LEFT LINE AND LENGTH: MAY

Trent Bridge prepares to welcome West Indies

The last time this column appeared, Notts had just completed a comprehensive Championship victory over its current holders, Lancashire, at Old Trafford (not the Theatre of Dreams, although it was at the end of the 2010 season as they wrapped up the second County Championship title of Mick Newell’s tenure). After that, Notts temporarily tossed the muddy, grass-streaked white kit in the laundry for some flunky or other to scrub with Vanish, unpacked their coloured clothing and got the CB40 campaign under way with a trip to Edinburgh to play a side that were once considered a bit of a banana skin but who, while still semi-professional, have chalked up enough victories to earn the right to be taken with the utmost seriousness. I mean, as well as dabbing in here as a region, Scotland play as a nation in ICC events on the world stage. Not with a lot of success, but still…

Anyway, Scotland shoved Notts in and restricted the Outlaws to 217 from their allotted overs (there’s a wee clue in the competition name about the amount). Chris Read continued his fine early season form to top score with 59, England hopefuls James Taylor and Samit Patel chipping in with 30s. With rain in the air and cricket’s convoluted algorithm – the Duckworth-Lewis method – likely to be a factor, Scotland strolled to 108 for 0 from their 23 overs to win by 18 runs (and for those of you savvy enough to wonder how you can win by a sum of runs when chasing, well, I refer you to the adjective I used some moments ago. Had Scotland lost a couple of wickets in their final over, then their D/L target would have increased, since it is about ‘resources’ and…oh sod it, you look it up). It was a decent knock of 58 from the underrated Calum Macleod – indeed, as the possibly fictional Francis Begbie had once said in that very city: “f**kin’ obvious that c*** was gonna f*** some c***”. 

Franco 

Back in the Championship, Notts welcomed newly-promoted Middlesex to Trent Bridge with the England boys on show for probably the final time this season, which meant Andrew Strauss and Steven Finn for the visitors and Graeme Swann and Stuart Broad for the Stags. Notts batted first and, after a rain-curtailed first day, notched 423 all out, with Michael Lumb’s 162 the mainstay of the innings, well supported by half-centuries from Alex Hales (79) and Steven Mullaney (60). They then nipped out three cheapish wickets, including Strauss, to leave Middlesex on 51 for 3 and vulnerable. However, a career-best 143 not out from Sean Bean lookalike Ollie Rayner (no relation to Suresh) warded off the prospect of the follow-on and Middlesex declared to give Notts a tricky little session before the close of Day 3, enough to account for Hales, Neil Edwards and Swann as Notts subsided to 22 for 3.

The final day began with a series of phone calls attempting to trace the aforementioned Hales, who, with no immediate prospect of involvement in the game, had failed to turn up for the fourth day until approaching lunchtime, an indiscretion that cost the England hopeful a week’s wages. Now, Left Line and Length is certainly not sitting on a moral high horse here, and well remembers the period in which County Cricket was essentially a six-month bender interrupted by a few late-night, posture-challenging car journeys and an endless programme of cricket matches manufactured to an exciting conclusion in the bar the previous evening – a period in which England were, frankly, rubbish (and the two mighty not be entirely unrelated). 

Hales: "the dog ate my alarm clock, Sir"

Anyway, as it was, Lumb (55) and Mullaney (73) completed fine games as Notts scored 174 for 7 before Read – eschewing any risk despite having two of the world’s top five Test bowlers in the ranks – called a halt, setting the visitors an unlikely victory target of 298 in 51 overs. Strauss and Robson had a 35-over net as the game petered out to a tame draw.

Just as the foul early season weather started to pick up, Notts had 13 days off before resuming an assault on the County Championship they had relinquished last season with a game on the south coast at Hove, one of the circuit’s more picturesque grounds. Sussex batted first and were indebted to Nash’s hundred to enable them to get up past 300 and the third batting point (of 5). In reply, Notts began with an opening stand of 171, Hales putting his misdemeanour behind him with 80. However, Riki Wessels was the star of the show with 199, falling heartbreakingly short of a maiden double-hundred as he edged Magoffin through to the ‘keeper. Notts managed a lead of 119 and then set about skittling Sussex again, which they did for 263, wildcard Andy Carter bundling out three of the top 5 to finish with 4 for 64 from 25 overs. An excellent victory, welcomed by returning Aussie batsman Adam Voges.

With Andre Adams rested, it was gratifying to see the side take 20 wickets again, Samit Patel’s left-arm spin responsible for seven of them. Notts overhauled the victory target of 145 for the loss of just 3 wickets, Patel unbeaten on 50. The victory left them top of the County Championship by a single point over Warwickshire, with one more game (Lancashire at home, beginning Wednesday June 6) before the Twenty20 competition kicks in again, definitely Notts’ Holy Grail and yet more of a likelihood than ever this year, I would wager (if I had any disposable income), as they appear to have the batting power to match any side.  

