Month: August 2015

Thinking soft.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

With the Ashes won in a fashion that Michael Crawford might recognise – three parts drama to two trauma – we’re maybe entitled to settle back and think. Think hard. Or perhaps, given that following England’s recent upward curves and voluptuous positives implies pleasures yet to come, think softish.

Thinking soft can be good. It might mean transitioning smoothly over data or cruising serenely past spent or failed plans; understanding enough of the detail but still oozing good-naturedly through. Sure there must be the (real and necessary) obsessing over individual form or technique but there are bigger essences too. In fact there are whorls if not worlds of issues that resist Venn diagrams and/or the clasp of the Stat Man. These range from human foibles to philosophical matters – issues of approach.

Suddenly the game of cricket went both ape-shit and plural. We know this. It’s now certifiable to consider or (ahem) approach Test Matches in the same way you think about One-Dayers or T20. They are increasingly massively different animals and right here, right now is where England need to show us all they get that, because painfully obviously, until about a couple of months ago, they didn’t.

This is e-nor-mous, a-morphous and bloody gooey stuff, right? Sorting your approach, your way in, your (hah!) ‘exit strategy’.

It’s also why we all have to summon the energy to recognise and/or execute the fag end of this Aussie tour to the max. England, in particular, have to cast off any jadedness and grab hold again. They are mid-revolution in a generally good way and must must must find the energy to validate themselves in the carve-up that is short format cricket.

The ‘Top Two or Three Inches’ become ever more crucial. Mind games. For the coach, the ability to cut through to the players, to stir them. (When the game is about instinct, stir the instincts). For the players, that confidence thing; to see ball, hit ball. Essential. Electrifyingly different, though, from Test Cricket.

Post any series is a good time for closing your eyes and trawling gently through notions around character, comfort, suitability; the aftermath (if that’s what it is) of an Ashes Series, with its unparalleled frisson, being surely the ripest of moments to go walkabout into the team psyche?

I’m hoping Messrs Bayliss and Farbrace have the clarity of purpose and the time to go meandering just now – sometimes you really do need to circulate freely before landing somewhere honest – somewhere rewarding. I picture them bolting through the airheads at some gathering, in the knowledge that somewhere (in the kitchen, maybe?) there’s a profound and rewarding conversation to be had.

Everything these days is said to be – or said to need to be – ‘holistic’. Do you get me when I say I wish the England gaffers space for exactly that holistic look at… everything? Because time and judgments are tight. There’s faaaar too much, in fact, going on. Pressures are acute. Progress needs to be evidenced. Hence, for balance and for sanity and (I would argue) for productivity, some need for anti-machismo, anti-drive, anti-measure; some need, in fact, for softness – understanding.

Let’s get back to the prosaic before I get carted away.

It’s likely that the further we drift beyond this extraordinary Ashes the more ordinary we will judge it to be; particularly in terms of quality. But my point here is certainly not to downgrade any achievement for England. In fact let’s re-state the brilliance of a win against opposition who strutted into their warm-up games confident of their own, world-beating status and seemingly on the brink of a more or less crushing re-assertion of Aus Power. Pre the Welsh opener, England fans (let’s be honest) had retreated into Please God No mode, having rehearsed disappointments ready for public consumption after a solid and possibly humiliating pasting.

‘Twas not to be. Instead Cardiff – a city that knows how to host sporting stuff – provided the extravagant launch-pad for a surprise.

So how to build on this? How to not only fine-tune the personnel but truly develop a squad, or squads? How to (or whether to?) fashion policy which both challenges and encourages players towards a) team goals and b) improvement. It will be fascinating to see how the England coaches do what all of us coaches are meant to do – facilitate the expression of talent, join the dots between, blend – in the coming weeks and months. Not least because there can be no pretence now that cricket is but a single game.

We’re rushing breathlessly towards a series of One-Day and T20 Ashes encounters that will again re-calibrate our senses around short format cricket. Massively exposed, hugely competitive, economically necessary. Games which may leave us all exhausted but significantly more clued in to just how far England have travelled from their immediately brain-dead past.

The Ashes were almost a triumph; they were certainly a win against the head. It feels almost cruel that Bayliss/Farbrace and some of our proud protagonists have such an important and ludicrously different challenge so immediately ahead… but they do.

