The Long Handle

Wednesday August 11th We learned today of a cunning plan by Mr Modi in his long-running yet entertaining tussle with the BCCI. It appears that he had asked for two members of the disciplinary panel to recuse themselves. This, it turns out, is not an obscenity, but a legal term. His Modiness wanted the duo gone because he was concerned they were biased against him. It was a clever move, for had they accepted the principle that the deposed IPL Overlord could only be judged by people not in anyway ill-disposed towards him, the BCCI would find themselves unable to fill a panel, or indeed a phone box.

Unfortunately for Lalit, they did not accept this request and so the show goes on in the same compelling yet impenetrable way. The opacity of proceedings is partly due to the exotic tangle of business gobbledook and thorny legalese through which the outsider must hack his way in order to make sense of it all. Like a modern Hollywood spy thriller, the audience for The Modi Supremacy and its apparently endless sequels has only the merest sliver of a clue as to what the hell is going on but we do at least know who is supposed to be the bad guy.

Thursday August 12th The Clydesdale Bank 40, for those who are unaware, is not the collective name for a group of individuals wrongly convicted of a theft of gold bullion. It is the title of a rather splendid little tournament that takes place throughout the spring and summer and that ends, hopefully, some time soon. Today I thought I’d catch up with county affairs and settled down to watch the Outlaws against the Bears. Once again, the team named after people triumphed over their zoologically titled opponents.

Saturday, August 7th I understand that Pakistan’s representatives at the ICC are seeking to amend the outdated rules on catching. Specifically, they will ask for the whole of Law 32 to be struck from the Laws of Cricket on health and safety grounds. A spokesperson for the PCB claimed that players risked a nasty bruise if they attempted to catch the ball, and abuse from television pundits if they dropped it, and that this constituted a violation of their right not to be laughed at in the workplace.

Sunday, August 8th Just when you thought things couldn’t get any better for English cricket, it has been revealed that John Buchanan is to help the England players with their Ashes preparations. And big JB is already throwing up some fascinating ideas. For instance, the England management are said to be very keen on his five-captains-per-series proposal and are seriously considering the theories outlined in his bestselling pamphlet, “Setting Your Field the Feng Shui Way”. This innovative approach does away with the traditional method of placing fielders in areas where you expect the ball to go and instead focuses on arranging them at auspicious points on the field, to maximise the flow of cricket energy. Andrew Strauss has already implemented some of these suggestions, refusing to have more than two slips for long periods of the second Test on the grounds that negative energy usually escapes in the direction of third slip. As, from time to time, does the ball.

Monday, August 9th The fallout from Edgbaston continues. It has emerged that during the tea interval yesterday, England’s prettiest fast bowler approached the ECB’s head nutritionist to ask whether it might be okay if he had some sweeties. Upon being refused on the grounds that f had some sweeties, he wouldn’t want his tea, Sulky Stuart stuck out his bottom lip, stamped his foot and stormed out of the dressing room, insisting that it wasn’t fair, and furthermore that he hated everyone. Broad was later fined half his pocket money and grounded for the rest of the week; punishment that his captain Andrew Strauss feels was over the top. “As everyone knows, it’s the summer holidays and forcing a young lad like Stuey to stay indoors when all his mates are hanging around outside the chip shop is harsh. Adolescent petulance has always been part of his game and if we made him behave like a grown-up, he wouldn’t be able to bowl as fast.”

Tuesday August 3rd
Some people have alleged that there is something rather futile, not to say tedious about the Clydesdale Rest Home Tea-Time Under-40s Inter-Regional Shield. Such cynicism is entirely unwarranted. Today’s televised game between a team in red and a team in powder blue was an absorbing affair, although sad to say, I was unable to watch the contest uninterrupted as I’d forgotten to deactivate the boredom setting on my new fangled Japanese television and it kept turning itself off.

I did manage to hear parts of Graham Onions’ return to the commentary booth and he appeared to be doing a sterling job in keeping viewers up to date in the matter of his incapacitation (I forget which Onions appendage is currently inoperable, but I gather it is one of the more important ones). He did though, make the mistake of implying that he regarded the latest architectural innovation at Old Trafford with something less than admiration.

