The Long Handle
The scream (starring Sanga)
A bloodcurdling cry of despair, hope, challenge and angst brings the IPL thrillingly alive
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
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The IPL is fun, but like any powerful stimulant, it can have side effects. Disorientation is common. We’re into week two now, and to be honest, I’m no longer sure whether the Kings XI Bangalore have already played their home game against Rajasthan Super Kings or whether that was last year. And that’s not all. Last week I felt a powerful urge to bang my head against the wall during a Morne Morkel over, and I find that the sight of a Chennai Super Kings shirt can induce nausea.
But on Sunday I experienced an entirely new IPL sensation: cold, naked fear.
It came during the 18th over of Chennai’s interminable, comic and ultimately futile run-chase. Piyush Chawla had outfoxed big Manpreet Gony with a sneaky googly. The grubby white ball thwacked into a canary yellow pad. And from his ideal vantage point behind Gony’s bottom, the Punjab keeper-captain produced a bloodcurdling wail. It went something like this:
Full postWhat happens in a strategic time-out?
If you don't tell Andrew Hughes, he might create some wild fantasies of his own about the break
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
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Sadly, for us Brits, this mystery interval is just another excuse to whisk the viewer away from the stadium where all the exciting things happen and drag them back to the place where conversations go to die. Yes, the ITV studio is the Bermuda Triangle for banter, a black hole for badinage. There they sit, Vikram and Alec and Graeme and the other Graham, like defendants in a courtroom, cagily reading extracts from the Sportman’s Manual of the Bleeding Obvious, whilst their hosts attempt to trick them into saying something, anything that might pass for interesting.
There was a marginal improvement on Thursday, because Mandira Bedi was trusted to run the show on her own and the second when that decision was made can be officially designated a Moment Of Success. Like a flower that has finally struggled into full sunlight, her personality spread out and she was able to do her thing. She takes the radical view that Twenty20 cricket is supposed to be showbiz. So does Danny Morrison, which is presumably why his every utterance is delivered in the style of a 1970s American chat show host going to a commercial break.
And speaking of commercials, I hope, like me, you’ve been playing Advertising Bingo. If you have, then you’ll have been delighted with the efforts of Russel Arnold on Thursday. In the space of a few overs, the eager Sri Lankan announced the IPL’s first Nearly DLF Maximum, when the ball fell just short of the rope; declared that a dropped catch by Dravid would have been a Karbonn Kamal catch; seized upon a Citi Moment of Success when Rajasthan finally managed to hit a six and then suggested that now might be a good moment to take a Max Mobile Time Out. A full set! Nice work, Russel, you’ve certainly stepped up to the corporate plate.
Full postRajasthan are yesterday’s bagel
Warne and Co are so over
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
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The IPL is like a bakery. How’s that, I hear you ask. How can a multinational cricket tournament be compared to a bread-making facility? Surely that is a simile too far.
Not so. Has reading this column over the last few weeks taught you nothing? No metaphor is too ridiculous, no literary device too outlandish to convey the wonders of the great game. So, here we go. The IPL is like a bakery.
What is the word you associate with bakeries? Apart from flour. And yeast. And eggs. No, I’m not talking about rolling pins, pastry cutters or ovens. I’m thinking of an abstract noun. The word is “fresh”. (Yes, it also works for greengrocers, but I don’t like vegetables, I like cakes, and besides, it’s my simile, not yours.) A bakery thrives on freshness. No one is interested in yesterday’s bread.
Full postDr Owais and Mr Shah
The Middlesex batsman's split-personality, VVS Laxman's no-change personality and Mike Haysman's dew-obsessed one were all to be seen on the opening day of the IPL
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
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I left him to it, because, much as I love a good old English moan today was not the day for negative vibes of any kind. Our clocks have now been reset to IPL Time and as we all know, Emperor Modi permits no frowns in his kingdom. The IPL hype, emitted by hundreds of media outlets, has been building into a kind of barely suppressed scream of anticipation, only audible to bats and accountants, that today reached a crescendo amid fireworks, sequins and the distant sound of Lionel Ritchie.
