In early January of this year I was in Jaipur. I was attending a friend’s 50th birthday celebrations and was following England’s misera...
In early January of this year I was in Jaipur. I was attending a friend’s 50th birthday celebrations and was following England’s miserable slump to an innings defeat at Sydney online. The Ashes had been sacriiced 4-0 and images of Steve Smith holding aloft the little urn appeared in the Times of India. Smith is an IPL icon, and oficials of the Rajasthan Royals I was with were crowing excitedly about the forthcoming tournament. They were back involved after a two-year suspension (for a controversy allegedly involving one of their shareholders) and they were about to appoint Smith – who irst made his name as a Royal in the early years of the tournament – as captain. In mid-February he was duly announced as such by the team mentor Shane Warne. Smith was an Australian hero, an Ashes-regaining captain with a Test batting average second only to the great Bradman in the history of the game, and now he was going to lead his old team back into the IPL fray.
Life was good. Then, a month later, came Sandpapergate. Smith, if not condoning then at the very least turning a blind eye to blatant, premeditated ball tampering, had been sacked as Test captain and hit with a year’s suspension from international and Australian professional cricket. He was an Australian villain. He made a tearful apology to the public and vanished from view. Of course he resigned from the Royals. He had no choice. How the mighty fall. There are two things to say about this sad episode. One, he was unfortunate that he took the rap for Australia’s general unsavoury presence around the game for the preceding two years, but two, he was extraordinarily naive to think that a) Australia would get away with what they were doing and b) a simple admission that what they did was wrong would be suficient to keep him in his job. He actually said: “This won’t happen again on my watch” as per ipl news latest.
“Damn right it won’t happen under your watch, Steve,” I wrote at the time. “I can’t see him ever again being put in charge of a pub quiz team, never mind an Australian cricket XI.”
Smith was, in some ways, a victim of his time. The increasing income top sportsmen have accrued in the last decade, and the fawning acclaim lavished upon them, has increased their isolation from everyday life. They know little of the hard yakka most people experience getting up for work at 6.30am – or getting breakfast down the kids – through a long, harassed, often poorly paid day, before lopping into a chair to watch I’m a Celebrity for half an hour and putting the bins out. International sportsmen meanwhile are spoonfed everything, transported everywhere and surrounded by sycophants. It generates a feeling of invincibility.
They think they can pretty much get away with anything, as the drinking habits of England’s one-day team – culminating in the Stokes/Hales incident in Bristol – had proved. The only thing worse than the Australian players’ deluded behaviour was the torrent of outrage and self-loathing emanating from down under since as if they were guilty of serious war crimes or something. But then this is a country that bans umbrellas from cricket grounds for being dangerous implements and forbids resting an elbow out of the window when you’re driving, so what more would you expect? Where was Dame Edna when they needed her?
Not long afterwards, the ECB caused outrage themselves with their announcement that the new city-based competition for 2020 would be 100 balls a side, including, possibly, a 10-ball over. If they were attempting to create some white noise around the new tournament they achieved it. Social media went into meltdown. Incandescent of Ipswich had a ield day, especially when the likeable but error-prone ECB chairman Colin Graves declared that “young people are not attracted to cricket”. (More than 57 per cent of The Cricketer’s online readership is in the 18–34 age bracket. But maybe they do not qualify in Graves’ eyes as ’young’.) In fact the ECB’s biggest error was not the 100-ball concept itself, which has some (I said ‘some’) merit, but the uncertain way it was announced, springing it on everyone – even the stunned county chairmen – without it being fully formed. Throughout the summer and the 100 trials the ECB has seemed like someone stumbling about in a dark cave trying, and mostly failing, to ind the way out. (It was inevitable, after such a charade, that the T20 Blast, now sponsored by Vitality, would break records for attendance and it did.)
The announcement of Ed Smith as the new chief England selector was less unexpected especially once he was asked by the interview panel if selection ‘is art or science?’. As he would have answered ‘both’ and gone on to philosophically and uncontestably explain why, he was soon sworn in. He demonstrated the ‘art’ part of it by recalling Jos Buttler to Test cricket despite a moderate irst-class record. He was more persuaded by Buttler’s innate skill and a sequence of ive successive ifties in the IPL.
While this was all going on, Pakistan’s Mohammad Abbas had stolen into England to warm up for the Tests in the relative anonymity of Grace Road. He then promptly reduced Ireland to 7 for 4 in their inaugural Test match and inished with 9 for 110 in the match as Pakistan edged home by ive wickets. If England – and various experienced pundits – assumed it was all to do with Irish inadequacy and a cabbage-patch pitch, they were wrong. Abbas did the same at Lord’s (8 for 64 in the match) to win the irst Test by nine wickets. No one could fathom Abbas’ stuttery run-up and amiable-looking 79mph deliveries, nipping this way and that, and they still can’t. Since the start of the English summer he has taken 104 (irst-class and Test) wickets at an average of 15. His current Test bowling average (16.62) is the lowest achieved since 1914.
It took intrepid tactics from Keaton Jennings – batting so far out of his crease he was warned by the umpires for encroaching into the danger area (for bowlers’ followthroughs) – and a brilliant counterattacking innings from Buttler, to nullify him. The nerveless debutant Sam Curran – another selectorial surprise – provided a useful ally. (ipl news latest)
Despite his absence, Surrey were leading the Championship and looking forward to welcoming Virat Kohli for three matches – at Beckenham, Guildford and Scarborough of all places. It led to them asking for extra cameras to be installed at Scarborough for the new live streaming service that was all the rage. Kohli was ultimately sidelined by a back injury and pulled out of the deal, but Rory Burns and Ollie Pope made the decisive contributions in a hard-fought win, and topped the irst-class averages.
