Professor Matthew Engel

Here's a treat:

http://www.matthewengel.co.uk/lectures/oxford/introduction.html

To his great surprise, Matthew Engel was invited to become the News International Visiting Professor of Media at Oxford University, in which capacity he delivered a series of lectures entitled Please, mister, can we have our ball back? Sport, the media, and the people earlier this year. The link leads to the text of the lectures.

I have made plain in other posts my admiration for Engel's writing. He became the cricket correspondent of The Guardian in 1982, after impressing on the county circuit (The Times for Gibson or The Guardian for Engel was a taxing choice for a young student in the early eighties).

From 1987 he divided his time between sport and the rest of the world, including a spell on The Guardian's Washington desk. He follows in the tradition of Cardus, Arlott and Alan Ross in being better known to some readers for his writing on other subjects, though he found time to drag the Wisden Almanack into the modern era. He edited 12 editions in two spells, and improved the quality of the writing in the good book considerably. Nowadays, his journalism is found in the Financial Times, which has a pay fence with lots of holes in it rather than a paywall, so it is easy enough to keep up with him.

So Engel is a splendid choice for an Oxford Chair, if unlikely one for a Murdoch-funded office. When I attended a sportswriting workshop Engel ran at the Cheltenham Literary Festival in 1995 he was very much of the he-is-the-devil's-spawn school of thought on Murdoch and his influence on the British media. His view has mellowed into ambivalence: he is for paywalls and admires the success of the British version of Sky TV, while regretting the extent to which some sports administrators are in thrall to it.

Engel identifies other reasons for his being an appropriate choice for an Oxford professorship:

My hair is often rumpled, my clothes a bit askew, my jacket a bit shabby. I have a taste for obscure lines of enquiry. I am hopelessly absent-minded. I am secretly addicted to pointless political intrigues, which I’m told would make me feel at home in any senior common room in Oxford. And most of the time, nobody knows what on earth I’m talking about.

 In the lectures he traces the relationship between sport and the media from cave paintings onwards, outing Homer as a bad sports reporter along the way. He shows how mutually beneficial this relationship has been:

Cricket in particular was a media creation: newspapers, not the MCC, created the concepts of the County Championship, Test matches and the Ashes.

He reminds us how important the game was to the Murdoch when it appeared that Sky TV could bring News International crashing down in the early 90s. The first big spike in the sale of dishes preceded the beginning of football's Premier League by six months: it was the 1992 cricket World Cup. Engel quotes David Elstein, an early Sky head of programmes, as saying “that’s when Surrey discovered Sky”. Before then, a dish was not something that a respectable home would have attached to it.

Engel makes the point that cricket is ideally suited to pay TV, which has hours to fill, and less so to the constricted free-to-air schedules, which have so many demands upon them. Even so, he regrets that cricket, alone of significant British sports, has removed itself entirely from live free-to-air coverage. Evidence that he is right to worry about the consequences of this is already apparent. There was nothing like the public interest in the 2009 Ashes series that there had been in 2005, when key passages of play enthralled the country.

I suggest a solution that I have not seen proposed anywhere else: that play after lunch on the Saturday or Sunday of every Test should be shown on a free-to-air channel (probably the one showing highlights), along with a couple of ODIs every summer. That would allow the general public to recognise the players at least, but would not be enough to dissuade viewers from subscribing to Sky, so would not significantly reduce the amount on the Murdoch cheque.

Engel suggests that TV is responsible for sport being got out of proportion these days. He contrasts the response to the England football team's victory in the 1966 World Cup – which the country's biggest-selling newspaper the Daily Mirror did not feature on the front or back page on the following Monday – with the hysterical, see-pages-1-to-26 reaction to success or failure that is routine these days (he cites Paul Collingwood's MBE for 17 runs at the Oval in 2005 in support: case closed). He says that the recent experience of war 45 years ago meant that people had a sense of perspective and knew how unimportant sport actually was.

Use the link to enjoy the lectures.

There's another Matthew Engel piece that is required reading (but it comes with a resilience-required warning):

http://www.guardian.co.uk/lifeandstyle/2005/dec/03/familyandrelationships.health

It is an account of the terminal illness and death of his 13-year-old son Laurie in 2005. Of course, a writer of moderate talent could produce a tearjerker from such subject matter; but only a great journalist could write a piece of such honesty, wit and humanity.

"Harold Larwood" and "A Last English Summer" by Duncan Hamilton

Duncan Hamilton has emerged as one of cricket's most important writers. Until four years ago he was unknown except to readers of the Nottingham Evening Post and the Yorkshire Post, the papers he worked for in a thirty-year career as a provincial journalist. For the former, he reported on Nottingham Forest FC for more than a decade, observing at close quarters the progress of the club's manager Brian Clough from eccentric genius to drunken legend. Hamilton's first book was an account of these years and it won the Sports Book of the Year prize for 2007.

He then turned to cricket (his first love, one suspects), but stuck with the theme of Nottingham heroes, with the 2009 biography of Harold Larwood, the great fast bowler. It also won the Sports Book of the Year Award, making Hamilton only the second double winner, after Donald McRae, who writes mostly about boxing. He followed Harold Larwood with A Last English Summer, a journey through the 2009 English cricket season.

Both books have been on my must-read list for a while and just when I was on the point of resorting to Amazon for one or the other I found both on the shelves of Wellington's splendid Central Library.

Harold Larwood tells one of cricket's most famous stories. Larwood came from the traditional source of fast bowlers in northern England: the pit. He became the fastest bowler in the country and led the attack in the Bodyline Ashes series of 1932/3. Others bowled bodyline – a systematic attack on the batsman's body, with a ring of close catchers on the legside waiting for a deflection as he fended the ball off – but Larwood did so with unequalled speed and accuracy, and that's what caused all the fuss. The Australians were outraged, the public schoolboys who ran the game in England, embarrassed. Larwood, who had simply followed the instructions of his captain Douglas Jardine, became the fall guy.

