The Shorter Wisden 2013

by John Wisden

  The defeat at Lord’s prompted Strauss to suggest that England preferred being “hunter” rather than “hunted”, which said a lot about the national sporting psyche. But they had been seduced by talk of a legacy: committing the oldest crime in cricket’s book, they took their eye off the ball. Cook demanded his players refocus, and so joined Douglas Jardine, Tony Greig and David Gower as the only England captains to win a Test series in India. The London Olympics didn’t hand out gold medals for pleasant surprises but, in the most memorable year for British sport, the cricketers had finally chipped in.

  We really need to talk about Kevin

  Tea was approaching on the second day at Nagpur when Anderson bowled Virender Sehwag for a duck and ran straight into the arms of Pietersen at backward point. The explanation was disappointingly simple, a case of falling headlong into the nearest embrace. But the symbolism! After a year in which Pietersen bestrode social media like a virtual colossus, here was the strangest thing: a real-life exchange with a previously hostile team-mate, and not a BlackBerry or an “LOL” in sight. It felt like a modern morality tale.

  There were moments in 2012 when Pietersen’s behaviour appeared to recall the Italian footballer Giorgio Chinaglia, who was once asked if it was true he had played with Pelé. “No,” he said. “Pelé played with me.” Cricket, some suspected, existed only as an extension of Pietersen’s whims (and unlike team, cricket definitely had an “i” in it). Emboldened by a lucrative new Indian Premier League deal, he was arrogant, attempting to bulldoze over the terms of his central contract. He was self-pitying, claiming he had never been looked after. And he was a man apart, sending silly texts to the South Africans.

  What happened next was a mishmash in many genres. A soap opera became a panto when Pietersen was booed at a county match in Southampton. His team-mates cast themselves in a Whitehall farce, giggling in the wardrobe as Pietersen was mocked on a fake Twitter account. Other nations enjoyed a comedy in several acts, not least when his role at the World Twenty20 was confined to a TV studio. And over in the Theatre of the Absurd, ECB chairman Giles Clarke spoke of reintegration – cricket’s noun of the year. Then there was Nagpur’s Bollywood hug. We await the musical.

  The inner workings of the English game were thrust into the spotlight. Despite armchair diagnoses, only the dressing-room knew just how troublesome Pietersen had become; for outsiders to lecture Andy Flower on man-management was plain ludicrous. But as his exile dragged on, the ECB began to look petty, if they showed their faces at all. Pietersen’s pursuit of Twenty20’s riches at the expense of the Test side – the format which had made his name – was unattractive, although these attitudes can filter down from the top. And if there was a have-cake-and-eat-it feel to his simultaneous grouse about excessive cricket and his yearning for the IPL, it was hard to ignore a wider truth: a bloated schedule has asked the players to make unfair choices. The dilemma is not going away, however much English cricket wishes it would.

  Earlier in the year, there had been a hint of double standards, too. When Stuart Broad branded county newspaper reporters “liars”, “muppets” and “jobsworths” – on Twitter, naturally – the slurs evaporated into cyberspace. Yet when Pietersen questioned the commentary credentials of Nick Knight, who works for Sky Sports, bankrollers of the English game, he was fined. Insults were being graded by the supposed importance of their victims.

  But all was not lost. In India, England were a better, more watchable, team for the inclusion of a fully engaged Pietersen. And, painful though the process was, the ECB had waylaid his international retirement. More than that, they may have saved a man from himself. Pietersen, it turned out, needed England more than he realised, just as England were acknowledging they would prefer not to live without Pietersen; no one said marriages of convenience were easy. Yet amid it all were perhaps the stirrings of a realisation – that while hero-worship at the IPL may feed the ego, a long Test career is more likely to nourish the soul.

  Tired but not emotional

  Strauss deserved better than the finale he got, but his response to the turmoil that dominated the run-up to the Lord’s Test against South Africa showed why he had been one of England’s most respected captains. Diplomatic and authoritative, he emitted just the right sort of anger – steam, not lava. And when he told team-mates of his retirement, he did so by letter. He treated others with respect as a matter of course; usually, they returned the favour.

