The Long Handle
What gets Finny’s goat
If you had to sit through Sky’s pre-match show, you’d be doing double teapots too
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
Wednesday, 22nd February
Stung by accusations that they have been a tad complacent in light of their team’s somewhat less than triumphant excursion to the Antipodes, the BCCI has today announced a wide-ranging review. Entitled “What We Did on Our Holidays”, it will be headed by an experienced playground supervisor and will aim to get to the bottom of a number of key concerns raised by players, specifically:
1. The X-Box rotation policy limiting senior players to half an hour each
2. The way Ishant always has the volume of his iPod too high on the bus
3. Gautam’s reluctance to change his socks
4. Praveen’s annoying habit of slurping his tea
5. Viru’s refusal to sit in the front row at team meetings if Mahi is there
6. The amount of time Virat spends in the bathroom
The review will be complete by the time the players land in Delhi and is expected to conclude that after ten weeks of being cooped up in the same coaches, dressing rooms and hotel lifts it would be in the best interests of Indian cricket and the sanity of all concerned if they spent some quality time as far away from each other as possible.
Full postEngland and the Quantity Theory of Victory
There’s only so much winning a team can take before they reach a state of Can’t Be Botheredness
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
Saturday, 18th February
Opinions, like socks, are commonplace and most people have several, though they can’t always remember where they got them from. It is also the mark of the civilised individual that they change them regularly, and so this weekend, English cricket journalists have been proudly displaying some freshly laundered ones.
Throughout 2011 they were agreed that England had not the faintest notion of an inkling of a clue as to how to tackle the 50-over stuff but that their ineptitude was not really a big deal because Test cricket is where it’s at, the World Cup is just a big yawn, and no one cares about a format that is all a little bit 1980s.
However, in the light of England’s recent series victory and dramatic rise up the rankings from mid-table to upper mid-table, the desert-bound hacks, suffering perhaps from a cocktail of sand exhaustion and golf fatigue, are spinning us a line about the importance of the 50-over game and England’s building for 2015.
Full postHow counties can make money
And a list of Sahara's demands met by the BCCI
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
Wednesday, 15th February
Derbyshire today revealed that they had turned an enormous loss into a marginally smaller loss by offering their ground as a wedding venue. This excellent idea should encourage other counties to find ways to generate a little extra money and to help them along, we’re launching a new feature called “101 Uses For A County Cricket Ground”. Here are three from the top drawer:
1. With their prime locations, Lord’s and The Oval could be turned into exclusive business heliports, enabling millionaires/billionaires/international fraudsters to get easy access to London’s financial district or alternatively, to make a quick getaway.
2. By turning their outfields into arable farmland, counties could swap their piffling ECB handouts for massive EU agricultural subsidies. Each county could specialise in a particular vegetable and the County Championship would be replaced by the Friends Provident Harvest Festival, judged by Geoffrey Boycott and Alan Titchmarsh.
Full postWhat Dhoni could learn from football
A five-ball over and no fuss
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
Monday, 13th February
In a leap year, strange things happen. February has an extra day, women can propose to men, and most bizarrely of all, England have won a one-day game. The last time they were any good at this stuff was 1992, also a leap year. Coincidence? Yes, probably, given that they mostly sucked in 1996, 2000, 2004 and 2008.
But the main thing is, they won a game. Pakistan finally collapsed like an exhausted school bully who’d already extracted all the lunch money and sweets he could possibly need.
Alastair Cook scored a one-day century, which is good news for English hacks who get to run the “Alistair Cook silences his critics” story for the hundredth time, despite the fact that even Alastair Cook’s most dedicated critics, including the retired colonel from Barking who used to follow Cook around the world haranguing him via a loud hailer about his substandard strike rate, have long ago admitted he’s not that bad.
Full postAll you wanted to know about Saeed Ajmal
Thursday, 9th February What’s the difference between a nuclear fallout and a media fallout*
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
Thursday, 9th February
What’s the difference between a nuclear fallout and a media fallout*? Well, a nuclear fallout is a deeply unpleasant side effect that lingers interminably, whereas a media fallout is a deeply unpleasant side effect that lingers interminably for which journalists get paid.
Early in the recent series, a few English types tried to launch the Saeed Ajmal crooked arm thing, but like a poorly constructed kite on a windless afternoon, it didn’t really take off, no matter how much they ran with it. In the end it was left to Saeed himself to take pity on the struggling hacks by talking about his special dispensation from the ICC to have a bent arm or something. I forget the details.
And as sure as the doosra follows Ian Bell’s front pad, a little typhoon of tediousness blew up in the desert as journalists and message board trolls desperately tried to fan the infant spark of baby controversy into a toddler-sized blaze. Yesterday, ESPNcricinfo’s own King Cnut, George Dobell, tried valiantly to stand against the waves of silliness by laying out the facts about Saeed’s perfectly legal action.
