Posted by A modern international cricketer like Ben Duckett has a lot of tricky career decisions to make. Sometimes you don’t know whether you’ve made the right choice until you have or haven’t aged into dust.
“This certainly is the cup of The King of Kings,” says grail-hunting, Nazi-collaborating Walter Donovan, shortly before drinking from it in Indiana Jones and The Last Crusade.
After he rapidly ages and turns to dust, the ghostly Grail Knight delivers one of the finest examples – perhaps even the definitive example – of stating the bleeding obvious.
“He chose… poorly,” he intones, entirely unnecessarily.
Choices, then.
It’s easy to ridicule the Kevin Pietersen argument that young cricketers can learn so much simply by being at the IPL; that their mere presence at franchises as unused squad players somehow provides an education they couldn’t get anywhere else. But it’s not without truth. At worst, it’s a pretty good opportunity to watch how a handful of the very best players from around the world go about their business for a few weeks. It can’t be hard to pick up a few useful ideas or habits from that, can it? It’s going to give you more fresh information than watching the same old team mates you’ve grown up with, who aren’t so incredible, whose games have been shaped by roughly the same coaching you’ve had yourself.
But Alastair Cook has a point too. At some point you do need to play a bit of cricket. A load of net practice and the occasional short innings or four-over spell only really buys you Ringo Starr level rhythm. No one (other than, inexplicably, the other Beatles) is happy with that.
County cricket can be a good place to find rhythm, but there are, of course, no guarantees. That makes the IPL v County Championship decision a pretty easy one for the lucky few faced with such a choice, because the upsides of the former are so much easier to come by.
Top tips, Ringo rhythm and a few hundred grand versus getting nicked off for 14 in your first innings followed by a groundswell of anxiety that you’ve made a dumb move that isn’t going to work out?
“Um, Top Tips please. When will the payment go into my account?”
Unusually, Ben Duckett weighed that head-to-head after a winter of scratching around, below his best, and concluded that longer hours for less money would be the right option for him this season.
This could have resulted in crawleying around the country, racking up single figure scores and in so doing inadvertently making a compelling case for omission from England’s Test team. But that hasn’t happened. Instead, he knocked out a series of handy half centuries before cruising to 203 not out against Surrey. The Walter Donovan-esque lifelessness of the Trent Bridge pitch is irrelevant really. Duckett was seeking runs and rhythm and he has successfully completed his quest.
The joy of The Grail Knight’s pronouncements lies in how gloriously redundant they are given what everyone around has just seen with their own eyes. (You ain’t ever gonna get one scintilla of wisdom, insight or awareness of the wider world from a crusader.)
Sometimes things have so obviously gone well that you don’t really need a 600-word article on an independent cricket website to tell you so.
After Indy drinks from “the cup of a carpenter” and fails to rapidly age into dust, The Grail Knight unnecessarily announces, “You have chosen… wisely.”
Harsh on Ringo
Is it?
I think it’s the most controversial statement that you have made on here. Rob Key would be disappointed.
They did say of Ringo that he wasn’t even the best drummer in the Beatles, but he was sufficiently useful to be ranked the 14th greatest drummer of all time by Rolling Stone, ahead of Phil Collins in 43rd, so, yes, that was a little harsh.
Steve Smith’s at 36 on that list.
“Though he’s spent most of the last 30 years touring on the jazz fusion circuit and heading up drum clinics, from 1978 to 1985 Steve Smith’s superhuman chops held down arena rockers Journey during their peak years.”
As for Ringo: “His steady reliability became an early gold standard for no-nonsense rock players.”
Infer what you will from that verdict.
Ringo Starr was unquestionably in the right place at the right time, career-wise. Surely timing is almost everything, when drumming and indeed when batting.
My favourite Ringo story is not about Ringo Starr, but involves Ringo Lo, the superb chef at Lee Fook on Westbourne Grove (sadly long gone). This is a tale of bad timing (mine) but, like all good rom-coms, the story has a happy ending:
https://ianlouisharris.com/1992/08/16/ossobuco-at-janies-place-16-august-1992/
The story describes the second time I met Daisy.
Ringo Starr did try to write some songs, which might have contributed to his “fourth out of four” Beatles reputation. Back Off Boogaloo, for example, does not do justice to his talent as a musician when in his own safe zone (drumming).
By the same token, I don’t think Ben Duckett should try to build his reputation as a cricketer by bowling his filth, despite the fact that he has been known to take the odd wicket with it.
Very odd wicket in this case: https://www.facebook.com/reel/2420986274905267?fs=e&s=TIeQ9V&fs=e&fs=e
This is neat
>Sarah Taylor, the former England wicketkeeper, will be in charge of the fielding drills during the three-Test series against New Zealand that begins at Lord’s on 4 June
https://www.theguardian.com/sport/2026/may/13/emilio-gay-james-rew-sonny-baker-england-test-squad-new-zealand-cricket-series
On the topic of the phrase, “you chose…wisely”, the following non-cricket related memory from my student days popped into my head overnight.
In an attempt to boost voter turnout in students’ union elections, ahead of the election season I wrote a spoof manifesto for a fictional candidate promising infeasible goodies. We eventually named the candidate Nigel Wisely, to enable the tag line, “Please vote, and please vote Wisely.”
https://ianlouisharris.com/1984/01/31/tackling-so-called-keele-apathy-by-encouraging-fellow-students-to-do-stuff-january-1984/
Unfortunately, come the election itself when the real manifestos went up, several students complained that they had wanted to vote for Nigel Wisely, but he wasn’t on the ballot.