  Like Cook, Strauss had inherited a mess involving Pietersen, and set about the repair work with diligence and honesty. Between England’s defeat on his first trip in charge, in the West Indies in early 2009, and the loss to Pakistan nearly three years later, Strauss led them to seven Test series wins and a draw. He won the Ashes home and away, becoming only the second Englishman – after Len Hutton – to achieve the feat in two full series against a full-strength Australia. All that had been missing was victory in Asia and against South Africa, though even the 1–1 draw there in 2009-10 was cast in his own unflappable image.

  It was odd to think that, less than a month before everything unravelled, England might have topped the world rankings in all three formats had it not rained in Birmingham during the one-day thrashing of Australia. While it’s true that Strauss quit Twenty20s in 2009 and 50-over internationals in 2011, he could claim some credit for creating a dressing-room which had grown to expect success. That – and not the confusion at Lord’s – was his true gift to the English game.

  Yet there was a regret that went beyond the events of the summer. Strauss had been full-time captain for only three and a half years. Graeme Smith, his resilient South African counterpart, took charge in April 2003. Smith did assume the job as a far younger man, but there was a more significant discrepancy: in the period in which Strauss captained in 45 Tests, Smith did so in 27. Neither figure was ideal. South Africa don’t play enough series of four games or more; England play too much full stop. Even without the burdens of the limited-overs roles, Strauss had every right to be worn out. Here’s wishing Cook a prosperous reign. It may be too much to hope for a long one.

  The roaring forties

  It is often said, usually by bowlers, that cricket is a batsman’s game. But South Africa’s pace attack have blithely ignored the maxim. Not long before they dismantled England, Dale Steyn, Vernon Philander and Morne Morkel had blown Australia away for 47 at Cape Town. Then, at the start of 2013, they humiliated New Zealand (45 at Cape Town) and, with the help of Jacques Kallis, Pakistan (49 at Johannesburg). There had been only 17 totals of under 50 in Tests before this trail of destruction, and 11 of those came before the Second World War. England’s nadir against the South Africans last summer was a positively zenith-like 240, which history may yet record as some kind of triumph.

  The power of three

  Perhaps we should have been surprised they were playing South Africa at all. In between their 2012 meeting and the next, in 2015-16, England will have played 24 Tests against either Australia or India. By the end of the 2015 Ashes, the Australians will have visited this country for bilateral series five summers out of seven. And when Australia arrived in India in February 2013, it was for the fifth Border–Gavaskar Trophy series in six years. The main reason given for England’s hosting of Australia for five one-day internationals last season was mutual back-scratching: Australia are hosting England in a pre-World Cup triangular tournament in 2014-15. The third nation? That will be India.

  The players from these three teams may grow sick of the sight of each other, but the accountants will probably not. Last summer’s downgrade of South Africa’s visit to a three-Test series for the first time in 18 years was a woeful piece of planning that could not be explained away entirely by the Olympics.

  Part of the charm of the big series resides in its sense of occasion. But ten straight Ashes Tests from July to January will be less of an occasion, more of a routine. And if the cycle of two series against Australia every four years was disturbed to spare England winters containing both an As
hes and a World Cup, then no such excuse can be made for Australia’s swift return here in 2015. Not since the start of the 20th century, when only three sides played Test cricket, have 15 Ashes matches been crammed into so short a span.

  Last year, we fretted about Twenty20 overkill. That process continued when Sri Lanka cancelled Test series against West Indies and South Africa in 2013 because of the IPL and their own 20-over league, while South Africa themselves replaced the Boxing Day Test with a game of Twenty20 against New Zealand. Now we face another extreme: over the next three years, one of the most durable encounters in all sport will be stretched to its limit. Administrators will point to full houses as proof that all is well. But a little of the magic will be lost.

  Ever increasing circles

  It remains to be seen how Australia’s talented but injury-prone seamers cope with ten successive Ashes Tests, although Michael Clarke has done his best to portray rotation as a necessary evil. The Australian hierarchy have even come up with a condescending piece of jargon for their policy. All hail “informed player management”. England, who are resigned to it as well, prefer the less slippery “rotation”. You get the gist.

