Like Gaul, the cricket season is divided into three parts: the trials and tribulations of the England cricket team, the fortunes of the Warwickshire Bears and my own small and often feeble contributions to club cricket. As the English season has come to an end, I thought I would provide a gentle summary of the Cricket Season 2008.
ENGLAND
The phrase ‘mixed bag’ springs to mind when reviewing England in the damp so-called-summer of 2008. New Zealand, having not played England enough already in 2008, popped over to blighty for another 124 slightly predictable games of cricket. England secured fairly laboured victories in the tests and got hammered in the ODI’s, but won the Twenty20. This is also pretty much what happened, if you remember, about 10 minutes earlier, in New Zealand.
There were a few highlights, England’s epic fight back at Old Trafford, when Monty Panesar bowled seven-shades-of-shit out of the Kiwis on the Sunday afternoon, to set up an unlikely England victory. On the subject of Mr Panesar, it was about his only moment of note for the whole of a rather squelchy and un-helpful summer, he might start to feel a bit of pressure from Rashid, Patel and Swann if he tours poorly in India later this year.
Kevin Pietersen’s left handed sixes against Scotty Stiris were jaw-droppingly good. I can understand sweeping left-handed, that doesn’t feel too un-natural, but the second of KP’s lefties was a full-bloodied smack over long-on (née deep mid-off).
On the down side New Zealand did give jolly old England a jolly good thrashing in the ODIs. Ryan Sidebottom and Paul Collingwood nearly ruined the entire summer when Collingwood upheld a run out appeal after Elliot had been floored by Sidebottom whilst taking a quick single, fortunately the game was won by the Kiwis so they could be forgiving and superior. The ODI at Edgbaston was an utter, rain induced farce, that I’d rather forget than repeat its tear inducing details (see previous post if you must re-live the ‘action’). So for the 94th summer in-a-row England were about as competitive in limited overs cricket as a goat in a horse race or were they?
When the South Africans arrived later in the summer, I was hoping that England could get something from the test series, although if you read previous posts, you will see that I was not exactly confident. At best, I thought England could sneak the test series 2-1 or something similar and then, no matter what, were going to get murdered in the 5 ODIs. As it turned out the loss of the Edgbaston test and consequently the series, provoked the departure of Michael Vaughan from the test captaincy, and probably from the England team for ever (although he’s got a central contract again, - no, I don’t know why either), as well as Paul Collingwood’s resignation as ODI captain and resulted in the coronation Kevin Pietersen as England captain for all forms of cricket. And boy did the greatest living Englishman get off to a flyer; a century and a victory at the Oval on debut as captain and then shock of all shocks, England kicked the asses of the South Africans into about the year 2015 in the ODIs, to the tune of 4-0, which let’s be honest would have been 5-0 had it not been for utterly unexpected rain in Cardiff.
At Trent Bridge the Saffers were skittled out for 83, meaning that the day/night match I was hoping to return home from work to watch the second half of was long over before I even left the office. At the presentation ceremony/interview afterwards Graeme Smith was loudly and justifiably jeered (suggested first question: “So Graeme, have you chaps ever played cricket before?”)
Notts left-arm tweaker Samit Patel made a big impression in the series, (that’s not a dig at his size, although I doubt anyone gets to the lunch table before he does very often), taking the wicket of Gibbs at Headingly when the Proteas were cruising and then chipping in with vital runs and a five wicket haul at the Oval, he must surely now be England’s first choice spinner in ODIs and Twenty20’s.
Flintoff was really back to his best in these 50 over games. His batting at 5 was brutal and clinical, and his bowling was economical and at times nasty. His first-change partnership with the recently un-retired Harmison (hmm... a million $s for three hours work in the Caribbean – oh go on then!) was viciously effective and might actually mean England have some bowlers to properly put the wind up the opposition for once.
