Month: February 2019

Now, I am no economist, but I do believe that the best way to make a recession happen is for “experts” to talk about how they are worried one might be on the horizon. People hear that, they get worried, they stop buying, and boom: recession.

Which is why I take umbrage with ICC Chairman Shashank Manohar’s comments today, as reported by Cricinfo: “… Test cricket is actually dying to be honest.” The best way to kill Test cricket, is to say it’s dying, over and over again.

But it’s almost more than that.

Manohar made the comments in relation to the World Test Championship, due to start (finally) after this summer’s World Cup, and how it might just be the shot in the arm Test cricket needs. He went on to back up his statement using television ratings and the like.

Fine. I get it. T20 does get better ratings, but not for the reasons that Manohar thinks. His reasoning is that people don’t have the time these days to tune into a five day match. Bullshit. They never did. And while the ratings might be down for Test cricket, people are still watching golf tournaments, which are more or less four day matches.

No, Test cricket’s ratings are down because the ICC and national boards invented a format in their own game that actively competes with it. Will people choose a three hour match over a five day one? Maybe, if you shove it down their throats. Which is more or less what they are doing, as domestic T20 leagues run rampant across the globe and boards actively neglect to develop batsmen who can succeed in the game’s longer formats. This, in turn, has decreased the quality and competitiveness of the matches.

What other sport would do that? Imagine the NFL or the MLB creating flashier formats that would compete with their legacy products in a market they have fully cornered?

Only cricket.

And so, yeah, Test cricket is in trouble, but it’s the ICC that put it there, purposefully, in their relentless pursuit of profit, profit, profit. And it’s things like ECB “hundred” that are only going to make the situation worse. The World Test Championship feels like a grasping at straws, not an actual solution. If it fails, and it could fail, then the ICC could be, like, “well, we tried, shrug” and they are off the hook.

It almost feels like it’s too late now. The World Test Championship is closing the barn door after the horse has run.

And here’s the thing: cricket fans like Test cricket. They will watch it, but only if the matches are worth watching. It’s not the format that’s the problem, nor is it the lack of a tournament, it’s the fact that Test cricket — despite putting up a couple classics now and again — has been slowly degrading in quality. The home team mops the floor with a visiting team, repeat ad nauseam. Changing who plays what and where isn’t going to fix that, it’s about making an actual investment in the players who play the matches, it’s about honing great Test bowlers and batsmen, not side-circus show ponies who can hit sixes, it’s about not creating new formats that actively compete with the first class game. And on and on and on.

Test cricket doesn’t need a shot in the arm, it needs the poison killing cut off at its source.

And that source is cricket’s governing bodies. They are letting the game eat itself alive. It’s insane when you think about it.

First step? Stop telling the world that Test cricket is dying.

I dig this Tweet a lot.

I like knowing what he is talking about, in the same that I still get a thrill from seeing cricket scorecards and knowing what everything means.

But Peter Miller’s got a such better eye than me, than most people, really. I’ve seen that episode of Midsomer Murders, and I never would have in a million years caught the fielding nonsense that Miller did. But, that’s the cool thing about cricket: it’s an onion that you never stop peeling. You just never stop learning. It’s layers run deeper than, I think, any other sport — I realize that this goes against the grain of what I was writing about just yesterday — and it’s to the point where it doesn’t just have its own lingo and slang, it has its own fully formed language, with cadence and rhythm and a deep and wide vocabulary. Just looking through the replies to Miller’s Tweet proves that out:

“I’m assuming the bowler is also the captain to think that those dobbers merit two slips and some weird short gully.”

“The biggest TV cricketing scandal since Helen Daniels gave Jelly Belly Bishop out to a Lou Carpenter leg break that was missing the stumps by 6 inches.”

“He must have battled hard for 80 odd not out and then been put in the covers. Poor lad, I feel for him.”

“The skip can’t justify two grippers for those gentle mediums.”

“Attacking field though, he must have been ripping them”

“Only explanation is that the guy on strike is established batsman and the guy at the other end is new and lower-order. If that’s true, though, having a slip and a gully with everyone inside the ring makes no sense. Makes the whole rest of the programme untenable tbh.”

“Square leg umpire too close, square leg fielder standing basically behind the umpire, mid wicket in no mans land, mid on and mid off too close”

“I’m concerned the bowler was running in before the umpire was anywhere near in position. This game is a circus.”

You get the idea, but the gist of the comments is important: cricket people could talk about fielding setups literally forever. And that’s why I think cricket’s onion has more layers than even baseball’s: the fielding options. In Test cricket, you can literally put fielders anywhere you want, depending on whether the captain wants to attack or sit back, whether you’re bowling pace or spin, what the wicket condition is, what the weather forecast is, whether the batsmen are openers or middle orders or bottom feeders or any combination there of.

Just look at the almost countless names for cricket’s fielding positions:

Wicket Keeper
First Slip
Second slip
Third Slip
Fly Slip
Long Stop
Third man
Gully
Deep Gully
Silly Point
Point
Deep Point
Cover Sweeper
Cover Point
Extra Cover
Deep Extra Cover
Silly Mid Off
Mid Off
Long Off
Straight Hit
Silly Mid On
Mid On
Long On
Forward Short Leg
Short Mid Wicket
Mid Wicket
Deep Mid Wicket
Sweeper
Short Square Leg
Square Leg
Deep Square Leg
Leg Gully
Long Leg
Leg Slip
Short Fine Leg
Deep Fine Leg

Unfortunately, as the game gravitates slowly away from Test cricket and toward the ruckus quick-hit atmospheres of domestic T20 leagues — for good or for ill, whether the fans or the players want it or not — fielding still matters, but I have noticed it matters in a different way: it’s less about the right number of slips, and more about the circus catches that make the ESPN highlight reel.

