Culture of spin.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

Immediately post the Third Test versus Pakistan and all the talk is of the dearth of quality spin bowlers. Or at least in the UK mini-subcontinent it is. Hour upon hour or page upon page of rumination around spin stuff, which in a way… is great. Great that this (arguably) least glamorous facet of the game is in the spotlight.

Whilst inevitably unpicking the issues arising from this (ahem) turn of events, I do wonder if we can turn this moment when both armchair authorities and Cricketing Authorities are acutely engaged… into a positive?

Let’s hear what some influential peeps or tweeps have said. Michael Vaughan has been relentlessly withering on the inconsistencies or raw inadequacies of England’s 3 spinners. Boycott has just described them – slightly absurdly, but as is often the case, we know what he means- as ‘non-existent,’ in a Telegraph article. Robert Croft – from the other angle – has tweeted that

We can’t expect our batsmen 2 be consistent against the turning ball. They never have to face it in this country as no turning pitches!

There’s a comparatively rare consensus around the facts that

a) our spinners (by definition, picked to spin the ball and either take wickets or tie up an end) were ordinary, given the help they received from prevailing conditions and

b) our batsmen were too easily undone by the Pakistani equivalents. There’s a further consensus around the notion that these two phenomena are umbilically linked… to the relative void (as opposed to the fecund womb!) where our spin culture should be.

In attempting to apply my own laser-like intellect to the spin bowling issue only – for now – I’m going to do what any self-respecting bloggerist might do, and reach for a coupla subtitles.

The Individuals.
There’s always context, right? Selection is always about what’s happened before, what’s expected and what impact or contribution a player might make. Remember that.

Moeen Ali.
I was in Cardiff for the Ashes and can confirm that folks were falling for Moeen, rather. He was actually loved, for his smooth, assured batting and his energy round the place. I’m not saying he was Ben Stokes exactly – Mo’s mojo is a whole lot less spikily, edgily brilliant – but he seemed so comfortable in the environment we hoped good things might happen whenever he was involved. Often they did.

That whole Mo batting at eight ruse also worked a treat, felt like a master stroke as he moved stylishly (and critically) to 77 in the first innings. That crowd-lurv, that confidence fed into a decent return from his bowling; in the first innings he winkled out Smith and Clarke and in the second Australian knock he claimed three wickets, including that of Warner. He took a super-sharp caught and bowled (that Clarke wicket) and somehow lifted the crowd with his easy enthusiasm. It may have been the prevalence of Mo masks around the Swalec crowd but something about his quiet presence suggested he may be destined to be the face of the summer.

In fact, whilst Ar Mo certainly contributed to a flawed but uplifting Ashes victory, there was early concern around the quality of his bowling. More than that; it was generally appreciated that the Mo-at-8 thing made sense precisely because he’s not a genuine international spinner… and yet he is more than a mere makeweight. He deserves a slot, he improves the balance of the side and shores up the batting/offers a match-winning threat even, down there. He is – despite the work-in-progress-that-may-not-progress enough-ness of his bowling – a real international.

Mostly, Moeen Ali looks every inch of that but, if you look at his bowling in isolation, he doesn’t.

Samit Patel.
Is viewed as either a proper throwback kindofa cricketer, or a man out of time. Defiantly unsexy, patrolling like some amiable neighbourhood copper dangerously close to the ‘likeably portly’ category. Simply does not have that sprint and dive thing in his locker; in fact looks like he has a ham and chutney bap and a bottle of Sam Smith’s in his locker.

Samit can clearly play – as can the other two spin candidates – but he has been judged to be short of fitness and that true elite-level threat with the ball.

So if Patel is generally and rightly regarded highly and warmly by plenty but few consider him the answer to England’s spin ‘woes’, why was he picked? With all due respect he doesn’t fit the bill as England’s Future. The brutal truth is that he was selected because of injuries around the squad, then geography/’conditions’ and because okaaaaay he mi-ight do a job with bat and ball. This he did. An average job – predictably. It may have been an average selection, given short and longer term considerations.

Rashid…(however…)
is the one.

If Moeen is effectively a batsman who can bowl spin and Patel a goodish alround spin bowler and batsman, Rashid is the one we might look to with the ball.

The fact of his leggie-dom may flesh out the notion he’s a Man More Likely To, in broad terms, than the other two labouring away alongside in Sharjah. He’s different; he’s A Prospect, a threat, a candidate for bona fide spin-king status in a way that Patel and Moeen maybe aren’t – certainly aren’t. Something says he’s more likely to tear through an innings than his compadres… and that he’s young enough to invest in… and we’re entitled to be hopeful and maybe even excited about that.

And yet he proved flawed. As in-out and generally disappointing as Patel and Moeen. As Sir Geoffrey said (of all of them)
they are not accurate or disciplined enough and there are too many easy balls to score off.

Simple but true enough. Rashid, whom we hoped (and still hope?) may bring that X-factor, that extra dimension to the side, underachieved.

General (Brief) Boring Theory thing.
I reckon most of us who have flung the cherry accept that bowling leg-spin is about as difficult as bowling gets: that’s part of its allure. The cocked wrist and the snap or flip of fingers as the ball is delivered from more or less the back of the hand works against easy repetitions.

Leggies tend to really work with their wrists and/or wind up revolutions by (in particular) ripping on the seam with their third finger. It’s (in my view) a whole lot more difficult to do this consistently and with control than it is to (for example) bowl a stock off-spinner, where the clockwise ‘turning the key’ movement of the first finger is a) more easily achieved and b) more easily repeated with the necessary accuracy. At every level it’s rare to find a leggie who is both turning the ball ‘big’ and able to plop it on the right spot time after time after time.

