When Trust Has Gone a Stain Remains

Yesterday New Zealand scored 100 runs from the last 29 balls of their innings.  A liberal supply of knee-high, leg-stump full tosses had been dispatched sometimes literally out of the ground at Pallekele which was holding its first one day international.

From the moment they took the field to the moment they lost their last wicket Pakistan were frankly shambolic, giving away a glut of extras, overthrows and dropped catches.  They bowled at the death like they were playing in a benefit match on a Bank Holiday Sunday.  In reply they batted like zombies. 

Ross Taylor scored 62 runs off the last 16 balls that he faced.  But his innings had begun uncertainly to say the least.  Planting his left leg a few inches in front of him and wafting the bat far from his body and out in front of him he had repeatedly flirted with danger and over balanced hideously.

Nor was Taylor the only Kiwi to struggle at the outset despite the fodder on offer. But the more tentatively New Zealand batted the worse Pakistan bowled and fielded. 

At ‘half time’ and at the end of play, the Cricketainment Industry moved into full gear expressing awe at the late onslaught triggered by McCullum, effected by Taylor and ably assisted by Oram.

Not one eyebrow was raised among the commentariat at this abrupt change in Pakistan form, which prior to this had delivered them comfortable and impressive wins and the accolade of ‘Team Most Likely …’

But we have been here before; in the Caribbean against Ireland in the last World Cup four years ago, at Sydney two years ago and at Lord’s last summer.  Bizarre misses, inexplicable bowling changes, sudden reverses in the batting fortunes of opponents, reckless shots and feeble defences. 

Yesterday one Pakistan batsman played three inches down the wrong line of a straight delivery.

It may be that Ireland won fairly and squarely four years ago (and their result against England in this competition is proof of their potential to upset good sides), but in years when they tell their grandchildren can those cricketers in green be certain there were not two sides out there playing for an Irish victory?

It may be that Broad and Taylor played exceptional innings, but in their private moments will the memories be tarnished by a niggling doubt?

Why is it not possible to accept that we saw yesterday another remarkable match and another remarkable innings?

Because the failings of the PCA and the ICC to convince us that they have rooted out corrupt practices mean that we really don’t know for what the match was remarkable – cricketing skill or cricketing manipulation.

If this was horse racing, there would be a steward’s enquiry.  But in cricket the silence of the infrastructure that administrates and reports on the industry is deafening.

In the image above, people appear to be standing and walking on the ceiling.  The image is warped and the moving figures blurred which makes us suspicious of what we see. 

We are right to have our doubts.  It is a photograph of a mirrored ceiling at the entrance to the Baltic Exchange in Newcastle on a busy and sunny Sunday afternoon.

Trust is of such importance to man as a  social animal that its loss is immediately replaced by distrust.  There is no neutral, intermediate stage.  Trust lost, leaves a stain, an imprint which is substantial, tangible.  It is mistrust.

Sadly, it has come to this.

Of Quakes, Elections, Revolutions and Cricket Matches

 

Just as stunned New Zealand cricketers and their followers have to try to play their game today against Australia while most of their thoughts must necessarily reside with their neighbours and loved ones in Christchurch, so Ireland will take the field against Bangladesh as their compatriots at home make their way to the polling stations in the most important election in that country ever.

Nor can or should anyone watching the string of more often than not ill-matched early round contests be deaf and blind to the struggles for survival against a manic tyrant in Libya, or the quests for freedom, democracy and opportunity of the vast majorities who have achieved at least the early phases of revolutions in Tunisia and Egypt.

Against such backdrops of human suffering, life changing decision making and bravery cricket matches pale into insignificance.

Who cares if Ponting shows his infantile petulance by ramming his bat through a television set because he misjudged a run when a young athlete threw a cricket ball sixty meters with such accuracy that it landed within centimetres of the bails?

Who cares if one side wins and another loses?

