The Long Handle
Elderly aunt v human cyborgs
And the astounding escapology act by Defeat
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
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On Thursday, it was the turn of the Port of Spain audience to be wowed by the West Indies Cricket Team’s long-running variety show. It is difficult to put into words the full experience of an afternoon and evening with Chris Gayle’s Travelling Circus. There is comedy for sure and there is tragedy too, not to mention a fair bit of standing around sulking. But the centrepiece of the show is a thrilling escapology act.
Each night, Defeat is tightly gagged; bound in padlocked chains, locked into a trunk and heaved into a tank full of piranhas by Chris and his glamorous assistants. Then we look on in wonder as, against all the odds, at the last possible minute, Defeat breaks free, bounds onto the stage and yells, “Ta-da!” accepting the groans of disbelief, sporadic booing and occasional fruit flinging of a stunned audience.
The verdict of the genial Colin Croft in the Sky studio is that the West Indies have forgotten how to win, a diagnosis of amnesia that might not be too much of a handicap to you or I but which is particularly unfortunate in a collection of professional sportsmen. And there appears to be no cure, other than waiting for your collective memory to return, a process that can take several years. For example, England mislaid the art of winning some time during 1987 and didn’t find it again for a decade and a half. Even now it comes and goes.
Full postHeat, rage and yet more defeat
It’s pretty out in Dominica, but on the ground it’s all a shambles
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
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There have to be more games in Dominica. In contrast to some of the windswept new constructions we have seen elsewhere in the Caribbean, which appear to have been thrown up on marshland in the most inhospitable parts of the island, this was a beautiful locale, surely challenging the HPCA Stadium in Dharamsala as the most stunning cricket venue in the world. The camera spent as much time lingering over the tree-carpeted mountains and the port of Roseau as it did pointing at the cricket.
And there was a full house. It took time for the ground to fill up, but then this was Sunday and there was church business to attend to. But by the time Chanderpaul had dropped anchor, the ground was full of parasol-wielding Dominicans, fanning themselves with scorecards and, away from the well-behaved stands, dancing, singing and causing a racket with a range of musical instruments, from a wheezy trombone to what appeared to be a small plastic horn attached to a length of garden hose.
It looked furiously hot out there. The occasional shots of the interior of the island, particularly the ice-cool emerald pool and the teeming waterfalls, were a welcome relief from watching all that perspiration. The South African jerseys appeared to be a mottled affair in three shades: dark green, light green and sweaty green. For a while Jacques Kallis, standing motionless at slip, reminded me of nothing so much as an enormous overfed lizard basking in the sun.
Full postFidget while you Trott
He may not be English but by being self-conscious and insecure, he puts his adopted countrymen at ease
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
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Personally, I find that the eclectic composition of the England cricket team is one of its redeeming features. Over the years, first, second and third generation immigrants have played in the name of England and no other team in world cricket has included such a diverse range of backgrounds. At the moment, a lot of them happen to come from South Africa, but there’s a reason for that: South Africa produce very good cricketers.
So, back to wee Trott. This Lord’s Test has given us a chance to get to know the little feller better, since we saw him only once at The Oval last summer and he spent so little time at the crease in South Africa. The first thing to note is that he appears to have picked up those comforting English traits of self-consciousness and chronic insecurity. We learned on Thursday that he only feels happy when the ball is coming out of precisely the middle of the bat and that he reads every word written about him in the press.
His most human characteristic though is his superstitious scratching at the crease. Over the first two days we watched fascinated as a tentative scratch became a defined drill, a definite rut and finally a deep trench. It would not have been all that surprising had he come out for Friday’s play carrying a watering can and a packet of seeds. Or was he combining his cricket duties with an archaeological dig in search of the lost gold of Thomas Lord?
Full postViewers are people too
Advertisers, cricket boards and commentators would do well to be advised that cricket watchers are not creatures with the attention spans of goldfish hooked on caffeine
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
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Last week saw the publication of a survey, presumably conducted by the Department of the Glaringly Obvious at the University of Duh!, which found (and you might want to be seated for this) that mid-over adverts during the IPL were not, repeat not, popular with television viewers. I know, surprising eh? Who could have guessed that being subjected to a continuous stream of visual marketing junk might begin to rankle a teensy bit with the watching public?