Conclusion thing.
Time to hone your spin-king skills is available, in (UK) domestic cricket – but arguably not enough of it, or not in conducive or even ‘fair’ scenarios.  ‘Special breed’ though they may be, spinners – like everyone else – have to earn the right to play, possibly more so now than in the years when there fewer non-negotiables – when you could be unfit or relatively uni-skilled.

Ideally though things remain unchangingly straightforward; you (the spin-king) just bowl magnificently and/or with monotonous skill; meaning all arguments simply fall away.

#TMS made the point earlier that Tuffers bowled around 800-900 overs a season for Middlesex: this compares to about 300-400 for spinners in the current era. No wonder then, we seem cruelly short of international-grade spinners when the opportunities in domestic cricket are both limited and frequently unrelated to or unhelpful towards producing Test Match bowlers.

Of course the changing nature of the game itself mitigates against the kind of consistency Boycott understandably demands. Especially in Blighty where spinners are used mainly in limited overs games where variation rather than consistency is often the key. Pitches and the surge towards yet more dynamic cricket significantly undermine any spin culture we may have. This is tough; it may even brand us as philistines – myopic no-hopers – but don’t expect too much in the way of revelation or revolution too soon.

The tremendous debate underway during this, the inaugural Spin Awareness Moment is valuable but may not, I fear, amount to much. Changes a-comin’ in the structure of English domestic cricket will not, I suspect, be driven by the need to find a new Graeme Swann – or better still, nurture a spin-friendly environment. More likely we will simply sit and wait for someone extravagantly gifted and stunningly reliable to come along, wheeling in glorious isolation, against the grain.

Skilled work.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

On coaches and crowds…

The Rugby World Cup has been/is a triumph for sport, yes? Not just for rugby but for sport. Superbly dramatic and almost entirely free from ‘simulation’ or disrespect between players or teams. Genuinely uplifting, in fact, in terms of the world showing us that brother/sisterhood thing we might be fearing subsumed in the age of diving and conniving footballers, £6 Cornish pasties and an intimidating multitude of *revealing* camera angles.

Folks have loved other folks’ teams – Japan-lurv being the most obvious example. So, shedding the baggage of our postmodernist awarenesses, we can simply agree (can’t we?) that it’s been bloody great?

But what can we learn?

In sport atmosphere is BIG. Athletes feed off energies from the crowd (and clearly vice-versa) in a way that really can inspire brilliant execution. It may be that truly elite-level athletes get to be that way because they harness, or are comfortable with or yes, inspired by the heat or hoopla of the big, big challenge. Magic players, far from being undermined by the pressures of the environment (noise/distraction/nerves?) blossom, find their truest finest selves in those moments – hence the overuse of the word ‘expression’. Almost without exception, from Brighton to Geordieland, #RWCup2015 crowds were buzzing… and the players got busy expressing.

Cast your mind back a week or two and something very different was occurring; the first Test Match in Abu Dhabi.

Here England and Pakistan ultimately served up some proper drama, after wading through a weirdly debilitating silence for four days. The players in fact emerged with an almost surreal level of credit but for an age a good deal of what happened felt emasculated, or short of sport. Cook flourished and important *statements* may have been made but with nobody there the event of it felt more like a drawn corpse than a live contest. What fascinates me – or rather one of the many things that fascinated me about this test – was what effect if any the utter lack of atmosphere had on what went on.

Let me swiftly add the rider that I speak as an advocate of Test Match cricket who (whilst getting the current impatience with it) would defend the capacity of the sport to bear the occasional slow burner ‘midst the contemporary carve-tastic norm. Consequently I was almost as unflustered as the England skipper when every pundit and former player in the universe was wailing on about dullness.

This daft thing in the desert was a small percentage part of the dynamically evolving Test Universe; it was entitled to its loopy-scratchy, defiantly anti-dynamic dawdle.

Like the Big Lebowski I chilled – abided – watching and waiting, wondering what might happen if an almighty clamour were to accompany a key wicket or a lush spell of bowling. Wondering how demotivating that yawning quiet might be – how seductive, how soporific to the fast-twitch fibres. The minor revelation came that things might have been different.

As I write #TMS is on again, for the second test; apparently (if my ears are to be believed) there is again no crowd. A challenge for bowlers – maybe particularly seam bowlers? – to get on a roll, on a flat pitch, in the sun, with no crowd.

The atmosphere(s) when Japan beat the Boks or when Ireland turned the Millenium green were both remarkable and essential to the sport occurring on that day. It could be that Japan might never have beaten South Africa in a near-empty stadium. Their fabulous momentum was predicated on quick ball and some irresistible spirit mexican-waving its way round the stands and from the stands into the bloodstream of the game. It was of course wonderful – dare I say it? – literally wonderful.

Crowds, then – mere gatherings of bystanders – play their part in the sporting cowabunga. Let’s note that… and if we happen to have some influence over where Big Games are actually played… remember. As we remember (alongside our friends from Bayern) the cost factor, eh?

Something else about the Rugby World Cup has really registered with the media (who’ve been all over it) and with those of us who either coach or bawl from the touchlines; the Skills Divide.

The domination of the tournament by southern hemisphere sides has been accompanied by significant rumination from the northern press – as though there’s been some uniformly powerful lightbulb moment. It’s clearly dawned that the key difference is in skills, by which I think folks mean the freedom and excellence of successful execution.  Most of us will imagine what we might call expressive skills; stuff we called natural ability until that became an area overloaded with difficulties.

Everyone from Brian Moore to Paul Hayward to well, everyone has been banging on about the skills that get you tries or opportunities (even) when things are tight. Skills that separate. Skills which may range from soft, intuitive hands to mind-blowing composure and decision-making.

It may be kinda funny that in the Everything Accounted For age, with typically more coaches and trainers and ‘support staff’ in place than can possibly be justified, we have such a universally recognised DOH!! How did we miss that one?!? moment.

