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.
