Home Thoughts, From Abroad: Farewell Hawkes Bay

Time to leave Te Mata and the beautiful Coleraine to the relief of readers.

In his comment to the previous post, the ever thoughtful Backwatersman linked to a film shot in 1902 of the Lancashire captain A.N. (Monkey) Hornby batting in a net against Arthur Mold in an attempt to prove that accusations that Arthur threw the ball were unfounded.

It should remind cricket lovers that there was a period at the end of the C19th and start of the C20th when the ‘authorities’ had allowed throwing to become endemic in the game – including among the untouchables (the so-called amateurs) like C.B. Fry. 

Hornby did his best to protect his old trooper and, in the propaganda war, seized on new technology to help him. The game was subsequently ‘cleansed’. Mold was removed.

To borrow BWM’s reflection and transplant it to the those earlier times, it may be that this up-swell in the use of the throw came as a response to the improvement in batting technique and performance led by W.G. Grace’s innovations. 

The determination of the authorities to ‘outlaw’ the chuckers perhaps had to wait until there was a general sense that the ball had moved into the ascendency – a kind of Kondratiev Wave  operating through cricket.

Because in modern times the (redesigned and unpressed) bat has enjoyed a period of ascendency, there is no palpable call for action that would further aid the bat by restrictions on the bowlers’ present freedoms.

Until there is a device to measure changes in the rate of elbow joint extension the game is left only with the lab, with all its limitations and secrecy. 

Today’s Hornby and Harris won’t be inviting the cameras in there.  As batting reached a zenith bowlers were helped to ascend from their nadir.  How did it happen this time?

This then is the view from Down at Third Man:

The exception that provided the rule.

The story starts with the never to be forgotten Murali, no matter that in many facets he was a genuine exception, he was to provide the justification for the new rule. 

Murali was able to bowl with limited extension.  Lay observers can take the film of him operating in the plaster cast as significant proof of this. 

His physical abnormalities gave him two advantages.  The arm that could not straighten meant that he had a naturally large distance between the wrist and the axis of rotation of the humerus. This permitted an exceptionally strong wrist flick.  The use of this strength enhanced the flexibility of his wrist, further increasing the force and therefore the number of rotations he could put on the ball.

Bowlers who have mimicked this technique (without the abnormality) have had to sacrifice some height at the point of delivery.   Not so Murali, because the second abnormality, the one in his shoulder, meant that he was able to keep both the height of the arm and the distance of the wrist from the axis.  Ajmal has to bowl with his head lent to the left so that the arm can be upright (except for his new delivery).  Not so Murali. 

This gave the Sri Lankan bounce, more options on wrist position and heavily revved top spin as a variation to the zipping off-spin.

These abnormalities also helped him when he began to explore the possibilities of Saqlain Mushtaq’s ‘other one’ or ‘doosra’, which he came to bowl even better than the master.

TM believes that at this point in history it is with little profit to speculate whether Murali, on the field of play, used any further elbow extension within or in excess of 15 degrees. 

The important point is that he could put on the extra revs and bowl the doosra  without recourse to extra flex and extension prior to and through release of the ball.  (See yesterday’s post for how this technique from throwing increases ball speed and revs.)

Two further developments then occurred. 

First other offspin bowlers searched for ways of bowling the ‘other one’ without having either of Murali’s anomalies.   They achieved it by using a flexed elbow.  That is by imitating the first anomaly of Murali.  But without the shoulder anomaly they could only do so by sacrificing height or balance. 

It must have been tempting for them consciously or unconsciously to compensate for this by increasing the extension prior to and through the delivery.  At first trial and error would have led them to these developments. Later knowledge of biomechanical principles will have guided them.

Second, the authorities were stung by the ‘appearance’ of Murali’s deliveries (and the apparent throwing by bowlers such as Brett Lee and Shoaib Akhtar) into researching these actions and turned to the biomechanic experts for help.

The biomechanics found  in lab conditions at least 20-25% of elite bowlers were flexing and then extending by amounts up to 15 degrees.  To keep these bowlers ‘legitimate’ they set the bar at 15 or fewer degrees of extension, arguing that, as all these elite bowlers’ were considered to have lawful actions, any limit had to be set at a point which did not outlaw them. 

In response to criticism by Martin Crowe in his 2006 Cowdrey Lecture, the  ICC general manager Dave Richardson stated that the scientific evidence presented by biomechanists Professor Bruce Elliot, Dr Paul Hurrion and Mr Marc Portuswith was overwhelming and clarified that, “Some bowlers, even those not suspected of having flawed actions, were found likely to be straightening their arms by 11 or 12 degrees. And at the same time, some bowlers that may appear to be throwing may be hyper-extending or bowl with permanently bent elbows. Under a strict interpretation of the law, they were breaking the rules – but if we ruled out every bowler that did that then there would be no bowlers left.”

But the biomechanics advisers had by that time also pointed to a practice whereby certain bowlers (who had elbow extension factors of less than 15 degrees) were going into their actions with heavily flexed elbows and starting the extension of this joint late in the action, just before release, but carrying on the extension after release, as would someone throwing an object. 