David Lloyd was quick to put him right. I think we can all agree that The Point is the reddest rectangular structure ever to be erected at a cricket ground and as gargantuan scarlet oblongs go, I don’t think I’ve ever seen a better one. I understand that future developments will include a day-glo green hospitality pyramid, featuring a rotating restaurant at the apex and, in place of that outdated pavilion, an enormous blue hospitality bean bag, capable of seating up to twenty obese sales executives.

Friday 30th July Breathe a long, deep sigh of relief, crack open a bottle of champagne or offer a prayer of thanks to the appropriate deity; the second Test in Colombo is over! I didn’t see the game myself, although I hear there was one man in a village somewhere near Kandy who watched every ball on television but was struck dumb shortly after tea on the third day and has not been able to speak since.

I wonder what the ICC pitch report for this game will say? Day One: Flat. Day Two: Flat. Day Three: Flat, hint of turn. Day Four: Flat. Day Five: Enormous cracks. Ball turned square. (Just kidding. It was flat.) Yet whatever the report says, you can be sure that no sanctions will follow. We may, therefore, have to take matters into our own hands. I suggest strapping the groundsman into a slightly uncomfortable plastic chair, without a cushion, and forcing him to watch the whole thing again. Twice.

Sunday 1st August England have another Antipodean bowling “coach”, no doubt planted at the ECB by the Australian Secret Service. He has been busy ingratiating himself with the English bowlers, compiling a dossier on their weaknesses (embarrassing school nicknames, food allergies, where Stuart Broad is most ticklish). When the team arrives down under, he will defect to the motherland and hand over his secrets to Cricket Australia. Just like the other guy. (I mean, what kind of name is Troy? Clearly a spy.)

Monday, July 26
An excess of confidence, like alcohol, can lead a man to do things he later regrets. Intoxicated by the success of my recent Sri Lankan wager, I became monetarily involved in today’s quarter-final disputations in the Friends Provident t20, expressing my certainty to the bemused chap behind the counter at my local bookmakers that the Bears of Warwickshire and the Sharks of Sussex would certainly triumph.

It turned out not to be a great day for zoologically-monikered cricket teams. I should have known better, really. The Bears were so named because of the popularity of bear-baiting in the fair towns of Warwickshire, a sport that didn’t usually end well for the bear. And now I come to think of it, the aquatic stars of the Jaws films didn’t usually finish on top either. In future I will stick to supporting teams with humans in their names, like the Outlaws, the Bushrangers or the Knight Riders.

Saturday 24th July We didn’t really learn anything about Pakistan during this mini-series. Two captains, a big defeat and an unnecessarily nervy win. Same old, same old. Instead I spent most of my time observing the Australians, a breed of cricketer I find fascinating. Why don’t they give up? Every other nation on earth would have gone through the motions this morning. Where does it come from? It certainly isn’t a genetic inheritance. The English way is to give up properly and give up early, before mounting a completely futile rearguard action when all chance of victory has gone.

Australia’s captain, too, is endlessly fascinating, like a piece of abstract art. I have come up with many theories to explain the enigma that is Ricky, and my latest is that his whole public persona is a total sham, a facade. Have you ever seen Ricky smile? It is a lovely thing, a boyish grin that lights up his whole gnarly face. No one seeing that grin could fail to warm to the little fella. Yet he goes about in public wearing a mask of humourless disgruntlement, through which compliments for victorious opponents are squeezed out of the corner of his mouth, and thanks to which he comes across as pricklier than a hedgehog wearing a cactus hat. Smile, Ricky, and the world may smile with you. Or at least they might not swear at you so much.

We were also granted another seminar on Australian sporting ethics. Michael Hussey claimed a catch off Kamran Akmal. Under the rules of the game, the claiming of a catch amounts to nothing. In Aussie World, when a bloke says he caught it, the other bloke has to take the first bloke’s word. Why he should do this is not entirely clear; that’s just the way it is. On the other hand, a bloke is entitled to remain at the crease even if there is a chunk of his bat missing from where the edge was removed and everyone in the surrounding province heard the noise.

