cricket

#Steynwatch2 (featuring Nye Donald!)

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

For the second match in a row, the boy Donald may have stolen the story. Not that I actually arrived with something planned – how could you? But maybe I’d *thought to* go with a #Steynwatch2, something along the lines of Steyn Has Landed. Then stuff about his greatness and his penchant for fishing.

Aneurin nibbles into that. As does the fella Ingram.

6pm at the Swalec. Warmer tonight than against Essex. First thought? Will this free up the local pacemen’s actions and by implication, give Steyn and Van der Gugten just that wee bit of a lift, or will it merely temper the pitch and soften things up?

I say local but the miles travelled and consequent environmental damage trailing behind Glammy’s strikemen give the lie to concepts such as this. They are guilty as charged by the Climate Change Lobby and yet… I can’t help loving them.

There may yet be a truly dynamic and exciting and destructive duo awaiting their moment and I am therefore am only momentarily torn in regard to their provenance and to any diabolical implications around their shocking inability to be born in Bridgend. More than that, I remain pret-ty close to thrilled at the prospect of seeing a hopefully settled-in Steyn and a Boy Wunda With Something to Prove charge in. Together – or one after the other. In the sun.

At 6.17, I’m counting down the moments.

Up in the really rather magnificent Media Centre, we hear that Glamorgan won the toss and are bowling. Which means I only have 13 minutes to wait. I spend the next four trying to work out if Dom – Glammy Social Media Dude – is winding us up on this. (He may have sensed me twitching, which leads me to a…

Question: could a fast  bowler obsessive be called a twitcher? There is, after all, something hawkishly fabulous about Dale Steyn. Ok, onward.)

Time is both racing and surreally juddering as a bloke with a bewildering array of keepie-uppie skills fills the void before that next Steyn Moment by doing his thing right there in front of us, on the pitch. With a football and his cap. Then Glammy emerge, followed by James Vince and Michael Carberry, no less. Meaning this is a proper significant challenge.

Will Dale-bach be ready? And (Donald having shelled one on Wednesday) will his slips?

There are less fireworks, first up, than against the Eagles. Steyn  bowls two goodish balls which draw nothing too adventurous from Vince, but then the Hampshire skipper eases the third through the covers for an undemonstrative four. It may have been a tad overpitched. He comes back with a sharp one outside off which Carberry wafts poorly at… but there’s no contact. A quietish over then.

Van der Gugten starts with a mixed bag. Attacks the crease, smacks the pitch but two or three are simply too hittable – being around the hip or shortish/wideish. Two boundaries result. He does however finish with an absolute peach; quick, lively and full – a wicket-taking ball which took no wicket. It does feel as though these guys do just need that moment of good fortune to ignite the Maestro/Apprentice Thing.

Steyn’s second over is decent but not hugely threatening. Hampshire have gone on to 26 for nought. Van der Gugten, meanwhile, takes an immediate rest.

Hogan steps in and gets Carberry, top-edging and maybe a little cramped; or lazy. Then he destroys Adams with a quick cutter which surely has clattered the stumps. But no. Unreal. 35 for 1 off 4.

Van der Gugten switches, in fact, to the Cathedral Road End. There’s the sense that he’s just *trying too hard* – or is that something folks just say when things go slightly unproductively? (It did seem like he’s really forcing towards a full length, when perhaps his natural length is shortish, darting or slamming towards the heart?)

Hogan bowls Vince with a stunning yorker and the thought occurs that maybe these Johnny Come Latelys are inevitably going to spike the competitive fury of some of their comrades. And that Hogan’s bouncy run has turned bouncier. The fella’s fist-pump at the wicket maybe hinted at that re-invigoration: he bowls great, tonight.

Wagg then easily pockets a skier from the bowling of Wagg and with Hampshire at 51 for 3 off 7 the game feels poised. I ask myself if it matters that neither Van der Gugten or Steyn have yet (yaknow) struck and struggle with the idea that actually yes it might – in the longer term.

When Hants lose another to a lame doink into the loveliest of Cardiff skies – this time Meschede benefitting – that need to massage the egos of the strike bowlers arguably recedes. Glammy are apparently okay without them. Who knew?

When the threatening Wheater is stumped Cooke bowled Cosker for 39 that a) feels good to the locals but b) brings in Shahid  Afridi. *Surprisingly*, he looks to club Cosker down the ground  but with limited success. The game progresses but the subtext (that story re the strike-bowlers who don’t seem to be striking yet) remains a goer.

Afridi – the inevitable sideshow(+) does then pat Wagg over midwicket for 6. The score moves to 107 for 5 after 14. And there is clearly a game, here.

Hogan returns to bowl the 15th and immediately claims a ‘typically’ t20 wicket – the batsman trying to do eight different, preconceived and unnecessary things with the ball…and getting rather limply caught.

Steyn returns to bowl the 17th. Two men out. He goes very quick but marginally down leg. It scuffs something maybe but it’s no event.

Then… The SOUTH AFRICAN LEGEND CLAIMS HIS FIRST GLAMMY WICKET with one that clips something on the way through. He backs that up with two very full and straight – the first of which almost *seriously inconveniences* Darren Sammy. Great contest now, as Sammy and Afridi face a distinctly waspish Steyn.

Hogan is back again, justifiably, looking in his pomp, for the 18th. BoomBoom smashes at everything, profiting until he drives one straight at deep mid-off. Hampshire now 136 for 8 as Steyn comes back for his fourth.

He claims Andrew caught behind with a shortish delivery that the batsman parries at fatally awkwardly. Then Tino Best can’t cope with a snorting full-lengther and is comprehensively leg before. This is timely and encouraging, ‘psychologically’ as Hants are done, on 141 and Dale-bach has therefore made the telling, innings-concluding contribution that he was bought to make. (No pressure.)

On reflection we must of course insert the fact that Hogan got 4 wickets to Steyn’s 3. We should also note again the energy and craft the (ahem) Senior Seamer brought to his work tonight.

However I suspect even Hogan would forgive our obsessing with Mr Steyn. Because that, if you remember was our subtext.

So, how was it for the electrifying new signing, with presumably the fattest contract in the Glammy Posse? Where did tonight take him? In a word, forward.

Is it mindcrushingly dumb to wonder if it’s the case that even legends – owners of the proverbial t-shirts – must feel relieved, feel better when they’ve justifed the fee/cheered the paying public/earned their crust? Surely they must?

Steyn looked fit, committed and focussed. And tonight he struck.

In reply to that 141, Glamorgan again started badly. The captain Rudolph is in danger of playing his way out of the side, having exited early-early again. As was the case in the Essex game, the innings steadied and then built around Donald, partnered ably by Ingram in this instance.

Glam were 63 for 2 off 6, with Ingram and Donald both on 28. Something in the ether felt with them, felt good – matchwinningly good – already.

After being dropped by Sammy out at deep midwicket, the latter went on to his highest t20 score, of 55. In doing so he hiked up both his reputation as a starlet-to-watch and the expectation around him. Donald’s manner and level of comfort against the likes of Tino Best was… impressive. Expect him to shine on rather than fizzle: this was his second consecutive Man-of-the-Match award.

