Jon Hotten's Blog
March 26, 2020
Other sports no. 3: Don King and the 45 minute answer
It was the week before the Mike Tyson versus Evander Holyfield rematch at the MGM Grand in Las Vegas.
I'd been at the first fight when Holyfield had pulled off a major upset by stopping Tyson in the eleventh round, even though beforehand there was a concern that Evander might actually die in the ring. He had been diagnosed with a heart condition that he now claimed had been cured by a faith healer.
As a piece of sporting theatre it was the most exciting thing I'd seen. Afterwards both fighters came to a press conference in a big white tent that had been erected behind the casino and was the locus of media activities. Holyfield had been there almost every day in the run-up and would happily talk to anybody. Now he sat at a table with Mike Tyson, explaining how it was God's plan that he would win. Mike Tyson had angry red welts on his forehead where the fighters' heads had clashed, and he kept pressing them with a white towel. Between them sat Don King, beaming with delight.
A British journalist called Jeff Powell stood up and said, 'Mike, do you think that after that defeat you should consider retiring, and Evander, now that you've achieved everything in the sport, would you think about retiring again too?'
The look on Don King's face was priceless, which I suspect Jeff Powell knew it would be. One of his great talents as a promoter was to be up on both sides of the deal. A Holyfield victory meant not just a rematch but a potential trilogy of big-money fights - from which the one guaranteed winner would be Don King.
I needed a commission to get to the second fight and managed to sell the idea of a piece about Don to Punch, the humour magazine that was undergoing one of its many revamps. I went over intending to try and get an interview in the big white tent during fight week.
As usual, it was an interesting moment for Don. He was facing a trial for wire fraud that carried a prison sentence of 45 years. The accusation was that he'd profited from a false insurance claim to Lloyds of London after the cancellation of a fight involving Julio Cesar Chavez. He'd already been tried once, but the jury had failed to reach a verdict.
There were lots of things that a piece about Don King was duty bound to mention, from the fact he'd killed two men, to his rise from prison to promoting fights like the Thrilla in Manila and the Rumble in the Jungle, and then listing the many fighters, promoters and officials he'd duped, bilked and baffled with his brilliance and his bullshit. When he'd been acquitted on tax evasion charges in the mid-80s, the US Government's lead prosecutor said that Don King was the cleverest man he'd ever cross-examined.
It was an extraordinary life, an American life ('only in America' was one of the stock phrases Don loved to bellow at people), and in the flesh King was just as monumental, six feet four or five tall with the famous hair standing way above that. He dwarfed both Tyson and Holyfield whenever he stood next to them.
Although he sued anyone in boxing at the drop of hat, he never sued the media because he knew the value of his reputation. Instead he talked and talked, a verbal steamroller that simpy couldn't be stopped, not matter what was thrown at him.
I was a genuinely lightweight opponent, but after a couple of days I got my chance. He was standing by himself in the media tent, so I crept over, turned on my tape recorder and said, 'Don, could I just ask you about the insurance case...'
Without blinking, he was off. I can't recall much of what he said, but back then, a dictaphone ran on physical cassettes that had 45 minutes of tape before you had to flip them over, and by the time he'd finished speaking, the thing had turned off in my hand.
It was vintage Don, exactly what I'd hoped for. He called the wire fraud 'a victimless crime,' and 'insinuendo'. A 45-minute answer... Only in America. I wrote the piece, which was very much like every other Don King piece, but I was quite in thrall to boxing at the time. A few months later, he was acquitted after a trial in New York. As the New York Times reported, "the fight promoter laughed boisterously, soliloquised his jubilation in religious and hyperbolic terms and signed autographs."
Being in thrall to boxing changed, slowly. Two years later I was working at an Australian newspaper. I liked to get in early and read the wire reports. One morning I saw one that began: 'Rick Parker wanted to be Don King. Rich. Intimidating. Powerful...'
It was from a paper in Florida, only a few paragraphs about this Parker guy, who, it transpired, had been advised by King to try and find a white heavyweight boxer who could win the world title - at the time there hadn't been a white champion since Marciano. So Rick Parker did. Well sort of, he tried at least, and left behind him a wild and sad story of fixed fights, mayhem, money and ultimately murder - his own, at the hands of one of his fighters, Tim 'Doc' Anderson.
I tried to find out more about Rick Parker. When I got back to England, I began writing to Tim Anderson, who was serving life without parole in a Florida prison. As the story became clear - the story of how a good man came to kill another (deeply flawed) human being - I realised that I no longer loved boxing.
It was an emotional rather than a logical thing. Lots of sports, maybe every sport, was corrupt in some way or another, some, like FIFA or the IOC, to a much higher level than boxing was, too. But boxing seemed more personally ruinous, and there was a divide between the men that got in the ring and those outside of it. After wading through the wreckage of Tim's once blessed life, I didn't find Don King's stories about ripping off fighters and being up on both sides of the deal funny any more.
The corruption in boxing was mostly low-level, in then-unregulated states like Oklahoma, where Rick Parker had poisoned Tim Anderson so that he would lose a fight with Mark Gastineau, the former NFL defensive end. Where men fought under assumed names that they took from the local cemetary. Where fighters were smuggled over borders, given fake social security numbers, made to fight outside their weight class, and lots of other shit that no-one cared about.
But it stretched upwards, too. Everyone was connected. Tim Anderson had fought George Foreman at Rick Parker's behest. Rick had a piece of Big George's comeback at the start, but Bob Arum took that. Nonetheless Rick found himself hanging over the top rope of the ring at the Omni Coliseum in Atlanta as 'Smokin' Bert Cooper, who he managed and promoted, was one more clean punch away from knocking out Evander Holyfield to become the heavyweight champion of the world.
One punch away.
Bert Cooper is dead now, and so is Rick Parker, and Tim Anderson is still in jail. Bob Arum is 88 years old and promotes Tyson Fury. Don King is also 88 years old, and much diminished.
Don's on the outside now, and no-one is getting 45-minute answers any more.
I'd been at the first fight when Holyfield had pulled off a major upset by stopping Tyson in the eleventh round, even though beforehand there was a concern that Evander might actually die in the ring. He had been diagnosed with a heart condition that he now claimed had been cured by a faith healer.
As a piece of sporting theatre it was the most exciting thing I'd seen. Afterwards both fighters came to a press conference in a big white tent that had been erected behind the casino and was the locus of media activities. Holyfield had been there almost every day in the run-up and would happily talk to anybody. Now he sat at a table with Mike Tyson, explaining how it was God's plan that he would win. Mike Tyson had angry red welts on his forehead where the fighters' heads had clashed, and he kept pressing them with a white towel. Between them sat Don King, beaming with delight.
A British journalist called Jeff Powell stood up and said, 'Mike, do you think that after that defeat you should consider retiring, and Evander, now that you've achieved everything in the sport, would you think about retiring again too?'
The look on Don King's face was priceless, which I suspect Jeff Powell knew it would be. One of his great talents as a promoter was to be up on both sides of the deal. A Holyfield victory meant not just a rematch but a potential trilogy of big-money fights - from which the one guaranteed winner would be Don King.
I needed a commission to get to the second fight and managed to sell the idea of a piece about Don to Punch, the humour magazine that was undergoing one of its many revamps. I went over intending to try and get an interview in the big white tent during fight week.
As usual, it was an interesting moment for Don. He was facing a trial for wire fraud that carried a prison sentence of 45 years. The accusation was that he'd profited from a false insurance claim to Lloyds of London after the cancellation of a fight involving Julio Cesar Chavez. He'd already been tried once, but the jury had failed to reach a verdict.
There were lots of things that a piece about Don King was duty bound to mention, from the fact he'd killed two men, to his rise from prison to promoting fights like the Thrilla in Manila and the Rumble in the Jungle, and then listing the many fighters, promoters and officials he'd duped, bilked and baffled with his brilliance and his bullshit. When he'd been acquitted on tax evasion charges in the mid-80s, the US Government's lead prosecutor said that Don King was the cleverest man he'd ever cross-examined.
It was an extraordinary life, an American life ('only in America' was one of the stock phrases Don loved to bellow at people), and in the flesh King was just as monumental, six feet four or five tall with the famous hair standing way above that. He dwarfed both Tyson and Holyfield whenever he stood next to them.
Although he sued anyone in boxing at the drop of hat, he never sued the media because he knew the value of his reputation. Instead he talked and talked, a verbal steamroller that simpy couldn't be stopped, not matter what was thrown at him.
I was a genuinely lightweight opponent, but after a couple of days I got my chance. He was standing by himself in the media tent, so I crept over, turned on my tape recorder and said, 'Don, could I just ask you about the insurance case...'
Without blinking, he was off. I can't recall much of what he said, but back then, a dictaphone ran on physical cassettes that had 45 minutes of tape before you had to flip them over, and by the time he'd finished speaking, the thing had turned off in my hand.
It was vintage Don, exactly what I'd hoped for. He called the wire fraud 'a victimless crime,' and 'insinuendo'. A 45-minute answer... Only in America. I wrote the piece, which was very much like every other Don King piece, but I was quite in thrall to boxing at the time. A few months later, he was acquitted after a trial in New York. As the New York Times reported, "the fight promoter laughed boisterously, soliloquised his jubilation in religious and hyperbolic terms and signed autographs."
Being in thrall to boxing changed, slowly. Two years later I was working at an Australian newspaper. I liked to get in early and read the wire reports. One morning I saw one that began: 'Rick Parker wanted to be Don King. Rich. Intimidating. Powerful...'
It was from a paper in Florida, only a few paragraphs about this Parker guy, who, it transpired, had been advised by King to try and find a white heavyweight boxer who could win the world title - at the time there hadn't been a white champion since Marciano. So Rick Parker did. Well sort of, he tried at least, and left behind him a wild and sad story of fixed fights, mayhem, money and ultimately murder - his own, at the hands of one of his fighters, Tim 'Doc' Anderson.