The sense is that Bayliss was employed with one eye on his nous for short format cricket; indeed the multi-counterintuitive fact may be that the ECB have excelled themselves by appointing the (apparently) born-to-be-conservative Strauss and that unassuming Farbrace/Bayliss combo and in doing so quietly but efficiently delivered us into the throes of the contemporary game dynamic and well-equipped. (And whilst we’re back-slapping the Old Farts maybe we should note that – as previously described – ECB Coach Education itself has been transformed towards the dynamic new era in a similarly seminal way… but let’s not go there too. Enough praise for one day.)

England Cricket has shifted forwards in terms of this flawed positivity thing: forward ‘cos we just beat the Aussies. We have talent and importantly we have fellas supporters might or already do love. (Rooooot, most obviously – and Stokes.) Things are medium rosy. But, as always, there is a huge amount of sorting out to do.

Key may be the general understanding that the three major international formats have separated and that this needs thinking about. Intelligently. Simply daft to equate ‘backing yourself’ with being good cricket for every situation. ( I imagine the Australians thought that pushing hard and looking to counterattack whilst under the proverbial cosh was good cricket; that ‘making a statement’ would be ‘massive’. I fear they may not be alone in letting their testosterone flood their finer faculties on that one.)

No, England want appreciation as well as power, sense as well as toughness, cuteness as well as dynamism. Because this is about range now – diversity and choice.

Dead Rubber?

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

Interesting how few folks seem to think the last Ashes Test is a ‘dead rubber’. Maybe the odd Croatian thinks that but most of us, despite the slam-dunkingly emphatic void where the competitive reality should be, can still feel the juices rising. The dander will still be up and the banter spiky as an echidna’s arse – as they say in Vauxhall.

It’s possible the Oval may be less of a cauldron than (say) Edgbaston was but even if us Poms do drift implausibly and non-demonstrably towards a rain-affected draw there will be meaning in some of this. Meaning for individual players – some of it life-changing – and meaning for the fans and for the game.

Pre- this final test, one rumour suggests Moeen may open with Cook and Rashid enter the fray, heralding multiple All New Possibilities for import or revelation.

Should this prove to be the case, it would necessarily imply medium-complex stuff – either the outright dropping (terminally or otherwise) of Lyth and/or a deliciously double-edged conversation with him (or about him) that may (who knows?) offer the hope that he would return should the second spinner syndrome no longer prevail.

How Lyth might actually read that hypothetical situation – even if there was a Scouts Honour-ability to any discussions with the coaching staff – is anybody’s guess; my guess is that he would publicly be A Brick and privately be pooping his panties. Being told however skilfully that the door is not closed is surely ver-ry nearly as cruel as being ruthlessly cast off?

‘Fella this is NOT ABOUT YOU. ‘S purely tactical – we’re looking at the options. So you go do what you do best… and force us to pick you.’
‘K boss.’  (*Cue manful trudge*.)

In contrast Moeen’s extravagantly rising star makes me think of Caesar and yaknow, firmaments. Except that there appears to be no fatal arrogance and no apparent threat to the man’s Polaris-like pre-eminence, despite his widely-perceived limitations as a bowler. Batting-wise, he’s creaming it: rarely have the fortunes around a tactical masterstroke gathered so beautifully as around the insertion of the Bearded One into the All Runs Are A Bonus zone.

Moeen’s multifaceted brilliance – stonewalling/stylishly gutsy/expansive and fearless with that bat, busy in the field, decent plus with the ball – has made him something of a darling for the fans and placed him absolutely at the centre of every strategy imaginable. You want an opener at eight or an opener at two or a counterattacking momentum-shifter hilariously and subversively low in the order? Here I am; me – Ali. Floating, stinging and doing just everything from that insurance policy thing (freeing everybody else up, right?) to just making this Test Cricket look pret-ty simple.

The quality of the clamour around Rashid these last few months tells us he is gorgeously ripe with potential. The Oval therefore provides another relatively de-stressed opportunity. All the selectors have to do is pick him: all he has to do is still the nerves entirely and tweak the ball fearlessly before giving it right old clout with the bat. Easy.