Ingram, in belligerent mood, departed on 43 with the score at 108 for 4 off 12. All that remained was for Cooke to steer Glamorgan home.

The final blow was emphatically despatched through midwicket for four and the crowd of 6,100 duly celebrated. It was an important win in terms of momentum and the gathering in of any substantive support for a tilt towards bigger games, bigger money.

It was also a night when Dale Steyn began to make the mark that we want, he wants and Huw Morris gambled on.

 

 

 

#Steynwatch.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

It may be that somebody offered him salmon-fishing rights on the Wye. It may be simply that him and Jacques-bach are soul-brothers, or close enough to want to hang together. It certainly seems to be that Mr Steyn was (whisper it) behind a certain Morne Morkel in the queue… and yet.

Whichever way the arrival in Cardiff of one of the great strike bowlers of the last generation feels major. Like a real story, like some kind of dream: ‘beyond, mun’.

But unless our eyes have deceived us, the Proper Quick South African has indeed been transported into our midst, pausing only to check out the Taff for encouraging ripples.

In the football warm-up, he looks relaxed and happy to jog around, with frankly little evidence of the elite- level threat he poses when that smaller, more familiar pill nestles in his right hand. He seems rather smiley and good-natured, in fact.

Things change a little when the fielding drills start. That arm twitches and flexes – begins to unfurl. We watch and hope (along with his coach, no doubt) that he’s warmed right through.

Later he’ll be mean, or rather purposeful and muscular in exactly the kind of way you’d expect. Like a slightly nastier (and slightly-but-crucially quicker) Anderson. And at the moment of this later, without sounding too weird, it’s mildly electrifying just looking at the bloke at the top of his run. Dale Steyn. Here. At Glammy.

Of course we could come over all cynical and hypothesize about the further trampling of everything that’s dear to us, by the relentless march of capitalism. And later we may. But for now (6pm) I prefer to plug into the charge and live a little off of it. He could well (couldn’t he?) turn out to be One a The Boys, get the whole Being Welsh thing, move into a semi in Aberdare and see out his career at the Swalec. So let’s enjoy! It’s Dale Steyn, mun!

Chill; cut through the businessness and the jetlagness of all this and watch the fella bowl. Without over-theorising or even noting the alleged facts about him not turning that tattooed arm over much, for yonks, because either other tactical choices were there or batsmen failed to recognise the threat that is Dale Steyn and hoiked him around the park a bit. Yes – cut out the background noise – simple tends to be good, right?

In truth, pre-arriving at the Swalec, the only in-depth analysis I allowed myself was on the #ohtimmytimmy issue. How might a Steyn/van der Gugten strike force gel? (If indeed they line up together?)

Might Glammy’s new-new legend (Dale) fire up the storm first, or might the fledgling legend step up and make some brilliantly bold, boyishly challenging statement, aimed at Dale and his coach, as well as Bopara and co?

Were/are the two Glammy quicks going to *get on famously* or will Crofty need to manage some diplomatic issue behind the scenes?

And are they actually both going to play?

Surely!

Fast forward an hour and yes they are but turns out Glammy bat first, so speculation re the pecking order is immediately less significant than whether Rudolph’s slash to cover carried or not. Ump says ‘yes’ so out strolls the skipper for another disappointingly measly score.

As he’s followed fairly promptly by Lloyd the early signs aren’t good but the cool, thick air and spongy outfield suggest this could be a bowler’s night. Tough to predict a par score in this autumnal chill.

Meanwhile (because there were other folks on the pitch), some of us were momentarily mildly diverted by Quinn (of Essex) – seen live for the first time, I confess. He proves good value. Not only did he slamdunk two bouncers unplayably high in his opening overs but his movement generally suggested stiltwalking of a rather under-rehearsed kind. He was, however, hugely willing in the field – the kind of bloke you really love if he’s one of yours.

Glammy stutter. Ingram smashes one to mid-off, who catches with nonchalant focus well above his head. The runrate is not special; the home fans are shuffling somewhat, in their seats.

There follows the highlight of the Glamorgan innings by some distance; young Donald playing a skilled, mixed, mature knock employing an impressive variety of strokes – most of which looked like Authentic Cricket. He gets a deserved 50. Glammy get to 140 but by any measure this does feel light.

The change of innings either goes too quickly or I’m simply not psychologically ready for the next bit. The bit I travelled for.

Steyn opens up… and starts with a pearler. Immaculate fourth stump line with a shade of drift. Cruelly, it’s Donald who drops the sharpish but straightforward chance at slip. Very first ball.

I get most of the way through the thought that ‘this is what we want’ when Steyn backs that up with another which breezes past the outside edge. He’s moving nicely. Okaaay it looks quickish rather than frightening; two straight balls are caressed through the on side by Bopara – one for four. Honours even.

Van der Gugten then comes haring in from the Riverside End. Heavier in the chest, perhaps he bowls a tad quicker than Steyn, accelerating sharply as he approaches the crease, dander markedly up. He nails Bopara (caught behind) in his first over.

But then things change: what the bowlers are doing seems suddenly irrelevant. Ryder’s hands simply take charge – respecting neither the Maestro nor the Young Pretender. There’s one of those shifts in momentum that feels decisive… until you check the overs total… and it says 5. Time yet.

The game is inexplosive but yes, we’re muttering that Essex have established what feels like a measure of control but when Ryder is brilliantly caught at mid-on, we wonder.

Steyn returns, having switched ends, looking fired-up, but is immediately dispatched for four through cover point. He means it now, though – running in freely and with intent. We like this, this smacks of determination and Proud Man Earning Living rather than Soldier of Fortune. He looks an athlete, he looks game.

Sadly, it just doesn’t quite happen for him. The man is patently unlucky more than once as the batsmen go airborne (but) generally the Eagles are steering the ball into space and easing towards the win.

When TimmyTimmy fluffs a stop out in the deep and another four is etched against Steyn’s name, he’s entitled to be disappointed; this is not going to be a glorious, victorious entrance. He fires down just that one over – his third – and then it’s all change again as Glammy run through the carousel of bowlers in search of that ‘critical’ breakthrough.

Strangely, Westley gifts them that when heaving and missing. But it’s too late, in tactical terms to bring out the quicks again – too few runs to play with. Essex are 101 for 3 off 12 at this point; they need only 38 for the win.

Soon enough, they get them – with 22 balls to spare.

So we had a whiff of something brilliant. Steyn’s first two deliveries were top; his third over was sharp, rhythmic, committed. Let’s hope he gets some luck.

 

The Brilliance of Games.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

It’s not just the prompt that is #MHAW16 that makes me think of the link between sport and wellbeing. At the risk of sounding like some faker or fanatic, I never really divert from that #caseforsport thing.

In my daily life I’m completely in the business of getting kids moving and smiling. My head continually swims with responses to sport – and for those in the London Borough of Brent, nope I’m not necessarily talking competitive sport here. I’m talking activity. I’m talking freedom, movement – the finding of skills, the building of rhythms and confidences. For me the brilliance of games are an obvious and essential way in to both social and academic skills as well as a rich but direct route to joy and achievement.

