The Shorter Wisden 2013

by John Wisden

  The English season began earlier than ever, with the first university matches being played on March 31, but ended early too: the previous ten had all extended beyond September 16. Frustratingly, March had been a dry month with an unequalled spell of warmth and sunshine towards its end. The rains, though, had already set in by the time the Championship started on April 5, and practically every match scheduled during April was seriously interrupted. In two instances, at The Oval and at Bristol, four-day games were wholly washed out.

  May 17 marked the beginning of a dry fortnight – and the start of the Test series against West Indies. The First Test was played under cloudy skies with a cold wind, but the Second, which finished a day early on May 28, was warm and sunny throughout. The Third, in mid-June, was strafed by frequent rain.

  There were further dry interludes in late-July, coinciding with the First Test against South Africa, while August was largely dry and rather warm in East Anglia and South-East England; other parts of the country were much less fortunate. The first ten days of September were also dry and warm, before the weather tailed off.

  The meteorological statistics, averaged over England and Wales, for the 2012 season, were:

  Each summer has slightly different regional variations, though in most years northern and western counties are cooler, cloudier and damper than those in the east and south. The Wisden Summer Index compares the summer county by county. In essence, an index over 650 indicates a good summer; one below 500 a poor one. Values for the summer of 2012 against the average for the standard reference period of 1981–2010 were:

  The bad weather during 2012 was spread fairly evenly across the country, with every county recording a deficit of 116 or more. Yorkshire, Hampshire, Essex, Middlesex and Surrey had the lowest deficits, while Durham and Somerset had the largest. Only four counties scored above 500, while three scored below 400, with Durham’s 342 comfortably the lowest.

  Taking a national view, 2012’s index of 455 was 127 points below the year before, and 48 lower than 2007 – the previous worst of the 2000s. The last six summers, 2007–2012, represent the poorest run since 1977–82.

  Highest: 812 in 1976

  Lowest: 309 in 1879

  CRICKET PEOPLE

  Dealing in millimetres

  ALI MARTIN

  Simon Taufel does not like the word “retirement”. He insisted upon its removal from the media release announcing his decision to step down from the ICC Elite Panel of Umpires. The 41-year-old Taufel instead “moved on” to become ICC Umpire Performance and Training Manager after 13 years, 74 Test matches, 174 one-day internationals and 34 Twenty20s. For much of that time, he was widely regarded as the best umpire in the world.

  A reputation for accuracy, and an ability – according to his friend and fellow Australian umpire Daryl Harper – to turn the panel’s workshops into “Simonars”, make his next step a logical one. “I have a passion for development and helping others achieve their goals,” says Taufel, who intends to spend more time with his wife and their three children. The Lahore terrorist attack on March 3, 2009, in which six policemen and two civilians were killed midway through a Test between Pakistan and Sri Lanka, changed his outlook. Part of the convoy of players and officials ambushed by gunmen near the Gaddafi Stadium, Taufel witnessed the death of his driver, Zafar Khan.

  “He was simply taking some people to a Test match, and then his wife and children lose him for ever,” he reflects. “That is just not fair. There were lessons for cricket to learn that day, sure, but for me it was about more than that. Life and families are precious.”

  Five Umpire of the Year awards from 2004 to 2008 demonstrate the respect commanded by Taufel, who made his international debut at Sydney in January 1999 and stood down after October’s World Twenty20 final in Colombo. Alastair Cook even apologised to him once after a day’s play for referring one of his decisions, despite Cook being proved correct. Taufel recognises that the Decision Review System helps the dialogue between players and officials, as well as the chance to improve the accuracy of umpires: “We used to deal in centimetres, now it’s millimetres.”

  And his favourite decisions? Taufel is especially proud to have had the “courage and knowledge of Law” to give Inzamam-ul-Haq out obstructing the field in a one-day international between Pakistan and India at Peshawar in February 2006. He also mentions working with Billy Bowden and TV official Ian Gould to rule that Sri Lanka’s Angelo Mathews had turned a potential six into a three with an astonishing piece of fielding on the boundary during a 2009 World Twenty20 match at Trent Bridge. A former seamer in Sydney’s Northern Suburbs, Taufel hopes others are encouraged to take up what is now a full-time profession; his 13 years as an umpire were juggled with a job in the printing industry. He says: “When it came to finishing, I always aimed to have people ask ‘why did you?’ rather than ‘why don’t you?’ If people talk about my time and the subject of umpiring positively, then I’m satisfied.”