To wit:

Now, of course, it’s a symptom of a disease: T20 domestic leagues are all about big hits and cheerleaders, so it would follow that fielders would want in on the mix too. And if guys come out trying to score 50 off of 14, they are going to put a few balls in the air which will create more chances for these sorts of diving acrobatics. But I don’t like it. It’s nonsense. It’s a dumbing down of the game. I don’t mind T20, it’s a bit of a necessary evil and can be damned entertaining, but I do mind the format stripping down the layers, making it a fist fight instead of a chess match. I’d prefer a nuanced discussion on the fielding in fictional cricket game over a Jason Roy circus catch any day.

Thankfully, we are all alive and well in an era that features both.

Let’s enjoy it while we can.

Yesterday was the Super Bowl here in the US.

And everyone has agreed: it well and thoroughly sucked.

From Deadspin:

It was a record-setter. Surely that can’t be a bad thing? Well, those Super Bowl records:

• Fewest points in a game
• Fewest points in a game by a winning team
• Fewest points through three quarters
• Fewest touchdowns in a game
• Fewest passing touchdowns in a game (tied)
• Fewest points in a game by one team (tied)
• Fewest touchdowns in a game by one team (tied)
• Most consecutive drives by one team ending in a punt

That last one? Woof.

Now, I get it, sport, like all other forms of entertainment — art, music, literature, movies, whatever — is a matter of taste. Some people like action movies, others don’t; some people like heavy metal, others don’t; some people like the NFL, others like Test cricket. Neither side is right, and neither side is wrong. There is quality and there is dreck, that’s the difference, it’s not the medium or the genre. Which is why I will freely admit that Test cricket has produced some woeful matches over the years — many of them in Barbados and Antigua featuring the same two sides, which is why the sparse crowd was primarily vacationing Brits there more for the drink and the sun than the cricket (and fair play to them) — and that the NFL has put on some hugely entertaining games — but there’s no way on earth people could stand up and say that NFL is the superior product — something many, many Americans believe. NFL fans, more than any other, consider their league the greatest show on earth, and would never allow for the argument that a bat and ball sport from England where the players wear sweaters could be more entertaining than their showpiece game.

But it can be. Just like, on occasion, the NFL can be vastly more entertaining than Test cricket.

We paint with such broad strokes when we discuss matters of taste. It creates an insularity that keeps us from trying new things, from experiencing events outside our comfort zone. I didn’t tune into last night’s NFL game, but I like to think that it was more a matter of logistics than anything else (I don’t own a TV). That said, however, I can be just as guilty of the above as anyone else.

There’s quality, and there’s dreck. Just because it’s the NFL doesn’t mean it’s consistently one or the other, same deal with Test cricket. But this past weekend, the NFL was surely pure dreck, while Test cricket was a real joy down in Antigua.

And, so, NFL fans, give cricket a chance, you might be disappointed, but you also might not be, and either way: you can say you tried something new. And you will have something to flip over to during another interminable five hour game that’s 90% commercials. Oh, wait, there I go again. I promise to give your game another chance, now and again, just give mine the same courtesy.

Related: Last night while you slept.

Until tomorrow.

After Australia’s first Test win on English soil in 1882, a satirical obituary for English cricket was published in The Sporting Times. English cricket had died, it said, and “the body will be cremated and the ashes taken to Australia” for burial. Hence, the Ashes.

Yesterday, after the Windies wrapped up the second Test against in England in Antigua, James Morgan, writing for his really great blog, The Full Toss, said, more or less, that the ECB had no interest in the long format of the game and that unless something changes, English test teams outside of England are screwed, and that there’s zero ambition from the board room to change that. Which is just a fancy way of saying that English cricket died yesterday afternoon at the Sir Vivi Oval.

Meanwhile, writing for the Independent, Jonathan Liew said that:

We frequently hear about players exploring the outer limits of their talent. We hear a lot less about exploring the inner limits. How long can you stay in the fight? How far are you willing to go in order to find a way? How much, ultimately, do you really, really not want to get out? But England don’t really seem that interested in those sorts of questions. Perhaps because they’re terrified of what they might find. Perhaps they’re worried that, if they deconstruct their games and search deep within, they might find nothing at all.

“In a sense, it’s a form of intellectual laziness,” he continues. “A fundamental inability to reflect, a fundamental absence of thought.”

Yikes.

And that’s just two sources. England cricket fans from the sportswriters to the average fans were collectively losing their shit yesterday. The gist of it is summed up in James’ post: the ECB doesn’t give a shit about anything but turning a profit, and are slowing strangling the Test game to death.

And he/they might be right. This might be the final nail for Test cricket in England. Writes Morgan: “(W)hat young player coming through the system wants to score 1,000 runs in the championship when they can make a lot more money in a hell of a lot less time by prostituting themselves to a shiny new Hundred franchise from next summer onwards?”

I don’t have an answer to that.

Wait. Yes I do. And his name is Shimron Hetmyer.

22 years old. Raised on the NBA and the IPL during a time of terrible West Indian cricket teams. But there he is, donning the whites and grinding out runs all the same. Why? Because the glory — the real glory — is in the five day game. Despite all the ECB’s efforts to the contrary, it’s Test cricket that turns heads, that makes kids want to be cricketers. It was that way before, it is that way now, and it will be that way forever.

This is a blip, not a trend. A speed bump, not a roadblock. English cricket didn’t die in 1882. And it didn’t die yesterday in Antigua. Yes, there are problems, and yes they need to work toward solutions, but an Ashes series win this summer in front of packed houses will inspire ten times the kids than next summer’s farcical “Hundred” will. Kids are smart. They see through the bullshit. They know the real heroes are the ones scoring those 1,000 Championship runs and winning Test matches all over the world.

Until tomorrow.