The Sussex game took place concurrently with the four days of unbroken sunshine under which the Trent Bridge Test match against West Indies basked, with sell-out crowds on Friday and Saturday enjoying some forward-thinking ticketing policies from Notts. Among these was free Day 5 entry for Day 4 tickets and, for the first time, a new flat price of £20 for under-21s, an extra grading introduced specifically to help prevent the sort of economically-imposed drop-off from among the nominal adults of the post-16 age group that can so undermine the overall health of the game. They have also pre-sold 14,000 of the 17,500 tickets for the Twenty20 International on Sunday June 24, a game that certainly carries more chance of a Caribbean victory than the Tests.

With things at the cash register looking healthy, on the field the Outlaws finished off the month [and nudged a few days into the next – Ed.] with a trio of CB40 games, hoping to remedy the defeat in Edinburgh. 

James Taylor eschews the 'posh side'

They started with a televised game against Hampshire at the Rose Bowl in Southampton that featured a breathtaking innings of 115 not out from just 77 balls (including 90 from the final 32 he faced) from new boy James Taylor. Given that this was the day that Kevin Pietersen somewhat contentiously announced his retirement from all international limited-overs cricket, it was certainly an opportune time for the wee England Lions skipper to bust out his full array of iron-wristed legside pick-ups, punches, and Dhoni-esque ‘helicopter’ shots, as his 7 fours and 7 sixes, um, propelled Notts to an almost seven-an-over total of 277. Hampshire flew to 88 for 0 from the first ten overs but three key wickets for Samit Patel (to add to his earlier 66) and a tight spell from Steve Mullaney dragged the game back. Coming down the home straight, however, Hampshire continued to swing hard and hover around the run-rate; with Dimi Mascarenhas at the crease, 40 from the final 3 overs looked possible (especially as he once hit the final five balls of an ODI innings for 6), but he lacked adequate support and Notts got over the line in a tight game.

Three days later, Notts found one of the few corners of the country in which it wasn’t bucketing down, yet went down to a heavy defeat at the hands of a Durham side still to hit peak form. Once again, Notts’ early-innings bowling appeared to let them down as the hosts plundered an opening stand of 183 in just 22.4 overs en route to a vast total of 310, including a brutal hundred from 66 balls by Phil ‘Colonel’ Mustard. Chris Rushworth then showed his new-ball counterparts how it should be done, taking a wicket in each of his first five overs, snaring the considerable scalps of Lumb, Hales, Wessels, Taylor and Patel as Notts subsided to 43 for 5 inside ten. Half-centuries from Voges (74) and Paul Franks (57) softened the net run-rate hit, but make no mistake, this was a todgering. 

Jake Ball, nudged for a cheeky 40 when he was wee

As Sir Alex Ferguson says, it’s all about how you react to defeats that counts, and Notts duly smashed the dressing rooms at Chester-le-Street to pieces in rage bounced back immediately with a comfortable home victory over recent nemesis Somerset, albeit with the visitors missing the likes of Marcus Trescothick, Keiron Pollard and Murali Kartik from their recent almost-glory years. Nevertheless, Notts did a comprehensive job and Mick Newell, fresh from ruling himself out of the coaching job with Bangladesh, will be especially pleased to have seen twenty-one-year-old Jacob Ball, a product of Welbeck CC, take three good wickets, including that of England’s limited-overs keeper-batsman Craig Kieswetter. Somerset’s woefully sub-par 205 was sauntered past thanks to half-centuries from the in-form Lumb and Wessels, a result that leaves Outlaws with two wins and two losses and sat in the middle of Group B after a third of their games. In this competition, the three group winners plus the best-placed runner-up qualify for the semi-finals, so with reigning champions Surrey unbeaten at the top of Group B, the Outlaws can ill afford any further slip-ups.

So, aside from the aforementioned Lancashire game, the rest of June brings with it the, erm, high summer, day-night razzmatazz of a slightly reduced Friends Life t20 competition, with Notts in the North Group and facing Lancashire, Durham, Yorkshire and local rivals Leicestershire and Derbyshire. Tickets can be obtained from the Notts CCC website.

Gwan the Stags!

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Article originally published by LeftLion... 

UP THE SWANNY!

In an age in which professional sportsmen are media trained to within an inch of losing their free will, Notts and England off-spinner Graeme Swann’s twinkle-eyed humour, vivid turn of phrase, steadfast refusal to take anything too seriously, and all-round enthusiasm for everything from tinned beefburgers in gravy to daytime telly make him a media man’s dream interview. He dead bats about as many questions as he does deliveries when out in the middle, where he is invariably found doing what the experts call “swinging from the ring”.  

Anyway, this time last summer I buttonholed the self-styled “worldwide trend leader in hairstyles for men who look fifteen years younger than they actually are” in the Trent Bridge pavilion after a rare outing for his county and asked if he’d mind filling out a daft questionnaire. At that very moment he was heading out with one of the Notts coaching staff to have a practice bowl on the square, but told me to leave it with the county’s media manager Michael Temple and that he’d attend to it. At the time, he wasn’t bowling as well as he can do and an opportunity to get a few overs under his belt going into the Sri Lanka Test series was scuppered by Warwickshire trouncing Notts by nine wickets, so it would have been perfectly reasonable for him to have politely refused, especially given the amount of media requests he no doubt already receives. (Yes, Dear Reader, me sheepishly asking him to fill in a form while mumbling “LeftLion” constitutes a “media request” in this neck of the woods.)  