They even asked him to sign a letter of apology. His mother told him that he would never see her alive if he signed it, which he didn't, but the pressure weighed him down.He never played Test cricket again, and Hamilton shows us Larwood's torment as he spent the next decade or more hiding from the nonsense that Bodyline generated. Hamilton resists the temptation to express his own outrage at the injustices done to Larwood, but tells the story in an understated way that leaves the reader to become angry on his behalf.

The portrayal of incidental figures is strong. It was fascinating to learn how Nottinghamshire's coach Jimmy Iremonger turned the scrawny, five-foot-seven Larwood into one of the fastest bowlers the game has seen. With his strong emphasis on physical fitness, Iremonger was decades ahead of his time, except that his favoured energy drink came in pint glasses with froth on top.

The villains are Sir Pelham Warner and Sir Donald Bradman. Warner was the England manager and appears here two-faced and weaselling. He was knighted in 1937, as Larwood, who he had hung out to dry, faded from the game, to the relief of Warner's fellow Lord's grandees, who were pleased to be rid of an embarrassment.

Jardine (who Larwood revered to the end) adopted bodyline to nullify Bradman, who, alone among the bowler's Australian adversaries, remained cool towards him, and failed to offer any assistance to Larwood when he emigrated to Sydney in 1951. This was in contrast to Jack Fingleton, whose tracking down of Larwood to a backstreet Blackpool sweetshop I have written about:

http://mylifeincricketscorecards.blogspot.com/2010/04/brightly-fades-don-by-jack-fingleton.html

Hamilton says that the former Australian opener's intervention was more decisive than Fingleton himself described, suggesting that far from building upon an existing notion, it was this visit that set Larwood thinking about emigration to the place where he had been public enemy No 1 less than twenty years before, and where he lived happily for the last four decades of his life.

The book is meticulously researched and has not only a detailed index, but also (and I can't remember when I last came across one in a sports book) a bibliography (so does A Last English Summer).

For me, only David Foot's Harold Gimblett: Tormented Genius of Cricket had passed the ultimate test for a first-rate cricket biography: that it could be enjoyed by a reader without an interest in the game, but Harold Larwood does so too .

A Last English Summer was inspired by Geoffrey Moorhouse's similar account of the 1978 season The Best Loved Game, which I was rather underwhelmed by:

http://mylifeincricketscorecards.blogspot.com/2010/11/best-loved-game-and-wisden-cricketer-50.html

Hamilton's journey is much more to my liking, partly because he is about my age, and we share memories, such as watching Derek Underwood bowl out Australia in grainy black and white at the Oval in 1968. Both of us were drawn to the game by early exposure to the vibrant play of the West Indies. Like mine, his childhood was spent in the shadow of a speech impediment, and I suspect that for both of us cricket grounds were places of sanctuary.

Hamilton appreciates the importance of ritual in cricket. He gets the beginning and end of the season spot on, starting at Lord's for MCC versus the champion county (a game played in Abu Dhabi for the last two years, which alleviates the early-season frostbite, at least), and ending, as I so often did, at Canterbury.

At Lord's he captures the suppressed excitement of the devotee at the start of the season and understands that it is really relief at having made it through another winter.

In September at the St Lawrence Ground he ignores the meaningless 40-over game being played, finding more interest in the Chevallier Taylor painting of Blythe bowling to Tyldesley in 1906 that hangs in the pavilion, a copy now, as the original has been flogged off to ease the county's penury. Something that non-cricket folk do not grasp is how tangential to a good day at the cricket the actual game can be.

Each chapter is an essay replete with pertinent observation and fine writing. There are always two stories to be told: one on the field of play and one off, of which the latter is the more important. Thus a visit to the Cheltenham Festival becomes a polemic in favour of cricket at out grounds. Graham Onions is described as having the appearance of “an estate agent on his morning off”.

At first many of his opinions appear typical of a cricket person of his (my) age, but he is much more aware. He mocks the snooty attitudes of EW Swanton and JM Kilburn to 40-over Sunday county cricket when it appeared in 1969 – he enjoyed this form of the game as I did, even though we both appreciated its limitations – only to ingeniously turn his argument upon himself when he realises that the objections of the old men are precisely those he has against T20. Nevertheless, when he laments T20, he speaks for me.

I particularly enjoyed his dislike of the games of football that seem central to the warm-up routines:

I long for a Saturday afternoon when I turn up at Old Trafford or Anfield and watch Manchester United and Liverpool pitch two sets of stumps and arrange a 5-4 field in the penalty area for a half-hour of cricket before a Premier League game.

Everywhere he goes, Hamilton takes a sense of history with him. At Trent Bridge he begins with a photo of WG Grace and the England team taken during the Grand Old Man's last test, and finishes with a spectacular piece of fielding by Angelo Matthews of Sri Lanka in the World T20 game he is watching, barely twenty yards from the site of the photo. No game has changed more than cricket without becoming something else altogether. WG would recognise T20 as a game of cricket while being astonished at most aspects of it, notably the fielding. Hamilton skilfully celebrates the continuity that cricket sustains.

A visit to the Ashes test at Edgbaston begins miles away, at the grave of Edmund Peate, whose dismissal to a reckless shot concluded the Oval Test of 1882, England's defeat prompting the mock obituary in the Sporting Times which initiated the Ashes legend. He day he chooses to visit Edgbaston is wet, so he has plenty of time to regret that a day at the Test in Birmingham in particular is an occasion for drunks to behave objectionably.

I do have a gripe with the book, bearing in mind that it was written by an experienced sub-editor. There are too many mistakes that should have been picked up by proficient proofreading and fact-checking. Mark Wagh (the Warwickshire/Notts batsman, not the Australian), Sir Frank Worrell, Nigel Llong, Ed Giddins and Chris Gayle all have their names misspelled. He has Dominic Cork taking his Test hat-trick in 1993 (two years early), and Keith Miller scoring a double century at Worcester in 1952 (in which case he was playing for the Indians).