Now, in the interests of fairness, I should say that advertising can have beneficial side effects. For instance, yesterday, in search of distraction from my list of chores, I slumped onto my sofa and flicked through a few channels. In no time at all, I had racked up a new record of eight consecutive adverts without seeing a single scheduled programme. I was so irritated, I decided to clean out my fridge instead. Thus, thanks to advertising, my kitchen no longer smells and I burned a few more calories hacking away at encrusted ice with a screwdriver.
It is also worth pointing out that the cricket watcher’s relationship with brand peddling is not a straightforward one. Certain ad campaigns, if they are sufficiently well conceived and interwoven with the cricket, can become part of the experience. For example, the short sequences on a fictional Caribbean beach that ran during the recent World Twenty20 were almost entertaining, which is pretty much the pinnacle of advertising achievement.
Full postNepotism, and an attack of the gophers
Why we love the Bish and why Antigua has returned to its batsman-hating days of old
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
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But the same could not be said for their commentators. It was a pleasure to spend two evenings in the company of men who didn’t regard the English language as an opponent to be bludgeoned to the ground. For the start, there was just the right balance of cricket clergy and lay person. Tony Cozier and Fazeer Mohammed earn their living choosing the right word and this carries over into their commentary, which is informative, restrained and unpadded with cliché.
There is still room for the ex-player of course, they have to earn a living after all and golf clubs don’t come cheap. Pick of the bunch, as usual, was Ian Bishop, a towering force of righteous judgement. He also has a delightful tendency towards bluntness. When Cozier, T made light-hearted reference to the interview technique of Cozier, C, the Bish shouted out, “Nepotism!” We’re all thinking it Bish, but you can’t say it!
We might have been thinking it, but it would be unfair. Craig Cozier is still paying his dues, charged with the thankless task of cultivating the shoots of illuminating comment from the stony ground of the pitch-side interview. His attempt to chat with Andrew Hudson was bedevilled by the clatter of South African wickets and he opened a conversation with a spectator by asking how long he’d been a lifelong fan.
Full postA cricket cure for the hopelessly insane
When you have been to the very gates of sanity and gazed at what lies beyond, there’s only one thing that can help soothe your frayed nerves again
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
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I’d like to start today’s blog with an apology. I understand that the non-appearance of Tuesday’s Long Handle piece caused a great deal of distress, indeed panic, on the streets of London, Mumbai and Melbourne. To those of you who staged a massed protest outside the offices of Cricinfo and had to be dispersed by riot police threatening to broadcast Danny Morrison’s audio recording of Shakespeare’s love sonnets, I offer my sincere apologies.
Rest assured that almost nothing can keep me from my keyboard. A court injunction might, but so far this month I have managed not to invoke the wrath of the law (though I did have to make some last-minute changes to last week’s piece entitled “Giles Clarke and the Kennedy Assassination”.) No, it was something far more serious that prevented me from fulfilling my Cricinfo duty. I have been, friends, to the very gates of sanity and gazed beyond at a world that makes no sense.
It began on Monday morning. I woke with a piercing headache and an ominous sense of foreboding. Nothing unusual in that, except that this time I was also experiencing the most bizarre hallucinations, visions of such absurdity that they could only have been the product of a fevered and diseased mind. I could see before me, as clear as if it had actually happened, irregularly shaven men in dark blue uniforms celebrating on a cricket pitch, and an Englishman lifting a trophy. Yes, a trophy. I know.
Full postCricketainment to the rescue
Can’t figure out how to calculate net run rates for the life of you
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
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The lot of the Indian cricketer is not always an easy one, and on Tuesday they found themselves in a familiarly perilous position. On the one hand, as Ravi Shastri helpfully suggested to the Indian captain, it was imperative that the players should relax and not get too tense about the whole thing. It’s only a game, after all. On the other hand, this was a match that they absolutely had to win! By at least 20 runs.
But for this spectator, much of the tension was removed from the situation due to the prominence given to the words “net”, “run” and “rate”. Now, individually, these are three perfectly honest and dependable words. I feel I know them, I can trust them. But put them together and they become as palatable as a mojito served with tomato juice and a slice of garlic; a cocktail of definitions that somehow doesn’t quite cause the right neurons to fire in the Hughes brain.