A few weeks rolled by without any sign of the questionnaire (which I’d printed off and left for him in a SAE with the ever obliging Mr Temple). ‘Oh well, good try’, I thought at some point in June before giving it up as a failure and allowing it to drift off into oblivion.

However, two months later, the day before the Second Test against India here at Trent Bridge, the postman popped a letter through the door with the address spelled out in my (frankly, quite neat) handwriting. It didn’t immediately register what the post was, but then I opened it up and saw Swanny’s questionnaire, diligently written out in his (frankly, not quite as neat) handwriting. What an absolute legend! Especially as I might possibly have tried to impress upon him, urgently, that I was just starting out in journalism – part-time, alongside my main career of highbrow daydreaming – and that this sort of thing would be gold, gold I tells ya. Well, it wasn’t that exactly, which is partly why I’m still sat on it 10 months later…  

Anyway, I’m sure Swanny’s next book will dedicate a chapter to how he agonised for two months over his answers and only once he was 100% satisfied did he submit, but for the time being I’ll just leave you with his answers…

illustration:  Moi

If you could win an Olympic gold (winter or summer) in any discipline, which would you want to win at?

The luge

You win a £10m luxury property in a competition and can choose anywhere in the world to have it – where would you go for?

St Ann’s, Nottingham

You have been sentenced to death (wrongly, of course) – what would be your final tipple?

A gallon of absinthe

What superpower would you most like to have?

Fly

If someone was popping round to your house and you wanted to make an impression, say something about yourself, what specific piece of culture – maybe a movie, a CD/album, a book, a painting, whatever – would you leave casually lying around in order to show off your personality?

Dumb and Dumber

You’re cooking dinner and need to impress – what’s your signature dish, your ‘banker’?

Bacon sandwiches

If you were a top-class darts player, what would be your nickname?

‘The Shoplifter’ – never gets to a checkout

What would be your specialist subject on Mastermind?

The life and times of Kerry Katona

If you could be reincarnated as any animal, what would you choose and why?

Aardvark. I like ants.

Which musical instrument would you love to be able to play to genius level?

I already play guitar to genius level

Excluding cricket, what would be your fantasy sporting experience or achievement (which sport, which event, and what’s the ‘state of play’)?

Division 2 Playoffs

If you could be anyone else in the world for 24 hours, who would you go for?

Jimmy Anderson

If you started a band, what would you call it?

I already have a band – do your research! [Author’s note: I did know this; I just forgot to print off a specially tailored questionnaire with “question not applicable to Graeme Swann, Brett Lee or AB de Villiers” written on it in red pen with an asterisk]

What is your least favourite genre of music?

RnB

What is your favourite UK regional accent?

Geordie

You win a 2-minute Supermarket Sweep-style smash-and-grab, but in any shop in the world – which one would you choose?

Lidl

Which Premier League footballer would you say is the equivalent of you as a cricketer (same style, temperament, skills, or looks, maybe)?

Titus Bramble

What is your karaoke tune, the one that allows you to express yourself the best (or at least not embarrass yourself too much)?

Erasure, ‘A Little Respect’

In the film of your life so far, which actor would play you?

Brad Pitt, obviously.

What’s your ‘TV Heaven’ and ‘Telly Hell’?

Heaven: Family Guy. Hell: Made in Essex

Which 5 ingredients would be in your ‘desert island salad’ (excluding condiments, etc)?

Eggs, bacon, sausage, beans, and chips (can I have brown sauce too?)

Your house is burning down, which 3 non-living objects would you grab on the way out?

My X-box, second X-box, and a teaspoon

Finish the sentence: “If I wasn’t a pro cricketer, I’d probably be a…”

Astronaut

What do you see yourself doing when you retire from the game?

Astronaut

What is the meaning of life?

Going to the moon

This was first published by LeftLion

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DAY 4 AT TRENT BRIDGE

Broad: too cool for school 

So, the final ‘6 Deliveries...’ from Trent Bridge, a day on which I forgot (or perhaps lost) my dictaphone and thus couldn't do the interviews I’d planned, although Ottis Gibson has knocked me back, claiming he won’t be doing any more one-on-ones on tour. Wish I’d have asked the question I was going to ask in his presser, now:

1. WE DON’T NEED NO EDUCATION

For some people, the idea of leaving school at the age of 14 without qualifications doesn’t matter so much. Gangsters, for instance. Or professional sportsmen, particularly those at the top level. So it was that Stuart Broad, having last night used Twitter to try and generate some walk-up ticket sales for Trent Bridge – not an easy sell given that, at that start of play, West Indies were only 3 runs ahead with 3 left in the shed – this morning sent this message to his 294,012 followers (of which, some quick research tells us, 147,876 are impressionable under-16s): “Exams are no excuse. Come to Trent Bridge in the sunshine, watch the cricket, revision in one hand, Pimms/beer in the other #perfect”.

So, not only is he playing down the importance of education, he’s also encouraging under-age drinking. #Scandalous.