Today in New Zealand rescue morphs into recovery and a shocked citizenry begin their long, long road back to confidence, as summer turns to autumn, heralding the bleak winter of the mind where, incredibly, the life force is yet stirring however unlikely that now seems.

Today in Ireland, a public will take a democratic vengeance on those leaders who allowed greed to go unchecked, unquestioned, unregulated and left the powerless unprotected.  

Today acts of immensely brave defiance will occur in countries dominated by dictatorships and autocrats that ‘til yesterday were propped up by western politicians whose hypocrisy and carefree commitment to democracy has left them as unbalanced as a Kanhai hook.

Today ramifications from the oil markets will influence the chances for global economic recovery and thus affect the lives of untold millions.  Not one country represented in the ICC World Cup 2011 will be unaffected.

Cricket can be an escape, a reverie that shuts out something more painful.  Cricket, throughout this tournament, must not distract.  It must help us focus on the significant.

Cricketers must conduct themselves with dignity as a mark of respect and support for all those who face uncharted uncertainties and challenges that make the vagaries of a cricket match look truly inconsequential.

By Final Day on 2^nd April the world will be a very different place and it will not be cricketers who make it so.

A Sentimental Education in the Peak District

You can’t really blame Derbyshire but, as England’s brave but increasingly battle-worn boys take on Australia in Tasmania, it was hard for Third Man to see the sense in providing Australian Test tyro, Usman Khawaja, with opportunities to develop his game playing eight Championship matches, all the county’s Twenty20 group matches and six of their CB40 games, oh and probably pick up a cheque for £40,000.

Peak Fan  welcomes the move, writing that it has ‘captured the imagination of most, something that will hopefully be translated into positive action at the gates of grounds.’

And at This Is Derbyshire  John Morris, Head Master of Cricket at the County, is quoted as saying, ‘the move to Derbyshire should be a key stage in his cricket education,’ and that the young man is, ‘keen to come over here, learn his game and score runs’. 

No doubt he is.  Who would not want such a chance especially with the 2013 Ashes in mind. 

Is Third Man the only one who thinks that this is madness?

This is a one way street with our young cricketers having to pick up the scraps in Grade Cricket, sleeping where they can and making ends meet with menial employment – a true apprenticeship.

If this young man wants to develop his game, he should be free, work permit permitting, to find some Premier League club where England and Wales cricket will at least get the benefit from young county second teamers sharpening their skills against him.

Wallpapering Over the Cracks – Interior Decorations in Doha

It is not just the actions of Mohammad Asif, Salman Butt and Mohammed Asif that are under scrutiny at the anti-corruption tribunal in Doha, it is the ability of the ICC in general and national cricket boards individually to protect the game from corrupt practices.

As is often the case in legal and quasi legal cases, the need to limit charges to those that it is possible for evidence to substantiate means that the focus of the tribunal is necessarily on a small number of highly specific events – the bowling of a few no balls on demand.

The issue that dare not speak its name, however, resides in the claim that News of the World journalists allege was made to them by the cricket agent Mazhar Majeed that he would give them proof of what was possible if they ‘subscribed’ to a service that was by implication already in operation. 

The no-balls were not the limit of what was possible but a token outcome that sought to prove that more substantial and more ‘valuable’ outcomes could be  produced on demand.  The inference was that the products of such manipulations were already being enjoyed by other subscribers.

'Bowl a quick one Amir'

This does not necessarily mean that the players had ever been asked to do more nor had done more, nor that they knew what was being claimed was for sale in their name.  Nor that they were doing anything other than bowling quickly.

But it is also possible that nothing in that match or even in that series or the one before it was as it appeared.  As was aired here on the 28th August before the allegations were made, some unusual and erratic things occurred in last summer’s series, which had many perhaps less-than-worldly people scratching their heads; dropped dolly catches, unusual field-placings, inexplicable bowling changes and sudden batting collapses were all commented upon by the media.

The focus on spot betting necessarily deflects attention from spread betting where bets are placed according to the evolving probabilities in a match and where big money is made on improbable outcomes and erratic rather than regular performance.