  “A labour of hate” is how Jim Cumbes jokingly describes the legally fraught redevelopment of Old Trafford, from a rundown but historic ground to a striking modern venue that hosts an Ashes Test in 2013. Having retired in December after 25 years at Lancashire – as commercial manager, then chief executive – Cumbes is proud of his legacy, and the battle won to get there.

  A dual sportsman from 1965 to 1982, he bowled seam for four first-class counties, and was a top-flight goalkeeper in England and North America. Reflecting on his most illustrious opponents, he verges on blasphemy: “Pelé was just a magically dynamic attacking player, but I think George Best edged him. He was good enough to star anywhere on the pitch.”

  Cumbes was approached by Tranmere Rovers, West Bromwich Albion and Worcestershire for commercial-manager roles as his playing career drew to a close. New Road appealed most, only for Worcestershire chairman Ralph Matkin to pass away on the morning they were due to discuss the matter. But the offers he was receiving meant Cumbes felt “someone was trying to tell me something”, and he played on for a season as Warwickshire’s Second XI captain in 1982 in tandem with commercial duties, before going full-time during five years of off-field success that prompted Lancashire’s interest.

  “I was the only county commercial manager, and my approach was simple: try new things and repeat those that worked,” he says. He became chief executive in 1998, and would test out his level-headed outlook during an arduous legal battle in 2011, in which the owners of the nearby White City retail park called for a judicial review into the £70m redevelopment of Old Trafford and the surrounding area. Cumbes and Lancashire, who had pressed on with the building work while the lawyers fought it out, emerged victorious that July.

  By the end of the season, captain Glen Chapple, coach Peter Moores and director of cricket Mike Watkinson had taken a team tipped for the drop, and playing home fixtures on outgrounds, to the Championship. But the relegation that followed in 2012 has done little to dampen Cumbes’s optimistic spirit: “The talent’s there to bounce back, and our ground’s now a world-class arena.”

  Towering over all England’s international venues is Mike Hutton, a man whose indifference to heights and Arctic conditions ensures television audiences are treated to stunning aerial views from the camera known as a cherry picker, 55 metres above the ground. A professional cameraman since 1977, Hutton’s first taste of cricket came on West Indies’ tour of India in 1994-95. And he volunteered for the loftiest job in the sport ten years ago, after a colleague’s heart condition prevented him from continuing. “It is an absolute privilege: the game, the views, the teamwork,” says Hutton, who has not looked back, and is not especially fussed about looking down either.

  The rolling Hampshire countryside and the Isle of Wight in the distance are what make the Ageas Bowl his favourite location to shoot from the platform on top of the crane, manned at ground level by colleague Steve Allan.

  Asked, as he often is, about the danger of becoming a human lightning rod, the 62-year-old Hutton employs North Yorkshire phl
egm: “I have picked up a good knowledge of clouds and can see storms developing from a fair distance. Sometimes you get a twinge of vertigo, but on the whole I’m fine with it.”

  CRICKET IN THE COURTS

  Carpeted in Kidderminster

  STANFORD JAILED FOR 110 YEARS

  Allen Stanford, 62, the corrupt financier once hailed as the saviour of cricket, was sentenced to 110 years in jail by a court in Houston, Texas. Judge David Hittner described Stanford’s corrupt $7bn Ponzi scheme as “one of the most egregious frauds ever presented to a trial jury in federal court”.

  The judge ordered Stanford to forfeit $5.9bn in assets, though investigators found very little of his fortune. At least 30,000 people were said to have lost money as a result of bogus investments by the Stanford International Bank. Many of his victims – including one woman whose family lost $4m – were in court to hear Assistant US Attorney William Stellmach tell the judge: “From beginning to end, he’s treated his victims like roadkill. Allen Stanford doesn’t deserve anyone’s sympathy and he doesn’t deserve your honour’s mercy.”

