JADE DERNBACH

I wrote a slightly scathing piece about Jade for the cricket365 website. Unhelpfully, they prefaced it with RANT, which doesn’t really capture the spirit of absurdism in which it was written. Still.

The also edited out the bridging gag from the opening paragraph to the main, um, ‘argument’. Still.

We also decided that a couple of paragraphs were too close to the bone. I have not omitted them from the below. In fact, I have highlighted them.

* * *

I’m rather hoping that Jade Dernbach, in future years, is going to make me somewhere north of £10,000 on the TV quiz show Pointless, when, in the final round, having selected Sport from the four possible categories, I’m lucky enough to land the question ‘Name anyone who played over 50 games of cricket for England in the 21st Century’. But until that day, Jade shall remain, as ever, pointless.*

You saw that coming didn’t you? Well, funnily enough…

Oh, you’ve seen that one coming as well, haven’t you? Drat. That was my go-to option. My stock ball.

Anyway, Dernbach. Pointless. Pointless and predictable. Yes? Yes. In fact, paradoxically, he has become so predictably liqourice allsorts that any non-lobotomised batsman only need sit in and wait for the tricksy stuff, nurdling the now (oxymoronically) surprise stock ball. See, the slower ball is obviously effective through contrast – if you bowled it every ball it would get what the experts know as twatted – but when the stock ball is so unfailingly wayward, you’re forced to go to the shiny thing (that you’ve invested hours and hours in at nets) more and more, until it eventually becomes dull and frayed. There’s only so many times you can jump out of a wardrobe screaming RAAAAAAAARRRRRGH!! before people start locking their wardrobes, whether you’re in them or not. And there’s a lesson in that. I think.

Anyway, Dernbach. I think Jonathan Liew, writing in The Telegraph last summer, nailed him: “Essentially, Dernbach is the equivalent of those football freestylers who can bounce a ball between their buttocks, but are likely to be rather less useful defending a corner in the dying minutes … He is the sort of cricketer who emerges when you start to confuse the bag of tricks with the game itself.”

They said his economy rate was too high for 50-over cricket – a fair assumption given that it’s the highest in the history of the game – but that he’d be ok for T20, where the odd nerveless dot ball here or there can decide things. Maybe.

But cricket’s not my only, or even main problem with him. No, there’s a good deal of irrationality sluicing around my noggin that doubtless blinds me to these obvious cricket merits (such as the fact that he holds a bat like Joe Pesci digging holes in the Nevada desert). 

And no, I don’t mean the fact that he has the most feminine name in international cricket outside of Samantha de Saram. Not at all. I’m all for loosening up the cultural moorings, going batshit with names. I positively welcome the time when we can field cricketers called Frangipane Delgado, Poo Nectarine, Whelk Robinson, Kendall Lendl, Bongo Slideranger, Stonk van Peebles or Admiral Sir Toxteth Cadmium – just so long as, y’know, they’re making runs and taking wickets. Chipping in. 

It’s not the body art, either – although we do seem to have gone in two generations from ‘I drink therefore I am’ to ‘I ink…’; from assiduously damaging your internal organs with ill-conceived acts of machismo to putting pictures of shit and stuff on our one and only sheath of pristine skin. (While we’re at it, I can think of a few England supporters who’d like to plunge needles into Dernbach.)

No, the tattoodles are all fine and dandy – although, now that you mention it, he may well be the first bowler whose ‘tell’ is the lower-arm colour you see coming over: one hue for the regular ball, another for the slowy. (I’m not entirely sure he’s got a 7 for 1 in him, mind, should some Smith or Dean Jones protest that he’s being distracted and ask the umpire for him to cover his arms up…)

It could be the fact that his eyes appear a touch too close together, although I probably could only get away with drawing links between facial morphology and character if I were Geoffrey Chaucer. “Whom be he off eyes-a-gether somefolk ye shalln’t entrust wiff d’eath bowlinge duties”, it says in The Pie-Thrower’s Tale.

It’s not even the fact that he plays his domestic teed-wenny for the Surrey Stockbrokers, about which I have written to change.org, avaaz, and SumOfUs.org petitioning them to make it a capital crime. No joy yet. Will keep you posted.

No, the problem with Jade – which does rather have the ring of a folktronica album about it, or some pastel-hued indie film set in Nebraska about a boy who takes a shotgun to his tormentors – is one of tone. It’s not the ink, it’s the goddam stink.

He just doesn’t know when to zip it, how to scale his celebrations. This is a man who [checks spelling] Vithushan Ehantharajah observed take a fourth day wicket in a Championship bore draw at Lord’s and run toward the Compton Stand with a finger to his lips in a shush gesture. This is a man who orders a crate of Dom Perignon when he gets a pointless answer on Pointless. 

And you just know he’s going to have Emirati swiper with nowt to lose dragging on with 43 per over required, then give it the full Ernie McCracken, berkishly sending him off (in fact, many feel he should be playing for Berkshire now) and bringing embarrassment upon the nation. 

