As emerging players at Essex, we would never have thought of standing in the middle of the square at Chelmsford and bombing the ball into the river. If you hit a boundary, you followed Goochy’s edict, took a single next ball and got off strike. Perceptions have changed. In Jos’s eyes a sequence of 6, 4, 6, 1 is better cricket. The white-ball cricket is about transference of power and freedom of spirit.
Modern bats are bigger in profile, with an inviting sweet spot, but less heavy because the wood is drier. They tend not to last as long, and break more easily, so equipment isn’t a major factor in the revolution. I used my best bat, a lovely thin yellow-handled thing, in 2005. It was so responsive I lent it to Ravi Bopara. Legend has it that Albert Trott, who played Test cricket for both Australia and England, hit a ball over the Lord’s pavilion in 1899, so that can’t have been a bad bit of timber.
A glance in the gym would offer a better indication of change. It used to be a no-go area for batsmen. Now every player has a tailored strength-and-conditioning programme. I’m no bio-mechanist, but it stands to reason that if you have a lot of muscle behind a well-timed shot, the ball will disappear into the distance.
Mentally, though, it is a different proposition. I shared a net with Alex Hales in my last one-day series. He had the ability to run down the wicket and hit the net-spinners for six at will, off every delivery. His Gimp was obviously telling him, ‘Don’t worry, you can do it,’ but he didn’t quite get it right at game time and was caught at deep mid-off a couple of times.
I said to him, ‘It must be really hard being you.’ By that I meant it was understandable that he should listen to the inner voice telling him he could clear the rope by seventy yards. That sort of self-knowledge can be dangerous since it leads to a subconscious assumption it is possible to hit every ball, any delivery, for six. If you know you can do it, when do you choose to do it?
That highlights one of batting’s most intriguing factors, its individualism. I’ve never had Alex’s problem of succumbing to temptation, because I don’t have his extraordinary power. I have three or four reliable elements of influence: if I can’t cut, chip or pull the ball, I leave it, or defend.
Someone like Ravi Bopara, who has shared my journey from Maldon to the MCG, has, perversely, had it harder than me because his technique and dexterity allow him more potentially profitable areas on which to concentrate. Those extra options mean he has to make a lot more decisions under pressure than I do.
Handling that distraction, the dilemma of trying to balance pop with prudence, must be a hard thing to deal with. I’ve noticed that the modern-day generation of fifty-over batsmen tend to kill you one day and go quietly the next. Of them all, Joe Root, a player grounded in old-school techniques, probably emerges as the most consistent.
Cricket isn’t losing anything. It is still in a transitional phase, where there is an absolute need to have someone of Rooty’s sureness. He is not a natural power hitter, but he is England’s pivotal batsman. Add that to the inventiveness of shots that look improvised but are meticulously rehearsed, and you have a proper team.
The Dil Scoop, introduced by Tillakaratne Dilshan at the 2009 World Cup, was a game changer. It was a product of street cricket, played with a tennis ball, in Sri Lanka, where there was little room either side of the wicket. He went down on one knee, leaned into the ball, and swept it over the wicketkeeper’s head. Jos Buttler tried it, felt he couldn’t do it the Dilshan way, but found his own method, after hour upon hour of painstaking practice. He is of the generation that grew up with T20, which started in 2003. It had an obvious influence, just as I was inspired by Test and four-day county cricket. The modern player must be far more adaptable; the old-school player approached one-day cricket identically to the longer form, apart from self-consciously having a whack in the last fifteen overs.
To be the complete cricketer is very hard, because that demands a very broad skillset. Joe Root, Steve Smith and David Warner are among the very few players who can relate to all forms of the game. Some excel in two, across twenty or fifty overs. Others, like me, are good in the longer forms, but struggle to make an impact in T20.
As for me playing in The Hundred, the ECB’s marketing-driven competition aimed at a new audience for cricket, which is scheduled to start in July 2020? I don’t think so. Being in one of eight city-based franchise teams, playing a shortened hundred-ball form of the game, is a step too far. An old dog can only learn so many new tricks.