The spreads are determined by averages and their influence on the estimation of probabilities, but also by hedging activity based on the accumulation of information on sales and purchases in the market.

There is a premium return for those who can predict counter-trend outcomes resulting from atypical performance.  Cricket’s vulnerability is that atypical performance can be delivered by a small number of players and even in some cases by an individual player.

Proscribed as it is, this tribunal cannot significantly influence the future likelihood of such conspiracy except through the deterrence of punishment if fraud is proven.  Yet the past has shown that even this brings only a temporary abatement. 

Cricket has to be very smart to out smart the criminals. Vigilance directed by analysis, insider information and entrapment backed by example, education, protection and a fairer share of the legitimate rewards from the game are all required.

In the end, Imran Khan may have expressed the long and the short of it last August: “If the message goes that crime pays, crime multiplies. And unfortunately…for these cricketers there are not many leading role models.”

Preparing the Wicket at the Cricket Ground, Sydney, 1912

 

 

 

As we wait for the start of the 5^th and final Test of the 2010/11 Ashes series to be played at Sydney it is possible to skip into the Mark III Time Machine to view the beautiful Edwardian, Association Ground pictured above.

The track around the playing field is a talking point for all those interested in boundaries and the definition of boundaries.  

On the 9^th November 1911, soon after MCC arrived in Adelaide for the first match on that winter’s Ashes tour to be played against South Australia, C Hill the Australian captain presented the touring captain P.F. (Plum) Warner and the team manager, T Pawley, with a list of 11 alterations to the playing  conditions for the coming Test matches.

At that time, Australia was the only country in the world where the laws of cricket as drawn up by MCC did not apply.  The proposed alterations could easily have been sent to the MCC in advance of the tour but the Board of Control were making a strong point about their independence, and besides these had been the rules under which Australia and South Africa had played the year before.

And the track? Alteration 3 Boundaries stated that ‘The batsman shall be caught out by a fieldsman if the fieldsman is at the time on the asphalt track surrounding the playing ground.  Other hits on to the track, would of course, be boundary hits, counting four runs.  Hits over the ropes or pickets placed as in Inter-State matches shall count six runs.’

Alteration 5 Rolling the Wicket also gave the MCC tour management some concern. ‘In the event of rain during the day the ground-man shall cause the wicket to be swept and rolled for not more than ten minutes after the close of that day’s play at any time that night, or on the Sunday night up to twelve o’clock midnight, whenever he is of the opinion that such rolling will improve the wicket, and he will use such roller after consultation with the two captains as he thinks best calculated to produce that effect.

‘This sweeping and rolling shall not affect the right to sweep and roll provided for in the MCC rules.’

Even after three visits to Australia Warner could never fathom out the rules concerning rolling especially when the variations of practice left him entirely in the dark.

Warner did however take a particular interest in the way Australian wickets were prepared.  Here is a letter which was sent to him during this tour by W.J. Stuart the Sydney Cricket Ground’s Caretaker.

Sydney Cricket Ground

27^th February 1912

 P.R Warner, Esq.

Captain, All England, MCC Team

 

DEAR SIR, The following is the process usually adopted in preparing a wicket for a first class match.  About a week before the match starts, the grass on the piece of ground selected for the pitch is mown as short as possible, and the ground well watered, the water being allowed to run until it lies in a sheet on it.  While the ground is still moist, but with no water lying on it, a roller weighting about 3 cwt is used until the surface begins to ‘work’, as it is termed.  The object being to drive the water into the most impervious Bulli soil.  After this process, which usually occupies about half an hour, the pitch is well sprayed with the hose, to wash the mud which has been worked up, down around the roots of the grass.  It is then left until it is free from any stickiness, and then a roller weighing 35 cwt is used until the pitch is perfectly smooth.  As soon as cracks begin to show, which is usually on the following day, the heavy roller is again used, which closes them up.  From now on, it is rolled with the heavy roller, for about half an hour each day, until the start of the match, by which time it is almost hard, and impervious to water, as a brick.