By some unfathomable coincidence, Broad’s Nottinghamshire teammate, Graeme Swann, tweeted to his much more robust following of 379,775: “make sure you all come down to Trent Bridge tomorrow. Day 4 promises to be a corker and we love a full house”. Notts’ marketing department will be delighted these two did this entirely off their own bats.  

who needs feet?

2. EASY GAME UP HERE (OR, LOOK IN THE BOOK)

Despite having a fringe that a caricaturist would require a ruler to draw, Marlon Samuels’ contribution was very well rounded: 2 for 14 first dig, the only wicket in the second, 117 and 76 not out. Along the way, however, he received a few snipes for not moving his feet enough when driving (much like my Grandma on her Sunday jaunt to the Peak District), judgements seemingly based on Pathé News footage of Len Hutton’s cover drive.

Let me dispel a myth. There is no such thing as technical perfection; no way you can get everything ‘right’. There is only risk management, concealing your weaknesses. You elaborate a method that has its pros and its cons, a method that may vary in step with the transformation of the conditions (overhead and underfoot), the situation, the attack, your own vibe. Sometimes these technical quirks and adjustments become sedimented into habit, into a technique.

Yes, Samuels often drives with feet together, especially against the quicker bowlers, but he also manages to leave the ball this way, too – an elaborate leave, it has to be said, one that occasionally takes him two pitches down the square to the offside, like a latter day Courtney Walsh. In these conditions, once the lacquer had come off the new ball, it seemed evident that the major danger to the batsman was straight bowling thudded into the wicket on an in-between length (hence the six lbws). Therefore, not lunging forward (there is also the bouncer to think about, remember) on a wicket that was not really seaming seemed a fairly sensible approach to the game, especially in a post-DRS universe in which the Stride Defence is no longer what it used to be.

3. ROACH CLIP

West Indies world-class players can be counted on the fingers of one hand, the hand of a man who lost three fingers in an unfortunate incident with a jig-saw. Beyond the cancrine nudgery of Shivnarine Chanderpaul, consensus in the press box is that two of the new players possess the potential, the raw talent, to join that shortest of lists: Darren Bravo and Kemar Roach. However, both men’s potential might fail to be realized because of the immense burden of continually having to rectify the shortcomings of their teammates. Bravo would certainly benefit from not coming out against the new conker every game, while Roach would serve his team better if others were punching the holes and he was rested and ready to bowl flat-out when the knockout blow needed to be delivered. He also struck the best two cover drives of the game, but that’s another story…

Bresilad

4. ENGLAND’S STRENGTH IN DEPTH (PART 1)

Where England Lions managed to see off West Indies by 10 wickets in the East Midlands (Northampton), the big boys only managed a nine-wicket win. At times, England were stretched, but they look in pretty fine fettle, having answered a couple lingering questions over the team’s make-up. After an indifferent opening day, Bresnan’s ultimately commanding contribution to the game (8 for 141 and 39 not out) probably cemented his spot – even though Strauss was coy about possible rotation – just as had the skipper at Lord’s, leaving only the number 6 position as an uncovered base.

Johnny Bairstow had pushed himself to the front of the queue with early-season runs, but now must convince the hierarchy that his discomfort against Roach’s bouncers was a one-off moment in the headlights, and that the carrot-topped one’s carrot eating doesn’t mean he’s a rabbit, in either a cricketing sense or a tortuous metaphorical headlight-averse sense, headlights of course being Kemar’s bouncers. Phew!

5. ENGLAND’S STRENGTH IN DEPTH (PART 2)

With the aforementioned Lions game having thrown forward yet another cricketer of promise in the form of Joe Root (a chat-up line in parts of Dudley), it has occurred to Spin that, with Australia here for a brief limited-overs exercise in cynical workhorse-flogging series, England could rest their whole side and put out an ‘A’ Team. Better still, make it a triangular tournament, with two Englands and an Australia, pay back for the 1994-5 Benson and Hedges Series Down Under in which the hosts thought their second string were needed to provide more competitive cricket. They were right, of course, but it would be gratifying to think that England and their cubs could do the same. 

Chef supreme 

6. STRAUSS AND COOK

During the fourth innings chase, England’s openers completed 5000 Test runs in tandem, scarcely breaking sweat (literally in Cook’s case) in chalking off the 108 runs required. Some of those have been made with Cook at first drop, but this pair of southpaws have made over 4500 runs together as openers (according to Malcolm Ashton, anyway), moving them past Atapattu and Jayasuriya into third, with only the Langer-Hayden and Greenidge-Haynes duos above them. It’s not always pretty, but it’s a pretty decent effort, that, and well deserved for a couple of honest fellows.