Let’s put something daft and challenging out there. I believe that we could radically improve the health, wellbeing and academic development of children if we put the much-vaunted Physical Literacy Framework right at the centre of Primary School life. Or more exactly – because I don’t want to get bogged down in This Year’s Ideological Re-structure – if we expanded our understanding of the role of physical education.

Decent coaches and/or teachers know PE can be used broadly (but phenomenally successfully) to gather unwilling or disaffected or ‘non-academic’ children in to the curriculum, as well as boosting levels of engagement and achievement in bright kids. It provides a way in – even with those who initially lack co-ordination.

Good coaches re-calibrate the challenge of the game and feed encouragement into the faces of children. They hear them and guide them and praise them towards some tiny- gargantuan triumph… like making a catch or swatting a ball off a tee crisply, with a deeply satisfying clump. In these moments lives can (honestly) be changed.

If I tell you I know that during every session I run something pret-ty damn profound happens that isn’t about me. It’s about the fact of that transformation through the game. A boy or girl *getting it*.

Maybe that getting it is the execution of a single (or probably more likely) a compound skill; or maybe it’s the moment when a lifetime of healthy activity kickstarts, because the child felt something magic… and they were seen… and they were heard; their skill or value was noted in the handbook of the world; their mark – maybe so often ignored, erased or simply un-made – was made, recognised, appreciated.

These are revelatory  moments and they can and should herald wonderful leaps forward.

Children can and often are welcomed in to curriculum work, to academic development via progress in games. (And yes, I am placing the games before the Proper School Work here. If we worked this way round more often rather than bundled on into SATS or some other ‘measurement’ then we might develop more confident, capable and sophisticated young thinkers. And that’s what we want, right?)

Through games children can learn co-operation, awareness, that sense of place – both in terms of belonging and in terms of hierarchy. Whilst the former tends to be powerfully helpful, the latter may turn out a real-world scramble that often needs supporting but must be negotiated.

Beyond the ‘obvious’ skill development comes the progress re- a child’s ability to make intelligent (tactical) decisions. Sport implies and needs the hot-wiring of judgements – often adrenalin-fuelled, often exhilirating. Such moments are surely growth spurts for the mind?

All this over and above the mere movement; the mere propping up of the universe and the NHS *because we got fittish kids*. PE dictates an increasingly alarmingly sedentary generation move something other than their texting or snapchatting fingers.

So mentally and physically we win and we win. I say we celebrate that and prioritise that by making it genuinely central to Primary Education (as opposed to merely re-branding it Physical Literacy and continuing that tendency to significantly underachieve.)

I hear the arguments from those who had a ‘bad experience’ of PE at school and who fear that insensitive blokes with scary beards or gruff manners might revisit all that in the playgrounds of their own children. But coaches or PE Teachers are way better than this now. Things are simply waaay more sophisticated and child-centred.

Coaches bring new levels of understanding and yes sensitivity to games these days. The kids who ‘would never get picked’ are involved now – they share in the activity. Far from being by-passed or damaged, children are more often found/released/directed.

Personally, after a couple of sessions I frequently invite children to build their own game – having prepared the ground with questions about fairness, structure, the sharing of the bat. It’s massively challenging.

There’s no hiding from deepish, philosophical issues because we’ve established that abstracted groundrule that ‘we’re looking for a way to make this work’. We’ve dug into the difficulties about the primeval urge to be the batter; we’ve asked ourselves what a good number might be for the bowler to bowl and those two(!) batters to bat. We’ve considered the shape of things; grappled with social, existential, practical stuff – stuff about time and number and patience and feeling and nerve. We’ve put the Education into the Physical.

Then we go play. And the children choose and negotiate and muscle through that barrier towards sharing.

I don’t think I’m overplaying the levels of mental/academic consideration we’re looking towards here. This is meant to support engagement on a zillion levels but it may (on a purely intellectual stratum) be a separate phenomenon to wellbeing. So let’s briefly look at that.

Young humans generally love to move – despite the aforementioned epidemic in sedentary behaviour – I maintain they/we are stimulated by and enjoy movement. Not because some coach or teacher tells us that games are good or important or healthy but because (when we are guided or supported well) something positive floods through our bodies.

That may be a profoundly individual sensation or it may be something communally-felt. There may be a process that folks in labs could unpick for us: it may be adrenalin/endorphins or some other biological/chemical surge that frankly I am hugely underinformed about. I’m not that interested in the mechanics – that’s not real to me.

What is real is the smiling and the running and the delight. The development. The newness and achievement and growth. Children (in this case) freed and uplifted or unshackled because someone got them moving. That’s real – even if it may not be measured.

#MHAW16 may have pointed some of us towards greater awareness of issues. I applaud that. I also get that my subject matter here typically rests in the non-acute area of interventions into wellbeing. However, as a positive bloke I’m happy to bundle through the politesse around all this and daub a simple, positive message: about sport being a way in.

I have seen Physical Education or Activity support those feeling or struggling with isolation, non-engagement, misunderstanding, chronic lack of confidence, furious anger. I have watched as ‘difficult kids’ are seduced into the struggle or the joyful search; as their minds flash with genius and pain and learning. I have seen teeny, gargantuan worlds light up – often.

 

 

Maybe slow is good?

~ bowlingatvincent ~ 2 Comments

The retirement of Charlotte Edwards does have that ‘end of an era’ feel. And there’s an interesting consensus around that change, as folks recognise the need to fit the boom/dive-tastic times.

That whole thing of us sprinting or going headlong into the cricket future, wearing Beats and Nikes, interests me. Who owns this notion that we’re supple and down wiv da kids, in an athletic, sexually-charged kindofaway? Or maybe more precisely how come that idea suddenly owns us so completely? Men, women, all having to be lithe and sassy and bright and quicksilver and strong: how did that become how now is? Because it did.

In the sense that

a) I love fielding, myself

b) I get that cricket needs to feel and be exciting

c) there’s something seductive about a changing universe and more movement within it

I can see why we’re going this way. But this doesn’t sit well with some of the finest coaches and Properest Cricket People I know. Forgive the postmodern mix of metaphors but they speak of Edwards’ removal as a further nick in the buttresses; as though we’re condemning or easing something away into a slower, duller, dodgy-kneesier past… and there’s something wrong or offensive about that.

Charlotte Edwards might be a symbol, then, for The Construction That Is our memory of cricket. Something in her brilliant, foursquare Englishness, together with that whiff of both grittiness and patience smacks suddenly – maybe jarringly? – of yesterday.

So we didn’t need to be in the room with the former England skipper and her newish coach to know that Robinson will have said something about the need to quicken things, to pass the baton to a new generation of athletes more comfortable with absolutely legging it, or flinging themselves, or clearing the front foot and smashing it. Or we know he inferred all that.

Watch the BBC interview http://www.bbc.co.uk/sport/cricket/36263023 (in which Edwards’ anger and hurt are palpable – as is her dignity in the moment) and the subtext is that through her shock a brutal acquiescence was bulldozed. That Way (your way) no longer fits; change (this change) must come. And you know this ain’t personal.

