Back of the Grid and Last Through the Flag: Team England

Once again, Team England put a car onto the track of a GP which was not properly ‘set up’ for the circuit.

England tactically are a decade behind the pace + technical engineering flaws

Generally in GP, the drive chain provides the power and enforcement, the drivers are class or not.

N.B. Last year’s form in F1 means zero.  As does set up for last race.

Australia : England set up at the Melbourne circuit today:

Finch&Warner : Cook&Bell

Watto : Root

Clark’s class in 4: Balance unrefined engine, untested chasis

2 spinners : no spinner

At-you bowlers fresh from BB : Bresnan & Rankin

Drive chain:  top order:  5 and 8

Stokes and Bopara after first pit stop.

Here’s the verdict: England:wrong tires, wrong pit stop/refueling strategy, understeer when oversteer essential, inappropriate suspension for Melbourne track, downforce applied from subframe, locked brakes on first turn.

Podium

 

KP Batsman – In Case It Is The End

I see your hair is burnin’
Hills are filled with fire
If they say I never loved you
You know they are a liar
Drivin’ down your freeway
Midnight alleys roam
Cops in cars,
The topless bars
Never saw a batsman…
So alone, so alone
So alone, so alone

Kevin Pietersen is a rockstar in a world of pop. He is cricket’s Jim Morrison. Soaring poet among pedestrians.  Eagle in a coup of flightless hens.  Stranger among the familiar.

The End
This is the end, beautiful friend
This is the end, my only friend
The end of our elaborate plans
The end of everything that stands
The end

No safety or surprise
The end
I’ll never look into your eyes again

Can you picture what will be
So limitless and free
Desperately in need of some stranger’s hand
In a desperate land

Lost in a Roman wilderness of pain
And all the children are insane
All the children are insane
Waiting for the summer rain
There’s danger on the edge of town
Ride the King’s highway
Weird scenes inside the gold mine
Ride the highway West, baby

Ride the snake
Ride the snake
To the lake
To the lake

The ancient lake, baby
The snake is long
Seven miles
Ride the snake

He’s old
And his skin is cold
The West is the best
The West is the best
Get here and we’ll do the rest

The blue bus is calling us
The blue bus is calling us
Driver, where are you taking us?

The killer awoke before dawn
He put his boots on
He took a face from the ancient gallery
And he walked on down the hall

He went into the room where his sister lived
And then he paid a visit to his brother
And then he walked on down the hall
And he came to a door
And he looked inside
Father
Yes son?
I want to kill you
Mother, I want to. . .

C’mon baby, take a chance with us
C’mon baby, take a chance with us
C’mon baby, take a chance with us
And meet me at the back of the blue bus

This is the end, beautiful friend
This is the end, my only friend
The end

It hurts to set you free
But you’ll never follow me

The end of laughter and soft lies
The end of nights we tried to die

This is the end

C’mon England, take a chance

Slips a Little Closer Together Please or Closing the Gap Between You and Everything That Is Not You

Third Man thought that his friends might not object to an explanation for the “oblique mood (or mode)” as the Master, Backwatersman, precisely described it, of much of his stuff. Especially when Brian, in a demonstration of unconditional loyalty in November tweeted; “Great to have (TM) back blogging. No real idea what he’s talking about, but never mind about that.” And David Mutton generously offered up an “Amen” to that.

Chris recently wondered; “what lies behind the ailing of other sections of the blogging world? Are podcasts and videocasts now the creative centre? Or has twitter condensed everything they need to say?” These are not quite the itches that TM has been trying to scratch as far back as the beginning of his blogging innings, but they are as close to a Broad bat as any ball can get without quite registering on a snickometer … so, straight to it.

In an article for the New Yorker in 2008 Zadie Smith, (Right Arm Surprisingly Fast) compares two novels, Netherland and Remainder . She reminds her readers that ‘novels attempt to cut neural routes through the brain, to convince us that down this road the true future of the novel lies.’*

She regrets that “A breed of lyrical Realism has had the freedom of the highway for some time now, with most other exits blocked. For Netherland, our receptive pathways are so solidly established that to read this novel is to feel a powerful, somewhat dispiriting sense of recognition.”

“(Lyrical Realism is) so precisely the image of what we have been taught to value in fiction that it throws that image into a kind of existential crisis, as the photograph gifts a nervous breakdown to the painted portrait.”

