Reverse Swing

During the rain in Antigua Sky showed the batting highlights from Australia’s matches against South Africa and the West Indies. This double-dose of centuries from Hayden as he clubbed the attacks of the next strongest teams in the competition was an awesome sight.The one-handed six off Samuels when he found his feet in the wrong position must have been a first in any form of cricket. Even when you take modern bats and boundaries out of the equation, his hitting has been pretty spectacular.Not so long ago there was talk of the end of his international career when Hoggard was getting him early in the tests – there was a sense that he’d been worked out. The thing is, have he and Australia peaked too early in this competition?

Watching Bob Woolmer pack his folders into his bag on Saturday, just after Ireland had hit the winning runs, you could see what he was feeling. The meticulous preparation had come to nothing, Pakistan’s loss to Ireland was painful. There had been quite a few shots of him during the game with Shahid Afridi alongside him, the camera searching for his grimaces as the game slipped away. Usually he’s one of the few coaches who acknowledged the cameras, at least with a smile but often with a laugh.

I remembered when he broke into the England team, working his way into the test game via the one-day county route, and made the 149 against Australia. An all-rounder who could make big runs – you expected him to be around for a long time, but it was the Packer stuff that stymied his test career.

He was a great coach with Warwickshire, innovative, getting them to practice in new ways, leading them to titles and then he got the South Africa job where he was successful. At the time you were asking why isn’t this guy the England coach – England always seemed to struggle for coaching talent of the top order, and the opposition have got Bob Woolmer. No disrespect to Duncan Fletcher but you always wonder what Woolmer would have brought to England. And now we’re never going to know. Like his test career it’s an imponderable, a might have been.

When he took on the Pakistan job you felt he was probably the only overseas coach who could make a success of it, that it needed someone of his stature and authority, as well as someone with vision. And as Pakistan has rumbled through one crisis after another over the last nine months it’s Woolmer who emerged with his dignity intact, negotiating his way through the political minefields surrounding the team.

Bob Woolmer was a one-off, irreplaceable on the international scene: someone who took coaching to new heights; someone who made the game more interesting. But in the end it was about his love of the game and the enthusiasm he brought to it . As he said himself: “There are times when the players are going to find it tough; you’re the one who has to push them and you’re the one who’s got to first show the enthusiasm.”

As someone who has got into difficulties in pedalos in the past, my sympathies go out to Andrew Flintoff. At best they’re fiendishly designed contraptions, traps for the unwary at any hour, but particularly so at 4a.m. in the morning. I had a particularly painful experience in the harbour at Aiguablava a few years when I was jeered by rich Catalan families from the decks of their yachts. I just hope that Freddie’s experience was not of this magnitude.

It was quite something to watch the ruthlessly professional West Indies squeeze Pakistan out of the game at Sabina Park. Tight bowling, spattering the spot, nothing down the legside, and definitely no extras, as they were backed up some athletic fielding, culminating in Bravo’s astonishing left-handed catch off his own bowling to dismiss Gul.

The last sight of the West Indies was in their warm-up game against India when they were giving catching practice. And then there was Tony Cosier’s commentary: does anyone shout more loudly for their own team than Tony Cosier?

Today I shall be cheering on Scotland against the Aussies. Strange how these things work out. If this was a football match then I would be cheering on Australia rather than Scotland.