Everybody Hurts

Back at the beginning of April I posted this;

Assuming Simon Jones makes a full recovery, the England selectors will have an interesting problem putting a bowling attack together from this summer.

With Freddie presumably a 'given' for one of the four fast bowling places, you're effectively picking the remaining three from the following seven names: -

Harmison
Hoggard
Mahmood
Plunkett
Anderson
Jones
Broad

A nice problem to have I'd suggest.

Updating that list -

Harmison - Injured
Hoggard - Injured
Mahmood - Injured
Plunkett - Learning how to bowl
Anderson - Back from injury - now leading the attack
Jones - On his way back from injury
Broad - Close but (currently) no cigar

Plus -

Freddie - On his way back from injury (again)
Sidebottom - Pleasant surprise
Tremlett - Picked ahead of Broad, but surely not a long term option

Out of ten bowlers on that list, three are currently injured, two are on their way back from injury and one (Anderson) has had extensive injury problems since making his debut.

Now I know that it's a fine balance between keeping players fit and giving them enough bowling to maintain their form between test apperances, but that's a heck of a lot of injuries in anyone's language.

New Boots and Panties

Some random thoughts following a day at Lords

The Indian bowling in the first hour minutes was woeful, By all means blame it on the famous 'slope' but shouldn't really take that long to adapt. By the time they finally got their line sorted out, England were well past 50 and the potential weak link (Strauss) was on his way to a hard earned 96, which could very well be the turning point for the Middlesex opener.

Scrape away the teeth-grindingly annoying veneer of the 'establishment at play', and Lords is a fantastic place to watch cricket. Architectually it has kept pace with time without losing the wonderful atmosphere. Extraordinarily, the 'spaceship' actually 'works' in terms of design and location - though when the plans were first drawn up I'm sure a few traditionalists must have had a fit!

Whilst crowds at other English test match keep post-lunch boredom at bay by resorting to Mexican waves and vocal support, the Lords crowd simply put their head down for forty winks. Seriously, the middle session wasn't the most exciting passage of play - although you quickly started to appreciate again how much India have owed to Anil Kumble over the years, but it was played out to a background sound of gentle snoring. From my seat at the Nursery end I saw at least 20 people having a quick post-prandial snooze.

Celebratory spotting - Richie Benaud (much much smaller than I was expecting) 'Boycie' from Only Fools & Horses looking very dapper in blazer and chinos... Goochie and his performing hair-weave... a wonder of modern technology. Dean Headley - the great 'what might have been' of English cricket, and Michael Parkinson.

There are few more magical sights in sport than the Michael Vaughan cover-drive... although his on-drive runs it close.

The lunch scene behind the pavilion still looks like something from the golden days of the Raj.

I've mentioned this before but what is it about MCC members and dress sense? Do they have their 'sartorial sense' gene surgically extracted when they become members? Admittedly the garish 'blood and pus' tie does no one any favours on the colour-cordination front, but when you mix it with a blue shirt, plum coloured trousers and a striped boating jacket you're really asking for ridicule.

'A frightfully nice chap!'

According to Vic Marks in today's Observer, the England selectors will be 'loath' to leave out Andrew Strauss for three reasons...

1) he is a trusted veteran now of 40 Tests; 2) he is a good bloke; 3) there is no obvious like-for-like replacement in the wings so that his omission would cause ripples of change that most teams like to avoid.

1. Big deal

2. For heaven's sake, what is this, 1955? We're talking about the England cricket team here, not a weeks golfing holiday in La Manga.

3. Well, yes, possibly - but England have had to rejuggle the balance of the side because of the absence of Freddie over the past couple of months. Surely it's not beyond the wit of the selectors to come up with a 'Plan B' in circumstances like this - or are they seriously suggesting that Strauss remains in the side until either his lack of runs becomes a total embarrassment, or he finally plays himself into some form?

Good to see Stuart Broad in the 13 though.

Don't take my Kodachrome away...

Worcester Sauce

Just a thought, but when Worcestershire are fined points for the recent 'farcical aquatic ceremony' (Ref - Holy Grail) played out at New Road, could Kent not be given the points that Worcester are deducted?