I tried to find out more about Rick Parker. When I got back to England, I began writing to Tim Anderson, who was serving life without parole in a Florida prison. As the story became clear - the story of how a good man came to kill another (deeply flawed) human being - I realised that I no longer loved boxing.
It was an emotional rather than a logical thing. Lots of sports, maybe every sport, was corrupt in some way or another, some, like FIFA or the IOC, to a much higher level than boxing was, too. But boxing seemed more personally ruinous, and there was a divide between the men that got in the ring and those outside of it. After wading through the wreckage of Tim's once blessed life, I didn't find Don King's stories about ripping off fighters and being up on both sides of the deal funny any more.
The corruption in boxing was mostly low-level, in then-unregulated states like Oklahoma, where Rick Parker had poisoned Tim Anderson so that he would lose a fight with Mark Gastineau, the former NFL defensive end. Where men fought under assumed names that they took from the local cemetary. Where fighters were smuggled over borders, given fake social security numbers, made to fight outside their weight class, and lots of other shit that no-one cared about.
But it stretched upwards, too. Everyone was connected. Tim Anderson had fought George Foreman at Rick Parker's behest. Rick had a piece of Big George's comeback at the start, but Bob Arum took that. Nonetheless Rick found himself hanging over the top rope of the ring at the Omni Coliseum in Atlanta as 'Smokin' Bert Cooper, who he managed and promoted, was one more clean punch away from knocking out Evander Holyfield to become the heavyweight champion of the world.
One punch away.
Bert Cooper is dead now, and so is Rick Parker, and Tim Anderson is still in jail. Bob Arum is 88 years old and promotes Tyson Fury. Don King is also 88 years old, and much diminished.
Don's on the outside now, and no-one is getting 45-minute answers any more.
March 20, 2020
Other sports no. 2: Gazza and the train that never left
'May you live in interesting times,' goes the old Chinese curse, and as we seem to be... thought I'd break the Old Batsman Fourth Wall and for this (hopefully briefish) interregnum until the crimson rambler is once again singing across the cricket fields of England, put up a few yarns about other sports that have occurred along the way... This time, a brief meeting with Gazza...
During Italia 90, the Juventus president Gianni Agnelli called Paul Gascoigne 'a dog of war with the face of a child,' which remains an unbeatable and beautiful description of him as a footballer.
If you want to imagine how far away 1990 seems now, how distant that vanished England is, imagine Harry Kane returning from the World Cup wearing a shellsuit and a pair of fake plastic tits. Imagine Gazza's other great almost-triumph, Euro 96, all of the present England squad flying to Hong Kong and lying in a leather dentist's chair while a barman poured Drambuie and tequila down their throats before smashing up the plane on the way home and then nearly winning the tournament.
By the time France 98 rolled around, Gazza had been transferred to Middlesbrough and any residual genius was spasmodic at best, but he still was still playing well for England and tournament football had always been his arena: he seemed to feed on its intensity. And as usual, England weren't overburdened with errant geniusus, so he continued to feel like their best bet.
England's manager at the time was Glenn Hoddle, who taken over from Terry Venables after Euro 96. Venables was a shrewd man who hid it behind a bluff wide-boy exterior. Hoddle was almost the opposite. He was given to gnomic pronouncements and, it would transpire, had a belief in hokey spiritualism that later on cost him the job. He was a brilliant coach, though, and after Euro '96, surely England were a chance...
That was the view at the football magazine where I was freelancing, anyway. With great fanfare Hoddle had selected an initial squad that he was about to trim to the final number. A day or so before the announcement, a team sponsor booked a Eurostar train and put an England player in each carriage for the football press to interview. The train was parked at Waterloo station and wasn't going anywhere, a clunking metaphor that seemed to be lost on the organisers.
I can't remember exactly which players were there now. Michael Owen was one, I think. The star attraction though was Gascoigne, as usual. Even in his faded state he was a magnet for headlines and attention, the legacy of not just his magnificence as a player, but of the chaos of his life. Within a few months he would be in rehab.
The writers were divided into groups and sent along the train. We only got about five minutes with each player, so it was a useless exercise really. We must have been one of the last groups to arrive in Gazza's carriage, but unlike some of the others, he remained cheerful. He waved us in.
"Sit down lads, sit down..."
He was still, then, a superb specimen, built like a boxer, his face surprisingly delicate with its line of wonky teeth and its soulful eyes. Even though we only had five minutes with each man, we had been through a ritual of prefacing the first few questions with "if selected," in recognition that some might not be. With Gazza though, that didn't seem relevant, so we didn't bother.
Two days later, Glenn Hoddle dropped him and when Gazza heard, he smashed up Hoddle's hotel room. He was inconsolable because, as would become obvious while his life unraveled, the football field was his only place of safety.
England got knocked out early on penalties to Argentina, a defeat that some, including Hoddle, tried to spin as a sporting tragedy on the scale of Italia 90 or Euro 96, which it wasn't. The truth was, they'd played four matches and lost two of them.
Hoddle got fired a year later. Gazza never played for England again. Hoddle managed a few more clubs before becoming an idiosyncratic pundit. Gazza tried the punditry once, became unintelligible with nerves and ran up a legendary bar bill. His real tragedy is not the end of his England career but the terribly damaged childhood and subsequent alcoholism that have ravaged his life.
That train seems like a long time ago.
Next time: Don King and the 45 minute answer...
NB: will obv. still post on cricket as often as possible, unless I sell the piece to a mag/website...
During Italia 90, the Juventus president Gianni Agnelli called Paul Gascoigne 'a dog of war with the face of a child,' which remains an unbeatable and beautiful description of him as a footballer.
If you want to imagine how far away 1990 seems now, how distant that vanished England is, imagine Harry Kane returning from the World Cup wearing a shellsuit and a pair of fake plastic tits. Imagine Gazza's other great almost-triumph, Euro 96, all of the present England squad flying to Hong Kong and lying in a leather dentist's chair while a barman poured Drambuie and tequila down their throats before smashing up the plane on the way home and then nearly winning the tournament.
By the time France 98 rolled around, Gazza had been transferred to Middlesbrough and any residual genius was spasmodic at best, but he still was still playing well for England and tournament football had always been his arena: he seemed to feed on its intensity. And as usual, England weren't overburdened with errant geniusus, so he continued to feel like their best bet.
England's manager at the time was Glenn Hoddle, who taken over from Terry Venables after Euro 96. Venables was a shrewd man who hid it behind a bluff wide-boy exterior. Hoddle was almost the opposite. He was given to gnomic pronouncements and, it would transpire, had a belief in hokey spiritualism that later on cost him the job. He was a brilliant coach, though, and after Euro '96, surely England were a chance...
That was the view at the football magazine where I was freelancing, anyway. With great fanfare Hoddle had selected an initial squad that he was about to trim to the final number. A day or so before the announcement, a team sponsor booked a Eurostar train and put an England player in each carriage for the football press to interview. The train was parked at Waterloo station and wasn't going anywhere, a clunking metaphor that seemed to be lost on the organisers.
I can't remember exactly which players were there now. Michael Owen was one, I think. The star attraction though was Gascoigne, as usual. Even in his faded state he was a magnet for headlines and attention, the legacy of not just his magnificence as a player, but of the chaos of his life. Within a few months he would be in rehab.
The writers were divided into groups and sent along the train. We only got about five minutes with each player, so it was a useless exercise really. We must have been one of the last groups to arrive in Gazza's carriage, but unlike some of the others, he remained cheerful. He waved us in.
"Sit down lads, sit down..."
He was still, then, a superb specimen, built like a boxer, his face surprisingly delicate with its line of wonky teeth and its soulful eyes. Even though we only had five minutes with each man, we had been through a ritual of prefacing the first few questions with "if selected," in recognition that some might not be. With Gazza though, that didn't seem relevant, so we didn't bother.
Two days later, Glenn Hoddle dropped him and when Gazza heard, he smashed up Hoddle's hotel room. He was inconsolable because, as would become obvious while his life unraveled, the football field was his only place of safety.
England got knocked out early on penalties to Argentina, a defeat that some, including Hoddle, tried to spin as a sporting tragedy on the scale of Italia 90 or Euro 96, which it wasn't. The truth was, they'd played four matches and lost two of them.
Hoddle got fired a year later. Gazza never played for England again. Hoddle managed a few more clubs before becoming an idiosyncratic pundit. Gazza tried the punditry once, became unintelligible with nerves and ran up a legendary bar bill. His real tragedy is not the end of his England career but the terribly damaged childhood and subsequent alcoholism that have ravaged his life.
That train seems like a long time ago.
Next time: Don King and the 45 minute answer...
NB: will obv. still post on cricket as often as possible, unless I sell the piece to a mag/website...
March 17, 2020
Other Sports No. 1: Ronnie and the Normal Shoes
'May you live in interesting times,' goes the old Chinese curse, and as we seem to be... thought I'd break the Old Batsman Fourth Wall and for this (hopefully briefish) interregnum until the crimson rambler is once again singing across the cricket fields of England, put up a few yarns about other sports that have occurred along the way... The first involves the incomparable Ronnie O'Sullivan...
We were working on a magazine for Sky. It had the glorious frequency of six issues per year, which allowed for plenty of downtime (rigorously filled with editorial planning meetings and other good deeds, natch). One of the regular office debates was about what counted as a sport and what didn't.
I had a glib line about it not being one if you could do it your normal shoes, which nonetheless excluded two sports that I've always loved, snooker and darts. Snooker especially, with its langueur, its epic scale, its midnight finishes, that wash of light across the immaculate baize... It seemed to understand something that cricket understood - how and where deep pulses of drama accumulate through hours of play. And it drew its champions from the masses, players that could offer the strange charisma of one tiny quirk amplified by the TV cameras.