Tone, lad. Walking back to his mark and making sure his effing hair is in the right place? Hipster bullshit. And that spat with David Willey at the T20 Finals? The bowler’s holding the bowler’s willy. Nonsense.

And then the stoush with Cameron White – giving Jade freedom of the city of Northampton, since when he’s become close friends with pea-in-a-pod David Steele – offering him on after his ego-bouncers had been pummeled hard and flat toward tour figures of 11-0-141-1. Don’t get those fuckers tattooed on yer, our kid. Schadenfreude? First you need some freude to be schaden.

He just doesn’t inspire love or affection, does he? Probably not even in his mother. For example, I bet you’ve never seen two kids playing cricket in the driveway, garage doors for slip cordon, wheelie bin as short leg, arguing over who’s going to be Jade Dernbach. “No, I bagsied Jade. Muuuuuuum!!” Exactly. And you’re not going to, either.

Nor are you going to hear anyone say, “He does a nice line in self-deprecation, does Jade”. However, you might hear someone say: “It’s pronounced Zhaaad”. That would most likely be Jade.

I have come to imagine Jade at coke-sex parties – and I really rather wouldn’t – screaming “Yeah, baby, c’mon; let’s fucking go” as Prince’s ‘Erotic City’ (his T20 walk-on music) plays in the background, wildly slapping random arse and asking whether they’d like to see his slower ball. Edifying, it is not. He has done that to me.

It’s got that bad that I’d rather England fail – admittedly, a safe enough bet – than Dernbach succeed. Mind you, such is his self-regard that he’s almost certainly going to Bangladesh not only with a bag full of decent moisturisers but also thinking Man of the Tournament is a distinct possibility.

If he does – and, let’s face it, he wouldn’t be the first South African-born quasi-Pom to do that (anyone know what happened to that other chap, by the way?) – then I guess it will at least be proper banter and shit, yeah? 

TWO POSTS ABOUT WEST INDIAN QUICKS

West Indies: bit of sh*thole, to be honest

Over the last couple of weeks ESPNcricinfo have published a couple of quite different pieces that I wrote about West Indian pacemen. 

The first was a condensed account of the Tino Best tale that I’ve told a couple of times on this ‘ere blog – Smells Like Tino’s Spirit and Best Behaviour – only with the emphasis shifted from him going Alan Doolally and getting banned to my experience facing someone of extreme pace.

Blistering Best had a good reaction, too.

Late to this, but excellent from @reverse_sweeper on turning up for a game and finding Tino Best in the opposition - http://t.co/jFINzlUwJ4
— The Old Batsman (@theoldbatsman) March 10, 2014

And this:

This may be the Best article about facing fast bowling I've ever read. http://t.co/O4NH7ZFzda
— Dilip D'Souza (@DeathEndsFun) March 8, 2014

The other piece was a comic sally – involving a bit of research, too! – as I came up with XI English Cricket Clubs who are also obscure West Indian pacemen, inspired by a Facebook comment by someone who plays for one of the clubs. I received a nice comment on Twitter from someone from Leicestershire way who thought the area had a useful quartet:

@IvanhoeCC @reverse_sweeper My favourites are Earl Shilton, Kirby Muxloe, Newton Linford, Ashby Hastings, an intimidating quartet of quicks
— Chris Glover (@chrisglover84) March 14, 2014

And that's that.

KP, AGENT PROVOCATEUR

A comic piece (no, really) for ESPNcricinfo's Page 2 suggesting KP should, you know, break up the Indian nation-state:

How KP can liberate cricket

BOB WILLIS TO MANAGE THE 2017-18 ASHES TOUR

Bob Willis, aka 'Goose', is not a jovial fellow. You may have noticed. He may still be your cup of tea, mind.

Anyway, with this basic premise – of dubious comedic value – I speculated as to how a Willis-run Aussie tour would pan out. Das Boot Camp.

Read More...

HOW TO SORT OUT THE FLOWER / KP TIFF

A debut piece for the excellent Sabotage Times website in which I set out three not entirely serious suggestions for how they might sort out their widely reported though fervently denied tiff, as well as breaking the extraordinary story as to who will become England's Test player #666...

Read more here...

MURRAY DARLING AND FRANK WISDOM

A piece for Cricket 365. 

Two hardcore fans, one Aussie, one Yorkie, discuss the Ashes.


"Oh my, what a debacle it has been! They might has well have been playing in chinos, so relentlessly village has it been. However, as the sage Mr Kipling counseled: 'Would you like a slice of Bakewell tart to take the pain away?' He also said (and I paraphrase), there’s no good reaching for the happy juice just cos you’ve won a game of cricket."

ASHES 2013-14 PREVIEW

If there’s one thing England have lead the world at, it’s leading the world. But those days are now long gone, of course, not that you would necessarily notice it by observing the behaviour of the English cricketing press corps – men who’ve had more than enough time to get used to mediocrity, you’d think.