As for KP’s captaincy, well, you can’t argue with the results, if anyone can inspire an ashes victory next year, there’s no better man to lead by example than Mr Pietersen. My only complaint would be the quite unnecessary levels of homoeroticism now present on the field of play. Is it really necessary for KP to skip around slapping everyone on the arse at every opportunity? Although, I suppose you could argue it’s working. Maybe he’d like to try it on the umpires, you know, to encourage them to give decisions in England’s favour. Billy Bowden looks like a man who’d enjoy that sort of thing.
To sum up, it has been another summer of underachievement and frustration for England, sometimes great, sometimes awful – but with KP at the helm, maybe, just maybe, something special might be around the corner.
WARWICKSHIRE
Warwickshire have also had a mixed season, a disastrous Friends Provident campaign, an indifferent Pro40, failure at the quarter finals stage of the Twenty20 Cup, again, but promotion back to the first division in the County Championship at the first time of asking.The Pro40 is a bit like the league cup in football (whatever it is called these days), the only people who actually give the vaguest toss about it are the people that win it. Seeing as the Pro40 is being morphed into a Twenty20 competition in two years time, there doesn’t seem to be too much point in overly exercising oneself about it.
The Friends Provident Trophy was Clusterfuck-Grand-Central for the Bears. No offence to Ireland, but if you can’t beat two professionals and nine pig farmers at a game that 95% of their countrymen couldn’t differentiate from women’s beach volleyball, you really are wallowing in the depths of ineptitude. After a decent showing in last year’s competition I thought they might a least put up a fight rather than their hands, but as we all know, nothing hurts more than dashed expectations.
The Twenty20 Cup was the same old story as last year. Once again the Bears qualified for the quarter finals before anyone else and once again they were comprehensively dumped out of the competition in the quarters. What is so infuriating is that they were so good in the group stages. Spin combo Ant Botha and Ian Salisbury were brilliant, taking a stack of wickets at about 11 a piece. Trott laid into all attacks, passing 1000 Twenty20 career runs in the process (why he’s not opening the batting for England in ODI’s and Twenty20’s is a mystery). But they bottled it big time against Fatty Key’s boys when it really mattered (At least we beat Worcestershire twice, I suppose).
Whilst the final stages of the County Championship in division 1 went down to the wire, Warwickshire were comfortable champions in division 2. Unbeaten all season, Warwickshire’s safety first tactics resulted in just 5 wins all season, something that will have to change if they are to make a serious challenge for the title next year. Personnel wise, a genuine opening batsman needs to be recruited from somewhere and for the whole season as well. Maddy is OK opening, but Powell, Poonia and Westwood have all failed to score big runs for the most part, Powell so much so he’s been given the heave-ho.
Were I to give Ashley Giles a mark out of ten for his first season in charge, I’d give him 7. Generous you might say, but he’s gained promotion to division 1 of the County Championship, and more importantly there is a real buzz, a feeling of moving forward, surrounding the team which was very much missing the grim days of Greatbatch.
ME
To finish, a short, slightly self-satisfied appraisal of my own cricketing achievements in 2008. My team achieved a 100% success record, dispatching all and sundry. The one occasion when it appeared we were going to lose, the heavens opened and the deluge saved us. Due to our repeated triumphs, I’ve hardly batted. My single moment of note being executing a particularly ravishing cover drive to score the winning runs in one game. My bowling has been rather good. The bare statistics being: 11 wickets @ 15.18, Economy: 5.96, Strike rate: 11.06, Best: 5 – 42. Not bad for a beginner!
Now the season is over I’m a bit lost for things to do. Until the Stanford Vulgarthon there’s no England cricket to watch on the telly and unless I can persuade anyone to play winter cricket with me, there’s to be no leather-on-willow-action until pre-season nets in March. As a substitute I’ve joined a snooker club, I’m terrible but it gets me out of the house. As measure of how sad I am, last week whilst I was waiting for my mate to return from the bar, I found myself clutching a cue extension, threading an imaginary ball passed extra cover for 4. Oh dear me.
