Dismissing Smith

In his 21^st over yesterday, Stuart Broad induced Steve Smith into a false shot, the ball looped from the bat’s leading edge over the gully area and landed safely on the lush turf at Old Trafford.

As a young man, Third Man was lucky to meet and spend a lot of time with Eddie Cooper, Worcester’s opening batsman either side of the Second World War.  In the Sixties he was recognised as the best coach in England  – a regular at cricketing brains trusts at Lilleshaw.

Eddie’s favourite story was of batting against the ’48 Invincibles in the opening tour match, captured  by Pathe News (45 seconds in).  Eddie liked the cut. Not many could cut Lindwall.  Eddie could. The first cut shot crossed the turf and slammed into the fence.   Bradman at mid-off sidled over to Lindwall for a chat.  Eddie was surprised to find another shortish ball coming down at him outside off.  He climbed into without a second thought, cutting the ball back to the fence from where it has just been retrieved.

Again and again in his innings he cut the Australian attack.  Finally, in the seventies, he cut another delivery into the hands of backward cover.  As he passed Bradman on the way back to the Pavilion, the great Australian smiled at him and said, “Cheap at the price son.”

What  price would England pay to have Smith leaving the field, bat under his arm?  50 … 60 … 70 runs?

Coincidentally, Smith probably has a similar back-lift to Bradman.  Out it starts towards gully before coming around and down in a glorious uninterrupted flow, not dissimilar to a Federa forehand.  But critically not straight down.   The direction it falls is slightly across the line of the ball.  His wonderful eye and superb timing means that he misses very few even with this weakness – for it is a weakness.

England tried to exploit this weakness yesterday bowling a fifth stump line.  But on the fifth stump line Smith plays for the straight delivery.  If the ball cuts away from him he misses it as a dozen balls were yesterday.  If it jags back, the impact with his pads is outside the line of the off stump.   Cute?  Invincible?

Bradman would know how to get him out.

England have to speculate to accumulate.  They have to bowl straighter.  Not wider.  Smith relishes the ball bowled at his pads, not playing around that pad as most do, but with the front foot hardly moved forward so that line of the bat looping round and down from square shoulders and hips is free to strike the ball in a wide arc of possible directions to leg.  (That’s how Eddie a student of Bradman coached the shot too.)

If the ball is straight, the impact is secure and it’s one or four depending on the positioning of the leg side field.  If it jags in there is a small danger of an edge towards a leg slip but as likely or not it’s a leg bye or a simple miss.  But if it nips back from a leg-side angled seam like the ball Broad bowled in his 21^st over yesterday, it strikes the leading edge and pops up somewhere between gully and short extra cover.

Anderson can bowl that delivery at will; Broad too and Archer.

It needs a precise field; plenty of cover on the leg side, catchers in slips and gully, and a man in short on the off side for the leading edge which loops in front of rather than behind square.  It needs a willingness to ‘leak’ runs to one of the batsman’s favourite  shots.  Finally it needs to appeal to the batsman’s ego; to know the risk, and to accept the risk.

How fitting that a man who summons the very image of Bradman the batsman could be dismissed by a ruse worthy of Bradman the captain.

 

* Photograph Worcestershire 1946 with Eddie Cooper centre of back row with cravat

Laughing Out Loud

In Duncan Hamilton’s wonderful biography of Harold Larwood, known as Lol to his fellow players, the author suggests that one of his inspirations for the work was that there existed at Lord’s no picture or painting to honour England’s greatest fast bowler.

Third Man was lucky to be at the ground for all four days of the 2^nd Test between England and Australia which finished on Sunday.  He too looked high and low for some recognition of Larwood’s existence in what the MCC likes to describe as the Home of Cricket.  But Lol was there alright. His spirit pervaded the contest between the old foes thanks to the presence of Jofra Archer.

Indeed, there were two teams ‘out there’ and again both were playing cricket.