                              

They haven’t always managed to accept their team’s ordinariness with those apparently native traits of stoicism and dignity – mere lip-service to the stiff upper lip, you might say – yet now they find themselves in the previously unimaginable position of being better than the Aussies. Probably. On paper. On the paper that their one-eyed words are printed on…

Aside from the ever-so-slight blip that was the 5-0 defeat in 2006-07, England haven’t lost an Ashes series since 2003. Thus, the tabloid tip-tappers – no doubt motivated at a primordial level by the desire to keep their jobs (thus to help their paper shift units, thus to roil up their readers and tip-tap into their nationalistic streak) and still slightly incredulous that the Aussie empire has expired with the passing of Warne, McGrath, Gilchrist et al – have started to take a certain salacious glee in seeing the old enemy struggle.

Even the broadsheets have found themselves engaged in what’s little more than trash-talk, only with superior adjectives. If we keep on abusing Steven Peter Devereux Smith – either for his middle name or the odd sweep of his hands through the hitting area – they seem to think, then the spell cannot be broken. Forget Surfer’s Paradise, Britannia rules the waves.

Personally, I prefer subdued post-colonial defeatism. It feels more English. And that is precisely why a large part of me would like the Aussies to win – to puncture the triumphalism that seems to have taken root since we’ve been slightly better than them. I don’t want desire masquerading as opinion. I want to read the climbdowns, the apologias, the mea culpas, the u-turns, the revisionist told-you-so’s. 

(It should here be noted that, within the team, the ECB have tried to offset their country’s deep, atavistic impulse for insufferable crowing by selecting people who aren’t actually English – a strategy not without merit, albeit one that does chafe somewhat at the basic premise of international cricket.)

In fact, I’d 100% want Australia to win were it not for one thing: the whole hypocritical hoo-ha over walking. I mean, the Aussies – fulminating over not walking! Strewth. It wasn’t so long ago UNESCO had to send a delegation to Canberra, since the nation’s parents were actively teaching their young not to walk. Not the best start in life, that.

Anyway, the predictable lightning rod for Aussie froth is lanky, blond hot-and-cold merchant, Stuart Broad. He is, it seems, one of those players that divide opinion: you either hate him, or you absolutely loathe him – hate him so much you want to “rip off his skin and wear it to his mother’s birthday party singing Bohemian f**kin’ Rhapsody”, to quote Malcolm Tucker. (Talking of Malcolms, that’s another reason it would be difficult to actively desire an Australian victory: Mr Conn, of News Corps-owned The Telegraph, a sort of square community version of gonzo journalist fruitcake, Hunter S Thompson.) 

The backstory: midway through the third innings of an exhilarating Ashes opener at Trent Bridge in July, Michael Clarke had used up his DRS options on frankly desperate attempts to alter the course of a game he was losing and/or keep certain members of his team sweet, Broad-dog practically late-cut the ball to slip. He could scarcely have been more out had he been a 37-year-old bachelor living in San Francisco with a subscription to Men’s Health magazine, a wardrobe full of leather underwear, and a cat named Snicko.

But he played doggo and got away with it. In the process, he sent a nation into contortions of rage (it’s also rumoured that he also sparked a recession) and ‘comedians’ there have duly orchestrated a hate campaign in response. And hate, at bottom, is the sentiment that Broad seems to evoke (that and love, because the two are as entwined as British and Australian history, and there’s a sense of Broad representing something slowly disappearing from the Australian male).

You see, he does a nice line in supercilious arrogance, does Stu – whether it be bullying people alleged to have pushed in to the queue before him at Nottingham’s Rock City’s celebrated Thursday nights, or brassnecking out middling it to slip – and it probably doesn’t help that he resembles some ruddy-cheeked Nazi poster boy, a model of outdoorsy vigour: the face, perhaps, of (Bavarian mountain) walking? But he has broad shoulders, and should be able to absorb the inevitable drossing from the bleachers.

Not that this misplaced activism has anything to do with Broad, or perceived English arrogance as holdover from Empire. It’s entirely about Australia’s painful shift to a new identity, one whose twin motifs are multiculturalism and metrosexuality.

Threatened without by a resurgent England and within by this dual identity crisis settling over the Aussie male – Peter Siddle, ‘Enforcer’, champion woodcutter, Southern Cross tattooed on his back, now eschews grilled meat – the Australian press and Cricket Australia PR machine have tried to tap into its own reserves of masculinity, to an era when men grew moustaches and responded to the sweat-inducing properties of their polyester shirts by drinking a gallon of piss every night that they knew would struggle to pass through said garments.

Thus, Mitchell Johnson – he of pierced tongue, which, beyond masochism and cosmetics, has only one known practical function – has been prompted to say he’s going to try and hurt various players (Trott, to name names), and get the ball at their throat. “If I can’t get them out, then [injury’s] the next option”. He promptly swept mousse through his hair and discussed his new primrose tattoo design. 

Scratch the surface, however, and there is still some old school Aussie male there: George Bailey, a Yorkie in a batting line-up of flakes; world squinting champion, Chris Rogers; Nathan Lyon, a man with the bobbing eyes and spaced-out, no-pain-threshold grin of a petrol-sniffing ocker; and Ryan Harris, a man who looks like he sleeps on the back of a ute and would probably get married in a navy blue singlet. To a hog. 