But these are trivial matters and do not impinge upon enjoyment of a substantial contribution to cricket literature. I look forward to much more from Duncan Hamilton in years to come.

Marcus Trescothick – Coming Back To Me

I usually avoid ghosted autobiographies but was intrigued by this one, which won the Sports Book of the Year Award in 2008 (the only only other ghost to win was the cyclist Lance Armstrong's).
For one thing, Marcus Trescothick is one of the best batsmen to have played for England in the past quarter century, with almost a thousand test runs a year over six years and 26 centuries almost evenly divided between tests and ODIs. What's more, they were scored in style, using a straightforward, attacking technique like a left-handed Graham Gooch.

For another, he's a Bristol boy, Keynsham born but raised in the city's eastern fringe. He went to the Sir Bernard Lovell School in Oldland Common when I was, with what I now see was undue optimism, trying to foster an understanding of Gladstone's domestic reforms just down the road in Kingswood. Indeed, the staffs of the two schools used to play cricket against each other, and he may have been one of the kids on the boundary, laughing at my field placings.

He was pointed out to me in the clubrooms of Keynsham CC in 1991. Half the people in the room were telling the other half that the tall, podgy kid at the bar would play for England one day.

Some of the book is much like any of the genre, a plod through the tests and tours, with plenty of anecdote, and a little insight. The impression that comes across confirms what I've heard about Marcus from those who know him and his family: that he is a decent, gentle person who is a credit to the game. He even asterisks out the swear words, which is rather sweet.

Of course, it is difficult, given the self-effacing conventions of the sportsman's autobiography, to do justice to the big moments. So the most disappointing part of the book is the rather rushed account of the 2005 Ashes series, the greatest of our time. In particular, there is no sense of how uplifting his opening partnership with Andrew Strauss was on the first day of the Edgbaston test, its commitment to attack a statement that, at last, England were not going to roll over after one defeat.

But there is enough to understand why the shy lad from the West Country was asked to join the tour committee on his first trip away as an England player, and we share his joy at those times when he is so confident and in command of himself and the bowlers that he can't see how he can get out.

But the reason why this is an exceptional book is not the story of the runs and the catches. It is the brutally frank account of how he was brought down by several waves of severe depression, which, to the great regret of cricket lovers everywhere, ended his international career many years prematurely.

The book opens with Trescothick sitting on the floor of a Heathrow Airport shop, sobbing with dread as the darkness catches up with him again as he prepares to leave for a pre-season jaunt to the UAE with Somerset in 2008. As his story is told, he spots portents of what is to come. Extreme homesickness on his first trip away from home, and feeling out of it at the start of every cricket tour (of which there were many from an early age). In New Zealand in 2002, the oddness was particularly sharp. I ran across him again at this time as CricInfo's man at the opening game of the tour, when he led England against Northern Districts:

http://www.espncricinfo.com/ci/content/story/114062.html

As the press pack broke up I approached him to pass on greetings from a mutual acquaintance. I noted at the time that he seemed a bit empty behind the eyes, but put it down to jetlag and frustration at being asked dim questions by amateur journalists, and perhaps it was, but it was a look consistent with the emotions he describes having at that time.

It was in Pakistan in late 2005 that it first sunk its teeth deep into him. The trigger was a serious accident sustained by his father-in-law, who fell off a ladder while maintaining the Trescothicks' house. Marcus had to watch the accident, replayed from security cameras, on his laptop in a hotel room in Pakistan so that the details could be passed on to doctors in Frenchay Hospital in Bristol, an experience that would test anybody's resilience. He speculates that things might have been different had he gone home straight away, as he would have done had Michael Vaughan not talked him out of it (Vaughan was injured, and Trescothick was stand-in captain).

Hurried retreats from India and Australia followed over the next twelve months. That he is able to describe so clearly the hopelessness, the desperation, the confusion, the helplessness, the torment, the brief contemplation of the unthinkable, is cheering as it means that he has reached some understanding of what has happened to him. It will be grimly familiar to anybody who has stood by helplessly as a loved one is taken down by depression, and has done a great deal to help understanding of the illness.

Moved as I was, a reservation nagged away. Some of the writing, actually quite a lot of the writing, isn't very good. Peter Hayter of the Mail on Sunday is more a poltergeist than a ghost at times, though the chapters on the depression are better. But there's much too much like this, taken at random from a paragraph on the 2005 series:

And now Glenn McGrath didn't so much let the air out of the balloon as stamp all over it...he made Straussy and me look like camels in clogs.

This isn't Trescothick's voice. It isn't anybody's voice. I couldn't help thinking what a good job David Foot would have done here. Could such leaden prose really merit the Sports Book of the Year Award, however gripping and important its story?

Then, as I started to make notes for this piece, the news broke that England all-rounder Michael Yardy was leaving the World Cup because he is suffering from depression.

Like most sufferers, Marcus had to hide his condition and pretend that it was something else for a long time, which is exhausting and makes things worse. Yardy feels able to be straightforward about how he is, and does not have to increase his agony by pretending that it is otherwise. The cricket world (apart from the odious Boycott, who has passed his sell-by date going in the other direction), has reacted supportively and with some understanding.

That's because Marcus Trescothick told his story. This book, in a small way, has made the world a better place for others to live in, and how many sports books in any year have done that?

Chokers Wild

http://cricketarchive.com/Archive/Scorecards/261/261464/261464_bbb.html

So the fishbone of fate lodges once more in the throat of South African cricket. I made it through to the early overs of the South African innings, around 2 am New Zealand time, propping the eyelids open long enough to see Hashim Amla out unluckily, caught by Vettori at slip (yes, at slip) off Brendon McCullum's boot.