Bayliss and Farbrace must know they are lucky, luck-ee geezers to be offered another early chance to blood Rashid when the high-risk essence of the leggie’s game is mitigated favourably by circumstance – by the fact that the Aussies have been pre-battered. (Allez-loo.) There’s a strong case for playing a First Spinner alongside Moeen even if the conditions scream seeeeeeaaammmmerr!! Get the lad familiar with all this; work to be done in the Emirates and in South Africa.

But look, micro-climatic issues of selection, whilst providing all of us with ammo for the bantfest, may be less central to our Ashes Summer than the general level of public warmth. Allow me to indulge on this?

Some of you will know I’m proud to work for Cricket Wales. I’m charged (and I mean that in every sense) with going into schools (mainly) to fire up kids for sport.

As what we call a Community Cricket Coach I dredge up unseemly amounts of enthusiasm and energy and belief in the good stuff that cricket can bring. (Read earlier blogs or take my word on it; sessions in schools can be… powerful.)

I’m spookily on message with the cricket mission simply because it’s right and essential to get kids educated re sport – physically literate, if you like. It may be my job to say stuff like that but don’t go taking me for a government man. The more I see kids lit up by games the more I know we must make the case. Cricket is such a magical conduit for such a diverse and real and developing carousel of activity and learning that I’m happy to plant myself astride the whole sales-pitch.

I/we make a difference. We encourage and we coax a zillion skills into our players – from thoughtfulness to dive-catches. And yet…

It really could be that even my inviolable positivity shifts the earth a whole lot less than (for example) a magnificent Ashes series. A year of the Cricket Man’s coaching is a thing of daft and infectious beauty and some significant influence… but I ain’t kidding myself. Cricket on the telly, in the news, on the BACK PAGES is a whole lot more impactful.

What @cricketmanwales does is kinda great but not an Ashes series. Not an extraordinary and victorious Ashes series. Not like a Broady eight-fer or a Jimmy Jimmy visibly in his pomp. My lack of visibility works agin me.

In fact ALL the magnificent work that all of us Community Coaches do – and by God we do! – is wee-wee in the ocean compared to highlights or column inches that capture something of the sensaaaaaayshunull nature of this game, this rivalry, this victorious series. We proudly march to stir the grassroots (barmy)armies but we need drama and exposure – as do all sports.

Cricket doesn’t always get it. The Sky Sports conundrum epitomises difficulties around progress, pop-ness or whoredom. In a universe reduced to garishness and gathering market-share, this unique and superlative sport needs glorious, pitch-worthy moments to bung its smelling salts beneath the nostrils of the masses. We need to be on the news, in the news. We (England and Wales?) need to be heroically winning. Ideally.

We need unimpeachably brilliant role-models and we need them on terrestrial telly. Then the Cricket Man will work around that.

So the Oval is big. Big for Rashid/Lyth/Ali. Big for all of us. As a fan and as a ‘professional’, I’m looking for more from our guys. More stories and yeah, more glory.

Build.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

Test Cricket’s changed, obviously – gone to the nightclub with a dodgy pipe. But whilst it sits there in Trap 3, head pleasantly whirling, feet gently twirling, those of us on the edge of all this do just need to nip out occasionally from the narcotic fug, to either inhale great puritanical clouds of insight – thankyou , Sir Geoffrey – or dart to the bar for a discombombulating chaser.

Well look how else are we to wrap this particular now, other than with blancmange-grade tortillas speaking loudly and in many tongues around the theme of IN-TOXI-CAYY-SHUNN? Tests – formerly the playground of gentlemen so starchily prosaic they may actually have been dead – now done in three, anarchic days. Batsmen windmilling psychotically at anything within arm’s reach. Crowds racily, indiscriminately, Stag Nightingly drunk. Glory and despair raging through our consciousness like a biblical torrent filmed by Nic Roeg. With a Stars on 45 backing track. How’s your head, dude?

Somewhere in this (literally) fabulous flux there’s a historic sporting contest – a cause. Which I think we still love and the essence of which maybe remains(?)
In fact it unquestionably remains; the cricket – the drama – however, is spectacularly different.

But do we like it? Surely most of us do – with a significant caveat or twelve- about whatever it is that’s replaced that traditional turgidity in the Getting On Our Wicks stakes.

