Cricket

Test match

Why do we need tie-breaks and photo finishes? If competitors have been nip-and-tuck all the way, why can’t they just share victory? England supporters who watched the ICC Cricket World Cup final might have been febrile with joy when the extra-time ‘super over’ ended in another tie, giving England the margin on boundaries, but New Zealand’s Black Caps lost by less than a whisker. Why shouldn’t they have halved the triumph? Why shouldn’t Roger Federer, who went toe-to-toe with Novak Djokovic in the longest-ever Wimbledon final, have lifted one side of that famous trophy? The answer is that human beings need resolution. Spectators need to know the thing has been

How English cricket can capitalise on the World Cup win

What next for English cricket? The first and most immediate answer is also an age-old one: thump the Australians in the forthcoming Ashes series. The second answer, which is more difficult to achieve, is: don’t waste this moment.   English cricket staked a lot on winning the world cup. The tournament will not be held in England for another 20 years if, indeed, it is ever held here again. For four years, this has been the target. For the first-time, and not without some controversy, the interests of one-day cricket were placed ahead of the traditional test format. To risk so much and still fail would have been a calamity.  Thanks

Croquet

People say cricket is the quintessential English game. Those people are wrong. Cricket may have a longer pedigree, but it’s too boring, too democratic and too honourable to qualify: croquet is the game that truly captures what it is to be English. As any pub quizzer will tell you, Wimbledon started its life in 1868 as the All England Croquet Club, only developing its vulgar sideline in lawn tennis late in the following decade. Its reputation has yet to recover.   Just like cricket, where the game as played on the village green differs from the international game, the echt English croquet is the one played, ideally slightly drunk, in

A perfect match

Cricket is the most gracious of games. County grounds in the lee of cathedrals, village greens in the perfect setting of trees and a pub, and not far from the parish church: even if the match will not be over in time for evensong, there is more than a hint of Dearly Beloved, a phrase which captures so much of English civilisation. Cricket is an intellectual game. It baffles Americans. Try explaining that a Test can last for five days and then end in a draw — which may well be the right outcome, morally and aesthetically. Think of Gavaskar’s immortal match in 1979. Any other ending would have been

It’s not just cricket: India vs Pakistan is the greatest rivalry in world sport

There are plenty of much-anticipated contests in the 2019 Cricket World Cup. But nothing to compare with today’s match at Old Trafford, where India play Pakistan in the latest epic in a rivalry that dates back to Partition in 1947. It’s a rivalry that is regularly punctuated by war. No cricket was played between the two countries from 1961 until 1978. The 1965 conflict, caused by Pakistani aggression, severed relations. By the time a ceasefire was declared, Indian tanks were on the outskirts of Lahore, where a 12-year-old Imran Khan was distraught not to be allowed to join a local militia. The two countries fought again in 1971 when India

It’s not just cricket

There are plenty of much-anticipated contests in the 2019 Cricket World Cup. But nothing to compare with this Sunday’s match at Old Trafford, where India are billed to play Pakistan in the latest epic in a rivalry that dates back to Partition in 1947. It’s a rivalry that is regularly punctuated by war. No cricket was played between the two countries from 1961 until 1978. The 1965 conflict, caused by Pakistani aggression, severed relations. By the time a ceasefire was declared, Indian tanks were on the outskirts of Lahore, where a 12-year-old Imran Khan was distraught not to be allowed to join a local militia. The two countries fought again

A tale of two Englands

At the same time as England’s rugby union players delivered a magnificent hearts-of-oak performance to humble a very good Irish side in Dublin, England’s cricketers were giving a very passable impression of what happens to a pile of balsa wood when stamped on by an elephant. What happens next — especially looking ahead to the rugby and cricket World Cups later this year — is fascinating. The remaining Six Nations matches will show us whether Eddie Jones’s England, with the formidable help of the returning Vunipola brothers and Manu Tuilagi, will go to Japan at the end of the year as a supreme force. I think they will. As my

Letters | 6 December 2018

Sleeping on the streets Sir: Mark Palmer claims that ‘homelessness is hardly a top government priority’ (‘Home truths’, 1 December). I was disappointed to read this, given the ambition of this government to make rough sleeping a thing of the past. As I have said previously in this magazine, we are committed to supporting people off the streets and have committed £1.2 billion to tackle all forms of homelessness. We are working tirelessly to end rough sleeping by 2027 and have outlined our long-term plan — backed by £100 million — to get people into a safe and secure home where they can rebuild their lives. We have also dedicated £28 million to the

Time to waste, money to burn

Marvellous team, the All Blacks, of course. But they certainly know how to waste some time. Here are some things you may want to do when the New Zealand forwards are making their way to a line-out with a one-point lead and the clock running down: change your energy supplier, clear those clogged winter gutters or, for the more adventurous, nip out to Santa Pod Raceway in Bedfordshire and do a quarter of a mile in a drag-racing car. Either way, those mighty Kiwi forwards won’t have moved far. Much to the annoyance of some big footballing beasts like Bayern Munich, Manchester City appear to have been channelling away millions

The functional, quiet nobility of Alastair Cook

No-one ever bought shares in Alastair Cook because they were sexy. No man has made so many runs with so little flash. But no Englishman has made as many as 12,472 runs in test cricket either. If the quantity of test cricket played these days helped Cook build his own mountain of runs, it remains the case that no-one, from any other country, has ever made as many test runs while carrying the burden of opening the innings. The opener is a breed apart. Few people want to open; not all those charged with doing so enjoy it. The position requires a very particular set of skills. There is never