I awoke a couple of hours later as Jacob Oram took an athletic catch on the mid-wicket boundary to dismiss Jacques Kallis (the feline abilty to wake just as something interesting is about to take place is something that you evolve when you have watched as much cricket as I have; happens all the time). Even then, surely not even South Africa could mangle this one, not with only 114 needed from 25 overs with seven wickets left.

But they could, and Mirpur becomes the next in the comi-tragic sequence that began in the rain at Sydney in 1992 (I watched that one in the Hammond Room at the County Ground in Bristol), and continued thus: Karachi in 1996 where seven wickets fell for 59; Allan Donald forgetting to run at Edgbaston in 1999; the failure to read a Duckworth-Lewis table properly at Durban in 2003; and gutless batting in St Lucia in 2007.

Today's debacle most closely resembled that at Karachi. Kallis' was the first of six wickets to fall for 38. No getting back from there.

Public acts of penance should be performed in the streets of Wellington by those who booed Jake Oram during the ODI against Pakistan at the Cake Tin in January. He has vindicated the selectors, who picked him because, episode of Casualty in human form though he is, he is one of the few players who can turn a game in the later stages of the World Cup, and that's what he did in Mirpur with four for 39 and two catches.

The influence of John Wright, the recently appointed coach, was apparent earlier in the day as New Zealand struggled to 221, the keystone partnership one of 114 between Ryder and Taylor. Both were subdued, suppressing their natural aggression to a large extent, having heeded Wright's call for patience. This was vital on a pitch which did not appreciate batsmen taking liberties. It resulted in a total that, though not what was hoped-for, was at least something. Kane Williamson's bright unbeaten 38 should also be noted. What a fine signing he is for Gloucestershire.

It was a good day for New Zealand's leadership altogether. Vettori handled his attack outstandingly, despite a gammy knee (hence the fielding at slip). He kept the pressure up well, and was prepared to keep effective bowlers going. Since one-day cricket began, captains have been too inclined to take bowlers off when they are at their most dangerous so that they have overs saved for later in the innings. Vettori was prepared to risk key bowlers not having overs left at the death, and it paid off handsomely.

As for South Africa...well, if they transferred the intelligence levels shown in the second half of their innings to everyday life, they wouldn't be safe crossing the road on their own. There were silly shots and poor decisions. The batting powerplay was a case in point. New Zealand rightly ignored their powerplay until the end of the innings, correctly diagnosing that it in the prevailing conditions the risk of losing wickets was greater than the opportunity to increase the scoring rate. South Africa, on the other hand, blundered into their powerplay when the eighth wicket fell, making it more difficult for Morne Morkel to score, with frustration the result.

This match provided the tension that the tournament has been lacking so far, as did the India v Australia game. There were some good contests earlier on (mostly involving England), but none that were must-win for both teams. The difference that makes showed in the eyes of Ricky Ponting on Wednesday and the later South African batsmen on Friday.

New Zealand have issues with World Cup semi-finals, having played in five, but in no finals.We are hoping that the old country comes through against Sri Lanka in the last quarter-final, as we reckon they would provide the lesser obstacle to further progress.

Update: some hope. It is hard to foresee an improvement by England in ODIs while 50-over cricket is not part of the domestic programme.

The first World Cup Final: Australia v West Indies, 60 overs, Lord's, 21 June 1975

http://cricketarchive.com/Archive/Scorecards/35/35256.html

If ever there was a day on which all was right with the world, it was 21 June 1975. There was not a cloud in the sky, literally or metaphorically. I was almost 16 and off to London on my own for the first time to watch the first World Cup final. If I could live again through just one of the hundreds of days' cricket that I have seen, it would be this one.

I took my place in the bottom deck of the old grandstand, square on to the pitch, the last time I ever sat there. In later years I joined the rest of the cognescenti behind behind the arm at the Nursery End. I've no idea how much the ticket cost, but it wasn't much.

I bore a substantial bag containing the following:

• binoculars
• radio and earpiece
• cricket reference library (Wisden, Playfair, Kent cricket annual)
• latest cricket magazine
• newspaper, probably The Guardian (for John Arlott rather than ideological reasons)
• Russian textbook (O level exams in this subject and the equally impenetrable Additional Mathematics the following week)
• writing material
• salad, big
• sandwiches, numerous
• Scotch eggs, infinite
• crisps, large bag of (almost certainly Marks & Spencer's prawn cocktail flavour)
• cakes, Jaffa
• orange squash, large bottle of

It has taken me 35 years to whittle this down to a more convenient quantity that can, with a degree of effort, be forced into a smallish rucksack.

The crowd around me consisted largely of West Indians, mostly first generation immigrants to whom cricket was heritage and the match a chance to spend a day back in the Caribbean, in their minds at least. They drank a lot of rum, but displayed none of the boorish aggression that is characteristic of many English cricket crowds these days, and, unlike the fancy dressers, they were wonderfully knowledgeable about the game.

Starting with Roland Butcher, the sons of these immigrants began to appear for England in the eighties. It was assumed that this presaged a never-ending supply of British-born players from that community but this did not occur, and it is rare to see an Afro-Caribbean face at a test match in England, even when the West Indies are playing. That this is so, when most county sides take the field with at least one British Asian player, is an act of neglect.

Their West Indians were not yet the mighty team they were soon to become. Of the dynasty of great fast bowlers that was to rule the game for the next fifteen years or more, only Andy Roberts played here. The rest of the attack consisted of the proficient Keith Boyce, the steady Vanburn Holder, and Kent's Bernard Julien, full of unfulfilled promise (Kent's first mistake was to billet him in a pub). Of the batsmen, only Clive Lloyd, Alvin Kallicharran and Roy Fredericks were at their peak, though both Gordon Greenidge and Viv Richards were just twelve months away from slaughtering England. This team was to lose five-one to Australia in a test series the following winter.

