I saw Flintoff in his prime…

...another time, another time.

Yes, yes, yes. I was at the Oval on the fourth day. I saw England gloriously, triumphantly, reclaim the Ashes by taking ten Australian wickets on the fourth day of the fifth Test. I was slap bang square of the wicket as Freddie Flintoff smashed down the stumps to run out Ricky Ponting.

It is ridiculous to invest the amount I do into what is, after all, a game. In lots of other areas of life, I like to think I have a good grasp of perspective, of what is important. Clearly, when it comes to sport I don’t. It is ridiculous to treat a sport this importantly.

But I do. And the more you invest in something, the greater the pay offs are. Seeing us collapse against WI in Jamaica, watching us toil on flat pitches to take twenty wickets in the rest of the Carribean, seeing us labour fruitlessly in the field in Cardiff, and that is before I even mention the ignominy of the 1990s…it just makes moments like this all the sweeter.

For most of the day, I didn’t think we were going to win. At ten past five, with about an hour’s worth of overs left, we still had five wickets to take and whilst I didn’t really think we’d lose, I was resigning myself to watching the moment of victory on TV the next day.

And then – suddenly, gloriously, brilliantly – the last five wickets tumbled and we had won. It was a beautiful day at the Oval. It feels like it has been the only summery day of the summer. I have been to last days at the Oval a couple of times before and there is something incredibly romantic and nostalgic about them – the end of summer, the end of certain players’ careers, the ends of innings, seasons, games, series and eras. The whole day felt magical, unreal. Even now, only a couple of days on, I can’t quite believe I was actually there. I feel now like I am a small part of a great tradition that stretches back through so many great players and matches, right back to the foundation of the Ashes – all those great moments from the past at the Oval, and I have been present for one of them.

So yes, it is completely ridiculous to invest this much in a sport and for it to mean this much to me, but it does.

Amazing.

Daisy Christodoulou : 25 Aug 2009 17:10 |  Tags: Cricket |  Comments (5) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Cricket Twitters!

Patrick Kidd in the Times has come up with a few potential past Twitters. Clearly this is the type of game that could run and run…

1. Does not St Paul say that where the spirit of the Lord is, there is a nice leather jacket and 5000 rand? @WWJD
2. Excellent, just been selected for seven Test match tour of Zimbabwe! @flattrackbully
3. Can’t believe the captain had a go at me after getting a century! What a wally. @brylcreemboy
4. Couple of Albanians wanted to see me about some job, told them I was too busy with nets. Might get a bit of long jump practice in after tea. @corinthianspirit
5. Bloody Australian woman won’t stop pestering me. Keeps leaving jars of dust everywhere! Who do these colonials think they are? @honivo

Daisy Christodoulou : 02 Aug 2009 10:58 |  Tags: Cricket |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Phillip Hughes

Phillip Hughes – or should I say PH408 – has just got out in the tourists’ match to Northants! He has been bowled by David Wigley. From Cricinfo:

Despite his tender years Northamptonshire is David Wigley’s third county. He began his career at Yorkshire, making his first-team debut in 2002, and moved to Worcestershire in 2003 in search of regular cricket. Opportunities at New Road were few and far between, and Wigley was on the move again in 2005 to Northamptonshire. 2006 was not a great year in the Championship for Wigley as he claimed just eight wickets in six matches at an average of over seventy.

What a man! Call him up for the England team! At the very least get him in as sub fielder.

Daisy Christodoulou : 24 Jul 2009 11:41 |  Tags: Cricket |  Comments (3) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

KP out for the series / Ian Bell

So, Kevin Pietersen’s achilles injury has deteriorated to the extent that he will miss the whole of the rest of the Ashes series. This is much worse than I had expected. I thought he might miss one match at worst. But instead he’s had the operation now and will be out for six weeks.

He’s had this injury for a long time, and has tried to treat it with rest and recuperation. The fact that that hasn’t worked really does make you wonder why he didn’t have an operation earlier. The answer, surely, is that he wanted to take part in the lucrative IPL. Anyway, regardless of what the reasons behind it are, we’ve lost him now and have to get on with it.

