Westfield
Shopped. Spot
Fixing: Sadness and Anger. Is TV to blame?
The
admission by Mervyn Westfield that he accepted £6,000 for spot fixing in
2009 is sad in two particular ways: Firstly, that a talented young
fast bowler could risk jail and his whole career for such an isolated paltry
sum. Alternatively, if it is not an isolated payment but one of many
such small payments sprinkled across the game, then that is even sadder for
the game. It has often been said that meaningless ODI cricket provides
the scenario where players could be tempted. Here, and as I understand
it, the situation appears to have been set up by the fact that the game was
being shown in India following the sale of international rights to ESPN.
It is difficult to imagine Pro40 having a huge genuine following even in
that cricket-mad country and the suspicion has to be that the “content”
was simply fodder to fill a pay-TV schedule.
Pro40
is a much criticised format here, even though it has (or rather, had) its
supporters in the English game. But at least it is a genuine
competition, not part of the endless international circuit of
ever-more-pointless
ODIs. That it should become schedule fodder for an international
station seems to be the root of the problem. The ECB may have sold the
international broadcast rights in good faith as with all other rights, but
at the end of the day it has proved damaging. Apart from revenue,
there will have been no benefit to English cricket from these rights being
sold in this way and, indeed, a massive dis-benefit has been now shown.
Officials will deny the causality, but if only they would stop selling TV
rights in appropriate ways. Whether it’s selling the domestic tests
to pay-TV, accepting “Sir” Allen Stanford’s grubby cash or allowing
pay-TV to dictate the haphazard scheduling of our county game, this selling
of the game’s soul must stop before yet another dis-benefit comes ambling
in from a distant corner of the field.
January
2012
|
Michael
Clarke’s Victorious 329* Against India
The
cementing of Michael Clarke into the role of leading-from-the-front Aussie
test captain seems somewhat unlikely given my recollection of an incident in
the Lord’s Long Room during the 2009 Ashes test series. It was the
final day of the 2nd test and England were looking to force a win, although
all three results were possible, including an Aussie win given that they
went into the day needing 209 more runs with 5 wickets remaining (Clarke
125* and Haddin 80*). The Aussies had already been caught out by
the Long Room right at the start of the game when the Lord’s first-timer
bowlers seemed to be caught unawares by the polite reception they received
from the members as they came through to go out to field and seemed rather
psyched out by it (and promptly bowled dreadfully).
At the
start of the fifth day, Clarke and Haddin, not the largest cricketers in the
team, made an error in coming down to the Long Room BEFORE the England
fielders. This needn’t have been disastrous had they not compounded
the original error by stopping. I was stationed somewhere in the
middle of the room and was astonished that the two batsmen, rather than
turning back, or (like the 2011 Indians on several occasions, Tendulkar and
Dravid included) simply proceeding through to the field, stood like a couple
of lemons right in the middle of the room waiting for the England fielders.
As Flintoff and co entered the room from the other end
they spotted the two unfortunates and couldn’t believe their luck.
They stared down the two diminutive batsmen who turned their faces down and
refused to make eye contact. As Flintoff walked right by them, he
paused with a leering grin on his face and nodded his head slowly as he
imagined their impending fate. The game was won there and then:
As they went on the field there was only ever going to be one result.
Flintoff duly embarked on an inspired spell, taking three wickets from
the Pavilion End (to give him 27-4-92-5) and the Aussies were blown away
losing by 115 runs.
January
2012
|
England vs The County Championship
A
letter appeared in this month's Cricketer magazine wherein the correspondent
suggested that the recent successes - and quality - of the England
Test squad was vindication of the two-tier county championship system.
The two tier system has some merits but the success of England has come at
the expense of the first class county game.
That
the England set-up has improved in the past 5 years or so is not in doubt;
but I attribute this to central contracts (and all that involves,
including the coaching regime as discussed in the subsequent article in the
same edition of the magazine).
The
result of this has been a weakened championship.