The West Indians were all familiar to the English spectators; all eleven had played in county cricket, whereas only Greg Chappell of the Australians had done so (for two seasons with Somerset, in the late sixties). The fast-bowling partnership of Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson that had blown the England batting away the previous winter was the big draw; it was the first time that I had seen either of them, not having attended the 1972 tests in which Lillee played (he did not appear against Kent). It's difficult to convey in the satellite age, when all sport is ubiqitous, how exciting it was to watch these two great bowlers for real, Lillee with his perfect, beautiful action, and Thomson generating such pace as a human catapult (and why has nobody ever tried to copy him?).

The West Indies batted first and the left-handed opener Fredericks soon started the dancing, hooking Lillee high into the Tavern Stand. The whooping soon descended into puzzlement, as it was realised that Fredericks was on his way back to the pavilion. This was my moment. From my square-on vantage point, binoculars deployed, I had seen what few others had, that, as he played the shot, Fredericks had slipped, his foot nudging a stump and dislodging a bail. A small crowd gathered round as I re-enacted events, excluding no detail.

At 50 for three Australia were ahead, but in came Clive Lloyd to take the game away from them, with the innings of his life, one of the finest ever played at Lord's, or anywhere else. Lloyd was the nearest to a superhero cricket has produced. See him arrive at the ground, or walk onto the field, and it would seem improbable that this gangly, bespectacled, plodding figure could be significant in the game. But when the ball left the bowler's hand a magical transformation occurred and he was invested with powers that allowed him as a fielder to stop and any ball hit between mid-off and point and throw down the stumps with it, and to bat with an unmatched combination of strength and grace. And that day he did it against two of the finest bowlers the game has seen at the peak of their powers, with first-rate support. 102 from 85 balls with no powerplays and no fielding restrictions.

One shot shines clear in the memory through the years. Lillee, from the Nursery End, unleashed a bouncer of the kind that had reduced England's finest to a shambles a few months before. It reared up towards Lloyd's unhelmeted head. He moved inside the line and hooked. I followed the ball's progress up and over the Tavern Stand as it disappeared into the traffic of the St John's Wood Road. On the radio John Arlott described it as “the shot of a man knocking off the top of a thistle with a walking stick”.

Lloyd was supported perfectly by Rohan Kanhai, who scored 55 in their 149-run fourth-wicket partnership. Just two years before I had sat in almost the same place to see Kanhai score a wonderful century against England. He was elegant, resourceful and not mentioned enough when great batsmen are being talked about, Wisden reminds me that he went 11 overs without scoring at one point, but, grey-haired and wise, he knew that what was happening at the other end rendered that unimportant.

West Indies finished with 291, an immense score for the time, even from the 60 overs over which the first three World Cups were played. At 81 for one Australia were well-placed, Ian Chappell in, Greg Chappell to follow. Viv Richards chose this moment to draw the spotlight to him for the first time at a Lord's final. It followed him ever after.

Ian Chappell turned the ball to the onside, Alan Turner hesitated briefly, and Richards ran him out with a direct hit. Moments later, more hesitation, another direct hit by Richards, this time to dismiss Greg Chappell. Ian Chappell became his third victim, this time with a Lloyd assist. That was as good as that.

Australia meandered to 233 when the ninth wicket fell, with 59 still required. Lillee and Thomson, having failed to take the World Cup with the ball now attempted to do so with the bat, and they came closer than anybody expected. At one point it was thought that a wicket had fallen, and half the crowd came on to the playing area. Nobody knew where the ball was, so the batsmen kept running. Order was restored and they were awarded three. Thomson fell 18 short of the target with eight balls remaining. It was 8.50 pm.

I watched the Duke of Edinburgh hand over the trophy to Clive Lloyd, and headed back to Victoria Station. I (just) passed Russian and Additional Mathematics, then forgot what little I knew about both for ever. Why they taught us Russian, I never knew. Maybe it was so that we could better plead for our lives when the red hordes swept into Kent. After the last exam it was down to the St Lawrence Ground for the last couple of hours of the first day of Kent versus the Australians. Later that evening Dennis Lillee stole my shoe. But that's for another day.

A Wellington XI v a Canterbury XI, T20, the Basin Reserve, 13 March 2011

A pleasant afternoon at a full Basin Reserve for a game between two XIs of old players in aid of the victims of the Christchurch earthquake, the sadness of which has pervaded every corner of these islands since it visited the crowded lunchtime streets almost three weeks ago.

All in the 9,000 crowd were there for the cause, but a fair number were also present to roll back the years, to see the heroes of their youth once more. The ground was full of middle-aged men looking wistful. The longer the time that has elapsed since retirement, the greater the nostalgia quotient. So the welcome for Ewen Chatfield, Bruce Edgar, Martin Crowe and Sir Richard Hadlee was especially warm.

But the big draw was Shane Warne, who changed plans at short notice to cross the Tasman in a good cause. He signed autographs all day, fielded on the boundary, choosing a different child each delivery to stand with him on the field, bowled an over at the Prime Minister during the interval, bore endless texting jokes with good grace, and impressed everybody.

A full complement of celebrities had turned out as well. Sir Ian McKellan, last seen in Wellington last July starring in a wonderful production of Waiting for Godot (by the first-class cricketer Samuel Beckett), was match referee. He is filming The Hobbit here in Wellington at the moment, and was joined by other members of the cast, including James Nesbitt and Martin Freeman. There were All Blacks, past and present, aplenty. Richie McCaw and Conrad Smith umpired, while Tana Umaga was a popular ringer for Wellington.

Martin Crowe's cousin, the actor Russell Crowe, was there, today embraced as a New Zealander, one of our own, just as he is when he wins Oscars. When he throws telephones at hotel staff, he is an Australian.