Ian Bell will doubtless come into the team. Regular readers of this blog, or indeed anyone who knows me, will know that I am not Bell’s greatest fan. I’d far rather they picked someone else, either Key or Shah. They won’t though, so I will be getting behind him, and hoping that the significant weakening of Australia’s attack since he last played them will make a difference, and that in his time out of Test cricket he has done something about his tendency to get to 30 and get out. We shall see. If he does well in this series – and I define ‘well’ not as an inflated average made up of cheap runs in a dead rubber, which I can already see happening, but as significant runs made at important times when others around him have failed – yes, if he does do genuinely well, then he deserves his place in the team for a long time and I will take back everything I have said about him.

If he does fail – again – I don’t think he should get anywhere near an England team for the rest of his career. Knowing us though, we’ll probably drop him for the tough winter tour of SA and then pick him again against whatever patsies we’re playing in the first two Tests of next summer, whereupon he will feast on a weak attack, boost his average, and hence give himself the classic defence of ‘but he’s got a Test match average of 45’ when he fails in all ten innings against whatever good team we play next summer, only to be dropped for the tough winter tour, repicked at the start of the next summer, and so on, ad infinitum. Oh god. How many times. What must Matthew Hoggard be thinking?

Anyway that is the last snide thing I will say about him until after the next Test match, for now it is all come on Belly, show em what you’re made of, and other such patriotism.

Daisy Christodoulou : 22 Jul 2009 16:12 |  Tags: Cricket |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Cricket Quiz!

OK here is your quiz question for today, no cheating and looking at cricinfo for answers.

Andrew Flintoff became the sixth player to get his name on both the bowling and batting honours board at Lord’s. He scored his century against SA in 2003, and now he has a five-for to go with it.

Who are the other five?

Three are English, one an Aussie and one an Indian.

Answers tomorrow.

Daisy Christodoulou : 21 Jul 2009 17:34 |  Tags: Cricket |  Comments (17) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Following on

There is a good article here in the Spectator about the tactics of following on. Alex Massie writes, correctly, that since VVS Laxman’s fantastic performance against Australia in Calcutta in 2001, when India became the third side in Test history to win after following on, captains around the world have become leery of enforcing the follow on. He argues – as has nearly every pundit I have heard/read – that this is a bad move, captains being swayed by the ‘exception, not the rule’. He admits that in 2006, SL saved the game at Lords after being made to follow on, but still thinks Andrew Strauss should have enforced the follow on.

I disagree. I think Andrew Strauss made the correct decision today. Ian Botham kept mentioning the two times he failed to get victory against West Indies earlier this year. But here are some other important facts.

In the last three years, not just SL in 06, but SA in 08 have drawn at Lords after being made to follow on, against fairly similar attacks to this one.

England enforced the follow on against Australia in 2005 at Trent Bridge, and very nearly lost – it basically came down to about 20 runs.

Alex Massie argues that for a side to win after following on, they need two or three career defining performances. I disagree. They need to play well, obviously, but if they do get a lead of 150+ and they have a spinner, the sheer pressure can be a huge factor. Had England lost that match following on at Trent Bridge, you would not have said there were two or three career defining performances – Shane Warne bowled brilliantly, yes, but their batsmen were responsible rather than Botham or Laxman esque brilliant.

Also, if you enforce the follow on is that you may very well lose the advantage of not having to bat last. Whereas, when you won the toss, you knew that you wouldn’t have to bat on a last day pitch, when you enforce the follow on, you may have to chase a target on that pitch. Whilst successful 4th innings run chases are getting higher and higher, it is still nevertheless tricky to chase any target on a 5th day pitch in the 4th innings. Certainly, you would say on most pitches in the world a par fourth innings score would be significantly lower than a par 1st innings score. In the sub continent, especially so. Even on this Lord’s pitch, that is true.

Overall, the thing that has changed is modern run rates. These make it far less likely that any games will end in a draw. We haven’t seen many more teams lose after enforcing the follow on because captains, unlike commentators or pundits, are well aware of the dangers. And the dangers are not just that you will lose – they are, as Massie notes, that you will get wiped out in the entire series. One of the best teams of all times, coming off the back of a 16 match winning streak, was so shell shocked by that Calcutta loss that it lost the subsequent match, and the series, too. Ditto 1981.

