Finals Day Preview - Birmingham Bears

Here is my preview of the Birmingham Bears' appearance in the NatWest T20 Blast Finals at Edgbaston.
http://deepextracover.com/2014/08/20/finals-day-preview-birmingham-bears/#.U_XDFrtX6zt
I'll be there for what should be an exciting day's cricket.

Sam Hain Profile

Here is the profile of young Warwickshire cricketer Sam Hain, as published by Deep Extra Cover:

http://deepextracover.com/2014/06/14/dec-introduces-warwickshires-sam-hain/#.U5xNnHQU-Uk

Launching the Birmingham Bears

I was lucky enough to be invited to Edgbaston last night for the launch of the Birmingham Bears.  Here is the article I posted on Deep Extra Cover:
http://deepextracover.com/2014/03/27/its-what-fridays-are-for-birmingham-bears-officially-launched/#.UzR3anSPOUk
Don't worry - Jonathan Trott hasn't aged badly.  That's me sat in front of his shirt in the Changing Room.  Only the hairline is similar.

Kim Jones, 1954 - 2014

Kim Jones was one of the nicest people I never met.  Several times, we came agonisingly close to meeting.  We were sometimes at the same cricket match on different days or even on the same day but at different ends of the ground.

I knew him mainly through Bearsfans, the on-line discussion forum for supporters of Warwickshire County Cricket Club.  He set up the forum and also was the leading light behind Spin cricket magazine, which he owned.  His articles for Spin and his Bearsfans postings all brimmed with his unique blend of wit and wisdom.

Few of us who knew him in recent times were aware of his unique and varied history – his childhood in Africa where he had a baby crocodile as a pet, his successful academic career at Shrewsbury School and at Oxford, his qualifications in both law and accountancy (not always a guarantee of either wit or wisdom) and his work in the world of advertising including running successful agencies both here and in the States.

What we did come to know was that he was a caring man of immense kindness.  When I had some problems with personal issues on-line, he helped to resolve the situation behind the scenes.  When my daughter was the victim of some unfair and untrue comments, he did the same.  He also gave her valuable opportunities to cut her journalistic teeth with Spin.

For me and for others, it was a dreadful start to the New Year when we heard that Kim was terminally ill.  Fortunately, many of us were able to send him messages of goodwill so that he was aware, in the short time before his passing, of the deep affection in which he was held by so many people.  A handwritten letter from Warwickshire and England’s Jonathan Trott probably took pride of place because, whenever anyone wrote something critical of Trotty, you could be sure that Kim would leap to his defence, often with irrefutable statistics to back up his argument.  Warwickshire captain Jim Troughton phoned him to offer his support and sympathy.

Similar tributes flowed out at his funeral on 10 February at Wrexham Crematorium and at the appropriately titled Big Bash Cricket Tea at Sweeney Hall in Oswestry.  The same words were used over and over again, in both the written and the spoken tributes.  He was kind, generous, knowledgeable, intelligent, modest, unassuming.  He made people laugh and they felt privileged to have known someone who was both a gentleman and a gentle man.

His wife and his sister both spoke movingly of their deep love for Kim.  George Dobell, a good friend over many years, also gave a heartfelt tribute.  At Kim’s request, George wore a jacket that had once belonged to the lead singer of Showaddywaddy.  Greater love hath no man for his friend than to be willing to stand up in front of so many people in such a monstrosity of a garment!

Unusually for a funeral, all three of these tributes evoked rounds of applause that seemed entirely fitting.  There was so much of Kim everywhere in that room, all his very special qualities that were being celebrated, that it seemed irrelevant to me that in front of us was a coffin that was eventually consigned to the flames.  That wooden box may have contained his mortal remains but Kim was all around us and, most especially, in our hearts.

Here is the lovely poem by Michael Laskey that is so appropriate that it might have been specially written for Kim:

I shall play cricket in heaven
in return for the afternoons
gladly given to the other
pleasure of others' leisure.

I shall walk, without haste, to the wicket
and nod to the angels kitted
in their whites waiting to discern
the kind of batspirit I am.

And one stroke in heaven, one dream
of a cover drive will redeem
every meeting of bat
and ball I've done without.

And I'll bowl too, come on to bowl
leg-breaks with such control
of flight and slight changes of pace
that one over will efface

the faint regret I now feel.
But best of all I shall field:
alert in the heavenly deep,
beyond the boundary of sleep.