Hail to the Chef

I first became aware of Alastair Cook in the Ashes summer of 2005 when he was named the Young Cricketer of the Year by the cricket writers’ association following some epic performances in the county game, not least taking a double hundred off the touring Australians. The assembled brains on our table, including Mike Brearley, agreed that the boy would go far. And how… The greatest of current English players, Cook — happily married and impeccably polite — set a perfect example. There were no nightclub brawls, no pedalos, not even any light aircraft. Blessed with incredible stamina and single-mindedness, he knew what worked and kept at it. He wouldn’t

The England team is no place for Ben Stokes

I had never heard of Sam Curran when I took my seat at Edgbaston a couple of weeks ago. Four hours later I was joining in a standing ovation. Single-handedly, he had made my trip to Birmingham worthwhile. Without him, I would have been on my way home soon after lunch. Yet with England facing almost certain defeat, and with one batsman after another falling to feeble or misguided shots, he dug in, then stroked his way to 63 runs off 65 balls to give England a chance of victory which they seized the following day.   Curran’s reward for that innings (as well as his five wickets in the match)

Let’s not fret about brilliant Belgians

Here’s a question: name some famous Belgians. Well there’s Kevin De Bruyne, Vincent Kompany, and Eden Hazard. And if that’s not enough, there’s Romelu Lukaku and Dries Mertens; not forgetting Toby Alderweireld and Thomas Vermaelen. Or Mousa Dembele, Thibaut Courtois, and Marouane Fellaini. If all goes well England will still be in with a chance of making the last 16 of the World Cup when they meet the mighty Belgians — not a line you see very often — in their final group match in exactly two weeks’ time. England have, arguably, only one star of similar status: Harry Kane. But I’m less convinced than I was a few weeks

The then and now of footballers’ pay

I must have missed the memo when it became compulsory for major football matches to operate as a marketing opportunity for the game’s marquee players, but that was what we got at Kiev after Liverpool were outmuscled and outplayed by a flinty-eyed Real Madrid. After Ronaldo announced that his time at Madrid was in the past, then our very own Gareth Bale, he of the annoying man-bun and sublime skills, in a rather graceless piece of scene-stealing, decided to ask for a transfer. Live on TV. Well, you do the math. He is on £300,000 a week (or £600,000 depending on who you trust), but assuming someone somewhere has to

The people’s cricket

Blame it on a marketing survey. In 2001, the England and Wales Cricket Board commissioned the biggest piece of market research in the game’s history. They were told cricket was ‘socially inaccessible’, and that there existed a vast swath of ‘cricket tolerators’ — those who didn’t hate the game yet didn’t attend matches. So the ECB decided to take cricket to them. Twenty20, which could be crammed in after work on a midsummer’s evening, was created in the summer of 2003. The new game followed a traditional path: born in England, but perfected abroad. After India overcame its initial opposition, the country inexorably became the home of T20. A decade

Letters | 3 May 2018

Campaign for real cricket Sir: Geoffrey Wheatcroft’s splendid article ‘Cricket, unlovely cricket’ (28 April) remonstrated against the threat to Test matches and the County Championship posed by the juggernaut of what he termed ‘Twenty20Trash’. He ended with the words ‘after the very successful Campaign for Real Ale, what about a Campaign for Real Cricket?’ As one of the four traditional beer lovers who founded Camra and as an MCC member, I wholeheartedly agree. We must rescue our beloved sport from the hands of the money-obsessed administrators who are foisting an apology for beach cricket on true lovers of traditional forms of a noble game. Michael Hardman London SW15 Love in

Roger Alton

Cowboys vs Indians

Difficult to know quite what to make of The Hundred, which has the feel of being knocked up on the back of a packet of Senior Service and anyway sounds like a film about a heroic battle rather than the name of a new cricket thrash coming to a Test ground near you sometime in 2020. My only hope is that the ECB will call on the bikini girls to march round the ground signalling the change of overs. But I’m old-fashioned like that. The tournament is scheduled for the ‘school holidays’ to pack in the kids, but in my day the school holidays were when people went away, to

Why I didn’t want to make a fuss about retiring from cricket

‘Ah, the old man injury!’ That’s what people said when I busted my calf a couple of years ago. At the time I laughed it off because in more than 20 years I’d never suffered any serious injuries, aside from my knee in 2012/13. No back problems or proper muscle tears. I was having a great time on the T20 circuit, playing to 84,000 spectators in Melbourne. Then, last year, I tore my calf again playing for Surrey. At that point I started to worry that it was going to happen all the time. When you sign these T20 contracts the last thing you want is to have to leave

Diary – 5 April 2018

When the much-admired (and very tall) literary agent Gillon Aitken died in October 2016, he left most of his estate in a charitable trust to be named after his daughter Charlotte, who had, very sadly, predeceased him. Quite soon, the trust will start its work, which is to ‘educate the public in the appreciation of literature’, including poetry and drama, by whatever means seem appropriate — to include prizes, grants, scholarships, the funding of retreats, courses and so on. As one of the trustees, my job is to find the best ways to fulfil Gillon’s wishes. The slate is blank. My first feeling is that there are too many prizes

Roger Alton

What a pantomime this ball-tampering scandal has been

I haven’t seen so many men crying since the end of A Tale of Two Cities at the Scala Cinema in Oxford in the late 1950s. As the credits rolled, stern-faced blokes whipped out their hankies and dabbed their eyes. But by the time the lights went up, the hankies were replaced and upper lips stiffened. These after all were men, many of whom had served in the war. On balance, you feel, that is how men should behave, rather than sobbing uncontrollably with their parents around, like Steve Smith, or — in the case of wee Davey Warner — doing an absurd name, rank and number impression from a