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DAY 3 AT TRENT BRIDGE

Sammy: corridor of absurdity

1. FIGHT…

It was the best of days, it was the worst of days for the Windies and their band of post-(apo)Calypso triers. In the field, they showed guts aplenty (not a pun on the plump and meaty Ravi-oli) as they whittled steadily through the England innings, in the process bringing about what was either a statistical curio (the verification of which would require skills I don’t have) or simply a banal observation: the sequence of wickets was such that all five bowlers took it in turns to snare their victims. Thus, Simpsons character lookalike Rampaul added KP to his overnight scalps, before Roach took out the middle-order B-unit. Sammy then nipped in with (a face-saving) two-fer: a lazy drag-on from ‘Priory’ followed by a tired Strauss losing patience with a negative line very wide of off stump, to a 7-2 field, and nicking off. Shillingford then picked up Broad via a top-edged sweep. Finally, the man Boycott had wearily dismissed on last night’s C5 highlights with “let’s be honest, Samuels can’t bowl” (prompting a snort from Vaughan) burgled the last two. Good stuff…

2. …OR FLIGHT

With a deficit of only 58 and 34 overs left in the day’s play, Windies came out to bat after tea with a good opportunity to give England an edgy night’s sleep. Once again, however, the innings lost its top quicker than a sunbathing exhibitionist with a new boob job. And what a boob job it was: 61 for 6. Angry Anderson nipped out the openers, Shiv had an ‘oh, sod it’ moment, before Bravo, Ramdin and a flu’d up vice-captain Kirk were plumb to Bresnan, ruling out a final day’s cricket and some possible revenue for Notts.

mediocrity

3. NORFOLK THREE-FIELD SYSTEM

Back in the eighteenth century, food production (and world history) was revolutionised by the farmers of East Anglia. They worked out that selecting three fields to be cultivated cyclically – two fertile and abundant with energy, a third fallow, recuperating its fecundity – would substantially increase flows of nutrients and thus enable larger populations to be sustained. In theory, the rotation of pace bowlers should work along similar lines, only Darren Sammy, it seems, is permanently barren soil, leaving the other two, um, fields, Roach and Rampaul, to produce the goods.

It may be an agricultural epicentre, but in cricketing terms Norfolk is only a Minor County, of course – which is about the standard of Sammy’s bowling. The ancient cat-skinners of Phoenicia might have eschewed a one-size-fits-all outlook, but there is only a place for 75mph seamers in Test cricket if you’re not being milked at 4 runs per over. All this is a familiar enough, but the problem is simply not going away. Windies need to address how they turn their skipper into a fifth bowler (other than just bowling two feet wide of off stump) without significantly weakening the batting. It is their cricket’s most significant short-term issue. 

roast carrots

4. JOHNNY B, GOOD?

Around lunchtime, there was something of media spat between Spin’s former editor, George Dobell, and, two floors up, Sky Sports’ resident county cricket expert Ian Botham, a man known for opinions that are as forthright as they are often ill-informed. Remarking upon Bairstow’s discomfort against some well-directed quick stuff from Kemar (‘Samosa’), Botham suggested that “he won’t have faced too much 90mph bowling in County Cricket”. Dobell – who is rumoured to have seen a few days’ count cricket recently – refuted this, which ruffled Sir Beefy’s feathers and he eventually challenged George, on air rather than Twitter, to “name three”. The Twittersphere obliged with double figures, by which time Sky seemed less keen to expose their semi-royalty’s opinions as baseless. (And anyway, it was all somewhat moot, since Roach was bowling between 84 and 87mph…according to Sky’s spped guns, at least.)  

While the storm blew quickly enough across its teacup, the fact remains that Bairstow batted extremely gingerly against Roach. The first ball was an attempted bouncer that skidded flat, crunching into his splice with him half-seeking evasive action. The next ball was again short, but with much more intent, much more venom, and it would have hit the Adam’s apple had he not got gloves in the way, the ball looping toward, and short of, a scrambling gully.

Stiff-armed in India against spin on slow pitches and now looking wooden and flat-footed against good quick bowling on a firm but not lightening quick surface here, there must already be serious question marks over the Yorkshireman in Test cricket. Another ginger, Eion Morgan, might not be totally unhappy about that.

Bell

5. TINKER-BELL

Ian Bell gives off the air of a man for whom it will be a blessed relief when he reaches the end of his career and his statistical legacy is finally known; intense, ticking, he’s a walking advertisement (and not a particularly good one) for the interventions of sports psychology. Had he been around at the time of the father of psychoanalysis, doubtless Freud would have prescribed him cocaine, as he did all his patients (hence the talking cure), which would surely have sent Bell’s already copious nervous energy spiralling.

Be that as it may, Bell is a delightful batsman to watch and a substantial innings here would have compensated the crowd for KP’s early exit. It was not to be. Short of another record-breaking lower-order stand, such a knock will have to wait until the next Test, at Edgbaston, his home ground, where rumour is afoot that Warwickshire are soon to name the newly developed Pavilion End after him: “Chris Woakes will be opening the bowling from the…”

6. BATTING DEEP

London has the Shard and the Gherkin; Nottingham, the ‘Batman’ – in the form of Trent Bridge’s pointy-eared office building-cum-big screen – which ought to have been auspicious for batters here. With good weather and a flat pitch to look forward to, KP had doubtless spent the previous evening thinking about a big one, and perhaps three figures as well, but after he, Bell, Bairstow and Prior missed a golden opportunity to squirrel away some Test runs before the arrival of Steyn, Vern and the Snorkel, it was left to Broad and Bresnan to ensure a lead of 58. Bressie hustled in late in the day to take three cheap wickets and once again confound critics suggesting his place might be in jeopardy…

Originally published on the Spin website... 