Kim Jones – may you rest in peace.

A Christmas Truce

As we approach the centenary of the First World War, I am proud to unveil this brief extract from the unpublished memoirs of my great grandfather, Algernon Shedd.  Prior to the War, he was a gentleman farmer in the somewhat bleak Northern county of Daleshire.  He led a long an eventful life, dying in 1965 at the age of 85.  However, his greatest claim to fame is that, for ten seasons prior to the War, he was the amateur captain of Daleshire County Cricket Club, leading them to the County Championship no less than seven times.

When War broke out in 1914, almost all of that great team joined the so-called Cricketing Pals Battalion of the Royal Daleshire Regiment. By Christmas 1916, they were serving together in France under my great grandfather, by then Major Shedd.  I will let him tell the story of what happened that Christmas in his own vivid words:

“Life in the trenches on the Somme was truly hellish.  The bone-numbing cold, the degrading squalor and the all-pervading stench of unwashed bodies brought irresistibly to mind the professionals’ dressing room at Derby.  Rats the size of W.G. Grace’s ego lurked in the latrines.  Many was the time my privates were badly bitten – as, indeed, was my sergeant-major.

Imagine the men’s collective delight when they received parcels from the good old county club on Christmas day.  How they appreciated the club’s generosity in sending presents of second hand cricket kit, together with the promise that the club would deduct the cost from the professionals’ wages in the first post-war season, applying an interest rate of no more than 10 per cent per annum in the meantime. It warmed my heart to know that the true spirit of Christmas lived on in the old club back in Blighty.

The men wasted no time in putting the gifts to use.  A Christmas ceasefire being in operation, they began an impromptu cricket practice in No-Man’s-Land, which was only halted when Slogger Robson belted a full toss from our medium-pacer, Lew Brush, into the German trenches.

The plaintive cry of “Please can we have our ball back, Fritz?” was greeted with a guttural “Come and get it, Tommy!”  Only after much begging by Lew – as fly as a bluebottle and an eloquent little pleader if ever there was one – was a deal struck.  We would play a match the following day against the Germans, one innings a side, with the winner having the right to keep the precious ball.

The Daleshire professionals in the platoon viewed the match with a confidence previously reserved for matches against one of the lesser southern counties such as Somerset.  This self-belief was tempered only by the knowledge that No-Man’s-Land, a morass of mud and slimy bomb craters, was likely to prove the most inappropriate venue ever for a serious cricket match.  How could any of us possibly have envisaged Old Trafford in 1956?

I am happy to report that the match was played in the most sporting spirit.  The Huns conceded the toss to us after the sixth consecutive penny had plopped irrecoverably into the thick mud.  Our assessment was that the pitch would be thoroughly untrustworthy and highly dangerous for the side taking first use of it.  So we chose to bat, knowing that it would be even worse after tea.

We ran up – or, rather, squelched up – an impressive total of 277.  Fortunately, our Teutonic adversaries applied the same technique to bowling that they used for lobbing grenades full toss into our trenches.  As a result, the vagaries of the pitch seldom came into play. And in the field, the butter-fingered Jerries had more drops than Santa Claus on Christmas Eve.

When the enemy began their reply, a December sun the colour of a much-used jock-strap had partly dried the pitch.  It was made for our mean left-arm spinner Herb Patch.  Pushing the ball through with all the flight of a pregnant penguin, he reduced them to the brink of defeat at 33-7 before the tragic incident occurred.

A hefty Hun swung wildly at a good length ball which soared high off the edge towards the fine leg boundary.  From my place at leg slip, I set off for the catch, along with several of the other close fielders.  Nearing the short boundary, I was just about to make a dive for the ball when a loud cry of “Mine!” halted me so completely in my tracks that I pulled both hamstrings.  I fell to the ground in a heap, probably left there by one of the cavalry horses.

As the ball landed harmlessly and trickled over the boundary, I realised that the cry had come not from one of my fellow fielders claiming the catch but from a haughty, monocled German officer spectating on the boundary.  Such a partisan intervention caused the Christmas spirit of goodwill to be temporarily forgotten.