Now as you may remember, last time round we Britishers were forced to sit through Mr Modi’s circus in the company of Ronnie Irani. That was bad enough. But for a while this year it looked like we would have to spend seven weeks hunched over our computer screens peering at Youtube. Then at the last minute, ITV4 secured the rights and we all breathed a sigh of relief. At last, a proper television channel who could do justice to the biggest cricket tournament on the planet.
Hmmmm. ITV4’s IPL effort is fronted by one of those multi-purpose presenters who appears to have been parachuted into the studio with a copy of “The Dummies Guide To Cricket”. He has Mandira Bedi to help him but she was trying a little too hard. For instance, at one point, with the Knight Riders in trouble, she suggested that Shah Rukh Khan’s decision to change the team colours to purple and gold wasn’t working. I’ll admit that purple doesn’t really bring out the colour of Ganguly’s eyes, but it’s surely too early to write off the new uniforms just yet.
Full postCrumbly tracks, lippy trundlers
Welcome to West Indies v Zimbabwe, where the pitches are lifeless, the batsmen clueless and the crowd cacophonic
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
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It is easy to criticise the West Indies Cricket Board and it’s fun too. But say what you like about Julian Hunte and chums, you can’t fault their hospitality. For the visit of the Zimbabweans, Caribbean groundsmen have produced some of the flattest, most lifeless strips of earth seen outside of the Sahara, just to make the plucky tourists feel at home. From Kingston to Guyana, it appears that every yard of soil in the West Indies is crumblier than a Madeira cake, and as an additional bonus for touring sides, none of the local players have a clue how to bat on it.
The result is that an apparently ho-hum affair has been turned into an edge-of-the-seat thriller. I certainly wasn’t expecting to be watching this series still, but as the shadows lengthened in Guyana on Sunday, I was gripped. The batsmen crawled painfully to their target, as though spin bowling was some dastardly new invention. Kieron Pollard in particular was an accident waiting to happen. Launching a ball to long-on, the hapless Mumbai Indian had to trudge back to the pavilion under the dead-eyed glare of his captain. The laconic Jeffrey Dujon suggested that Pull Hard might consider getting changed behind the pavilion.
In between the silly shots, the crowd were amusing themselves. Given the blazing heat, some kind of award has to go to the man in the Santa suit, complete with full-length white beard, who marched up and down the stand, playing a musical instrument that looked like it had been knocked up in a shed. Horns were everywhere. At times it sounded like a troupe of performing sea lions had been let loose in a drum shop. All manner of unearthly honks, hoots and bellows were unleashed, particularly when Gayle gave the ball a few healthy taps.
Full postGimme the Windies of old
There's been enough talk of the decline of the game in the Caribbean
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
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Chris Gayle walks slow but he talks fast. In fact, he gabbles like a man for whom vocalisation is a chore that gets in the way of his sitting down time. In the time it would take Ricky Ponting to drawl his opening, “Ah look,” Big Chris has already answered the question, outlined the extent of his disappointment, explained what the team are going to do to put things right, ordered his taxi back to the hotel and booked his flight to Jamaica.
So an interview with Mr Gayle is an occasion for intense concentration and possibly some lip-reading. Take this from his post match interview with Ian Bishop on Thursday.
“…intheendtherewegotofftoagoodstartahbutagainyouknowfalteredinthemiddleandyouknow crucialrunoutagainandthenyouknowsomeyouknowIdon’tknowhowtodescribethewordbutahmyou knowsometerribledisplaysofbattingdownattheendthere.”
West Indies' house of quicksand
Just how bad was the Twenty20 between Zimbabwe and West Indies
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
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Just how bad was the Twenty20 game between West Indies and Zimbabwe? There is as yet no internationally agreed scale by which we can measure cricket awfulness, so instead we must rely on the judgement of the experts. Alec Stewart played for England in the 1990s and so clearly knows a thing or two about staggering ineptitude. He declared Sunday’s game the worst international cricket he has ever seen. I think that says it all.
Both sides were equally dreadful, but in slightly different ways. Zimbabwe spent their first dozen overs swinging and missing, like blindfolded lumberjacks trying to locate something woody. They worked their way through The Book of Thwackery, exhibiting every variation of scything, lunging and groping that you could wish to see on a cricket field. Mr Stewart said it belonged on the village green. It wasn’t that good.
