The Edge – a review

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Contrary to most reviews and comments I’ve seen, I don’t think The Edge was perfect.

There are so few cricket films – and even fewer where the filmmaker understands, as in this case, the sport with the same passion as we do, its intricacies and vagaries, its labyrinthine psychology, its beauty and its brutality – that we feel so unutterably grateful when one comes along that we dare not criticise for fear of putting off anyone else who might want to have a go.

So we press ‘Play’ with our expectations already set at 100% and we do all in our power to keep them there.

Having not seen a bad word said about it, and having loved my first viewing of it when it came out, I decided to watch The Edge for a second time.

Sticky start

I’m still not sure about the opening. A part of me admires the huge, sweeping ambition of the visuals and the spare, epic script; while another part of me can’t help but wince at the artifice of Jimmy Anderson running on the beach and the portentous rhetoric whose content seems somewhat insubstantial compared to the gravity of the style with which it is delivered.

I suspect there are many who loved it, probably most. For me, it jarred.

But then we’re into the action. ‘How much would you give to be the best?’ is the question asked and it forms the backdrop for everything else that is to come.

Visual treat

Whether the sweeping shots of a northern beach or the brooding bucolic expanses of Trott’s mind float your boat or not, there’s no denying that Barney Douglas has a filmmaker’s eye. This was evident from his first film, Warriors, which was also richly visual and delighted in the natural beauty of its setting to enhance the film’s aesthetic.

Here, the visuals not only make the most of the footage available but the set-up shots, such as the interviews, are elegantly arranged, even down to Andy Flower seeming to emerge from the shadows like a Bond villain.

The aircraft hangar, where the team’s route to becoming no.1 is visually charted in a way reminiscent of a Waking the Dead investigation board, is another striking visual choice that steers dangerously close to visual hyperbole. But there are subtler choices too, like the tape recorder used to indicate significant moments, which seems to meld with the overall aesthetic much better than the huge visual statements; and on the audio side, the brilliant choice of an energetic, discordant, discombobulating but insistent jazz funk track that accompanied KP’s brilliantly angry innings in 2012 against South Africa. Nice.

Talking heads

The film really gets interesting once the talking heads take centre stage. We start to see what makes players tick, what the dynamics were between players, the coach and the captain. We get little insights into personalities – ‘I didn’t know Andy Flower from a bar of soap’ says Tim Bresnan.

I was curious about how and where the players were interviewed and how much we were being presented with a narrative: Monty in a very everyday café location, cleaning his glasses nervously, with a glass of water in front of him; Strauss sitting back on an expensive sofa in a smart, well-lit room; Colly comfortable in a Chesterfield armchair; Bresilad in a no-nonsense room with a huge fridge in the background. The film needs a narrative to hold it together, of course, but it’s interesting to note the way the protagonists are presented to us – and how some who played a significant part, such as Tremlett, are not really mentioned at all.

I assume this is all down to the need to keep a tight rein on the narrative being told in a 90-minute film. I just wish it had been a series instead – it felt like so much must have been left on the cutting room floor. I’m sure there was enough going on to give or five or six one-hour shows, which would have been amazing.

Camaraderie

Trott’s story is one of the key threads running through the film, and he gets the full treatment when it comes to visual re-enactments of both his matchday routines and his psychological states. His teammates talk about his idiosyncrasies with a bemusement that is infused with affection, and this attitude typifies something of what it is that makes a great team (apart from ability and hard work): mutual respect and acceptance. Jimmy Anderson describes Trott’s unusual box routine and ruefully comments, ‘I quite miss that actually’.

Indeed the whole film describes an arc whereby at one peak moment, the cricket on the field and the camaraderie off it were at their zenith. The film perfectly captures that boisterous, successful dressing room environment that any cricketer of any standard will be familiar with, where all team-mates are equal and held in the warm embrace of the affectionate piss-take.

The pre-2010-11 Ashes boot camp section was fascinating. Firstly, a caveat: I hate this kind of macho bullshit with a passion and the footage did nothing to change my view. Andy Flower said the camp ‘revealed short-cutters, revealed character’. I would suggest it revealed what he wanted to find.

The campfire moment, though, which is what Strauss picked out as the key part of the camp, was powerful. This is where players opened up, shared vulnerabilities and developed trust, cemented a camaraderie that would stand them in good stead for the winter.

They didn’t, however, need to go through all the rest of the camp nonsense to get to this point.

An interesting aside is that, for family reasons, Cook missed most of the camp and Trott missed it all. These two were England’s leading run scorers in the series. (https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2015/jun/26/england-ashes-boot-camps)

With clear leadership, clear vision and a clear target from Flower and Strauss – to go from seventh in the world to number one in two years – they actually did it in 18 months. Then, fascinatingly, we have Strauss saying, ‘Holding that mace to say we were number one in the world…it was a bit of an anti-climax. Is this it?’.

And this is the challenge of being utterly goal-oriented: what do you do when you get there? When you realise that you reached an arbitrary point in what is actually just a game? When the structure that held your life together was a temporary one, a functional artifice whose raison d’etre disappeared in the moment of its realisation.

And so it was that the glue that held this team together started to decay.

For me, the last 20 minutes of the film were the best: the insight into the psychological disintegration of the team and some of its members, and the different ways in which that disintegration played out: Monty eating to fill a hole in his soul, Finny falling apart in the face of brutal press coverage, Prior raging against the dying of the light, Trott losing all sense of who he was and what he was doing.