Watching Archer it was impossible not to think of Larwood and to be better able to capture the effect his extreme and prolonged pace bowling had on batting and batsmen eighty five years ago.

Some bald stats: in the first innings at the SCG in December 1932 Larwood bowled 31 overs, 5 maidens, 5 for 91, the extraordinary Stan McCabe making 187 in Australia’s innings of 360 all out.  In their second innings of 164 a/o, Larwood took 5 for 28 in 18 overs.

At Lord’s, Archer bowled 29 overs in the first innings and 15 in the second. Steve Smith made 92.

One can only imagine what Jardine ‘s reaction  would have been to Vaughan’s call for England not to over-bowl  Archer.  In fact we need not speculate.  When the 1932-33 series was won by the fourth Test,  Larwood, close to physical breakdown and bowling with a broken foot,  asked if he might sit out the final Test, but Jardine required him to play and bowled him a total of 43.2 overs across the two remaining innings. And were they not 8 ball overs?

But watching Archer bowl long spells of sustained and extreme pace and witnessing the reaction of the Australian batsmen, including Smith the Bradman of the day, spectators were transported to Sydney, to Melbourne, to Adelaide, to Brisbane and back to Sydney.

Larwood long protested that Leg Theory did not require him to aim at a batsman’s head, or willfully to try to hurt or injure the batsman, and held to the end of his life that he did not do so. He was a short man, blessed with a wonderful action, natural and dependable rhythm and a powerful physique.  Leg Theory produced a serious examination of batting technique, courage and mental orientation.

At Lord’s, Archer hit a number of batsmen on the helmet, on the grill, in the armpit, on the chest, in the stomach and on the inside of the thigh. The Australian captain Tim Paine’s press comments were commendable.  In effect, ‘we are used to facing bowlers bowling at 145 and 155kph, we have to cope with the challenge’.

What spectators at the ground and in front of their screens saw was the effect on the batsman’s mind of extreme pace; the way it scrambles thinking and chisels out from deep deep down, not the usual responses of the trained and grooved muscle memories but the animal reaction of self-preservation.  When we cannot fight or fly we turn our backs, instinctively we make ourselves as small as possible, we abandon poise. We duck into danger.

So it was at Lord’s, so it was at Adelaide.

The abiding memory from last week’s match was not the sickening near beheading of Smith, though that will remain seared on the mind, no it was the playfulness of Archer when, on the final tense day when all results were possible, fielding at third man to a left hander and thus on the boundary at the point where the Grandstand and Warner Stands meet.

A 12^th man had come round with a bottle of water for him, but keener yet to share a word or two with this other young man, every time his right arm raised the bottle to his lips, Archer thought of another word to say and, eyes still fixed forward on the state of play, he lowered the bottle to his side untouched.  Then he raised it again to his lips only not quite to get there before another word occurred to him and the bottle returned to his side.

In their thousands, those in the Grandstand and the Warner, picking up the restrain of this armography, began a rising accompaniment which climaxed in a roar the instant that Archer’s hand dropped to his side.  Some players intent on the match may have ignored this game or turned to wave and smile.  Not Archer.  Still looking forward, he played with the crowd, accentuating and repeating over and over again the rise and fall, the action and even delaying the denouemont, as if totally unaware and innocent, while the crowd Laughed Out Loud.

One could sense Larwood doing such a thing.

Come on MCC, if Australian batsmen can react so well today, it’s time you admitted your prior errors and honoured the great fast bowler of Nottinghamshire and England.

 

 

 

 

“Yes Chef!” or All Hales and the Humidor

The Squire wished to go to Lord’s on Saturday to watch Nottinghamshire play Surrey in the old B & H mid-summer Final, now thankfully re–insured by Royal London – Life Insurance + Pensions + Investments neatly inscribed on the boundary markers. Players used to find a twenty pack carton under their peg awaiting them on B & H match days. Now there’s a financial adviser sitting there ready to offer independent advice.  The game has changed.