The ICC had also been told that this kind of rotation of the humerus brought about by throwing techniques made possible the ‘back of the hand’ spin from leg to off (the dousra). 

With an elbow extension limited to 5 degree (as it was originally set by the ICC) Murali could bowl the doosra.  He didn’t need 15 degrees.  

But the exception had provided the rule and, by increasing the limit, the ICC made it possible to use throwing mechanics for all types of bowling without breaking the 15 degree barrier and without the technology to identify and prevent the use of those techniques.  That is where the game stands with throwing techniques legalized.

The Point of Inflexion

Either cricket will have to wait and then like Hornby seize a new piece of technology (fitted to a bowler’s arm) or …  with the advanced commoditization of cricket, to wait for its consumers to tire of the present model.  At which moment those who make their livelihood from the game will suddenly agree the need for action.

Meanwhile Ajmal awaits England on the morrow.  Though there seems enough turn for all the Pakistan spinners to run amok.

“And the co-ordinates Sir? ”

“Home or Abu Dhabi or Adelaide?  Time is our oyster, Third Man.”

“Anywhere but this point in time.”

The Curious Incident of the Angle that Did Not Exceed 15 Degrees

 

This is the fourth in a consecutive series of posts and the reader new to the series may benefit by starting here or even the post before that.

The Squire poured another glass of Te Mata, Coleraine, enjoying the heat radiating from the walls behind him and watching the sun set over the ranks of vines that gently undulated like a graph plotting the elbow angle excursion of a legal, quick.

 

Third Man could sense that great mind at work which once had inspired his old friend, the Portsmouth AFC goalkeeper, and occasional bowler, Arthur Conan Doyle.  

Like any good factotum Third Man played along, bowling a long hop.  “Is there any other point to which you would wish to draw my attention?”

“To the curious incident of the angle of elbow extension.”

“The angle at no point exceeded 15 degrees.”

“That was the curious incident.”

 By this time Bob Marshall of EIT’s Department of Biomechanics had arrived.

“Bob, will you explain it to him, please.”

“It would seem that bowlers who can maintain a fixed elbow flexion during delivery can use humerus internal rotation to produce higher ball release speeds.”

“And faster rotations and a more manoeuvrable wrist,” continued  the Squire, scratching the diagram atop this post in the dust of  New Zealand’s best terroir

“The change in wrist speed is firstly a function of effective lever length, and second of the wrist distance from the internal rotation axis of the humerus.”

“Length d in the diagram.” 

“The conventional spin bowler endeavours to maximize the effective bowling arm length.”

“My modelling predicted that the generation of wrist speed due to humerus internal rotation would be greater than any loss of wrist speed due to reduction in effective bowling arm length.”

“Bob’s conclusion was that bowlers who could maintain a flexed arm through delivery either consciously or owing to an elbow abnormality either of the fixed flexion or carry angle type had the potential to achieve substantially higher wrist speeds through the use of humerus internal rotation.”

“The ICC were looking elsewhere?”

“Here’s what they need to be looking for …”  The Squire etched another diagram in the dust.

 

“In this elbow extension angle profile the arm flexes up to the first black line (front foot landing), stays constantly flexed up to green line (bowling arm reaches shoulder height) begins to flex slightly again as the arm moves up towards the point of release at which time the wrist is also furthest from the internal rotation axis of the humerus, only then does extension begin and continues through and beyond second black line (ball released), maximising speed of wrist rotation, or wrist flick.”

“But that’s a throw.  The same could be used to describe the technique of an Olympic javelin thrower.”

“It is possible that this effect may be utilised legally to some extent by those bowlers who flex the bowling arm slightly through ball release,” said Bob.

“But the more natural and probably most efficient method to generate ball or wrist speed is to extend at the elbow through release as in throwing,” said the Squire.

“In throwing both elbow extension and humerus internal rotation are utilised to generate ball speed.”

“So, if we took a ‘bowler’ whose elbow extension angle was around 60 or so degrees and was then extended through release, but by no more than 15 degrees, say to 48 degrees his action would have the properties of a throw despite him having an elbow extension of 12 degrees from shoulder height to ball release.”

“Yep, under the present code with its 15 degree extension limit such a delivery would be legal,” said the Squire with a catch in his throat as the sun set over the scene, casting a gloom.

“And such an action has the potential to generate higher ball speeds and more rotations than the conventional bowling action, does not have the mechanical characteristics of bowling, and uses throwing techniques.”

There is no need to bring me into this. It's a chuck.

“If it looks like a duck, swims like a duck, and quacks like a duck, then it probably is a duck.”

“Which means that every coach in the world will be teaching youngsters how to perfect it. And if a bowler can get away with an elbow extension over the 15% limit, there’s an even greater advantage to be had.”

“Maybe if a coach sat in his bath, puffing on a cigar and figuring out how best to maximize revs he’d come up with a … duck.”

“Probably he already did that.”