Innovation is no bad thing per se. Cricket has always had room for the experimental. Mushtaq Mohammad of Pakistan first tried out the switch-hit shot playing for Northamptonshire in the mid-seventies. Mike Gatting infamously attempted an impetuous reverse sweep in the 1987 World Cup final against Australia in Kolkata, deflecting Alan Border’s first ball to wicketkeeper Greg Dyer in a key phase of a run chase that ended seven short.
Sometimes fortune favours the brave, or at least excuses the misguided. MS Dhoni, a law unto himself on a cricket field, will be forever associated with the helicopter shot, a fusion of timing and instinct. It involves a strong, quick-wristed flick off a fuller length ball, towards the leg side, and ends with the bat being twirled above the head.
Tekkers, as I think they say in football.
For me, the greatest advance was Kevin Pietersen’s switched-hand reverse sweep, with which he deposited Scott Styris over the extra-cover boundary at the Riverside in June 2008. Just imagine, for a moment, how strange it would feel if you hit a shot with your wrong hand. It is such an unnatural act. Yet Kevin’s shot also incorporated remarkably quick feet, an amazingly sharp brain and flexibility of body position that would have put most of us in traction. For good measure, he repeated the trick against a slower ball, a sequence that involved waiting in his reversed position and hitting it virtually straight over long off. No wonder Styris gawped with amazement before joining in the applause. Kevin had toyed with the shot in T20, but this was new territory, even for a batsman who had announced himself two years earlier with a reverse slog sweep off Muttiah Muralitharan into the Eric Hollies Stand at Edgbaston.
Some of the responses to the destruction he wrought in Durham were way over the top. MCC, guardian of the game’s laws, announced it would be considering the shot’s merits at a previously scheduled meeting. There was some frankly daft talk about bowlers changing from right to left arm in stride, and not making the decision whether to bowl around or over the wicket until the last possible moment.
Shock and awe. KP was made for the IPL and he knew it.
I marvel at such skill and audacity. I played my first scoop against Chris Jordan, having never practised it in my life. I was 80-odd not out, calculated he was going to bowl a yorker and used beginner’s luck to paddle it. Bowlers learn quickly, however. The slower ball, out of the back of the hand, is old hat these days. It’s now delivered even slower, from deeper in the hand.
Batsmen have to cope with slower-ball bouncers, knuckle balls adapted from baseball. Some of the balls wobble like freshly set jelly. They are no longer inclined to submit to the yorker and are primed to create or make the most of fractional errors in length. Bowlers are trying to get their retaliation in first, before they are brutalized by batsmen like Buttler, who hit eleven consecutive boundaries against the West Indies in February 2019 and needed only thirty-two deliveries to go from 50 to 150.
Glorious, but ridiculous. I dare you not to love it.
Watching Buttler or Chris Gayle in full flow is like playing Brian Lara Cricket on the PC when we were kids. They are the Superman Cheat, which lets you hit every ball for four or six, in human form. I was in the Essex dressing room, watching TV, when England just missed out on 500 at Trent Bridge, and someone said, ‘They’re playing a game which is just not real …’
It looked so easy. I was in awe of what those guys were doing, even though I had played alongside them in different forms of the game. I haven’t got their type of talent, their free-form creativity, our equivalent of a cross between jazz and h
eavy metal. Could they bat for eleven hours in 40-degree heat on a ground so silent you can hear nesting birds in the roof of the stand? Possibly not, though Ben Stokes wouldn’t need to hang around that long, in any case, to brush up on his ornithology.
It’s different strokes for different folks in its most literal sense, but there are unifying factors. Jos Buttler is the poster boy for this new form of cricket, but Shane Warne, his mentor in the IPL with Rajasthan Royals, gave him the confidence to transfer his skills into the Test arena. It took time for him to come to terms with red-ball cricket, but he admits: ‘I’m desperate to reach my potential.’ His versatility is deeply impressive, made to measure. He opens with violent intent in T20. In the fifty-over game he’s the finisher, held back for the big push. He keeps wicket to the white ball but concentrates on his batting in Test matches. His character is trusted by the men he serves as vice-captain, Eoin Morgan and Joe Root.