"In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."
Albert Camus
French existentialist author & philosopher (1913 - 1960)
ENGLAND
The phrase ‘mixed bag’ springs to mind when reviewing England in the damp so-called-summer of 2008. New Zealand, having not played England enough already in 2008, popped over to blighty for another 124 slightly predictable games of cricket. England secured fairly laboured victories in the tests and got hammered in the ODI’s, but won the Twenty20. This is also pretty much what happened, if you remember, about 10 minutes earlier, in New Zealand.
There were a few highlights, England’s epic fight back at Old Trafford, when Monty Panesar bowled seven-shades-of-shit out of the Kiwis on the Sunday afternoon, to set up an unlikely England victory. On the subject of Mr Panesar, it was about his only moment of note for the whole of a rather squelchy and un-helpful summer, he might start to feel a bit of pressure from Rashid, Patel and Swann if he tours poorly in India later this year.
Kevin Pietersen’s left handed sixes against Scotty Stiris were jaw-droppingly good. I can understand sweeping left-handed, that doesn’t feel too un-natural, but the second of KP’s lefties was a full-bloodied smack over long-on (née deep mid-off).
On the down side New Zealand did give jolly old England a jolly good thrashing in the ODIs. Ryan Sidebottom and Paul Collingwood nearly ruined the entire summer when Collingwood upheld a run out appeal after Elliot had been floored by Sidebottom whilst taking a quick single, fortunately the game was won by the Kiwis so they could be forgiving and superior. The ODI at Edgbaston was an utter, rain induced farce, that I’d rather forget than repeat its tear inducing details (see previous post if you must re-live the ‘action’). So for the 94th summer in-a-row England were about as competitive in limited overs cricket as a goat in a horse race or were they?
When the South Africans arrived later in the summer, I was hoping that England could get something from the test series, although if you read previous posts, you will see that I was not exactly confident. At best, I thought England could sneak the test series 2-1 or something similar and then, no matter what, were going to get murdered in the 5 ODIs. As it turned out the loss of the Edgbaston test and consequently the series, provoked the departure of Michael Vaughan from the test captaincy, and probably from the England team for ever (although he’s got a central contract again, - no, I don’t know why either), as well as Paul Collingwood’s resignation as ODI captain and resulted in the coronation Kevin Pietersen as England captain for all forms of cricket. And boy did the greatest living Englishman get off to a flyer; a century and a victory at the Oval on debut as captain and then shock of all shocks, England kicked the asses of the South Africans into about the year 2015 in the ODIs, to the tune of 4-0, which let’s be honest would have been 5-0 had it not been for utterly unexpected rain in Cardiff.
At Trent Bridge the Saffers were skittled out for 83, meaning that the day/night match I was hoping to return home from work to watch the second half of was long over before I even left the office. At the presentation ceremony/interview afterwards Graeme Smith was loudly and justifiably jeered (suggested first question: “So Graeme, have you chaps ever played cricket before?”)
Notts left-arm tweaker Samit Patel made a big impression in the series, (that’s not a dig at his size, although I doubt anyone gets to the lunch table before he does very often), taking the wicket of Gibbs at Headingly when the Proteas were cruising and then chipping in with vital runs and a five wicket haul at the Oval, he must surely now be England’s first choice spinner in ODIs and Twenty20’s.
Flintoff was really back to his best in these 50 over games. His batting at 5 was brutal and clinical, and his bowling was economical and at times nasty. His first-change partnership with the recently un-retired Harmison (hmm... a million $s for three hours work in the Caribbean – oh go on then!) was viciously effective and might actually mean England have some bowlers to properly put the wind up the opposition for once.
As for KP’s captaincy, well, you can’t argue with the results, if anyone can inspire an ashes victory next year, there’s no better man to lead by example than Mr Pietersen. My only complaint would be the quite unnecessary levels of homoeroticism now present on the field of play. Is it really necessary for KP to skip around slapping everyone on the arse at every opportunity? Although, I suppose you could argue it’s working. Maybe he’d like to try it on the umpires, you know, to encourage them to give decisions in England’s favour. Billy Bowden looks like a man who’d enjoy that sort of thing.