  In 2006 Stanford was knighted by the Antigua government. In 2008 he flew into Lord’s by helicopter where a Perspex case ostensibly containing $20m in cash was waiting – the purse for a Twenty20 match between a team of West Indians and an England XI. He was fawned on by the game’s leading officials. Within a year US investigators had gone public with their allegations, and Stanford was in jail.

  Stanford blamed his downfall on “Gestapo tactics” by prosecutors which provoked a run on his banks. He said: “I am and will always be at peace with the way I conducted myself.” Sentencing him on March 6, Hittner made most of the 13 separate sentences consecutive rather than concurrent, which means Stanford will die in jail unless the conviction is overturned or he is pardoned.

  SWANN FINED

  England off-spinner Graeme Swann was fined £1,383 by Kidderminster magistrates on June 1 for speeding and failing to respond after his Jaguar was caught doing 74mph on a 50mph stretch of road in Herefordshire. Swann was said to have sent no reply to five letters requesting the name of the driver.

  He told the court he had written to West Mercia Police after the first letter, saying his agent was driving, but had not received the other four. Philip Worrall, defending, said they were probably not delivered because they were addressed to West Bridgend, Nottingham, not West Bridgford. “We find the prosecution more credible,” said magistrate Tim Morris.

  CAIRNS WINS TWITTER LIBEL TRIAL

  The former New Zealand all-rounder Chris Cairns won £90,000 damages at the High Court in London on March 26 after suing the former Indian Premier League commissioner Lalit Modi for accusing him of match-fixing. This was said to be the first libel case involving a Twitter message.

  Modi was estimated to be facing a bill of £1.4m, including legal costs, after a 24-word tweet sent in 2010 claimed Cairns had a record of fixing. Mr Justice Bean said Modi had “singularly failed” to provide evidence to back up his claim, or even to show there were reasonable grounds for suspicion. He also criticised the aggressive nature of the defence, which included Modi’s counsel calling Cairns a liar 24 times; the judge said this had led him to increase the damages by £15,000. An appeal was thrown out in October.

  The allegation stemmed from Cairns’s time captaining Chandigarh Lions in the Indian Cricket League, the failed rival to the IPL. Cairns faced criticism for bringing the case in the UK, where there were estimated to be between 35 and 100 people who read the tweet. Padraig Reidy of the pressure group Index on Censorship called his decision “one of the most clear-cut cases of libel tourism we have seen”; libel lawyer Mark Stephens called the case “ridiculous” and said it should have been struck out.

  JOSHI JAILED FOR SEX OFFENCES

  The Indian off-spinner Uday Joshi, who made his name playing for Sussex in the 1970s, was jailed for six years on March 9 for sexually abusing a boy while playing and coaching in Northern Ireland in 1979.

  A 45-year-old man gave evidence at Belfast Crown Court about three incidents that took place when, as a 13-year-old, he and Joshi stayed in the same house. Joshi denied all the allegations and said nothing untoward had happened, but he was convicted unanimously after a five-day trial.

  Judge Gemma Loughran said she accepted that the offences had been wholly out of character for Joshi, a 67-year-old married father of two, but said they had left the victim with a chronic adjustment disorder and anxiety. Joshi was barred for life from working with children. On December 19, an appeal was dismissed. He took 557 first-class wickets in a 17-year career, mainly for Sussex and Gujarat.

  AZHARUDDIN’S LIFE BAN OVERTURNED

  Twelve years after being banned for life for match-fixing by the Indian cricket authorities, the former national captain Mohammad Azharuddin had the ban set aside by the Andhra Pradesh High Court on November 9. The court said he had not been given the chance to state his case, and that the claims were unsubstantiated. Asked whether he regretted playing 99 Tests and not 100, Azharuddin said, “Maybe I was destined to play 99 Test matches and that’s what the Almighty wanted. I would not like to dwell on the past. I am an MP and would like to focus on the development of my constituency, Moradabad.”