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THE TWO CHUCKS

Irreverent filmmakers Jarrod Kimber and Sam Collins have carved out a niche providing daily video blogs from Test matches under their The Two Chucks guise. They are also making a feature-length documentary about the future viability and prosperity of the Test game that has involved interviewing several legends and which I have vaguely and idiotically suggested I’ll try and see if Joe Hart wants to finance (don’t ask!). The film is called Death of a Gentleman and is in development.

Anyway, at the end of Day 2, after Strauss’s presser and before his Windies counterpart’s, they asked if I’d be prepared to do the regular slot at the end of their vlog, in which a journalist wraps up the day’s play in 20 seconds (ish). So, I had the 5 minutes of Sammy’s press conference to have a think; then, while Jarrod set up, a further couple of minutes to fret, vital seconds during which, instead of pondering what I’d say, I chatted to a virtual friend made flesh (someone I’d emailed and Tweeted a few times, but never met), Gary Naylor.*

Here’s the clip. I’m at 7:17, in mono:




* Gary is semi-ubiquitous on the Internet, almost a sports writing version of Six Degrees of Kevin Bacon: he’s the Guardian Blog’s Mouth of the Mersey, an occasional Test Match Sofa commentator, an Evertonian and author of a marvellous Blizzard piece about supporting the Toffees in the late 60s and early 70s, and a future collaborator on Bowls in Geneva, a Blizzard-like project for longform journalism across all sports.

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DAY 2 AT TRENT BRIDGE

The second day at Trent Bridge was just as scorchio as Day 1 had been. Personal highlights of the day were speaking to Geoffrey Boycott at lunch, pitching an interview to Nasser Hussain, soliciting a brief lesson in cultural history from Tony Cozier and doing a slot on Cricinfo’s ‘The Two Chucks’ video blog.

Here's my copy for the day, published on the Spin website.

*****

1. TUMESCENCE AND FLACCIDITY

“Dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot, dot”. No, this is not an Eastenders homage to the scene in which Alan Partridge tries to get the attention of Dan (Steven Mangham) on the Chorister’s Country Club car park, but the sequence of deliveries faced by DJ Sammy first thing this morning as he closed circumspectly in on a first Test hundred.

However, rare must it be that a captain’s personal aura of authority can have grown and shrivelled so much within such a short space of time. For it was toward the back end of the middle session that Jonathan Trott was making him look like one of the Academy net bowlers. Then, after tea, he bowled at KP with the keeper stood up. I’m not sure Derryck Murray ever did that to Colin Croft or Andy Roberts when they were third seamers. If only he had an all-rounder at number 6 to take off the heat, a Bravo, say…

2. ROACH MATERIAL

Few things are more deflating in cricket than taking wickets with no balls. Naturally, this is less of an issue when you are creating wicket-taking opportunities at regular intervals – when the ball is nipping, nibbling, hooping or otherwise misbehaving. But on a chapatti-flat pitch with the sun beating down and a three-and-half-man attack [note to self: pitch this as new Charlie Sheen vehicle], it is especially galling. But to do so twice is bordering on the criminal. Beneficiary both times of Kemar Roach’s sloppiness was Alastair Cook (on 1 and 12), who must have thought that all his Christmases had come at once (which would only be fair, given his birth date of December 25). However, the chef, one of the best Cooks to have played the game, failed to kick on. Roach, meanwhile, was last seen being kept away from his belt and shoelaces. “This is a league game, Smokey. There are rules”. 

Portly but nimble

3. WE LOVE YOU RAVI, WE DO

Windies sole wicket-taker was the chunky spunk from Guyana, Ravi Rampaul, a man who has been pilloried recently for his Samitian approach to Body Mass Index, treatment that your correspondent considers downright ‘fattist’. Thus, despite bowling a few sharp bouncers (“double chin music”) and getting the ball to reverse swing nicely during the evening session, when he bowled a spell of 5-1-9-1, he was still subject to cruel chants from the sozzled crowd late in the afternoon.

Anyway, along with Chanderpaul, Rampaul’s presence in the side –, plus players like Davendra Bishoo, Sunil Narine, and Denish Ramdin around the squad – led me to ask the doyen of Caribbean cricket broadcasting, the august Tony Cozier, about the history behind the Indian influx to Trinidad and Guyana. I duly learned that they came as indentured labour to work on the holdings of freed slaves in the mid-nineteenth century, but only in the larger territories where land was ample.

What a delight. What a privilege. What a warm and ego-free man.

4. HACKNEY DE PHRAIZ

In the course of the aforementioned history lesson, Tony Cozier (or ‘Coze-dog’ as I felt able to call him some four minutes into our relationship) mentioned that, unlike the Indians, who kept their cultural moorings, the freed African slaves took the names of their colonial masters. He then proceeded to reel off a list of men such as Shane Sillingford, Winston Benjamin, Patrick Patterson…

The wonderfully evocative names of Caribbean cricketers have long been a source of fascination for me, ever since the David Baddiel gag about them having a new quick called Cumbersome Briefcase. Not only are they one of the best vehicles through which to hear the melodiousness and cadences of Cozier’s voice, but they also fall into a few interesting categories, from the ideological (Fidel Edwards, Nixon MacLean, Nikita Miller) to the cannabis-themed (Kemar Roach, Floyd Reifer, Daren Ganga).