To sum up, it has been another summer of underachievement and frustration for England, sometimes great, sometimes awful – but with KP at the helm, maybe, just maybe, something special might be around the corner.
WARWICKSHIRE
Warwickshire have also had a mixed season, a disastrous Friends Provident campaign, an indifferent Pro40, failure at the quarter finals stage of the Twenty20 Cup, again, but promotion back to the first division in the County Championship at the first time of asking.The Pro40 is a bit like the league cup in football (whatever it is called these days), the only people who actually give the vaguest toss about it are the people that win it. Seeing as the Pro40 is being morphed into a Twenty20 competition in two years time, there doesn’t seem to be too much point in overly exercising oneself about it.
The Friends Provident Trophy was Clusterfuck-Grand-Central for the Bears. No offence to Ireland, but if you can’t beat two professionals and nine pig farmers at a game that 95% of their countrymen couldn’t differentiate from women’s beach volleyball, you really are wallowing in the depths of ineptitude. After a decent showing in last year’s competition I thought they might a least put up a fight rather than their hands, but as we all know, nothing hurts more than dashed expectations.
The Twenty20 Cup was the same old story as last year. Once again the Bears qualified for the quarter finals before anyone else and once again they were comprehensively dumped out of the competition in the quarters. What is so infuriating is that they were so good in the group stages. Spin combo Ant Botha and Ian Salisbury were brilliant, taking a stack of wickets at about 11 a piece. Trott laid into all attacks, passing 1000 Twenty20 career runs in the process (why he’s not opening the batting for England in ODI’s and Twenty20’s is a mystery). But they bottled it big time against Fatty Key’s boys when it really mattered (At least we beat Worcestershire twice, I suppose).
Whilst the final stages of the County Championship in division 1 went down to the wire, Warwickshire were comfortable champions in division 2. Unbeaten all season, Warwickshire’s safety first tactics resulted in just 5 wins all season, something that will have to change if they are to make a serious challenge for the title next year. Personnel wise, a genuine opening batsman needs to be recruited from somewhere and for the whole season as well. Maddy is OK opening, but Powell, Poonia and Westwood have all failed to score big runs for the most part, Powell so much so he’s been given the heave-ho.
Were I to give Ashley Giles a mark out of ten for his first season in charge, I’d give him 7. Generous you might say, but he’s gained promotion to division 1 of the County Championship, and more importantly there is a real buzz, a feeling of moving forward, surrounding the team which was very much missing the grim days of Greatbatch.
ME
To finish, a short, slightly self-satisfied appraisal of my own cricketing achievements in 2008. My team achieved a 100% success record, dispatching all and sundry. The one occasion when it appeared we were going to lose, the heavens opened and the deluge saved us. Due to our repeated triumphs, I’ve hardly batted. My single moment of note being executing a particularly ravishing cover drive to score the winning runs in one game. My bowling has been rather good. The bare statistics being: 11 wickets @ 15.18, Economy: 5.96, Strike rate: 11.06, Best: 5 – 42. Not bad for a beginner!
Now the season is over I’m a bit lost for things to do. Until the Stanford Vulgarthon there’s no England cricket to watch on the telly and unless I can persuade anyone to play winter cricket with me, there’s to be no leather-on-willow-action until pre-season nets in March. As a substitute I’ve joined a snooker club, I’m terrible but it gets me out of the house. As measure of how sad I am, last week whilst I was waiting for my mate to return from the bar, I found myself clutching a cue extension, threading an imaginary ball passed extra cover for 4. Oh dear me.
"In the depth of winter, I finally learned that within me there lay an invincible summer."
Albert Camus
French existentialist author & philosopher (1913 - 1960)
No comments:
Post a Comment