As a society and as sports-lovers, we’re too committed to a linear view of sportsmen I think, especially when it comes to the psychological side. We need to allow for peaks and troughs, for how we’re very different people at different times and in different situations. We are constantly shifting and we mustn’t pathologise or over-dramatise these normal ebbs and flows.

I wonder: if Trott had been treated differently in 2013, might he have come back successfully? His England career was rich but surprisingly short and surely it must be the reification of Trott’s psychological dip that contributed most to this?

One of the positive unintended consequences of there being so much cricket now and rotation being a standard policy is that this might just create the space to acknowledge mental ups and downs, respond to them appropriately and ensure players can take a break and resume when they’re ready.

Trott

Trott was the central story of this film and we must be grateful to both him and to Barney Douglas for going in deep. The film’s willingness to look these issues square in the face turns it from a compelling sporting story to a vital human one.

The film shows Trott’s extraordinary confidence at the start of his career – ‘I knew I could go out and deliver’, he says before his Ashes test debut – and contrasts this with his disintegration at (what was essentially) the end of his career during the punishing 2013 Ashes.

If people, especially those with high pressure jobs or stressful personal circumstances, come away from this film with anything, it must surely be the value of knowing yourself and ensuring you have good people around you.

The problem with ‘mental illness’ (a disputed term but that discussion must wait for another day) is that it is rarely immediately obvious. People do not often drop into entirely different states of mind just like that (certain conditions excepted). It is slow, gradual, insidious – which makes it very difficult to pinpoint when it becomes a problem. And this is how it was for Trott. So when he felt out of sorts, he practised harder: this does not seem an unreasonable response for a professional sportsman. But something about that practice wasn’t right – he was getting peppered with 95mph deliveries from the bowling machine, over and over. When he wasn’t performing, he was down and miserable – but he’s a professional sportsman and this was his job, so why wouldn’t he be?

Perhaps Trott did not have the self-awareness at the time to take a step back – or maybe the stakes were too high, the environment too brittle to make that a choice. Equally, no-one stepped in at the first signs and tried to help him regain some perspective, to remember that cricket is not everything. As Matt Prior comments, ‘We never stopped to take a breath’. Exactly so.

It was fascinating to hear Trott explain how the situation affected everything, including his movements. Anyone who still hangs on to some kind of cartesian dualism should watch this film and understand that mind and body are one, constantly interacting and responding. So it is that when people are struggling, they may reach for food or drink or drugs, or they may become obsessive over exercise (or stop altogether), they may struggle to sleep, they may get pain, lose co-ordination and so on. The point is, if you know yourself well enough, you can begin to spot the signs that you’re struggling. And even if you can’t, then maybe someone around you can, and interrupt the chain of events before they reach crisis point.

[Damasio’s Theory of Consciousness and Porges’ Polyvagal Theory are both interesting explorations of the body-mind phenomenon if you fancy reading more. For a slightly less academic read, van der Kolk’s The Body Keeps the Score is a truly brilliant eye-opener.]

Trott’s final talking head of this outstanding film is deeply moving, capturing the ineffable, often unspoken bond of team-mates in a dressing room (indeed David Saker’s speech on the outfield confirmed it should probably remain unspoken, the ethereal turning lumpen as the words tumbled untidily from his mouth).

Andy Flower, towards the end, asks, ‘Why does it matter at all?’ What a great question.

The answer is that it helps us make meaning of our lives. Unless we are fortunate enough to have the unshakeable certainty of a religious belief system in our lives, then we make our own narratives to stretch a blanket of meaning over the existential void. It is hard to make meanings without other people and without relationships, without confirming your existence in the mirror of the other. As Andrew Strauss said, ‘It makes you feel alive’.

Yes, that’s about it.

 

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‘In adversity, I made my dream come true’

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When nine-year old Ali Layard was accidentally knocked off a narrow boat in 2012, he was dragged into the propeller, which removed 90% of tissue and muscle on his right leg between knee and ankle. The latissimus dorsi muscle was taken from his back and transferred to his leg, then he had a skin graft (from his thigh) to cover the transplant. And that was the good leg.

His left leg is the one that holds him back the most. The propeller removed the base of the tibia and most of his knee cap. A new knee cap is impossible because there’s nothing to support it. Ali was told by the consultant that his best case scenario would be that he might be able to walk with a stick and a stiff leg.

However, that was then and this is now. In one week’s time, 16 year-old leg-spinning all-rounder Ali will pull on his England shirt as part of the 15-man Physical Disability (PD) squad competing in the PD World Series in Worcestershire. Six weeks in intensive care, five months in hospital, years in rehab and an unimaginable amount of grit and determination have brought him to a moment he’s always dreamed of.

“While I was in hospital, I remember the IPL being on the TV. That reminded me that this was the game I fell in love with and always wanted to play. I was desperate to get better and it never crossed my mind that I wouldn’t play cricket again. When I pull on the England shirt, it’s an incredible feeling, it’s everything I’ve been working towards.”

The England PD team join India, Pakistan, Afghanistan, Bangladesh and Zimbabwe in the six-team T20 series starting on 5 August. England are strong and will be keen to avenge their defeat against another tournament favourite, Pakistan, in last year’s T20 International PD Tri-Series final.

