Extras

Stephen Fleming retires

We really ought to have something to say about Stephen Fleming, but we really don’t.

We know that he was a brilliant captain, because we read it about a thousand times. We don’t question that fact, but we’re struggling to think of any evidence. Our first thought was of the three match Test series New Zealand drew in Australia in 2001, but looking back, Australia scored heavily and there was a lot of rain.

We also know that he wasn’t all that great at hundreds at first. It took until his 39th Test innings to reach three figures – 129 against England at Auckland. The next year he got his second Test hundred, 174 not out against Sri Lanka in Colombo. He then went another three-and-a-half years before notching his third, 105 against Australia at Perth.

He’d mastered it then though. His six remaining hundreds included 274 not out, 192, 202 and 262.

Everyone also remembers his spectacularly ballsy 134 not out against South Africa in the 2003 World Cup. New Zealand needed to win to stay in the tournament; South Africa had scored 306, which wasn’t so readily chased-down back then; and New Zealand had won just one of their previous 18 games against South Africa.

With rain shortening the match midway through, an early wicket or so could have done for New Zealand via the Duckworth-Lewis calculations, but Fleming had preserved his wicket and scored quickly enough that after the recalculations, New Zealand only needed 44 off 51 balls.

The astounding part was that the entire innings had been risk-free and stylish. It was gauged and executed to perfection.

Adam Gilchrist’s career

Australia were the best side in the world before Adam Gilchrist was promoted to the Test side. Afterwards, they took on an air of invincibility.

How can a side take the fifth Australian wicket and be faced with a batsman who middles the ball with his first stroke, throws the kitchen sink at everything and averages 50? It was totally unfair and lifted Australia into a hitherto unimagined plane. Gilchrist was a great wicketkeeper, but it was quite frankly freakish that he could bat the way he did on top of that.

Of batsmen who’ve hit more than 1,000 Test runs, only you-know-who has a higher strike-rate per 100 balls than Adam Gilchrist’s 81.95 and essentially that means that nobody in their right mind has ever scored faster.

But consistently as well. The bowlers are tired. It’s been a slog. They do not want to see Adam Gilchrist gripping the very end of his bat handle with narrow-eyed, sadistic intent.

Essentially Adam Gilchrist innings came in two forms. There was the turn-it-around-in-an-hour rearguard on the rare occasions when things weren’t going totally Australia’s way, but more fearsome than that was the remove-any-hint-of-doubt, pile-on-the-misery, kick-’em-when-they’re-down, rapidfire hundred that made tired bowlers exhausted and exhausted bowlers suicidal.

The former would be exemplified by the Christchurch Test of 2005. Australia were 160-5 in their first innings after New Zealand had made 433. Gilchrist scorched his way to 121 off 126 balls, Australia got within a single run of New Zealand’s score and the frazzled Kiwis were bowled out for 131 in their second innings. It was a hundred measured in wickets as well as runs.

The second kind first came to our attention during his first innings against England – the first Test of the 2001 Ashes. England were bowled out for 294 and Australia sauntered to 336-5. It was bad, but the match and series suddenly became a lot longer and more miserable at that point, because Gilchrist did his thing.

152 off 143 balls did more than just drive home Australia’s advantage. It totally dispirited a nation. The English were already prone to elevating the Australians to the status of demigods at this time, but now they had to find a higher pedestal. How could their number seven batsman do this to England’s finest?

‘Psychological hold’ is such a limp, hackneyed expression, but when a sportsman thinks even his best isn’t good enough then his performance drops further. But that’s the nature of competition: if you can impose yourself on your opponent to such an extent that their standards drop, then that’s worth even more than your own, personal contribution.

That’s what Adam Gilchrist did so well. His contribution goes beyond the statistics. And consider this: his statistics are phenomenal. 5,570 runs, 17 hundreds and an average of 47.6, as well as 379 catches and 37 stumpings.

Those statistics have deteriorated as well. Since the start of the 2005 Ashes, Gilchrist has averaged just 30.21. Prior to that he’d been averaging 55.65.

55.65! He’s a sodding wicketkeeper and he bats at seven! We’re all used to it now, but that really is outrageous.

Of course even that period of relative mediocrity contained the odd gem, like the second-fastest Test hundred of all time – the archetypal Gilchrist innings. Monty Panesar had been finding Test cricket rather easy up until then. That rather comprehensively put him straight and no mistake.

We haven’t even mentioned one-day cricket, where he won the World Cup with the grandest big occasion hundred imaginable and somehow convinced the selectors of the world that wicketkeepers had to open the batting without their even questioning why this might be the right thing to do or not.

It’s a big loss for everyone.

Shaun Pollock isn’t playing international cricket any more

“I realise I have been blessed by God and feel I have nurtured my talents to the best of my abilities.”

