their hands on their hips, looking incredulous. England are particularly skilled at this. Watching the Sultans of Sulk in Mohali the other day, I had to admire their polished, poised display of perturbation. In one instant they turned from energetic young sportsmen to a gang of IT maintenance people who'd just discovered that the reason they couldn't get the printer working all morning was that it wasn't plugged in.
I wonder if, in between throwing and fetching rehearsals, they have sulking drill? Ian Bell's peculiar little grimace conveyed so much more than mere disappointment. There was angsty despair. There was a touch of indigestion. There was a hint of latent anger, as though any day now, the peculiar little grimace might be followed by a bat-wielding, box-throwing, glove-chewing, umpire-savaging rampage.
Full postRotation's a jolly good thing (mostly)
If it's good enough for shirts, friends and duvets, why not for cricket?
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
Where would we be without rotation? Cars wouldn't be much fun, for a start. That trick that jugglers do with the spinning plates would be a lot less impressive. Hamsters would have more free time, which they would undoubtedly use to plot the overthrow of humanity.
So on the whole, rotation is a good thing. And it's something you can introduce into your daily lives. Instead of wearing the same pair of shoes until the soles flap when you walk, get yourself a development wardrobe of up-and-coming footwear, and then give some of them an occasional one-day outing, so that when the time comes for them to step up, they'll be ready. You'll find that rotation also works for shirts, friends, duvets and arable crops.
It can sometimes go wrong. Henry VIII's attempt to introduce a rotation system for the Royal Bedchamber failed because the pool from which he was selecting (unmarried women in Western Europe) was wide enough to render a rotation policy more or less superfluous.
Full postAftab Ahmed is one of us
He's not going to bore you with descriptions of what he bench-pressed or how much he ran today
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
I don't know about you, but I find it hard to warm to professional cricketers these days. It might be that we pay them too much - as the old saying goes: 'You pay golden peanuts, you get monkeys with expensive watches', or it could be their tweeting. When Mr Twitter announced to his pet parrot one morning that he'd just dreamt about a fantastic new way for the citizens of the world express themselves, I'm sure he never imagined it would end up being used by professional cricketers to tell us they'd just had their dinner.
Personally, I think we should look to the Romans for guidance on how to treat our popular athletes. Like cricketers, gladiators performed in arenas full of baying crowds, had short careers (in some cases, extremely short) and were fond of a tattoo. But the Romans didn't pay them, did not allow them to write autobiographies, and would have taken a dim view of any gladiator who wanted time off to fight in the Parthian Premier League.
Yet just when you think the modern cricketer is beyond redemption, you read a quote like this from Chittagong batsman and last decade's next big Bangladeshi thing, Aftab Ahmed:
Full postIn which England hark back to the bad old days
There really is nothing like a good collapse, is there?
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
It's the epic bat-and-ball clash that is already being described as "one of several limited-overs series taking place in January". In the blue corner, the undisputed and inexplicably top-ranked 50-over side in the world. In the other blue corner, complaining about the lack of wi-fi, it's the challengers, MS "Transition" Dhoni and the Excuse-Makers from Mars.
It reminds me of the lesser-known Biblical clash on the undercard at the David versus Goliath bout: the one between David's heavily tattooed cousin Dwayne, who had an unfortunate tendency to sling stones into his own face, but who talked a good game, and Goliath's younger brother Geoffrey, who had anxiety issues and didn't like people looking at him.
Two games in, and, as predicted, the thing makes no sense whatsoever. The cricket has been quite entertaining, but there's more fun to be had by watching desperate cricket hacks attempting to construct a coherent narrative out of the randomness. Three days ago England had boldly gone and conquered the final frontier. Today the warp drive went into reverse.
Full postA professional analysis of the BBL
In which the good and the bad are sorted out from the ugly
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
First of all, I would like to apologise. This week's blog isn't as funny as usual. Some might consider this quite an achievement. They might elaborate by pointing out that you already need a powerful humour microscope to detect the levity in the Long Handle and that any further diminution in the chuckle quotient might render it completely undetectable to the human brain.
Nevertheless, there comes a moment in any part-time, semi-professional, semi-literate cricket blogger's life when he or she yearns to break the stifling bonds of mere humour and be taken seriously as a proper cricket scribbler.
Obviously, real cricket journalists have to spend years learning the skills of their trade: how to type without moving your lips; how to balance a carton of coffee, a laptop and a doughnut; how to make a plausible expenses claim. I should really sign up for a course; learn all about publishing law, ethics, fact-checking, nouns, verbs, punctuation and stuff.