We were normally pretty tolerant of the enemy’s excesses.  It was expected that Zeppelin crews would fly behind our lines to spy on us.  We accepted that if they spotted British Tommies in haystacks with French peasant girls indulging in a little entente cordiale they would hover overhead and attempt to pour water on them.  At least, we all fervently hoped it was water.  It was one thing for the Hun to indulge in gas attacks and aerial bombardments and to post secret snipers who would take pot shots at honest Tommies’ todgers as they relieved themselves at the open air latrine.  All’s fair in love and war.  But to cheat so blatantly at cricket was a clear breach of the Geneva Convention.

Whilst I lay writhing on the ground in agony, the whole team advanced on the offending German, oblivious to his cries of protest.  Before they reached him, the awful explosion did its worst.  As he wiped spattered mud, blood and brains from his coat, the German’s only comment was: “Well, that I did not warn them they cannot say. Deadly things, mines.”

So perished the flower of Daleshire cricket.  And so I now pay my tribute to them before I am gone and they are completely forgotten.  I may have been their leader on and off the cricket field but they were my heroes and I am proud that they died heroic deaths playing the game they loved.  Who now remembers Shortarms Stidworthy, stonewaller extraordinaire and renowned as the meanest man in cricket?  Who now recalls the consummate ease with which he achieved the double in each of the last ten seasons before the war?  What an all-rounder! Every year, he clocked up at least 100 rounds of drinks not paid for and 1000 cigarettes “borrowed” but never returned.

And what of Trumper Bullivant?  He was named not after the legendary Australian batting star but in recognition of his own special ability, in his delivery stride, to startle batsmen with an unexpected anal eruption.  Maybe his descendants still recall his sterling deeds – Bullivants never forget – but to the world at large, it is as though he had never trumpeted triumphantly across Edwardian cricket fields.

I could go on.  But my emotions prevent me from writing more.  Suffice it to say that I have never forgiven myself for heeding that call.  Had I continued to go for the catch, I should, of course, have perished but those brave Daleshire lads would have survived.  How stupid, how foolish, how crassly naïve I was.  Why did I not ignore that call? For when did a Daleshire fielder ever call “Mine!” if there was a chance of someone else taking a tricky catch?

I can hardly bear, in conclusion, to tell of the ultimate tragedy.  Yet I must do so.  It was not just ten good Daleshire men and true that were lost that day.  The Germans claimed the match by default.  And I never did get our ball back.”

Review - the Great Tamasha

The Great Tamasha, by James Astill

James Astill’s The Great Tamasha is a real tour de force.  A tamasha is a Hindi word meaning an entertainment, a performance or a show; and the book is about what Astill calls the conquest of India by the tamasha that is modern Indian cricket.  The book’s sub-title is Cricket, Corruption and the Turbulent Rise of Modern India and the author, as the political editor of The Economist and previously their South East Asia Bureau Chief, is well placed to paint on a large canvas in covering all of these topics and more.

What makes the book so readable is that Astill is able to cover the broad sweep of history whilst at the same time creating all sorts of fascinating vignettes along the way, bringing to life the personalities and incidents behind the names.  Consider, for example, the Maharajah of Vizianagram (known as Vizzy) who captained the 1936 tour of England, arriving in the country with 36 pieces of luggage, two personal servants and a team that already despised him.  His later career as a broadcaster is dealt with in equally damning terms – he allegedly hunted tigers by placing a radio in the jungle and boring the beasts to death with his commentary.

The book links the growth of cricket in India to the rise of the independent Indian nation.  Astill tackles the religious sensitivities between Muslims and Hindus, which takes him into the topic of relationships between India and Pakistan, both on and off the cricket field.

He touches also on the delicate subject of caste in India, describing the influence this has had on the nation’s cricket, from the Palwankar brothers a century ago, now largely air-brushed out of India’s cricketing history, to the sad tale of the massively talented Vinod Kambli.  His career could have rivalled that of Sachin Tendulkar but for his personal frailties and also, maybe, some ancient and hidden prejudices against his lowly caste. 

Astill charts the rise in the financial fortunes of Indian cricket and of the players. The great spinner Bishan Bedi tells Astill that he was a Test cricketer on a bicycle because that was the only form of transport he could afford at the start of his Test career.  Much of the change of fortune since Bedi’s heyday in the 1970s is related to television and the deals that have been struck.  In 1982, there were around two million TV sets in India.  By 1992, this had risen to 34 million; and now the figure is around 160 million.  Largely through television deals, India now generates 80% of cricket’s worldwide revenue.  Tellingly, Astill points out that, from its vast revenue, the Indian Board of Control, the BBCI, spends a paltry 8% on the development of the game.  That, if nothing else, explains why India on the field is not the overwhelmingly dominant force on the international stage that it is off the field.