  Yet you wonder about the point of it all if, fitness permitting, teams are disinclined to field their strongest side – a basic principle of international sport which, thanks to the schedule, has been made to look like a hopeless ideal. England’s one-day defeat in India in January 2013 rang hollow without Trott, Anderson, Broad and Swann. Spectators wondering which star players they won’t be seeing any time soon may sympathise with the French existentialist philosopher who once asked for a coffee without cream. “We’re out of cream,” said the waitress. “Would you like it without milk instead?”

  Even Andy Flower admitted defeat in November, agreeing to hand England’s limited-overs coaching duties to Ashley Giles. This was presented as a piece of forward thinking by the ECB. And in the circumstances it probably was: if an HGV needed to get from Portsmouth to Aberdeen and back in 24 hours, you’d hope for two drivers. But when cricket’s talent has to job-share to stay awake at the wheel, you know something is wrong.

  A turn for the worse?

  Comparisons flowed with Jim Laker and Tony Lock while Swann and Panesar were harvesting their 19 wickets at Mumbai in November. Swann is now at Nottinghamshire and Panesar at Sussex but, like Surrey’s Laker and Lock, they were once team-mates, at lowly Northamptonshire. This is relevant, for what happened at the Wankhede came with a health warning – and not just for India’s batsmen.

  The county circuit has not traditionally offered spinners much solace. Swansea used to do a bit, as did the Essex outgrounds and Old Trafford. But Wantage Road would rag square – excessively so in the end, and Swann and Panesar had to learn about bowling on less helpful pitches too. But show them a turner, especially one with the pace that was on offer in Mumbai, and they will show you how to exploit it.

  The spinner’s paradise has now vanished from county cricket altogether. Last season, the weather didn’t help. Neither did a fixture list in which half the Championship matches were over by June 9, when slow bowlers in England are still coming out of hibernation. But it is also a question of attitude. Points penalties just aren’t worth the risk, and since Northamptonshire were caught out in 1998 even their pitches have retreated into the Stepford Wives blandness of the domestic game. Just as endemic is a culture in which captains prefer the safety-first of medium-pace: among English-qualified spinners who will still be playing in 2013, only Chris Nash of Sussex and Steven Croft of Lancashire finished in the top 30 of last summer’s national averages. And even Nash and Croft would not describe themselves as frontline spinners.

  Slow bowlers on the up, such as David Wainwright, Danny Briggs and Simon Kerrigan, are battling a system in which not one of the 18 first-class headquarters in England can be regarded as spin-friendly; the gradual disappearance of outgrounds further precludes variety. If England are to keep winning Tests in India, this has to change – with pitch liaison officers instructed to show more leniency to turners than seamers. Peter Such, appointed last summer as the ECB’s spin guru, is aware of the conundrum, and will need to bring to his job all the resolve he once showed while making a 72-minute duck for England.

  Cricket’s crown princes

  Of course, you have to be careful what you wish for. In India, it turns out, they have a different problem: the wrong kind of spin. Throughout the Test series against England, their captain M. S. Dhoni pleaded for the magic formula that would help his side exact revenge for the 2011 whitewash. But no groundsman could play the sorcerer’s apprentice. After India had taken the lead at somnolent Ahmedabad, Mumbai was too quick, Kolkata ended up helping England’s seamers, and Nagpur died a slow death.

  Dhoni claimed that India’s defeat, only their fourth in a home Test series in a quarter of a century, was nothing compared with the pain of the first-stage exit at the 2007 World Cup, which was either disingenuous or deeply worrying. But the result was the lesson the cricketing world wanted India to learn: power has its uses – and its limits. When Prabir Mukherjee, Eden Gardens’ 83-year-old curator, refused to do the BCCI’s bidding, he also set an example to the non-Indian members of the ICC.