Life as a cricket addict is not easy. The hours are long, the sacrifices are many and you are regularly presented with tough choices. Take this evening, for example. On the one hand, I had been invited to attend the annual dinner of the Nihilist Cricket Society (guest speaker: Bob Willis). On the other hand, Worcestershire were scheduled to embarrass themselves on live television in eighty overs or fewer. Which pleasure would I have to forgo?

I need not have worried. Vikram Solanki’s chaps in very dark green set about their task with familiar gusto. Chasing an unlikely 313, they saw themselves off in double quick time, enabling me to slip away and spend a pleasant evening discussing the futility of existence and the Clydesdale Bank 40; areas of debate with a surprising degree of overlap.

Conventional wisdom is that Test cricket needs a facelift, a makeover, an injection of conceptual botox, or at the very least, some form of major and invasive reconstructive format surgery. Whereas Twenty20 is dressed up in the latest consumer-enticing finery, fresh from the fevered minds of those clever marketing chaps, Test cricket is still wrapped in a shroud of dusty rules and cobwebbed ritual.

For example, even though a stadium may be overlooked by enormous towers featuring row upon row of pristine lightbulbs and served by many miles of lovely electrical cable, it is still possible for players to go off in the middle of the day due to bad light. And though rugby players may hurtle headlong into one another long after rain has turned their pitch into a quagmire, Test cricketers cannot possibly be asked to run about outside when the grass is a little damp.

And a good thing too. The future of Test cricket is not to be found in pink leather balls, cheerleaders or lunch breaks at midnight. Instead we must make a virtue of anachronism. Tradition and history are powerful selling points. Why else would a poky little ground in north London with an eight-foot slope be regarded with such awe by visiting Australians? Newcomers expect Test cricket to be stuffy, old-fashioned and impenetrable, and we should not disappoint them.

One of the pleasures of the enthralling first Test at Lord’s was listening to Shane Warne. I emphasise the word "listening". On camera, Warnie is a slightly alarming presence, sporting a tan suggestive of a fortnight at one of Mercury’s more exclusive resorts and teeth that could guide trawlers to port on moonless nights. But safely ensconced in the commentators’ booth, he is an uplifting contributor who rivals Harsha Bhogle in the congeniality stakes.

For instance, I have yet to hear the game’s greatest legspinner utter a negative syllable about anyone or anything. All of life’s unpleasantness is encapsulated by the word, "rubbish", a word he occasionally uses to describe such diverse phenomena as inaccurate bowling and negative personality traits, but only to confirm that such things are entirely absent from the make-up of the player under discussion.

Optimism and generosity of spirit isn’t for everyone though, so viewers in need of an alternative had the option of tuning in to Test Match Special, where Ian Chappell was holding court. Gruffer than a billy goat recovering from laryngitis, he seems to have discovered new frontiers of grumpiness since I last heard him; at one point managing to inject bile, belligerence and bad temper into an anecdote about learning to ski.

We English do not summer well. We are designed for living in the depths of soggy forests or shivering in stony cottages on windswept moors. Hot, dry weather turns us the colour of the Zimbabwe one-day shirt and causes us to sweat whilst sitting down, an entirely unsatisfactory state of affairs. Mercifully then, after a distressing interlude, the English monsoon season has arrived in all its soggy glory. Our native moisture is restored and for the next 11 months the dampness of a chap’s shirt will be down to precipitation rather than perspiration.

And who better to celebrate the return of leaden skies and gloomy afternoons with than good old Bob Willis, a man genetically suited to standing in the rain at bus stops complaining about the council? Long Bob was, of course, a fine bowler, but I have often thought that his cricket career was merely a distraction from his true calling: having a bit of a moan.

He was rather restrained during his opening spell on Thursday, but when the umpires took the players off for bad light shortly after lunch, he was soon steaming in off his long run and letting fly with a gloriously downbeat monologue castigating the folly of the men in white coats, an interlude of vintage complaining that was only spoiled by the sight of the players returning to the field just as Bob was hitting his grumbling straps.