Anyhow, the snooker was on its way back from its precipitous 1990s fall. Barry Hearn was in charge again and had Ronnie O'Sullivan, the Rocket, knocking in impossible shots with a wild intensity and threatening to quit every ten minutes.
Now Ronnie was available for a phone interview, which our editor, Ryan, had said he would do.
"I'm going to ask him about the normal shoes..."
'Oh no... Don't do that..." I said, but people were already laughing at the thought.
"Anyway," he said, "I've got something else for you. Haile Gebreslassie..."
Gebreslassie was a runner, a great one, currently at his palatial home in Ethiopia and also available for a phoner.
Ryan rang Ronnie, and after a while, in a loud voice, said: "there's a bloke in our office says it's not a sport if you can do it in your normal shoes..."
"Tell him he's an idiot," Ronnie said.
"Actually he's about to speak to Haile Gebreslassie..."
Ronnie perked up at this news. He was well known as a good club runner, and had posted some impressive times at various races in the Essex area. He'd even credited it with improving his game.
"Haile likes snooker," he said. "He's seen me play..."
Just before I rang Haile, Ryan said, "Make sure you ask him about Ronnie..."
I was an admirer of Gabreslassie myself, and so placed the call with some trepidation. When I got through, the line to Ethiopia was terrible and I could barely hear anything he said. The only way I could tell he'd finished his answers was because he laughed loudly at the end of each one.
"So Haile," I shouted. "I hear you're a fan of snooker..."
Silence.
"Snooker?" I yelled again.
Faint laugh.
"And you've seen Ronnie O'Sullivan, the World Champion, play?"
Silence, barely audible laugh.
"Snooker..." I said, more desperately. "Played on a green table..."
Haile laughed faintly and hung up.
Somehow, Ronnie O'Sullivan seemed to have taken his revenge for the normal shoes idea.
Next time: Gazza, Glenn Hoddle and the Eurostar at Waterloo...
NB: will obv. still post on cricket as often as possible, unless I sell the piece to a mag/website...
We were working on a magazine for Sky. It had the glorious frequency of six issues per year, which allowed for plenty of downtime (rigorously filled with editorial planning meetings and other good deeds, natch). One of the regular office debates was about what counted as a sport and what didn't.
I had a glib line about it not being one if you could do it your normal shoes, which nonetheless excluded two sports that I've always loved, snooker and darts. Snooker especially, with its langueur, its epic scale, its midnight finishes, that wash of light across the immaculate baize... It seemed to understand something that cricket understood - how and where deep pulses of drama accumulate through hours of play. And it drew its champions from the masses, players that could offer the strange charisma of one tiny quirk amplified by the TV cameras.
Anyhow, the snooker was on its way back from its precipitous 1990s fall. Barry Hearn was in charge again and had Ronnie O'Sullivan, the Rocket, knocking in impossible shots with a wild intensity and threatening to quit every ten minutes.
Now Ronnie was available for a phone interview, which our editor, Ryan, had said he would do.
"I'm going to ask him about the normal shoes..."
'Oh no... Don't do that..." I said, but people were already laughing at the thought.
"Anyway," he said, "I've got something else for you. Haile Gebreslassie..."
Gebreslassie was a runner, a great one, currently at his palatial home in Ethiopia and also available for a phoner.
Ryan rang Ronnie, and after a while, in a loud voice, said: "there's a bloke in our office says it's not a sport if you can do it in your normal shoes..."
"Tell him he's an idiot," Ronnie said.
"Actually he's about to speak to Haile Gebreslassie..."
Ronnie perked up at this news. He was well known as a good club runner, and had posted some impressive times at various races in the Essex area. He'd even credited it with improving his game.
"Haile likes snooker," he said. "He's seen me play..."
Just before I rang Haile, Ryan said, "Make sure you ask him about Ronnie..."
I was an admirer of Gabreslassie myself, and so placed the call with some trepidation. When I got through, the line to Ethiopia was terrible and I could barely hear anything he said. The only way I could tell he'd finished his answers was because he laughed loudly at the end of each one.
"So Haile," I shouted. "I hear you're a fan of snooker..."
Silence.
"Snooker?" I yelled again.
Faint laugh.
"And you've seen Ronnie O'Sullivan, the World Champion, play?"
Silence, barely audible laugh.
"Snooker..." I said, more desperately. "Played on a green table..."
Haile laughed faintly and hung up.
Somehow, Ronnie O'Sullivan seemed to have taken his revenge for the normal shoes idea.
Next time: Gazza, Glenn Hoddle and the Eurostar at Waterloo...
NB: will obv. still post on cricket as often as possible, unless I sell the piece to a mag/website...
January 28, 2020
Faf du Plessis and the implacable cruelty of cricket
Faf du Plessis is so comically alpha that he can have AB de Villiers as a friend since schooldays and not be overshadowed. AB might be the greater player but he's one of life's handsome wingmen, Ice Man to Faf's Maverick.
Faf du Plessis is so alpha, his box is called 'The Beast'. He wears pink gloves and has pink stickers on his bat in the same way that 1980s lover boys wore a pink shirt, to let the ladies know. His own playing shirts have the sleeves cut high to best display those magnificent triceps.
Faf is so alpha the grill on his helmet is specially adjusted to keep clear of his movie star jawline*. You could shred your fist on that razor-wire stubble. When he was once asked, at a pre-match interview, why Hardus Viljoen wasn't on the teamsheet, he'd replied, 'because he's in bed with my sister,' and smirked at the camera.
At the Bullring Faf went down with his ship, last hand of a generation on deck. He was done, cooked, the eyes had taken on that thousand-yard stare that skippers who have gone a series too far tend to get. He went into bat in the final innings with South Africa's score at 89-2, almost two days of cricket to play and another 376 needed to win. They had been caned in the last couple of games, and they were getting another pasting in this one.
He knew the odds. How often would he get out of a similar Test with something, with anything - one time in a hundred? One in thousand? That's why they still talk about Atherton at the Bullring, why VVS Laxman has a wonderful life, eased along by the number 281. From this position in Test match cricket, you don't draw and you don't win. From this position you lose. You always lose.
The pitch had fourth day pub nutter tendencies, overly friendly one moment, threatening to glass you in the face the next. Faf's highest score in the series was 36. Since 2018, he had averaged above 36 in one of the eight series he had played. His career mark was about to dip below 40, which his career didn't deserve.
He dug in anyway. After 40 deliveries, he'd made nine. At the other end, Rassie van der Dussen was playing the innings of his short career, somehow smacking the bowling around, taking a heavy shot in the chest and battling on. The pub nutter pitch appeared temporarily placated. Root brought on Joe Denly. Faf watched from the non-striker's end as Rassie pumped long hops and full tosses over the rope. How he could do with a few of those himself, just to get the muscle memory going, but each time he got on strike Denly hit his length.
He was pleased for the kid anyway. He and a couple of the others were players who could maybe grab the torch and take it on. That's what old fighters hoped for, some kind of legacy. Leave it better than you found it. Mark Wood came back on, and he absolutely pured one off his pads, right out of the middle, easy as the glory days. Stokes, who has the odd pub nutter tendency himself, came on, and suddenly the pitch was doing all sorts again, every other ball jumping from a length and smacking his gloves.
He got to 35, one short of his best for the series. His career average flickered back above the mark all batsmen want. He had batted for two hours and ten minutes, faced 91 deliveries. Stokes bowled again. He propped forward again and instead of jumping up, the ball hit something and stayed down, took the under edge of the bat and flicked off the bails without touching the stumps at all. He bent even lower, sank to a knee, beaten at last, beaten again.
He'd barely got his pads off when Rassie clothed a drive to short cover, out two short of the maiden century that he'd so deserved. Temba Bavuma, so often the whipping boy on social media, got to 27 before he copped a throat ball from Stuart Broad. He wondered if anyone knew how hard it was to score 27 on that pitch against that sort of bowling, how good you had to be to do that?
It was over. Big Vern got a strangle in his last Test innings. Maybe he deserved more, too. de Kock got out going death or glory, the highest run scorer on either side for the series. He deserved something, surely. There was even a run-out, which always happens in games like these.
Faf du Plessis was comically alpha. He stared the game down, time after time, but the game is cruel and implacable and notions like 'earn' and 'deserve', concepts of karma and reward, exist only in the mind, glimpsed in victory, rued in defeat.
It was all over at last.
* this one may not be true. 'The Beast' box is real, though. And in fairness to his excellent line, Faf went on to explain that his sister and Hardus had just got married.
Faf du Plessis is so alpha, his box is called 'The Beast'. He wears pink gloves and has pink stickers on his bat in the same way that 1980s lover boys wore a pink shirt, to let the ladies know. His own playing shirts have the sleeves cut high to best display those magnificent triceps.
Faf is so alpha the grill on his helmet is specially adjusted to keep clear of his movie star jawline*. You could shred your fist on that razor-wire stubble. When he was once asked, at a pre-match interview, why Hardus Viljoen wasn't on the teamsheet, he'd replied, 'because he's in bed with my sister,' and smirked at the camera.
At the Bullring Faf went down with his ship, last hand of a generation on deck. He was done, cooked, the eyes had taken on that thousand-yard stare that skippers who have gone a series too far tend to get. He went into bat in the final innings with South Africa's score at 89-2, almost two days of cricket to play and another 376 needed to win. They had been caned in the last couple of games, and they were getting another pasting in this one.
