The Long Handle

Wednesday, 2nd February Thanks to the miracle of Twitter, we have learned more about cricketers than we ever could have from the mountains of unreadable biographies and hours of televised cliché-swapping that were once our only window on their world. For example, pre-Twitter we might have suspected that the average cricketer had the mentality of a 12-year-old schoolboy. Now we know it for sure.

Or do we? There has been a flap about the recent Twittertiff between a man named Warner and a man named Geeves, but the media have only given us half the story. I have obtained the as-yet unreported tweets that cast these two distinguished gentlemen in a rather different light. It all started when a post-match dressing room discussion spilled over into cyberspace:

@geevesyb: It is my contention that of all the ancient schools of philosophy, it is the Stoics who offer mankind the greatest consolation

Saturday, 29th January What could be more teeth-grindingly depressing than the appalling news that the years 2013 to 2015 will contain no less than THREE Ashes series? Well one or two things, I suppose. Wolverhampton in the rain. Discovering that Osama Bin Laden has moved in next door. Being trapped overnight in a lift with Brett Lee. Discovering that Brett has brought his guitar with him. But that’s about all.

The only consolation is that by the autumn of 2015, all those people for whom the Ashes is more important than cricket will have come to understand. They too will be sick of the brain-numbing hype-mongery, the plague of pifflesome previews and the Graeme Swann video diaries. Personally, I will be retiring to a salt hotel on the edge of the Atacama Desert in May 2013 where I will remain until it is all over. You are welcome to join me. Just as long as you don’t mention the A-word.

Sunday, 30th January So now we’re booing Michael Clarke? Really? Does the egregious Mr Pietersen get such treatment even though every time he opens his mouth he sounds like a particularly tactless Terminator trying to blend into human society? Did Paul Collingwood feel his lugs humming with boos for those long periods in his Test career when he appeared not to know which way up to hold the bat? Did grumpy old Ricky Ponting get booed? Well, you get the idea, anyway.

Wednesday, 26th January My South Africa versus India series was splendid. Lots of lovely cricket with only sporadic interruptions from a trio of self-conscious men in dark suits sitting in an arctic blue studio that looked like the penguin enclosure at a downmarket zoo. But Indian viewers had it much worse. Their cricket was squashed into a small window, the rest of the screen being reserved for gaudy ads hawking all manner of worthless tat. Why was this? A prominent man in nice shoes from Ten Cricket explained:

“…there is a significant amount of pressure to monetise Indian cricket events.”

There may well be, but since I don’t speak gibberish, it took me a while to grasp his argument. Like cats, small children and economists, I don’t really understand economics, but I got there in the end. The argument goes like this: It costs a lot of money to put Indian cricket on television, leaving very little for he and his fellow boardroom loiterers to spend on IPL cufflinks, porcelain elephants and diamond-studded ipods. So without adverts, they would have to cut costs.

Friday, 21st January Yet more avant-garde administration from the wacky pranksters who gave us the self-rescinding lifetime ban and the incredible vanishing allegations. The PCB have gingered up the yawnsome selection ritual by flinging down a conceptual doosra.

Yes, we have bowlers. Batsmen we’ve also got. Wicketkeepers too (ish). But check this out: there’s no captain! That’s right. We’re sending a World Cup squad to India and we’re so crazy we don’t even know who’s going to lead them!

Reactionary old Waqar doesn’t get it. He thinks it’s preferable to have a captain than not to have a captain. He used to play a bit and he still wears a tracksuit from time to time, so he’s probably entitled to his opinion. What he’s not entitled to do is express it. You concentrate on lining up the post-nets energy drinks, W, and leave the rest to the experts. Or they might just decide to send the team to India without a coach either. Maybe Chairman Butt will do the coaching. Who’ll be laughing then, eh?

Monday, 17th January An abundance of felicitations to Leicestershire County Cricket Club! For those of you who don’t give a flying Irani about Leicestershire County Cricket Club (and I fear there may be several) you should be aware that this particular sporting collective has, at a time of global financial perturbation, achieved the eyebrow-raisingly impressive feat of hauling themselves up the mouldering heap of fiscal ineptitude and planting their flag at the very summit.

Last year, in return for continuing to be Leicestershire, the ECB shovelled in their direction £1.7m with which to play at being businessmen. In homage to the classic Richard Pryor film Brewster’s Millions, the besuited denizens of the Leicestershire boardroom set about disposing of this embarrassingly enormous sum in the shortest possible time. This week they were able to announce that, against all the odds, they had attained a loss of £400,000. Quite an achievement, I think you’ll agree.

But in county cricket there can be no question of laurel-resting or of slack-bottomed complacency. How can Leicestershire exceed the raised expectations of ineptitude that will inevitably follow? It is an order of Morkelesque proportions, a Jesse Ryder of an ask. In the next few weeks, the ECB money truck will pull up outside the gates of Grace Road and deposit another, even larger mountain. But if I know these guys, squandering free money will not be enough. They will also be going for the record of failing to produce a single international cricketer for five full seasons in a row!

Saturday, 15th January So why didn’t Australia win the Ashes? A batting line-up crumblier than a 500-year-old fruit cake? Bowlers who flung down more pies than a malfunctioning high-velocity pie-making machine? A selection policy based around the roulette wheel? No, the truth is much simpler. On the first morning of the Boxing Day Test, captain Clarke and first mate Hughes attended a breakfast function. Hughes had a croissant, Clarke ordered a low-fat frappaccino with cinnamon sprinkles. The rest is history.