  We may, though, have to defer our hope that power will spawn responsibility. Interviewed by ESPNcricinfo shortly before the Mumbai Test, BCCI president N. Srinivasan was asked about the IPL’s global impact, and whether his board should be “thinking about world cricket”. He got full marks for brutal honesty: “There’s a lot that the BCCI is doing for Indian cricket.” Srinivasan was also asked about the possibility of an IPL window, which would restore at least some order to the Future Tours Programme. He replied: “You must understand that it is not ICC who can offer a window. The FTP is among ten members, so ten members decide.” Srinivasan knows very well how votes tend to be cast at the ICC – and why.

  Last summer, the people of Liechtenstein went to the polls to vote on the right of Crown Prince Alois to veto the results of referendums: three-quarters wanted the veto to remain. The ICC’s Full Members had already undergone their Liechtenstein moment when no one properly challenged the BCCI’s instant rejection of the Woolf Review, which had called for the game’s governing body (the ICC, that is, not the BCCI) to adopt greater transparency and an independent executive board, among other doomed proposals. As long as a majority of Full Member nations remain in India’s pocket, administrators can peddle the illusion that cricket’s politics operate in a free world.

  And then there were not very many

  It seems inadequate to talk about Sachin Tendulkar in terms of an era: in cricket’s geology he’s a one-man eon. But his struggles against England came after the Test retirements of Rahul Dravid, V. V. S. Laxman and Andrew Strauss. Ricky Ponting and Mike Hussey quickly followed. One day soon, we will be without Jacques Kallis and Mahela Jayawardene. An age of distinguished batsmen, brought up before Twenty20 asked a generation to recalibrate their loyalties, will soon die out.

  But these names go beyond nostalgia. They are or were not just prolific run-getters, but ambassadors; and if Ponting occasionally belonged to the plainer-speaking school of diplomacy, his concern for cricket’s well-being was in his genes. When these men speak, others listen; they are not rent-a-quotes. Dravid was already a member of MCC’s world cricket committee before he retired, and Strauss has an executive role written all over him. The appointment of Anil Kumble as chairman of the ICC’s cricket committee was a good move. But too many slip through the net. It would be a shame if they are allowed to drift away from the running of the game, which needs more globally respected former players to reassert cricket’s integrity.

  This is not mere window-dressing. Cricket’s fight against corruption continues to strike an underwhelming note. Once more, the most revealing work into the subcontinent’s betting markets came from a journalist: Ed Hawkins’s Bookie Gambler Fixer Spy is Wisden’s Book of the Year. But its suggestion of foul play at the 2011 World Cup semi-fina
l between India and Pakistan met a predictable fate: the ICC rejected the claim, the BCCI expressed outrage. The suggestion may be wrong, but we are yet to hear how the tweet sent to Hawkins by an Indian bookmaker could so accurately map out the course of the Pakistan innings that day in Mohali.

  To dismiss him as a publicity-seeker, as some did, was facile: the book has yet to be written whose author hopes for poor sales. And the moral high horse is no place to keep in touch with events on the ground – recently retired players are closer to reality than any ex-businessman, lawyer or even policeman. Cricket owes it to itself to listen. Yet the perception is that our sport is concerned primarily with safeguarding its reputation – and all too willing to turn a blind eye.

  Still hazy after all these years

  In August, the Surrey spinner Murali Kartik was jeered at Taunton after he Mankaded Somerset’s Alex Barrow. Kartik had already warned Barrow about backing up too far, and was not breaking any law. Still, Surrey later said sorry, compelled by some nebulous nod to the spirit of cricket. It was the wrong way round, like the English habit of apologising after someone has stepped on your foot. The contrition should have been Barrow’s, for trying to pinch a few yards that weren’t his to pinch.

  It is unclear whether this topsy-turviness has its roots in the historical subservience of prole bowlers to bourgeois batsmen; or in the fact that the man who gave his name to the deed in the late 1940s, India’s Vinoo Mankad, was cheeky enough to enact it at Sydney, a bastion of cricket’s white ruling classes. Either way, it’s time to move on – and for the batsmen to stop acting hard done by.