Yours respectfully,

 W.J. Stuart,

 Caretaker, Sydney Cricket Ground

Bulli soil, mined from the base of the Illawarra escarpment, has been used for the Sydney Cricket Ground pitch for over 120 years. In the 1920s the groundsman, Bill Stuart, looked for alternative sources as Bulli soil was sometimes difficult to obtain. Stuart used Hamilton soil for the pitch in the early 1930s. This sample was probably souvenired from the soil used to dress the pitch for the ‘Bodyline’ series — the English Ashes tour of Australia in the summer of 1932–33.

Sydney Rollers

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 the SCG Trust’s Grounds and Maintenance teams.  The 2.5 ton roller was built around 1924 and purchased new by the Trust from Noyes Bros. (Sydney) Ltd to replace Boxer’s Roller and has been in regular use at the SCG ever since as the primary roller used for preparation of cricket pitches. 

According to TrustNo1, who may have had a hand in the restoration that commenced in 2001, ‘incongruous components that were added to the English-built machine over the years were removed, and the paintwork and chrome plating was largely redone’.

For those who need a closer and sharper look, the SCG Roller has a brother pictured here, owned by Dubbo City Council.

Third Man does not rate many articles in his special ‘Heavy Roller’ category, but this naturally must be one such.

Extracting the Michael – At Our Peril

No batsman should ever have to leave any cricket field to the sound of booing.  Yet that is the fate which was to fall to Michael Clarke when he could not avoid playing the second ball of the final over of the day – a steeply rising ball from Pietersen – onto the hip of his thigh pad from where it continued to rise steeply to the right of and behind Cook at short leg who turned to make a diving catch.

Clarke was inconsolable and in a state of stunned mental confusion as he reeled towards the dressing room.

Yet he was forced to experience further stress and torment when an incompetent umpire failed to read the situation or appreciate that Clarke was ‘walking’ and declined England’s appeal for the catch  

A less baffled Clarke would have continued to walk (no doubt risking the wrath of administrators and match referees for ignoring an umpire’s decision and bringing the game into disrepute) but, still shocked and bewildered like a concussed boxer being led by a referee to a neutral corner for a mandatory count he faltered back towards the crease to await the excruciatingly drawn-out process of the UDRS.

In this vulnerable position he now faced the humiliating taunts and ridicule of Team England as the photograph at the top of the page communicates in all its raw school playground mockery.

We are only 9 days into a prospective 25 days of Test cricket, yet this seems a defining moment.  

In their ridicule of Australia’s vice captain, England have humiliated their opponents.  It is more emasculating than a kick in the balls, more brutal than a foot on a wind pipe.

In their contempt for their Team’s vice captain, some of the cricket-following folk of Australia have turned angrily on their own.

Forgotten are Clarke’s eighty runs today made in fine counterattacking style. Forgotten are his match winning innings for their team over many years.  Forgotten is his nomination as Man of the Ashes Series in 2009.

Jrod who knows more about Clarke’s mettle than Third Man says that he has been out in situations like the one today too many times. “If it happens once, he’s a good batsman who was unlucky with the bounce, if it happens time after time after time after time, there is a problem.”

But it is the naked self that crosses the boundary marker on the way to the middle. It is Ego Alone.  Clarke is paid well.  He enjoys privilege.  He is an entertainer or he is nothing.  Except that he is a fellow human being with all the vulnerability and frailty we each know attaches to that individuality.

Clarke is worthy to share a pitch with anyone out there today.  That is all we need to remember.  Oh, and the universal truth that what goes round comes round.

Hail Siddle ‘Lord of Time’

Cricket, more than anything else, is a battle for control of the perception of time. Yet again on day one of a Brisbane Test Australia proved themselves the Masters of Time.

Third Man’s Theory of Time is not complex but, as droppers-by might expect, it uses imaginary numbers to explain reality.