Third Man left the Squire with the McCartney’s swapping tales of Desert Island Disk selections. Went down to Macca’s shed and took the trusty old aluminium ladder to the bottom of the road and shimmied over the wall into the ground before a Steward could shout ‘What?!’

He made his way to Dressing Room 6 to see whether any of the old Pros were there. Many of the dressing rooms that once adorned the Pavilion’s higher echelons have been turned into video analysis rooms and places that offer comfort to fourth umpires and referees.  But Dressing Room 6 remains well disguised as a Lift marked ‘Out of Order’.  Three or four of the old boys were there and cards were spread on an old coffin (from the relatively modern age of the game).

Lord’s is famed for its catering. Less well known is its reputation for fine cigars, a supply of which are kept in a jury rigged humidor – an adaption of the climatic control machine purchased for the Indoor Nets and transported to Dressing Room 6 by Pip Edmonds in what are called the Botham Days.

At 10.50 in walked young Hales. “Hail Hales”, we all said.  “Any of those Cohiba Behikes left, TM?” asked the six-foot-five Hillingdonian. “The Squire instructed me to issue you with two, Titch. One for your innings and one for afters.”

Surrey’s innings took off at a rate of knots. Notts seemed generally languid and unperturbed, dropping a catch or two to demonstrate their confidence – a lot of psychology in the game now. The Lord’s outfield was like glass – emerald green glass. The fielders sauntered. The batsmen drove. But the truth was that Surrey batsmen kept losing their wickets at the most inopportune moments.

The last time TM had seen Surrey play in a Lord’s Cup Final was in 1965 when Brian Close dropped Boycott a couple of Dextros in his morning Horlicks.  Surrey wilted that day. “Seeing you here again does not bode well, TM,” said dear old Horse (13.3.51.1) from a corner of Dressing Room 6.

Notts and Pattinson in particular (34 dots in his 10 overs) got a little reverse going as Surrey entered the last 10 overs and ground to a halt. Their final score of 297 was disappointing. “If only it had been 347,” the Notts supporters on top of the Compton were later to moan. Fletcher did his impression of a lad up from pit for day, but rumour has it he was rescued from a life as a chef at Hooters of Nottingham.  He’ll be OK in Dressing Room 6 in the years to come will that Fletch.

As Hales skipped down the stairs to the Long Room on his way to the wicket, TM stretched out a hand containing a lighter. “There you are Titch.”

The stewards have strangely become a friendly lot in recent years and not a word was said as the scent of fine Habana filled the Long Room, members’ noses turning towards the sweet smell. Such a forgiving scent.

At the wicket, Hales handed the smouldering cigar to the square leg umpire and took guard.

Few who were there will ever forget the following 200 minutes. Lord’s bathed in divine light. The scent of cigar drifting across the ground, reaching all parts of the field like the ball off Hales’ Grey Nick’s bat. Sublime drives. Powerful pulls to balls shortened by the anxiety of bowlers fearing to give him any length. Width punished, not with an admonishment, but with a neatly  inscribed note of thanks, that the time which this master of the drive has at his disposal allowed him to pen. The ash flicked nonchalantly towards the Media Centre at 50, 100 and 150.

At one point, a bewitched opponent, yet England team mate, Jason Roy, ran fully twenty yards to offer the palm of his hand, rather than to allow that foul ash to sully the batsman’s gloved hand; the burning glow at each leisured inhalation never once threatening to outshine the batsman’s brilliance.

Look at the book, if you want the details, oh foolish prizer of data. For all your counting and calculating you will have missed the essence of a cigar appropriately humidified, of batting as leisure, in a match that mattered.

 

(Special thanks to Michael Vaughan who smelt it first.)

Watching Kohli Drive

Here’s Kohli from yesterday. The hands will do what Buttler’s hands do. There’s the ‘L’ shape that produces the ‘lag’.  The hands travel across his body // to the ground as the sequence continues.

and then …

the ball has reached the point below the hands, but there’s still plenty of room for the lag to unwind, creating tremendous bat speed. Hands still at the same height as the first image – ‘low’ relative to the ball – a shallow angle of attack.

