Thoughts on the 2000th Test

First up here's some newspaper coverage of the first ever Test: 2,000 matches and over 100 years later, and the game doesn't seem to have changed much. One thing that's noticeable from the coverage is the sense of excitement among the followers. As the report states, only a few hundred were there at the start, misinformed about the start time and aggrieved by Allen's withdrawal from the game. For the second day, there were 4,000 present. The eventual success of the competition gave rise to the Ashes.

There was certainly a lot of excitement about this one. The queues stretched for miles, St John's Wood Tube was closed for a time, and I was bloody lucky to get in, thanks to a mate who'd been queuing all morning. We had some nice seats near the front of the Tavern stand. I would say the crowd was about 60/40 per cent Indian/English fans, many of them youngsters thanks to the MCC's fantastic U16s ticketing policy.

Boy, does our attack look good. Broad looks the nastiest - wiry strength, a beautiful run up, a high, explosive action - the man looks built for the purpose of propelling a cricket ball very fast. Tremlett (see below), is quite simply a monster. I didn't see him bowl a half volley all day, and pretty much anything that lands in his half is going to be hard to hit. Anderson looked less threatening from side on, but the accuracy was incredible. And this was one of the first games I've seen him be really effective without really swinging the ball, until he got the new one. The bowling to dismiss Raina - sharp away swing following sharp inswing - was brilliant. At his best I think he's at the forefront of sport - an incredible combination of athleticism and skill. And watching Swann from side on is a great sight - you can see the subtle variations in flight and dip, probably a lot better than the batsman can. 

So I got to see Sachin bat, in the 2000th Test, and.....he faced about 30 balls and struck a single run. He was clearly under the weather. Poor sod. Everyone in the ground - or anyone with any sense, which on the whole cricket followers have - wanted him to get a ton. Many of them, myself included, might have favoured that over an England win. So he didn't make any runs, but the tenets of his technique were clear to see - absolutely, emphatically forward or back in defence to every ball. 

The other thing I found captivating was England's fielding. Pietersen and Morgan, in particular, seemed to have a kind of sixth sense about where the ball would be, beginning their movements almost at the split second ball met bat. England as a whole were an impressive unit - Morgan put one down and quick as a flash there was a fielder running up to him and patting him on the back. Upon taking the final wicket they looked like what they are - a group of friends celebrating together.

As to the result, it never really felt in much doubt. But my God, have the Indians had some bad luck with Khan, Gambhir and Tendulkar. With Khan I feel some blame has to be laid at the coach's door - if you're going to turn up with a half-cooked bowler, there's a question over whether seven batsmen is the right option, well though Raina played in the last innings. But all that didn't stop the atmosphere from being buzzing all day. I'm delighted I was there.

23/07/2011 - Bourne, Surrey

Another game, another loss. My second team is absolutely terrible - indeed, they're famous for being terrible - but this season has been worse than usual. We played on an ok green-top. The odd ball scuttled through very low, but otherwise it was even. There was plenty of grip for the spinners due to the dry soil peeking through the grass.

Batting first, we made 196. It wasn't a bad effort, but the opposition bowled most of their colts and plenty of joke bowlers, so 220-30 would have been more like it. We missed out on too many singles. I scored 22* at the end - again, I'm not timing it when I hit out as well as I should, but it wasn't easy with some extremely slow bowlers and the fielders out on the boundary. And a nearby bonfire being lit just as I went out to bat, leaving me trying to sight the ball out of a smokescreen. A loopy donkey drop plopped onto my toe at one point, and I was surprised to feel pain shooting across my foot. Now my toenail has turned black. Turns out even really slow cricket balls hurt.

So we were pretty confident, but less so when they got to 60-0 in reply, at 7 an over. As one of the opening bowlers I feel I should take some responsibility for this. So, excuses:

- They opened with a combination of good adult and small child, so I had to shorten my run up every other ball which really buggered up my rhythm.
- We had a really terrible wicket keeper which I found off putting.
- Nearly half the runs came off me in misfields. We are absolutely terrible in the field.
- We had a really old and worn ball, which meant I had to bowl cutters. Some of them gripped and went miles, too far for the batsman to nick. But I had less control over them than if I'd been sending it seam up.

Facts:

- I bowled like shit.

We managed to work our way through their order, and I came back with 6 overs to go. We had one of those horrible situations - 5 wickets left, about 30 or so for them to win, with a draw another possibility. We had to try to win it. I figured the best way to do it was to bowl floaty spin and get them playing their shots. Which it did. And it got me two wickets. The trouble was, I also went for a few, and so did the guy at the other end. We were left needing three wickets, and them needing 12 to win off the last two. Suddenly, somehow, they'd ended up favourites. My over went for six in byes and whatnot, and they won in the last one.