Everybody’s leapt upon the essential ‘truth’ of it; Wales were great but couldn’t finish, Ireland were outclassed by The Pumas(!), Scotland have transformed and may have been robbed, England and France were embarrassing. But mostly, The North lacked brilliance.

Somebody soon enough will make a counter-argument to the current rash of theories aligned around Northern Bash undone by Southern Flash. In fact, because it’s plainly a tad simplistic I may even do it myself. But if we accept that there is a case to answer, here – i.e that we in the North are producing less gifted or less ingenious/expressive rugby players – why would that be? Does this transfer across into other team sports? How come our talent is less talented (or less able to perform) than (say) Kiwi talent?

The theses are already underway, right?

I can speak of but not for the ECB Coaching set-up on the ideas around the facilitation of talent. Here there is an acceptance that diverse opportunities for sport and broad development – towards being a better human, actually – fit with the pathway towards brilliance. Coaching is (or aims to be) more generous than previously; less prescriptive. Core Principles are offered to players as a support, through which those same players should find a way that works – that feels like them. This counts for a pretty radical shift when compared to decades of technical models and acutely fine-tuned ‘demonstration’.

Plenty of coaches are concerned that the growth of a globalised, t’internetted Sports Development Corporation necessarily means things get genericised, flawed by soundbites, or compromised as we all seek to do the Right Thing. We all finish up saying the same thing in order to sound credible – or we all seek to sound ‘left-field’ enough to stand out. We’re all too painfully aware.

I have seen enough to acknowledge both shortcomings in what the ECB call their ‘player-centred’ approach and in the creep towards multiskills BUT have no doubt that this loosening of the technical shackles is helpful in terms of unleashing or freeing talent. Of course this talent might be guided by what we might call technical specialists but let them not clutter up the mind of the athlete. Let them offer up their gift.

It may be foolish to meander between sports but I make no apology. I remain alive to the possibility of wonder through daft stuff like rugby and cricket, as well as through cerebral revelation via culture. I make no qualitative distinctions between them. They both still make me smile – as does the following wee notion.

Graham Henry (who has written so outstandingly on #RugbyWorldCup2015 and matters beyond, recently) has coached at the elitest of elite levels, yes? Known for his intelligence, thoroughness, experience, success(!) etc etc. Whilst All Blacks coach he was approached by key players, after a significant disappointment, as he no doubt planned his next Churchillian, team-gathering riposte. They asked him who the speechifying was for – them or him? They asked him – Graham Henry, aged 50-odd, at the height of his powers – if maybe he should say a bit less and trust a bit more. Graham Henry now doesn’t do team talks. He builds teams… from individuals.

Questions for the game.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ 9 Comments

Every sport is navel-gazing. By that I mean doing that soul-searching thing to find a way to either grow or sustain; holding workshops or seminars where the men (mainly) who administrate gather to chew the fat and challenge themselves over matters of strategy and policy. I realise now that the quality of questions asked at these pow-wows is erm , powerfully important: in that respect it’s not unlike coaching.

I went to two days of exactly these kinds of meetings earlier this week as part of the Cricket Wales posse charged with thinking deeply but also freely about what we do. I should say clearly now that what follows is neither a Cricket Wales-approved synopsis of what happened and what this means, nor some kind of manifesto.

On the first count let it be known that whilst I am unashamedly proud – yes, proud! – to work for CW, I speak and occasionally get up a lather very much of my own and am therefore what we might call a medium-loose cannon. I’m a team-man, certainly but have waaaaaay too many fast-twitch fibres to be a full-time office-waller and/or strategic thinker – for now!

However – and in contradiction – I do get that there is value in skilled and informed and generous brainstorming; it’s complacent not to do it and (for the cynics out there) my experience has been positive, in the sense that I now reckon people genuinely work hard and honestly at these gatherings – certainly our lot do. Then we drink brandy ‘til 2 a.m.

In essence, during our medium-epic philosophical shakeout, we were set two prime tasks; to identify the three most significant issues facing Junior Cricket in Wales and then, having reflected on those, propose what we might do differently next year.

(I may need to briefly remind or inform my sagacious readership that as I am a Community Coach, the bulk of my work and that of my colleagues is around enthusing kids for the game and getting them to transfer from schools into clubs/hubs or leisure centres so that the healthy cricket stuff sustains – hence the concentration on that end of the market. Cricket Wales, of course, is charged with leading and inspiring as well as administrating the whole of the recreational game in Wales but we Community Coaches inevitably(?) spend the bulk of our time playing daft games wiv kids.)

The following – a shocking mixture of ‘conclusion’, ‘experience’, hunch and sooo-premely insightful observation – will need some care, as a diplomatic disaster or twelve could unfold *unless* you are prepared to believe me when I say that neither myself nor my colleagues are characterised by a kind of appalling and arrogant CricketWalescentricity. (I promise.)

Having looked at rafts of data and swapped intensely our many, many coaching/club/school impressions, the clear winner in the Big Issue For Junior Cricket stakes was (the idea that the) experience for children who had transferred into clubs wasn’t magic or entertaining or (who knows?) comfortable enough for enough of those children to stick with cricket. A big number of kids were gathered in but a smallish number stayed.

There are several ways we might interpret that – from the idea that the game itself proved to be unappealing after a few sessions to the notion that something within or about the club experience was undermining (excuse the Sports Development Speak) migration. Plus, there would be sub-notions that I simply don’t have time and space to address – for now. Clearly, if the proverbial lessons are to be learned then the data – which shows a big drop off between the numbers of children who actually went to clubs, having been inspired (or bundled kicking and screaming) by Community Cricket Coaches and those who stayed there for more than a few weeks (and therefore became new members at those clubs) must be de-mystified if possible.

We threw most of the relevant notions round the room, earnestly as well as liberally and there was a consensus around the following; that whilst some clubs offer new children the kind of (actually) pretty dynamic and inclusive and entertaining sessions they get from Community Coaches who visit their schools (generally for around four lessons), others don’t. The experience is either a little intimidating or starchy or dull… or something.

