Reverse Swing

England’s winning Ashes team have picked up MBEs for their performance last summer. For skipper Michael Vaughan, coach Duncan Fletcher and chairman of selectors David Graveney there were OBEs.

With the Downing Street reception in the summer it could easily be seen as another of the Labour government’s smart moves to associate itself with English and Welsh sporting success. However, the Ashes heroes are pretty close to the World Cup winners of 1966 in the pantheon of English sport. England has regained the Ashes before but this series win was such a long time coming that for many younger fans it was the first time England had won the Ashes, and for older fans, it just felt like the first time.

The glory and memories of the summer are still right up there. It’s just that their marble toes have been chipped away a little by the recent performance in Pakistan.

A top-drawer piece of fast bowling from Brett Lee in the second test against South Africa at Melbourne. Jacques Kallis had been as gritty as ever, determined not to throw his wicket away, bent on occupation rather than runs, carefully leaving the ball outside off stump from McGrath. It wasn’t the flashiest of cricket to watch but you knew it had to be done.

Lee bowled a bouncer and he decided to hook it but he was too late: the ball thwacked into the side of his helmet as he turned his head away, and he had to right himself pretty quickly as he was in danger of treading on his own stumps. There’s wasn’t exactly an “ Are you all right mate” from Lee and the Australian fielders, but nor did they come in with the verbals. Next ball was a fast yorker which bowled Kallis. He held his defensive pose with his wicket broken behind him, as if he couldn’t quite believe he was out. He was probably still dazed from the first delivery.

Looking through the tributes to Kerry Packer I haven’t yet come across a breath of criticism of the great man. Not that there should be of course, for in a couple of years around 1978-79 he carried through more reforms of the game than had been achieved in the previous 50.

Even the Daily Telegraph could only come up with;
“His innovations, such as one-day games, floodlighting, and players wearing coloured “pyjamas”, were shunned by the staid cricketing hierarchy. But now, more than 25 years later, they have become standard features of the modern game.”

But back in 1978 all the stops were pulled out to stymie his World Series Cricket operations: the MCC frantically organising extra tours to Australia, pressure was put on players like Jeff Thomson and Alvin Kallicharan to defect, and players who signed up for him, such as Dennis Amiss, were shunned in their county dressing rooms. There were even suggestions that he had plans to take cricket to the USA where a radical re-write of the rules would prevent batsmen not playing at more than 3 balls in succession.

But all of this has been forgotten, where even the Daily Telegraph see him as a much-needed reformer. And this in the end is a measure of the man’s success: he saw that the game needed innovation and the best players needed to be properly rewarded for their efforts far before anyone else. And now everyone just agrees with him.

Good to see Andre Nel pick up 4 wickets for South Africa in the Boxing Test against the Aussies. Early on Ponting knocked a simple chance to Nel at mid wicket and he fluffed it. No one goes red like Andre Nel, his emotions are never that far from the surface, and the TV cameras captured his discomfiture perfectly. I thought this was going to be one of those days for him, but he came back with the wickets.

The first time I saw him play was for Northamptonshire against Somerset at Bath in 2003 in. On that occasion Cawdron took the wickets but Nel looked a cut above anyone else who bowled that day, consistently hostile, and that was without the face contortion and outrageous gurning for which he has since become renowned. He probably didn’t think a national League one-dayer warranted the full set of toys coming out of the pram.

Around a month after that he was playing at Edgbaston for South Africa against England, and this time there were some verbal exchanges on the field. After his stint he came to field in front of the Hollies Stand and a group of black country wits from Dudley started to chant “Who the fooken Nel are you? “ at him. He didn’t rise to the bait, saving his energies for the unsettling the opposition.

My favourite Andre Nel story is from 2001 when he felled his boyhood hero Allan Donald with a bouncer, and then promptly burst into tears. His coach, the eccentric Ray Jennings wasn’t of any comfort to his young fast bowler. “I was really pissed off,” he said. “His hero ducks into a short one so what does he do? He goes and sobs over him like a girl guide. I told him to pin him with the next ball and pin him again until he didn’t get up.”