We'd gambled; we'd lost. If I'd bowled seam up I think the draw would have been the most likely result, but we were desperate to win, and gave runs away in our efforts to do so.  There were plenty more culpable players - catches went down, the captaincy was questionable and misfields occurred left right and centre - but at the same time I felt pretty crushed. I guess if I'm right to feel down about my performance it needs to be the bowling in my first spell, not the second. We just don't know how to win.

The difference between my two teams is enormous. In terms of talent there's not such a massive difference - a few class players apart - but in all the minutiae of quick singles, tight fielding and tactics there's a gulf of epic proportions. When I was batting at the non-striker's end it got whacked to long leg, and thinking it was a certain four we stopped running, missing out on at least two and maybe three runs. That would probably have got us the draw. Cricket is a game of minutiae.

Yesterday was the best Test Cricket I've ever seen

Actually that's bollocks. But it was bloody, bloody good. Here are two things I enjoyed:

1. Kevin Peter Pietersen: As someone on the Guardian pointed out, this probably gives us a good idea of the batsman he's going to be in the second part of his career. It was a schizophrenic innings - the last 50 took 25 balls; the first 100 was his slowest ever. The dual between him and Kumar was fascinating stuff. He had elected to get as far outside off stump as he possibly could, hoping to remove LBW from the equation. From this position he could work the ball to leg whenever he didn't have to reach for it. Only three balls went through the off side. Kumar could see this and was trying to mix up the away swingers outside off with the occasional leg stump yorker that could nip behind his pads. This was proper Test cricket - Pietersen's technique against Kumar's skill. Other batsmen adopted more conventional approaches - and while Trott and Bell looked good, they both got out in conventional ways. KP deserves credit for his enterprising approach to the problems he posed.

As Vaughan and Boycs had pointed out, the problem on Thursday evening was that Kevin wasn't perfectly balanced as the ball was being sent down. On Friday there was slightly less swing, and the balance looked largely perfect. He got himself across and began to play with more of the bat through mid-on, rather than mid-wicket. Once he'd got to 150, his tactics changed entirely - this was the Kevin of 2005, the wonderful leg-side thumper with an uncanny sixth sense as to the whereabouts of gaps. This is the batsman who clears the bars, who always gives you your money's worth. I've watched him live in full flow and the brutality, against people bowling really fast, is stunning. Yes, there was no Zaheer. No, Sharma and Harbhajan weren't on their games. It was still breathtaking stuff.

2. Praveen Kumar: Many people commented on how the attritional nature of the opening exchanges gave the game something of an old-school vibe. Kumar's performance had something of the old-school medium pacers we've barely seen other than Asif. Terry Alderman and Alec Bedser have both been mentioned - certainly after the 40-over spell the latter comes to mind - this was proper unstinting medium pace trundling.

Actually the bowler he most reminds me of is Edward Simon Hunter Giddens, another swing genius who'd managed to master the tiny alterations in seam position required to swing it both ways with no change in action. Both had a supple, wristy flick in their delivery. Giddens did brilliantly on debut in 2000, but was dropped later in the summer, a touch unfairly I thought. I suppose that, like Kumar, the general feeling was that without a new ball, helpful conditions or both, he'd be cannon fodder. I actually think Kumar has more about him than that - I thought the same of Giddens.

It's a really, really hard art. As a left armer I can swing it in quite easily, but when I try to bowl the ball that comes out counter to a side on action - away swinger - it's much tougher. I can get the seam going down in the right place, but I lose all pace and control. How ironic that Duncan Fletcher, he formerly of the 90mph or nothing school, is his coach. Yesterday was all about technique and artistry. If those big names get going, we might have another day of it today. The only blemish was the catch at leg gully, which the third umpire denied. Confused by the Indians' lack of willing to use Hawkeye and yet use this - the most flawed bit of technology there is.

A theory of good fast bowling

Here are some things which really good bowlers have:

a) Express pace. 90mph plus.

b) Bounce. Lots of bounce.

c) Ridiculous levels of accuracy

d) Huge amounts of late swing or exaggerated tendency to move it off the seam.

e) Separate category. Be left handed, over 80mph, and have an in-swinger. e.g. Vaas, Khan, Sidebottom for a time.