He knew the odds. How often would he get out of a similar Test with something, with anything - one time in a hundred? One in thousand? That's why they still talk about Atherton at the Bullring, why VVS Laxman has a wonderful life, eased along by the number 281. From this position in Test match cricket, you don't draw and you don't win. From this position you lose. You always lose.
The pitch had fourth day pub nutter tendencies, overly friendly one moment, threatening to glass you in the face the next. Faf's highest score in the series was 36. Since 2018, he had averaged above 36 in one of the eight series he had played. His career mark was about to dip below 40, which his career didn't deserve.
He dug in anyway. After 40 deliveries, he'd made nine. At the other end, Rassie van der Dussen was playing the innings of his short career, somehow smacking the bowling around, taking a heavy shot in the chest and battling on. The pub nutter pitch appeared temporarily placated. Root brought on Joe Denly. Faf watched from the non-striker's end as Rassie pumped long hops and full tosses over the rope. How he could do with a few of those himself, just to get the muscle memory going, but each time he got on strike Denly hit his length.
He was pleased for the kid anyway. He and a couple of the others were players who could maybe grab the torch and take it on. That's what old fighters hoped for, some kind of legacy. Leave it better than you found it. Mark Wood came back on, and he absolutely pured one off his pads, right out of the middle, easy as the glory days. Stokes, who has the odd pub nutter tendency himself, came on, and suddenly the pitch was doing all sorts again, every other ball jumping from a length and smacking his gloves.
He got to 35, one short of his best for the series. His career average flickered back above the mark all batsmen want. He had batted for two hours and ten minutes, faced 91 deliveries. Stokes bowled again. He propped forward again and instead of jumping up, the ball hit something and stayed down, took the under edge of the bat and flicked off the bails without touching the stumps at all. He bent even lower, sank to a knee, beaten at last, beaten again.
He'd barely got his pads off when Rassie clothed a drive to short cover, out two short of the maiden century that he'd so deserved. Temba Bavuma, so often the whipping boy on social media, got to 27 before he copped a throat ball from Stuart Broad. He wondered if anyone knew how hard it was to score 27 on that pitch against that sort of bowling, how good you had to be to do that?
It was over. Big Vern got a strangle in his last Test innings. Maybe he deserved more, too. de Kock got out going death or glory, the highest run scorer on either side for the series. He deserved something, surely. There was even a run-out, which always happens in games like these.
Faf du Plessis was comically alpha. He stared the game down, time after time, but the game is cruel and implacable and notions like 'earn' and 'deserve', concepts of karma and reward, exist only in the mind, glimpsed in victory, rued in defeat.
It was all over at last.
* this one may not be true. 'The Beast' box is real, though. And in fairness to his excellent line, Faf went on to explain that his sister and Hardus had just got married.
January 2, 2020
Xmas leftovers Part II: Ben Foakes at Guildford
These few paras were taken out of a forthcoming piece as they didn't really fit. I thought Foakes, along with Smith and Labuschagne, was the best player I saw live last Summer. The gods of cricket have decreed that Dom Bess is with England in South Africa, and good luck to him.
In July I went to Guildford, to Woodbridge Road to watch Surrey play Yorkshire. It was supposed to rain all day, but when we arrived just after lunch Surrey had a hundred on the board for a couple down and under low skies, Scott Borthwick, a number three bat these days, darted around and Ben Coad pinned Ryan Patel in front. Sat square of the wicket, feet on the same earth as the players, felt like a privileged position. There was an intimacy to it, the grunts of the bowlers, the urging of the fielders, the sharp calls for quick singles. It was a place of work, of effort. Ben Foakes came in at number five. His summer hadn’t been great, overlooked by England, injured, short of runs, but even when they’re struggling some players make the game look like second nature. Foakes had his collar open and the sleeves of his shirt pushed up, as if he’d just shucked off a jacket and tie at a wedding and got up to jam with the band. He was at ease here, a young man in an old competition. His batting had true beauty and that preternatural bit of anticipation where he appeared to be forward or back to the ball in the instant it was delivered. Dom Bess, on loan from Somerset, lacked the electric snap in his bowling that Foakes had in his batting, and as soon as Foakes felt it he whipped a couple through midwicket, blade vertical and face angled in the classical way. At tea the spectators went out and looked at the wicket and after the resumption the veteran Steve Patterson got one through Foakes, which surprised everyone, even him. The crowd sighed, Patterson gathered himself again and bowled Will Jacks first ball. Drama. A hat-trick chance. Across the far side, behind the high wire fence and the tall trees, traffic flowed down the London Road oblivious. <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-font-charset:78; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1791491579 18 0 131231 0;} @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;} @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1073743103 0 0 415 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page WordSection1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style> -->
In July I went to Guildford, to Woodbridge Road to watch Surrey play Yorkshire. It was supposed to rain all day, but when we arrived just after lunch Surrey had a hundred on the board for a couple down and under low skies, Scott Borthwick, a number three bat these days, darted around and Ben Coad pinned Ryan Patel in front. Sat square of the wicket, feet on the same earth as the players, felt like a privileged position. There was an intimacy to it, the grunts of the bowlers, the urging of the fielders, the sharp calls for quick singles. It was a place of work, of effort. Ben Foakes came in at number five. His summer hadn’t been great, overlooked by England, injured, short of runs, but even when they’re struggling some players make the game look like second nature. Foakes had his collar open and the sleeves of his shirt pushed up, as if he’d just shucked off a jacket and tie at a wedding and got up to jam with the band. He was at ease here, a young man in an old competition. His batting had true beauty and that preternatural bit of anticipation where he appeared to be forward or back to the ball in the instant it was delivered. Dom Bess, on loan from Somerset, lacked the electric snap in his bowling that Foakes had in his batting, and as soon as Foakes felt it he whipped a couple through midwicket, blade vertical and face angled in the classical way. At tea the spectators went out and looked at the wicket and after the resumption the veteran Steve Patterson got one through Foakes, which surprised everyone, even him. The crowd sighed, Patterson gathered himself again and bowled Will Jacks first ball. Drama. A hat-trick chance. Across the far side, behind the high wire fence and the tall trees, traffic flowed down the London Road oblivious. <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-font-charset:78; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1791491579 18 0 131231 0;} @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;} @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1073743103 0 0 415 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; font-size:12.0pt; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} .MsoChpDefault {mso-style-type:export-only; mso-default-props:yes; font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-font-family:Cambria; mso-ascii-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-fareast-font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-fareast-theme-font:minor-fareast; mso-hansi-font-family:Cambria; mso-hansi-theme-font:minor-latin; mso-bidi-font-family:"Times New Roman"; mso-bidi-theme-font:minor-bidi;} @page WordSection1 {size:612.0pt 792.0pt; margin:72.0pt 90.0pt 72.0pt 90.0pt; mso-header-margin:36.0pt; mso-footer-margin:36.0pt; mso-paper-source:0;} div.WordSection1 {page:WordSection1;} </style> -->
December 28, 2019
Xmas leftovers Part I: The Strange Hinterland of Vinceness
For one reason or another, a piece sometimes falls by the wayside - inbetween commissioning and arrival, things shift and the spike is inserted. I've had a couple this year, so thought I'd throw them up here. The first was written around the start of the World Cup. It's about James Vince and the predicament of being England's spare man. Ultimately, he held the fort and played his part, so here's to the great JV...
Ah, James Vince. A breathy sigh across the face of the game, a player that, even when hitched up to the runaway train that is England’s one-day batting, transports you to way-stations that no-one else can. Take Cardiff, the T20i against Pakistan last month. He hit one through cover so hard the ball seemed to leave a slight vapour trail behind, pixels of white-light. ‘Are you watching this?’ said one of my direct messages. ‘It’s not just the timing, it’s the power…’ Or Nottingham, where he opened against Pakistan and oozed the second ball of England’s innings to the boundary, a shot that produced from the crowd the kind of deep ‘aahhh’ of satisfaction that comes from air being taken in rather than expelled from the lungs.
Vince made 36 at Cardiff and 43 in Nottingham, scores that populate that strange hinterland of Vince-ness in which both fans and haters find their fuel. There is a vacancy for an enigma in English cricket, has been since Graeme Hick and Mark Ramprakash became the last two men to score one hundred first-class centuries. At the centre of any enigma is mystery, and Vince’s lies somewhere between those of Ramprakash and Hick. Like Ramprakash there is a dissonance between how he looks when he’s batting and how he feels. Like Hick, there is a woozy sense of diffidence, of not appearing to be quite present enough.
Here’s James Vince talking about how it feels from the inside, speaking to the writer Jonathan Liew: “Every now and again, you feel like your rhythm’s on, you can do pretty much anything. But those days are very rare. It always feels like a grind. There’s never an easy run.”
Then there’s the diffidence, the maddening repetition of fifteen of his twenty-two Test innings ending with catches somewhere between the wicketkeeper and cover. An analysis by the Cricviz website found that he was the unluckiest batsman in world cricket. Another, by Jarrod Kimber, focussed on the number of runs Vince scored in boundaries - around 62 per cent of his Test tally came that way, a figure as high as Sehwag’s.
Both analyses had value, both could be right, and also wrong. Enigma sometimes exists as disparity between how something appears and how it performs. Vince’s blessing, and his curse, is to make something that everyone knows to be difficult seem as natural as breathing.
A cricket bat maker once gave me a wonderful analogy about the way he approached the bats of this new era: “fast cars look fast,” he said.
James Vince looks fast. For the aesthete, his grace at the crease can be overwhelming. He creates a sense of possibility when he bats and when he gets out in the ways that James Vince gets out, he leaves behind a sadness for what hasn’t happened, for what won’t now be seen.
Some people, pragmatists generally, a group into which many professional and ex-professional cricketers fall, don’t really feel that loss in the same way. They were always on at Ramprakash and Hick, and now at Vince too, mainly for giving the appearance of being something that they’re not.