Over the years, I've seen a number of games such as these, the Old England v Old Australia match that preceeded the Centenary Test of 1980 being particularly memorable:

http://cricketarchive.com/Archive/Scorecards/114/114225.html

Then, and today, the batsmen found it easier to give a flavour of what they once were than did the bowlers, whose arms and stomachs find gravity stronger than of yore. So in 1980 Cowdrey was elegant, d'Oliveira powerful, Simpson commanding. Barrington off-drove a six high into the stand next to the pavilion in the last game he ever played; he died while serving as England's assistant manager in the Caribbean little more than six months later. The keeping of Godfrey Evans, just turned sixty, was particularly striking. His stumping of Simpson was so fast that it was announced as bowled.

Here, Bruce Edgar was resolute and well-organised, Mark Greatbatch was as forthright as he was as the first of the pinch-hitters in 1992, and Nathan Astle looked as if he could walk back into the national team today. The bowlers all operated off short runs, though Ewen Chatfield was nagging enough to remind us of how important a foil he was to Hadlee. But it was fours and sixes that the crowd wanted, and the bowlers were happy to conspire to provide them.

Canterbury won, as if it mattered, more than half a million dollars was raised, and a good time was had by all. Why, I even set aside my customary lack of community empathy to participate in a Mexican wave (there are witnesses, but no photos).

Before play started, people went around the ground throwing chocolate bars into the crowd. Save for the presence of Helena Bonham Carter, or one of the former members of Pan's People, how could a day be more perfect?

How the ICC ruined the World Cup

If the ICC had been in charge of the Last Supper, 47 associate apostles would have been invited. The bread and wine would have been provided by an official supplier, with centurions on the doors to keep out non-approved brands. The painting rights would have been sold to a manga outfit, who would have offered their images of the occasion to subscribers only. It would have surprised nobody if the catering had been franchised to a bacon sandwich company.

 

This is an organisation with a talent for removing the joy from life unmatched since Oliver Cromwell was in charge.

 

It has followed the test of fortitude that was the 2007 World Cup – endless matches in empty stadia, culminating in the finalists being sent out to finish the final in the dark when the assembled suits failed to interpret the playing conditions correctly – with a misconceived structure that consigns the first month of the 2011 tournament to irrelevance, and threatens once again to make mockery of the entire event.

For the benefit of those who don't follow these matters closely, this is how they've managed it: 

• 14 teams are competing, at least four of which have no hope of seriously challenging the top eight (Ireland's wonderfully improbable win against England is no justification for this policy), resulting in a series of dire, one-sided games
• four teams from each group of seven qualify for the quarter-finals so most cricket fans could pick seven of the eight before the tournament started, and even games between the big teams are largely meaningless as both begin these matches certain to progress; going straight to semi-finals would have made almost every game in the group stage important
• two of the quarter-finals are under lights in Dacca, Bangladesh, where the side batting second has a huge advantage because of the dew that comes down at dusk
• the schedule is unnecessarily elongated, with one game on most days and two on some; on Monday 7 March, for example, the sole attraction is Canada v Kenya, a game without any interest whatsoever
• the rules said that the squads had to be be named a month in advance, while there was much ODI cricket to be played around the world; New Zealand, for example, are stuck with the out-of-form Jamie How instead of Rob Nicol, who was red hot in domestic cricket, and most teams are in a similar position (the reason for this was the need to print programmes – there's this thing called the internet...).

So for now I will ignore events in south Asia, and instead will post memories of the first three World Cup finals, all of which I had the pleasure of attending.

Wellington v Northern Districts, 50 overs, Basin Reserve, 30 January 2011

http://cricketarchive.com/Archive/Scorecards/304/304704.html
A belated account of last weekend's visit to the Basin for what the weather, the fixture list and the home team's indifferent form have conspired to make the only domestic 50-over game I will watch this season. If the ECB's wish that 40-over cricket become the standard format for one-day cricket comes to pass after the World Cup, it might even be the last ever, which is a gloomy prospect.

Wellington had won only one game of six played before today's game, which is part of the penultimate round of a lopsided round robin, which sees each team playing three of the others twice and two once (the truncation has occurred, needless to say, to make room for a full T20 competition). But four teams go through to the knockout stage, so a victory today would keep Wellington in the hunt, probably at ND's expense, so it was an important game for both sides.

Jesse Ryder returned to the top of the Wellington order, having been rotated out of the national team for the weekend. A lot of good it did him, as he was run out in the second over of the day after a communications breakdown of such proportions that it was hard to believe that Ryder shares a common language with his partner Stephen Murdoch (reading Ryder's Twitter messages fails to assuage doubt on this matter). His return to the rooms was marked by one of the evocative sounds of summer, that of willow on plaster.

Murdoch followed soon after, having been in long enough neither to see off the new ball, nor to allow his opening partner's frustration to work itself out. This brought together Cameron Merchant and Grant Elliot who put on 165 in a beautifully paced third-wicket stand in just under 30 overs. In would have been more, but for the powerful allure of the batting powerplay, which had the distracting effect on the partnership that a scantily dressed Russian spy does on James Bond.

On the face of it, calling the powerplay early (in the 37th over) had a certain logic about it. Why not use it when two batsment are well set? But that view was unobservant. It failed to note that Merchant and Elliott had been accumulating runs at a smart pace by placing the ball through the gaps in the inner field. These closed in the powerplay, so the batsmen had to abandon the method that had been serving them so well. Both were out during the powerplay, though Wellington were fortunate that James Franklin was able to maintain the momentum, taking the total to a formidable 294. If the batsmen are hitting over the top, that's a different matter. I felt that New Zealand missed a trick in the final ODI against Pakistan by not calling the batting powerplay from the 16th to 20th overs to offer Ryder and Guptill five more overs with the field in. A lower-order player such as Kyle Mills could be on standby as a day-night watchman to protect the middle order.