England showed their commitment to the PD game with the appointment of fellow leggie Ian Salisbury as the first full-time head coach in 2017, at which time he already had an eye on the upcoming tournament as an opportunity for England to take a win on the world stage. The backroom staff now includes all you’d expect of a professional cricket team, including specialist coaches, physios and an analyst.

If they don’t win, it won’t be for want of preparation. “We’ve been preparing for this for months, ” says Ali. “We’ve had weekend and four-day training camps, lots of hard work in the gym and in the nets, lots of practice games. We’ve also spent a lot of time discussing everyone’s roles in the side, strategies against certain players and how the team works together as a whole.”

Ali has worked hard at his physical fitness as well as the technical aspects of his game. “The biggest thing for me is strength in my legs, ” he says. “Over the last few years, I was getting injured a lot but I feel much stronger now. I train at least five times a week, running or strength training or both.

“Physically, it’s been a long story since the accident but it’s been ok because of the amazing support I’ve had. Mentally, though, it’s been hard. It’s difficult to get your head round such a terrible injury. I had no confidence for a while, not even wanting to go outside wearing shorts – but I think I’ve come out stronger. You push through it and come out the other side.”

Ali says that visualisation is a tool that has become a huge part of his game, helping to calm his nerves and prepare him for the game ahead. He adds, “I’ll visualise my batting, my bowling and even my fielding. For example, I’ll visualise being at backward point, watching even for those small movements of the batsman’s feet that will give me an extra fraction of a second to begin moving the right way in anticipation of a shot.

“PD cricket is a great standard and not many people realise that because it’s not well enough known yet,” says Ali. “I’ve had people watch us play and genuinely not realise it’s a PD match; when they find out, they come up to me to ask what my disability is.”

Ali only found out about PD cricket at all thanks to former county paceman Steffan Jones, who spotted Ali by chance and quickly got him into Wellington College, where Jones is Director of Sport, on a scholarship at the age of 14. Jones then introduced Ali to the PD set-up. Ali is now a regular in the school’s first team.

Last year, Ali also made his debut for the able-bodied Somerset U15s. He had been in the reserve squad and was brought in to make his debut after someone dropped out. Ali took 6-44. “It was the moment I realised I really could match up to able-bodied kids and from there I really pushed on.”

Quietly spoken, polite and self-effacing he may be but Ali is resolutely ambitious. He says he would like to cement a place in the England PD side if possible, play for Somerset U17s (he didn’t make the squad this year) and ultimately play professional able-bodied cricket for Somerset. Citing the likes of Adil Rashid, Jason Roy and Jos Buttler as the cricketers who inspire him, he says:

“I’ll keep working in the gym, get stronger, get quicker, keep tailing the able-bodied lads then push on past them if I can. To play just one game for Somerset, even if I just came on as a sub fielder and took a catch, would be amazing.”

Meanwhile, Ali is joining up with his England PD team-mates who, he says, welcomed him with open arms. “I felt at home straight away,” he says. “They’re amazing and they inspire me to become even better.” How will it feel to play?

“I’d love more people to know about, and come to watch, the PD World Series but I don’t really mind how many people are in the crowd because once we all pull on our England shirts, we’re still playing for our country, being the very best we can be.”

Manufacturing a cricketing spectacle

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How do I love thee? Let me count the ways.

Scholars are divided on whether Elizabeth Barrett Browning was writing about Robert Browning or about cricket but her words came to me as I pondered my experience as a spectator in the crowd at the England V Pakistan World Cup match last Monday at Trent Bridge. (An intelligent, passionate poet, I think Elizabeth might have enjoyed cricket – although would have struggled with eight hours in the opium-free stand.)

Anyway. Her words dropped into my brain as I sat quietly watching the match while the Pakistani supporters leapt around me with ineluctable vigour. While there is no doubting their love of the game and their team, it became apparent that much of their more outrageous dancing and chanting came at the same time as the appearance of a TV camera.

And it wasn’t just the Pakistan supporters. The England-supporting schoolkids in front of us were frequently briefed by the cameraman to perform on cue. The camera didn’t just happen to capture some 10 year olds playing air guitar along to the terrible guitarist who was playing live during breaks in play, it captured them doing it because the cameraman had told – and shown – them what to do and when to do it, each of them performing on cue as he pointed at them one by one. The camera then moved away and they settled down to resume watching quietly and eating sweets.

Beyond the choreographed enjoyment, the simple presence of the camera changed the crowd dynamic. When it pointed at anyone, they leapt up to cheer and shout and wave. When it pointed at the Pakistan supporters, they launched into chants and dances.

We’re sophisticated enough to know now that just because something is on the TV or t’internet, that doesn’t mean it’s a true record of events. Selective editing, angles, re-takes and so on all mean that we are being shown a version of the truth. But live TV – most people would surely assume that what you see is exactly what you get? Well, it’s not. And not only that but the camera is not just a recorder of events but a shaper of events; not a neutral, objective presence but a presence that is an active part of the very spectacle it purports only to record.

As part of a broader picture that sees 4 and 6 cards and thundersticks handed out to everyone, that sees the Cricketeers hyping up the schoolkids to sing and chant, that sees music played in the ground to get the crowd singing along, and the picking out of anyone in fancy dress on the big screens for everyone to cheer – we are encouraged to express our pleasure at the spectacle and our support of our side in a very particular way. It’s a way that feels distinctly at odds with how many people might want to enjoy it but it’s the only way the authorities appear to want us to enjoy it. It’s not a 90-minute football match, it’s an 8-hour cricket match: we really don’t need to pretend that every minute is action-packed, every spectator is out of their seat with excitement, do we?