We cannot know what every child feels about the transfer into clubs and clearly children (like allegedly mature adults) don’t always tell us the truth, anyway. But plenty do get asked about this – it is surveyed. Could be that we need more and better information around this but for what it’s worth (and I am clear it’s worth something) the Community Cricket Coaches and their immediate seniors the Cricket Development Officers of Wales were notably in agreement that migration numbers fall away sharply partly because sessions aren’t fun enough to make it worth the child (and by implication, the family) committing to the club regularly.

The chief difficulty around this may be the argument that Doh! Of course Cricket Wales staff are going to conclude that their coaches are more fabulous than those unblessed with the CW badge! Their very lives and jobs depend upon deciding to Big Up and Justify their own excellence!

People, on this one, all I can say is I’m pretty certain some of us like the sound of our own voices (Exhibit A, this website) and ye-es, it’s possible that we are the annoying geezers who Say Too Much Too Loudly whenever the opportunity to peacock our cricket knowledge around the gaff presents itself but honestly… we ain’t so cheap as to masturbate our own egos over this one. It’s too big, too important and besides – again, honestly – as a mob our lot are too genuinely concerned for the good of the game to invent some self-serving cobblers to deflect undeserved flak someplace else.

All of which means I am saying to you, to my colleagues and soulbrothers and sisters in club cricket, that it could be the case that some children, newly arrived at your club, are being inadequately accommodated. Some are feeling that sessions are a bit dull; some feel excluded – even though they have manifestly made a step towards the game; some maybe feel a bit lost. I should add – and not just for the sake of ‘fairness’ – that all of these feelings may arise in one of my sessions… but percentage-wise this appears to be less likely than in a club environment.

Please try to get past the arrogance implicit in the cricketmanwales.com view of this and ask yourself how new, young players arriving at your club feel about what you’re offering. What is training like, for them? What is the environment like – what are the people these children are being led or coached or signed in by sounding like? Think about how the children who may never make one of your competitive teams but who have stepped across that threshold anyway feel. Maybe think about how your club activity fits against the fun festivals and inclusive, un-threatening, softball sport these children may have gotten used to at school. There may be an argument that you should be offering an extension of that experience as well as developing competitive players/Test stars of the future.

I’m here to ask some difficult questions. I realise the answers may be about changes in format or governance as well as culture change in individual clubs. I’m not providing answers and I know what I do – what Cricket Wales – does is flawed too. This blog – all of these blogs – are about making a contribution to a debate. Endof.

Look I know there are many many wonderful clubs and coaches out there. I am privileged to know and to work with an inspiring lump of them, either as a volunteer, or as a Cricket Wales fella, wearing *that badge*, remembering *that training*, aspiring to *those goals*. But however unpalatable it may sound, I am clear there are things we all have to improve, not just for some spurious need to ‘grow the game’ but because surely we are all together charged with offering our players – young and old – something fabulous for them.

Finally, it may sound like I’m somehow down on traditional cricket and traditional cricket clubs. No. Nothing I’ve argued is to suggest that traditional cricket is either out-dated or inappropriate or short on fun. It ain’t. It’s wonderful. But my strong conviction is we may need to provide some other stuff too, for the kids who want to join us… but then turn away.

Cross words?

~ bowlingatvincent ~ 2 Comments

So the Powers That Be – incidentally, what a phrase that is! – have withdrawn the snippers from County Cricket. There will be no change next season to the playing schedule. If it wasn’t patronising in the extreme, I’d echo that there was ‘rejoicing in the shires’ as the news came in. Members from Barry to Barnstaple chinking their glasses to a victory for the common, retriever-owning man. All that. The Daily Telegraph wafted excitedly towards the wife as she brings tea-on-a-tray.

Blow me, we’ve beaten the buggers back, Tess!

Okay, mischief. And surely unhelpful to satirise either side, even when hoping to raise a smile? Better get into this, together, as seriously as we want to – this fabulous tangle of earnest case-making, floppy hats, vitriol and crosswords.

I should maybe start by saying I think the decision to make no change (or wait on change?) is right; politically astute in the sense that (for all my mischief) a genuine clamour has been raised; wise-in-the-round because we all know there will be substantial discussions to come, during the off-season. Discussions which most of us imagine will bring change of some sort next year.

My job ensures I stand on the edge of talks about cricket; I coach for Cricket Wales but often find myself either actively involved in seeking out ‘ways forward’, or ear-wigging our senior blokes as they grapple with either Bigger Pictures or with difficult questions around the detail of national cricket. I have some sympathy now with the difficulties in juggling Irate of Ffestiniog with Serenely Influential of Cowbridge. I totally get that given the wondrous breadth of opinion on (even) the structure of the game, this week’s stay of execution will feel like a minor triumph to some… and something of an insult – #ridiculous, in fact – to others.

On the one hand we have those who may in fact not necessarily be conservative but who want to keep the number of ‘proper’ cricket matches at the current level and on the other we have those who (like @MichaelVaughan and @BumbleCricket) make arguments for change now.

Vaughan, who relishes the role of dynamic tweeter and maker of strong opinion, used that r-word to describe the failure to allow new men in the hierarchy to do their jobs – i.e. make tough decisions/effect change for the better. He has a point, but it strikes me that these fellas, having floated the ideas, have opted for time and the ‘opportunity’ to flesh out their arguments before implementing changes next year. Perhaps(?) I note in passing that the former England skipper may have been less likely to use the argument that the management should be left to manage had he disagreed with what was proposed.

Elsewhere, there are more or less strident concerns about players being under-prepared for championship games because of the allegedly relentless nature of the schedule – fears of burnout as well as erosion of excellence.@AlisonMitchell has thrown in the fear of over-tired players driving long distances after matches.  My own, additional fear is for players who’ve de-stressed with a beer or two before heading out to the motorway.