No, actually what happened was that you were ‘blessed by God’ and then you threw that blessing back in His face, pausing only to give him a prolonged hand gesture in the form of a lengthy career of line and length medium-pace.

For Shaun Pollock was once a fast bowler. When he first came out (we realise that’s ambiguous and don’t care) Shaun could bowl really quickly. Mike Atherton said he was quicker than Allan Donald at first. Mike knows about these things. He may have edged the greatest medium-pacer of them all more often than most, but he faced down a fair few quicks as well.

But Shaun Pollock changed his approach. He sacrificed speed on the altars of reliability and consistency – two of the shittest altars of them all. Come on everybody, let’s find the altars of reliability and consistency and draw penises on the sides of them.

Reliability is a handy attribute, but it’s one best viewed in scorecard form. Shaun Pollock was really good and you might even want him on your side, but you’d prefer his contribution to happen on the day when you weren’t at the Test. Unless he contributed with the bat. He was a really rather fun and actually more than handy batsman.

But our overall memory is one of stultification. Let us instead remember Shaun Pollock’s arms of expression, because at least they were fun for about ten minutes back in October.

Twenty20 wicketkeeping

Do you want the better batsman or the better wicketkeeper behind the stumps for your team? That argument’s been represented by any number of individual duels over the years. Recently though, we think you’ll all agree that the better batsman’s been winning out, in general.

Blame Adam Gilchrist. He’s a great wicketkeeper, but his batting’s so spectacular it easily overshadows that fact. International sides want wicketkeepers who average 50 now, let alone 40. They’ll never get it because Gilchrist’s a one-off, but it won’t stop them trying.

But there might be some hope for the thoroughbred stumpers. Might Twenty20, that impure bastard version of the game, bring wicketkeeping skills to the fore once more?

Here’s our rationale – obliterate it in the comments with your usual gusto. How many batsmen do you need in Twenty20 cricket? How many do you really, really need? We reckon five – five specialists at any rate.

Presumably at least one of your five bowlers won’t be Tufnell-esque and presumably any eligible keepers are at least half-competent with the bat. If you’re serious about winning, then you don’t really want to be losing more than five wickets in 20 overs. Things aren’t going your way if that happens.

So you can fairly happily pick your best keeper. And you know what – there’s an added incentive.

In Twenty20 cricket, with scoring being so low and tight, batsmen get cheeky. It’s not totally unknown for them to take a run off a ball which goes straight through to the keeper. They like to jump around as well to disrupt the bowler’s line and length, coming down the pitch or batting out of their crease.

So wouldn’t it help if you had a keeper who was good enough to stand up to the stumps to fast-medium bowlers? No cheeky byes. No batting out of the crease. The wicketkeeper’s having a real impact there.

Twenty20: saviour of the wicketkeeping tradition. There’d be a touch of irony in that.

Spin bowlers: we even love the ones who are complete bastards

Are You A Left-Arm Chinaman? will shortly be celebrating its first birthday. In honour of its bias towards spin and to join in the festivities, we’re contributing this.

We thought we’d write about our favourite spinner. So who is that? Well, it’s probably Monty Panesar, but this doesn’t quite sit right. Monty can’t be our favourite spinner of all time, after all, because we already loved spin bowling when he arrived.

Who then? Eddie Hemmings, Peter Such, Robert Croft? No. Any spinner whose wicket-taking delivery was ‘the one that goes straight on’ isn’t for us.

What about Tuffers then? Phil ‘The Cat’ Tufnell – a man the selectors never wanted to pick but occasionally had to, because every now and again he’d single-handedly win a Test match. Mike Atherton was certain of Tufnell’s worth and his autobiography (definitely one of the better ones) depicts a constant battle to get the bowling attack that he wants, of which Tufnell is a major part.

But something’s still awry. For just those selectorial reasons, we never saw enough of Tufnell to form a lifetime devotion to the art of spin, although he surely played a part. So what spin bowler did have that sort of impact on us?

No. It couldn’t be. He can’t be our favourite spinner. We hate him. Everyone hates him. Believe us, we were more surprised than you, but we’ve had to accept it: Shane Warne‘s our favourite spin bowler.

We’re currently working our way through a review copy of If It Was Raining Palaces, I’d Get Hit By The Dunny Door by Nigel Henderson. At one point during the infamous Adelaide Test, an Australian sitting next to Henderson in the crowd turns to him and says: “He’s great Warnie, isn’t he? But I can’t stand the man, he’s a total cockhead. If he walked into my local, I’d smack him straight in the face.”

Now at least that guy had the benefit of Warne doing great things for his team, rather than against them. Imagine how we feel. The guy’s ‘a total cockhead’ and he’s humiliating the team you support, yet still you want to watch every ball, because you admire the guy so much. Bastard.