Most of us in the cricket-playing world have come to an understanding with Defeat. We accept him as an old acquaintance, like one of those people you kind of know, whose company you don’t particularly like but who you can never quite seem to get rid of. And he’s not so bad really. When he does pop round he just sits quietly in the corner, looking fed up. Providing he remembers to wipe his feet and doesn’t drop digestive crumbs on the carpet, it isn’t too much of an ordeal to accommodate him.

But Australia and Defeat do not get on well at all. Down under, they see this latest Ashes setback as a sign that the cricket gods are angry. And when gods are angry they must be appeased. So the elders of Australian cricket are casting about for a sacrificial victim to help them relaunch their currently beached national sport. And in the absence of dumb animals it is generally accepted that the youngest and the prettiest members of the crew feel the knife for the greater good.

Tuesday, January 11th What? Postponed? Until February? Did one of the ICC’s crack three-man Judgement Squad have tickets to the opera? Were the seats in the Auditorium of Justice particularly lumpy? Or could it be that this was merely the operation of the oldest of legal principles: why finish today what you can charge for tomorrow?

Officially, the excuse is that Amir’s lawyers wanted the panel’s verdict written up but none of the Trio of Truth can type. At least I think that was it. Salman Butt’s lawyers also made requests, but, frankly, I suspect that their insistence on the verdict being inscribed by Franciscan monks on paper made only from the pulp of the rare Bolivian Sequoia and embroidered with myrrh might have been delaying tactics.

So the ICC can add “inability to stage a courtroom drama” to “failed brewery-based function arranging” and “inadequate administration of a popular bat-and-ball sport” on its corporate CV. Imagine the final moments of the penultimate episode of your favourite legal drama. The judge is poised to deliver justice, the courtroom is hushed and the faces of the accused taut with tension. The stirring theme tune strikes up as the credits roll and then you hear the voice of the continuity announcer:

Saturday, 8th January I’m not sure the PCB have quite got the hang of this anti-corruption thing. The dial on their administrative machinery appears to have two settings: “suspect no one” and “suspect everyone”, and at the moment it is stuck firmly on the latter.

Danish Kaneria has not been charged with any crime and is not under investigation by the ICC. And yet he is persona non grata in Pakistan selection circles, as likely to get a game as Barack Obama, Rolf Harris or “President” Asif Ali Zardari, veteran spinner and connoisseur of the cut.

Why is this so? I have a theory. The PCB, having been late converts to the benefits of fighting corruption, are now zealots in the cause and, like all zealots, have to take things that little bit too far. And what’s the only surefire way to prevent players from fixing cricket matches? Simple. Don’t ever let them play in any matches!

Wednesday, January 5th Four walkovers and a stalemate. This has been the dullest Ashes series in living memory and still it goes on. I feel like a tourist whose long-awaited dream holiday has turned into a nightmare, trapped in a dingy hotel above a 24-hour Barmy Army karaoke bar, suffering from ear-ache and chronic disillusionment and counting the days until it is all over. It has been the triumph of the competent over the shambolic. England have done well, no doubt, but they play cricket like Oliver Cromwell might have done, if he hadn’t thought it the devil’s work. It’s been so dull that even Paul Collingwood has had enough.

And throughout, there has been the insistent drumbeat of patriotic bias, as welcome in the commentary booth as a nest of scorpions in your biscuit jar. Chief cheerleader is Ian Botham. Listening to his gratingly one-sided contributions is like being hit on the head repeatedly by a white and red inflatable hammer. When Phil Hughes half-heartedly claimed a catch today, Beefy exploded. Clearly, Hughes was a cheat. A lesser man might have reflected on some of the other examples of sharp practice in recent years, from the unorthodox use of Murray Mints in 2005 to Strauss’s “catch” at Lord’s in 2009. But not Beefy. This is the Ashes. It’s us and them. If you’re not with us, you’re against us. God Save the Queen! Pass the earplugs.

Thursday, January 6th The BCCI do not want to use the UDRS system and have refused an invitation to go and watch it in action in Australia, reminding us that sand-based full-cranial immersion remains as popular amongst sports administrators as it does in the ostrich community. Loathe it or tolerate it, UDRS has become part of the cricket experience. Watching the game without referrals, HotSpots, traffic lights and snickometers already seems an antiquated pastime, part of cricket’s yesteryear, like the days when TV companies couldn’t afford a camera at both ends and the viewer spent 50% of their time watching to see which way the batsman’s bottom moved.

Saturday, 1st January Sometimes you just have to despair about the modern cricket fan. A number of Bangladeshi cricket lovers have let themselves down today. Why? Because they were desperate to get tickets for the World Cup. What is the matter with these people? Don’t they know that 50-over cricket is like, so last millennium? A great many journalists have gone to a great deal of trouble explaining why we shouldn’t like this format. Have they just been wasting ink? Get with the programme, people!

Sunday, 2nd January The shake-up in the New Zealand cricket system seems to have brought on a mood of melancholy and despair amongst their players. Now Daniel Vettori is sulking:

“Why are we playing these extended one-day series? What’s the point?”