  SACKED EXECUTIVE AWARDED EIGHT-FIGURE SUM

  Tim Wright, the British former chief executive of IPL franchise Deccan Chargers, was awarded £10.5m on July 16 by the High Court in London for breach of contract when he was dismissed in 2009. The Chargers’ owners, the Deccan Chronicle, did not attend the trial because they disputed the court’s jurisdiction, and were subsequently reported to be in financial difficulties. Wright insisted the contract was subject to UK law.

  LIFE SENTENCE FOR NZ CRICKET BAT KILLER

  A New Zealander admitted bashing his de facto stepfather to death with a bat, before going on to play cricket the next day. Christopher Glenn Gleeson, 25, was jailed for life, with a minimum of 11 years four months, in the High Court at Christchurch on April 17. Gleeson pleaded guilty, but offered no explanation.

  CRICKET AND THE LAWS IN 2012

  Fatal distraction

  FRASER STEWART

  Steven Finn has demolished many stumps during his career, but it was his disruption of the wrong set that caused a stir in 2012. While Finn had occasionally broken the non-striker’s wicket with his knee throughout his career, the quirk came to a head during the Second Test against South Africa at Headingley. On the first morning, he knocked into the wicket during his delivery stride at least twice before umpire Steve Davis signalled dead ball when it happened again. It was from this delivery that Graeme Smith edged to Andrew Strauss at slip – but the dismissal didn’t count.

  At the time, no specific Law dictated that a bowler should be penalised for accidentally disturbing the non-striker’s stumps, and rarely was dead ball called on such occasions. However, Davis chose to apply Law 23.4(b)(vi), which states that either umpire should signal dead ball when “the striker is distracted by any noise or movement, or in any other way, while he is preparing to receive, or receiving a delivery. This shall apply whether the source of the distraction is within the game or outside it. The ball shall not count as one of the over.”

  Jeff Crowe, ICC’s match referee at Headingley, confirmed to MCC that Finn had broken the wicket at least twice prior to the Smith incident. Both batsmen complained it was a distraction, and Finn was told to move over. Davis himself was also said to have found it distracting. Law 23.4(b)(iv) states that the umpire should call dead ball if “one or both bails fall from the striker’s wicket before the striker has had the opportunity of playing the ball”. The reference to the striker’s wicket indicates dead ball should not automatically be called if the wicket at the bowler’s end is disturbed.

  Whether the striker is distracted is a moot point. Smith hit two subsequent balls for four when Finn had broken the wicket, only for a call of dead ball to cancel out the runs. If the striker really feels he is distracted, he can pull away, though this may not alw
ays be possible with a bowler as fast as Finn.

  The ICC introduced a directive to their umpires that such incidents should result in a warning at the first occasion, followed by the call of dead ball on subsequent occasions (although Finn, deemed a repeat offender, was told during the one-day series in India in January 2013 that he would get no warning, and was subsequently denied the wicket of Suresh Raina at Mohali, with Davis again the umpire). But MCC felt this directive was unfair to batsmen, who could be denied runs. And there is no reason why the second breaking of the wicket should be more distracting than the first.

  After discussing the matter at length, MCC decided in February 2013 to change the Law so that, from October, a no-ball will automatically be called should the bowler break the stumps during the act of delivery. This removes the burden from the umpire to rule whether the batsman really has been distracted.

  The players’ knowledge of the Laws is sometimes questionable – and ignorance can definitely be costly. When Jonny Bairstow was caught by Gautam Gambhir at silly point on the stroke of lunch on the third day of the Second Test against India at Mumbai in November, it was via Gambhir’s chest and the grille of his helmet. Law 32.3 states “it is not a fair catch if the ball has previously touched a protective helmet worn by a fielder”. But by the time TV replays showed what had happened, Bairstow had left the field and lunch was almost over.

  In scenes reminiscent of those described here last year, when Ian Bell was reprieved after being initially given run out during the Trent Bridge Test against India in 2011, the England management attempted to have the decision overturned during the interval. India chose not to withdraw the appeal, as was their prerogative: unlike the more complicated circumstances of the Bell run-out, this was nothing more than an umpiring error. However, had Bairstow known the Law – he admitted he didn’t – he could at least have mentioned to the umpire that he felt the ball had struck the helmet (Gambhir said he was unaware of the Law too). He would then have been reprieved by the third umpire.