And here’s almost the moment of contact …

Hands in front of the ball. Still some lag to be unwound. And the shallow angle of attack.

There are many similarities here with a Jordan Spieth drive.

 

 

‘Ell of a shot

Those able to watch the first ODI match between India and England played at Pune yesterday were able to feast on a diet of 750 runs, without the slightest fear of indigestion. It was a great spectacle.

It was also a funny old wicket.

Few batsman managed a decent pull shot, which suggested variable pace, there were a few dabs and flicks but surely most of the runs came from drives or was it just the stunning nature of these shots – especially from Kholi and Buttler – that gave a false impression?

And this revealed a delightful irony of the modern game: with all the new shots that have come into cricket in the last decade; reverses, ramps and switches; it is actually the good old drive that seems to have undergone the greatest transformation.

People point to the bats, and yes, they are softly pressed and the willow more evenly dispersed across the blade, but they are not unduly ‘heavy’ or heavier than those used in the 1970s.

Where then comes the increased range of the lofted drive, especially, and the increased pace at which the ball comes off the blade?

Above is an image of Buttler that reveals all. Ask any American weekend golfer what’s going on and they’ll tell you.  But how many cricketers?

It’s the ‘L’.

It’s an ‘L’ of a shot.

Cricketing Cults and Stress Fractures

For England, preparing to take the field in Mumbai, two down with two to play, the six letters that should be uppermost in their consideration  S – T – R – E – S – S or, strictly speaking, how to avoid being stricken with stress.

Eddie Jones recently had some words of wisdom on the subject. If you know what you are doing there IS no stress. In other words, disabling stress comes when not knowing what to do forces its way into a sportsperson’s consciousness.

So, if you have a plan and, crucially, if you believe in the plan and have no doubts or feelings of insecurity about the plan that you are being asked to follow or have chosen to adopt, you will bat or bowl without stress.

The trouble comes when you play in two (or more) minds. The ‘should I, shouldn’t I?’ dilemma of being true to ‘my game’, true to my understanding of myself and … and playing in a way that is ultimately inauthentic, alien and pushed on you by outside forces.

In his blog A Sportsman’s Transition the entry on 2/12/2016 for 1/10/15 Alex Gidman  describes the modern dressing room: “We have developed a culture in cricket where we sit in a room with a load of coaches who tell us what we have done wrong. Ok they have stats, footage, whatever but unless you can figure out why things have gone well or badly yourself then it’s irrelevant what the coach says. You have to figure it out what changes are needed and why, the coaches are there to assist you and help but not to be relied on.”

And In ‘Setting the Scene’ – Chapter 1 of ‘Bucking the Trend,’, Chris Rogers, describes how the former Cricket Australia executive Marianne Roux sat the Australians down and said ‘for every negative thought you’ve got to tell yourself to have five positive thoughts’.

One can almost hear the internal monologue of the perspicacious Roger’s, no shrinking violet he, saying to himself, “Well I can’t say that’s ever fucking worked for me.”

Can one picture an England Lion in the full England dressing room reacting to such advice in any other way than with strict compliance? “Yes, yes!”

Rogers explains his own perspective on such advice, “Oddly enough, doubts and insecurities have actually been quite a powerful force driving me as a cricketer. Some players are able to back themselves in, but my own doubts about my ability to pull off certain shots led me to a very pragmatic game, where I worked out the most reliable ways of surviving and scoring without taking undue risks. You often hear about the use of positive thoughts to generate good results, but I’m a big believer in finding a way to channel negative thoughts.”

Rogers continues, “You spend so much of your time questioning yourself and competing against others that you need to find a way to use those doubts. To block them out successfully means kidding yourself, and how long can that last? Instead I find it best to know and own those doubts, and use them to sculpt a technique within my own limitations. By thinking my way through it, I’ve been able to find ways of succeeding where others have not …” before going for the jugular of the modern meme that is the perhaps greatest force for inauthenticity in modern batting, “There is, perhaps, something for others to learn from that, in an age where we constantly hear so much batting bravado talk, which can lead either to rapid scoring or rapid collapsing.”  TM’s italics.