The standard minute has 60 seconds which are experienced as a variable quantity of perceived instances.  Time can be slowed by increasing the number of perceived instances in a standard minute.  Time speeds up when the number is reduced.

When time is slowed you can get more and better thinking done.  When time is speeded up you get less and poorer thinking.

As regular callers to this site might anticipate, Third Man believes that will power can slow time.  It is their exceptional Wills that help successful sportspeople dominate both the opposition (for example in cricket and tennis) and the conditions (in golf and skiing).

Mastery of Time is generally a more immediate problem for batsmen than for bowlers but that immediacy is experienced along a continuum and is a function of an individual’s ability to control or will his or her perception of time.  Bowlers and Captains battle for it too, but in marginally less pressurized situations.

In general circumstances, from the perspective of batsmen, scoring runs slows time, allowing for a greater quantity of instances to be perceived in a ‘standard minute’ which is experienced like having more seconds in a minute.

Wickets (and all that adds pressure such as good balls, close escapes, nicks that don’t quite carry) increase the speed of time, which is experienced or perceived as having fewer seconds in a minute.  It’s the ‘hurry up’.

Fielding captains and good teams in the field can ‘hustle’ and reduce the number of perceivable instances or ‘seconds’ experienced in a minute.  Bowlers can walk back and turn quicker. Fielding sides can increase the over rate.  (Sometimes, as Australia were soon to do, you can slow things down paradoxically to speed things up – like going one step back to advance two paces.)

Sportspeople need self mastery to will a  reduction in the speed of time to counter these tactics to win more time to think well.  But the domination of time is a zero sum game.  There can be only one winner.

Here’s a rough and ready graph of perceived speed of time against standard time for the first day’s play.  UP is fewer ‘seconds’ in a minute and the origin is the infinite minute, which can be perplexing.  So think UP is time passing in a flash and less and less time to think effectively and adapt :

 

The early wicket of Strauss kicked on time.  A short second wicket partnership resisted further increases but the fall of Trott saw it mount again. 

Peter Siddle is a hustler (a proficient manipulator of time).  But in the morning on a slowish wicket, where Trott’s long scrapped guard revealed the moisture beneath the surface and the bowlers kept resorting to the sawdust, Siddle bowled a ‘good’  length but did not have a discernable effect on the battle.

Between lunch and tea the England batsman steadily won back control of the perception of time and gradually brought down its speed.  But Siddle had managed to control his personal internal clock to slow things down too and therefore to increase the quality of thinking.   

Perhaps it is how you can feel on your birthday, a ‘my day’ effect. His  plan was to bowl an even fuller length along a straight line to tempt the frustrated batsmen.  It did for Pietersen and then Collingwood.

The Australians used the pressure shelter of the tea interval to work out a plan based on reducing scoring opportunities.  They had to.  One destiny from that time was a close of play score of 270 for 4.  They needed to wrest back the domination of time.

This was the tactic: When they came out for the final session they’d use Watson and others to bowl a negative line to frustrate the England batsmen.  Frustration also affects the perception of time.  Impatience is experienced as an increase in the Speed of Time.

Then Ponting carefully chose the moment to switch tactics.  He brought back his best hustler, Siddle.   England did not respond quickly to this change.  At the crease they continued to play late and square, falling to slip catches or, playing across the line and missing straight deliveries, to be bowled or given out LBW.

This was the time to play in the “V”, but the fall of wickets increased England’s perception of the speed of time and paralyzed their ability to think ‘now’.  They continued to play ‘then’ shots, appropriate to the length and direction Australia had been bowling and not those that Siddle was ‘now’ using to great effect. 

Cook, Prior, Broad, Swann stuck in the sticky thinking mire of ‘ago’ played across the line and perished in quick succession.

197 for 4 became 260 all out and, during the minutes of that collapse, Australia established themselves as The Masters of Time.