The fact is, in a lot of cases where a side has scored 200 runs more than the other side in their first innings, it may be that there is a gulf in class but it may also be that one side has cocked up. The point is that in the past, run rates were so significantly slower that if the side you put back in did recover and did improve their batting, chances are their batting speed, and the overall run rates in the match ruled out the chance of them beating you. The follow on has never been a guarantee of a win. In 411 matches where it has been enforced in the whole of Test cricket, 248 times it has resulted in a win for the team enforcing. There have been 160 draws (and of course three losses, all to Australia, which work out as 0.7%). That is only a 60/40 win margin. In the modern era, where draws are so much less likely, I would argue that a small but significant share of those draws could be converted into wins for the side who have followed on. The two times in the modern era a side have won after following on, they’ve had batsmen who have scored at a ‘modern’, fast pace. The 19th century example of winning after following on was a timeless test that went into a 6th day.

Consider this scenario, based on traditional 2.5 runs per over run rates. Side A win the toss and bat. They knock up 500 in two days. Side B come into bat and struggle, making 300 throughout the whole of day 3 and a session of day 4. Side A enforce the follow on. Side B get their act together and by lunch of day five – three sessions – have made 300 for not many. They are still only 100 ahead, so they are not in a position to declare and set A a testing target. Side A can only force the win if they blast out the remaining 7 or so wickets in a session and then try and score 150 odd in a session. The match peters out into a draw.

However, with exactly the same scores and same decisions, that entire match changes if we accelerate the run scoring. A make their 500 by lunch of day 2. B make their 300 by lunch day three. B get their act together and are 300-2/3 by lunch day 4. Bat through to the end of day four, or get bowled out by then, and all of a sudden side B are 250/300 ahead with three sessions to bowl out side A. Side A have three sessions to get the runs. I honestly believe that if the follow on was enforced more often, we would see more and more situations like this – they would still be a minority, yes, but they would be more than a 0.7% minority. If every potential follow on was enforced, I believe we would see something like 65% wins for team enforcing, 25% draws, 10% team being asked to follow on. (The overall result rate in cricket in the last decade is 75%, compared to 60% in all previous Tests.)

If we look back at Trent Bridge, the most recent time a side has wobbled after following on, we can see this. We came within 20 runs of losing a match which we had dominated for just about every session bar the last. We didn’t bowl badly in their second innings, they didn’t bat particularly outstandingly – they were competent. On top of that, the time was not a major issue – again, because of fast run rates, the game ended up finishing at the end of day 4! There were an entire 90 overs left. So we probably would have had enough time to bat again, set them a target of 500 odd, and then bowl them out. That scenario would have seen us scoring 100 runs more than we eventually needed Those 100 runs more would have taken us about a session more. The match would still have finished before lunch on the final day. Obviously, Australia might have batted better, knowing they had to stick it out/we might have bowled better, being less tired/who knows, these things are impossible to know. All I am saying is, the follow on is by no means the safe option it was, and it is by no means a guarantee of a win.

Shane Warne tried to claim yesterday that Ricky Ponting would be delighted Strauss hadn’t enforced the follow on, because it gave them a better chance of winning. I distinctly recall him saying four years ago how glad he was that England enforced the follow on at Trent Bridge, because it gave them a better chance of winning! He was right four years ago, he was wrong yesterday, if Australia chase down these runs fair play to them, someone really will have to put in a career defining performance.

Daisy Christodoulou : 19 Jul 2009 10:06 |  Tags: Cricket |  Comments (12) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Result!

Well, never can I have been so pleased after such a dreadful performance by England. Only one player comes out of it with any real credit – Collingwood. If they dropped any or all of the ten others I wouldn’t complain. I normally really dislike knee jerk decisions to drop and pick players based on one match, but we have been so awful this match I feel knee jerk reactions are the only way to go. So.

Strauss’s place has to be safe because he’s captain – I know dropping captains in the middle of a series has worked before, but I don’t think it’s the best idea now. Bopara deserves another chance – he didn’t play great but he did get a bad decision and anyway he is only just back in the team. Actually, there is a case to drop KP to give him a kick up the backside, but he is our most gifted batsman, so we probably should give him another chance. Much as I am an Essex fan, etc., Cook has got to be looking over his shoulder. He has not made important runs for a while now, and you can’t have an opener who can’t read pace and misses straight ones. If we did drop him, I’d be tempted to bring in Rob Key.