There are parallels with young players emerging in English football. They are unafraid of self-expression and take great pride in the extravagant skills they developed playing cage football as kids. They are quick-witted, and ready to try new tricks on the biggest stage. They will not sacrifice their enthusiasm because they are not scared of failure.
Buttler is a kindred spirit in that respect. His response when a photographer noticed that he had written ‘Fuck it’ on his bat handle was revealing. ‘It puts cricket in perspective,’ he explained. ‘When you nick off, does it really matter?’ In the great scheme of things, no. To a captain or coach craving stability and security, perhaps yes.
Jos had played thirty-one Tests over five years until the summer of 2019, averaging nearly 36 and scoring a single century, 106 against India in 2018. It hasn’t been an easy ride, with Geoffrey Boycott characteristically suggesting ‘a seven-year-old schoolboy would have played better’ in the 2015 Ashes, but his determination to excel is admirable.
He speaks about having ‘fun’ learning new strokes. His favourite is the ramp shot, over the wicketkeeper. Confidence is a transferable item; he understands he can’t play those shots with such freedom in Test cricket and wouldn’t do so indiscriminately, but he reserves the right to employ an element of surprise. Bowlers think they know what they are dealing with, and plan accordingly, but can be knocked out of their stride.
They also appreciate the allure of the five-day game, even when they make their name, and their fortune, in four-over bursts in franchise cricket. Jofra Archer, Buttler’s teammate with Rajasthan Royals, seized the imagination when he qualified for England and was selected for the 2019 World Cup. His ability to bowl with speed and accuracy, to deliver smoothly at 95 mph, is applicable across the game.
Look into his background, and you will find the examples of commitment above and beyond the call of duty that are common among successful athletes. He remodelled his action following back problems after being discovered playing club cricket by Sussex, and even rolled his own mud wicket so he could practise at home in Barbados.
I have no problem with Archer shifting allegiance to England. We live in an age where nationalities are becoming blurred across all sports. At the last count, twenty-nine cricketers have represented two different countries at international level; fifteen have done so in Test cricket. Eoin Morgan, Boyd Rankin and Ed Joyce have all been on the conveyer belt between Irish and English cricket.
I never had to deal with the issue of circumstances curtailing my ability to fulfil my potential as a cricketer. I was lucky the opportunity to play cricket for England was my birthright. I have been brought up to support anyone who represents my nation. Without wishing to sound jingoistic, I’m English through and through.
I don’t have the right to judge those who have done what they thought best for themselves. Morgan was a fantastic cricketer, denied his chance to play for Ireland beyond the odd one-day game – twenty-three, to be precise, between 2006 and 2009. He may not have lost his broad Irish accent and he may retain family roots in the land of his birth, but his life is in England. His heroes, principally Graham Thorpe, were English. The idea of playing for England began to take shape when he studied at Dulwich College in South London from the age of thirteen. He brought with him an intriguingly different set of skills. He played hurling as a schoolboy, growing up in Dublin. The grip for the two-sided bat, or hurley, is the same as the one used in cricket’s reverse sweep.
The modern England team is, as we have discussed, a cultural and ethnic mix. Jonathan Trott, for instance, played Under-19 cricket for South Africa, but has had a British passport since birth, because his dad is English. He’s had to take light-hearted stick as an adopted Brummie but feels very English. His children have been brought up here. He belongs.
Others will inevitably follow a similar path. Simon Harmer, a world-class off-break bowler who has had such an impact with us at Essex over the past couple of years that he now captains our T20 team, has extended his county contract until 2021. By then, although he played five Tests for South Africa in 2015, he will be eligible for England.
Kyle Abbott, who played eleven Tests, and Rilee Rossouw, who was being developed as understudy to AB de Villiers, caused controversy in South Africa in early 2017 by standing down from international cricket to sign long-term county deals with Hampshire. They argued that they were seeking greater financial security; I don’t blame anyone for taking up opportunities as they occur in life.