It may not be personal but I’m guessing it feels that way to Lottie… and to those who inhabit what I’m going to lazily call the traditionalist wing of the #cricketfamily. They sense repercussions or reverberations here which bother their yaknow, buttresses.

But let’s applaud the skipper in.  Her feats and achievements will be heavily recorded in the media in the next few hours – more heavily, in fact than any previous captain of the England Women’s cricket team – because Edwards has been outstanding and because (despite malingering #everydaysexism?) the profile of the game has never been higher.

The reluctantly retiring captain had persisted through the ages, being a fixture from the times of dark obscurity – when (looking at at the papers, the telly) it seemed barely anybody cared – into the era of women professionals and the #WSL. Lottie’s been England’s other queen, similarly immovable until now, a quiet permanence as the colours got noisier all around.

Coach Robinson’s aspiration for a particular kind of change is a function of the times, then. He wants a new level of dynamism as well as a younger leader. The tide of Contemporary Positivism is carrying all before it – we get that. But maybe out of respect for Edward’s place in the iconography and possibly because these things interest me, I’d like to air some of the counter-arguments to this flood towards high-octane norms.

Maybe it’s great that cricket can be a bastion against quickness? Maybe the world needs someone to shush it the **** up now and then? Maybe we need to be ver-ry careful we don’t go excluding guile and craft, when we’re rushing about the place. Maybe *philosophically* it’s cricket that’s the antidote to i-phones and t’internet and cards that you swipe and earpieces you wear when you’re out shopping or walking the dog! Maybe slow and patient and thoughtful and tactical are good – precious and good?

One of cricket’s great strengths is surely this defiantly uncool capacity to build gorgeously-painfully slowly. Unlike nearly everything else.If it has a nature, it is not characteristically about instants – or instant gratification. On times it may even be viable to have a kip whilst you’re watching… and not miss anything that matters. That may be unique and that may be good.

Many of us love the idea that martians are watching, mystified but rapt as earth-beings (who typically buzz frenetically about) occasionally do this thing where they take five days to fail to conclude anything very much… then call it a Test! We hope they are doing martian A-Levels in What The Hell’s All That About and How Can It Fit With Everything Else?

Of course I’m bending arguments here, cross-relating absurdly – being perverse. Particularly as I’m going now to confess that broadly I think cricket benefits from what we’ll simply term greater athleticism. But the point may be that the development towards increased or (I like the word) heightened dynamism might yet prove to be a trend falling in line with very immediate perceptions of what seems relevant… or saleable. And that therefore genuinely profound understandings or skills or expressions of the game might be being under-appreciated in this hyperactive now.

It may be offensive to Charlotte Edwards to be cartoonised within this beery hypothesis – if so I apologise. She is a great of the women’s game and my intention is more to respect her than use her as makeweight in some crusty mither about (eeeeh) Modern Times.

Clearly the Kent and Southern Vipers captain thinks she still has plenty to offer – even if the England selectors think Edward’s running and her run-rate pulse too low now, for the international challenge. She may yet, through a surge of imperious form that would surprise nobody, make the most satisfying statement around all this. She may say that class is permanent and it defies the clamour. Indeed, I personally hope this captain, this icon, this monarch does – and in doing so sends a reminder.

 

Smells like team spirit.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

So does the Leicester Thing mean anything for other sports? Does the shockingly beautiful but relentless surge that carried the Tinker Man’s team through transfer elsewhere? Of course it does.

Not because there’s some template here, that Ranieri has demystified.  Not because the ‘reversion’ to simple qualities of honest work and togetherness explains everything in a way we can cart across to cricket or rugby.

This is not boxes being ticked so much as people (players) being transformed or galvanised together. And fans from all over – from outside footie, too – have loved or bought into the excitement around that; it’s felt refreshing, uplifting; it’s revalidated that wonderful but tarnished word ‘game’.

In our different way we get that the Leicester gaffer’s gathered and intuited together a powerfully more-than-the-sum-of-it’s-parts blend which has (rather than being one-dimensional but hellish durable) outrun, out-competed and often swamped the opposition in a flood of complex, focussed, inviolable energy.

There’s nothing simple about this except the sense that Ranieri’s absolutely nailed something – something like Peak Manager – in this remarkable process.

We have to be careful we don’t patronise his personal achievement whilst deconstructing events most commonly described as ‘unbelievable.’ We’d all concede that theoretically Leicester City have no right to win a Premier League; not in the era of oil sheiks and unthinkable piles of monopoly money – both of which they plainly lack. Let’s mark, then, the fact that Ranieri has done something truly rare; sustained a run from nowhere over an entire season.

Even those with a rare eye for talent would not have recognised Champions in their pre-season squad photo. Mahrez, Vardy and maybe Okazaki constitute the fellas high-profile clubs might have coveted in August. (I’ve just flicked through their ‘roster’ and recommend you do the same should you think this a significant underestimation of their star quality. We may argue on this but the central point seems reasonable; that Leicester have done something incredible, given their resources on all fronts.)

What factors have been key, then, really?

Broadly Ranieri has set his side up to play brisk footie at a highish tempo. They dare to exemplify the old virtues of teamwork and solidity within a four-four-two framework and defensively unashamedly challenge convention by fielding stoppers – blokes who can head and clout things and who dream not of overlapping charges nor cultured forward interventions.

Forward of the Huth-men, they’re quick, tough and mobile and in the case of Mahrez in particular, precociously gifted. But they are not Real Madrid. They are spectacularly galactico-free, in fact.

So there is romance in their relative plainness? Maybe.

The Leicester City defence have been like something out of a 1970’s comic. Or a movie where giants wade out of the sea. They  hold and shove; they are intimidatingly ‘physical’. They make that statement.

How much of this is policy and how much the ‘nature’ of the individuals I leave to you. But if it’s been their achilles heel in terms of popularity, not so re- results; it’s been a key part of the winning bundle.

Some can’t quite get past the idea that this is a freakishly poor quality season, with Man Utd, Arsenal, City and Chelsea all caught somewhere between underachievement and raw embarrassment. And that by implication This Was The Year when summatz daft might happen. Others have just got on with enjoying Leicester’s success.

Whatever our view of the tactical masterstrokes (or flukes), the philosophical undercurrent(s) or the uniqueness or otherwise of the Leicester Phenomena, we all seem drawn to a single essence. It’s about spirit. They bristle with it…  and most of us rate that.

But where does that come from? (Because maybe this is transferable, or applicable to other team sports – maybe to all?!?) How do you get that stuff to work… like this?

The gaffer sets the tone. At all levels. The manager or coach is a presence – a force or a vacuum, maybe. This presence may be expressed in the classically Churchillian way, through brilliant, inspirational, possibly ‘set-piece’ speechifying or it may be through by a sort of incremental handing over of responsibility or leadership to key individuals. Or some of both. In either case it is pretty close to critical that the manager is believed – respected.

Unsurprisingly, I think it’s likely that Ranieri has provided both inspiration and inspired delegation/organisation. He may appear  likably quirky but he is shrewd and demanding and tough. He is The Boss. He can cuddle and charm but he can deliver a serious bollocking.