Moving on to the bowlers, it is complicated by the fact that so many of them were our better batsman. However, one of Swann or Panesar has to go, and given they were both equally shit in the match and Swann has the better recent form, I would drop Monty. As for Jimmy and Broad, I’m afraid I would drop Broad too. He has looked massively out of his depth. Jimmy was average, but not dreadful, and there is always the hope that if if swings at Lord’s it will suit him.

Flintoff is a tough one. Like KP, he is too important to drop, at least now, and he brings such important balance to the side. He didn’t bowl or bat particularly badly either, he certainly wasn’t the worst in the team in either department.

Prior’s batting was bloody awful. Even in his first innings, he seemed to think that a classy few boundaries was enough. Look at Haddin, the Aussie keeper – even when they were 550 odd and he was on 50, he knew he hadn’t done his job. Prior’s attitude reminded me of Usman Afzaal’s in the 2001 Ashes, he scored a flashy 50 when we were batting to avoid the follow on, then got out, then pranced around topless on the balcony like he’d won the Ashes. Also, Prior’s second innings dismissal was awful. However, his keeping was all right, the role of keeper is not one you can chop and change, so for now I’d keep him in.

As for replacements – Key would be the next batsman in in my opinion. I don’t get how Bell is kicked out of the team for not being good enough, but is still kept in the squad as the next man in.

Bowlers, very tricky. This is a classic example of a player’s stock going up if he’s not in the team, regardless of what he has done at county level. I really cannot believe that Steve Harmison can get YET ANOTHER RECALL. And yet, who else is there? I would bring back Matthew Hoggard, but even I can accept that no one else seems to be thinking along those lines. Other than that, it’s Onions and Sidebottom, and I can’t see them offering very much more than Anderson and Broad did. At least Harmison offers you that tantalising, amazing possibility that he will blast a side out, which no one else in county cricket seems to have. Never mind that he hasn’t blasted a side out, or looked like doing so, since Simon Jones last played Test cricket. I suppose he did take a lot of wickets on a trampoline against Pakistan at OT in 2006. So that is what it has come down to. All our hopes rest on a man who’s had one good performance in the last four years, several absolute shockers and who has a suspect temperament. Desperate times, etc.

But whatever the case, now we’ve drawn here we cannot do worse than 06/07, and Glenn Mcgrath has been proved wrong! It certainly wouldn’t surprise me if we did lose 4-0 – if it does happen, it will be because Australia are a better team than us. They played brilliantly over five days in this Test match and completely deserved to win. We have been given a lesson in how to bat and bowl. Even if we improve, we may still not get close to them. Whatever will be, will be – I hope we do enough to keep it competitive though and produce some more exciting close finishes.

Daisy Christodoulou : 12 Jul 2009 20:25 |  Tags: Cricket |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Ashes Strategies

Back in February, after sitting through three consecutive agonisingly close failures to win against the WI, I couldn’t see a way in hell we were going to take 20 wickets against the Aussies, let alone getting on to the part of the equation that says you have to score more runs than them as well. After we won against them at home, and got Fred back, I got a bit of hope up. I came up with a strategy – yes, yes, I realise the futility of me spending my spare time dreaming up strategies for England cricket, but what is that compared to the futility of actually watching the bloody matches? – by which we could win the Ashes.

Given that their batting was very solid and our bowling had difficulties bowling out teams on flat pitches, in order to bowl them out, we would have to produce pitches that suited our bowlers. This would be swinging pitches, and also turning pitches, as for the first time in a generation our spinners were at least not the inferior of theirs, and very probably better. However, given the unfortunate and frequently maligned fact that both teams have to play on the same pitch, this would require a Herculean effort from the top order batsmen. If we genuinely did prepare green tops, Cook and Strauss would have to be on absolute top form to see off the new ball and make things easier for the lower order. However, given the lack of the bowlers’ ability to blast teams out – the absence of express pace or mystery spin – it was the only strategy that would work.