After all, it's the White Horse county that have suffered most through this - apart from the spectators of course. Lying in the bottom half of the first division table, Kent would have been looking for a good haul of points over the past four days against the bottom county. Instead, thanks to the refusal of the Worcester authorities to agree to having the game moved, they have ended up with a measly four - whilst rivals Surrey made hay while the sun shone (in
London at least) and picked up a handy eighteen points by beating Durham.

In addition, the Kent team have effectively been sent on a four day wild- goose-chase, kicking their heels in the changing room and at their hotel, when they could have been much better employed elsewhere.

Barring an unprecendented 100 degree heatwave mixed with a brisk wind, the Worcester groundsman must have been aware well before the scheduled start of the game that conditions were unplayable - and would remain so throughout the four days - but the chairman was cynically quite prepared to let the scheduled start arrive without an recourse to relocating the game - either to Kidderminster, or even to Beckenham, which was the Kent offer.

Whilst you have to have some sympathy for the financial position the weather has put Worcestershire in, don't forget that Kent are liable to suffer equally badly if they are relegated at the end of the season.

He who pays the piper...

I've previously posted here about Allen Stanford and the monumental financial commitment he's making to grassroots cricket in West Indies - £50 million pounds over the next three years.

There's a further development outlined here. He wants to run a week long 20/20 tournament in Antigua next June involving four nations (Australia, South Africa, India & Sri Lanka) with the winners playing a West Indies All Stars 20/20 side, drawn from the best players in the (now) annual Stanford 20/20 competition.

It'll be interesting to see how the ICC react to this. The last time the cricket authorities came up against a determined individual prepared to sink a lot of money into the game they were left with egg all over their faces. Presumably they'll want to avoid the same fate again, so maybe they should be looking at ways of encouraging Stanford into the cricketing fold, rather than treating him as some pesky external irritant.

Workers Playtime

- Alright Jimmy, you old tart, it’s Tony!

- Hi mate – how did it go on Friday?

- Fantastic! We all went out on the lash ‘big stylee’ at lunchtime – must have had about seven pints each down at the Cheshire Cheese – we took Bob from Charterhouse Insurance with us so we could claim it all on expenses, even though we don’t do any work with them at all. He’s a right knobend!

- Nice one!

- By four o’clock there was no point going back to the office, so we all went straight down to the Oval for the 20/20. Stevie K had got a whole load of tickets through a tout he knows in Aldgate. Only 20 quid each, and because Bob was with us, it all gets put down as ‘entertainment’

- Superb! Who were Surrey playing?

- No idea. Bar was open when we went in, so we loaded up – they’ve got this shitty rule that you can only have four pints per person, so we ordered THIRTY TWO for the eight of us… you should have seen their faces!

- Awesome!

- Once we got to our seats the place was fucking packed – loads of other city boys, and some family groups with kids and stuff. Also, loads of fantastic totty.

- Nice!

Mickey Evans did his usual stuff – became a right comedian. Everytime someone walked in front of us, he yelled ‘Siddown’ really loud – fucking hilarious… every time – wonderful – we pissed ourselves laughing!

- Good stuff!

- Couple of tossers in front of us got a bit shirty, but we told them to take a hike, then some old codger complained about the swearing, so Big Kev told him to “fuck off Grandad” – fucking great!

- Amazing!

- Then Mickey starting standing up and dropping his strides and flashing some birds behind us, shouting out “I ate all the pies”

- Great!

- At half-time we got more beers in – then Mickey just went mental, shouting and giving it large at everyone around us, it was a real laugh! The old codger and his missus had another go, said his grandchildren were getting upset – but why do you bring young kids to cricket for fucks sake?

- Excellent!

- Towards the end it got a bit lairy – some geezer lobbed a beer over Mickey who got the RIGHT hump and threw one back, then it all got a bit tasty – few fists went in, Mickey went over the back of the seats to try to get to this bloke who’d showered him.

- Really?

- Yeah – some stewards came up and tried to cart Mickey off – people behind were cheering so Mickey gave them an earful and a few V signs, then Dibble stuck their nose in and Mickey got carted out.

- Bad news. Who won the game?