In India, corruption seems endemic in life, not just in cricket.  As Astill points out, Indian cricket is badly run but India the country is run even worse.

In cricket, there is corruption even at a junior level where, for example, in Delhi, a selector was alleged to be demanding sex from mothers in return for their sons being selected for age-group teams.  One father is reported to have hired a prostitute to masquerade as his wife and provide the requested favours.

It is not just in the administration of the game that corruption is rife.  There is the whole issue of match-fixing.  Astill gets to interview a young bookmaker in Mumbai who claims, in what one can only hope is a wild exaggeration, that 99% of international matches are fixed.  Fingers are pointed in the direction of Dawood Ibrahim as the mastermind of corruption and fixing.  This is hardly a revelation in that Ibrahim is currently on the run from Interpol and is number three on the Forbes World Top 10 most dreaded criminals.  This is maybe the weakest part of the book, in that the evidence of the extent of match-fixing is contradictory and inconclusive.

And so we get into the messy history of the last few years, with the rise of the Indian Premier League (IPL) and the juggling and jousting between the key power figures, with Lalit Modi and Sharad Pawar, in particular, looming large.

Modi is presented as a modern-day Phineas Barnum.  Barnum created a travelling circus filled with freaks and frauds.  Modi created the IPL.  Like Barnum, Modi is obviously a brilliant entrepreneur, with a fantastic ability to pull off unlikely deals.  Unfortunately, unlike Barnum, he seems to have a unique capacity for upsetting people and creating enemies.  His downfall was inevitable when he achieved the unique hat-trick of alienating the BCCI, the Indian government and, maybe worst of all, the Mumbai mafia.  Nevertheless, before he retreated to London in disgrace, he managed to devise and launch the IPL, a massively successful, if precariously financed, cricket tournament.

The IPL, based on Twenty20 (T20) cricket is the ultimate tamasha, a brash mix of sport and entertainment.  Whether a game based around a constant barrage of fours and sixes is good cricket is another matter.  Those interviewed by Astill who are involved with the tournament are understandably reluctant to criticise the quality of the product.  It could be that the closest we get in the book to an honest opinion is from ex-Indian cricketer W.V. Raman, who says: “T20 is like a porn movie.  I mean, it’s OK for a bit, but how long can you watch the bonking?”

Astill is clearly a perceptive and probing interviewer, getting more from his subjects than maybe they wished to reveal.  Sharad Pawar, government minister and top cricket administrator,  skilfully manoeuvres his way around his interviewer’s questions, speaking out of the corner of his mouth because his face has been half-frozen by cancer. He deflects the issue of whether or not he is the richest politician in India, but merely succeeds in creating the impression that he might be. The reader is left to decide whether “richest” is a euphemism for “most corrupt”.  Astill knows his boundaries.

At a much more humble level, Astill interviews cricketers playing in the slums. And next time Chintu Pujara scores a hundred for India, spare a thought for his proud father Arvind who taught the game to his son.  More than that, for the last twenty years he has coached the young cricketers of Rajkot, not just free of charge but at his own expense, paid for out of his modest salary as a railway clerk.  Astill’s portrait of him provides a moving insight into the selfless dedication that keeps the game alive.  Maybe Indian cricket has needed the likes of Pawar and Modi to take it to its current dominant position as the financial powerhouse of international cricket.  But it is the likes of Arvind Pujara that keep the game alive and healthy on the field despite all the corruption and in-fighting off it.

As for the book, it manages to be both a tamasha in itself, a great entertainment, and also a deadly serious work, carefully researched and lovingly compiled. Because of India’s dominating influence over the international game of cricket, even the most parochial and partisan supporters of the game outside India should read it. Its message is clear.  In the world of international cricket, India will be supplying most of the money to pay the piper and so will be very much calling the tune.  It is a tune that the rest of us will have to dance to, whether we like it or not.

Warwickshire End-of-Season Review

Here is my end-of-season review of Warwickshire in 2013 as published on Deep Extra Cover

http://deepextracover.com/2013/10/14/warwickshire-season-review-2013/