It was an exceptionally lop-sided summer schedule, and now white-ball cricket took over both regionally and internationally. There was further unrest in the shires. Yorkshire did not play a Championship game at Headingley between April 23 and August 29. It made Adil Rashid’s decision to play only white-ball cricket for club and country at least slightly more logical. But he might have had second thoughts when his leg-spin was lashed all over Edinburgh by the undaunted Scots.
After that defeat and the one in the Champions Trophy semi-inal the previous summer, England’s vulnerability in one-off or knockout matches was theoretically exposed. Back to a longer rubber, and England ruthlessly disposed of a Smith-and-Warner-less Australia 5-0, and then won the decider in a three-match series against India.
So to the climax of the summer ipl news latest: England v India over ive Tests? Well no, not really. It was Anderson v Kohli actually, wasn’t it? The No.1 bowler against the No.1 batsman. As Kohli had been his bunny four years previously, Anderson was salivating. Despite that the Indians neglected to have a lengthy build-up, as is a tourists’ wont these days. It wasn’t easy for the England Test players either, given the lack of irst-class ixtures. Alastair Cook had to turn out for the Lions, for whom he notched a faultless 180, watched by the admiring India A coach Rahul Dravid. “We are a dying breed,” he said. “Modern batsmen get no satisfaction from a good leave!” That was clear from the way both sides’ batsmen went after the moving ball, and generally succumbed. Kohli was the exception, playing a monolith of an innings at Edgbaston having beneitted from England’s faulty slip ielding. Anderson, the victim, controlled his fury admirably, knowing there would be another chance.
Surprisingly there wasn’t. He bowled 212 balls to Kohli in the series, forensically examined his technique, begrudged him every single run, but never got him once. Anderson’s control, stamina and desire was immaculate. He went past 400 Test wickets in the decade during the Lord’s Test, a truly amazing performance. But Kohli stood firm and proud.
Unfortunately the rest of India wasn’t quite ready. England had taken a 2-0 lead before they had woken up and realised that Sam Curran was a handy batsman as well as nifty bowler. The inclusion at Trent Bridge of the strolling, stuttering but severe pace of Jasprit Bumrah – injured for the irst two Tests – gave India a serious cutting edge to pull it back to 2-1, in spite of a hugely deserved irst Test century for Buttler. (Curran had been surprisingly replaced by Ben Stokes after his acquittal at Bristol Crown Court.)
Two of the deining aspects of the series, apart from Kohli’s range of impassioned expressions – a Bollywood movie encapsulated – were the extraordinarily green outields and grassy pitches (this in the hottest, driest summer on record) and the way the bowlers utilised them, especially round the wicket to left-handers. Only once in the irst four Tests did a team manage 300 in the irst innings.
It was those factors that conspired to inally persuade Alastair Cook to announce his retirement. He was fed up groping at thin air. Opening the batting was no fun anymore. His concentration and determination were spent. He was running on empty. But, after Moeen Ali had sealed the series on a dry pitch in Southampton, he rose up deiantly one last time at The Oval. It was a special farewell. He had made a decent, at times luent 71 in the irst innings. But now, after England had snared a 40-run lead, he brought out his bat for the last time, on a sunlit Sunday evening in Kennington in front of his family and friends. Unburdened by responsibility and expectation, he got through painlessly to the close, 46 not out, allowing thousands of his loyal subjects to arrive on Monday morning to pay homage to the King of Concentration. He did not disappoint with some adroit defence, a judicious leave, a hurried jab to third man and a few of those trademark clips through square leg. It was vintage Cook. He even allowed himself the liberty of an off drive. The capacity crowd were in rapt attention. A steer to backward point took him to 97. But then there was a wild throw from Bumrah and the ball sped to the boundary presenting him with his 33rd Test hundred.
The overthrow was a metaphorical thanks for all those laboriously earned runs. The crowd rose as one and the roar could be heard in Whitehall. The ovation lasted over two minutes. I sat with Grandfather (Don) Root, who had seen Bradman bat (and was named after him). I’m sure I saw a tear in his eye. People say Cook is not a pretty player. For me there has always been beauty in the eficiency and control of his shots – placement and timing of great calculation and measure, iguring out the angles and cosines. He bats like a mathematician. No glamour or frills. Just go to the ofice and get the job done. He may not be England’s greatest batsman. But he is indisputably England’s greatest run-maker.
Root, the man who will one day steal his crown, made his irst hundred of the series, and the recalled Rashid (another of Ed Smith’s hunches) bowled the ball of the season and Jimmy Anderson took the inal wicket to become the leading Test pace bowler of all time. It was quite a inale. Surrey won the County Championship – their irst under the house of (Alec) Stewart – with a game to spare. This was not bought success, either. Eight of the winning team were homegrown, aided and abetted by the towering, titanic Morne Morkel who inished with 59 wickets at 14.32. He was one of 30 pace bowlers who took their wickets at under 20, making it oficially the Summer of Seam (in a heatwave?!). A word too for Kent, who made it out of Division Two for the irst time since 2010. And for Worcestershire, winners of the Vitality Blast on their irst appearance at inals day.
That was quite enough excitement for one year. And then England, where spin is mainly found in Westminster, packed their team with tweakers and won 3-0 on turning pitches in Sri Lanka. What’s more, Ben Foakes, someone who wasn’t even in the original squad, was man of the series. It has been a year of drama and surprises. Thank goodness for the Christmas break. We all need it.
COMMENTS