England could have done with Doctor Who in their dressing room, if not at the wicket.  As it was, the  hatrick-taking, sixfer-Siddle was today’s Time Lord.

Stop Blowing Holes in My Zeitgeist

 

Is Captain Jack Sparrow the very model of a modern major England cricketer?

It ain’t corporate unless it has a mission statement, a strap line and a slick promotional video.

When the two waves of 45 sixteen year old cricketers and their parents  assembled for a short ‘induction’ before starting their Talent Testing at the National Cricket Performance Centre last weekend (reported here) the first thing ‘up’ was the ubiquitous DVD.  Cue music.

Something unmitigatedly English such as Lark Ascending?  Shostakovich’s Cello Concerto, famously hummed by Mike Brearley to drown out the chin music that was all around him in the ‘70s?  A little Lily Allen, curtesy of cricket’s fashionable convert?  Or something from Muse, Live At Old Trafford?

No, the Zeitgeist of England Cricket was denoted by the swashbuckling theme of the Black Pearl, with Muttiah Muralitharan standing in as Jack Sparrow, Shane Warne as  Will Turner, Andrew Strauss as Captain James Norrington, oh, and Andy Flower as an unexpectedly perfect ringer for Hector Barbossa.

With this rousing music as background, readers must imagine the fast cut action shots of splintered masts stumps, smashed cannon balls, flying fish catches, elation and victory, treasure and triumph. 

The euphoria is interspersed with clips of the England captain obviously far from comfortable with the emphasis he is encouraged to place on ‘fighting spirit’.  Flower, brooding and taciturn, revelling in the part of a boatswain who, if you as much as blinked in action, will as soon as look at you send you down the gang plank.  And a young cricketer not many years older than those watching scripted in the role of cabin boy.

The Cheeseland spirit of individualism and market orientation with which this video tried to capture the attention and adherence of its audience was Ad Faberly summed up in the strap line: OWN THE MOMENT.

Concerned followers of Third Man will be relieved to know that the assembled talent did not appear to be taken in.  Probably they knew better than their elders that the facetious Captain Jack “Stop Blowing Holes in My Ship” Sparrow was ‘without doubt the worst pirate (the garrison camander) had ever seen’. 

Proof that it was only a film: pirates being made up

Almost certainly they were too sophisticated to buy this uncool pitch.  They have been through so many trials and tribulations by this time that they don’t need to be told that, when the going gets tough, the tough get going.  They know who funks it or finds an injury when the track is flat.  They know who they’d rather have down the other end when the ball’s lifting from a length and a helmeted short leg’s breathing down their back.

It may come therefore as a great relief to realise that these talented young people who navigate the oceans of an electronic globe with Facebook friends amounting to several hundred and walls stuffed with notes and snaps would rather SHARE than own the moment.

Sparrow sporting IPL12 clothing

Others may argue that those who think that ‘the moment’ is collectively attained and part of a long series of moments that make up a deep and multifaceted experience are not destined to become world class cricketers.  But to portray Steve Waugh or Mathew Hayden, Satchin Tendulka or Brian Lara as ruthless individualists is to caricature them.  Their extraordinary will power and their abilities were at the service of their team and they expressed their talent for more than their own benefit. 

Cricket it not a zero-sum game.  Ask Flintoff and Lee.  And you don’t have to believe it is to get the best out of yourself.  Quite the reverse.  Though it is very C20th to say this.

Or it could be that Third Man is doing everyone a disservice.  Those behind the video and the narrative may know perfectly well that a pirate’s life was notoriously one where a strict hierarchy and defined roles of high grid and high group were mediated by a strong commitment to democracy, collective decision making, team work and sharing. 

Unlike in the Royal Navy of the time, a pirate captain received little more than twice the share of prize money destined for the lowliest crew member. He was elected, accountable and sackable.  He was consultative and kept his office for only as as long as he kept the confidence of his crew.  No doubt as such he was a fine cricketer too.