Without wanting to sound too curmudgeonly, I wonder if there is anything wrong with enjoying the game of cricket for what it is rather than feeling like you’re in a piece of performance art? In an era where scores of 300 are the norm and 400 is regularly within reach, and when so many truly thrilling players are showing spectacular skills, is this not enough? It feels as if cricket-the-product has become more important to the powers-that-be than cricket-the-game.

On supporting Pakistan

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Three sounds echoed in my mind as I left Trent Bridge on Monday, having watched England play Pakistan in the World Cup: the incessant dull resonant thud of thundersticks being whacked together, the exquisite sound as the ball hit Jos Buttler’s bat before disappearing through extra cover, and the soundtrack of the day: the chant of ‘Pakistan! Zindabad!’

I went to the match alongside teachers and children from the school where I am a governor – all of us the fortunate recipients of tickets through the commendable World Cup Schools Programme. It was a first big-match experience for all the children who went and they loved it. Our seats were allocated, sensibly, in the alcohol-free stand; this, of course, was also where the vast majority of Pakistan supporters were too. We had quite an experience.

If I know nothing else, I know now that Pakistan supporters love their cricket, their team and winning. They live and breathe every delivery. They walk a tightrope of joy and despair every single ball, they are the very antithesis of stoicism.

How has it come to this, I wondered. How is it that all the England supporters (unfuelled by stiff-upper-lip-inhibiting alcohol) sit quietly, applauding gently, and trying not to eat their lunch before midday, while the Pakistan supporters punctuate any quiet moment with a series of loud call-and-response chants, chatter excitedly, and leap from their seats and run down the steps to dance with impressive vigour and enviable disinhibition every time there is a four, six or wicket? This is no hyperbole: there was not one boundary hit that was not celebrated as if the match were won.

What is the dancing all about? Is it simply a message of joy? Surely it cannot be – it is too orchestrated, too deliberate (though undeniably joyful too). It appears to be a bonding experience, a moment for men (for it was exclusively so) to bond under one flag, one religion, one nation. It is perhaps a rare space to express themselves and the pride in the nation from which they or their forbears come. In a British society that sadly appears to be becoming less tolerant, this is a rare opportunity where they feel safe just to be.

That’s not to say there aren’t tensions. The interactions with the stewards are uneasy, both parties trying their best (some individuals succeeding, others not) to find a light-heartedness in their interactions that doesn’t come easy. Despite the supporters’ ebullience, there is an underlying sense of nervousness, a tacit awareness that despite the freedom they have here in the ground, it is still one that could be curtailed at any moment. At one point someone from the back of the Pakistan section throws a bottle of water which lands in the area in front of the seats. Every Pakistan supporter turned to look, repugnance writ large on their faces, followed by several exasperated cries of ‘Come on, bro’. There are a few minutes’ uncomfortable silence.

There is little tension in the crowd, however (apart from, understandably, the old couple who can’t see the cricket every time the Pakistan supporters leap up to dance. They were moved after a while – a sensible decision from the stewards). There is no sense of aggression or pending confrontation bubbling beneath the surface. Ultimately we all share a huge love of the game, even if we express it differently. Everyone of us is amused by national loyalty tensions that are embraced by the fans: the chants of ‘He’s one of our own’ whenever Mo or Rash come on to bowl (see this great piece from Mo for more on this https://www.theguardian.com/sport/blog/2019/jun/05/england-moeen-ali-cricket); the pantomime booing of an Asian man in an England shirt; the fans in half-and-half wigs and shirts proclaiming support for ‘EngPak’. A be-turbanned Indian supporter with a huge flag is embraced and sits amongst the Pakistan fans.

The schoolchildren we are with watch in bemusement and amusement everything that is going on, looking to the adults with perplexed faces as the famous Chacha Cricket sweeps regally around the stand, leading chants, greeting fans, taking selfies. I’m not sure how much adulation one man needs but clearly he is yet to reach his limit.

So I leave Trent Bridge having watched a wonderful match and experienced an extraordinary atmosphere that has left me curious to understand more about this group of cricket supporters, whose fervour is untrammelled, whose joy is unsurpassed and whose enthusiasm unimaginable. Where does it come from? What is it all about?

It makes me think back to the wonderful film Fire in Babylon in which one comes to understand the critical importance of the West Indies cricket team to the Caribbean diaspora, and I wonder if it’s the same for Pakistan today. There’s so much more than cricket at stake.

An implicit language

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One sunny afternoon on the school playing fields in 1982, the nine-year-old me came face-to-face with my Dad. In a father-son relationship founded in the old rules of stiff upper lips and unspoken affection, cricket was the medium through which we communicated, a way into a conversation where we could interact warmly, passionately even, without awkwardness. This was how we expressed our affection – and we accepted it. He knew no different, I knew no better.

As school drifted into the joyous last few days of the academic year, nine-year-old me walked to the wicket, heart thumping, ears alive to the cheers of encouragement from the boundary. Suddenly I became so self-conscious that even walking felt complex and mechanical, but I made it to the wicket and took guard in the annual Fathers v Sons match. The umpire confirmed my Viv Richards-inspired leg stump guard, I tapped my bat – my first, a size four Gunn & Moore – and looked up to see my Dad at the end of his run.