Throwing in Cricket – UnLocking the Evidence

Apologies from the outset for the length of this positing.  It is the third in a series in which a further is planned.  New readers may wish to start two posts back in time 😉

Reacting to Saeed Ajmal’s performance in the first Test of the present Pakinstan v England series, other bloggers and established journalists have made the point that to perform as expertly as Ajmal did, even throwing the ball, takes a huge amount of skill and is fascinating to watch.

It may be that Ajmal was bowling within both the laws and the spirit of the laws of cricket – the Squire and Third Man  journeyed yesterday to New Zealand  to find out – but one thing is for sure, if such a technique is allowed very soon every bowler will adopt it just like round-arm, once it was legalized in 1835, replaced underarm and over-arm, once it was legalized in 1864, replaced round arm (until revived by the excellent S.L. Malinga).

Why?  Because throwing makes it easier to impart faster revolutions on the ball.

Can we calculate what these extra revolutions/minute are worth to a spinner?

In the summer of 2010 Third Man featured the contest between left-arm spinners Johnny Wardle and Tony Lock. Johnny’s son, John provided the following statistics by way of a comment to the post that can be found here.

Lock’s Test average pre 1959, that is before he changed his action, was 14.70 for Tests in England and 19.66 overall.  For the period after 1959, following the change, it was 48.06 in England and 34.58 overall.

John also reminded readers that Alan Hill had described Lock as having “three phases” to his first class career.   Pre-1952 he averaged 22.95.  Between 1952 and 1957 when his action was described at best as “suspect” (Laker thought it embarrassing) his average was 14.78 and post 1958/9 when he was forced to change his action the average returned to around that of the pre- 1952 level: 23.19.

And Lock did not use the advantage to deceive in terms of direction of turn.

So, what is going on with the likes of Botha  (above), Ajmal and the plethora of bent elbow ‘bowlers’ that are bestriding Test cricket, first class cricket and now, inevitably, cropping up all over the public parks and club grounds around the world?

First, some are exceeding the 15 degrees of leniency for elbow angle extension provided by the ICC code.  They may do so every ball, or for certain balls, relying of the fact that there is, as yet, no ‘in-play’ means of measuring this angle or the change in this angle during the delivery.

But some appear to  ‘jerk’ even when their elbow angle extensions are at or below 15 degrees (see Growl Tiger’s comment to yesterday’s post). 

This phenomenon was observed by Rene Ferdinands and Ure Kersting in their research, Elbow Angle Extension and implications for the legality of the bowling action in Cricket in A. McIntosh (Ed.), Proceedings of Australasian Biomechanics Conference 5 (December 9-10), 2004, University of New South Wales, Sydney.

They noted that the ‘throwing group could not be differentiated from the other bowling groups by elbow extension angle.’

Ferdinands wrote, “This suggests that either (i) the bowlers in the throwing group were not generally throwing and the visual effect of jerkiness was an illusion, or that (ii) a throwing-type action is not solely determined by elbow extension angle. If the latter was correct, then another biomechanical concept is needed to differentiate a throw from a bowl.”

The 1947 code (4th Edition, 1970): Law 26b, with its elbow extension constraint and its time constraint, ‘just prior to release’ requires the calculation of another measurement; that of the linear rate of change of elbow angle through release, or ‘elbow excursion angle slope’.  

If the elbow extends through release, as in a throw, the rate of change of elbow angle would be positive – described as having a ‘positive slope’. Conversely, if the elbow flexes through release, the rate of change of elbow angle is negative, and has a ‘negative slope’. If the bowling arm remains perfectly rigid through release the slope is zero. 

In terms of the 1970 definition a legal delivery is one that has an elbow angle slope of less than or equal to 0º/s. 

Ferdinands believed that this 1970 wording of the Law on throwing was preferable to the later 2000 code Law 24.3 because ‘after an initial period of elbow straightening, many bowlers are able to maintain the elbow angle or slightly flex the elbow through ball release’.

Yet notwithstanding this, in practice (i.e. from in the sample of 69 bowlers in the sample) a significant percentages of bowlers were unable to comply with this.

According to the 1970 definition 20.0% of the fast bowlers, 25.0% of the fast-medium bowlers, 27.3% of the medium bowlers, 64.3% of the slow bowlers and 20.0% of the spin bowlers would have had to be defined as throwers.

The authorities might have concluded, ‘so be it’ and forced between one in four and one in five of the sample to change their action.

But as was shown yesterday for the angle of extension it was decided that rather than ask bowlers to change their actions the interpretation of the law should be changed to an extent that brought these bowlers who were ‘assumed’ to be ‘bowling conventionally’ into legitimacy.

Ferdinands emphasised this determination or necessity to provide a license for bowlers with positive slopes by writing that ‘This would be particularly true of the faster bowling groups and the spin bowling group because these included the largest proportion of elite subjects.’

Here again an atypical group (atypical because many of them had been selected because of their ability to take wickets against first class batsman on class wickets by speed through the air, by speed of rotations and by ability to conceal the direction of rotations) was considered the norm and which therefore skewed the mean and standard deviations before then setting limits which included as many of such (first class) performers as possible as legitimate ‘bowlers’.  