The nature of the professional cricketer is changing. The T20 generation are global players, who are not necessary identified with one team. Jonny Bairstow is as Yorkshire as they come but reached a new constituency in his debut season in the IPL, where he averaged 55.62 at a strike rate of 157.24 for Sunrisers Hyderabad. He had barely got off the plane from India before he was into a World Cup training camp and scoring 126 in a one-day international against Pakistan.
The modern hybrid player has so more many opportunities to play; Buttler, for instance, represents Sydney Thunder in the Big Bash, while remaining grounded in county cricket for Lancashire. He played for Comilla Victorians in the Bangladesh Premier League. Dawid Malan took a pay cut, from playing T20 cricket in Bangladesh, to represent England in the Ashes in 2017, where he scored his maiden Test hundred at the WACA. Players shouldn’t really have to make such a choice, but the economics of the game have changed as radically as their professional lifestyle.
Franchise cricket operates as a satellite system and answers a constant need for TV content. Malan, for instance, captains Middlesex but spent last winter playing for Cape Town Blitz in South Africa’s Mzansi Super League, for Peshawar Zalmi in the Pakistan Super League, and for Khulna Titans in the Bangladesh Premier League.
Every sport wants to maximize its income and enhance its exposure, but sometimes you can have too much of a good thing. Crowds were down in the last edition of the Big Bash in Australia; they have been uniformly poor in the Caribbean Super League. It is easy to say the calendar should be rationalized, but professional principles apply.
Like other athletes in other sports facing identical issues, we play too much. That might not be as physically destructive in cricket as in, say, rugby, but there is a logical erosion of impact. Everyone needs a rest, but what happens when you are two weeks into a month off, and your agent calls with news that a franchise is offering £50,000 for three matches? The temptation to accept is enormous.
I’ve never been on that circuit. I missed the boat in one sense. I played a solitary season of T20 for Essex, and even scored an unbeaten 100 against Surrey in front of 17,000 at the Oval, but didn’t have the desire to devise an effective method. I was set on becoming the best Test player I could be for England.
Is Test cricket as close to administrators’ hearts as they say it is? Possibly not. The five-day game is declining in one sense, because it is not making money in many countries. It is a difficult discussion, due to the emotions it evokes, but my thinking was refined by a conversation with Ryan ten Doeschate, my captain at Essex, whom I get on really well with
.
Tendo is a fascinating bloke, whose approach to life is summarized by his Twitter bio, which contains only the quote: ‘Take the risk of thinking for yourself, much more happiness, truth, beauty, and wisdom will come to you that way.’ He’s South African-born, is aged thirty-nine, and one of the best players to represent a non-Test playing nation, the Netherlands. His career is best described as esoteric. An Essex cricketer since 2003, after being spotted in South Africa by Graham Gooch, he has played for the following teams since 2010: Mashonaland Eagles, Canterbury, Tasmania, Kolkata Knight Riders, Impi, Otago, Chittagong Kings (now Vikings), Gazi Tank Cricketers, Adelaide Strikers, Dhaka Dynamites, Karachi Kings, Comilla Victorians, Rajshahi Kings and Lahore Qalandars.
He helped Balkh Legends win the inaugural Afghanistan Premier League in Sharjah in late October 2018, and ended the year playing for Bhairahawa Gladiators in the Everest Premier League, a six-team tournament in Nepal that stages all matches on three wickets at the Tribhuvan University ground in Kirtipur, just outside Kathmandu.
Despite that CV, he had dedicated his sporting life to Essex. He struggled badly on arrival; his bowling, which had been spectacularly successful because of his mastery of the yorker, went to pot for a while. I once saw him, head in hands, after being hit to all parts by Scott Styris in a match against Middlesex and wondered whether he would survive. He went out and won us that game with the bat and has never looked back. He is a fantastic leader of men, as comfortable discussing the past with county legends such as Goochy, Keith Fletcher and Doug Insole as he is playing cards on the bus or in the dressing room with an up-and-coming teenager. He has that knack of being able to relate to people on a variety of levels.
The Autobiography Page 24