Full postCricketers: they're angry like us
If they get into spats every now and then, blame the hideous society we've created
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
I don't know if you've noticed, but the world is quite an angry place these days. Our politicians are shoutier than ever, there are so many terrorist organisations that soon they'll have to start sharing acronyms, and even our tiny cartoon birds have chosen to wage a campaign of reckless vigilante vandalism rather than pursuing justice in the matter of the theft of their eggs through the proper legal channels.
It's no surprise then that cricketers have come down with this general global malaise. It started in Melbourne. Marlon pulled David's shirt, then David's friend Shane said that Marlon shouldn't ought to have done it, but Marlon said he didn't care anyway, so Shane threw a ball at Marlon, who threw his toy truck at Shane and broke his earring.
It didn't stop there. At the after-match buffet, Shane took the last prawn-cranberry-and-camembert vol-au-vent even though he knew it was Marlon's favourite, then Marlon sneaked into the car park and put a whoopee cushion on the seat of Shane's car, so Shane retaliated by tweeting, "Marlon is a big fat smelly pants", to which Marlon replied, "Nah nah nah nah nah nah not listening #fingersinears"
Full postDoes the Hicks-Botham particle exist?
Plenty of oddities in cricket point to the possibility of this god-only-knows how particle - like England being good at one-day cricket
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
Many things in life are counterintuitive. The earth, it turns out, is not as flat as it looks. The numbers 1,2,3,4,5, and 6 are as likely to win you the lottery as any other combination. Dale Steyn's childhood pet was a prize-winning Pekinese called Sparkles. And England are top of the one-day international rankings.
Thinking this anomaly might prove the existence of the mysterious Hick-Botham particle, scientists at CERN have been firing the rankings through their big collider. But it doesn't matter how many times you smash the numbers together in a high-energy underground particle accelerator, the results are still the same.
When England first topped the rankings last year, Haroon Lorgat marched down to the algorithm facility in the ICC's basement and demanded to speak to the operator of the clearly malfunctioning ratingsometer:
Full postTracer bullets are so 2012
We need new, more colourful description for balls that travel really fast
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
Purple is a fine colour, the colour worn by Roman emperors, and it suits men of a certain physical stature. It doesn’t look good on Ricky Ponting, for example. Same goes for Xavier Doherty. They have the lean, hungry look of plebians. Doug Bollinger, on the other hand, looks very good in Hurricane purple. It’s far more flattering to a man of his dimensions than the canary yellow he has to flap about in for Chennai.
Watching him against Perth on Tuesday, it occurs to me that he even looks a bit like a Roman emperor, albeit one of the portlier ones who didn’t like to walk. After troubling Marcus North with a short one, then inducing Shaun Marsh to play on, he stood proudly in the huddle, accepting the thanks of a crowd of friends, Tasmanians and countrymen, looking regal, if slightly out of breath and a little sweaty.
The Flame-Grilled men from Perth did offer some resistance to the purple wind, mainly through the batting of Simon Katich. He doesn’t quite look right playing T20, but then when has he ever looked right? He was an awkward, nuggety, ugly Test match No. 6, then an awkward, shuffly, ugly Test opener, and now in the BBL he’s like a plumber in his overalls at a school prom. And yet he finds a way to score runs. In fact, translated to T20 his low-powered hitting almost passes for Gower-like insouciance.
Full postA guide to 2013 in cricket
Includes the formation of a new planet, a scandal about Alastair Cook, and the ashes of the Ashes
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
Life is like a rain-affected Test match. There's a lot of standing around, too much small talk and long periods when nothing appears to happen. Sadly, you can't fast-forward life to get to the good stuff, or tune in for the highlights show. So for those of who are curious about what will happen in cricket in the next twelve months but don't want to have to sit through all of it to find out, here is the Long Handle guide to 2013.
The biggest news will be the retirement of the Little Master. Having outlasted Wasim, Ambrose, Warne, McGrath, Donald, Murali, Mullally, George Bush snr, George Bush jnr, two Gulf Wars, apartheid, Mother Theresa and the Space Shuttle, Sachin will finally pack it in during the Australian series when he realises that he can't remember which one is Starc and which one is Cummins.
In the period between Sachin's mentioning casually to a journalist he meets in a corridor that he might be thinking about calling it a day, and the moment when he pulls off his sweat bands for the final time, the Tendulkar industry will experience a merchandising Big Bang. So many souvenir pull-outs, commemorative mouse-mats and Tendulkar statuettes will be produced that the streets of Mumbai will be drowning in memorabilia. By the summer, the Indian government will intervene, buying up the stock and disposing of it by launching it into space where it will form a new planet, Sachin 1.
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