I mention all this because it is my intention to launch and market a ‘Windies name generator’ app for iPhone. It will take a suburb of London and add a polysyllabic olde worlde profession, giving you the likes of Kensington Cobbler or Putney Stevedore. Dragon’s Den, here I come.

5. STRAUSS RAUS? NEIN

Strauss’s second hundred of the series, his twenty-first in Tests, led me to think about the way fortune and contingency stalk our lives, now bestowing their favours, now scuppering even our most mundane wishes. Had the scheduling been different, with a more potent or skilled bowling line-up (I grant you, Windies new ball attack is not shabby), then he might not have been able to render his position as captain quite so impregnable.

The skipper rarely looked troubled and batted at a tempo that suggested he was here for a long time rather than a good one. The four pillars of his batting were in evidence – back-foot tucks off his pads, cuts of varying lateness, cover drives and delicate lap sweeps – as he progressed serenely to 102 not out at stumps. In contrast to the effusive rib-cruncher at Lord’s, he this time received something of a shall-I-shan’t-I bear-hug from KP, who should look to rectify this and go full-on should Strauss make it a Daddy hundred tomorrow. 

Hug buddies

6. KP & THE SUNSHINE BAND

Finally, we could be in for another mawkish dose of faux-humility tomorrow as the former Cannock CC number 9, ‘Kelves’ Pietersen, will look to kick on from an occasionally brutal, regularly disdainful 72 not out and into three figures. One of the most imposing and intimidating physical presences at the crease there has ever been, perhaps in the same bracket as Sir Viv and Haydos, Pietermaritzburg’s favourite son was especially contemptuous today toward the off-breaks of Shillingford, giving the charge to the first ball he faced to smear a six over long-on, while at one stage going down to play a lap sweep and improvising a Dilscoop-cum-ramp shot that went wide of slip – clearly an homage to his secret drinking buddy and notable one-day improviser, Nicholas Verity Knight.

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TEST DEBUT

Jimmy and Marlon: they're mates really

So, Friday May 25 – the twentieth anniversary of (the start of) the Castlemorton Rave, which prompted Thatcher to legislate against techno – was my first day reporting on Test match cricket (from the ground, that is), for Spin magazine. Below is my output, some 300 words or so over the limit. Anyone who knows about my final week editing my thesis (63,000 words removed in eight straight nineteen-hour days after I realized that footnotes do count toward the overall wordage) will tell you that is not a bad effort.

The press conferences at close of play were highly entertaining, too. Ever shy, I made sure I got a question in, asking the “surprisingly tall” Jimmy A (his words) whether his early one-handed grab at third slip was the best catch he has ever taken. As self-deprecating off the field as he is aggro on it, he answered in a round about way that it was a fluke. 

His conference followed that of West Indies' centurion Marlon Samuels, who had the press pack in stitches when he realized halfway through an answer about the sledging he got from Jimmy that his antagonist was stood looking at him just outside the squash courts that Trent Bridge uses as a temporary press facility [clip in here somewhere].


1. POLICE CAMERA, ACTION! 

Firstly, West Indies and their top-order woes. The opening hour was like an episode of Police, Camera, Action! – the England new ball pair of Anderson and Broad were playing the role of the police (bad cop and not quite as bad cop, respectively), relentlessly pursuing a flashy joyrider until the wheels came off his motor; the press box was both cameraman (we had the best view, despite not being in a chopper) and narrator, an air of almost moral disgust at times peppering the rueful verdicts.

They really do need to sort this out, though, because sooner or later their Guyanese lynchpin (see below) will not be there to paper over the cracks. Darren Bravo (‘Two Zero’) looks like he has the tools to succeed; back in the city where he played a season of club cricket for West Indies Cavaliers in 2007, Kirk Edwards missed a straight one by as far as it was possible to miss it without dropping the bat; Powell, doubtless to the despair of his coach, flashed loosely having got himself in, a capital crime; and Barath was lucky to get a blob, brilliantly caught one-handed in the slips by Anderson, a catch he claimed not to know anything about.

Cancrine

2. CRAB BALLS

A commonplace of hypothetical hypothetical conversations was heard fluttering across the press box: Who would you want to bat for your life?

Overlooking for now the obvious concerns and anxieties that being in mortal danger would bring about, who wouldn’t want to live in a parallel universe in which matters of importance (and we’ll leave it up to the Shanklyists to decide where life and death rank) were decided out on the square, bat and ball in hand, gladiatorially:

“I hereby sentence you to possible death, depending as to the innings played by a batsman of your choice. Court dismissed”.

“But what sort of pitch is it? What are the overhead conditions? The bowling attack, m’lud?”

“Court dismissed”.