Alternative (England) Sea Songs: 

Test Cricket – Assessing and Developing Emerging Talent

This weekend 90 of the country’s best emerging 16 year old cricketers made their way in two groups to the ECB’s National Cricket Performance Centre at Loughborough University to undergo, in a little over 24 hours of intensive activity, a series of Talent Tests.

A few weeks ago 13 year old emerging players underwent similar tests and 19 year old and 22 year olds will make their way to the Centre in the coming weeks.

These ages are seen as significant gateways for those who eventually become world class.  Age 13 is when the best are taken on to the County/ECB’s Emerging Players Programme. Age 16 is when assessments for entry into County Academies tend to take place.  The world’s best are often establishing first team places for County sides at 19 and by 22 they are knocking on the door to international cricket.

One of the ideas behind the testing is therefore to have records of how world class players mature and how they were performing mentally and physically at these ages.  The data is being compiled and analysed at Bangor University.

The young men and women under assessment are defined as batsmen, pace and spin bowlers or wicket keepers.  All undergo batting tests which include performance against pace and spin with the emphasis on forcing the pace either pinch hitting in the earliest power play overs of an ODI or in the later frenetic run chase. Pace bowlers are speed tested and the spinners have their revolutions measured and their accuracy assessed for both their stock delivery and their variations, such as arm balls. 

Besides physical strength and stamina tests (the Bleep Test has given way to the Yo-Yo Intermittent Recovery Test [ SPARK (Yo-Yo)  Test ], there are also psychological assessments, learning style analysis using the Fleming VARK model, (visual, auditory, reading/writing tactile/kinaesthetic) and assessments of tactical awareness.   A detailed history of cricketing practice, reaching back to their experiences as 7 year olds, is also taken.  There is also a session on The Spirit of Cricket.

The environment of the testing is deliberately pressured, with as much physical and mental stress applied as possible.  There are late nights and early rises with each individual responsible for getting up at the right time, getting to the right test at the right time, with the right equipment and having done the right warm-ups.  There is no coaching, it is purely assessment and an individual’s ability to function well under stress and tiredness is part of the examination.

ECB expects world class cricketers to be fighters who accept a challenge and thrive on responsibility, and they are looking for early and consistent signs of this.

The results are not necessarily used to make selections.  Certain individuals prior to these tests have been invited to join demanding England Development squads with full-on programmes which for the 16 year olds for example would mean around 7 days a month being dedicated to the Development Programme at Loughborough, Derby, South Africa and Australia.  The ECB’s aim is to win two World Cups in the next four years.

For these young cricketers a very difficult decision is upon them as their academic education is bound to take second place to cricket and for them and their parents there is a stark choice.  For the old pros who joined their county staffs at 16 this would have been no big deal, but in a world where academic qualifications matter far more for future life chances the decision is a very large gamble: enter this special gateway to cricketing opportunity with nothing guaranteed or go the university route, perhaps through a University Centre of Excellence, and hope you still have the ability and experience to make it as a cricketer with an academic qualification in the bag, just in case.

It is difficult to believe, though, that individuals who demonstrate ‘The Right Stuff’ and who put together interesting performances in all or some of these tests and match these with good performances at Under 17, Academy and Second Team cricket next year won’t be drafted in.

Similar programmes are already well established in other test playing countries, so England is considered to be lagging behind, as recent performances in youth World Cups tend to confirm when England talent has lacked temperament.

The whole process is overseen by the ECB’s Head of Development and former Chairman of the Test Selectors, David Graveney.  It is clear that Graveney has a sharp vision of what is required, has sold that vision to the people who hold the purse strings or worn their resistance down, has put together a strong support team and is determined that England will catch up fast in the field of temperament as well as talent identification and development.

But, just as individuals and their parents have had to make difficult choices, so the culture into which they are being welcomed has itself been the subject of selection and development.   “What is that culture and is it the right one?” are questions that Third Man would like to … well … to assess.

The painting above is Young Spartans exercising by E. Degas whose CRB check is pending.