I realise, of course, that there will be large numbers of readers spitting out their coffee at this shameless display of mathematical inadequacy, readers for whom calculating the net run rate is as straightforward an affair as brushing one’s teeth or remembering the names of one’s children, but there it is. My name is Andrew and I can’t add up. Admitting you have a problem is the first step, they say.
Full postCould this be England?
There were slogs that connected, sixes that flew and dives that actually saved runs
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
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But those of you not residing in long-term institutions for the mentally bewildered will understand. When England play cricket, they provoke many feelings. Boredom. Ennui. Fatigue. Apathy. Sporadic bouts of blind rage. Factory operatives are strongly advised not to watch England play cricket whilst operating heavy machinery. I can well recall one July morning when I fell asleep whilst Alastair Cook was taking guard and was only roused in the middle of the evening session by the squeals of my pet gerbil who could stand it no longer.
However, news reached me earlier this week of extraordinary developments taking place in the Caribbean and so on Thursday morning I taped my eyelids in the open position and tuned in. Immediately, I was drawn into a strange and unfamiliar land, an alternative dimension in which two aliens who looked a lot like Michael Atherton and Nick Knight blithely assured us that England would comfortably beat Pakistan. This was exciting, dangerous talk that told of a changed cricket landscape, of a new era in English cricket and possibly of a bottle of whisky behind Charles Colville’s cushion.
These two were, let us remember, prominent performers in England’s Cricket Circus of Calamity that toured the world in the 1990s, bringing hilarity, high jinks, pratfalls and exhibitions of staggering ineptitude to the comedy starved masses of the ICC member states. Now, here they were, large as life in their slacks and open-neck shirts, reclining in a television studio, adopting the blasé attitude of men who had placed a hefty wager on an event that had already happened. It was all most unsettling.
Full postStiff upper lip, old boy
We’ll have none of that whingeing, you hear Mr Collingwood?
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
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There’s nothing we Brits like better than a good old moan. Our current general election (which I am assured will mercifully reach a conclusion this Thursday) has once again turned out to be nothing more than a licence for us to indulge ourselves in our favourite national pastime. Everything is awful, the country is in a mess, there’s nothing on telly, we’re all going to hell in a handcart and so on.
It was not all that surprising, therefore, that on Monday evening one of England’s several cricket captains was seen on our television screens complaining in the rain, thus bringing together the two salient features of British life.* It did not matter that his chaps had batted in an impressive and entirely un-British manner or that they still only had to be beat Ireland to go through. He had a chance to moan and he seized it.
Now, I do have a smidgen more sympathy for Collingwood, P this time around than I did last summer. If you recall, back in June, England won the toss against the West Indies on a day on which rain was as inevitable as a Ray Price sledge. But rather than batting second, the reluctant skipper chose instead to bat first and moan later. At least this time he could argue that it was not his fault that he ended up in the field trying to defend a modest total against a team with all their wickets intact.
Full postWhen Sri Lanka lost to a clergymen's XI
The World Twenty20 begins with some odd cricket
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
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Last year’s World Twentysomething bash kicked off with splendid high farce as England slipped and slithered against Netherlands. This year’s edition began with one of those rare and happy events in which, if it were possible, you would like both teams to win. Let’s be honest, anyone who doesn’t like the way Sri Lanka play the game has a malfunctioning cricket gene.
And who could have a bad word to say about the chaps in black, everyone’s favourite semi-finalists, who have long been the acceptable face of the antipodes? It is true that (with the exception of big Jesse and the Welsh allrounder Scott –y – Styris )* they have the physiques of Olympians and, like their cousins in yellow, display a remarkable fondness for the tedious chore of catching the round leathery thing.
But there has always been something fragile and reassuringly human about the men from down under and along a bit. Like most of the rest of us, they know that they probably aren’t going to be successful and so they don’t get too carried away. Perhaps it is the black shirts, but they sometimes remind me of a collection of Church of England clergymen who have perhaps spent a little too much time in the vicarage gymnasium.
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