There are other spinners we love, but Warne’s the one who taught us that spin bowling’s a great way of turning a match your way and he also taught us that while a batsman can be intimidated by fast bowling, he can never look quite so bewildered and humiliated as he can when he’s being worked-over by a brilliant spin bowler.

Spin bowling’s bloody brilliant. Batsmen play at balls and miss them by two feet and they leave balls that hit the stumps. The deliveries come thick and fast and the fielders are all crowded round like a makeshift human batting net.

To spin! [Raises mug of tea, spilling contents over keyboard slightly.]

Shane Warne’s 700th Test wicket
Justin Langer about Shane Warne
Shane Warne retires – our view of the man

Muttiah Muralitharan’s 709th Test wicket

It was Paul Collingwood. We’re sure he’s delighted with the honour. Muttiah Muralitharan is now the top Test wicket-taker of all time.

Murali’s had this record before of course, but no-one playing at present seems at all likely to overtake him, so we’ll assume that on this occasion, it’ll be his record for a while.

In this third paragraph, it’s customary to raise ‘the spectre’ of throwing allegations against Murali. The accusation is that he straightens his arm as he delivers the ball – this constitutes a ‘throw’ or a ‘chuck’ which is against the laws of cricket.

Even if he hadn’t been cleared of it 12 times, surely straightening your arm if you’re a spinner only makes it more difficult to land the ball where you want it to land. Go and try it next time there’s daylight – which’ll be about March in the UK. Straightening your arm only adds another variable into the mix.

If it’s really such an advantage, then his critics should just get out there and do it themselves. They should adopt his action and skip their way to 700-and-odd Test wickets at an average of about 21. That’s another thing, besides taking more wickets than anyone else, no-one around at present with more than a couple of handfuls of wickets can rival that average.

This piece should be more positive. Here are some links to some positive Murali articles:

Muttiah Muralitharan v England – 16 wickets in a match
First-hand experiences of facing Murali
Mahela Jayawardene reveals that you can’t master Muttiah Muralitharan

Darren Lehmann retires

Darren Lehmann was twice the batsman Mike Hussey is. That’s not a fat joke, nor is it meant as a put-down for Hussey, who we rate very highly – it’s just that Darren Lehmann was magic.

Some players have a really good season where they stand head and shoulders above everyone else. A lot of players manage to live off such a season for the rest of their careers. Darren Lehmann stood head and shoulders above everyone else, every season, for about 20 years. He was outrageously superior for an astonishing length of time.

He hit 3,000 one-day international runs, won two World Cups, averaged 45 in a 27 Test career and finishes as the top run-scorer of all time in Australian domestic cricket, but still he didn’t get as much success as he ought to have done.

He was unfortunate to find himself competing with Steve and Mark Waugh for Test batting spots, but we’re not sure they were his betters. Their reputations were largely forged in Test cricket and we suspect Lehmann would have fared just as well give more of a chance, but we’ll never know.

To watch Lehmann bat was to watch someone totally in command of their own game and the confidence that brought allowed him to deal with any match situation. In his final season playing for Yorkshire, he rose to the occasion in all the big games. Or at least he appeared to. In reality he was on top form from first to last – you can’t raise your game when you’re already at the summit.

In three Roses matches against Lancashire, traditionally Yorkshire’s biggest fixtures, Lehmann hit a hundred in each of the first-class games and a mere 92 in a one-day game (off 69 balls). In a match against Kent, Lehmann came to the crease at 34-4 and promptly hit 193. In the return fixture he hit 172 out of Yorkshire’s total of 310. The next highest scorer was Anthony McGrath with 41.

This is all in one season. Oh no, wait – there’s more. In the final match of the season, his final match for Yorkshire, with the whole county desperate for him to get a hundred, he did. In fact once he passed 100, he felt okay, so he got another. And another. His final innings for Yorkshire was 339. He’d hit three sixes and 52 fours.

So when he turns out for South Australia on Friday in the Pura Cup, it might be worth keeping an eye on him. Lightning never strikes twice in the same place, but lightning has nothing to do with scoring runs in first-class cricket. So far Darren Lehmann’s proved that you can score a first-class run 25,628 times.

The man’s a machine. A big, bald, lardy, run-scoring machine.

Darren Lehmann posts from the past – some are quite good. We like the one where we say: “How much more better could he be? The answer, of course, is ‘none’. None more better…”

Alex Loudon retires from cricket

At the age of 27. Uninjured.

This is why we shouldn’t allow Old Etonians to become professional cricketers. What kind of a person gives up professional cricket in favour of ‘a career in business’?

Well congratulations, Alex. You’ll be shaking hands with people for a living before you know it. You can spend the next 30-odd years staring at spreadsheets and having meetings.

You can buy a pointless grey car and put your frigging golf clubs in the back. You can get a Mont Blanc pen and tell people about how you’ve got a Mont Blanc pen, watching their eyes glaze over before you’ve even finished the word ‘Blanc’.