The schedules in Australia and South Africa – where 10 matches are contested – are much referred to, alongside the notion that this has led to higher quality and certainly the current Test standings do nothing to undermine that view.

But though these are all important considerations, they may be less pivotal than the extraordinary feeling which exists around County Cricket.

Who knows, really, if lovers of County Cricket – and here I mean effectively the longer format game – are a particular breed? Perhaps they are. You’d expect a narrow demographic but that may be less relevant than the fact of their love and understanding (remember that?) for the game.

Certainly they have notable virtues, including the precious capacity to recognise sport (or anything else) as a narrative over time. Sure they love the moments of show-stopping drama but their show – the trickle that is four day cricket – is an experience where their own loyalty, persistence, patience count. It’s sport and time dancing together, often slowly, unobtrusively – demurely, even – as if in a silent, undeclared ecstasy. This is unique.

I have seen this. Seen the magnificently un-dynamic truth that is fans who relax better at a County Cricket match than anywhere else in their lives. They lounge; they watch; they snooze; they appreciate when their attention needs to be utterly committed… and when they can drift. They barely register these joys but joys they are. They may, in their beautiful, gritty, eccentric way be either ‘watching the cricket’ or making a profound statement against the death of the attention span. You choose. Either way they have been heard, these last few days.

But maybe about now Bumble and Vaughany would be saying
Get real, dude!

Quite possible to argue that the pitiful crowds for many fixtures condemn this thing as an anachronism. Do the math. Nobody goes – or not enough people go for it to be remotely sustainable. It is only sustainable because of TV money and because people will come to watch the T20blast. Therefore the quality of lurv shown by these few ‘die-hard’ fans is notable but insufficiently compelling in the argument. It blocks stuff. And anyway they will still be able to do their thing… just maybe ten times instead of fourteen!

That’s a brutalist view but I can see how it may hold sway. Throw in the need to protect players and simultaneously (maybe) improve standards in the longer format (and thereby bolster the Test team?) and you have a decent case. Reduce County Cricket. Reduce County Cricket despite the furore. It would be tough.

I think changes will come and they may not even be the changes we currently imagine. World Cricket is such a lurid carousel these days that anything could come trampolining in. Blasts or Bashes are clearly, undeniably The Force in the game but there is a consensus around the need to protect and/or develop Test Cricket. Which means County Cricket/Shield Cricket etc. etc. have to sustain at a certain qualitative level. In short, cricket is charged with not just the accommodation but the development of two (or three?) spectacularly different formats and I’m struggling to think of a sport with an equivalent challenge.

So anyway, I’m hearing the arguments and my brain hurts. For me there is nothing in the world so special and so precious as that escape into sport – and therefore those County Cricket people are my soul-brothers. I’m neither resistant to change, particularly, nor convinced by the need (necessarily) to ‘grow the game’ via some spookily PR-driven, crassly commercial ‘dynamic development’ that sends me into a fury over The Americanisation of Everything! And yet the world demands of us that we are agile and forward-thinking. It’s tough.

I’ve settled on the idea that no change for now is right. This is less to do with the ten/fourteen/however many County Cricket fixtures than the #T20blast – which may be telling in itself. Blast surely needs – arguably has earned? – another year on that Friday night slot. That may be important – not just in financing half the County Clubs but in pre-empting the 8 city franchises we keep hearing about.

There is a sense that the whole notion of the Counties themselves may depend upon increasing exposure and quality and entertainment in the Blast. I hope it continues to thrive – pretty much as it is. Frankly I’d rather Glamorgan had Glamorgan playing at the SSE Swalec than Cardiff Klonkers. Perhaps this, in itself, is a reason to take a further look at things this winter.

Good move.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

Deciding what to do is often as much an art-form as an exercise in diplomacy or joined-up thinking. Sculpting from intimidating choices that which merely works may not, in the contemporary flux, be enough – in life and in sport. Good moves, on the contrary, imply some well-springing beyond mere survival, into (actually) greater health; virility; dynamism. But given that we often concede to the reality that everything seems compound or complicated, the tendency to play safe weighs heavily against the brilliant, the inspired or truly creative; so good moves are hard to find.

We cricketpeeps have our challenges. On the global scale this might mean heavyweight conversations about governance; on a national or practical or structural level maybe that heave-hoing see-saw between County Cricket and the inevitable slot for Blast-dom. How do we manage all that? Significant. Significant issues but maybe not as big as the (okaaaay, related) question of how we retain players.

The @cricketmanwales-familiar among you will know that I work in cricket at what tends to get slightly patronisingly called the ‘grassroots’ level. As a Community Coach for Cricket Wales I spend a lump of my working life enthusing small people towards the game – go read previous posts and you’ll get the drift. I can tell you that generally it’s easy enough to gather players in under the spell but there is a problem in the teenage years.

Not just for cricket. Other team games are finding a disturbing number of players – boys, possibly in particular – drift away between the ages of say 14 and 17.

We could all write a fabulously strident thesis on the reasons for the exodus (I’d love to – please send funding to the Death to Nintendo/McDonalds and The Folks Who Produce Reality TV Campaign) but that’s for another day. What I want to begin to address is what it is we might do to keep young fellas/girls playing our game, when either doubts or other opportunities or distractions enter the frame. Or at least I want say something about a particular event which felt important, recently.

There may be a prequel to this; one which features stonkingly obvious insights between the link between quality of experience for players and retention… and more subtle understandings around coaching… and relationships.

If youngish boys and girls have an inviolably wonderful time at their cricket club then clearly they are likely to stay in the game. More than that; having appreciated the quality of coaching(?) learning(?) growing(?) they benefited from, they may well later look to make a contribution – possibly an enlightened one – of their own, to their club and/or the game. Thus good-ness stimulates good moves in the future, which in turn increase the likelihood of great people staying in cricket, enriching the cricket-peep gene pool . But what does this aforementioned wonderful time look like and feel like?