Graeme Aldridge was ND's best bowler, as so often before, but being one of the most consistent performers in domestic cricket for ten years or so has not had the impact it might have had on the Basin's scoreboard operators, who managed to misspell his name in two different ways during the day.

One thing that has struck me this season is the revolution in fielding technique that has taken place recently. It seems to have become obligatory for any fielder chasing the ball to execute a sliding, twisting manoeuvre when picking it up. Here for example, Jimmy Marshall, one of the best fielders in New Zealand for a decade or more, seemed incapable of retrieving the ball without first prostrating himself across the turf like a novice nun. I must confess to experiencing a touch of schadenfreude when the unfortunate Nathan Hauritz busted something in his left arm or shoulder when performing such an action on his return to the Australian ODI team. Had he employed the tried-and-trusted bend-down-and-pick-it-up technique that has served us so well for two hundred years or more, he wouldn't have ended up on the operating table.

In the interval between innings a thick layer of cloud materialised over the ground, enabling Andy McKay to swing the ball at the start of the ND innings. He sent Brad Wilson on his way with a gorgeous inswinging yorker, and flirted with the outside edge like Marilyn Monroe. He might have had another wicket in the eighth over, but Ryder put down a sharp chance at slip, the consequent injury to his hand causing him to make his second oath-strewn exit from the field of the day. Today's There-is-a-thin-line-between-bravery-and-stupidity Award went to the two young lads who asked him for his autograph as he crossed the boundary.

A promising third-wicket partnership between Marshall and Hatwell was ended by a spectacular catch on the boundary by Mark Houghton, a rangy slow left-armer. Apart from some brief resistance by the Balkan combination of Devcich and Yovich, that was that for ND, who finished 52 short.

Wellington's reprieve was short-lived. A midweek defeat by Auckland ended their one-day season. ND lasted only a few days more, losing to Otago in the minor semi-final.

New Zealand v Pakistan, 1st ODI, Cake Tin, 22 January 2011

http://cricketarchive.com/Archive/Scorecards/305/305616/305616_bbb.html

My golden ODI run continues for another year. That's five wins for New Zealand and a washout since 2006. Like most of these games it was a cakewalk, Pakistan's paltry 124 passed in the 18th over of the reply, the floodlights superfluous, home by eight. Given the icy sou'easterly that pinned us to our seats like a guard dog, that was just as well. Cricket suits sultry evenings in Hamilton, Auckland or Hawke's Bay, but Wellington, like the UK, doesn't have the climate for it. I see that floodlit games are now being played in the old country in the first half of May. People will die as sure as standing up them against the back of the pavilion and shooting them.

New Zealand bowled superbly having lost the toss. It is hard to recall a loose delivery. Tim Southee swung the ball away on the line of off stump and finished with five for 33. Hamish Bennett took three wickets, and excited the crowd by bowling consistently at the miraculous speed of 140 kph. I realise that this may not sound much, but such is the monotony of medium pacers here that it is greeted as something wondrous, like Stephenson's Rocket was to people who couldn't imagine anything faster than a horse and cart.

Jacob Oram bowled a few leg-side wides, but took two wickets in two balls which appeased a section of the crowd which had given him a hard time. He is a controversial selection for the World Cup squad because of his poor fitness record, which is such that if he were any other species he would have been put down some time ago. He didn't help matters by dropping a sitter at long on from Shahid Afridi off Vettori. However, he remains the 11th ranked ODI bowler, and has the potential to be a matchwinner in the knockout stages, so is a good selection. Besides, he can be replaced if he is injured.

Impressive as the home bowling was, it has to be recorded that Pakistan batted dreadfully. They fished outside the off stump so much that they should have worn waders instead of pads. Only Misbah-ul-Haq resisted, and until the ninth wicket fell batted at his own cautious pace apparently oblivious to events around him, just as he had in the Test. Then a few well-timed blows took him past 50, and made the tenth-wicket partnership with Shoaib Akhtar the third-highest of the innings.

Jesse Ryder and Martin Guptill struck out from the start of New Zealand's innings, Ryder's hitting being particularly relishable. He, Ross Taylor and Brendon McCullum are all capable of playing a match-winning innings against any attack, which gives us hope for the World Cup, particularly if the bowling can retain the discipline it did today.

Shoaib Akhtar led the attack, back from his thirteenth retirement, but did so poignantly, a dog too old to bring back the stick. None for 47 from four overs. There is even a bald patch visible through the flowing black locks.

So ended New Zealand's horror run of eleven straight defeats in ODIs, a form of the game that had previously provided consolation to us for being so dismal in Tests. It was John Wright's first ODI as coach, and if he carries on in this vein he will be able to walk back to the hotel straight across the harbour, though it is never wise to draw any conclusions from a single ODI, particularly when they are being used for pre-World Cup experimentation.

A word about ticket prices, really just to irritate readers in the frozen north. For the Test I paid $75 for a ticket that got me into the Basin every day, which, even with the pound having shrunk to a value comparable with shiny pebbles, is still only seven quid a day. The ODI ticket was $27 for a seat behind the bowler's arm, and has an offer attached that allows me to get into tomorrow's domestic one-dayer for $5. This is a great country.

New Zealand v Pakistan, Second Test, Basin Reserve, 19 January 2011 (fifth day)

http://cricketarchive.com/Archive/Scorecards/305/305615.html
How much closer to bliss can you be than to have watched all five days of a Test match and still find all results possible at tea on the final day? Admittedly, if that statement were tested it might be found that it was only true in a parallel universe in which the New Zealand attack was capable of taking 20 wickets in a game, but even so, there was more pleasure to be experienced by being at the Basin for the past five days than a sackful of T20s could provide. The result was a draw, the possibility of which is said to be Test cricket's flaw, but which actually gives it a dimension that no other sport has.