Oh, and let’s not forget that ‘Harro’ totally shoved it up Broady’s snot-box at Chester-le-Street – one of Mitch’s throat balls, only with the accuracy – and there were, truth be told, one or two Poms who enjoyed it.

So, in conclusion: I don’t care who wins. Identity crisis? Maybe. 

This was originally published by Cricket365. 

VILLAGE CRICKET: PREPARING TO BOWL

The third in an occasional series for cricinfo, following pieces on setting the field and preparing to bat (both linked in the opening sentence of the article). 

Have a read... 

NOTTINGHAMSHIRE CCC END-OF-SEASON REVIEW, 2013

So, the dust has settled on the cricket season. Subsequently, said dust has been swept away by an army of diligent, dawn light-welcoming Polish polishers (who, frankly, could teach this LeftLion lot a thing or two about hard work), only for a whole new layer of dust to form in the interim, leaving everyone so deep in this metaphor that they don’t know whether they need a new broom to brush away the proverbial cobwebs, some Sneeze-E-Zee™ nasal spray to soothe the effects of an as yet not properly diagnosed dust allergy (which could also be a twisted septum, rhinitis, or miscellaneous wear and tear), or to begin a new life as far away from these words as possible.

Berate ye not our tardiness, as I think the good book probably says somewhere. There’s good reason. In the face of a breakneck modern media world of instant verdicts, banal, disposable quotemongering, and general blah (the three pillars of churnalism), Left Line and Length likes to ruminate, cogitate, formulate, delegate, procrastinate. In your face, Modern World.

Anyway, regardless of what’s happened to the dust, the cricket season is over. The best of the sunlight has effed itself off to the southern hemisphere, no doubt hoping to catch a bit of winter sun, while the Notts squad have doffed their cap to Old Skool refueling habits and had their annual fancy-dress tram-crawl piss-up. They now have seven months to do what’s known in the game as sort their shit out. Nothing less than a treble is acceptable. In fact, the quadruple. The Championship should be wrapped up by late August, allowing Notts to field a reserve team for the last three games while the stars head off to India to win the Champions League.

The last time your columnist deigned to keep you informed as to what was going on at Trent Bridge – and he is painfully aware that this is your primary news source for cricket and thus that you may well not be aware that they had quite a decent day out in that London in late September – they had just been knocked out of the T20 competition. Again. After Somerset in 2011 and Hampshire in 2012, in 2013 it was Essex, with their traveling pissheads, precisely curated barnets, and vajazzled uvver arves back in Chingford, home quarter-final defeats indeed proving like buses: shit and full of hooligans.

The season thereafter can be summarized as follows. First, there’s a massive yawn as Notts’ mid-season, mid-table mediocrity in the Champo leaves them with nothing to play for. Then, there’s a titter as Derbyshire, back in the top-flight for the first time in a decade and yet winless after 10 of 16 games, suddenly put together a run of three wins in four. The titter becomes a trip to the shitter (not so much a gesture as a physical reflex) when it looks as though the team from NG might be Sucked Into A Relegation Dogfight. Notts come through it, though, but it goes to the last game, a travesty given the talent in the squad and something they ought to be a little embarrassed about.  

To give it some context, Notts won a measly two Championship games all season (the least in the top division), both wrapped up by May 18, leaving over four months, twelve games, without a four-day win. Left Line and Length cannot be totally certain as to why, but he’s going to simplify the explanation to a single word. Bowling. With Andre Adams under an injury cloud for most of the season and Ajmal Shahzad a pale imitation of the bowler he was as recently as 2011, Harry Gurney and Luke Fletcher toiled honestly but without enough zing to knock over Div One lineups. If the bowling lacks life, the TB wicket does also. And if the square is too dry as a result of drainage, they don’t have a frontline spinner to exploit it [yes, Indignant of Kimberley, I did see those two jaffas Samit bowled at Lord’s].

How times have changed. Five years ago, Notts had an attack of Sidebottom, Pattinson, Adams and pre-England Graeme Swann, and were often mocked for their supposed batting frailties. Today, the attack is like a man trying to eat a curly-wurly with no teeth. The bowling needs some je ne sais quoi. What that is, I don’t know exactly. Smart money is on Mick Newell dipping into the market for a non-IPL-playing pace bowler – one who’s also unlikely to be commandeered for any of the other T20s mushrooming hither and thither and coinciding with the English ‘summer’. New Zealander Trent Boult would be useful. Or Jackson Bird. Young, hungry and, offering zero with the bat, no T20 reputation as yet. 

What guard you take? 

Anyway, despite the huff and puff of the Championship and the T20 loss to Essex – Essex! – it wasn’t all doom and gloom at Trent Bridge. No, Notts actually made it to a Lord’s final, having gone 24 years without a Big Day Out at HQ, the longest wait in all of county cricket.

Here’s the story of the final. Relive the highs and lows! Revisit the twists and the turns!! Get your limited edition souvenir set of multi-coloured fineliner pens!!! 