It’s hard to make the case that they are wrong, in this moment of extraordinary fecundity in England’s one-day batting. The line-up is as freakish as its results suggest, so James Vince will play the role of spare man, a state almost as tantalising as one of his thirties or forties.
Teddy Sheringham spoke recently about Manchester United’s 1999 Champions League victory. Sheringham was a substitute on the night of the final, and with United losing 1-0, Alex Ferguson told him that if another fifteen minutes went by without a United goal, he’d be playing: “I didn’t want Bayern to score because then it’s really hard to get back in the game. But I didn’t want us to score either, because then I probably wouldn’t get on…”
It’s a perfect summation of where James Vince is right now. Wanting but not wanting. Hoping but not hoping, just like Teddy, who pulled it off in the end. <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-font-charset:78; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1791491579 18 0 131231 0;} @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;} @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1073743103 0 0 415 0;} @font-face {font-family:"Calisto MT"; panose-1:2 4 6 3 5 5 5 3 3 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; 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Ah, James Vince. A breathy sigh across the face of the game, a player that, even when hitched up to the runaway train that is England’s one-day batting, transports you to way-stations that no-one else can. Take Cardiff, the T20i against Pakistan last month. He hit one through cover so hard the ball seemed to leave a slight vapour trail behind, pixels of white-light. ‘Are you watching this?’ said one of my direct messages. ‘It’s not just the timing, it’s the power…’ Or Nottingham, where he opened against Pakistan and oozed the second ball of England’s innings to the boundary, a shot that produced from the crowd the kind of deep ‘aahhh’ of satisfaction that comes from air being taken in rather than expelled from the lungs.
Vince made 36 at Cardiff and 43 in Nottingham, scores that populate that strange hinterland of Vince-ness in which both fans and haters find their fuel. There is a vacancy for an enigma in English cricket, has been since Graeme Hick and Mark Ramprakash became the last two men to score one hundred first-class centuries. At the centre of any enigma is mystery, and Vince’s lies somewhere between those of Ramprakash and Hick. Like Ramprakash there is a dissonance between how he looks when he’s batting and how he feels. Like Hick, there is a woozy sense of diffidence, of not appearing to be quite present enough.
Here’s James Vince talking about how it feels from the inside, speaking to the writer Jonathan Liew: “Every now and again, you feel like your rhythm’s on, you can do pretty much anything. But those days are very rare. It always feels like a grind. There’s never an easy run.”
Then there’s the diffidence, the maddening repetition of fifteen of his twenty-two Test innings ending with catches somewhere between the wicketkeeper and cover. An analysis by the Cricviz website found that he was the unluckiest batsman in world cricket. Another, by Jarrod Kimber, focussed on the number of runs Vince scored in boundaries - around 62 per cent of his Test tally came that way, a figure as high as Sehwag’s.
Both analyses had value, both could be right, and also wrong. Enigma sometimes exists as disparity between how something appears and how it performs. Vince’s blessing, and his curse, is to make something that everyone knows to be difficult seem as natural as breathing.
A cricket bat maker once gave me a wonderful analogy about the way he approached the bats of this new era: “fast cars look fast,” he said.
James Vince looks fast. For the aesthete, his grace at the crease can be overwhelming. He creates a sense of possibility when he bats and when he gets out in the ways that James Vince gets out, he leaves behind a sadness for what hasn’t happened, for what won’t now be seen.
Some people, pragmatists generally, a group into which many professional and ex-professional cricketers fall, don’t really feel that loss in the same way. They were always on at Ramprakash and Hick, and now at Vince too, mainly for giving the appearance of being something that they’re not.
It’s hard to make the case that they are wrong, in this moment of extraordinary fecundity in England’s one-day batting. The line-up is as freakish as its results suggest, so James Vince will play the role of spare man, a state almost as tantalising as one of his thirties or forties.
Teddy Sheringham spoke recently about Manchester United’s 1999 Champions League victory. Sheringham was a substitute on the night of the final, and with United losing 1-0, Alex Ferguson told him that if another fifteen minutes went by without a United goal, he’d be playing: “I didn’t want Bayern to score because then it’s really hard to get back in the game. But I didn’t want us to score either, because then I probably wouldn’t get on…”
It’s a perfect summation of where James Vince is right now. Wanting but not wanting. Hoping but not hoping, just like Teddy, who pulled it off in the end. <!-- /* Font Definitions */ @font-face {font-family:"ＭＳ 明朝"; mso-font-charset:78; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1791491579 18 0 131231 0;} @font-face {font-family:"Cambria Math"; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1107305727 0 0 415 0;} @font-face {font-family:Cambria; panose-1:2 4 5 3 5 4 6 3 2 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:-536870145 1073743103 0 0 415 0;} @font-face {font-family:"Calisto MT"; panose-1:2 4 6 3 5 5 5 3 3 4; mso-font-charset:0; mso-generic-font-family:auto; mso-font-pitch:variable; mso-font-signature:3 0 0 0 1 0;} /* Style Definitions */ p.MsoNormal, li.MsoNormal, div.MsoNormal {mso-style-unhide:no; mso-style-qformat:yes; mso-style-parent:""; margin:0cm; margin-bottom:.0001pt; mso-pagination:widow-orphan; 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August 7, 2019
First Test notes: England on the Edge (again); rethinking the last day
One evening during the Test, I saw The Edge, Barney Douglas' film about England's champion side of 2009-14. I've reviewed it for the next issue of WCM so I won't cover the same ground here, but soon after I'd sent the piece, I sat and watched England fold, and it was striking how the film's themes were being played out again in real time.
The Edge is structured around England's ambition to become the number one team in world cricket. It takes them two years to get there and another couple, give or take a few months, to fall apart. There is a core of players together for the whole span, others who drop in and out, but they all become part of something bigger, something that controls them as much as they control it.
After England beat India in 2011, Andrew Strauss is handed the ICC mace, a trophy so ridiculously grandiose it could only have been conjured by sports administrators. In his talking-head interview Strauss - and what a man he is - says, "I thought, is this it?"
That sense of anticlimax is not uncommon in sport. The golfer David Duval was so driven in the early part of his career that he briefly knocked a peak-era Tiger Woods from the top of the rankings, but when he won the Open Championship in 2001, it was his final victory on tour. Ten years later, when Woods had won 14 Majors to his one, Duval lost his tour card. His decline, which he likened to "a train wreck, and the train is loaded with toxic chemicals," had many causes, but one of them, as he admitted, was that same feeling as he held the claret jug: "is this it?"
It's a complex thought, but it must stem from the emotional release of achieving a long-held goal. What's missing is the goal itself, the meaning, the purpose, the journey. That's a wholly personal experience. Sometimes it comes back and sometimes it doesn't.
This England team, like Strauss', also had a four-year project, and it was also successful. This week, Jos Buttler spoke about the World Cup win. He'd kept England alive in the final, then batted in the super over, and gathered Jason Roy's last, fateful throw during New Zealand's. A few days later, he moved house. "What was scaring me," he said, "was that if we lost, I didn't know how I'd play cricket again. This was such a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, a World Cup final at Lord's. It felt like destiny, and I was thinking, if it doesn't happen, I will have no motivation to pick up a cricket bat for a very long time."
For a pro sportsman, this is a wonderfully frank thing to say. It has an obvious flipside, too. Having won rather than lost, but having gone through the ringer either way, what motivation is there to pick up a bat again, anyhow? At least, not a week or so later.
Part of what The Edge is saying is that we get so close to sport, we disassociate the performers from real life, real feelings. They never move house. They are held to impossible standards, often by their own will, but by the collective will too. We've won the World Cup, but now we want the Ashes, after you've played a game against Ireland, because that will be the perfect summer, Boy's Own stuff.
The teams of Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook played Ashes series in 2009, 2010-11, 2013 and 2013-4. They'd won the T20 World Cup, and contested series against South Africa, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka, home and away, too. The film finishes, but the schedule goes on, a World Cup disaster, a Champions Trophy, another Ashes...
This summer has put the current team through the same thing. We're still throwing brickbats from the sidelines about Jos Buttler's only Test century, Jason Roy's mad charge, the 'declines' of Jonny Bairstow and Moeen Ali, Joe Root not converting again... We look with great and rightful sympathy at the plights of Trescothick, Flintoff, Harmison, Trott, Finn, at the broken bodies of Prior, Swann, Tremlett and the rest. You may watch The Edge and find yourself re-evaluating Kevin Pietersen's "it's hard being me" moment, as I did.
And then you realise, it's happening again, and it's happening now, to a different group of people. It's happening because this is the modern game, but we're caught up in the moment and don't take a step back to see it. England looked shot at Edgbaston because they are shot. Who the hell can blame them, and who is going to do something about it?
Rethinking Day FiveIn Duncan Hamilton's wonderful new book about Neville Cardus, The Great Romantic, he recalls the Melbourne Test of 1937, when Don Bradman outflanks Gubby Allen by reversing Australia's batting order in the Aussie second innings (Chuck Fleetwood-Smith asks why he has to open, and Bradman tells him that the only way to get out on this wicket is to hit the ball, and as Fleetwood-Smith never could do that... Chuck gets a duck anyway). Bradman made 270 from number seven and Australia won by a street.
If I was a proper journalist I'd try and find the stats of England batting out day five in the modern era. I'm not so I won't, but it doesn't happen very often. And yet every time, they do exactly the same thing. And they lose, and we all get annoyed about 'white ball techniques' and lack of sticks of rhubarb or whatever it is that causes them to be all out by 3pm.
What they never try is something different. Maybe not reversing the order (although if it's good enough for the Don...), but at least attempting to fit some tactics to the situation, rather than the meaningless "bat time" or "see where we are at lunch" (five down, usually).
