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Tag Archives: The Ashes

The Edge – a review

11 Tuesday Aug 2020

Posted by nc in Uncategorized

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australia, camaraderie, cook, cricket, england, mental health, psychology, team, The Ashes, The Edge

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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The Duke lives on

28 Friday Aug 2015

Posted by nc in Uncategorized

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england, ian bell, The Ashes

So this morning the Duke of Bellington, aka Ian Bell, announced – http://metro.co.uk/2015/08/28/ian-bell-exclusive-im-in-no-way-ready-to-finish-i-still-have-plenty-i-want-to-achieve-in-test-cricket-5364510/ –  he’d like to continue playing test cricket (and also announced, rather redundantly, that he has retired from ODIs). I have to say, I’m surprised. I thought he was heading for the very opposite announcement.

What I’m more surprised about though, is that it appears to have been the coaches and captain who have persuaded him to stay. In fact, despite going off to ‘take stock’ just a few days ago, he now has plans to go to Australia in two years’ time to retain the Ashes. Hmm.

I think we can all agree that an Ian Bell cover drive is a thing of beauty and his late cut to third man is the deftest of touches but there’s a sense now that when he plays them we ought to enjoy them while they last because they don’t happen as often and they won’t happen for much longer. Bell now gets plaudits for getting pretty 50s and taking decent catches – the sorts of things that were routine before and barely discussed. When you’re getting rapturous applause for doing something twice in a series that you used to do day-in, day-out, the game is up.

There’s no doubt he’s been a fine player for England who has played some fine innings. But not many recently.

In the last three years, he averages 35.20 in test cricket; in the last two years, 29.24; in the last year, just 24.29. That’s a downward trend if ever I saw one. His career average is down to 43, whereas for a time in 2011 is was around 50.

These stats would suggest he is being picked on reputation. ‘Belly is looking great in the nets’, ‘He’s done it so many times in an England shirt’, ‘Form is temporary, class is permanent’…these phrases and many others like it have been trotted out by selectors, team-mates and supporters but it just doesn’t wash any more.

He’s been a fine England player but it’s time to look around. If Bell can have 22 matches over two years when averaging 29.24 with only two tons, then surely we can afford to give a young batsman a chance to match or beat that?

Assuming Bairstow is retained (with a championship average of 108.89 this year, how could he be dropped? Although they managed to drop him for the ODIs somehow…), then we’re looking at one of Hildreth, Hales or Taylor aren’t we? Although if Root stays at four, a resurgent Ballance could be tried again at five. More from leftfield are other players who have been performing to a high standard year in, year out – Mitchell, Madsen and Vince; or someone in red-hot form like Steve Davies. I still can’t work out what James Taylor has done wrong for England and I’d give him a run.

Just because he wants to keep playing doesn’t mean Ian Bell has to be selected or can’t be dropped. So in the last few weeks of the county season, there’s all to play for and we’ll see who senses a very real opportunity.

Cook the captain has arrived at last

09 Sunday Aug 2015

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Alastair Cook, captaincy, england, The Ashes

The Cook revolution has been a quiet one. It has sneaked up on us. After a drubbing in the last Ashes in Australia, Cook looked finished – certainly as a captain and maybe even as a player. But he stayed on. After a long and fruitless run in the ODI side, he was finally jettisoned but it was too late, leaving the team with no chance and Cook furious and hurt at his treatment. The way he was cut from the ODI side and captaincy (right decision, wrong timing) was enough to make anyone feel angry and humiliated. In these circumstances, it’s not beyond the realms of possibility that a player might just say ‘Sod you’, walk away and write a salty autobiography. But not Cook, who seethed quietly then harnessed his anger and transformed it into determination to prove himself as Test skipper and opening bat.

With this Ashes series win, Cook has finally overcome his captaincy blindspot and finally looks comfortable in his own captaincy skin. He must be lauded for his resilience, and the England hierarchy equally congratulated for their patience (go on, give them a pat on the back – it’s the only one they’ve had for a couple of years).