You can go to bars with your mates, drink terrible alcohol at inflated prices and talk about how you can drive from one miserable office full of idiots to a different miserable office full of idiots faster than they can, learning to distinguish between different pointless grey cars in the process.

We’re sure you’ll cheer just as enthusiastically when you get that all-important third quarter contract as you did when you clean-bowled someone in a vital match. We’re sure the guys in Human Resources will give you just as much of an ovation as when you single-handedly won a cup match in front of a sell-out crowd.

It’s probably not necessary to tell you that I’m not particularly happy with Alex Loudon right at this minute.

Inzamam-ul-Haq retires

No. Don’t do it. We know you’re 37, but since when has lack of fitness affected your game? Besides, you’re as svelte now as you’ve ever been. Inzamam’s appearance has always been deceptive though. Maybe his slimmer look is deceiving us too.

He’s got one more match to go – the second Test against South Africa and as one of our all-time favourite cricketers, we hope he goes out in style. In style, but also run out. It’d only be right.

Everyone’s got a favourite Inzamam run out story – that’s part of his appeal – but our all-time favourite Inzamam story is one of Mike Selvey’s from the Guardian:

“If I would pay good money to watch Inzy bat, then I would fork out double to watch him practice. Five years ago, before the final Test in Karachi, we were given a demonstration of what it is like to be a special case, one for whom the rules are bent.Pakistan, then under Javed Miandad’s tutelage, began their session with warm-ups and some strenuous training. It all bypassed Inzy, who had yet to leave the airconditioning of the dressing room. Fielding drills followed, during which he emerged, tracksuited and padded up. He wandered across to a large wicker chair by the nets and slumped down to observe the efforts of his team-mates.

Then came a net session that he also viewed nonchalantly for a while before deciding it was time for a spot of batting. So he unzipped his top, removed it, placed his green Pakistan helmet on his head, and strolled into the nearest net, where for 20 minutes he proceeded to bat like a prince, before deciding enough was enough. Out he came, collecting his extraneous gear on the way, and disappeared back to the dressing room, not to be seen again. Next day, of course, he made a century”.

That whole article’s worth a read.

The way he batted reflected this attitude. We know that you’re supposed to keep your head still at the crease, but Inzy kept his whole body still and for so, so long.

He’d take his guard at the start of the bowler’s run-up and he’d remain in this position long after the ball had left the hand. As the ball neared him and you began to wonder whether he was actually paralysed, he still wouldn’t move and you waited for the ball to strike pad or stumps.

Suddenly, with apparently urgent time constraints blithely ignored, Inzy would move directly into position, his wrists would cock and snap back again and the ball would skip across the turf into the boundary boards. You’d look back at Inzy, he’d have reverted to his initial stance and you’d question whether anything had happened at all.

Perhaps it was this conservation of energy that allowed him to dance down the pitch and strike sixes when he was on 280 en route to 329 off 436 balls against New Zealand in 2002. That was a match when only three other batsmen could pass 50. Add up every run scored in that match by both teams, every bye, every wide – Inzy scored over a third of those runs in his one innings.

We remember as well the 2005 series in Pakistan where he irritated England by scoring 53 and 72 in the first Test, 109 and 100 not out in the second and 97 in his only innings in the third.

Inzy’s Test average will be as good as spot-on 50 when he retires. That’s over a 120 Test career that took in Warne and McGrath, Ambrose and Walsh, Donald and Pollock as well as Muttiah Muralitharan. He needs 20 more runs to become the top Pakistani scorer of all time, having already set the equivalent record in one-day cricket.

Literally irreplaceable.

Dhanuka Pathirana sets the standard

We’re in the middle of the Twenty20 World Cup and what is considered acceptable batting behaviour is changing by the day.

Yuvraj Singh’s 12 ball fifty the other day is only three balls shy of the perfect half-century – the minimum number of balls required to pass the landmark. However, if he thinks that hitting six sixes off an over is impressive, he clearly doesn’t know much about Twenty20 cricket.

A couple of weeks ago, in the Saddleworth league, a player by the name of Dhanuka Pathirana played an innings of such astoundingly sustained destruction we can’t even comprehend it. It was the kind of sporting performance that doesn’t belong in cricket. It was more akin to darts or ten-pin bowling where perfection’s the norm and matches are decided by rare mistakes.

Playing for Austerlands against Droylsden, Dhanuka Pathirana hit 277 off just 72 balls. That’s a whisker away from being four runs a ball OVER 72 BALLS. If you batted for 72 balls and hit every other ball for six, you’d still only end up with 216. Pathirana hit 29 sixes and 18 fours.

Back when 20 over cricket was just ‘cricket’ this probably wouldn’t have been such big news, but now it’s ‘Twenty20′ and branded so it’s massive.

Thanks to Raoul for pointing this out to us. Ages ago.