However, Ferdinands did conclude that,  ‘Unlike elbow extension angle, elbow angle slope through release was able to differentiate those bowlers in the throwing group from the other bowling groups’, yet argued that ‘by the increasing the threshold of allowable elbow angle slope, this property could be used to further differentiate between the throwing group and the bowlers’.

He gave as an example a 150 degree positive slope as defining 65% of the throwing group as ‘throwers’.

The diagram above illustrates the ‘problem’ for administrators trying to outlaw those assumed to be throwers from those ‘assumed to be legitimate bowlers (because they were at work in first class cricket and considered OK).

If the zero or negative degree definition is selected it ‘catches’ all the throwers bar one, but also ‘catches’ the 20-25% of fast, fast medium and spin bowlers.

Does cricket really want them bowling that way?  Could they with some work and help redesign their actions?  Should cricket return to Law 26b of the 1970 code?  By setting the elbow angle slope at negative 150-200 degrees is cricket making it even harder to police the law and inviting further slippage?   

Tomorrow Third Man and the Squire will be back on The Case of the Elbow that Did Not Straighten and The One that Straightens Later, and looking at how throwing makes it easier to impart more revolutions on a ball.

They will also be casting an eye over that “teesra” delivery carefully constructed, perfected and perhaps not quite innovated by Ajmal.  A lot of unscientific speculation has already been aired on this by former batsmen. What is it really all about and how would it measure up in the lab?  Clue: it cleverly exploits a biomechanical potential.

Cricket’s Jerks, Angles and Extensions or Not Throwing a Tantrum

(This post is one of a series which began here, yesterday.  Readers my wish to start there )

Last Thursday it was Info Day at Eastern Institute of Technology, Hawkes Bay, NZ.    So, the Squire, shunning conventional means of travel, and saving the CO2s, waited ‘til Friday morning before joining Third Man in the Type III to travel back in time to the EIT Info Day.

A little secret here: the co-ordinates were already set in the ‘My Favourite Places’ section of the Squire’s terrestrial navigation device that Her Grace gave Him for Christmas. 

Not EIT exactly, but Te Mata, and the other Buck House, Coleraine, pictured above,  across the road from the winery, designed by the Wellington architect Ian Athfield,  who incidentally also designed a modest C20th ‘extension’ to the East Wing of the Great House for the Squire.

Stretching his legs after the short but naturally debilitating passage and savouring a well aged bottle of Coleraine, the Squire, in improving humour, awaited the arrival of his very good friend the biomechanic, Professor Bob Marshall.

“A little light background reading, Third Man, please …”

The 1947 code (4th Edition, 1970): Law 26b states that “a ball shall be deemed to have been thrown if, in the opinion of either umpire, the process of straightening the bowling arm, whether it be partial or complete, takes place during that part of the delivery swing which directly precedes the ball leading the hand. This definition shall not debar a bowler from the use of the wrist in the delivery swing.”

This set elbow extension as an anatomical constraint and ‘just prior to release’ as a impractically vague temporal constraint. 

So a new code Law 24.3 in 2000 sought to clarify this – A ball is fairly delivered in respect of the arm if, once the bowler’s arm has reached the level of the shoulder in the delivery swing, the elbow joint is not straightened partially or completely from that point until the ball has left the hand. This definition shall not debar a bowler from flexing or rotating the wrist in the delivery swing.

By 2000, biomechanics had already revealed that, under the constraint that any straightening of the arm prior to release was evidence of throwing, almost no bowlers operating in the first class game could meet the restriction.

The ICC therefore chose to specify a range of elbow extension tolerance levels that it considered acceptable, but which were dependent on ball release speed.  Fast bowlers would be allowed 10° elbow extension, medium pace bowlers 7.5°, and spin bowlers only 5°.  Poor umpires !

In 2004 Rene Ferdinands and Uwe Kersting published Elbow Angle Extension and implications for the legality of the bowling action in Cricket.

For their research sixty-nine bowlers were selected and grouped into fast, med-fast, medium, slow, and finger-spin categories. 40% of these were first class or test cricketers.  8 bowlers in their sample were observed as possibly having a “throwing-type” or “jerky” action.  

Ferdinands and Kersting quickly confirmed that the elbow angle extension operations of none of their 69 could meet the provisions of the 2000 code.  Further, although 100% of the medium bowlers met the ICC’s constraints, only 86.7% of the fast, 87.5% of the fast/medium, 35.7% of the slow and 60% of the spin bowlers satisfied the 10, 7 and 5% limits respectively.

At this point the ICC could have required bowlers such as these to alter their actions to meet the prescribed constraints or they could have eased the maximum angles to ‘legalise’ a greater proportion.  They chose the later. 

Nor did they appear to consider that they might not be basing their decisions on a ‘reliable’ sample.   Of the 69, 28 had come through the trial by batsman to become first class or Test bowlers, a process that selects not for legitimacy of action but for effectiveness.