- No idea. But we all said we’d make a point of doing it again next year. Cricket after work is fantastic, especially on a Friday when you can really pile it on! We’ll have a word with the Marketing people and sort out three of four games where we can take a real crowd down there - right laugh!

- Good news!

- Anyway – game was almost over then, so by the time we got out, Mickey had been let out and we all piled in a couple of cabs – few more beers in the West End then off to Spearmint Rhino!

- Nice!

- All on expenses of course!

Favourite Shirts

True story – a few years back I went up to Edgbaston for the New Zealand Test. There was a guy on the same early morning train from my local station into London who seemed to be heading in the same direction. The clues were all there - he was reading the sports pages of the Torygraph, and was wearing a Kent CCC one-day shirt, jeans and sandals and had a rucksack, presumably full of food and drink. Sticking out of the top of the rucksack was a white panama hat.

He was then on the same tube to Euston, and then the same train to Birmingham New Street.

In Birmingham it was pissing down with rain, so my friends and I passed most of the day in a pub near the station. We finally gave up at around 4pm, wandered (staggered) round the city centre, bought about 100 pounds worth of punk rock and Family Guy DVDs at the local HMV and then got on the train home.

The guy from my local station was on the same train – then the same tube train, and then the same train out of Charing Cross. We both got off the train at our local station and walked out of the station at the same time. Feeling that this was getting ridiculous and that I was possibly living in an Ingmar Bergman movie I decided to, belatedly, break the ice;

‘Bloody weather eh?!’

‘Sorry?’

‘Rain – no play at all, a wasted journey!’

‘I’ve been working’

‘Working? I thought you’d gone to the cricket?’

‘Cricket?’

‘In Birmingham…’

‘I’ve been at an IT conference’

Hey, Mr Postman

As the TV cameras panned round to the huge swathes of empty seats in the Lords Pavilion, you could only assume that the Postal Workers strike on Friday meant that 80 percent of MCC members didn't receive their tickets for today's ODI. There can be no other reason for such a pathetic turn-out at the 'Home of Cricket'.

After all, the guys in the 'blood & pus' coloured ties are cricketing experts - the sort of people you'd expect to turn up for any international event at their home ground - especially as they don't even have to pay for their tickets.

On a related note - the Oval members area was totally packed for both 20/20 internationals last week.

Throwing in the Towel?

Friday's 20/20 saw one of the most blatant pieces of cheating I've ever seen on a cricket field - yet it seems to have been almost totally overlooked almost everywhere except in the Telegraph.

Marlon Samuel's quicker ball to get a bemused Paul Collingwood stumped was delivered with a crooked elbow that any MLB pitcher would have been proud of. It clocked in at 78mph, whereas every delivery before and after, delivered with the fantastically languid action that Samuels adopts, was timed at around 50mph.

There was no reaction at all from the square-leg umpire, and as far as I'm aware there has been no follow-up report from the match referee.

Bizarrely, the Sky commentators TOTALLY ignored the evidence of illegality in front of their eyes. The Slowmo from side-on showed clearly that Samuels had chucked the ball... it was repeated three times, so you got the impression that the director was ready for them to comment. Shamefully, David Lloyd and Nasser stayed silent making only guarded comments about the variations in the speed of deliveries. Quite a shocking reaction, when they are normally so quick to jump on any potential scandal going on out in the middle. (Consider the way Inzamam's antics at The Oval last year were dissected in minutest detail)

Credit where credit's due - Aggers on TMS today compared the delivery with that off Jocky Wilson throwing a dart. This elicited a weary sigh from Gus Fraser and a comment along the lines of 'please, not all this again?' Remember Fraser was on the ICC committee that effectively cleared Murali, when a group of previously sober judges turned into wild eyed Pythagorian Professors measuring degrees and angles to try to defend the indefensible.

It now seems the 'offical' reaction to chucking is to either ignore it, or to brush it under the carpet.

Samuels's 'pitch' (I'm not going to credit it with the description 'delivery') happened in a meaningless 20/20 game - a format that used to be called 'beer match' when I played them in club cricket. It could have cost England the game - what happens when he tries it in a Test Match, or full ODI?