Her criticism is not full frontal. “In the end what is impressive about Netherland is how precisely it knows the fears and weaknesses of its readers. What is disappointing is how much it indulges them. Out of a familiar love, like a lapsed High Anglican, Netherland hangs on to the rituals and garments of transcendence, though it well knows they are empty.”

“…adjectival mania is still our dominant mode,” with adverb mania surely following not far behind.

Is this criticism not similarly applicable to writing about cricket, especially when online channels have facilitated the production of more and more words about the game?

It is not as if enthusiasts can’t switch on the their telly/laptop/tablet to see the match for themselves, mediated for them by ‘commentators’ who, laying down the mike, type in the self same words for those who may still want to read it later on-line or a day later in print.

There are straightforward (well grooved neural paths) that shape the way a point of view is communicated, an insight shared. To help transcendence, writers apply various degrees of symbolism: ‘Before lunch Jones bowled well and kept Brown to 20 runs in two hours,’ or ‘Jones, bowling like the wind, made life difficult for the ponderous Brown’. Are these not ‘the rituals and garments of transcendence’, exhausted by use?

Haven’t the telephoto lens on the thirty TV cameras situated around the Test match grounds today gifted a nervous breakdown to the cricket writer?

Smith envies the special neural paths etched by visual artists like Marcel Duchamp with works such as Fountain or The Bride Stripped Bare By Her Bachelors, Even (The Large Glass) (above) and those retraced by the subsequent abstractions his pioneering made possible.

“The received wisdom of literary history is that Finnegans Wake did not fundamentally disturb Realism’s course as Duchamp’s urinal disturbed Realism in the visual arts: the novel is made out of language, the smallest units of which still convey meaning, and so they will always carry the trace of the real.”

CLR James moved matters on, significantly, ‘Beyond a Boundary’. Electronic publication removes many of the barriers to exploring that territory and sending back posts. Expedition costs are minimal. Little damage can be done. But who adventures in Finnegan’s other wake?

In the final moments of the final episode of, Shock of the New in 1980, Richard Hughes, (left arm rapid and inspiration to Mitchell Johnson) said “The basic project of art is to make the world whole and comprehensible, to restore it to us in all its glory and its occasional nastiness, not through argument but through feeling, and then to close the gap between you and everything that is not you and in this way pass from feeling to meaning.”**

Now that’s a challenge no-one writing about cricket should resist.

“Bloody Hell, TM, I think I am the one needing a large glass after that,” said the Squire, wishing to bring matters to a close.

* The blog is littered with re-enactments and other imaginings, but a direct  representation of this article was attempted here.

**Watch Richard Hughes live here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ShV1h85dnkc

Dérive and the Best Approach to Bowling Part II

“Mr Finn, you look lost.”

“I am as a matter of fact.”

“Well that’s the best place from which to start.”

“I beg your pardon. Look, I really ought to be getting on my way.”

The little man, who had accosted him, did not take the celebrity cricketer’s polite hint.

“To be sure you should.”

“I mean, shouldn’t YOU be getting on YOUR way?”

“Indeed I should, but I sense a troubled mind and I’m not for leaving a young man with a worried cast alone in this great big city. Why don’t we walk together and let the city speak to us. Who knows, it may help.”

They walked for hours, talking sometimes, not at others, taking in the sudden change of ambiance in streets where psychic atmospheres would change within the space of a yard or two.

Finn began to lead. Strolling aimlessly, he took a path that soon had no relation to the physical terrain.

“If you do this, there is no need to worry about missing the stumps at the bowler’s end,” said his companion. “Just open yourself to the appealing or repelling character of the locality. It is how you did it as a child.”

“But this is not the way I was taught.”

“My boy, what really matters never depends on causes to be uncovered by careful analysis and turned to some high account. Throw that nonsense all away. Find your own way to the wicket.”

And suddenly there they were in an enormous open and expansive square, with not a landmark in sight. The Professor of Psycho-geography, for such he was, took a piece of chalk from his pocket, drew a short line on the ground and moved some distance away to the side.

“Now bowl from that mark. Find the path of least resistance. Feel the rhythm marshaling the power within you.”

He was running now, like he had never run before and in a moment, without a single thought, he found himself at some imaginary crease, releasing the ball, his body pivoting over his left foot like some Archimedean point from which to lift the world.  Vividly he saw a ball leave his hand and travel towards some invisible set of stumps.