Notts: x1·1··· | ·····1 | [1]1···1 | 12···1 | ·1·1·· | ·[4]·14· | ·[4]·2·4 | ·446·1 | 1·1111 | ·w11·· | 112w·· | 2··1x·· | ···1·1 | ··1211 | ··13·· | ·1··2· | x·11··· | w····· | ·424·w | 3··1·4 | 11···2 | 1131·· | ·····4 | 1····1 | ··1·1· | ·13·11 | ·61111 | 21113· | ·1·11· | ··1··1 | 441[4x]221 | ··14·· | ···142 | 1411·1 | 6w··24 | ·wx1414 | ·1[2]11x2 | 124144 | [1]411·w | ·2·41w

Glamorgan: ·11·11 | w··2·· | ···1·· | 4····1 | ·411·1 | 1111·1 | ··4·14 | 11··41 | ·11w·1 | 2·1·1· | ·21111 | 14··11 | 11121· | 114·1· | 1·111· | 2··4·1 | 12·121 | 1·1·11 | 4122·· | 21·1w· | 1··1·1 | 13·w·· | 1·11·· | w··1·· | 11·121 | 1····· | [2]111·· | 1·4·1· | ·1·311 | 1····· | wx2w1·4 | ·11··1 | w2w··w

As you can clearly see, it wasn’t exactly a thriller. 244 plays 157. It was exactly the sort of game you’d expect when a team of current or sometime internationals (with the exceptions of Steve Mullaney and Harry Gurney) square off against players from a county – actually, three counties, Mid Glamorgan, South Glamorgan and West Glamorgan, which is something of an advantage until you consider that Notts have effectively annexed Leicestershire, an Anschluss not quite on a par with Hitler’s incorporation of Austria in the Third Reich, but still… Anyway, much as Yorkshire once forbade themselves from picking anyone not born within the county borders (something the aforementioned Fuhrer might have solved by seeking to expand those county borders), Glamorgan have until recently constitutionally restricted themselves to having at least 70% of their squad bear the following seven names: Evans, Jones, Griffiths, Davies, Morgan, Llewellyn, and Rees (and occasionally combinations thereof). Like a heroin addict with manky veins everywhere, they’re shooting themselves in the foot.

Still, Notts had their own selection quandary. People whose raison d’être appears to be getting their knickers in a twist duly got a touch frothy about Stuart Broad and Graeme Swann, um, swanning in for the final having had no part in the thirteen-game path to Lord’s save a couple of tweets. Once the storm had passed and the teacup had stopped rattling, the no-brainer was pursued. Selection became slightly easier when Jake Ball, Man of the Match in the semi-final win over Somerset, was ruled out with injury. This left only Riki Wessels of the regulars to miss out.

Captain Read, after a wretched summer with the bat (though not quite as bad as Alex Hales, who averaged 13 in four-day cricket), played the major hand and Samit Patel spun the first two balls of his career to dismiss key batsmen in Allenby and Goodwin to pick up man of the match. Ale was drunk. Songs were no doubt sung. Steve Archibald, the ex-Spurs and Barça striker who once said “team spirit is an illusion glimpsed in the aftermath of victory”, probably tickled his bawbag somewhere. As if to prove him wrong, the Notts players went out on an extended bender several days after the aftermath could reasonably be said to be over (do the math), thus proving Mick Newell right, as you can see from this leaked document:

END OF TERM REPORT

Hales – post-match hug at Lord’s was -8˚C but before he goes to the Hype-Pee-Ell, or whatever it’s called, he needs to take a long hard look in the mirror. No, scratch that…

Cowan – we gave him two months practice here and he repaid us with a golden blob that’ll probably end his Test career. Top man!

Wessels – Oh Riki, you’re so fine, you’re so fine you blow my mind (but not enough to make the XI for Lord’s), hey Riki, hey Riki.

Lumb – If I was gay…

Taylor – They say he’s hit the glass ceiling. Must be a bloody low one. Medieval Japan, or somewhere

Patel – High-maintenance. Doesn’t do enough self-maintenance.

Hussey – Great servant. Need to find someone to sweet-talk the square-leg umps next year.

Mullaney – The Ute (of today could learn a thing or two).

Read – Like a frayed sofa, part of the furniture. Don’t ever leave me!

Franks – Bowling becoming dot burglary but he’s a stick of Outlaws rock. Cut him open and he bleeds to death.

Fletcher – Too much time on Fletcher Gate, not enough in the gym. Needs to wash his kit on a lower temperature, too. And tuck it in.

Adams – Remember to take him out of cryogenic suspension in March.

Shehzad – Remember to devote two days in Bradford looking for his mojo. 

Gurney – Runs up like a frog on rollerskates, but does the job. Batting ropey. “Bowl him a piano, see if he can play that”. He can.

Broad – No, never heard of him…

Swann – Who?

Phillips – Why?

White – Think he’s the ginger lad.

Carter – No, this one’s the ginger lad. That reminds me, must get Noony to be clear he’s giving me DVD tips next time he texts “Get Carter”.  