There was a decision in the Trent Bridge test that signalled to me that Cook is now the England captain he always wanted to be. On the final morning with just three wickets to take, he bowled Stokes and Wood instead of Broad. Why was this decision, which would have no impact on whether England won or not, so important?

  1. The way they’d bowled, these two lads were just as likely to take the wickets as anyone but the conventional and populist thing to do would have been to bowl Broad. Eight in the first innings, one more to take for a rare 10 in a match, home crowd favourite… But no, Cook took a bigger decision. He didn’t follow expectations but equally it wasn’t funky. It was a sound tactical, slightly intuitive, decision where he backed his own decision-making processes.
  2. It was a big statement to those two young players and to the whole team. ‘Yes,’ he was saying, ‘I’ve got Jimmy and Broady with 700+ wickets between them but actually these two young lads are going to finish the job.’ This said to his own team that he believed each and every one of them could win matches for England – indeed he expected them to, and they should expect to do so too. This was a confidence-inspiring move for a side gelling together nicely.
  3. It also said to the Aussies, ‘actually we’ve got four quicks who can get you out not just two. I trust them to do it.’ And they did it. I wouldn’t say it’s quite Roberts, Holding, Garner, Marshall but it is a quartet of fast men who can all destroy a side on their day. Future oppositions will have noticed.

So why has it taken so long for Cook to slip comfortably into the captain’s role? Well, he didn’t captain much before he got the England job and not everyone drops into the captaincy role easily. It clearly didn’t come naturally. Then he went two years without a Test century, barely justified his place in the team, got thrashed in the Ashes, dropped from the ODI side and drew with a ‘mediocre’ West Indies side.

The uncertainty led to what appeared to be captaincy by committee where he had plans when he walked out on to the field that he stuck to rigidly. He was slow to react and tactically limited. He became defensive both on the field and in front of the media. The latter was understandable – he came in for some fierce criticism, often unnecessarily harshly delivered. The former was less easy to defend. So formulaic was his captaincy sometimes, I’d imagined him before walking out on to the field with a piece of paper in his pocket from the master in charge of cricket, showing him when to change the bowling and where to put the fielders.

He was also dealing with the retirement of key players, turmoil at the top of the ECB and the KP issue. He was so busy fighting fires he probably didn’t have time to lead the team as he’d have liked. But peace, in the end, came. The New Zealand series was the turning point. Almost by accident, he realised just what his young team was capable of – and he liked it. They gave him confidence and now that he had a young team 100% behind him, he was able to reflect that confidence right back to them. Loyalty, support and commitment went both ways. A joie de vivre, missing for so long, returned.

So confident, calm captain Cook began to make good decisions on the field, tactically sound and often productive. The decisions weren’t made for the sake of being seen to make them, they were made because they were the best for the team. They were made because they came naturally to him. Finally the title of England captain sat comfortably on him.

I do still harbour reservations about his batting which I’m sure isn’t anywhere near as good as a few years ago. On the off side, he still seems to poke at the ball hard with his hands out in front of him and the way he was LBW to a straight half-volley in the Trent Bridge test was concerning (how did he miss it by so much?) but what his batting has now is self-belief again and that’s more than enough to paper over the cracks. He remains a good batsman if no longer a great one, and is an important foil for the expansive players down the order.

Cook the captain is so confident now that he was quite comfortable to say, after the Ashes had been won, that he hadn’t expected the team to be ready to win them just yet. He also went out of his way to thank Peter Moores. And his voice cracked with emotion when he talked about his team, the lads who had backed him all the way and played out of their skins to pull off a remarkable win. An Ashes win is always a defining moment for a captain but when that captain has been through what Cook has been through, it is a moment that resonates way beyond the field of play.

Read Nick's All Out Cricket work online

  • County Crickets Academy Rewards
  • Recreational Habits pt 1
  • Recreational Habits pt 2
  • Recreational Habits pt 3
  • Recreational Habits pt 4
  • The Power of Pain

Latest Posts

  • The Edge – a review August 11, 2020
  • ‘In adversity, I made my dream come true’ August 7, 2019
  • Manufacturing a cricketing spectacle June 10, 2019
  • On supporting Pakistan June 7, 2019
  • An implicit language April 11, 2019

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