It looks different but like fun. It looks like a diving catch or an all-out, lung-bursting shuttle race – finishing with another dive… and slide, onto a watered outfield. It looks like whatever sharing a joke looks like. It’s physical; it’s ‘psychological’; it’s about movement. Maybe?

Maybe it also looks like a superbly thought-out series of training sessions where a zillion skills are learned… incidentally, almost? Because the coach knows he or she doesn’t need to teach too much, just offer some games and ask some skilfull questions. Let the players find a way to play.

But this is very abstract. Let’s move on to stuff wot actually happened…

Recently, Cricket Wales ran an Under 19’s T20 competition. The idea essentially being that cricket clubs throughout the principality could enter teams in an event that not only looked and sounded like a Big Bash (or similar) but was essentially and indeed boomtastically directed by the players. They were, within reason, to shape it in the way they chose. So yes, there was coloured kit. Yes, there was some geezer wiv kickin’ toons. And yes, it was more than slightly wonderful. My lot – Pembrokeshire- missed the deadline for entering.

Actually that may not be entirely true but something, something got in the way – fortunately, not for long.

I’ve been on the fringes of this but I remember asking the question of our local fire-starter (and Chairman of Pembrokeshire Association for Cricket Coaches) Mr Jonathan Twigg
what’s happening re- the Under19 thing?

Then having a couple of brief conversations with our local Cricket Development Officer (Matt Freeman) and a longer one with Haverfordwest CC’s Junior Head Coach Simon Williams. All of which left me thinking we might be in a slightly embarrassing black hole, having neatly fulfilled metropolitan prejudices about Sleepy Ole Pembrokeshire.

HA HA! Wrong!

In fact, faster than a speeding cherry, Messrs Twigg and Williams had a) nobbled half the county and b) bundled a key clutch of the potentially (cricket-wise) underemployed youff into a seething, expectant and actively-engaged posse. Sponsorship was sorted; kit and fixtures were sorted; a Final’s Day (as well as the friendly games) was posted into the calendar. Most magnificently… things really happened.

My own club’s teens swiftly metamorphosed into Blue Lightning, players now resplendent in blue, sporty-disco shirts with name and squad number on the back. Likewise at Carew Rooks or Burton Warriors or Cleddau Crusaders – all in grooviciously contemporary clobber. Twigg and Williams and god bless ’em their equivalents elsewhere got the games on – at Haverfordwest superbly supported by Big Scrivs, the local MC/DJ/esteemed provider of music and (quite literally) fanfares.

In other words, games took place. Teen-appropriate events. Cricket events unlike anything seen before in our county. 20 overs of wallop and bantz-loaded cricket, for young people, watched by lots of other young people – and often their families – accompanied by bursts of reassuringly dated Popular Music. Wicked!

On the Finals Day at Haverfordwest Cricket Club the organisation as well as the cricket was ramped up to fever pitch. ‘Twiggo’ had established a Control Room containing more pens, forms, balloons and members of the media (thanks @FraserMercsport) than a Jeremy Corbyn rally. Umpires – proper ones – had not only been sourced but kitted out in fetching acid green by main sponsors Nat West, represented locally by long-time Narberth CC man Huw Simpkins. Ditto sponsors from Tees r us, alongside Mark White from Cricket Wales HQ. It was all alarmingly kosher.

In terms of the practicalities, 3 pitches were available at Haverfordwest CC whilst a preliminary fixture was played at Hook CC a few miles down the road. 8 teams entered, including Llanelli Knights from… well, you-know-where, some 50-odd miles east, plus, remarkably, I think, 7 from Pembrokeshire. All teams were guaranteed at least two games, with a plate competition being played out (ten overs per innings) for those beaten in the first matches.

For the record, Llanelli Knights were deserved winners, beating Burton in the final: Haverfordwest won the plate. However the occasion was such a clear and overwhelming success – and spoke so loudly of frontiers being opened – that we might dare to hope that in the continuation of this one event a significant step forward might be possible in terms of retention.

Some of us are already thinking that our local County Cricket Club needs to take a long, hard, unprejudiced look at this. Because it may not just be relevant to teenagers. It strikes me that whether we like it or not, gathered-in, short-format cricket of this or a similar sort may be central to how cricket develops – and I do mean develops – all over. Our own struggling lower divisions in Pembrokeshire might be sustained in this way… and how comfortable us older folks are with that may be irrelevant. Local leagues may need to provide both longer format and T20 boomathon cricket.

Most teams brought about fifteen players to Pembrokeshire Finals Day, so that meant 120 teenage players doing what they feel comfortable with – feel good about. Panacea? Possibly not. Model? Quite possibly. Good move? Abso-lutely.

Here’s what Fraser Watson from The Western Telegraph made of that day – http://www.westerntelegraph.co.uk/sport/13715660.T20_teams_have_a_blast_at_Finals_Day/

The Mad Batter’s Tea Party; Obvious Positives.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

Working in and for the game of cricket, I take more than a passing interest in how folks view all of its multifarious (or possibly just nefarious?) forms. (Go see Jarrod Kimber ‘bout that latter niche.) I’m as daft and as clueless as the next fan/coach/umpire/player about many things within what we might call the world of cricket but medium clued-in, I would say, on matters to do with coaching and retention – what the game (or, okaaay, what Cricket Wales) is looking to do.

I’m not boasting. I’m not saying I’m good at this or that, just that I have some knowledge – some information – stored on these issues, following turgid or revelatory classroom-bound discussions or blokey workshopping or centre-practice of cricket stuff. It’s what I do. Why wouldn’t I know something? If I don’t know what the path forward looks like on Coach Education and in terms of schools provision, I do know what’s being discussed, or put in place, or considered at local and national level. But ultimately… everything’s context.  Everything out there shapes things.