The very best pace bowlers, who average close to 25, have at least two of the four.  Allow me:

Pollock, McGrath, Garner, Ambrose = b + c (and sometimes a in the West Indians' case).
Lillee, Younis, Akram, Marshall, Steyn = a + d (and usually c).
Hadlee (later period), Asif, Stuart Clark= c + d
Odd rare category of express pace and huge bounce - Harmison (when he could get it vaguely straight), Mohammad Zahid  = a + b.

So accuracy is basically a constant. Mohammad Sami is a classic second tier bowler - pace and swing, but no direction. Had Lee been more accurate in the first half of his career, his record would be way better.

England don't have anyone who meets all the criteria. They all pass on b) with the exception of Anderson who passes on d).Tremlett comes closest to passing on c), but not enough yet. Bresnan doesn't pass on any of the criteria, but he's decent on all the counts.

There it is.

15/07/2011 - Wormsley

Two words: FUCKING AWESOME.

Ok, so there's not much to be said about the ground that hasn't been said before, except now I can add: I GOT TO PLAY AT WORMSLEY. Here are all the snaps. CC's mate had managed to blag five of us from my team into a six-a-side tournament for the Lord's Taverners. The only downside was that we were forced to represent a Giant Vampire Squid (actual name redacted due to fear of lawyers/hitmen), despite the fact that only he works for it. So every time we did something good the commentator (oh yes), said 'that's great play from the Giant Vampire Squid.' And at one point he apologetically added: 'The Giant Vampire Squid invests a lot in inner-city cricket: not a lot of people know that.' Maybe he'd just seen someone leaving a turd in one of our kit bags and felt sorry for us.

All to play for then. And between us and the trophy, the small matter of five other teams, each with an ex-pro. We had our own, and it's fair to say we drew the long straw - not only had he played a Test and some ODIs, but unlike all the others he was still playing for his county. And as the day went on he proved to be a class act: self-deprecating, funny and above all really bloody good at cricket. Over lunch he told us who he hated bowling at the most (here's a shock: Hayden) and hated facing (Akhtar and Lee, would you believe).

Didn't go so well in the first game though. The bowling was fine (we only had an over each) though my last two balls went for four (a Chinese cut and byes) which lead to the commentator, who I think was already tanked up by this stage, describing CC's over as 'expensive', and plenty of spluttering from yours truly. So I was keen to make up for it with the bat.

Our pro went for a golden duck, his middle stump pegged back by son of a famous England player. I was next out, and reassured my team mates: 'don't worry, he's a tail ender anyway.' Turns out I might have been a bit over-confident, what with said pro the proud owner of 4,000 first class runs, which as it happens is 4,000 more than I have. My middle stump went back 10 yards, first ball. I think it's my second-ever Golden Duck, but it might actually be my first. The guy generated pretty whippy pace off a four-pace run up, and I just wasn't expecting it. He'd done me so comprehensively that I thought I'd got a grubber. Later learned I was just stuck on the crease. Fortunately our number 5 saw off the hat-trick ball and we got to the last ball of the game with 3 to win, 2 to tie. He hit it for six. Some things we deduced about our number 5 from this:

- He has balls slightly bigger than Jupiter, and made of adamantium.
- We probably owe him a drink some time.

Sat out the next game, which we played against a much weaker team and won pretty easily. They had some crap spinners, and our pro hit them miles. It wasn't the only mismatch of the day - in another game a former England player made a batsman look so stupid that he turned around, knocked his stumps over, and stropped off. Another batsman tried the same trick in another game, and the umpire rather amusingly called dead ball, so he had to carry on playing and missing. In another game a very slow bowler sent down a full toss to a former England player who'd been renowned In his day as a big hitter, and the next thing we knew it had travelled over 100 metres into a neighbouring field.

So we were in the final, against a team who'd looked very good. We got off to an iffy start - the oppo had some midget from Western Australia who bowled far quicker than someone that height should, and he tied down our openers, the pressure forcing a run out and a bowled. To quote Rain Men on short bowlers: Napoleon invaded Europe. This put our pro in, and he immediately started winding him up. I'm thinking this was good professional tactics - get him rattled, make him lose his rhythm - but I wasn't particularly thankful when I went out to face a furious Aussie shortarse on a king pair. Luckily the first ball pinged out the middle through cover, and I was off.

It was a tricky situation - two wickets left, so I couldn't really afford to get out for three or so overs, but we had to go at ten an over for a par score. I didn't time it very well at all - actually that's an understatement - but I kept going at a run a ball, which gave our pro plenty of strike, and he seemed to hit pretty much everything for six, four or two. I ended up about 20 not out, and we'd set 80 off 8 overs, probably par. If I'd timed a few more and we'd had a better start I think we could have got to 100, which would have been a tough ask, but 80 was something to bowl at.