Have a good series Andre.

Donald price tag a joke, say Easterns

England’s victory over Pakistan by six runs in the fifth and final one-day international was unexpected and welcome, with four wickets for Anderson and three for Blackwell plus some useful hitting from Plunkett.
With the series already won by Pakistan there was no Shoaib Akhtar and Inzamam, while England chose to play Flintoff who was unable to bowl because of soreness in the ankle. They also played Shaun Udal for what is likely to be his final representative appearance. No Kabir Ali after his 2 wickets and 39 not out in the last ODI, his only appearance of the tour. Blackwell was belatedly shoved up the order, ahead of Jones, where he got a first baller.

End of tour, end of term, time for a re-group.

Following Troy Cooley’s departure from the ECB as the England fast-bowling coach, quite a few names have been thrown in the air as possible replacements. Dennis Lillee, Waqar Younis, Bruce Reid have all been suggested by the media, while Steve Harmison recommended Darren, he of the fancy footwork, Gough. And of course there’s level 4 coach Kevin Shine, a member of the Elite Fast Bowling research group, set up by Troy Cooley.

Whoever does it is going to have to be more than an up and at ‘em motivator, and more of a systems in place, user of biomechanics, analyser of data which seems to rule out Goughie. So my money would be on the Australians. At one time I couldn’t have seen Lillee coming to England, but in 2004 his contracted days at Cricket Australia were reduced by 50% and his daily rate was cut. The return of his protégé Cooley may push him out even more.

If the idea of the moustachioed adversary working for the Poms still seems impossible then so did the idea of Rod Marsh running the ECB academy.

With a 2-0 loss in the test series against Pakistan and a comprehensive defeat in the 2nd ODI you would have expected the press to have laid into England with a vengeance. Well with the exception of Geoff Boycott, complaining about a late night stay up for BBC Sports Personality of the Year, the criticism has been noticeable by its absence.

This is partly because there is such a huge reservoir of goodwill since the Ashes victory; and the press, just like the supporters, want to continue to enjoy it rather than sending out ripples of discontent. After all, there are quite a few people expecting the multi-disc DVD of the five tests for Christmas, so you don’t want to spoil it by thinking about a defeated side. And, even if you’ve already got it then you’re unlikely to have played the third disc yet.

Test cricket is something that you sip and sniff over a period of time, something to savour rather than gulp down. For the players and the public, the test and one day series with Pakistan has clipped the heels of the Ashes with its high drama and emotions. As Freddie said in a heartfelt way last Sunday when he received his award, he just wanted to get home and see his wife and baby. It’s difficult not to feel anything other than sympathy, as he’s gorged out on cricket: the Ashes finished on 12th September, by the end of September he was in Australia for the unmemorable World X1 series, and by the beginning of November he was in Pakistan.

This talented and attacking Pakistani team deserve to be playing an England team at the top of their fitness and form, and both sets of supporters want a close and competitive series in both tests and ODIs. Just like the Ashes in fact.

While the England under 19 team have struggled in the under-19 Tri-Nation Tournament the winners of the tournament were the hosts, Bangladesh. In the final they beat Sri Lanka by six wickets, with the man of the match going to fifteen-year old Saqibul Hasan for his three wickets and an 86- ball century. The young left-hander has already made his first class debut and has a couple of five-fors to his name.

In contrast, England lost all of their ten matches on the tour. Coach Andy Pick didn’t blame the conditions. Instead he commented on a failure to use the new ball well and also, “we’ve got into a position where we are in with a shout, we’ve lost two or three wickets close together and you’ve lost your middle order and are suddenly up against it.”

He’s obviously concerned about the performances with the World Cup imminent, taking place in Colombo in February next year, but England should have an opportunity to build up some confidence in their group where they are playing Nepal, Ireland and Zimbabwe.

Pluses for England on the tour include Varin Chopra of Essex who made 264 runs at an average of 44, and Somerset all-rounder Rob Woodman who made a couple of half-centuries when moved up to the middle-order.

England Under 19 Tour Averages