It was rare for him to go to a school event. But this was a special occasion. Mum had bought a picnic and a summer dress. While other dads who were playing wore jeans, tracksuits and trainers, my Dad was in his whites.

Dad bowled off-spin. I watched him begin his familiar, curved trot to the wicket, left shoulder dipping, before a short delivery stride and a surprisingly delicate pivot on his left foot. The ball hung in the air. So slow, so hittable. I swung as hard as I ever had, the shouts of ‘Go on, Nick, show your Dad!’ and ‘Six! Six! Six!’ spiking a surge of adrenaline.

As I swung my bat, I became aware that the expected moment of impact had come and gone. There was that instant between missing the ball and hearing it hit the stumps when you manage to generate a nanosecond of optimism before the sound of leather on ash crashes through your hopes.

My devastation was immediate and, I learned later, so was my Dad’s. He had thrown up a ball of innocuous gentleness, an offering from father to son, a delivery designed to ensure the moment belonged to me, not to him.

The tears prickling my eyes would not be swallowed away. The jeers and boos directed at my Dad made me feel better – and worse. My Dad prepared to bowl his next ball, utterly crestfallen.

In the weeks before he died, when his world had shrunk to reach only the edges of his hospice bed, his digital radio became the fire around which we gathered while his heart counted down its remaining beats.

We listened and agreed on enough to feel the warmth of our shared understanding, and disagreed on enough to maintain the fragile paternal carapace on which his dignity could rest. As consciousness became more fleeting, the mumbling of the radio alone, no matter what the words, was the blanket we wrapped ourselves in and huddled under while the cricket continued to wash over us with reassuring timelessness.

NET RESULT

I wrote this in July 2017 during the Women’s World Cup. The archive for All Out Cricket, the magazine for which I wrote it, seems to have largely disappeared so I’m uploading this, and possibly other articles, here for posterity.

Derbyshire CCC had put the call out to local club players to come and bowl to international teams while they were based at the county ground during the Women’s World Cup. Like a few other local hopefuls, I decided it was probably going to be my first and last chance to net with international cricketers, so I signed up.

I had been standing at the side of the nets for half an hour, waiting to be asked to bowl. I was neither warm nor loose. Suddenly the call comes. Now, my club team will tell you that my first delivery of a spell is something of a lottery. My bowling analysis after one ball frequently reads 0.1-0-4-0. So it’s fair to say that there was an element of trepidation as I marked out my run.

I picked up a white ball, stood at my mark and looked up to see Heather Knight at the crease, bat raised in anticipation. Yes, the England captain, having her last knock before her team would play on the opening day of the premier international women’s cricket tournament, one of the most important days of the players’ lives.

On the plus side, I made it to the bowling crease. From there, it went downhill. As I bowled, I felt as if I had momentarily inhabited someone else’s terminally uncoordinated body and following a confusion of limbs making a series of unrelated movements, I watched, powerless, as the ball landed – for the first time – nearer me than her, before looping in a miserable parabola and landing again three-quarters of the way down the net then finally falling miserably, ignominiously, ground-swallow-me-upingly into the side netting.

It’s amazing how long a few seconds can feel at moments like this. I jogged down the net to retrieve the ball and offer my apologies. The heavy silence was broken by the voice of a coach in the adjoining net, “One more in the side netting and you’re out.” I looked round to see if he was smiling. He was not.

I managed to land the next ball on the cut strip and spent the next 20 minutes trying to banish thoughts of side netting, the yips, beamers and broken fingers. Then I settled in, my body loosened up and I began to enjoy it. And by the time I got to Nat Sciver, I was bowling ok, induced an edge to first slip and am definitely claiming it as my first international wicket.

It was an interesting experience. Net bowlers are very much a commodity, human bowling machines to be switched on and off as required. You must be ready to bowl at any moment or be prepared to wait for an hour at the side until your type of bowling is required. Most volunteers were young and fit so their bodies, full of youth and vigour, seemed better suited than mine, full of age and inertia, to bowling on demand and without warning.

The day before the first match was a fascinating time to watch the England players close up. Brunt chirpy, Shrubsole deadly serious, Taylor busy and genial, most of the squad happy to sit and chat in groups when not required in the nets, happy to shoot the breeze. “The day before a game is very much the players’ time,” England coach Mark Robinson said, watching on. “They practise what they need to practise, maybe replicate what they might face out in the middle tomorrow. It’s important that the bowlers go and spend time in the middle, getting used to the ground and local conditions, see what it’s like bowling at either end and generally getting comfortable ahead of the game.

“I’ve already told the players who is in the starting eleven tomorrow. Sometimes I can do it the day before, other times we need to wait until matchday depending on the pitch, conditions, injuries and so on. Those in the side can focus on preparing well and it’s important for us to look after those who haven’t made the team. Apart from anything else, they’re only one injury away from playing.”

Watching the players from 22 yards, perhaps the most consistently striking feature of the batsmen was their timing. Tammy Beaumont in particular timed it beautifully, sending the net bowlers to the cover and mid-wicket boundaries with regularity. Sarah Taylor was less expansive and adventurous than I expected, perhaps still working her way back towards 100% – although never missing out on the chance to absolutely leather any half-trackers through midwicket. Having bowled to Heather Knight and Nat Sciver, I bowled to Fran Wilson, solid and powerful, and Danni Wyatt, full of energy and purpose. Then Alex Hartley and the chirpy Danielle Hazell batted while Anya Shrubsole practised hitting length balls for six in the next net.