Full postIt’s all up to the PCB now
We know they can turn triumph into disaster
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
Saturday, 6th February
While the cricket world is engrossed by a fascinating Test series in Dubai and the Commonwealth Bank ménage-a-trois is just warming up, into our consciousness barges the IPL, like a messenger in a ten-foot-tall peacock outfit interrupting a village wedding to announce via a solid-gold loudhailer that the Maharajah will be holding a bacchanalian orgy and concubine market at the Palace and all are invited.
Or to put it another way, it’s IPL auction time. As usual, some of the world’s finest cricketers were on offer at completely random prices, which is what makes this game show so entertaining. The eager contestants queue for their chance to give the Wheel Of Crazy Money a spin and see what wacky prizes they end up with. Vinay Kumar $1 million! Sunil Narine $700k! Somebody bought Mitchell Johnson! Crazy!
In keeping with IPL tradition, there were a few English bridesmaids, and we now look forward to another post-auction ritual: guessing which of the unsold Englishmen will be the first to declare (whilst wiping away a tear) that they never wanted to play in the thing anyway and that their first priority has always been international cricket/turning out for Nowhereshire/spending April decorating the spare room.
Full postHaddin gets the evil-villain approach
And Andrew Hughes remembers the exciting plot of the original Woolf Report
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
Wednesday, 1st February
How do you let someone know that you’re not interested any more? That they are the leftover bit of pastry dough or the spare screw in the flat pack furniture set?
You could tell them bluntly that the spark has gone, that you don’t find their sledging thrills like it used to, that they can’t catch and that your mother never liked them. This can be painful; there may be tears, perhaps the odd bruise. But it’s the kindest way.
Option two is to take the little kernel of truth and wrap it in an awful lot of stuff that could plausibly be true, but on this occasion isn’t. It’s not you, Brad, it’s me. I’ve changed. I used to think that looking like Ian Healy and occasionally blasting a quick 50 was all I wanted in a keeper, but now I realise I was wrong. That kind of thing.
Full postThe peril of premature laurel-resting
Is that recrimination is lurking close by, waiting to nip your backside
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
Sunday, 29th January
“And so the Andy who was called Strauss led his disciples into the desert. For three days and three nights they wandered but on the fourth day they rested on the back foot and were caught unawares. There was then much wailing and gnashing of teeth and they returned unto their hotel whereupon they did beat their X-Boxes mercilessly.”
The Greeks didn’t give us the whole picture. Nemesis comes after hubris all right, but they missed out stage three: recrimination, which is the worst bit. Sky’s usual suspects looked like appalled teachers confronted with the evidence that last term’s top student had just been caught smoking in the sixth form toilets. Bob was loftily contemptuous, Botham was steaming and Nasser was definitely not amused.
But are they being fair? England are a good team, they just aren’t as good as all that. There’s no disgrace in losing to Pakistan, who played very well. What’s the problem?
Full postWhen will the Indians feel embarrassed?
Because it seems the 4-0 whitewash merely disappointed them
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
Thursday, 26th January
Today Giles “Show me the money” Clarke issued a dire warning. Ever vigilant, like Batman in a pin-striped suit, he’s identified the biggest threat to cricket, the looming danger that could destroy our beautiful game and he wants to tell us all about it.
Is it match-fixing? Nope. Twenty20 overkill? No. What about the ongoing DRS controversy, with its corrosive effect on the authority of umpires? Not that either. The imbalance in wealth between rich and poor cricket boards? The plight of Test cricket? The threat of Premier League football? No, no and no.
It seems the biggest danger to cricket is… people watching cricket on the internet. Now I’ll be honest, until recently (this morning) I didn’t really know what pirate streaming was. It sounds like an extreme form of white-water rafting restricted to members of the piratical fraternity. In a better world, that’s what it would be.
Full postA sinister conspiracy against county cricket
Sunday, 22nd January Like many cricket watchers, I have whined on incessantly about how boring modern Test pitches are
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
Sunday, 22nd January
Like many cricket watchers, I have whined on incessantly about how boring modern Test pitches are. Who cares if the game lasts five days if we’re asleep for four of them? Well, like a bank that has been recently been bailed out by the government at a time of low economic growth, I should now start giving credit where it’s due. The groundsmen of the world deserve a prolonged hurrah.
They deserve all three cheers and more, for letting the grass grow, leaving the hose pipe on, inserting mattress springs below the top soil or whatever it is that they do to make things more interesting, whilst all the time under pressure to do precisely the opposite. In what other sport would the phrase “result pitch” cause widespread administrative frowning and monocles to pop from the eyes of officials?
So when Gautam Gambhir today said Indian pitches should be spin-friendly, I was almost entirely in agreement. Dry, dusty, cracked surfaces on which spinners can cause the ball to move sideways to a preposterous degree is precisely what you should expect when you go to India, just as you should look forward to soggy ankles in England and broken noses in the Caribbean. That’s how it should be.
Full post