I’ve been in dressing-rooms where I felt ten feet tall post the team-talk. I’ve been in dressing-rooms where we all felt embarrassed for the manager’s lack of weight; where the obvious irrelevance of the leader’s opinions was a rank embarrassment. He was lost, as was the room. Fatal.

Coaching at every level is the art of understanding and knowing your players. Getting into their heads; maximising their efficiency as a group by maximising their belief and their contributions as individuals. Finding different ways to motivate different humans. The efficacy of all tactical and strategic plans is contingent upon this relationship, this galaxy of relationships, driven and directed by the coach.

This does not mean the coach has be an orator par excellence – although he or she needs to be able to command the space. Pithy can be perfect.

During the Rugby World Cup, Graham Henry wrote brilliantly and fascinatingly on how he learned to withdraw his ego from coaching. How he latterly grew big enough to embed virtually all the motivation and the tactical decision-making within the team. His All Blacks evolved into a group that practically ran itself – once the cultural stuff had been coached or understood.

Extraordinarily, Henry barely spoke during the allegedly critical minutes before a match. His players knew where they were at and simply did not need further input from him. The work had been done, over months, years before and specific plans for specific opponents addressed during the preceding week or so. So the coach just shut the **** up. For me this is right up there with diving through a crowd to score knowing your going to get your head kicked in.

Ranieri may not have been at Leicester long enough to embed that amount of strength into the team. But he has clearly done something magnificent – something which is his.

Leicester City have chased and harried and out-passed and outwitted the Premier League. We watch their fabulously collective energy and we recognise something powerful and cheering for the game – maybe for all games? Sure it’s something to do with our love of the underdog and our revulsion towards Big Money but none of this need undermine our enjoyment, or the sensation that (dinglydong!) our faith may yet be restored.

Bravo, Claudio!! And thank you.

 

 

 

Watch the ball.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

Some of us can remember (faintly – if I dare use the word in this context) when David Coleman described Asa Hartford as a whole- hearted player. He was. But unfortunately for the Beeb’s lead commentator (and owner/inventor of the Colemanballs phenomenon) he also famously had a hole in his heart, making this a headline-grabber of a booboo, for which the purveyor of the similarly memorable

Juantorena opens his legs… and shows his class!

could only profusely and publicly apologise. The world forgave him and re-positioned before the footie, or athletics, and/or virtually everything else and waited… for the next one.

I haven’t yet heard James Taylor described as a lovably titchy but big-hearted bloke but I expect the moment is coming. Because he plainly is. How else could he haul himself into contention in such a defiantly gutsy, as well as impressively cool fashion? And how else could he stand at short leg – three foot two from the sweet spot – and watch the ball into his outstretched hand whilst knowing this baybee’s reeeaally gonna hurt? If you were reaching for a word to describe the fella’s essence it might unavoidably be some extension of or derivative from that deliciously evocative bundle of letters h.e.a.r.t.

Taylor is smallish but appears implacable in the face of that contemporary international standard – Attack of the Psyched-up Beanpoles. He seems as comfortable as most when the cherry’s whistling around his ears. There are fascinating arguments around whether his strikingly human scale enables or complicates his playing of the quicks but what seems reasonably clear is his ability to deal with that stuff. He’s a bonafide player (in at least two formats) in the highish middle order.

Goes without saying that Taylor’s agility helps in both the rough and tumble of the field and in terms of his batting: good to be tiggerish and tigerish when you’re up against spin and speed, eh?

But hold: we’ve drifted into the wrong tense. Sadly James’s playing, his actual cricket, is done. Let’s doff our caps amiably and respectfully by noting his all round and genuinely full contribution, without either being maudlin or patronising the lad in any way. He was a proper international player; he was kosher and compact and I liked his style: that latter point being important (I hope.)

But this is not an obituary. James Taylor is bright and capable and by all accounts a great bloke to have around. Cricket is saying

we need you, fella.

Offers are already being made with respect to roles which may be helpfully or otherwise gathered under the ‘ambassadorial’ category. Naturally and rightfully. Whilst there is inevitably something sentimental about such developments the harder-headed truth would be that most of us might expect him to make a further real and intelligent contribution to his county – to the game. That’s what he does.

Of  course that frisson around Taylor’s condition lingers. We can’t know what’s viable on this – not for some weeks or months. If it’s unthinkable for him to hurl himself around then playing avenues have been closed: that’s the hurtful but easy bit. Where that leaves him in terms of the do-able will be a longer game, a test match-like, tactical resolving of deep meaningful things which I’m again confident Taylor is well-equipped to deal with. It’s another kind of dance around another kind of bouncer.

I can get away with saying that, I reckon. I’m *entitled*. Check out my upper left chest where there’s a quirky wee bulge -referred to in the Walton household as my ‘canna sardines’. It’s an At Rest pacemaker, the result of my own freakish heart issues. If nothing else it levers open the opportunity to indulge in voice-of-experience paternalism towards the boyish Mr Taylor and sorree but I’m not entirely inclined to pass up such an opening.

I can say stuff like

James, this really is just a beginning.

Like

Jimmy lad, the world *really might* be just about energy. And there really might be a way to understand everything as being invincible… or not. And you might choose (like me) to believe that your own being is in proportion to your belief in the invincibility of your own energy. This is not foolhardy. This is predicated on knowledge and awareness of where you’re at: it just frees you up to be fearless and good – to express your new maximum.

I might say that, if I got past security with my grapes and my takeaway…. and past the introductory flannel.

JT’s ‘situation’ is not the same as mine – that’s true in so many ways. But I do get some of the bewilderment and disappointment and fear he will surely be feeling, as do so many others. We’re united in the flux. What I decided pretty sharpish was to defy it.

So no space for loss. No space either for daft, dangerous, recklessness. Instead find that calm and that steeliness. Watch the ball, in fact. Then hit it where you choose.

I hope the above renders the brief, soul-brotherly, sub-van Goghian ‘hearty handshake’ I’m about to offer superfluous. I hope Titch (and everybody else) get that I’m looking to offer something a tad more inspiring than sympathy.

Hearts are the most remarkable things- maybe irrespective of condition. Tick through the list of  skills which take them soaring past mere functionality: from generosity, defiance, courage and on to love. Remind yourself how endlessly, endlessly wonderful they are. Then come on, big boy. Gimme that hug.

 

 

…Which plainly won.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

It’s been a blast. An Indian one – sinuous and surreal and somehow both massive and intimate.

Afghanistan have charmed and entertained us; Dharamsala has blown our minds and now The Windies have doubled up on their Champions dance. Things are done; plans and hopes exhausted. Perhaps it’s time to reflect on where this leaves us.

It’s been a blast, despite an infuriating whiff of anarchy around ticketing and venues and the weirdly Old-World thrum of intransigence re the status or value of Associate Nations.

There’s an argument, of course, that global cricket governance needs to experience a similarly explosive culture change to that which rumbles so excitingly violently through the game itself but such was the seductive power of a good deal of #WT20 that I will scoot irresponsibly on past this whole conversation. (Others will and are nobly unpicking the pretence, in any case.) Much better and fairer and more appropriate to revel in the plusses.