Increased elbow extension benefits quick bowlers for speed, but also facilitates humerus internal rotation which, for spinners, improves rotation speeds and wrist flexibility.  The former considerably aids turn, drift and dip.  The latter increases the potential to bowl deliveries such as the doosra.

The authorities chose to set the limit at 1) a one-angle-fits-all i.e. regardless of bowling style, thus, avoiding issues of interpretation as to style of bowling, 2) at a extent of angle that would allow accurate observation – floppy long sleeved shirts and all, and 3) at an angle, incidentally, that identified as legal all but one of the 8  ‘throwers’ in the sample.  This was 15 degrees.

Professional bowlers are capable of modifying their actions to gain the maximum permitted advantage.  Like speeding drivers they will see a ‘limit’ as a target if it increases their performance. Without an ‘on field’ or ‘non-lab conditions’ means of measurement bowlers will naturally risk grabbing a few extra degrees.

Also they are capable of reducing the elbow angle extensions if they should need to.  Almost all of those who have been sited and worked on their action have had their ‘new’ actions cleared; evidence that those who earn a significant income from bowling can alter their elbow angle extension.

The authorities ignored the opportunity to demand improved actions.  For instance they could have set the elbow angle extension limit at 10%.  This would have required 13.3% of the fast bowlers, 12.5% of the fast/medium and 40% of the spinners in the sample to modify their actions.

Interestingly and significantly in the ‘throwing’ group of 8 only one extra bowler would have been ‘excluded’ by a reduction from 15% to 10%.  Clearly for this group it is not elbow angle extension that causes the cricketing purist to wince and cry ‘jerk’.

Does this mean, as they and their supporters will claim, that many of those whose actions look really bad are in fact bowling fairly?

“Well,” said the Squire, “that is why we are here in Hawkes Bay, waiting for my old cuz Bob.  He’ll be along soon, but until then there’s another bottle of Buck’s best to enjoy.”

Ajmal Throws England Out for 192

You can reply on Third Man to state the facts.  England, who won the toss and elected to play cricket, were all out for 192 in the Dubai National Stadium today.  Seven of these dismissals were run outs. Seven run outs?  Well, they weren’t bowled.

Those who relied on getting that truth from their Sky Sports Entertainments package  were to be disappointed.

So too were those who expected it from the Test Match Special team.  Shame on them!

Those at the ground who thought that the umpires might see that the laws of the game were implemented were frankly deluded.  That function of course has been taken away from them by the administrators, in case they broke the conspiracy of silence and did their traditional job of policing the laws of the game on the field of play.

And those who relied on those self same administrators in the nearby offices of the ICC to see that such a bowler would not be allowed to participate in a club match let alone a Test match with such an action were whistling in the Dubai sunshine.

The Characteristics of an Obtuse Angle: not quick or alert in perception, feeling, or intellect; not sensitive or observant.

Sky, in a bizarre decision showed Ajmal’s “variations” under the microscope of super, super slo-motion, and then had to ignore how these exposed to everyone but their hirelings  the full extent of the chucker’s positive and blatant  elbow angle and snap, far exceeding even the itravesty of the 15 degree limit – everyone that is but the former cricketers of distinction who are locked into the type of complicity pioneered by wrestling commentators in the 1960s.

Not one of them had the courage or the ethical commitment to say, “He’s bloody chucking them.”  UPDATE: back in a London Sky Studio Bob Willis courageously did so.

60 degrees of concern. Will the umprires and referee take action?

Hussein legitimized a round the wicket javalin throw as Ajmal’s third variation, the Twousra, or his ‘arm ball’.  Botham thought it ‘slingy’. Viewers could sense that he was having to brace himself as he said this.

Over on Test Match Special, a man in bright yellow trousers was looking for buses, seagulls, and naked nuns rather than have to describe the action that was taking place in front of his nose down there on Planet Darts.

Now, for those in the blogging seats, there is always the danger that they will stand accused of being poor losers by ascendant Australians and even belligerant Bangladeshis who not long ago had no problem driving those Ajmal arrows to the boundary.

 

But the point is that athletics took years to stamp out the use of drugs in its sport.  In that time young people had the choice of taking the stuff or working three times as hard and still often finishing behind the cheats.

Do we really want youngsters coming into cricket thinking that this is the way to deliver spin?  Do we want those who are doing it the hard and legitimate way to be kept out of teams by cheats who throw the ball?  

Do we really want to see the cash we spend on tickets, our subscriptions and licence fees pay for administrators who think this is right or haven’t the guts to take the necessary action to stamp it out ?

Do we want the papers we buy and our license and subscription fees to employ so-called journalists who would rather an easy life than expose and challenge what is going on in the name of cricket?

No. No. No.

The conspiracy of silence from the establishment will do the game no service in the long run.

UPDATE: Good old Bob .  Third Man has published before this piece on Murali bowling in a brace.  Ajmal should wear one similar and show the world his doosra – Murali took the challenge.