With the retirement of The Wall earlier this year, I suppose Jacques Kallis would come into the reckoning, and maybe Mahela Jayawardene, but I’d suggest there are two or three candidates in this game (all three of them with doctorates in Knowing Where Your Off Peg Is Studies): England’s sweatless opener, Alistair Cook, and all-rounder number 3, Jonathan Trott, but above all Shivnarine Chanderpaul. Today, he looked to have booked himself in at Sir Geoffrey’s bed and breakfast – easing to 46 from 86 balls with nine fours, even unfurling a weight-back, no-feet calypso drive-slap through mid-off that provoked Jimmy Anderson into two bouncers and a sledge – before being undone by an unlikely source and UDRS (see below), perhaps due to the fact that he wore one in the ‘crown jewels’ earlier in the day, flooring him for several eye-watering minutes.

So, the long and short of it is that, if you’d chosen Shiv to bat for your life today, you’d now be dead. Should have gone for Marlon, obviously…

3. MARVELLOUS MARLON SAMUELS

There is a school of thought that says the West Indies have for too long been too laidback, too impassive, to the extent that, even if they are trying their conkers off on the inside, it doesn’t get expressed outwardly and therefore comes across to their supporters as not caring. This seemed true of the team built in the image of Chris Gayle. The new regime, under the more demonstrative, less self-conscious Darren Sammy, is explicitly trying to rectify this, to show the proud people of the Caribbean that, okay, they may not be the dominant force they were, but they are trying their hardest and it matters deeply to them.

But not Marlon Samuels. It clearly matters a lot to him – you don’t play innings of such concentration and determination if it doesn’t – but he isn’t showing it. Inscrutable, like his Jamaican former skipper. However, perhaps his too-cool-for-skool attitude is precisely what saved him (and your life, potentially, not to mention his team’s chances in this game) from being cruelly run out at the non-striker’s end when on just 16 as Stuart Broad deflected a straight drive onto the stumps that would have left the Windies on 89 for 5. As it was, Marlon was busy chillaxing (and ting) and hadn’t backed up one inch. He finished the day on richly deserved and warmly appreciated 107 not out and was in fighting form afterward, responding to a question about Jimmy Anderson’s persistent chirping with “[he] should know that I’m batting for the team and there’s several balls I could hit to the boundary that I left alone. But when I get that double tomorrow, I’d like James Anderson to say something to me…”  

4. SAMMY, ARE YOU OK, ARE YOU OK, SAMMY?

The genial St Lucian is among the most likeable men in Test cricket. Humble, happy, courageous, and able to squeeze the last drop and more out of his ability. He is also doing a manful job of leading a mediocre, depleted team as it looks to drag itself slowly back to competitiveness (I do not share the view that their glory is necessarily a thing of the past, as is the case with, say, the Hungarian national football team). But there’s a ‘but’ coming… But he isn’t really good enough at his primary job to justify his place in the side. Not really. I wish he was – truly I do – but I have seen many better bowlers in Minor Counties cricket.

However, whether he deserves his place in the team is a separate question altogether. On balance, I think he does, much like Brearley did in 1981, his input eluding statistical measure. Even so, there’s no getting away from the fact that he unbalances the side (particularly with no Dwayne Bravo): if they want to play a spinner, then Sammy becomes third seamer; if they want Sammy as second change, they omit a spinner.

So here is my (admittedly radical) solution, one that flies in the face of the day’s events: promote himself to open the batting. Think about it: the top order is failing repeatedly and showing little gumption and/or nous in the process. He could go in and tee off (I said it was radical; stick with me), looking to disturb one of England’s strengths: their new ball bowling. A no-frills Sehwag, if you like. It would send a very strong message to his team, too – that he’s prepared to be first over the top – and perhaps serve to shore up his authority. When backed into a corner, it’s better to go radge.

5. UP THE SWANNY!

Talking of ex-Number 8s (a topic that will appeal to a Scouse writer sometime of this parish, since he considers them as pivotal to cricket as they are to rugby union, the bridge between two units), Graeme Swann did something for the first time today: he took a Test wicket on his home ground of Trent Bridge, and a prized scalp, too. They say there’s no place like home, but it’s probably not so true for Swanny (who, it was revealed, has a darts nickname of ‘The Shoplifter’). Anyway, he’ll probably enjoy a bat at some stage on Sunday, although it’s a sign of the times that he’s now down to number 10.  

6. BRESNONE-FER*

Finally, sticking with Number 8s, England’s incumbent – Shiver me Tim Bresnan – could soon be coming under some pressure for his place, despite his status as something of a lucky charm for England (12 victories in his 12 Tests). Andy Flower doesn’t strike me as the superstitious type and will thus be far more interested and cold-blooded about the Yorkshireman’s input to the side as third seamer, whatever garnish his batting brings. With little swing available to him, conventional or Irish, he looked laboured, down on pace, and, frankly, largely ineffective. Warm days and flat pitches are precisely the times that skippers crave something more than steady containment (and going at practically 4 runs per over, the burly Tyke didn’t really provide that), something a little bit extra – either raw pace or mystery spin, and its je ne sais quoi (French for X-Factor). With Steven Finn waiting in the wings, Bresnan needs to improve.  

* I realize he took a wicket, but that ruins the gag.

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