Cricket People are like Ordinary People in that they locate themselves, noisily or quietly, into wildly different zones of opinion or belief. Sometimes a level of global calm seems to win out, as the cricket equivalent of peacetime – or tea-time – prevails. Other times the brew is stronger and the scones, yaknow… stonier.

Now feels like a Mad Batters Tea Party. An incendiary, expressionistic, drug-addled cornucopia-fest. Where the crashbangwallop of the game magnificently and beautifully but maybe luridly reflects the noises off, the times, the turbidity currents building around cricket’s heaving continents. It’s excitingly off its own head.

The times of course do contribute to the vulcanism; ‘f you don’t like something or somebody you mercilessly troll them. ‘F you see the umpire got it wrong from 24 different angles you blow your collective, high definition fuse. If the game slows down you down another Fosters. So if this doesn’t seem like a Test Cricket kindofa time then maybe that’s because it really ain’t.

However. Despite the absurdities and indeed immoralities exposed by ‘Death of A Gentleman’; despite the *challenges* to fairness/honesty/decency implicit in an Indo-Aus-Giles Clark Pact; despite the alleged woefulness of some of the Ashes Women batting – despite the obscene hurry we’re all in to get somewhere brasher quicker – there are Obvious Positives. Even for Test Cricket. Surely there are? Positives which though they may not necessarily ‘grow the game’ – in that immortal phrase – may counter-intuitively perhaps preserve it and develop it.

I know some of these positives from my work and in that I am privileged. I see young girls in Penny Dropping mode as they get that this is their game too. I see the powerful and yet relatively untapped educational potential in upful, ‘physical’ but thoughtful school sessions – children building cricket games and therefore using a zillion ‘academic’ skills as well as heartily lugging round those limbs – moving. I meet, actually, loads of brilliant people, either in schools or within Cricket Wales or Glamorgan C.C.C. or elsewhere.  But hey look if you think I’m coming over all soft-sellingly pro- what I do then I’ll park that and go back to where we came in. Which was with perceptions – opinions.

I went both to the Ashes Test Match in Cardiff and the Bank Holiday double header extravaganza – where both men and women played T20 Internationals. Both were superb events, confirming the racy, thrilling, contemporary brilliance of short-format cricket and the traditional but evolving majesty of the five (soon-to-be-four) day experience. Moeen Ali was great. Ben Stokes was great – all kinds of things from that general upping of the ante to seeing Cook command the new era with confidence and imagination were great.

These days were both a novelty and a re-affirmation.  We’ve burst through something, haven’t we? Carved out of yesterday’s billion-year-old past.

I’ve previously wittered on about this new wild positivity – picked holes in it – but generally it’s pretty fab, right? It offers us cricketpeeps clear opportunities; let’s take them.

But enough foam for a minute. Here’s a wee story which feels relevant. ‘Sharing’ stuff, (hate that phrase!) asyado, on twitter, I happened to drop in a minor note of disappointment re the level of attendance at the beginning of the Women’s T20 and was fairly promptly slapped down for using the everydaysexism hashtag to accompany my (honestly relatively minor) gripe. I should say I have the luxury of being a complete nobody so this was not heavyweight trolling, you understand, this was two blokes.

They objected to my high-handedness and accused me of that kind of hypocrisy whereby you *support* something you don’t really support because (probably) you read that this is right in the Guardian. They said that the Women’s Ashes was poor and I shouldn’t be pretending otherwise, effectively: also that you can’t force people to watch something.

I know what they meant and that there is such a weasley phenomenon at work in the Liberal Mind. And I suppose I fall into that category. But they were wrong.

Firstly I hadn’t said or implied anything about the quality or otherwise of the game. Secondly they misunderstood – probably wilfully – the essence of my disappointment. Not wishing to use too much battery time on the discussion, I signed off promptly –
Have a good day, Genghis.

With the SSE Swalec emptyish rather than fullish as Brunt and Shrubsole went about their opening business and in the knowledge, frankly, that on a purely economic level it made sense for supporters to take in both internationals, I expressed disappointment. Why not support the women’s match, even if you find it less dynamic or entertaining – even if the ‘standard’ offends you? Don’t get it. Unless #everydaysexism.

To clasp that nettley comparison – this;
a) it’s both faintly ridiculous and mildly dumb to compare men and women – they’re simply different
b) (if) levels of power are the central issue maybe something could be done on type/weight of ball and/or length of pitch – if we become sure that women’s cricket needs to replicate men’s by becoming increasingly about elite-level mega-dynamism. If we don’t, then maybe (wonderfully/hilariously/enlighteningly) women’s cricket will be a/the game for skill, subtlety and patience, as things develop.

Finally on that, things have developed. Meaning despite the ‘distance yet to travel’ inferred by much of the writing on the Women’s Ashes, cricket played by women and girls is a cause for celebration and it seems essential and right to support it. Not indiscriminately but support it. Sure the scores are markedly lower, sure the hitting is markedly less wallopacious, sure the event is of a different timbre – currently and maybe permanently. But there has been and there will be rapid ‘progress’ as wider opportunities for top level competitive play/training/competition emerge.

Finally finally, watching from directly behind the bowler’s arm, I loved it that Anya Shrubsole (who bowled a flawed spell, ye-es!) swung the ball further than anyone of any sex on that double-header of a day. I also really enjoyed Brunt’s Proper Fast Bowler Attitude from t’other end.

Throw in Sarah Taylor’s nonchalant excellence behind the sticks and there you have three reasons to be cheerful. Obvious Positives. Now if we (the English/Welsh) can sort the Buttler batting thing out – oh and the Lyth one – and then get to the fascistic world-governance scene-thing, imagine how fabulous cricket could be?

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?