Go Look at the Trophy: Read the Names

India, where are your young men of change, where are your revolutionary Test cricketers?  It is your time or it is no time. Go look at the Trophy: Read the names.

The Border/Gavaskar Trophy being contested at this moment may prove to be a seminal Test series to match that of the 1928-29 series between Australia and England. It may change the course of cricketing history. Let’s hope so.

In 1928, Australia, after a period of dominance in world cricket found their stars aging but its Cricket Board, out of touch and inert, were unable to reconstruct their side in time before coming up against a very strong England side.

Australia were hammered 1 – 4.  For England across the series, Hammond scored 905 runs at an average of 113.12, and Hendren, Sutcliffe,Hobbsand Jardine all averaged over 40.

Among the England bowlers Geary, White, Larwood and Tate took 79 wickets between them.

But although it was not obvious at the time, the series initiated an exciting period of change in Test cricket  – a period of unprecedented attack and counter attack.

That series-drubbing deeply influenced the mentality of a young Australian debutante in the side, Don Bradman, who went on to bat  without mercy in the return series when he surpassed Hammond with an aggregate of 974 runs in 7 innings at an average of 139.14, as Australia, with nine players in their twenties of whom six were under 23, regained the Ashes.

The Bradman experience led to Jardine (and Warner’s) experiment with leg theory, as cricket’s evolution accelerated once more and the world’s most exciting bowlers tested the Australian batsmen to the limit outside the off stump as well as outside the leg.  It was pace, raw pace, even more than direction that placed some of the best batsmen in the world under the most intense of investigations.  It was cricket being played out there … by both teams.

Today in the third Test of this series, played at Perth, India have again been put to the sword.  Perth was always going to be India’s Nemisis – fast, bouncy, alien – and yet also the perfect surface for Warner to attack with an extraordinary 69 ball century and who on 104 is still there with his partner at 149/0.  Perth cricket is Test cricket.

How will India respond, not tomorrow, not during the rest of the series, but strategically?

First they are going to have to decide whether they just want to nurture T20 experts or find someway of decontaminating their game and its effect on young players.  Of repairing the damaged inflicted on their batting DNA by the IPL.

Secondly, if they are to compete away from home, surely they have to do something about their wickets.  (It is a shame that Test wickets, like Test umpires, are not the responsibility of the ICC, but, although this will happen one day, Third Man is not holding his breath.)

Drubbings can have either a paralysing effect on the victim or they can energize.  An establishment can retreat to its bunker and press on regardless in a state of delusion (like the Australian Cricket Board in 1928), or it can respond with change, innovation and renewed vigour. Batsmen can ‘farm’ the riches of the IPL or say, as many in other countries have, “I want to be judged as a Test cricketer and found exceptional.”

Bradman, who won the PR battle, was an exceptional cricketer because he was a man of steel.  Jardine, who did not, was also exceptional and made England winners in a manner that was revolutionary and before its time.

Young Indian batsmen have been quick to take up the innovations of others and exercise them in T20 and may have looked more promising for Test cricket than they really are.

Change is effected not by innovators but by revolutionaries, men of steel and extraordinary substance – the Bradmen, the Jardines, the Clive Lloyds, the Steve Waughs and especially the Borders and the Gavaskars who now fittingly lend their names to the contests between their two countries.

India, where are your young men of change, where are your revolutionary Test cricketers?  It is your time or it is no time. Go look at the Trophy and read the names.

John Arlott: “Trying to take it in through the eyes and get it out through the lips”

Action this Day.

The above link will self-destruct at 9:02 PM Sat, 14 Jan 2012.  It is available on BBC I-Player and was broadcast on the 7^th January. 

The Squire considers that there are only two types of person in this world: plumbers and poets.  In these days of punditry, those who are paid to comment on (TM almost wrote ‘to describe’ but quickly saw his error) the game of cricket are all plumbers, and proud of that. 

Arlott was a poet, a campaigner, a liberal and a stranger to pride.

At a reception given by the BBC to mark the beginning of JA’s last season, he told a story against himself and his relationship to cricket and cricketers, by referring to Oscar Wilde’s short story Lord Arthur Saville’s Crime, in which Lady Windermere’s pet cheiromantist, Mr Podgers, reading Lady Fermor’s palm, told her “right out before every one, that she did not care a bit for music, but was extremely fond of musicians.”

This joke was his modest and oblique way of expresssing his fondness for and admiration of professional cricketers which was the basis of his special relationship with those who, when they eventually began to think of forming a body to represent them, reciprocated by asking him to be the first president of the Professional Cricketers’ Association.

In his poem: To John Berry Hobbs on His Seventieth Birthday he wrote:

There was a wisdom so informed your bat
To understanding of the bowler’s trade
That each resource of strength or skill he used
Seemed but the context of the stroke you played.

************

“Can it be true?” TM asks. 

John Arlott once confided to the Squire, in the hearing of Third Man, that he had taken the field in an early season match at New Road, Worcesterand as a former policeman was not unnaturally sent down to patrol the third man boundary.  The ball was hit wide to him and he set off in an effort to apprehend the ball before it reached the rope.