Australia's pressure at Edgbaston was always going to come from Lyon bowling all day at one end and the seamers the other. As Jason Roy discovered, it was a risk trying to hit the GOAT out of the attack, but on a different day, or with a method agreed before play started, it would be no more risky than trying to block out. It's just less palatable, less easy. But sometimes audacity has its moment, too.
The Edge is structured around England's ambition to become the number one team in world cricket. It takes them two years to get there and another couple, give or take a few months, to fall apart. There is a core of players together for the whole span, others who drop in and out, but they all become part of something bigger, something that controls them as much as they control it.
After England beat India in 2011, Andrew Strauss is handed the ICC mace, a trophy so ridiculously grandiose it could only have been conjured by sports administrators. In his talking-head interview Strauss - and what a man he is - says, "I thought, is this it?"
That sense of anticlimax is not uncommon in sport. The golfer David Duval was so driven in the early part of his career that he briefly knocked a peak-era Tiger Woods from the top of the rankings, but when he won the Open Championship in 2001, it was his final victory on tour. Ten years later, when Woods had won 14 Majors to his one, Duval lost his tour card. His decline, which he likened to "a train wreck, and the train is loaded with toxic chemicals," had many causes, but one of them, as he admitted, was that same feeling as he held the claret jug: "is this it?"
It's a complex thought, but it must stem from the emotional release of achieving a long-held goal. What's missing is the goal itself, the meaning, the purpose, the journey. That's a wholly personal experience. Sometimes it comes back and sometimes it doesn't.
This England team, like Strauss', also had a four-year project, and it was also successful. This week, Jos Buttler spoke about the World Cup win. He'd kept England alive in the final, then batted in the super over, and gathered Jason Roy's last, fateful throw during New Zealand's. A few days later, he moved house. "What was scaring me," he said, "was that if we lost, I didn't know how I'd play cricket again. This was such a once-in-a-lifetime opportunity, a World Cup final at Lord's. It felt like destiny, and I was thinking, if it doesn't happen, I will have no motivation to pick up a cricket bat for a very long time."
For a pro sportsman, this is a wonderfully frank thing to say. It has an obvious flipside, too. Having won rather than lost, but having gone through the ringer either way, what motivation is there to pick up a bat again, anyhow? At least, not a week or so later.
Part of what The Edge is saying is that we get so close to sport, we disassociate the performers from real life, real feelings. They never move house. They are held to impossible standards, often by their own will, but by the collective will too. We've won the World Cup, but now we want the Ashes, after you've played a game against Ireland, because that will be the perfect summer, Boy's Own stuff.
The teams of Andrew Strauss and Alastair Cook played Ashes series in 2009, 2010-11, 2013 and 2013-4. They'd won the T20 World Cup, and contested series against South Africa, Bangladesh, Pakistan, India and Sri Lanka, home and away, too. The film finishes, but the schedule goes on, a World Cup disaster, a Champions Trophy, another Ashes...
This summer has put the current team through the same thing. We're still throwing brickbats from the sidelines about Jos Buttler's only Test century, Jason Roy's mad charge, the 'declines' of Jonny Bairstow and Moeen Ali, Joe Root not converting again... We look with great and rightful sympathy at the plights of Trescothick, Flintoff, Harmison, Trott, Finn, at the broken bodies of Prior, Swann, Tremlett and the rest. You may watch The Edge and find yourself re-evaluating Kevin Pietersen's "it's hard being me" moment, as I did.
And then you realise, it's happening again, and it's happening now, to a different group of people. It's happening because this is the modern game, but we're caught up in the moment and don't take a step back to see it. England looked shot at Edgbaston because they are shot. Who the hell can blame them, and who is going to do something about it?
Rethinking Day FiveIn Duncan Hamilton's wonderful new book about Neville Cardus, The Great Romantic, he recalls the Melbourne Test of 1937, when Don Bradman outflanks Gubby Allen by reversing Australia's batting order in the Aussie second innings (Chuck Fleetwood-Smith asks why he has to open, and Bradman tells him that the only way to get out on this wicket is to hit the ball, and as Fleetwood-Smith never could do that... Chuck gets a duck anyway). Bradman made 270 from number seven and Australia won by a street.
If I was a proper journalist I'd try and find the stats of England batting out day five in the modern era. I'm not so I won't, but it doesn't happen very often. And yet every time, they do exactly the same thing. And they lose, and we all get annoyed about 'white ball techniques' and lack of sticks of rhubarb or whatever it is that causes them to be all out by 3pm.
What they never try is something different. Maybe not reversing the order (although if it's good enough for the Don...), but at least attempting to fit some tactics to the situation, rather than the meaningless "bat time" or "see where we are at lunch" (five down, usually).
Australia's pressure at Edgbaston was always going to come from Lyon bowling all day at one end and the seamers the other. As Jason Roy discovered, it was a risk trying to hit the GOAT out of the attack, but on a different day, or with a method agreed before play started, it would be no more risky than trying to block out. It's just less palatable, less easy. But sometimes audacity has its moment, too.
February 17, 2019
Third Test Notes: No-one born slow gets fast
Pace bowling remains one of the game's great unknowables. There is mystery inherent within it, and very few men on earth can do what Mark Wood did in St Lucia last week. As the old sprinters' proverb goes: 'no-one born slow ever got fast'.
It was interesting to hear Wood describe it as "feeling like a superhero." When I worked with Simon Jones on his book The Test, he made the same analogy: "It's like having a superpower, it's a surge, an urge. It's a feeling like no other, to know that the opposition are worried about you, sometimes frightened of you... I've had guys throwing up in the dressing room toilets before facing me. I've had guys refusing to come into bat."
And Simon was always quick, he was born fast. When he was fifteen years old and still five feet six inches tall, he toured Zimbabwe with a Welsh schools side and removed the front teeth of a 30 year old sheep farmer who refused to wear a helmet against a kids team. He felt he was at his quickest, and his wildest, when he first played for Glamorgan. Their wicketkeeper Colin Metson thought he was the fastest he'd kept to since Wayne Daniel. Bob Cottam saw Jones almost hit a keeper on the Lord's groundstaff during practice on the eve of his Test debut against India with a delivery he later called the fastest he'd ever seen.
Simon's genetic line illustrated something. His father Jeff Jones was England's leading wicket taker in the 1965-6 Ashes, and regarded for a while as the quickest on the county circuit. Yet Simon has a fraternal twin, Matthew, and an older brother Richard, "who can bowl quickly, but not as quick as me".
We are in the age of sports science, when almost everything in every sport is undressed and analysed, and everyone and everything is getting faster, stronger, longer. And yet fast bowling isn't, and arguably, it never has. Those who saw Larwood or Thomson, or Holding, or Croft, or Patterson, or Wasim, or Shoaib, or Johnson or Simon Jones, or Mark Wood, have seen men bowling about as fast as anyone can, give or take the vaguaries of the human eye and the speed gun. While the science and analysis might make it happen more consistently (and that's debatable) its arrival is dependent on particular genetics. If you're born slow, you may get less slow, but you won't get fast.
Simon Jones and Mark Wood are often compared. Simon endured some horror injuries that curtailed his career, yet he played in teams that beat West Indies home and away, South Africa away, and of course in the greatest series of all, the Ashes of 2005. Wood has struggled with injury too, though happily not to the same degree. Both generate a lot of their pace from their action rather than the impetus of their run. Simon can still bowl at more than 80 mph from four paces, and, in common with Mark Wood, cut down his early, long approach to something much shorter - six paces at one point.
It's a far more complex process than you may think, and when Jones decided to extend his run again because the strain on his body was too much, he had to consult with Lynn Davies, the champion long jumper, to find something that worked.
Wood has a much smaller and more slender frame than Jones, and it seemed like madness that his run had been made so short. His body couldn't possibly survive that amount of repetitive strain. Even in St Lucia, watching the super slo-mo of his ankle when the force of delivery went through it was like a video nasty as the joint kinked one way and then the other.
And yet as both men say, it is a superpower, and it does strange things to batsmen. The West Indies players who had stayed in for days on an Antiguan minefield against 85 mph were jerked from that comfort by Wood's pace on a far more predictable deck. After he faced Brett Lee for the first time at Lord's in 2005, Simon Jones said that McGrath from the other end "felt like spin".
It's just a few miles per hour, but it is the vital few, at which physiological limits are reached. Fast bowlers who can do that live on in the imagination of batsmen. Mark Wood is something rare, and it is impossible to guess how long it may last, or when it might come again.
It was interesting to hear Wood describe it as "feeling like a superhero." When I worked with Simon Jones on his book The Test, he made the same analogy: "It's like having a superpower, it's a surge, an urge. It's a feeling like no other, to know that the opposition are worried about you, sometimes frightened of you... I've had guys throwing up in the dressing room toilets before facing me. I've had guys refusing to come into bat."
And Simon was always quick, he was born fast. When he was fifteen years old and still five feet six inches tall, he toured Zimbabwe with a Welsh schools side and removed the front teeth of a 30 year old sheep farmer who refused to wear a helmet against a kids team. He felt he was at his quickest, and his wildest, when he first played for Glamorgan. Their wicketkeeper Colin Metson thought he was the fastest he'd kept to since Wayne Daniel. Bob Cottam saw Jones almost hit a keeper on the Lord's groundstaff during practice on the eve of his Test debut against India with a delivery he later called the fastest he'd ever seen.
Simon's genetic line illustrated something. His father Jeff Jones was England's leading wicket taker in the 1965-6 Ashes, and regarded for a while as the quickest on the county circuit. Yet Simon has a fraternal twin, Matthew, and an older brother Richard, "who can bowl quickly, but not as quick as me".