Throughout, Mark Robinson stood and watched, occasionally having a brief conversation with a player or group. He cuts a thoughtful and largely inscrutable figure, his natural stance being arms folded and head tilted slightly to one side. However, he is calm, approachable and friendly, and has clearly formed an excellent and trusting relationship with the team.

As the session drew to a close, Mark Robinson was happy to chat. He had been quite content with all the net bowlers and thanked us for our time. Mark’s only slight concern had been the difference between the surface in the nets and the playing surface. The nets were a little slow, stopping a bit, turning and had some variable bounce, whereas the track the next day was expected to be a belter. He remained fairly phlegmatic about it though. “It is what it is,” he said. “It’s just that if anyone’s out of nick with the bat, this sort of surface can make it worse.”

A few days later and New Zealand were in town. I waited with half a dozen clubbies while the NZ team warmed up on the outfield. They were soon into a game of touch rugby – and the previously relaxed conviviality of the group changed quickly to intense competitiveness.

Moving into the nets, the atmosphere immediately felt different to when England were in town – probably indicative of the fact that NZ had just easily won their first game, while England had been facing the pressured prospect of the first match of a home tournament. As the net practice went on, the atmosphere remained utterly focused but also calm, with a real sense of underlying confidence.

The coach watching on was the epitome of that calmness. Even when one batsman got pinned by a bouncer, he took so long to walk down to see if she was ok that that by the time he reached her, she’d got up, dusted herself off, shaken her fingers and taken guard again. No dramas.

The bowler of the bouncer – and a number of others – was Lea Tahuhu. She was distinctly sharp and the only bowler across the two days that I saw bend the back netting at head height.

My own bowling was much steadier this time and I was fortunate enough to bowl at NZ’s two high-class batsmen, Suzie Bates and Amy Satterthwaite, who went about their business unostentatiously but classily. While still working on their own games, they were also giving feedback to the younger bowlers in the squad. I didn’t manage to get either out but did nick off one of the following pair for my second international scalp.

All the NZ players, and the coach, thanked the net bowlers for their efforts, which was a nice touch after two or three hours bowling to them. They’re a genial group (unless they’re playing touch rugby) and it was a pleasure to be a small part of their preparations.

Indeed, bowling to both England and New Zealand was a pleasure and a privilege – a high point in the bewildering litany of mediocrity that has characterised my recent cricketing life. I was able to stand and watch at close quarters two of the best international teams prepare for their biggest competition. While I’m not exactly expecting a call-up to the England’s next training camp, I hope my contribution helped the cause. Apart from that first ball…sorry Skip.

Book review: The Good Murungu

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Zimbabwe cricket seems to pitch itself either as an unfathomable soap opera that wallows in a bathos that ill befits its position as a test playing nation or as the utterly forgettable sub-plot to the tale of international cricket, becoming more and more irrelevant as time goes on. In Alan Butcher’s new book The Good Murungu, however, we gain some real insights into the parlous state of the game in Zimbabwe, which is so beset by problems that one must only hope that this book is more exegesis than eulogy.

The book details his time as coach of the country from 2010 to 2013, and as well as a great insight into the country and its cricket, this book presents a fine insight into the man. Alan Butcher appears to be someone not just interested in cricket but in life. He wants to know what makes people tick, he likes people who have views of their own, he embraces new ideas, is happy to be proved wrong and has a firm view of what he ought to provide as a coach. This combination seems like the ideal start for a coach who has to pull together any group of individuals, especially as disparate and complex as Zimbabwe’s.

The overall impression of Zimbabwe cricket that one is left with, certainly in the years Butcher was coach, is that it was involved in a slow, painful act of self-sabotage. Butcher reveals that players were treated appallingly, were criticised, talked down to, and were not paid for months. Instead of wondering why so many Zimbabwe cricketers gave up and headed for the certainty of a county wage, one is left wondering why there weren’t more.

Zimbabwe Cricket had crippling debts and little income except ICC handouts. Butcher reports that the situation was so hand-to-mouth that someone from the finance office went to the bank daily, sometimes for as little as $20. The coach clearly shelled out for various things from his own pocket – what else could he do when his players couldn’t get to practice because they couldn’t afford to put petrol in their cars or didn’t have enough cricket jumpers to keep warm on a tour of New Zealand?

The attitude of the powers-that-be was remarkable – a kind of egotistical, macho micro-management that Butcher summarises as, ‘Everything was confrontation, rarely an effort to understand, empathise or help.’ He describes a strange, deeply-hierarchical system, where respect was demanded not earned and power was an end in itself rather than a means to the greater good. It was a regime that routinely undermined the players and the coaches – then complained when they had little success.

It’s telling that after one confident performance, Butcher was asked how he made it happen. His response of ‘I just gave them some love’ was clearly so off-message that by the time the quote reached the papers, it was ‘I just gave them some glove’, with the implication that it was a rather more of a stick than a carrot approach.