Peculiarities.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

Lots of good things about a diabolical Lords test for England. Maybe firstly it’s right that reality has checked – or rather thudded – in. Maybe it’s great that there are debates re-ignited about whether pitches should be tranquilized or away teams simply offered the choice of batting or bowling. Possible too that this assumption towards ‘positive cricket’ from England should be challenged.

Don’t get me wrong I was in Cardiff for two of the four days and can rubber-stamp the brilliance of that event and the extremely decent-plus nature of the England performance. But it might be that the victory there was more about discipline than liberating culture-change. (England bowled tighter lines/Aus under-performed/job done?) The SSE Swalec pitch –derided for the first four overs, broadly accepted thereafter – was surely less of a factor than the Aussie seamers inability to keep the cherry in the slot? So whilst Root and Stokes again gave us Brits an exciting whiff of Horny Expressionism, one view might be that Test Match cricket is about passages in time as well as inspired clonks… and that we are advised to recognise that wonderful peculiarity.

In other words, New England are growing up in public. Against – asitappens – the best cricket team on the planet. There are issues arising – some of them to do with hitting a ball or not.

Now our relationships with the Shackle-draggers (thankyou, Brian Moore) are *conflicted* but not to the extent that I can’t (grrrrrrrarrrrunnnchhh) express some (ffffuuurkanaall-lla) reeeeasonably convincing appreciation for their work down at Lords. Where the bastards were magnificent. Clearly however, from the local’s perspective the fascination turns immediately away from applauding Johnson and Smith and and towards philosophical discussions around what I am admittedly appallingly going to call The Bigger Pitcher… and to eeking out explanations.

Skirting for the moment right past the issues around That Pitch – and therefore flopping foolishly into the trap of talking (actually) about what happened – we are confronted with the question; how could the Aussies dominate every facet of play so utterly completely? Given the previous and allowing, yes, for their great-ness?

On that inevitable sliding scale, how come we (England) failed to register on any –ometer of any description, at any time? In fact is it possible that the reason Australia scored all them runs and took all them wickets was because England *literally* did not turn up at Lords? So Clarke threw a few pies for Warner and Smith to slap around the place. And Blowers and Aggers ‘batted’ one and two for ‘England’ to fulfil the fixture. Because proper England – Cardiff England – were stuck in an ice-bath at Celtic Manor for four days.

This explanation seems as plausible as any of the alleged ‘transmissions’ by Sky Sports over the last week.

Ok we have to note and even respect the quality of the Australian fast bowling; and mark that it tends to be significantly sharper than ours – a few mph around the 90 bracket being disproportionately key, so it would appear. Reluctantly we may also have to accept the evidence that their top three batsmen are playing at a contemptibly higher level than ours but… where does this get us? Nowhere. Team England has to (actually) do stuff to get back into this.

Messrs Bayliss and Farbrace and Strauss (I imagine) will be looking at both technical competence amongst our frontline batsman and scrutinising psychological profiles to find evidence for a satisfactory match-up. Whether this means consulting with wacko’s or havin’ a beer and a quiet word the end result presumably needs to be either a change in mind-set or personnel or both, unless conditions – not necessarily but possibly That Edgbaston Pitch – conspire in England’s favour. Which (as they say) could happen.

But back to what could be done. Lyth and Balance look pret-ty close to shot, as does Bell but the latter’s enduring quality and doughty English quiet man-who-may-yet-blossomness may, I suspect save him. In fact all three may yet survive to duck another day, either because the management believe they themselves shouldn’t twitch or because it’s notoriously tough to step in as an opener or number three bat. There are candidates but it may be wrong or unfair on Hales or Compton or anyone else to parachute them into this. (Not that this constitutes a reason not to act; it just complicates things.)

Is it not somehow fabulous, however, that this test – the Ashes – is suddenly again the largest and hairiest in the sport? With the biggest black and whitenesses and turnabouts by the ton. Cruelly absurd and yet predictable(?) that England, having been in dreamland, must now blast or grind or spirit a way back to being *remotely* competitive.

It’s unreal drama but excruciatingly trying for players and coaches of both teams. All that physical effort really just the flanneled tip of an immense iceberg-like accretion of tensions and yes (for Lyth/Ballance etc.) traumas . And howsabout we pause for a moment’s sympathy for the New England gaffer? I mean – what a week and a half for Bayliss?!? What state is the poor fella in NOW?

Time to gather oneself and think back to those positives, loaded though they may be with counter-griefs.

It may be painful for fans of Ingerland but it’s also surely exhilarating that high quality fast bowling – one of the most glorious and somehow viscerally-received spectacles in sport – puts us here? Cook is right to describe the capitulation at Lords as ‘unacceptable’… and yet.

Australia were in their zone, their element and (goddammit) they were undeniable in a way that may even make Bayliss’s genius redundant. For though there must always been a response – planned, calculated, mature, skilful, evolutionary – and though conditions may be engineered, the peculiar combination of big wedges of time and world-class pace can prove overwhelming. Plainly England were overwhelmed at Lords.

Even those who don’t get the finer points of bowling sharpish get that the exceptional ferocity and skill of the Australian fast bowlers has pinned England somewhere evidently vulnerable. The urn just lurched back towards the southern hemi. A mere week on from Cardiff, individuals look and unquestionably feel vulnerable, both in a ‘Jee-sus, that could hurt!’ kindofaway and in terms of their professional security. Making it a rare challenge, this. The Ashes.

Sport is about tactical stuff and theoretical stuff but it’s also – as we are seeing – about holding firm when a hunk of leather is flying at you unfeasibly quickly… and arcing or not… and bouncing or not. And amid and amongst any indulgences we, the fans and pundits may get caught up in, Lyth and Cook and Ballance and Root and Bell, or their immediate successors, must face up and front up when the challenge resumes.

Regardless of the toss, regardless of the qualities of the strip. They really need to get playing and then maintain that intensity and that freedom… for days.