We are in the age of sports science, when almost everything in every sport is undressed and analysed, and everyone and everything is getting faster, stronger, longer. And yet fast bowling isn't, and arguably, it never has. Those who saw Larwood or Thomson, or Holding, or Croft, or Patterson, or Wasim, or Shoaib, or Johnson or Simon Jones, or Mark Wood, have seen men bowling about as fast as anyone can, give or take the vaguaries of the human eye and the speed gun. While the science and analysis might make it happen more consistently (and that's debatable) its arrival is dependent on particular genetics. If you're born slow, you may get less slow, but you won't get fast.
Simon Jones and Mark Wood are often compared. Simon endured some horror injuries that curtailed his career, yet he played in teams that beat West Indies home and away, South Africa away, and of course in the greatest series of all, the Ashes of 2005. Wood has struggled with injury too, though happily not to the same degree. Both generate a lot of their pace from their action rather than the impetus of their run. Simon can still bowl at more than 80 mph from four paces, and, in common with Mark Wood, cut down his early, long approach to something much shorter - six paces at one point.
It's a far more complex process than you may think, and when Jones decided to extend his run again because the strain on his body was too much, he had to consult with Lynn Davies, the champion long jumper, to find something that worked.
Wood has a much smaller and more slender frame than Jones, and it seemed like madness that his run had been made so short. His body couldn't possibly survive that amount of repetitive strain. Even in St Lucia, watching the super slo-mo of his ankle when the force of delivery went through it was like a video nasty as the joint kinked one way and then the other.
And yet as both men say, it is a superpower, and it does strange things to batsmen. The West Indies players who had stayed in for days on an Antiguan minefield against 85 mph were jerked from that comfort by Wood's pace on a far more predictable deck. After he faced Brett Lee for the first time at Lord's in 2005, Simon Jones said that McGrath from the other end "felt like spin".
It's just a few miles per hour, but it is the vital few, at which physiological limits are reached. Fast bowlers who can do that live on in the imagination of batsmen. Mark Wood is something rare, and it is impossible to guess how long it may last, or when it might come again.
February 4, 2019
Second Test notes: Root Maths - The Head of the Snake; Holder's Ban
The parsing of a player's stats in order to sustain a particular argument about their game has a name of quite longstanding: Root Maths. It generally fails because it assumes that stats are somehow infallible as well as immutable, when the truth is that they are as open to interpretation as a Jonny Bairstow straight drive.
But after the Antigua Test, when Joe Root's batting average as captain - 1,954 runs at 42.47 - fell more than ten runs behind his average when he's not - 4,594 at 52.80 - the urge for some Root Maths about the original victim of it becomes irresistable.
It was Glenn McGrath who put the concept of targeting the opposition's best batsman into the public arena, although the notion of Bodyline was constructed around it, as was the idea that the good Dr Grace's irascibility might occasionally be used against him. Cutting the head from the snake is especially attractive when it involves a captain: it rots authority; it opens psychic wounds.
So a specious bit of Root Maths appeals. Does team performance align with Root's when measured against his opposing skipper? Series by series, it looks like this:
Eng v South Africa (Home, 2017), Eng won 3-1
Root 461 runs at 57.62
Faf du Plessis 171 runs at 28.50
Eng v West Indies (H, 2017), Eng won 2-1
Root 268 runs at 67.00
Jason Holder 86 runs at 17.00; eight wickets at 39.12
Australia v Eng (Away, 2017-8), Eng lost 0-4
Root 378 runs at 47.23
Steve Smith 687 runs at 137.40
New Zealand v Eng (A, 2018), Eng lost 0-1
Root 142 runs at 35.50
Kane Williamson 124 runs at 41.32
Eng v Pakistan (H, 2018) Drawn 1-1
Root 117 runs at 39.00
Sarfaraz 31 runs at 10.33
Eng v India (H, 2018), Eng won 4-1
Root 319 runs at 35.44
Virat Kohli 593 runs at 59.30
Sri Lanka v Eng (A, 2018), Eng won 3-0
Root 229 runs at 38.16
Dinesh Chandimal 34 runs at 17.00
West Indies v Eng (A, 2019), Eng trail 0-2
Root 40 runs at 10.00
Holder 229 runs at 114.40; seven wickets at 17.85
Superficially, an argument could be made that there's some kind of link. Yet it has too many flaws to list. An Ashes of monolithic Australian dominance bears little relation to the delicate, butterfly-wing interventions of weather and fate that tilted the India series one way and then the other last summer. Root was outbatted in both. The batsmen around Root have collapsed like the post-Brexit Stock Exchange on several occasions, fatally in New Zealand and the West Indies, and so on, ad infinitum.
Notably, though, Root has been outmatched by the other 'Big Four' club members, Smith, Kohli and Williamson, whose hundred in the first Test of the short New Zealand series helped set up the win. And Root's decline as a batsman is evident. He has not averaged 40 in a series since the Ashes, and much of the old certainty that showed itself in the rapid, rhythmic starts to his innings has been whittled away.
Perhaps there is something more obvious. Root's reluctance to bat at three is understandable, as with England it's essentially opening. The captain should bat where he wants, and if Root, as the leading player, needs time to decompress then he should take it. But given the frailty of England's top order, does he get it?
Root has batted 47 times as England captain, eleven of those at three and the rest at four. Here's the breakdown of the team score at the time he went in:
0-10 - 6
10-20 - 9
21-30 - 6
31-40 - 6
41-50 - 2
50-100 - 13
100+ - 5
In 27 of his 47 innings, Root has gone in with England at 40-2 or worse. In 45 per cent, it's less than 30. The bulk of those have been after his first three series as captain, when the oft-maligned number three batsmen were Tom Westley and James Vince.
There was moment in the India series, during the Southampton Test, when I thought that if India had drawn level at 2-2, Root might have seriously considered his position. His agony was palpable, and he is not good at hiding it. Perhaps his feeling is that he will only truly be able to shape a team once Anderson and Broad have gone, although the hole they will leave is terrifying. Maybe he sees the Ashes next year as some kind of watershed, as it so often is.
Root Maths is Root Maths. But at some point, England and Root will have to decide whether his captaincy is worth the missing runs. In so many ways, it may not be.
Banning JasonJason Holder's ban for slow over-rates is pedantry of the highest order, which I accept is the definition of having rules, too. Yet there is an element of Root Maths to it. England batted for a total of 103.1 overs in a Test that was done in less than three days. It is the role of the match officials to make a calculation based around a minimum over rate of 14.28 per hour (which gives 85 in a six-hour day, plus an extra half-hour to reach 90). From that, they must deduct time for drinks, stoppages while adjusting sightscreens and kit, injuries, use of substitutes, use of DRS and so on. This time is within their gift, and many of the stoppages that they stand there and watch are against match conditions anyway.
The game itself, in terms of time, was incomplete. Just as DRS must predict the path of the ball and has a Schrodinger's Cat element, so Holder could suggest that, had England been less inept, the fourth and fifth days would have incorporated the use of his spinner, Roston Chase, as selected, and had its effect upon the rate.
The travelling fans that paid to visit Antigua have been sanctioned not by Holder's over rates but England's terrible cricket, and have missed two days' play. Those that have shelled out for St Lucia must now watch one team that has been manifestly weakened (it'll probably be a better game then, etc etc). Either way, they are denied spectacle. No-one, apart from the match officials and the ex-pros in the commentary box, gave a fig about the over rate in Antigua. As Jason Holder might ask: were you not entertained?
And anyway, do you want to be the one telling Shannon Gabriel he needs to walk back faster?
But after the Antigua Test, when Joe Root's batting average as captain - 1,954 runs at 42.47 - fell more than ten runs behind his average when he's not - 4,594 at 52.80 - the urge for some Root Maths about the original victim of it becomes irresistable.
It was Glenn McGrath who put the concept of targeting the opposition's best batsman into the public arena, although the notion of Bodyline was constructed around it, as was the idea that the good Dr Grace's irascibility might occasionally be used against him. Cutting the head from the snake is especially attractive when it involves a captain: it rots authority; it opens psychic wounds.
So a specious bit of Root Maths appeals. Does team performance align with Root's when measured against his opposing skipper? Series by series, it looks like this:
Eng v South Africa (Home, 2017), Eng won 3-1
Root 461 runs at 57.62
Faf du Plessis 171 runs at 28.50
Eng v West Indies (H, 2017), Eng won 2-1
Root 268 runs at 67.00
Jason Holder 86 runs at 17.00; eight wickets at 39.12
Australia v Eng (Away, 2017-8), Eng lost 0-4
Root 378 runs at 47.23
Steve Smith 687 runs at 137.40
New Zealand v Eng (A, 2018), Eng lost 0-1
Root 142 runs at 35.50
Kane Williamson 124 runs at 41.32
Eng v Pakistan (H, 2018) Drawn 1-1
Root 117 runs at 39.00
Sarfaraz 31 runs at 10.33
Eng v India (H, 2018), Eng won 4-1
Root 319 runs at 35.44
Virat Kohli 593 runs at 59.30
Sri Lanka v Eng (A, 2018), Eng won 3-0
Root 229 runs at 38.16
Dinesh Chandimal 34 runs at 17.00
West Indies v Eng (A, 2019), Eng trail 0-2
Root 40 runs at 10.00
Holder 229 runs at 114.40; seven wickets at 17.85
Superficially, an argument could be made that there's some kind of link. Yet it has too many flaws to list. An Ashes of monolithic Australian dominance bears little relation to the delicate, butterfly-wing interventions of weather and fate that tilted the India series one way and then the other last summer. Root was outbatted in both. The batsmen around Root have collapsed like the post-Brexit Stock Exchange on several occasions, fatally in New Zealand and the West Indies, and so on, ad infinitum.