Putting the pursuit of the brand before the authentic expression of personal capabilities is the reason that England has crippled (not a nice word but here, surely, justified) so many young batting talents in recent years? And it is why, in this Test series, stress has stalked the nets and dressing rooms and thrust itself on to the field of play, bringing calamity and dissonance in its wake.

The England managers have only themselves to blame. They have created a cult. It has initiation ceremonies, rites de passage, through which novitiates must pass. Inside is security and access to magical knowledge and privileges beyond the ken of outsiders.  There is a priesthood and leaders, whose authority must never be challenged. They have access to huge wealth and entitlements that can be withdrawn in a moment. Leaders come and go, but the orthodoxy reforms around new leaders. There is apparent equality yet power is held by the few. Novices are taken in at a young age and indoctrinated. Few if any are recruited later in life. There is perfect freedom within, provided the orthodoxy is never challenged.

Cults have a way of ending in mass suicides when reality becomes inescapable and the dissonance too great to bear. But before then, we can change coaches, replace captains and welcome a new cap or two.

“Has What it Takes” – The Importance of Leaving Well Alone

 

The Squire and Third Man first saw the batting of Haseeb Hameed, known as Has, in the Old Trafford Indoor School when he joined a small squad in the Level III ECB Development Programme, aged 11 or 12.

But they had heard of him a couple of years before as a precocious talent who had been selected for the Lancashire Under 11 side while still two or three years below that age.

The reports from the Under 11s were that, accommodating his size, he was already a great manager of the ball, making its energy work for him. He was flexible of wrist. He possessed patience and great powers of concentration.  He valued his wicket highly – and his valuation of it was as precise as his shot making.  He was regularly scoring 50s and batting very long innings. In short no-one could get him out.  Not much has changed, it seems.

There were long battles in the spin net on that Lancashire/ECB programme. You could see that the young man had respect for those bowling against him, not a subservient respect, nor an assertive arrogance, but the kind of respect that underpins sound judgement of shot selection.  His defense was secure.  There were few bad balls on offer and so his ‘virtual’ runs came from deflections and glides.  Placement trumped power.

His parents brought him each evening and his father watched carefully from a distance.  Was it from his father that he had learnt those delightful skills?  Because this was mature batting at an early age – a miniture masterpiece – and, importantly for what comes below, well before any system had got at him.

Neither the Squire nor Third Man have seen him bat since those days but the results have been plain to read and the tributes from opposing First Class captains and their veteran coaches confirm that this batsman is special and steadfastly realising his potential.

The magnificent feat of a hundred in each innings of the just completed Roses Match has been met with a call from Michael Vaughan that he should be included in the full England touring party this winter as the ‘spare opener’.

This news coincides with a severe critique of England’s recent selection policies from James Morgan at The Full Toss and follow England’s batting woes in the tied Test series against Pakistan.

Test cricket is now one specialised form amongst a number of different forms of the game, each of which has its own Darwinian adaptive forces selecting for differing skill-sets.

Test match batting with its expanses of time requires the highest level of technical excellence.  The analysis and bowling at Test match level is now sufficient to expose any weakness in a batsman.

A career in cricket is a process of the winning and giving of development opportunities by the selectors.  Experience counts, all benefit from being given opportunities, but the opportunity of gaining experience is better given to some than to others.

‘Selectors’ might not be the right word to describe Whitaker et al in the days of the strong Coach/Captain model (which includes a very strong Technical Director of Elite Coaching [TDEC] overseeing a pool of players deeply embedded into the England set-up and through whom all selectees pass). Where real power over these decisions lies is as obscure and as unwritten as the British constitution. The suspicion remains from the late Flower era that cultural fit into the system is given as much, if not more, weight than technical proficiency.  How would our own bowlers bowl against some of our recent debutants and are they ever asked before decisions are made?