Having seen the first three days of this match, I stand by the strategy but I wonder very much if the players are up to executing it – or indeed any other strategy that results in an England win. You see, as I am sure von Clausewitz once said, you can have all the bloody strategies in the world, but if the bloody players insist on sweeping balls three miles outside off stump, you haven’t got a hope in hell.

The argument against my strategy would say that it is suspiciously defensive, which doesn’t work against the Aussies. This would be the England team’s defence of their day one performance, which looked to the outside eye like wantonly chucking wickets away, but which I suppose they would justify as ‘positive cricket’. And to an extent, they have a point. The only time we have beat the Aussies in my life time is through massive aggression – fighting fire with fire. The minute they get us on the back foot, we fail. So, for example, the first day at Edgbaston 05, compared with the last day at Adelaide 06. A difference of about three runs per over in run rate, and between inspirational victory and soul destroying defeat.

After that first day at Edgbaston, thrilled as I was by some of the strokeplay, I was really worried that we have failed to fully exploit a good pitch and the absence of Mcgrath. I thought that 500+ was the minimum we needed. Basically, my emotions were pretty similar to after the first day of this Test. I was not alone – Geoff Boycott – and you can see this on the Ashes 05 DVD – thought that we needed nearer 550, and that Australia would end the day 400-5. Now, Geoff and I were wrong then and I would love to be proved wrong this time. But it seems to me that whilst you can pull off occasional days like Edgbaston 05, it’s not a long term strategy for success.

Two other things about that 400 in a day – in some ways, against Shane Warne there was a fair argument that you might as well not die wondering – you were never realistically going to hang around for long against him, so you may as well rack up the runs while you were there. The other thing about that 400 is that it was made to look good in retrospect by our bowling performance the next day. Had this year’s bowlers bowled back then, that 400 would have looked puny and the attitude of our batsmen ridiculous. Conversely, had 05’s bowlers been bowling yesterday, the 450 would have looked a hell of a lot better. It comes down to the old adage about not knowing what a good score is until both sides have batted – and of course bowled. Or, as Albert Einstein would doubtless have said had he seen Verity outbowl (and indeed bowl out) Grimmett and O’Reilly at Lords in 34, it’s all relative.

But, given that we don’t have the bowling attack of 05 – and that neither do they – I think our strategy now has to be the one I outlined earlier. On even slightly flat pitches, Ponting and co will destroy us. We have to level that up with bowler’s pitches, and then demand defensive, attritional, grinding innings from Strauss and Cook, against a bowling attack that is solid but lacks the magic of Warne and Mcgrath.

You could make the reverse argument – our batsmen are prone to collapse, to level things up we have to produce flat pitches so we can score lots of runs too – but that way round at best leads to five draws, which isn’t enough, and at worst leaves us half an hour of madness away from blowing the entire series, a la Sabina Park in February. Low scoring, tense matches where we hang in there with the bat and grab the vital moments. I think it’s the only way we can win, but I am still not confident we are capable of it.

To go back to Boycs again, his three key players are Flintoff, Anderson and Prior. I would switch Prior for Cook, but other than that I agree. The heartening thing about the heavy loss at Lords in 05 was that at least we’d managed to take 20 wickets fairly cheaply. If you can do that, you can always win a Test match and series.

Daisy Christodoulou : 10 Jul 2009 23:04 |  Tags: Cricket |  Comments (2) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

Jimmy Anderson

I read this in the Telegraph a couple of weeks ago (23rd May) and couldn’t quite believe it:

Has there ever been such a display of swing bowling from an Englishman? There have been swing bowlers with pace (Fred Trueman and Ian Botham), but surely none with the ability to swing the ball late and both ways at around 90mph, with only the most minuscule change in action. The uprightness of the seam throughout was perfection itself. Some of the balls swinging away from left-handers from around the wicket defied belief. Indeed the late, great Malcolm Marshall would have been proud. Anderson was that good.