See yous in April. Up the Stags.

Originally published at LeftLion. 

SECRET FILMS OF CRICKET #2: 'THE MATRIX'

After the editor of All Out Cricket magazine chanced across my piece 'What can The Big Lebowski teach us about cricket?', he asked whether I could provide a series on that theme – essentially, delving into well known movies and finding tenuous cricket connections. Of course, being poor and faintly desperate, I answered in the affirmative. Cue not a very cost-effective trawl through several cult movies listening out for mentions of "backward point" or "leg glance" or somesuch. Anyway, I managed to shoehorn The Matrix into this preposterous schema and have since submitted (a better) one on This Is England. 

Have a read. 

CRYSTAL BALL-TAMPERING

Very occasionally you come up with a title so perfect that the hypothetical piece to which it gives form (title often comes first with these things) demands to be written. Such was the case with Crystal Ball-Tampering. I even asked a friend, Jake Goretzki, to draw a cartoon capturing the subject – call it branding, if you like.

Even so, ESPNcricinfo, in their wisdom (or because of the anti-creative demands of SEO, of course), decided to give the piece – 2200 words or so, now divided into three – a new title; or rather, three new titles. They also dispensed with some of the more risqué material, although I wasn't surprised with that. The idea of cricketamine might not go down too well in Bengaluru...

Anyway, if you want to read some absurdist predictions about the future of cricket, then here they be. The originals can be found here: Part One | Part Two | Part Three 

* * *

Predicting the future is difficult. Very difficult. Notoriously difficult, even with tea leaves, astrology charts, animal entrails and algorithms. In cricket, the clairvoyants use many forms of futurology: divination by wagon wheel, by pitchmap, by Manhattan. And it’s still nigh-on impossible (which is why assorted “game outcome operatives” try and make things more predictable by bribing and/or blackmailing participants). But not totally so; not with the right tech-neeek. So, if you want to place a few heavy, cast-iron bets on the cricket, or simply cannot be bothered waiting for events to unfold, then here’s where the sport is heading…

---

The year-on-year growth of the IPL, the massive heft of both India and the BCCICC (Board of Control for Cricket in the Indian-Controlled Countries, formed from the merger of the BCCI and ICC) behind this format, and the search for even more TV-friendly forms, sees the continued proliferation and then miniaturisation of T20 cricket.  

1-on-1 cricket is developed to fill the early evening light entertainment slot. It consists of a single super-over per side (re-named “over”, then re-re-named “super-duper-over”) with ad breaks between each ball and, for consenting bowlers, ad breaks within the delivery stride. R Ashwin and R Croft make a commercial killing. Tied games are decided with a super ball.

This format leads to cricket finally taking off in the USA, albeit with 31 states promptly introducing the death penalty for front foot no-balling (finally proving that capital punishment can work as a deterrent, albeit one that dissuades people from actually taking up cricket…).

With all the new leagues about, top players are forced to learn how to parachute so that they can be dropped into a stadium from light aircraft to wham-bam-thank-you-mam their highly remunerated contribution, before later being picked up to go to the next city, the next game, the next paycheque.

*

It’s not all cash cows and gravy trains, however. The spot-fixing blight grows to epidemic proportions with the appearance of meta-fixing: betting on betting. Meanwhile, to prevent corruption by the officials, there’s the introduction of a “referee referee” to referee the man who referees the TV umpire.

*

England react to this twenty-first century miniaturisation (“trivialisation”) of the game with a bit of old-fashioned nineteenth-century macro, reintroducing timeless Tests. And with unemployment hitting 47% in England by 2020 (a year the English try, unsuccessfully, to have renamed), there’s no problem filling the grounds to ensure the spectacle looks good for the TV viewer (although the ECB’s broadcasting rights deals plummet to £25.99 per Test match).

At domestic level they launch something called the English Defence League (there is some teething trouble with the branding), essentially a blockathon in which batsmen are rewarded for how closely they can kill the ball to them in a playing area of concentric, graded circles. Games go on in perpetuity. Dulux and ICI enter a bidding war for sponsorship rights. 

*

While Indian cricket gets sexy and cosmopolitan, and England hunkers down ever more into some Avalon of lost nationhood, T20 expansion leads to several new Test countries:

• Holland (full members of the BCCICC in 2016): unfortunately, rising sea-levels mean problems for their new stadium, and they will have to relocate to the East of the country and a stadium built on stilts.
• UAE (2018): the Emiratis play in a giant transparent perspex ball suspended between two high-powered jets.
• USA (2021): takes to the game with alacrity [see above] albeit with a few modifications: local rules permit 100 per cent flex at delivery; there are no stumps; they ask batters to run round a diamond rather than between sticks, etc.
• North Korea (2022): with the Korean League’s batsmen having exclusively played with bats that other nations use for practising skied catches, thereby demonstrating (on a giant screen in Pyongyang each Sunday morning) their superior strength, the players come rather unstuck when they enter the international arena, not only because of standardised equipment but also because Kim Jong-Un only gets one life per innings.  
• Russia (2025): with local rules insisting the batsman has to spin a barrel and, to the first ball they face, play whatever shot is on the slip of paper in there (“reverse sweep Dale Steyn”), the fatalistic Russians fail to adapt to the more sedate rhythms of five-day cricket.
• Nigeria (2026) develops the game after its endlessly resourceful gangster class become enticed by match-fixing possibilities. The simple of act of scoring becomes a bit fraught, leading the BCCICC to implement neutral scorers.