We can do this most realistically, however if we pause briefly to ask if there is – in this Age of The Boomathon – any way this format at this level could fail to be tectonic entertainment?

Now we have legs clearing and blades voluptuously carving from ball one – arguably not.

Aha but let’s be positive! (Let’s be fair, in fact.) From an England (and Wales) supporters viewpoint I/we can now luxuriate in the knowledge that finally we have a team that gets this. Going forward – as the politicians and planners and coaches and posers and everybody else now says – the single most significant plus is the fabulous forward lurch, the progression that now sees us ready to compete in this format. This  may be bigger than achieving a place in the final: because we aren’t either flunking this or faking it now. England are a force and you (everybody else) better believe that.

Clearly you do.

Beyond this steepling climb into credibility and competitiveness, the view into the milieu nouveau is comforting – possibly inspiring. Crucially, it’s also inseparable from a nailed-on expectation of solid entertainment. (My thesis on How Exactly, This T20 Stuff Materialised, will be serialised in The Daily Doosra sometime soonish but meantime just do a one-minute-of-applause-thing for the happy coincidence of (R)evolutionary Sporting Dynamism and Full-on 21st Century thrill-grazing.)

Then check out these four boomers.

  • #WT20 was great because of the fabulous, diverse geographical/sociological landscape it inhabited. The continent that is India.
  • Yes we can give the administrators a slap but no we won’t waste energy on that: not now. But that will come. Now, enjoy!
  • England achieved.
  • Certainly Root and maybe Buttler confirmed themselves as World Stars, here and now, in the Boomathon.

Broadly, there’s been a change of nature in short-format cricket which inclines it towards drama. We know that now and we (England) are feeding off its energy, receiving the revelations; responding to and reflecting the sheer excitement.

What we fans can’t yet know is whether experience or experiences around the new and renewing sexed-up beast will be mediated in time by familiarity/inertia/ boredom. Fortunately the climax of the men’s tournament in particular (although the women’s ran it close in the ‘Advisory; watch from behind the sofa!’ stakes) re-nonsensed unlikely fears of any encroaching ambivalence.

Four more *absolute rockets*.

  • The gist of this is that England are of the essence of this format (now.) The Blokes, anyway. Expect the Women to return to some serious soul-searching and an abrupt, significant gear-change.
  • Willey kindof discovered himself, maybe? Which could be interesting.
  • Our Blokes are a danger to anyone but…
  • Just a few moments of inspiration or brutal, brutal hitting can have this thing done. T20 really is pop. Only unlicensed, dangerous, punky pop.

In the #WT20 Final, after England had unburied themselves from a frankly sickening start – mainly due to yet more brilliance and guts from Root – a young lad called Brathwaite unleashed a shortish but shockingly terminal barrage. It did feel like an eruption, being violent and beautiful. It crashed through of our senses; it was a supra-conclusive statement of something in a new-torn, invincible language. It was magic but kinda scary.

But that was the end. Previously, with the undoubtedly strong England batting line-up inserted, things began with a whimper not a roar. Both Roy and Hales departed jarringly early as the innings bolted towards then flirted with – please god no! -humiliation. Skipper Morgan almost got his lines together…but no. Butler and Root battled against and almost stemmed things… but no.

Strikes me that one of the challenges we’re yet to resolve in the new T20 universe is how swiftly and mercilessly we apportion blame to failing batsmen. They’re ALL supposed to give it a thrash, right? So, risk factors are to some extent factored out.

The Roy/Hales #fail-ure here provides plenty of scope for #bantz or bar-room brawling: why wouldn’t it? World Cup Final: stall to be set. Opinions will gloriously differ but unarguable surely that their premature exit contributed to England’s descent into flip-chart-cartoon-chaos mode? (Meaning it wasn’t good.)

Mind you, Goodie-Baddies in all of this were a W Indies side absolutely on the rampant side of pumped. They forced the England stumble. They were close to unplayable, being everywhere in the field – being a presence in the gaps. We knew Morgan’s side batted deep but from early on it seemed somehow only Root and Buttler might offer resistance, never mind a threat.

The former was again magnificent. Always less likely than Buttler to clear the rope but purer and less brittle. Whilst he stayed…

Painfully and somewhat surprisingly, the Yorkshireman got a tad greedy or a tad sloppy and ballsed up a trick shot. A disappointing end – one he visibly railed against. But he’d been England’s rock again. Buttler and Willey snorted or smote some defiance but the score seemed 20 or 30 light at 150-something.

Then the crazy stuff really started. The ultimately triumphant W Indies innings stumbled and stalled as England’s had done. Root winkled a couple out, sharpish and joyously. The pressure piled up and occasionally blew. Scores were comparable, as were levels of angst. This was no strut – not for Gayle, the feared colossus,  nor for anyone else. Everybody not actually in the ground was – yes! – behind a sofa.

England’s bowling was/is by reputation less convincing than the batting. Except maybe at The Death, when both Jordan and Stokes have repeatedly shown heroic levels of both skill and nervelessness. Another lurch forward and Stokes found himself, ball in hand with a *more than decent chance* of steering his country home. In the World Cup Final!

There is no question that Stokes is a) brilliant b) big-hearted and c) biologically/genetically programmed to perform sport to an elite level. It didn’t matter. Brathwaite dismissed him for four consecutive maximums to obliterate the ‘fact’ of a bottom-clenchingly tight finish.

We could pile in with the pyroclastic metaphors and the references to New Earth Being Produced. During this Last Over/New Geological Era Finale Thing. Because Brathwaite unmade or sea-floor-spreaded all that too, whilst he was dissecting and discombobulating Stokesy and England. How could he do that stuff? It was impossible. Times four.

We can argue the toss about what Stokes did or didn’t do but better to relax and actually to smile. Brathwaite made him and his lifetime of practice (and his weeks of death-bowling plans) an irrelevance. On the count of one, two, three, four.

Importantly, Stokes will be back. But this is Brathwaites’ story. He won a World Cup and made the most wonderful mockery of everything. Everything except sport… which plainly and simply won.

Root and branch and lifeblood.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

The argument (made by England skipper Eoin Morgan to the BBC) that Joe Root is the most complete batsman England have ever produced is a rather striking one. One we might reasonably and fairly immediately file under hyperbole; post-match, post-UNREAL swashbuckling victory euphoria. Because if ever there was a moment for delusional disproportion then this was it: Root being godlike in an environment from which most would have (actually) sought escape, one way or another. Instead Ar Joseph unflinchingly but beautifully built his way forward, denying the Munch-like scream of the moment, dismantling the Proteas attack.

For this most English of English heroes to dismiss the whirlwind around him with such calm, such style and without resorting to the violent bludgeoning of the innocent ball was remarkable… and maybe remarkably attractive and rich and necessary. Whether Root’s genius catapaults him beyond England’s Finest Ever is another matter. Frankly I’m not going there; not now; not without several clarity-inducing beers inside me.