The first hour of the day was New Zealand's, the rest Pakistan's. Three wickets had fallen by noon, two to Chris Martin in a fine opening spell from the northern end. With Pakistan's batting New Zealand's closest rival in collapsability, it seemed that the game would be wrapped up by mid-afternoon but Younis Khan and Misbah-ul-Haq had a contrary view. They put on 118 for the fourth wicket, separated only when Younis suffered a lapse of concentration on the point of tea. His dismissal cost Pakistan victory. He had been batting so well that only a marginal increase in tempo after tea would have taken the game.

Misbah-ul-Haq continued with the doggedness that he had adopted throughout the partnership, to which he contributed 37 compared with 81 from Younis. It was faintly disappointing, but entirely understandable, that no attempt was made to have a hit at the target once the draw seemed secure, but the prize of Pakistan's first series victory since 2006, and the first outside Asia for eight years, was too precious to have the safest of punts on. It was a personal triumph for Misbah who was appointed on the last-man-standing principle, the chalice not so much poisoned as fashioned from nuclear waste. By all accounts he is a good man who deserves his success. Geoff Lawson, one of the many to have held the post of Pakistan coach over the past few years, describes him as having the best cricket brain in Pakistan. For the ODI series to follow, the captaincy reverts to the more excitable Shahid Afridi.

It was a disappointing day for New Zealand, and in particular for Daniel Vettori, who took only one, late wicket. Over the past few years he has failed every time he has had the opportunity to bowl out a side on a turning wicket in the second innings. There was turn here as Mohammad Hafeez demonstrated on the fourth day, but Vettori could not find it, looking a bit of a sixth-day bowler. It seems that he will be remembered as a great one-day bowler (he is currently a street ahead in the ICC ODI rankings), but as a primarily defensive Test bowler. It could be that he goes down as New Zealand's Kapil Dev, someone who took stacks of wickets by bowling for a long time in a team short of bowling talent. I rather hope that he does not hang around long enough to become New Zealand's leading Test wicket taker (he has 345, 86 short of Richard Hadlee's record), as that should be in the hands of a great bowler. The most promising young spinner in New Zealand is none other than Kane Williamson, and he should not be the receptacle for all our hopes.

As for the rest of the attack, I stand by my earlier view that the admirable Chris Martin is fading into the sunset. He seems to be entirely dependent on the new ball to make things happen, and may be destined to go out with 199 wickets. Brent Arnel does not appear to have his captain's confidence, and his captain is probably right. Jimmy Franklin is in danger of passing, as Michael Foot said of David Steel, from being a promising newcomer to an elder statesmen with no intervening period.

The great hope of New Zealand fast bowling is Neil Wagner, a South African who completes his qualification period soon (but not in time for the World Cup, alas). He bowls sharp and accurate left-arm fast for Otago and looks ready to step up. There is also Adam Milne of Central Districts who shifts it at 150 kph, but he is only 18 and must not be rushed.

We should be getting excited about the third Test now, but there isn't one, a six-game ODI series building up our stamina for the interminable World Cup instead. I'll be at the Cake Tin on Saturday trying to look excited.

New Zealand v Pakistan, Second Test, Basin Reserve, 18 January 2011 (fourth day)

http://www.espncricinfo.com/new-zealand-v-pakistan-2010/engine/current/match/473922.html

The expected deluge threatened the Basin for most of the day, but cost us only 23 minutes for a light shower after tea, and that was made up at the end of the day. The price we had to pay was thick humidity of a kind that we rarely experience in Wellington, and tend to regard as an Auckland affectation. For part of the day it appeared that all the game wanted to do was to have a cool drink and a lie down. Nevertheless, an intriguing final day has been set up, in defiance of the meteorologists.

Brendon McCullum and Martin Guptill batted through the morning for New Zealand's first century opening partnership at the Basin in nine years. McCullum increased the pace of the innings as the morning went on, and cut brutally. When he was out for 64 just after lunch, things went quiet. Kane Williamson made a typically well-organised 15. If he had a winter job in an office, his desk would be the tidiest, and he'd be fantastic at filing. Here, his focus was on batting correctly rather than moving things on, which is exactly what it should be for a 20-year-old Test No 3.

Guptill was out soon after Williamson, for 73. It was an admirable innings and he became more confident in playing shots square of the wicket as it progressed. But he didn't have another gear to move up to, which is odd for a man who was first noticed as a one-day strokeplayer. I wrote the other day that ideally he and Williamson would be left to develop at Nos 5 and 6 and the responsibility of opening seems to have curtailed his natural flair. It will be interesting to see how quickly he adjusts to the 50-over game at the weekend.

It was something of a relief that Ross Taylor and Jesse Ryder came together before tea to inject some urgency into proceedings. Ryder came in on a king pair, and had been out first ball in the second innings at Hamilton too. He did his best to oblige the bowler and the statisticians by shaping to cut a straight ball, but adjusted the shot just in time. Even during a poor run, Ryder has the gift of making cricket seem a simple game. Today he got off the pair by crashing a four over mid-wicket, with a six following in the same direction shortly thereafter.

But he had not escaped the first-ball hoodoo. Facing part-time off spinner Mohammad Hafeez, Ryder waved past the first ball after tea, only to see it collide with the off stump. Hafeez extracted more turn from the pitch than Abdur Rehman, who is accurate, but spears it in. The offie had Franklin caught behind in short order and the aim of the innings was transformed from pushing on to set a target to collapse prevention.

Taylor, approaching top form once more, held things together and kept the score moving at around three an over. He was well supported by Reece Young, whose second Test appearance is a vast improvement on his first.

A flurry of wickets fell in the final half-hour leaving New Zealand all out, a good thing as it removes the temptation to bat on in the morning. New Zealand has to win the match to draw the series, so must take all the risks. Pakistan's target is 274, which is as finely balanced as can be, if only the rain stays away.