Butcher’s method as coach has a lot to commend it and I like his considered approach. He appears to have always been willing to look at the person behind the reputation and to disregard others’ agendas in favour of making his own mind up. He is very thoughtful on the dynamics of teams and nature of relationships – and any coach who talks of the human condition and the Johari Window (look it up, it’s like Donald Rumsfeld meets Sigmund Freud) is my kind of coach.

As well as the cricket, Butcher provides something of a travelogue and is clearly not shy of a touch of epicurean indulgence. For me, I could have lived with less detail about safari, steak and red wine but I know many other readers have thoroughly enjoyed the texture this has brought to his story.

This is an honest account and although no punches are pulled, it’s also a very humane approach that seeks to understand rather than condemn. Butcher clearly loves the place: ‘I found a country, or at least a population, that was trying to move forward, trying to accept; a country in which I felt safe and welcome wherever I went.’ Butcher is sincere, honest, wise and open to new ideas. I’m left wondering why no other team has snapped him up.

 

Why are flawed heroes so hard to take?

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I was quite cross after the West Indies blitzed the last over of the World T20 final and snatched it from England’s grasp. I admired Brathwaite’s hitting of course and I sympathised with Stokes, who was a matter of inches away from being on all the front pages with head held high rather than on the back pages with head bowed. Still, I was cross that England had allowed me to think this was a done deal and we were six balls away from being world champions.

Then within seconds of the amazing West Indies win, we had TV pictures of Marlon Samuels tearing off towards the England dug-out, ripping his shirt off, seemingly spoiling for a fight. In a moment when you’d expect the emotion to be delight, joy and gratitude, he appeared angry, aggressive and ungrateful. His anger subsided – a little – but the posturing remained throughout the ceremony afterwards and the press conference after that. It was, I felt, ugly and unbecoming. Judging by social media, I was in the majority.

But then I wondered, why do we need our sports stars to be perfect heroes? Why should I or anyone else begrudge Samuels his moment or the way he chose to use it? Does our reaction say more about us than about him?

Yes. And this may be why…

Unwittingly, our sporting heroes represent order and morality. In the sporting arena, we expect good things to happen to good people. Sportsmanship, fair play, hard work, talent – these are the ingredients that bring reward aren’t they? Not always, they’re not.  Ben Johnson, Lance Armstrong, Hansie Cronje, Diego Maradona…all quite brilliant and all fatally flawed in different ways. The fall from grace is so spectacular because we expect so much. With each fall, an illusion is shattered.

It turns out that good is not always rewarded, iniquity not always punished. Suddenly the world is not as ordered and fair, it is arbitrary and amoral. Individuals are flawed, arguments are nuanced, stories are not black and white. We can’t take this dissonance as it makes life too complex, decisions too hard, certainty impossible, so our heroes must either remain elevated with the gods or vilified with the devil.

Another part of the problem is that very early in our lives we buy into scripts to which we expect everyone to conform. Fairy tales, Hollywood movies, Roy of the Rovers…we get a sense of where these stories will go, where the moral will be delivered, where right triumphs over wrong. Have you ever read a story to a young child where the ending wasn’t happy ever after or the good guy didn’t win? Utter bemusement and not a little fear. This isn’t how it’s supposed to be…this isn’t how the world is ordered.

Making our heroes superhuman also protects us in another way. They are not like us, they are achieving things we could never achieve, they are born to it. Well, not really. These are flawed human beings just like us. They have succeeded through talent, yes, but mainly through hard work, ambition, risk-taking, audacity, self-belief, practice. The painful thing is that they have succeeded where maybe we could have too. But we did not. They are more like us than we care to admit. So when they show their flaws, it makes us angry – angry at them for not behaving as their elevated position demands and angry at ourselves for not having succeeded as much as we might.

Finally, and returning to Marlon Samuels, it is easy to vilify a caricature. It is also easy for the person behind the caricature to adopt it as a persona, as the only way to take control of the way they are seen. I know nothing of Marlon Samuels off the field or of his upbringing but I do know that people don’t just get as angry as Samuels is for no reason. They don’t choose confrontation, they don’t need their ego boosting all the time, they don’t adopt an iniquitous persona from nowhere. I have no idea what made Marlon Samuels into the man he is today but I’m pretty sure that if I – and you – knew, we’d see him differently. We all have a story, even our heroes and villains, but of course it’s easier not to know it, easier to have a narrative free from ambiguity, where we know what is right and what is wrong. But the other night, Marlon Samuels helped to demonstrate that this is untenable. This is a world where the boorish, angry, unlikeable Samuels is the hero. Life is no fairy tale, and Marlon Samuels shouldn’t have to apologise for that.

The three-year itch

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Unsurprisingly, there’s chat about Alex Hales and whether he should get another chance opening the batting. This debate is as premature as it is predictable. The man has played two tests, averages 25, scored a good 60 in one of his four innings, and with a strike rate of 37 he is clearly reigning in his attacking instincts in order to make a good fist of the test opening job. He averaged 50 in the Championship last year. It’s worth noting, too, that in each of his four partnerships with Cook, it has been the skipper’s dismissal that has come first.

With all the talk of Cook’s run of unsuccessful opening partners, my mind turned to Graham Gooch’s rather slow start to his test career. He managed 0 and 0 in his first test and soon disappeared back to county cricket, only to return with considerably more success three years later.