Instead let’s pop back into the broader arguments. T20 is clearly the coming force but if there is a concern around its appeal this may centre over the car-crashness, the impact-frenzyness, the potentially divisive or even repulsive quality of the Boomathon that it has become. (I know! Tad perverse to intuit the least concrete reservations of a tiddly proportion of traditionalist fans here but stay with me; a Bigger Picture will emerge. Judge me then.) Where were we?

T20. Yes we love it and need it to make us relevant into a new age. Yes we accept that there is some meaningful upskilling going on as well as possible subversions to Wise Old (Longer Format) Truths – fielding and levels of ingenuity in both batting and bowling codes being notable contributors to the positives here. And yes, critically and unanswerably, we acknowledge cricket is suddenly unthinkable without T20.

But in the ever-fuller gallop, are there implications for the sustainability of all this – or more precisely, are there dangers in being T20-centric? Is there something inevitably concerning about a dynamic charge – a revolution – that is so-o relentlessly breathless? My answer to that is I’m not sure, that I am uneasy with the consideration-vacuum implied, that I do wonder.

Again I fear the accusation of miserablism. So I repeat my allegation that I am the least miserable/most enthusiastically positive bloke I know and that I support and accept forward energy as our lifeblood. I also get that excitement means numbers and that maan, we need numbers.

There must be debate about how T20 feels and looks and evolves and is structured or levered into our domestic structures but yup – there must T20. The question (or one question) might be whether people weary of the smashes, the fireworks, the ramped-up ramp-shots? And how, if boom-fatigue did set in, could we plan or address that easing back? Where does cricket go if (let’s say) new supporters tire of seeing Gladiator X carve his way to another killing?

Backtracking into my crease, I accept this scenario simply may not arise. Maybe I’m just casting the idea out there to see if anyone understands the universe this way(?) The fact that Root and de Villiers (for example) span the ludicrously operatic skills-dimension with such majesty and ease suggests T20 will never be the brittle theatre I almost fear. Long may their talent keep us safe.

Certainly the Yorkshireman made a nonsense of my argument yesterday. He/we can’t claim he did it solo – not after the stunning barrage from Hayes and Roy – who sent Steyn (arguably the best and toughest and canniest genuinely quick bowler in the world, remember) packing. Root did still, however, come in with the proverbial ‘lot to do’. He then performed beyond the capacity of nearly everybody on the planet – hence that hyperbole from his captain.

He steered the ball as much as he smote it. He seemed – absurdly – to be in his element whilst we were either delirious or contemplating a brisk walk out until things were done. It was one of those personal triumphs that go beyond the tribalist norms; he was rapturously received, when his effort was cut tantalisingly short, by an almost entirely neutral crowd. He might almost have been at Headingley.

Morgan was effusive in part because of the natural excitement following an audacious and vital win but also because Root really is special.

Comparisons are fatuous with previous eras because now is so obviously and uniquely Peak Dynamism. Sobers or Botham or Boycott or Bradman – who all faced fearsome opposition – faced nothing like the levels of athleticism we’re seeing now. The context was substantially different and probably less challenging in terms of its range; despite uncovered pitches etc etc. We could conceive of Sobers and Botham being transported into the modern era and adapting (probably remaining gloriously god-like, in fact) but many of us would rather simply deny the validity of joining any of these crazily abstract dots.

What we could reasonably extrapolate, however, is that Joe Root is pret-ty masterful across the cricket arts. He has the technical brilliance and temperament to be a genuine Test Star. He has the running and the hands of a short-format hustler. He has, as yesterday confirmed, the timing and craft to power his way towards the unthinkable in T20. Even when the pressure is mega-epic-acute.

Joe Root is our world star. He’s precious not simply because of his tremendous gifts, but his personality – his capacity to return us to simple, joyful matters of sport. That boyishness. He’s great company, too, being plainly a ‘good lad’, ‘one of us or ours’, a charmer and a laugh. But let’s value him higher yet; in covering all bases across the playing formats, making the case for skill as well as muscle, he may be holding the whole shebang together.

This Charmless Man.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ 1 Comment

Caught merely the gist of a column the other day about charmlessness, in relation – I believe – to the Six Nations and epitomised – I believe – by Dylan Hartley. Have to confess at the outset that what with coaching and taxiing the kids round the gaff, I did not read the article but was nevertheless struck by the life-affirming subtext that how players appear whilst executing the sport thing matters.

This is a civilising (ouch!) notion contradicted by the bullishness and result-oriented nature of much of the discourse around the daft games we love and fight about. Top Level sport (in particular) is so-o consumed by the means and process of securing victory that the quality, the measure of fulfillment around any given event has to some extent slipped from view and gone with it is the meaning and contribution of the fan – the one who watches and filters.

Wins are ground out – legitimately. Points are ‘everything’. Goals are still paying the rent.

All this would be unarguably okaaay but for the actually rather unsubtle shoulder-barging off of much of the colour or charm or richness of the game(s). Fans feel and maybe live through the wildly swinging doors of in-stadia experience, understanding and registering profound and also absurdly tangential stuff which (if coaches/managers/pundits are to be believed) apparently either didn’t feature, or stand irrelevant to the conversation. (I’m picturing everyone from Sam Allardyce to Andy Flower to Warren Gatland whilst saying this.)

Game-management is the thing and though we cannot deny the aspiration from Coach A to maximise his/her chances or narrow the dangers, there is surely a relatively negative inference here? Keep the thing orderly; shape it; direct it – provide the platform. All essential on the one hand but in contrast – even if understood as a either a pre-requisite or preamble to glorious, expressive dominance – unconvincing as a departure point towards heart-lifting poetry. And sport as we know can be poetry; liberated and rhythmic and giddy and beautifully-terrifyingly fickle.

So I make the argument for senses over sense. The audience knowing more than the player or coach – or certainly appreciating more. The audience being freer to love, less conditioned and constrained by the deathly need to win. Even those fans who phone in to say ‘we’d take that result anytime’; they don’t mean it, most of them. They mean to sound like coaches and players who screen the subtleties out because they need to protect themselves from the inevitable confusion and doubt that feeling all this might bring. Far safer to retreat into stats and meetings.

Of course plenty of evidence flies in the face of my hypothesis. How can Joe Root – the poster boy for brilliant, simple, expressive, almost childlike Playing of The Game exist, let alone thrive in the cynical world I describe? How could any ‘natural?’ And doesn’t the prevalence of talk from coaches on positivity and dynamism undermine this central accusation of cynicism and crassness at the core? Maybe it does.

But pausing to select a footballer or rugby star to insert into the Reasons To Be Cheerful category (and here I mean an all-round diamond geezer, gorgeously talented and whole)… I was struggling. Despite the magnificent levels of honourability and dedication and commitment in rugby, the sense (in the Northern Hemisphere at least) is of giants playing largely by rote. The football equivalent is further adrift again, being plagued by deceivers and posers and appalling egos.

Let me briefly develop this particular rant. I could get specific – or even personal given today’s events at Goodison Park- but let’s merely throw in the words Diego Costa, urge you to revisit the blog’s title and then shuffle forwards. Please. The extravagantly elbowed and foreheaded and indeed jawed one out-epitomises Hartley by a distance on our chosen theme. But yes – hastily – on!