In recent times, batsmen with glaring weaknesses have benefited from development opportunities against weak opposition operating in alien conditions. Those opportunities have too often been wasted on players whose deficiencies have been quickly exposed when strong opposition arrived.

It would be natural for the coaching, fitness and psychological support staff to believe they can ‘fix’ such inadequacies on the job – it’s why they are paid. But here is further cause for concern.  Ask the old pros associated with coaching talent in the counties and you will hear them talk of their dread that their player is being scooped up into the England system.  Sure, this can be a human reaction to someone losing control, but too many have seen young cricketers who have been growing in ability in their nurseries ‘crash’ and burn after time with the England set up.

The system is clearly failing.  After a number of series, including an odd and less than reliable one at home against the Australians, England is left with gaps, real or imagined, in their batting line up and no more development opportunities before their winter series.  For the medium to long term this system must be fixed. It is broken.

But, back to Haseeb Hameed and the question as to whether right now this precious talent should tour with England this winter.

The answer should be Yes,  but … not if he is to be the ‘spare opener’ from the start.  Imagine: first warm up match – not selected! And on and on bringing on the drinks, until, out of practice in the middle, he receives his call up to meet a crisis.   No, the young batsman’s technique is ideal for sub-continental conditions.  If he is to go and to survive the process, his and England’s best chance is for him to open the batting from day one.

But he is where he is because he has been left to develop and to soak up experience on the basis of  ‘I’ll ask if I need something’. There should be no efforts to tinker with technique or with his mind!

Here’s an ideal chance to see what happens when coaches leave well alone and Test selection pays due regard to technique.

• Thanks to the Manchester Evening News for a shot taken in those same in door nets – a few years later.

In Praise of Bunsen Burners

“Westward Ho! Third Man” yelled the Squire last Saturday. “We are off to see our friends from the North (West), Messers Parry and Keedy. They’re playing at home for Formby today. One o’clock kick-off. I don’t want to be late.”

It’s August and the Squire is on his Bowland estate. It had been raining incessantly on the moors.

“We must seek sun and good spin bowling, TM. We are enthusiasts starved of drift, dip and turn. I’ve been told by our old companion Cockbain, now the captain of Formby in the Lancashire Premier League, that we’ll find what we are looking for at the end of the rainbow yonder on the coast.”

They arrived at Formby five minutes late and found that the visitors, New Brighton, had already lost a wicket. “I told you were driving too slowly, TM. You were listening to that damn Boycott and not concentrating on the task in hand.”

Here was Boycs on the benign Edgbaston wicket.  “Will this wicket turn eventually on the fifth day?  Of course it will. So, why don’t we ask the groundsman to leave the wicket open to the elements during preparation to produce his ‘fifth day wicket’ on the third day?”

Abrasion and grip can produce enthralling, skillful cricket, with batsman challenged by and responding early in the match to conventional swing and seam, and later to reverse swing and spin.

Cricket at Formby began on a day five wicket, as dry and textured as Third Man’s bowl of Flahavan’s  porridge oats.

Cockbain turned to Parry and Keedy in the 9^th and 10^th overs.  Parry, initially stiff and wayward to leg after a fortnight out of the Lancashire side, and Keedy, feeling his way towards the optimum pace at which to bowl. Early doors, both experienced the indignity for left-armers of being lapped by right-handers. But old pros like Pazza and Gazza are not put off by that, even when New Brighton’s 50 had arrived with no further loss of wicket.

Then Parry, who bowls straighter and quicker than Keedy, hit the stumps. And Keedy, tossing the ball high and ripping it across the face of the bat, found the edge.

Here on view were two very different approaches to the art of left arm bowling: Keedy intimidating the amateur batsmen with prodigious turn and bounce before striking with an arm ball or a delivery of less excessive flight and turn; whilst Parry bowled bullet straight. Four LBWs, two for each on a ‘Bunsen’.