Firstly, the 2-tier system does not appear to have concentrated talent in
the top division; there has been relatively little movement (of
players) between counties to this effect, if any. Secondly, the
championship is poorer for the absence of the centrally contracted players
for most of the season. Thirdly, when you add to this the lack
of high quality overseas stars who stayed connected to a county for many
years (in my own county of Kent I think of Asif Iqbal, Bernard Julien, John
Shepherd, etc. or Mike Proctor at Gloucs or the Somerset pair of Viv
Richards and Joel Garner alongside Ian Botham from the 1970’s) and their
replacement with either so-called kolpak players or short-term visits from
overseas test players, I think the county championship is vastly inferior to
the 1970’s/1980’s version.
There
have been other effects too: the dominance of the international game
(and money therein or there from) has led to counties investing in their
main ground and the dropping of many out-grounds where people could see
their counties close at hand without travelling far.
Yes,
there is an end-of-season excitement around relegation / promotion, but
sadly England’s success (and the overall migration of focus to the
international game as a whole) has been at the expense of the overall
quality of the Championship.
October
2011
|
Disappointing Indians
There
was alot of hoo-ha about The
Lord's Test being something of a classic. It was enjoyable, yes,
and not simply as an England fan (your correspondent is somewhat
unjingoistic, if that's the word), but a "classic"?.
This seemed overdone at the time - as India "won" very few
sessions in the test and had few chances (but not none at all) to gain the
upper hand. But the subsequent tests and the one-day series we are now
into have proved very disappointing as contests. This was partly due
to an unfortunate series of injuries to the tourists, but seemingly in a
number of ways also the result of a general lack of focus on test cricket (eg
IPL etc.). This is worrying: soon we could be back to three
serious test nations if this carries on, after the relative demise of
Pakistan and West Indies in recent years. Cue yet more nostalgia after
two years' ago's lamenting that the West Indians are not what they were (in
the 1980s). I hope first class cricket is not a dying game....
September
2011
|
Fatty
Batter
The
splendid “WG Grace Ate My Pedalo” reports that “The popular Kent
opener, RWT Key, will miss the first part of the English summer after an
unfortunate over-eating incident”.
This
was proved not to be true of course, and one can only marvel at the fitness
and athleticism of the modern international cricketer, especially the
bowlers who can no longer get away with trudging round the boundary taking a
breather between spells. Some of the diving stops and catches made by
the modern player are simply breathtaking. Just as their fitness
regimes and fielding training are clearly disciplined, so too their actual
bowling, as evidenced by the performance of England’s bowlers in the
Ashes; bowling as a team, to a plan. It is a sign of the times when a
potentially useful slow bowler like Samit Patel is omitted from the
world cup squad due to “fitness shortcomings” according to the Cricinfo
article.
But
has something has been lost? There was maybe a time when cricket was
more of a game than a sport. If this meant the demon spin bowler
couldn’t field or bat for toffees then that was OK, or that the workhorse
medium-pacer was a cart-horse in the field, or the opening bat liked the odd
pasty, then fine. They were there for their bowling, or their
batting. If we carry on like this all we will have is an
interchangeable battery of formidable super-fit six-foot-seven robots, all
bowling to a plan, sipping isotonic drinks (whatever they are),
reverse-swinging on cue and fielding like Jonty Rhodes. Here at idontlikecricket,
we celebrate the less athletic of cricketers: the ruddy-cheeked slip
fielder, the honest Angus Fraser type trudging back to long leg for a rest,
the demon spinner at number 11 with a batting average of 4.7.
The
Ashes and the World Cup are all very well, but cricket and food are
inextricably linked: to quote The Duckworth Lewis Method,
contemplating, in song, Mike Gatting’s possible perspective on being
bowled by Shane Warne at Old Trafford: “if it had been a cheese roll, it
would never have got past me”. We like cheese rolls, and all
who enjoy them.
April 2011
|
n't like cricket...