Notably, though, Root has been outmatched by the other 'Big Four' club members, Smith, Kohli and Williamson, whose hundred in the first Test of the short New Zealand series helped set up the win. And Root's decline as a batsman is evident. He has not averaged 40 in a series since the Ashes, and much of the old certainty that showed itself in the rapid, rhythmic starts to his innings has been whittled away.
Perhaps there is something more obvious. Root's reluctance to bat at three is understandable, as with England it's essentially opening. The captain should bat where he wants, and if Root, as the leading player, needs time to decompress then he should take it. But given the frailty of England's top order, does he get it?
Root has batted 47 times as England captain, eleven of those at three and the rest at four. Here's the breakdown of the team score at the time he went in:
0-10 - 6
10-20 - 9
21-30 - 6
31-40 - 6
41-50 - 2
50-100 - 13
100+ - 5
In 27 of his 47 innings, Root has gone in with England at 40-2 or worse. In 45 per cent, it's less than 30. The bulk of those have been after his first three series as captain, when the oft-maligned number three batsmen were Tom Westley and James Vince.
There was moment in the India series, during the Southampton Test, when I thought that if India had drawn level at 2-2, Root might have seriously considered his position. His agony was palpable, and he is not good at hiding it. Perhaps his feeling is that he will only truly be able to shape a team once Anderson and Broad have gone, although the hole they will leave is terrifying. Maybe he sees the Ashes next year as some kind of watershed, as it so often is.
Root Maths is Root Maths. But at some point, England and Root will have to decide whether his captaincy is worth the missing runs. In so many ways, it may not be.
Banning JasonJason Holder's ban for slow over-rates is pedantry of the highest order, which I accept is the definition of having rules, too. Yet there is an element of Root Maths to it. England batted for a total of 103.1 overs in a Test that was done in less than three days. It is the role of the match officials to make a calculation based around a minimum over rate of 14.28 per hour (which gives 85 in a six-hour day, plus an extra half-hour to reach 90). From that, they must deduct time for drinks, stoppages while adjusting sightscreens and kit, injuries, use of substitutes, use of DRS and so on. This time is within their gift, and many of the stoppages that they stand there and watch are against match conditions anyway.
The game itself, in terms of time, was incomplete. Just as DRS must predict the path of the ball and has a Schrodinger's Cat element, so Holder could suggest that, had England been less inept, the fourth and fifth days would have incorporated the use of his spinner, Roston Chase, as selected, and had its effect upon the rate.
The travelling fans that paid to visit Antigua have been sanctioned not by Holder's over rates but England's terrible cricket, and have missed two days' play. Those that have shelled out for St Lucia must now watch one team that has been manifestly weakened (it'll probably be a better game then, etc etc). Either way, they are denied spectacle. No-one, apart from the match officials and the ex-pros in the commentary box, gave a fig about the over rate in Antigua. As Jason Holder might ask: were you not entertained?
And anyway, do you want to be the one telling Shannon Gabriel he needs to walk back faster?
January 28, 2019
First Test notes: Moeen's Immaculate Disaster
Moeen Ali is a poetic cricketer, a cricketer to watch, and almost everything he does is worth watching. When he has a bad Test, or a bad tour, he accommodates failure in his own way.
The first innings in Barbados was a lovely example of this. Advance publicity on Moeen is that the short ball can unsettle him. His instinct is to hook, but he knows that he probably shouldn't, and in going against instinct he has created a problem for himself. When his first delivery from Kemar Roach came flying down, chest high and on the line of his body, he did no more than offer the bat horizontally before the ball was on him, but being Moeen, a poetic cricketer to whom things happen, the merest shiver of the blade in his hands was enough to send a top edge almost eighty yards into the maw of long leg. It was an immaculate disaster.
With players like Moeen, it doesn't always matter what they do, but how they do it. His dismissal may have left the team in further trouble and the dressing room in high dudgeon, but it had flair. It had drama. It had humour, the very black kind that makes you laugh at the ridiculousness of it all - of cricket and of life.
When he was thirteen years old, Moeen scored 195 in a T20 game, a knock of which his younger brother Omar says, 'it is nearly twenty years since that evening, but it is by far the greatest innings I have seen in cricket.' That's because Moeen is an aesthete and the things he does and the way he does them live on in the mind. In that sense he's kin to any number of otherwise disparate sportsmen, from Alex Higgins to Herol Graham or even George Best, where it's not really about numbers or statistics but what you remember of them [incidentally, Higgins once took this line too far in an argument with Jimmy White over a hotel room, of which Higgins claimed occupancy, "because he was an aesthete" and would appreciate it in a way that Jimmy wouldn't. Yet as the man who reported on the row, Jonathan Rendall, pointed out, so was Jimmy White, perhaps even more so than Higgins*].
It's something that pragmatists, of which there are many in sport, never get. England didn't so much have a bad day at the office in Barbados as drive to the office pathetically late and then crash through the wall while trying to park the car. But like Prince Philip, they'll simply have a gleaming new Land Rover delivered the next morning and start driving again, ignoring the deeper problem that it's not the broken car, it's the fact that they're 97 years old - or in England's case, that they are a team full of all rounders, three of which are wicketkeepers.
Moeen's destiny is in sharp focus because of it. He is, clearly, a batsman who bowls, yet England need a bowler who bats, and he will be caught in this cleft forever now. Perhaps his personality is not quite forceful enough to escape, in the way that Ben Stokes' has been. Moeen's batting is as under-rated as Stokes' is over-rated, and in both cases that is by a little rather than a lot. Steve Harmison once said of Stokes that if England treated him like a number eight, then he would bat like one. Well Moeen has not so much been treated as a number eight as something mutable, shiftable, disposable.
Imagine, briefly, that England had the top five that took them to the number one ranking they again crave: Strauss, Cook, Trott, Pietersen, Bell. Would Stokes get into that? He would not, which suggests he is a not a genuine Test match number five, any more than he is a number eight. Of England's other middle-order players, Bairstow at his best might challenge an out of sorts Bell; Jos Buttler for sure has some of the mad and imaginative genius of Pietersen, if not the adrenalised swagger that enabled Pietersen to do it from debut.
And Moeen? Well not now, but there is an alternative universe in which his talent and difference were embraced and nurtured in the way that Ian Bell's were. At his best, Moeen is that good, that beautiful, that aesthetic and it is England's loss that his is a path not taken. The pragmatists will never get it, but this is an immaculate disaster.
* From memory, the upshot of this stoush was that Higgins refused to yield and spent three days sleeping in the bath.
The first innings in Barbados was a lovely example of this. Advance publicity on Moeen is that the short ball can unsettle him. His instinct is to hook, but he knows that he probably shouldn't, and in going against instinct he has created a problem for himself. When his first delivery from Kemar Roach came flying down, chest high and on the line of his body, he did no more than offer the bat horizontally before the ball was on him, but being Moeen, a poetic cricketer to whom things happen, the merest shiver of the blade in his hands was enough to send a top edge almost eighty yards into the maw of long leg. It was an immaculate disaster.
With players like Moeen, it doesn't always matter what they do, but how they do it. His dismissal may have left the team in further trouble and the dressing room in high dudgeon, but it had flair. It had drama. It had humour, the very black kind that makes you laugh at the ridiculousness of it all - of cricket and of life.
When he was thirteen years old, Moeen scored 195 in a T20 game, a knock of which his younger brother Omar says, 'it is nearly twenty years since that evening, but it is by far the greatest innings I have seen in cricket.' That's because Moeen is an aesthete and the things he does and the way he does them live on in the mind. In that sense he's kin to any number of otherwise disparate sportsmen, from Alex Higgins to Herol Graham or even George Best, where it's not really about numbers or statistics but what you remember of them [incidentally, Higgins once took this line too far in an argument with Jimmy White over a hotel room, of which Higgins claimed occupancy, "because he was an aesthete" and would appreciate it in a way that Jimmy wouldn't. Yet as the man who reported on the row, Jonathan Rendall, pointed out, so was Jimmy White, perhaps even more so than Higgins*].
It's something that pragmatists, of which there are many in sport, never get. England didn't so much have a bad day at the office in Barbados as drive to the office pathetically late and then crash through the wall while trying to park the car. But like Prince Philip, they'll simply have a gleaming new Land Rover delivered the next morning and start driving again, ignoring the deeper problem that it's not the broken car, it's the fact that they're 97 years old - or in England's case, that they are a team full of all rounders, three of which are wicketkeepers.
Moeen's destiny is in sharp focus because of it. He is, clearly, a batsman who bowls, yet England need a bowler who bats, and he will be caught in this cleft forever now. Perhaps his personality is not quite forceful enough to escape, in the way that Ben Stokes' has been. Moeen's batting is as under-rated as Stokes' is over-rated, and in both cases that is by a little rather than a lot. Steve Harmison once said of Stokes that if England treated him like a number eight, then he would bat like one. Well Moeen has not so much been treated as a number eight as something mutable, shiftable, disposable.
Imagine, briefly, that England had the top five that took them to the number one ranking they again crave: Strauss, Cook, Trott, Pietersen, Bell. Would Stokes get into that? He would not, which suggests he is a not a genuine Test match number five, any more than he is a number eight. Of England's other middle-order players, Bairstow at his best might challenge an out of sorts Bell; Jos Buttler for sure has some of the mad and imaginative genius of Pietersen, if not the adrenalised swagger that enabled Pietersen to do it from debut.
And Moeen? Well not now, but there is an alternative universe in which his talent and difference were embraced and nurtured in the way that Ian Bell's were. At his best, Moeen is that good, that beautiful, that aesthetic and it is England's loss that his is a path not taken. The pragmatists will never get it, but this is an immaculate disaster.
* From memory, the upshot of this stoush was that Higgins refused to yield and spent three days sleeping in the bath.
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