Cricket

I was going to write something about the 2000th test match but was distracted by Murdochpalooza. Happily this is not actually the 200th test. Or it should not be. The ICC, reliably mistaken as ever, have given test status to the (disappointing) 2005 match between Australia and the Rest of the World. The Bearded Wonder and his successors do not approve of this and there has, consequently, been much chuntering about the matter in scoreboxes across the land as this trivial-yet-oddly-significant landmark approaches. It is not the fact that the 2005 match was a marketing ploy that rankles, it is the inconsistency. If the 2005 match is given test status

Via Johnson, a remarkable statute in Victoria which criminalises: Any person who in or near a public place or within the view or hearing of any person being or passing therein or thereon- sings an obscene song or ballad; writes or draws exhibits or displays an indecent or obscene word figure or representation; uses profane indecent or obscene language or threatening abusive or insulting words; or behaves in a riotous indecent offensive or insulting manner- shall be guilty of an offence. Penalty: 10 penalty units or imprisonment for two months; For a second offence-15 penalty units or imprisonment for three months; For a third or subsequent offence-25 penalty units or

Three days on and Sri Lanka’s collapse to 82 all out on the final day at Sophia Gardens remains astonishing. What should have been a routine voyage ended in disaster. One minute the Lankans were supposed to ease their way to a comfortable, even dull, draw, the next they were holed below the waterline and then, within minutes, broken-backed and disappearing into the murky oblivion of the deep. Such is life and such is cricket and test cricket still enthralls. The old dame still has some songs in her pipes. It’s not uncommon in other sports – golf, snooker, tennis – for a competitor playing poorly to drag his opponent

So England will have different captains for each form of cricket this summer. Fine. Nothing much to see there. Much more important, really, is the news from South Africa: Australia’s forthcoming tour has been cut to just two tests. As usual, the over-crowded calendar is blamed. As usual this is a reasonable diagnosis. As usual it’s test match cricket that suffers. And it suffers at the hands of people who claim to value test cricket above all other forms of the game. The sport’s administrators say they want to protect test cricket while at the same time they sacrifice it any time there’s a spot of fixture congestion or their

I’ve not been hugely impressed by Scyld Berry’s tenure* as editor of Wisden and his decision to name just four rather than the customary five Cricketers of the Year this season merely confirms that. It’s either a cop-out or a dishonourable play for extra publicity. Neither explanation reflects well upon the venerable Almanack. For the record the four players chosen are Jonathan Trott, Eoin Morgan, Tamim Iqbal and Chris Read. Morgan, in my view, scarcely deserves his place but none of the players chosen deserve to have their honour eclipsed by the controversy over Mohammad Amir’s exclusion. Berry has done the four cricketers he did deign to name a grave

Jonathan Bernstein has a jolly post attempting to select a squad of baseball players who are still alive to take on Babe Ruth and his comrades on the All-Dead team in some kind of hypothetical celestial match-up. This is the kind of parlour game that can’t be left to baseball alone. So here’s an effort to do the same with cricket: All-Dead XI: 1 Jack Hobbs 2 Victor Trumper 3 Don Bradman 4 Wally Hammond 5 George Headley 6 W.G Grace (Capt) 7 Keith Miller 8 Godfrey Evans (wkt) 9 Malcolm Marshall 10 Bill O’Reilly 11 S.F Barnes The batting, frankly, pretty much picks itself. I’d questioned selecting the Doctor

17th September 1932: Members of the MCC cricket team aboard the liner ‘Orontes’ at Tilbury, en route for Australia (left to right) Walter Hammond, Douglas Jardine (captain), Brown, Bowes, Duckworth (head turned), Harold Larwood, Leyland, Mitchell, Paynter, Herbert Sutcliffe, Verity, Voce and Wyatt. Photo by H. F. Davis/Topical Press Agency/Getty Images. No, not this lot – though they were so good they might have beaten Bradman and Australia in 1932-33 bowling to “ordinary” fields. At the start of the tour, however, Jardine’s men travelled from Perth to Adelaide by train across the Nullarbor Plain. It was a long, often tedious trip. To while away the time they picked various All-Time

Many thanks to Brother Bright for pointing me towards this completely charming British Council film about cricket. It’s narrated by Ralph Richardson and John Arlott and features the 1948 Lords Test – Bradman’s last appearance on the ground. The thing that’s striking is that while everything has changed, the essentials remain much the same. In that respect then, like monarchy, cricket is close to the epitome of a certain kind of English conservatism. For more terrific films from the 1940s and 50s, digitised and made accessible in part thanks to Martin’s New Deal of the Mind, pop over here.

So, little blogging here. Partly because, even more so than usual, I’ve been living on Australian time these past few days. I’ve a quick piece up at Critical Reaction on the Adelaide Massacre: Never mind ‘Were you up for Portillo?’ Were you up for Adelaide? An entire generation of England supporters have waited all their lives for this sort of payback moment. Not since 1985 have England dominated a series in this fashion; not since Mike Gatting led MCC to victory in 1986-87 have England enjoyed even a marginal supremacy Down Under.  Indeed, Gatting’s side was the last to win a ‘live’ test in Australia. You have to be over 35

There are only three things wrong with this Australian side. They can’t bat, they can’t bowl and they can’t field. A harsh verdict and one that may need to be revised before the end of the series, but one that’s an accurate appraisal of Australia’s most recent efforts. This is a good but hardly great England side. It ain’t Jack Hobbs and Wally Hammond hammering these hapless Aussie bowlers but Alastair Cook and Jonathan Trott… “There’s only one side playing cricket out there – and it’s not Australia” said a commentator on Test Match Sofa* which is the kind of deliciously piquant assessment England supporters have been waiting to dish

The first thing to be said of a test in which a side batting third can score 517/1 is that the wicket was not fit for test match cricket. The second is that, for once, this did not matter. Hilarity trumped common sense. None of us, not being present for the Melbourne test in 1912, can recall the 323 run stand shared by Jack Hobbs and Wilfred Rhodes but, somewhat sadly, that’s now been wiped from the record books by Alastair Cook and Jonathan Trott. Actually, the wicket was worse than even 517/1 suggests. The teams combined for a score of 624/2 in the second innings. That’s a Sri Lankan

Four years later than should have been the case, Andrew Strauss will skipper England in Australia. English cricket has righted itself since the Flintoff and Pietersen debacles. For a spell one sensed that marketing considerations were influencing cricketing decisions. The great strength of the present Strauss-Flower regime is that it is, in the end, almost dull. No drama, no fuss and precious little intrigue either. Australia, by contrast, are in some mild kind of flux. Where England picked their team before leaving home, Australia have been scrabbling to find players with sufficient form and fitness to justify inclusion. Xavier Doherty’s inclusion seems sensible but is based more on hope and