“Good, good, good,” he heard the Professor cry, his academic eye focused on the spot where Finn’s front foot had landed.  Quickly reaching the spot, the old man took the chalk and marked the spot. Then he handed Finn a piece of pink thread and some silver nail scissors.

“Now take the other end back to that first mark and cut the string to length.”

Finn did so, then wound the string in a ball and placed it in his pocket for same keeping.

Looking up he noticed the busy street of the main shopping district, cabs flashed by, shoppers barged into him. But not a trace remained of the Professor.

His heart sank. A nervous hand felt for his pocket. The thread; it was still there.

*A dérive is an unplanned journey through a landscape, usually urban, on which the subtle aesthetic contours of the surrounding architecture and geography subconsciously direct the travellers, with the ultimate goal of encountering an entirely new and authentic experience.

** Third Man’s use of  psycho-geography and the place of Situationists in cricket was earlier explored in posts such as these.

Dérive and Finding the Best Approach to Bowling Part I

It might have been Brisbane or Adelaide or Perth or Melbourne: looking back he could never quite remember.

He and Boyd were sitting out a Test match, their highviz jackets like ill-fitting breast and back plates. He was sucking his thumb and dreaming of salmon leaping in a still pool. He was sure of that.

“Finn is a great Irish name, to be sure,” Boyd had said by way of nothing. “Yes, Finn McCool was Ireland’s greatest spear thrower and a mighty hero.”

He did not interrupt; the brogue was a comfort to him in his torment and shame. He couldn’t hit a barn door or bowl a ball fast enough to shatter the thinnest piece of Waterford glass.

“Of course Finn was not always a great spearsman. Once upon a time he couldn’t hit a barn door or shatter the thinnest piece of Waterford glass.”

“Is that true, Boyd?”

“Ah! He was a magical, benevolent giant was Finn McCool.”

“So, how did he become a great spearthrower?”

“The young Finn met a leprechaun, the poet Finnegas, so he did, near the river Boyne and studied under him.”

“I think that’s what I need if I’m ever going to get myself sorted, Boyd.”

“Well, before you wish for that you might need to know a little more. You see, Finnegas had spent seven years trying to catch the salmon of knowledge, which lived in a pool on the Boyne. The story was, that, whoever ate the salmon, would gain all the knowledge in the world. Eventually he caught it, and told young Finn to cook it for him.”

“I sense trouble.”

“And you’d be right. While cooking it, Finn McCool burned his thumb, and, quick as a flash, he put his thumb in his mouth, swallowing a piece of the salmon’s skin. With the salmon’s wisdom, he then knew how to gain revenge against all his enemies and, whenever in a fix, all he had to do was suck that thumb.”

“That, Boyd, is a great help!” sighed Finn bashing the tall Irishman round the head with a towel and nearly missing.

Death in an Afternoon

Although it was only the third morning of a five day Test match, Australia were in no mood to drag out the affair and decided that thecoup de grace should be delivered with due dispatch, batting as if it was Carnival, as well as Jane McGrath Day.

Perhaps Darren Lehmann had been reading Ernest Hemmingway: “The chances are that the first bullfight any spectator attends may not be a good one artistically; for that to happen there must be good bullfighters and good bulls; artistic bullfighters and poor bulls do not make interesting fights, for the bullfighter who has ability to do extraordinary things with the bull which are capable of producing the intensest degree of emotion in the spectator but will not attempt them with a bull which he cannot depend on to charge…”

Bullfighting is a foul activity, a dehumanising one in its selfish, barbaric cruelty, but who could argue that Hemingway’s words point to the root of the condition of the England cricket team on the final day of the 2013/14 Ashes series.

Not a single person at the ground or anywhere in the world watching or listening could disagree that the England bull was not to be depended upon to charge. Such was their total mental paralysis and capitulation.

Motivation and de-motivation are opaque concepts, but a theory favoured by Third Man is that they arise from the sub-conscious.  They are some direct expression of truth, or of a true state of mind.

What spectators and viewers have seen is a traumatic stress reaction to domination and powerlessness.  No means of fighting back. No succour in their own camp.

Michael Vaughan, almost alone within the paid world of cricketainment, has lifted the veil and has writing, “You can see the team are completely scared to death of Andy.”

This climate of fear has eventually produced a collective psychosis.  England communicated in the only way open to them: subconsciously they struck: bat down, ball tossed, catch dropped.

Players have been selected and pushed into the fray who were not fit and not adequately prepared, often technically, sometimes psychologically, for the task. In one case very great damage may have been done to a particularly vulnerable person.