I don’t know why I was reading the Telegraph, to be honest. It was probably someone else’s fault, and it may have been around the time of the expenses scandal, which might provide a decent excuse. But whilst I have a tendency to prostitute my literacy when it comes to sports journalism – I have been known to defend my reading of the Sun, Mail, News of the World etc., on the grounds of good sports coverage (a futile defence actually, since generally the kind of people who detest the Murdoch papers, Mail, etc., are the kind of people who find a liking for sport just another example of fascism in action. Or maybe I am being mean. Mike Marqusee, etc.)

Anyway, the point is that reading newspapers you wouldn’t otherwise on account of the good sports coverage depends on their sports coverage actually being good. And in the case of the aforementioned article by Steve James, it was clearly bloody awful. I may be proved wrong. Jimmy Anderson may bowl England to a stunning victory in these Ashes. But even if he does, the fact that a couple of months ago, someone saw fit not just to compare him to Trueman and Botham but to suggest he was better than them and then, even more mind bogglingly, to mention his name in the same breath as Malcolm Marshall!! And, oh god, the rhetorical question at the start. Has there ever been such a display of swing bowling from an Englishman? Er, yes. Several times. (restrains urgent desire to launch into diatribe on the injustice, the sheer injustice, of Matthew Hoggard’s summary sacking from the team, restrains even more urgent desire to spit the names Darren Pattinson and Amjad Khan). Even in my lifetime, which is saying something, given we’ve been 11th out of 10 in the world for about 90% of it. And against better batting line ups than the chocolate tea pot WI one as well.

But of course, when it comes to Jimmy A, the press have always had a soft spot for him. Actually, to be fair, I have a soft spot for him. He burst onto the scene at a dire moment for English cricket, he took hat tricks for fun, swung the ball round corners, he was genuinely young as opposed to being about 29, which is the age most English players are described as ‘promising’ at. But it was all a bit of a flash in the pan. He succeeded in Tests against Zimbabwe, but in his first proper outing in Tests was flayed alive by the South Africans, who taught him that you can’t get away with one bad ball an over, and taught the rest of the world that when it wasn’t swinging, he didn’t have a plan B. More or less, that’s been the story of his game ever since. The entire media seem to think he’s been cruelly treated by the England set up though, in particular by the nasty foreigners Duncan Fletcher and Troy Cooley who didn’t understand the noble art of swing bowling and made him a glorified waiter and cone-boy for about two years. In particular, they always seem to trot out the line about Troy Cooley destroying his bowling action. Troy Cooley is the man who reinvented Flintoff as an attacking bowler. The architect of the 05 pace attack. The man who then moved back to Australia and started transforming and reinvigorating Mitchell Johnson, Brett Lee and co. The only player he’s ever worked with who he hasn’t had success with is Jimmy Anderson. Which is of course entirely his fault.

I think Jimmy is a lovely chap who will take wickets for England, but essentially, I think he’s another Steve Harmison – talented, inconsistent, lacking in confidence. Geoff Boycott reckons that there are three key men to England’s Ashes campaign – Flintoff, Prior, and Anderson. I largely agree. And I think Anderson is the most important of the three. If he bowls well, and takes wickets, with the first new ball and the old ball, not just the second new ball when the innings has gone – we can still win this series. If not, we are never going to take 20 wickets.

Daisy Christodoulou : 10 Jul 2009 22:49 |  Tags: Cricket |  Comments (1) |  Close comments |  Report a problem

The Ashes and My Life

Back in February, when I spent my entire half term break and most of my spare time in the weeks before and after watching England repeatedly fail to beat the West Indies, I wrote quite a blogs posts about cricket. I didn’t post them, partly because I just didn’t get round to it, but partly because I was embarrassed by the sheer amount of time and words I had expended on cricket. In fact, one of the articles was an attempt to add up the amount of time I had spent watching or following cricket over the past decade. This is the first proper Test series since then, and I am not too embarrassed now to admit that I have spent an entire summer Friday night in my room, writing about cricket. In my defence, I have actually also spoken to some real people about it. So despite my obsession, I retain friends, as long as they like cricket.

Thinking about it, I am hideously embarrassed my life is like this, but it will only be more embarrassing if I write these posts and then don’t publish them. So here they are. My tuppence on the Ashes.

Daisy Christodoulou : 10 Jul 2009 22:45 |  Tags: Cricket |  Comments (0) |  Close comments |  Report a problem