Everyone knows that New Road is prone to flooding.  They may not know that because of this in those far off days the part of the ground that Arlott was sent to guard featured a luxurious growth of duck weed of the most slimy and slippery kind.

Arlott described himself frantically trying to keep his feet before, like a cartoon figure upended on ice, coming to rest in a heap as the ball sped past him for four.

Much rain has fallen on New Road since the telling of this story and the memory is dim and indistinct.  Could he have been called on as 12^th man?  Has anyone else heard of this story?

UPDATE: On some reflection, it seems to Third Man that this is but a retelling of the Lady Fermor story; mocking his own aptitude and thus, implicitly but fondly, contrasting it with the skills of the professional cricketer.

For those who came too late for the link here is a turgid consolation prize: John Arlott in a 1955 Liberal Party PPB unscripted and unrehearsed (and wrongly labelled “Liberal Democrat”). Special thanks to Simon Titley for both links.

Good listening and viewing

After Sydney the Aftermath – Ashwin, Ramadhin and Mental Scaring

In Australia’s total of 659 – 4 declared at the Sydney Test, Ashwin Ravichandran bowled 44 overs with 5 maidens and took no wickets for 157 (3.56/over). 

His fingers will be sore for some days but perhaps nowhere near as sore as his mind which during two long days in the field will have received as much of a battering as the ball.

In his three tests prior to this one, Ashwin had taken 26 wickets for around 500 runs and must have thought that the world lay between his finger tips.

But when Clarke joined Ponting on Day One their hand gestures, nods and smiles suggested that they were now reading Ashwin’s ‘wrong’un’.  Third Man thought it looked ominous. 

288 runs later when Hussey took Punter’s place at the Sydney Reading Club it became obvious that the Aussie batsmen had decoded something more valuable than Linear B.

Ashwin now faces at least two problems going forward (as the managerialists like to say these days): living with the mental scar tissue received at the SCG and working out a new disguise for the caroom ball. 

Keep your thumb in, chum?

A similar thing happened to Sonny Ramadhin at Birmingham when the West Indies toured England in 1957.  Those “two pals of mine”, Ramadhin and Valentine had caused consternation in international cricket since first appearing on the scene as twenty year olds in the early 1950s.

Ramadhin bowled with the hand facing the batsman and flicked the ball up with the index finger to make it turn very slightly from off to leg or up or up with the ring finger to make it turn from leg to off. 

Batsmen like to play back to spin, especially when it’s something they cannot read, and in those days when they did come forward they had been coached to find a contact point well in front of the leading pad.

Many played Ramadhin for his reputed turn and were bowled through the gate or caught off the outside edge or trapped lbw by straighter deliveries.

The Birmingham Test lives long in the minds of those who were there. Or in the less reliable memories of those who fiddled with the horizontal hold knob on their tiny screened TVs vainly hoping to control the frustratingly unstable and flickering black and white images broadcast in 405 line technology by the BBC.

England won the toss and batted. They were spared Valentine, who was unable to play, but Ramadhin with 7 for 49 in 31 overs, 16 of them maidens, continued to mesmerize and disarm in the home side’s meagre total of 186.

The West Indies cruised to 474 which included an exceptional innings of 161 by the sublime O.G. ‘Collie’ Smith who was all-too soon tragically to be killed in a car crash while back inEnglandplaying league cricket.

The scene was set for an innings defeat and with Colin Cowdrey joining his captain Peter May at 113 for 3 that looked a certainty.  But May, who had made 30 in the first innings proposed to play forward to the spinner and to keep his bat close to his pad. What he lost in narrowing the angle he gained in broadening the barrier. 

The innovation worked and was also taken up Cowdrey.  Although never dominating Ramadhin (he went for less than 2 an over), the two ‘amateur’ batsman nullified the threat posed by the ‘crafty’ professional and ground out a partnership of 414 over 8 hours and 20 minutes.

Cowdrey was eventually out for 154 and when May declared the innings closed at 583/4 his score was 285. 

These heroics were immediately mythologized, at a time when national pride had been badly dented by the debacle of Suez and the ‘mother country’ was looking for any evidence with which to deny its decline as both a colonial and a world power.

Ramadhin’s figures in the innings were 98 overs (588 balls), 35 maidens, 179 runs for 2 wickets.  In the match as a whole he had bowled 774 balls.

Although not excessively punished with the bat, the psychological effect of this experience and the development of bat-and-pad play, meant that Ramadhin never again had the impact on Test cricket that he had formerly exercised.

And Ashwin, will there be an aftermath from this experience?

When the players eventually fly westwards to Perth, his mind is likely to be whirling as fast as the fins in the jet’s engines.  For him Perth will be a real Test.

Number 5 – Lucky for Some at the SCG

What’s not to like about Michael Clarke – apart from the tattoos and a tendency to get out just before major intervals?

At the end of day two of the Sydney Test, he is 251 not out (31 x 4s and 1 x 6) and all day his grin was as broad as his bat.