Sadly, the other team were much too good. I guess most of us at our best are league second team players who wouldn't disgrace themselves in the firsts, whereas they had some proper first team players. My over -the second - was fine - with four fielders to play with I figured the best bet was to go three on the off side boundary and one on the leg, and bowl full outside off. Doubt I'd have got away with another one like that though. They really showed their class later on in the innings, and won with an over to spare. With a few more runs we might have pushed them harder, but I reckon even 20 more might not have been enough, and anyway, our pro had done most of the work for us.

No disappointment: ultimately it was a FUCKING BRILLIANT day. In fact, I'm going to throw this out there - the best day's cricket I've ever had. Huge thanks for the invite, well done to everyone on our team, and my God I hope to do it again some day.

10/07/11 - Hutton, Essex

A terrific game. I was captain for the day. By mutual agreement with the oppo skipper we bowled first, and started terribly. I was completely hungover again, and bowled like an absolute drain. Turns out being hungover really impedes the bowling too: I kept dropping short all the time. You really need to be bowling a decent amount if you want to be accurate - back in the day I bowled about 20 overs in a weekend and I reckon you need to do at least half that, and some in the middle of the week, if you want to avoid giving a four ball every over.

Fortunately our second string bowled absolutely brilliantly, and we managed to restrict them. Would like to take some credit for the field placings - we caught pretty much everything, in some part due to my making sure the three people who could catch were standing in the right place.

Our reply started really well. At 40-0 we fancied our chances. But one of our openers went to a bad bit of luck, (a slightly too-soft-handed defensive shot saw the ball dribble onto the stumps), while the guy hitting all the runs went LBW. Numbers three and four were lesser players whom I'd bumped up the order so that they could get a go, and neither of them contributed much.

I then came in and cruised to 15, before some absolutely horrible luck. I went for a cover drive to a full, slow ball, and slightly misjudged the length, the ball hitting the toe of my bat. Normally that wouldn't be a problem - you certainly wouldn't expect it to somehow dribble back onto the stumps. Never been out like that before, probably never will again. Odd thing, batting - it was totally my fault for not timing the shot a fraction better, but it felt like I'd been totally robbed.

We scrapped our way towards the total, but with three overs to go our last pair were at the crease, with 11 to win. One was a batsman I'd stuck down the order to fight fires in case we were 40-8 (we usually are), the other a bona fide number 11. The bowling was good - fast and straight - and the batsman I'd put down the order ended up having to see out the final over.

It was a thrilling ending. to a great game, played in fantastic spirit against a lovely bunch of blokes. Hutton is a proper club (they field five teams), and this was very much an occasional Sunday side, but they still dug out some good players for us. The wicket was excellent, with something for the bowlers but not too much, and even though I contributed absolutely nothing of any value I really enjoyed it. I guess the fact it was such a close game made it better. It's relatively rare you get a close game played in good spirits too - often it's either one or the other. Really want to play there next year.

09/7/11 - Hampstead Heath Extension

Ah rats' cocks. The pitch, by council standards, was just about ok (again the rain had taken a lot of sting out of it). The bowling was mostly terrible. Three batsmen had already made 50 and retired (thank Christ, otherwise there'd have been carnage). I'd got to about 30 at a run a ball with no trouble whatsoever, but with 9 overs to go and only one wicket down I figured I had to hit out. I tried for four overs, and barely connected once, other than the occasional edge past the stumps. I scored much slower than if I'd just batted normally, and ended up with 38. Not a disaster, but a 50 would have been nice.

Earlier in the season I'd made 46 off 25 balls, so I know I can do this sort of thing...what went wrong? Really dunno. The pitch wasn't the easiest for full-on slogging - we'd scored quickly off the many bad balls, not by hitting through the line - and everyone else's attempts down the order at smacking it came to nothing. I guess the earlier innings was based on proper shots, whereas in that situation I was just trying to hoon the lot for six. It was probably the right thing to do, I just wasn't quite good enough. I got caught up on reverse hitting the spinner into the big space behind square on the off side, when actually using my feet to him might have been the more sensible choice. I was either thinking about the shot  - which put me off the shot I was playing - or trying to play the shot, and missing.

Worse was to come in the field - two dropped chances, to go with one in the last game. One was a slip chance down by my ankles which I just wasn't ready for, and then an absolute shocker at deep midwicket. The problem's simple: hard hands. The solution: I have no idea. Chuck me the ball in training and I'm usually ok - not great, but I can hold the simple ones. Still, good fun, though our team really need to get some new oppositions....we've improved beyond recognition in the course of a couple of years. We still know how to take a photo though....