Cricket

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

Ahead of the Times revealing its post-war XIs, Norm has made his own selection. As you’d expect, they’re pretty strong teams. It’s a little depressing to realise that selecting a Greatest Post-1945 Australian side is much, much more difficult than doing the same for England. In fact I don’t think I can disagree with any part of Norm’s England XI: 1. Len Hutton, 2. Geoffrey Boycott, 3. Ken Barrington, 4. Denis Compton, 5. Peter May, 6. Ian Botham, 7. Alan Knott, 8. Jim Laker, 9. Fred Trueman, 10. Derek Underwood, 11. Brian Statham. You could, mind you, make a case for Frank Tyson. Alec Bedser is also unfortunate to miss-out.

Yorkshire cricket is the epitome of hard, correct cricket. Lancashire cricket is always bowling into the wind, beating the edge and wondering if luck will ever shine on the Red Rose. Kent cricket, I somehow feel, should always be played in a manner that has the ghosts of Woolley and Cowdrey murmuring their approval. These, of course, are generalisations. So if Trent Bridge remains the loveliest of Test grounds (“A lotus land for batsman”, as Cardus wrote, “where it is always afternoon and 360 for 2”), I’ve nonetheless always thought of Nottinghamshire as a kind of junior Yorkshire. From Arthur Carr and Larwood and Voce to Clive Rice and Richard

The News of the World’s revelations about connivance between cricketers and bookmakers is dismaying; the story can’t alas, be considered wholly surprising. If proved – and on the face of it there’s every reason to suppose that the allegations are accurate – then it’s difficult to see how Salman Butt and the other players implicated can escape heavy punishment (and perhaps in the skipper’s case a lifetime ban). The consolation, in as much as there is one, is that the evidence points to spot-fixing rather than match-fixing. Saying that the former is not as serious as the latter does not mean it’s unserious. It just means that matters could be

Broad and Trott skip on against Pakistan. Amir looks on in some pain. Photo: Clive Rose/Getty Images. One ball. One wicket. That’s how far away Pakistan were from establishing a match-winning and series-squaring position at Lords. Now only god or, more probably, rain can save them. When Stuart Broad joined Jonathan Trott at the crease on Friday England were reeling at 102-7. If any one of the next, oh, 180 deliveries had dismissed either batsman England might have been dismissed for no more than 200 runs and Pakistan would have enjoyed every chance of forcing another improbable victory and, in so doing, levelling the series. Such are the margins between

  Was it Warren Buffett who said investors should be wary of any company that decides it needs to spend huge amounts of cash on swish new corporate headquarters? If it wasn’t the Sage of Omaha then it was someone like him arguing that this is often a warning sign of a company behaving recklessly and with little regard to its shareholders’ interests. (Hello RBS!) Anyway, I thought of that when I saw, again, this sign at County Galway Cricket Club. Though there is record of cricket being played in Galway as far back as the 1830s (the original garrison game!) the present club dates from the 1970s. Recently they

All will be quiet here this week. I’m heading offline and, more importantly, to Ireland for a week of cricket. Six games in six days across three provinces is a punishing, even optimistic schedule. Then again, it can’t go any worse than it did on Saturday when my two overs were walloped for 29 runs. Anyway, see y’all next Tuesday.

I suppose that relatively few people in England knew Alan Ruddock, who died from a heart attack on Sunday aged just 49, but in Scottish and Irish journalistic circles he was a considerable figure. As Kevin Myers reminds us, he defied the IRA as editor of the Sunday Times’s Irish edition. Later, as Stewart Kirkpatrick remembers, he was a very fine editor of the Scotsman, presiding over the paper and its coverage of the first elections to the new Scottish parliament in 1999. Later still, and foolishly, the Irish Times declined to give Alan the chance to edit the old lady of d’Olier St. Their loss. Instead he wrote a

A new cricket season is upon us and something to take our minds off this election caper. Happily this also means it’s time for another lovely piece from Frank Keating, still the doyen of British sportswriters. This time he’s strolling down Shaftesbury Avenue, compiling an XI of playwrights who have played and loved the noblest game. It is everything you would imagine and hope it to be. Beckett* and Pinter and Stoppard feature prominently of course; so too Simon Gray. There’s this too, from Peter Gibbs, once of Derbyshire and subsequently of the stage: In that long ago piece Gibbs had been, in real life, even more metaphysical than Stoppard

Until today I had not known that Adolf Hitler played cricket. Once. Apparently. This is, actually, reassuring since it seems that cricket found him out and, as it is wont to do, smoked out the essential elements of Hitler’s character. Ben Macintyre has the story: Adolf Hitler played cricket. He raised his own cricket team to play some British prisoners of war during the First World War, then declared the sport “unmanly” and tried to rewrite the laws of the game. The Führer’s First XI sounds like a Spike Milligan joke, but this small nugget of history is true. In all the millions of words written about Hitler, his telling

I have many more enthusiasms than convictions (in any sense of the word) but I am certain about some things and enthusiastically so. Cricket and tobacco, for instance. They’re as natural a fit as ham and eggs. If the government really wants to clamp down upon smoking they should probably consider banning cricket – for in no other sport does Lady Nicotine provide such a useful, nay vital, service. There are the cigarettes you smoke when you’re waiting to bat and the wicket looks a little lively and the other mobs’ fast bowler has a vindictive look about him and you’re just hoping that he’ll have exhausted his allotted overs

Sunday evening: a roaring log fire, a calming glass of claret and listening to HMS Pinafore. For once, cruel world is vanquished. For a time anyway. And, of course, Pinafore helps illuminate our Britain too. Here, for instance, is how Bob Ainsworth became Secretary of State for Defence: And here is what the Barmy Army, if they had any wit about them at all, would sing* every time Kevin Pietersen** comes to the crease: *If sing they must. **Or Strauss, Trott and Prior too.