 *

Despite the world game undergoing its Great Schism – India and T20 on the one side, England and the reversion to timeless Tests on the other – there is, on both sides of the divide, a common thread: TV rules everything, which means a profusion of new gimmicks (because TV men assume that the game itself isn’t interesting enough). Thus:

(1) In the drive for ‘interactivity’ and to make the game user-friendly, swathes of kidult gamers who last saw daylight in 2003 are now “allowed” (i.e. hoodwinked) to vote on bowling changes and moving the fielders. $2 per SMS. Bargain.

(2) Entertainment despot-entrepreneur Simeon Scowl of X-Factory fame launches a new talent show in India, Zero to Hero Honda Superstar, in which he takes one budding cricketer all the way to the national 1-on-1 team. The lucky winner will get to field in an unimportant part of the field and sit quietly at the back of the dressing room, perhaps making the tea when asked. Scowl told the assembled reporters at the media launch that he knows exactly what he’s looking for: “a certain je ne sais quoi”.

(3) Ever at the marketing cutting-edge, Australia’s Big Bash (Season 6) sees umpires replaced with glamour models wearing specially designed bikinis kitted out with devices to hold jumpers, caps, shades and other garb. The “yumpires” have a whole new repertoire of titillating, telegenic signals: out – they suck lasciviously on their finger; overturning a reviewed decision – they stroke their breast; leg byes – whew, you don’t even want to know! Billy Bowden goes berserk. As do feminists. Shane Warne has to be stretchered from the field when a yumpire asks him the positively pornographic question, “Are you coming round or over?”

(4) The belated American T20 league admits celebrity cricketers:

• Usain Bolt becomes the fastest man to one professional run;
• Daniel Day-Lewis, told by his skipper he’s going to play as a pace bowler (on account of his height), gets into character by spending a season with Ham CC where he insists he’s given the “new conker” and, when challenged about it, is hounded for being “temperamental”;
• Michelle Pfeiffer is Day-Lewis’ new ball partner, prompting rumours of a Caddick and Gough-style rivalry;
• David Blain is picked as a specialist floating slip, although he does not allow anyone else near the cordon while he’s there;
• This means that Niles and Frasier Crane – Freudian Slips who always keep their eye on the ball – have to play on another franchise;
• Sixteen-time World Darts Champion Phil “the Power” Taylor is drafted on account of being the best finisher in the business;
• Coldplay are desperate to play but rules are rules and three behind square are still not allowed;
• Heidi Klum, Claudia Schiffer, Kate Moss, Elle McPherson, Adriana Lima and Linda Evangelista are drafted in to field at fine leg and/or long leg.  

(5) There are also advancements in technology as drop-in stadiums are introduced. An egalitarian, meritocratic tendency in Australia then leads to the creation of boundaries that retract and contract according to the “punching power” of the batsman – a sort of handicap system based on how far they hit it. At the most architecturally advanced grounds, the stands also ebb in synch with the boundary. When Keiron Pollard and Chris Gayle bat, the crowd are so far from the square they need binoculars. It’s expensive, but it’s fair.

*

Hand in hand with TV gimmickry comes the even more rampant commercialisation of all forms of the game.

By 2018, all players are contractually obliged to say a particular sponsor’s name depending as to which guard they take: “Mitsubishi middle-and-leg, please”; e.on one leg; Toyota two; Sony centre, etc. 

Players will also have to incorporate the sponsor’s name in their appeals (much as a decision cannot be given without an appeal, so, in the future, an appeal will not be valid unless it incorporates the sponsor’s name): “How-is-BP-that?”

Much as happens at traffic lights at major road intersections, BCCICC will sell franchise opportunities in ball polishing: corporate high-rollers and top-dollar merchants come on as the cherry is being tossed around and give it the sugary sweet once-over…

*

With WADA close to admitting defeat in the face of ever more sophisticated pharmaceutical products and masking agents, an unsanctioned T20 tournament in Netherlands in 2022 trials the legalization of performance enhancing drugs. With participants munching down the anabolic steroids, there’s a quantitative leap in the performance of fast-bowlers as speedsters regularly hit 190kph and Bangladeshi left-arm spinner Hasnain Manbub’s arm ball clocks 140kph.

With several players quaffing testosterone shakes while batting, the amount of aggression rises exponentially and the tournament soon spawns a sinister, ultraviolent, Running Man-style spin-off called Hardball, played for high stakes and in front of a TV audience rabid with bloodlust. The batsmen are not permitted to use any type of protection when facing the 120 mph exocets – although, as they’re on colossal doses of morphine, that doesn’t really matter.