Clarke has grown several inches taller under the weight of the captaincy which may account for the fact that he did not look like giving way to any last-over-of-the-day lapse in concentration and therefore will reappear from that grand old pavilion on day three as fresh as a daisy with enough time in the game to amass a mammoth score without being in anyway selfish.

Clarke is already the highest scoring Australian at the SCG in a Test and has in his sights the 287 notched up by Worcester and England’s R.E. (Tip) Foster  (shown right tucking one away to leg) in the First Test of the 1903 series.

Foster, like Clarke, batted that day at Number 5, came in at 73 for 3 (not dissimilar to Clarke entering the fray at 37 for 3).

Foster ended his first day at the crease on 73; Clarke on 47; but the English had laboured all of for three hours in this the first phase of his innings.

Next morning, with the wicket playing faster, ‘Tip’ moved up a gear to reach his first century.  There followed a collapse at the other.  Foster, with Relf as his partner counter attacked, scoring 94 between lunch and tea. 

At Relf’s departure, Foster was joined by Rhodes in a record for the last wicket of 130 in 66 minutes before being caught by Noble off Saunders 13 short of the triple.

However, when Australia began their second innings 292 runs behind the visitors, Foster’s great innings was eclipsed by one from Victor Trumper  who, batting at Number 5 (quelle surprise!) made a sensational 185.

Although time-bound readers of this blog will not have seen Victor Trumper bat, it is just possible that they will have come close to that experience if they have been fortunate enough to see Michael Clarke bat today.

Light and quick of foot. Check. Wonderful front foot driving. Check. Deft cuts. Check. Savage cuts. Check. Infectious enjoyment. Check. Mastery. Check. The ability to make the sunshine on a cloudy day. Check.

Trumper reached his hundred in 94 minutes.

The written-off Ricky Ponting wrote himself back in with an innings of 134, which on any other day would have deserved a piece to itself, but as Foster discovered nearly 110 years ago, even a very good innings can be totally eclipsed.

One supposes that the only thing that could possibly trump (sorry) a big-triple from Clarke would be Tendulka scoring that hundredth hundred.

If Third Man was MS Dhoni, he’d bat the little master at number 5 to make sure.

N.B. Prior to Clar*e’s innings today, an Australian’s top Test score at the SCG was Doug Walter’s 242 v the West Indies in 1969 ,batting – you guessed it – number 5.

 India 191: Australia 482/4 (116.0 ov) Australia lead by 291 runs with 6 wickets remaining in the 1st innings

* Thanks GT.

Test Cricket’s Damaged DNA: Nurture and Nature After IPL exposure

Beneath a hole in the ozone layer created by excessive use of CFCsIPLs and the carcenogenic consequences of exposure to intense T20 radiation, India were bowled out cheaply again in Test match conditions outside the sub-continent. 

A cancer has set in leaving India all out for 191 in 59.3 overs at the Sydney Cricket Ground today.  More importantly, it lays bare the realization that, with much of Test cricket’s DNA  now damaged and mutated, this failure surprises very few.

The big matches over the last couple of months in South Africa and now in Australia  had already brought into the light of day the damage done to the genetic code of almost all of the Test playing nations.

Those batsmen with greatest exposure to T20 and the least experience of Test cricket to fall back on are looking woeful.  Add a lack of Test match practice and some drop in form among the old guard and the batting of these teams is looking sick.

Bravo to The Bowlers’ Club of Australia whose morale is sky high and still mounting. 

Today the new boy Pattinson followed up his ‘fifer’ at the MCG with the wickets of four of present game’s top batsmen: Gambhir, Sehwag, Tendulka and Laxman.   But his generous praise for Siddle and Hilfenhaus, when accepting MOTM in Melbourne, inspired his partners to three wickets each – a perfect outcome for the unit.  

Then Zaheer Khan put Australia’s youngsters under the microscope, cruelly exposing first the specialized DNA of Warner – over and out for 8 in the first six balls with a strike rate of 133.33 and plenty of time ahead of him in the dressing room to give his mind a rest; secondly Marsh – first ball ‘nough said, and thirdly Cowan lbw for 16.

Then, Ponting and Clark, who learnt their game BT20 (Before Twenty20), took the score on from a sunburned 37 for 3 to a sunscreened 116 for 3.

Practice, practice, practice. Get it right and the best behaviour is engrained. But practice makes permanent – mistakes and mutations.

The following are all-too-easy questions to answer: What happens when the life-form is exposed to two very different environments?  What happens if nurture alters nature, accelerating the adaptive process? And why should cricket worry about that?

England, the reigning champs of  Test cricket, may have already become the fortunate beneficiaries of their northern niche which is less suited to exposure on the sun blest beaches of the IPL. 

Excluded Pakistan, if they, their administrators and their politicians can rid themselves of their addiction to nefarious practices on and off the field, could become world beaters thanks to their life in the shadows.

In cricket, as in life, evolution produces specialization. And when nurture infects nature, the process is accelerated.   Specialisation is a huge gamble. 

After winning the toss, India 191 all out; Australia 116/ 3