Saeed Anwar had the same experience, coming back from a pair on debut to score 169 three years later. And as any cricket aficionado of a certain age will tell you, Marvan Atapattu is the poster boy for ropey beginnings followed by sturdy careers. He made 0 and 0, 0 and 1, 0 and 0 in his first three tests (admittedly rather unhelpfully each about two years apart). This is a less than solid performance for a test match opening batsman. Hales’ average of 25 looks pretty good compared to Atapattu’s 0.16 (and even his one run was rumoured to have come off his pads not his bat). Atapattu was then dropped for three years before coming back to have a distinguished 90 test career that included 16 tons of which six were doubles.

It was only as I began to research this article, which was ostensibly to be about Alex Hales (with a side helping of self-congratulation on my previous post calling for Mo to be kept at 8, Compton to be recalled and Bell to be dropped), that it dawned on me that all the players mentioned above were dropped for around three years before they made their successful comebacks. I wonder what the significance of those three years is? Is this the amount of time it takes to refine your game or work out whether you’ve got the hunger to play for your country?

It worked for James Taylor too. Much as I believe he deserved his recall sooner, the fact is that he had a three-year hiatus from the team and has returned a transformed player. He says himself that not being picked drove him on. Are the selectors on to something here? Do they possess a psychological insight that we hadn’t credited them with?

Nick Compton’s absence was approaching three years too. Undoubtedly a better player now.

There must be something in this three years thing (I think I’ll call it the Campion Rejuvenation Formula©) because Boycott even dropped himself for precisely that length of time before his glorious return with a ton against the Aussies in 1977.

Then there’s Adil Rashid, who spent six years in the international wilderness and judging by his form in the Big Bash, he’s now twice as good as he used to be.

(If I’ve missed anyone you can think of in the three-year club, do shout up.)

It’s impossible to know whether being dropped was the right decision, of course, because we can never know how players’ test careers might have turned out had they been retained. Other teams, with scarcer resources, might be forced to find out whether a player could learn on the job. Certainly when England’s own options have been limited, they’ve had to be patient. Look at Gatt – it took him seven years and 54 test innings to make his first hundred. Hales has had four knocks in his test career. I reckon he should be allowed a few more.

Don’t mess with Mo

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I’ve had misgivings about the way England have gone about dealing with the troublesome opening spot for some time. Today they picked Mo to do the job. It would appear that he got the job not because the coach and selectors thought he was the best man for the job but because they couldn’t come up with anyone else. ‘It’s not ideal’ is the ringing endorsement from the coach, who in one short sentence manages to undermine Mo and annihilate Hales’ confidence completely.

It would seem that Mo is expected to fail. If he does not fail here, he is still expected to fail against South Africa. So we haven’t solved a problem by picking him to open, we’ve postponed it – and created a new one.

Coming in at no.8 last summer was an odd spot for Mo but he rather made the most of this niche position during The Ashes. He played with delicious freedom and treated us to strokes of such grace that the ball didn’t so much hit the bat, as genuflect before it prior to racing away in reverential haste to the extra cover boundary.

Now, however, we’re in danger of doing a Joe Root on him. Taking him from a position where he’s comfortable and performing well and asking him to perform another role in the team that he’s not ready for simply because the powers-that-be are a bit stuck. It would be a crying shame if Mo’s confidence, currently clearly growing, was shattered by a difficult test series. And I do fear for him. From seeing the way he batted in the summer, he didn’t look like a candidate to open in a test match, and to see him wafting outside off stump in the warm-up matches like a cross between David Gower and d’Artagnan confirmed my fears.

What’s sad about the situation is that not only is this decision potentially messing with Mo (and Hales) but it’s also monumentally unfair on other opening batsmen who could be fulfilling the role. If they wanted someone to wave at balls as they passed outside off stump, they could have stuck with Adam Lyth. At least he opens for a living.

But really, I still have a bit of a bee in my bonnet about Compton and Carberry. Two proper openers who did a decent job and should have had a chance to do more. Both had steady, if unspectacular, county seasons and both would have been raring to go. Before you ask, no I don’t think they’re too old. Apart from Younis, Misbah and Shoaib Malik proving the old guard have a bit to offer today, I think Compton (32) and Carberry (just turned 35) are in that stage of their careers where the proximity of retirement is such that it really concentrates the mind. Perhaps you’d call it the Chris Rogers effect™.

When Chris Rogers retired from international cricket this year, I was so glad he didn’t rescind his decision after a successful series. I think he was so successful largely because it was his last series. Essentially he gave it his absolute all for two glorious years and by the end of those two years, he was spent. The fact that his light blazed brightly was inextricably linked to the fact that it blazed so briefly.

It would be the same with Compton or Carberry. Indeed, I think we got a glimpse of it when they first played. Remember how Carberry stood there in Australia and took on Johnson and co, where others were in full retreat? He tried his heart out in that series and his stats stacked up with the best of a bad bunch. One of these two (and realistically it probably would have been Compton) should have been inked in for the whole winter – Pakistan and SA. One of these two would have got their head down and fought with every last bone in their body. It might have been the start of a Rogersesque couple of years. And Mo would still have been down the order, persuading the ball to the fence and changing the shape of games.

Bell’s clangers

And a word on Ian Bell and his selection. My previous post explains my reservations about Bell. He shouldn’t have been picked for this tour, and shouldn’t have been picked for this game. I just don’t know what James Taylor has to do to get the nod. And now Bell has spilled two sitters at slip. When he was pondering retiring at the end of the summer, I think a part of him did. The rest of him should follow.