*

With the rise of social media, bowlers in T20, 1-on-1, Tests and Hardball will be tweeting between deliveries: “wide of the crease this ball, nip-backer, hope he tries to leave it and gets”. Or: “New blog: How I follow-up my bouncer with an inswinging yorker #waqared”. Are they bluffing? Meanwhile, on Facebook, Mickey Arthur insists on status updates at end of each over.

*

By 2025, climate change means that fielding in gloves is permitted in England, while fielding naked is allowed in Sri Lanka and the Caribbean.

*

Despite the misgivings of the egg-and-bacon crew that T20 is some sort of apocalypse, it’s undeniable that the format hothouses creativity. Thus the jaded seen-it-all-before merchants of the MCC get a rude shock as new technical innovations appear in IPL24 (their coaching manual still not yet updated to include the googly).

First, those amateur beach ballistics experts of Sri Lanka develop an up-swinger. While cries of “CHEAT!” emanate from the drinking clubs of West London, savvy administrators (from those same clubs) hotfoot it to the Commonwealth Office to expedite these wizards’ UK citizenship applications.

Then comes the first new distinct batting shot since the Dilscoop and the switch-hit appeared in the late noughties: a stroke developed by Eaioaioeun Morgan, cousin of Eion, called “the Hurl”. The batsman gets offside of the ball, as though to play the ramp shot, only he then somehow manages to keep the ball on the surface of the bat as both he and it pirouette through 180 degrees, finally hooking the ball over backward point head, à la pelota, at speeds of around 180 mph. Spectators in the point areas are advised to keep their eyes on the ball and to take out life insurance.

*

While the rest of the world kowtow to the BCCICC and generally feast on the Twenty20 riches, the pauperisation of county cricket continues apace.

The drive to raise urgently needed funds leads to the redevelopment of county grounds in creative ways (following the lead of Canterbury, where they knocked down their indoor school to build a supermarket, and in which they occasionally practiced in the aisles – though not the fruit or dairy). Surrey, Warwickshire and Lancashire rent their outfields out as helipads, interrupting play on several occasions per day and causing an 89% rise in the amount of lost headgear – mainly wigs, some charity shop baseball caps. Somerset cut a gigantic chalk Facebook ‘like’ symbol into the Quantocks in the hope of attracting druids. Hove doubles as a campsite throughout the season. Chester-le-Street installs wind turbines.

Draconian new stop-and-search measures at the county grounds lead to the confiscation of packed lunches, with offenders immediately frogmarched to the spangly new Panini Palace under the grandstand for some pastrami, rocket and caramelised onion chutney creation that elicits only an affrighted stare.

By 2035, the counties’ parochial intransigence has reached absurd levels – in 19 of 21 cases (Staffordshire, Devon and Norfolk having been given first-class status) squads are larger than their memberships, cricket’s popularity having been eclipsed by parkour and base jumping – yet still the chairmen refuse to abandon the Sacred Format. The schedule – in which T20 games are shoehorned between the morning and evening sessions of Championship matches, causing chaos at the ticket booths – doesn’t really help.

Eventually, in 2040, with bankruptcy looming, a regional format is adopted. Lancashire and Yorkshire resist and secede, first from the Panini Palace Regional Championships then from the United Kingdom itself. Suddenly, England has as much trouble producing pace bowlers as India, who duly return to the Test fold.

---

And that was all that the cricketing futurologists were able to tell us. So, what are you waiting for? Get down the bookies. 

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ANAGRAMS

SK WARNE -- anagram of what most Poms think of Australians #ct13 #EngvAus
— Scott Oliver (@reverse_sweeper) June 8, 2013

COUNTIES RE-REBRANDED

Strictly speaking, it’s not plagiarism if you steal from yourself, is it? It can’t be. Whatever, I was happy to have another piece published on what I’m legally obliged to call Cricinfo's irreverent Page 2 section. It was a re-work, a re-jig, a re-hash, a remix of this piece griping about the unimaginatively macho and Yankified names given to T20 franchises – only, where that one dealt with the clubs of my local league, this was about the counties. You know, the Sussex Sharks, Glamorgan Dragons, Gloucestershire Gladiators... Yawn. 

My beef, and that of Frank Wisdom, is that they need to be less struttingly steroidal and more, well, down to earth, more honest. Unfortunately, Cricinfo being a mainstream website I had to tone down some of the ideas. Thus failing to make the cut were: Yorkshire Rippers, Sussex Sex Offenders, Suffolk Sisterfuckers, Wiltshire Wifebeaters – monikers that better reflect twenty-first century life in Dear Old Blighty. 

Anyway, here’s the piece if yous fancy a gander: re-rebranding the counties. 

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FOOD-RELATED CRICKET STORIES (OR VICE VERSA)

I wrote a somewhat frivolous piece about cricket and food some months ago, pitched it to Cricinfo last week, and hey presto they decided to run it -- albeit not in the XIs section for which it was intended. Feel free to have a guess as to the other ten, given that the title they chose for it reveals the first one: Dodgy Prawns and Other Delights 

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