With me that’s around the batting, I suppose and the whole positivity machismo. The sense that (let’s say England) have to ‘express themselves’. Clearly and obviously and wonderfully there is a truth in this notion that freeing up players to play is both a key role for the coach and (often) central to individual confidence. England have rightly signalled an intent towards dynamism which players and public alike are enjoying. (Remember that?)

In terms of selection a) Buttler (despite being weirdly hesitant by his standards in recent innings) is all about newness and switch-hitting counterattack and b) Moeen at 8 – 8, for chrissakes! – practically bullies the blokes from 3 to 7 into Belligerent Barsted Mode because they know he can bat for a day if things go pear-shaped. And c) (if we’re talking in essences again) every carve or drive from the likes of Root embodies this deliberately transformative policy. ‘Back yourself, bro. Back yourself!’

In other words this wild new wotsit is strategically sound as well as flushed with testosterone. As it should be. Farbrace and Bayliss are no mugs. England have caught up with the mood of things in limited overs and sprung fearlessly forward from there. Which is great, right? We’re catching up – right up. Finally.

It is all great but it’s also simplistic. And I hear the hand of the Sports Psycho Militia in all this. In their urgency to overhaul the humour or the approach of England Cricket, people have been sucked in to believing their own publicity/disappearing up their own backsides – all that.

There’s a crowd of folks doing stuff. It’s inevitably blokey and charged and focussed. There will be team meeting after team meeting where (and I’m not being cynical) important things will be said but this melee of egos and views creates difficulties. Too many voices, too much pressure to say something impactful and positive. Meaning too much freeing up and – despite the evidence from Edgbaston and strangely counter-somethingly? – not enough good Test cricket.

Huge holes in that argument. Firstly because plainly England played enough good Test cricket to blow Australia – the world number ones – away. Secondly because on the one hand I’m arguing for positivity (yes I am!) and on the other shredding its alleged fragility. Let’s try to deal with some of that.

Both Bell and Root were heroes at Edgbaston and I not only cheered them but crossed my fingers and willed it to be those two stylishly knocking off the winning runs. I respect Bell’s class hugely and like the rest of the universe I’m in love with Root’s magnificent, boyish presence.

And yet there were moments when I coulda tanned their backsides with a hazel stick; both were out, embarrassingly, mindlessly cheaply when the moment for called for further building. Building towards an unassailable total – building like you do against anybody in a Test Match.

Bell skied one when playing beautifully and Root reached ludicrously for a ball pitched in Humberside and they both got out. Out when England needed them in. In to build 400 because that was necessary at that time – a lead, an emphatic, hopefully demoralizing lead over Australia in the Ashes.

The fact that Australia’s first innings capitulation had put England in the box seat in no way abrogates the responsibility towards gathering a match-winning total. The fact that England bowled outstandingly again in the Oz second innings and they simply couldn’t cope is/was a dreamland barely within contemplation. Not even by the boy Finn – to whom we all send the choicest of hugs, yes?

So yes I am arguing that even though England were already on top and Bell and Root (for example) ‘backed themselves’ in exactly the manner they have been prompted to do, this approach was flawed; they were wrong to be so cavalier.

Even in the knowledge and agreement that fellas behind were primed to come to the rescue. Even when England win the game by a street.

Test cricket is a test over time and through conditions. You look to maximise score as well as establish superiority in terms of momentum/body language/team psyche. It’s not all about making points through hitting. How ‘bout if Bell goes on to make 160 in that first innings and stands there twiddling his bat, humming between balls as Starc snorts around him? How ‘bout if Root leaves the daft-wide ones – all of them, until the match situation swings entirely England’s way – and picks out the lush drives or the easy pulls?

In Test cricket you choose your time and you do that as part of your (reasonably sophisticated) Game Plan. There is perspective and there is consideration amongst the swash and buckle.

I suspect that because of the flood of positivism and the commitment towards ‘making a statement’, Bell and Root and England Cricket PLC were clear that they had licence to go get the Australian attack. Whenever/wherever the ball landed, if they felt good about it. This is a legitimate tactic; it’s just not intelligent enough. Their gamble – which worked, which I almost loved – was an indulgence. Wickets were always likely to fall in clusters in the game, so unsexy as it sounds… take account for that. Why fall for the notion that we have to be as ‘aggressive’ as the Australians? Why not play and build and go sailing past that dumb machismo?

Why not play better cricket, in fact?