This has coincided with the rise in video, Hawk Eye and statistical analysis that makes such difficulties even greater vulnerabilities.

Lehmann has praised his players for their ability to ‘read’ the game, respond, change, adapt and execute more appropriate strategies. Like Churchill hiding the existence of his code-breakers, and the Enigma machine, Lehmann may have been coy about the extent of the preparations that his team has been put through.

This has probably been one of the most evidence-based series in the history of the game. Yet it is only a beginning.

England will have tried to do something similar, so what has gone wrong? Why couldn’t they execute their plans? To borrow the wisdom of that great cricket coach, Miranda Hart , ‘England is all structure and no fun. Australia is fun within a structure’. The Australian side has license to get it wrong … once .. even twice … before Lehmann gets upset.  He wants cricketers who learn, not ones who never err.

From England’s camp the players and staff can be heard whispering to themselves, “My responsibility to get myself fit, my responsibility to sort out this techinical issue, my responsibility to see this physical problem, my responsibility to see the psychological frailty in that player. Best keep quiet.”

This is the culture that has to change.

+ In case it needs saying, the above ph0tograph of Graeme Swan, on his haunches, calls to mind an image of the tormented torro moments before the coup de grace.

Sydney Rollers

On the second morning of the final Test, Nasser Hussain nearly met an untimely fate under a Sidney Roller. Here’ some background on the Machine in question

Down At Third Man

If you type Sydney Rollers into a search engine you may well be directed to the City’s Roller Derby League, the organisation of a ‘full contact women’s team sport striving for empowerment, athleticism and, above all, fun’ made popular in the Chicago of the Nineteen Thirties and seemingly enjoying a revival in Sidney over the last few years.

Do not be diverted, but press on until you find mention of the SCG’s historic rollers.

The first is Boxer’s Roller. This sandstone roller was used to prepare the Sydney wickets as early as 1901 and was therefore in operation at around the time the photograph below was taken in the ‘Noughties. The roller was drawn by a horse named “Boxer” who wore special shoes to avoid damaging the pitch.

The Barford & Perkins roller pictured at the top of the page and again here replaced Boxer’s roller.  It has been restored by…

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Gang Culture: It’s Wrong and Not Just on the West Side

Nothing to add since 29th December posting of this blog – in case you missed it …

Down At Third Man

Team England has a strong sense of identity.  It has been built that way by Andy Flower and by Duncan Fletcher before him.

The expience of the last year and especially of the last 38 excruciating days begs the question as to whether this identity is not just the wrong one, but whether the construction of any such strong group identity can itself be the worst kind of organisation for nurturing the best kind of cricket.

Each year a thousand flowers bloom on the cricket grounds of England. Too few survive the long season of their potential. And too often the best are ground into the dust.

The Gang operating in Cricket England for at least twenty years has been free (and even encouraged) to act this way by weak and ill-judged leadership at the very top of the game.

The booty that the Gang delivered for its community, even…

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The Irresistibile Change

There is only one thing more depressing than England’s performance on the second day of the final Test in Sidney – which was excruciating to watch.  It is the speed with which the Establishment has battened down the hatches, with the Chief Executive of the ECB, David Collier, giving Sky Sports News the astonishingly premature comment, “”We look forward to both Alastair and Andy leading us to success in the future.”

The difference between the on field teams has been their differing capacities to learn and adapt.  Lehmann has rightly applauded his side’s flexibility and competence in responding to game circumstances and conditions.

In Camp England and Wales, the top of the Board is proving its inability to consider change in the face of a calamitous performance by their selectors and the counter-productive culture which now surrounds the team, the development squads and their support staff.

Potential talent is being squandered, existing talent abused.

The ending of Andy Flower’s present contract allows the usual post tour review to benefit from having few no closed options. But Collier has said, again, with unthinking haste, “We are not going to do a review of that nature, but we will do a full debrief and learn the lessons that we need to learn from this tour.”

This, within hours of stepping off the plane and without allowing the new Managing Director, Paul Downton, (Effective 1^st February) more than the briefest glimpse of what has been going on. Downton is a former England cricketer, a decent mind, a likeable fellow and, all had hoped, not a push over.

Here is what Collier said, under the BBC heading, ECB chief David Collier backs Andy Flower to continue.

“We look forward to both Alastair and Andy leading us to success in the future,”

“We need that experience,” he said. “When you go through a transitional period you need somebody with knowledge, somebody who knows our system, somebody who works with all of our key coaches.