At 40 for 4 after 12 overs, it was all over and the Zimbabwean in the box, Neil Johnson, was expressing disappointment that at this rate, we would not get to see Keiron Pollard bat. But his companion, the legendary Tony Cozier, had been here before, on two or three dozen occasions.
Full postInterview the fan, why don't you?
Players will only put you to sleep with their repetitive inanities
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
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What’s that Lalit? No, I’m not talking about Test cricket, you naughty boy. I’m not even talking about the terminally drowsy County Championship that bumbles along from April to September without ever causing a single drop of adrenalin to enter the bloodstream. The fact is that no game of cricket has ever been dull, to the true fan and if you think it is, then you aren’t paying close enough attention.
There are, however, great reservoirs of tedium out there, held back by the mighty dams of editorial discernment. And in recent years, as cricketers have become superstars and the appetite for coverage of cricket has increased, the façade has begun to crack. Every day a new hole appears and on comes the tedious, the platitudinous and the downright boring, filling our lives with pointlessness
I am referring, of course, to the player interview. Players, for the most part, do not have anything interesting to say. They do not lead particularly interesting lives. They train, they travel, they play, they travel, they train. Indeed, they are contractually obliged not to do anything interesting because interesting can be misconstrued as scandalous or controversial. Instead, they say nothing and they say it at some length.
Full postA night at Afridi World
A beautiful place where time before the Big Boom was spent by Pakistan acting like silly billies
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
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Saturday’s Twenty20 game was an intriguing desert clash between England and a Shahid Afridi XI at a venue that could have been renamed Afridi World for the night. Among the Aztec hats, carnival masks, fluffy toys and inflatable camels there was an abundance of banners and placards, and a brief survey revealed that 99% of them referenced Mr Boom. His appearances on the big screen (approximately once every 30 seconds) sparked waves of jubilation, and the entire occasion seemed to be building to one point: the moment when the man himself arrived at the crease. Time divided neatly into two periods: BA (Before Afridi) and AA (After Afridi).
One of the few banners not proclaiming Shahid-love exhorted the Pakistan players to “captain like Imran, bowl like Wasim and Waqar and bat like Aamer, Saeed and Ramiz”. But until Abdul Razzaq entered the arena, their batting had been more Mr Bean than Mr Raja.
British politician Dennis Healey had a habit of referring to people who behaved foolishly as “silly billies”. This phrase popped back into my head as I watched Imran Nazir set about the task of laying a solid platform for Pakistan’s run chase. The first ball was hit stylishly down the ground for four. The second was blocked. The third was dispatched swiftly to the palms of third man with a mighty forehand smash.
Full postVive le rankings
For ages they only measured how far ahead Australia were, but now ordinary punters care about them
Andrew Hughes
25-Feb-2013
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India are still top dogs. Yes they were at home, but home means expectations, nay demands, of victory, and the press after Nagpur left none in doubt about the retribution that would be dished out should Dhoni and Co fail to seal the deal in Kolkata. Three fluffed catches on the last day suggested sweaty palms and jittery fingers. But Test cricket demands patience, even when the margins are shrinking. Ten balls to go and things looked ominous. A few seconds later, they were cavorting in the outfield.
The Kolkata Test was a vindication, not just for MS Dhoni, but for the oft-derided ICC ranking system. It was once considered an ingenious but entirely superfluous statistical contrivance for measuring how much better Australia were than the rest. Sometimes it was 20 points. Sometimes it was 18. Jolly interesting and all that, but what’s the point? When your car is covered in cold white stuff, you don’t need to consult a meteorologist to find out it’s snowing.
Well ranking-sceptics should now recant. That list of numbers is not only a barometer of who’s good and who’s not, it has become a competition in itself. Thanks to the ICC spreadsheets, this match meant something; it wasn’t just one more stop on the bus route of reciprocal competition. The pre-match hype had everything except Don King. Newspapers competed for hyperbole. Would Bhajji have screamed like a lunatic and raced off towards the stands as though he had a beehive down his trousers if this had been just another game?
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