A good partnership for the ninth wicket, with some fearless hitting, transferred the pressure from batsman to bowler and took the New Brighton score to a very respectable 165 all out – Parry 5 for 44, Keedy 4 for 68 – “More than we planned for,” said Cockburn.

There is no such thing as a ‘natural’ wicket – not even a terroir – when there is marl or loam, or even dust to be added; watering and covering or uncovering to be varied, length and extent or absence of grass to be gauged, and, on first class grounds, heaters and varying rollers to be chosen.

Every strip is a contrivance: In the first Test between England and Pakistan this summer, the public were provided with conditions that entertained them with the excitement of late movement from reverse swing and the ingenuity of classic wrist spin.  Old Trafford contrived to avoid the conditions of the previous Test, and Edgbaston provided the drama of attrition and brought forward the narrative of perseverance overcoming the odds.

Formby had contrived conditions that Boycott would have enjoyed; conditions in which batsman, in the highest level below county cricket, had to battle with flight and turn and fierce bounce not from pace but from the spinner’s science –  the keeper often taking the ball above shoulder height standing up.

And New Brighton had three spinners in their armoury who could and would monopolise their bowling.

The Formby openers refused to allow these three to settle and took the score to 100 without loss. But once those spinners had tasted success, the scales moved against Formby with three wickets falling without the score moving on. In a blink it was 125 for 5 and 144 for 6 before Cockbain, with years of experience, sent out two lefties to neutralise the two left-armers.

This is as good as cricket gets – spinners bowling 87% of the overs in helpful conditions. Metaphorically and literally gripping stuff.

These conditions can be contrived anywhere in the country at almost any time of the season.  Don’t be fooled into believing that seaming tracks are God given, they are not.  More ‘Bunsen burners’ will see counties and England Test sides bringing on and using the spin talents that dominate Under 11 and under 12 county cricket.

Your score card

Above – Thanks to the Grosvenor Estate in Bowland where the Giants have pitched their wickets

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Yasir Shah, His Magic Mirror and The Rubby Dubby Bag

Tomorrow England face Pakistan at Old Trafford. Expect a feast of bowling. At Lord’s, the Pakistan seamers were getting it to reverse almost by the twenty over mark.  At that rate, if the OT wicket is typically abrasive, they’ll be getting it to reverse after five!

But the highlight will surely be the chance to watch Yasir Shah again, following his 10 – 141 in NW8.

Viewing Shah from side-on you’ll appreciate the speed of the arm and the powerful force he generates through the crease, like a catapult assisted jet taking-off from an aircraft carrier.

In the first innings he exploited the minimal turn offered by the wicket.  Throughout both innings he was content selflessly to bowl from which ever end his seamers didn’t want to bowl from and made the best of it whenever that required him to bowl his leg-breaks up the slope: a good team player for an obvious super star.

Also he took a number of wickets when England batsmen played vicious top spin deliveries square to leg instead of bunting them straight back.

Was this faulty technique?  Well of course.  But it wasn’t as simple as that.

Every now and then … perhaps once every four overs … Shah, as if in error, would drag down a delivery which a grateful England batsmen would gleefully pull to the mid-wicket boundary.  But it was like watching a fisherman dangling some rubby dubby over the side.

“Enough of these metaphors TM!”

So, when in the 71st over of England’s second innings, with a valiant Bairstow on 48 and doing his very best to refrain from all temptation and shepherd England slowly but surely towards the required total … well here is how Cric-Info described it, “A straight ball, that (Bairstow) should have whacked. Yasir has pitched it a little short, which is why Bairstow went back. He tries to play it with perhaps too closed a face …”

Except that to understand why Bairstow played the ball as if it was a drag down ball and not the top spinner that was going to screech through anything but a straight bat, you have to have seen that Shah had deliberately given him just such a dragged down delivery to ‘whack’ to the boundary four of his overs before.