Generally, sadly, I get precious little inspiration from footie these days and this is largely/precisely due to the charm deficit. Great that Leicester are flushing out the arrogance of the allegedly Big Four but the Premier League is surely characterised more by expensive barnets on underachieving heads than by authentic, Scholes-like genius? Fans know it feels

a) superficially exciting because it’s ‘open’
b) poor and in some measure fraudulent or expensive.

This reality is skilfully obscured by the sheer scale of the lurid behemoth that is Super Premier League Thing. Monopoly money. Corporate de-sensitising of the Actual Game-day. Pies at 5 or 6 quid. True the reassuringly tribal passions do remain but even they are being eroded; difficult to engage lungburstingly loyal mode when the blokes out there don’t seem bothered. Difficult to see the charm in shockingly high prices and mediocre quality sport and unlovable protagonists.

This then, broadly painted, is the challenge. In a word, mixed. You decide what applies to your team, your game.

As a conversation starter I’m saying that Dylan Hartley’s bland brutishness is merely and inevitably in contrast to Theo Walcott’s infuriatingly persistent adolescent blandness. But this leaves me feeling undersupplied. I know I’ve experienced richer fayre. I know it’s not unreasonable to insist on more. Because these essences, these defining-but-abstract things are appreciated, it’s incumbent on our Top Level People – players, coaches, directors of this and that – to provide us with authentic characters, with quality and with the charm that we deserve.

Beautiful Game.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

My ‘One a the Boys’ rating has always been somewhere between questionable and variable and what follows may do little to re-affirm my status as a fella you could comfortably share a pint and a kosher backslap with. Because I’m dealing in whimsy here; poetry of a sort; and the ‘b’ word comes out.

Let’s cut through that frisson sharply now and tell the story.

You know I’m a cricket coach and I go into schools and clubs to enthuse kids and generally lark about. You know I’m up for it to the point of (that word again) embarrassment – being foamaciously enthusiastic and committed as a whirlwind.

I’ve just been into schools in Fishguard and Goodwick– or as the demonstrably, audibly lovelier welsh words would have it – Abergwaun ac Wdig. Abergwaun, in February, doing cricket. It’s been fabulous.

We found an island of spectacular weather with that unsurpassably stunning winter light zapping from glorious sky to sea to river Gwaun, to asphalt or tarmac pitch. Literally brilliant – but coldish. All the more reason, then, for a certain Cricket Wales missionary to stir the enthusiasm rather than curb it. I went at it, in friendly-comedian and hopefully man-worth-listening-to mode.

Somehow, over three days, delivering sessions that were about multi-skills as much as cricket (movement between cones/hopping/catching/bouncing/listening because things change, right?) a happy and successful and invigorating and enjoyable mood was sustained. The weather was reflected. Children were challenged and entertained – they were distracted into listening.

The means for them to coach me how to throw was found, or built, from stories of disillusioned dogs (epic fail – more like a shot putt!) and ecstatic pooches chasing missiles hurled from a High Elbow and Long, Long Arm. A rare outbreak this, of Technical Stuff, in a matrix of buzz, movement, sharing bats, booming balls. The kids were in there, they were on it, they were up for it; I think maybe I barely gave them a choice.

In one school I ran three sessions in the morning. In the last of these I was joined by a (woman) teacher of some standing in the school whom I know not well, but well enough to respect as somebody who gets sport can offer. She was accompanied by another specialist teacher supporting a young boy with a particular challenge. In the sparkling sunshine, on a playground pitched quite alarmingly down from right to left as I cheerfully ‘prepped’ the session, we went to work.

First up I did do that thing where you invite the group to listen so they don’t miss any of the fun. I made it all a giggle and a deal. Then on we charged.

Through coloured ‘gates’ we had to shift – forward or back, jogging or hopping. Through four or ten or how many? Thirty?!? Then basketball/catching/clapping; always offering a calibrated challenge so that fliers could fly and fumblers find a happy way through. Then that throwing round the garden thing, with a partner and a target on the floor and (actually) the space and attention and confidence in the bank to talk technical, for just a mo’. Another step on my mission to teach half the western world (well, Pembs) that dog-launching life-skill.

Round the garden I went, with a dose of encouragement for everyone. Not just spooned to the wind blandly, but proffered into every face.

These or’nary kids really got it. They really listened, really threw with their feet, really tried to hit that target. It all flowed; my positive energy, their smiley determination. The teachers sat back contentedly, or joined in.

Timing-wise and ambience-wise a clumping of balls from tees to finish seemed absolutely appropriate. Fifteen minutes then, of building a way of sharing the bat – dumb questions from the coach finding a ‘taking it in turns’ protocol agreeable to all. It may have been the sunshine but this group shared magnificently, irresistibly proficient fielders passing the ball over to their less dynamic compadres for their turn to ‘give it some wallop.’

Not the most original way to end a session, it’s true. But in terms of learning arguably quite profound lessons on what makes games (or life?) work and combining that with a pure, liberating, hitting experience it stands as valid and valuable. And the kids loved it. Broadly, it felt great, obviously, undeniably great to all of us – one of the best I can remember – in all sorts of ways.

I closed the session by saying thankyou and asking one or two more dumb questions about what we’d accidentally found; catching-wise, throwing-wise, making games work-wise. I told the children I was dee-lighted to report that I’d be back for more… and they seemed genuinely pleased. Finally I asked them if they’d be so good as to go quietly back into school with their teachers.

At that point the senior teacher spoke. She asked the children if there was something they thought they should say to me and they responded in Welsh (largely) – diolch yn fawr iawn, Rick! Predictably enough. But the teacher went on to say that she thought the children should note how ‘beautifully’ I had spoken to them and how this had been a special – she used the word again – beautiful lesson that they should remember for a long time.

You weren’t there so I’ll just add that she was in no way either showboating or being glib. She was, to her credit, visibly touched by something and was trying to a) thank me, generously and sincerely but also b) mark that there had been something profound and lovely as well as merely successfully sporty going on. There had.

There had but I’m not after the credit: I’m after making that case for sport again. I’m touched by the boldness and generosity of the language used – specifically, of course by the use of that precious ‘b’ word, which most folks would’ve surely swerved and which I’ve never heard before in this context.

On reflection, by the way, I’m clear that what was beautiful was the children’s level of engagement. I may also contend (dangerously, because it interests me!) that the teacher’s sex may have played an important role in the discourse – Big Boys generally being too dumbed by machismo to speak so fearlessly and naturally of loveliness. But this is another subject.

I was gladdened and sure, made proud by the implications around all this. Chiefly I was clear that for whatever reason, a moment had been marked; we’d heard – the universe had heard – that encouragement, movement, co-ordination can be beautiful.

Dawning; typical of me but I think I’ve just realised why I wrote this. Could be because I do wonder if us blokes are generally so unable to say ‘b’ words (or similar) that perhaps we don’t let ourselves recognise the transforming poetry in moments like this.  Or if we do we don’t say it.  And if we don’t say it maybe it’s not evidenced in the way it might be.  And if it’s not evidenced then less kids (maybe) get fit, or open themselves up to the game. Any game.