“Andy has all of those attributes and more. I’m sure he’ll do a great job leading us into 2015.”

Of course, these are equally valid reasons for not having the person who oversaw a premature perhaps an unnecessary and unplanned period of transition.

The decisions to pick both Swann and Trott exposed the weakness of other selections.  The absence of a fully fit holding spinner and the selection of Tremlett, both for the tour and in the first Test, exposed one of England’s great assets, Jimmy Anderson and to a lesser extent Stuart Broad, to unnecessary fatigue and punishment.  Broad’s impact in the first innings of the series has not been repeated.

The ensuing pandemonium within the camp has given Stokes an opportunity to accelerate his development, but the damage it may have done to Carberry, Root, Bothwick and perhaps Ballance has jeopardised the managed development of these talents. And who knows how many more. Here in this series, England Lions have been sent like Kitchener’s New Army into their version of the Somme.   

Establishments are the enemies of adaption. They stand for closed minds, closed imaginations and closed options. This unplanned and frankly chaotic transition is being used to justify the retention, unexamined, of those who caused the chaos. Seldom do such efforts delay for long the irresistibility of change. But a lot of damage can be done in the meantime.

* young people now use the word chief in a very different sense to their eleders 😉

Who Will Master Time Tomorrow? The Importance of the Scoring Rate in Long Distance Cricket

Third Man hopes that George Dobell (again), Freddie Wilde and Peter Miller won’t mind if he singles them out for taking the position that, in Test cricket, scoring rates don’t matter.

“Look, there was a whole day left in that Test, England’s/Carberry’s/Compton’s/Boycott’s  slow scoring rates are not important. We need more batsmen grinding it out. Dig in.”

Google ‘why the scoring rate is important in cricket’ and you will get page after page of links to post after post saying that ‘whereas the scoring rate is important in ODI it isn’t in Test match cricket.’

Of course you’d find it impossible to get that opinion from someone who has played big cricket.

Here’s a go at explaining why coaches want batsmen in IIs, County, State and Test cricket to press on the opposition through the scoring rate and why grinding it out is counterproductive and will get you the sack:

In no particular order:

A high scoring rate puts pressure on the bowler and reduces his effectiveness.  It has a similar effect on bowlers waiting their turn.

Upping the scoring rate reduces the number of fielders in close catching positions and allows batsmen to get away with mistakes.

By spreading the field, the batsmen make room to knock singles.  Bowlers hate change and love routine.  They relay on rhythm and hate having to recalibrate their attack each time a single or a three is scored.

Bowlers don’t like 1s, 2s,3s,4s and 6s being knocked off their bowling, to state the obvious.

Batsmen like scoring 1s, 2s,3s,4s and 6s.  Mysteriously it helps them see the ball earlier and ‘bigger’. The move more freely and more instinctively.

Upping the scoring rate puts pressure on fielders and makes for more misfields and dropped catches.

It also puts pressure on the fielding Captain, jazzing the quality of his thoughts.

Increased scoring rates create momentum.

Now momentum is a mysterious concept and it is natural that a time traveller, like Third Man, is more at home with the idea.  Momentum changes the way time is experienced.  In the case of the batting side gaining momentum, it slows time for them and quickens time for the fielding side.

That is why cricketers playing for the counties are taught quite early on – say when they are twelve – to hurry things up when they are taking wickets and to slow things down when they aren’t.

Batting is especially about slowing time down so that it all goes further; more time.

A batsman with a slow scoring rate creates pressure for the guy at the other end and for those who are coming in later, just as much in 4 and 5 day cricket, as in ODIs and T20. He quickens time for his partner. That is why it is the great sin in batting.

Just remember when you are having sweet dreams about Geoff Boycott’s batting that only Bob Barber ever managed to score runs at the other end; (Did Gooch, once?) that he dominated the batting order at a time when England rarely won Test matches – digin – doesn’t win.

Anyone who finds this hard to accept might do worse than to read True Colours, by Adam Gilchrist (Test s-r 80+)

Not wishing to labour the point about Millenials too much, but one of them, David D. Burstein, titled his book about them, Fast Future.

You know what they say at the Pavilion at the Edge of the Universe; “Fast Future:Slow Time”

Today, Haddin (75 from 90 balls faced) mastered time. Ask Smith, Johnson and Harris what it felt like for them. Or Anderson, Broad, Cook?

Who will master time tomorrow?