And here’s how Cric-Info had described that ball in the 63^rd over, “Yasir Shah to Bairstow, FOUR, a rare – very rare – poor ball as he drags one down and Bairstow latches on with a powerful pull through square leg.”

Subtle stuff to savour.

HT the ever suspicious Chris @ Declaration Game and Brian Carpenter @ Different Shades of Green.

 

 

 

 

The Strangest Things – England v Pakistan Lord’s Test 2010

“It’s ridiculous,” said Graeme Swann.   “(The match) keeps throwing up the strangest things.”

Swann was commenting at the end of Day 3 of the fourth Test of the 2010 series between England and Pakistan.

After interruptions for rain on the first day of the match, England began the second day on 39 for 1.  At drinks they were 69 for 5 in bowler friendly conditions that had reminded Third Man of Massey’s Test at the same ground in 1972.

The last three England batsmen had all made ducks and had fallen to Mohammad Amir – the new Massey.  Two further wickets fell after lunch taking England’s score to 102 for 7 when Stuart Broad joined Jonathan Trott. England, from this perilous position, went on romantically to win by an innings and 225 runs.

The match has become famous for allegations of spot fixing. Unbeknown to the Pakistan players, that day, The News of The World were about to be given proof by Amir himself, via a ‘middleman’ that, for a price, they could be fed tips about the outcomes of parts of Pakistan v England matches.

As this blog reported on the 29^th August 2010, three no-balls were ordered up for the News of the World’s sting team, designed to convince this potential client/punter that lucrative outcomes could be and ALREADY WERE being delivered to subscribers to the middleman’s services.

A no-ball duly ‘delivered’ by Amir was photographed. It revealed the bowler over ‘stepping’ by at least 12 inches and, tellingly, the captain, fielding at mid-off, watching anxiously, not at the batsman on strike as you might imagine, but at the bowler’s front foot.

Scotland Yard arrested the middleman and the ICC banned three players, Salman Butt, the captain, Mohammad Amir and another bowler Mohammad Asif also implicated in the delivery of no-balls for the News of the World. The bans were for between 5 and 10 years – not life. All three were later convicted of criminal charges ‘related to spot fixing’ and given prison sentences.

Attention has always focused on the no-balls and ‘spot fixing’ –  but the many other ‘strange things’, unwittingly alluded to by Swann, point towards the probability of many hugely profitable spread betting opportunities, contrived during this match for other potential clients.

At the time,Third Man wrote, “at around noon on Friday (TM) thought England would be out for under a hundred, the conditions were so conducive to the undoubted talents of Amir and Asif.  Even then the disparity between the wickets taken by Amir and Asif seemed extraordinary.

“But he was also increasingly surprised to see Butt take the foot off the England throat.  He could not believe some of the bowling changes and field placings.  Why no sustained attack?  Why no third slip?  Why use your two strike bowlers so sparingly with the new ball?  Why take off Amir just as Broad reached 99.  Why use a part time leg spinner?  Now, one even has to speculate on the missed chances (two slip chances in an over) and juvenile miss-fields.”

Amir will probably be playing for Pakistan again at Lord’s later this week.  Opinion is divided as to whether convicted cheats should be allowed ever to play again.  It is good to see a number of experienced former cricketers of the highest class saying they should not.

If you were not watching at the time, it might be easy to dismiss a couple of no-balls and wonder if the punishment was appropriate to the crime and that Amir for example should be given a second chance.  Warning: personal naivety should not lead one to the projection of a similar naivety onto others.

This was an appalling, calculated and systematic fraud that blights cricket to this day – it robs those who watch cricket and pay to watch it of the certainty that what is going on is sport, is legitimate competition.

Letting cheats earn a living again from the game they have damaged sends the wrong signal to every future player approached by a fraudster.

August 2010 was the worst of times.  And it happened before our very eyes, the sensations that they discerned crowded out by sport’s inconstant friends, romance and idealism.

• Image Above : Eduardo Paolozzi’s sculpture, “A Maximis Ad Minima” Kew Gardens.