Jarrod Kimber's Blog, page 36

Jimmy did it

William Herschel just beat Australia. He died in 1882 but it was he who contorted Brad Haddin’s face, encouraged the England players to cheer and forced Marais Erasmus to tell Aleem Dar he’d made a mistake.

William Herschel was the man who discovered infrared. It was infrared and quality stump microphones that beat Australia. That and Jimmy Anderson.

When he’s showing you what he is doing, Anderson is really good. When he is hiding what he is doing, he’s terrifying. Statistically he was half of England’s wicket tally. In person he was almost all of it.

Anderson took down the great Ashton Agar. He delivered him the kind of ball that you save for people who can ruin your life. Around the wicket, close enough to make you play, moving the prefect amount, and taking the right amount of edge. Without a sterile room and a scalpel, this was about as perfect as surgery gets. Australia’s Skywalker was gone.

Three innings ago Mitchell Starc made 99 in Mohali. In the middle of a 4-0 whitewash, in a match Australia would lose by six wickets, he smashed the ball everywhere and all but pulled off a hundred from No. 9. Like many Aussie tailenders, he couldn’t convert his start into a hundred. This time Jimmy was clearly not looking for any fun from Starc. Starc couldn’t have looked any less comfortable facing Anderson if Jimmy was operating a flame thrower.

Peter Siddle’s batting usually has two things, solid full-faced defence and the occasional stylish stroke through the offside. He doesn’t make many runs, but he isn’t easy to get out. Off Broad he took two boundaries, when he tried to do anything resembling that to Anderson he lost his wicket.

Anderson only had eight balls to James Pattinson, mostly in his 13th straight over. His pace was down. On one ball, that Pattinson hit for four, it looked like Jimmy was dragging a washing machine through the crease with him. He had bowled himself into the ground; he produced the sort of spell that ends fast bowler’s careers, while making them legends. Shortly after he limped off the ground like he had a chastity belt made of concrete around his waist.

That was when this became an actual game. Without Jimmy, Australia fought back. Brad Haddin embarrassed Steven Finn. Pattinson embarrassed the techniques of most of his top order. Finn dropped a catch. Swann bowled full tosses. Australia edged closer.

A nine-wicket cricket match is not like other sport. Your brain does not know how to understand it. It can be over at any stage. Your ears make up noises. Your eyes can’t be trusted. It’s like watching a tortoise cross a ravine on a tightrope.

A bump ball can make you make you cry. You hear noises that can only be bails falling off. Every other single noise is an edge behind. A skied catch can take 17 years to find a hand. Every single defensive shot could spin back off the pitch into the stumps. You actually stop breathing and at any point you can’t see the ball. That all happened to me. It was like the game hijacked my senses.

Every time Pattinson leaned forward with a perfectly straight bat to defend, I saw an edge. A skied shot from Haddin just went missing in the sky; I kicked my desk trying to find it – I am still positive I saw the ball drop safely into Finn’s hands.

But what actually happened is that tortoise happily moved across the ravine, getting closer and closer, until Jimmy came back into the attack.

It doesn’t really matter if Anderson is the most skilful bowler on earth, or even the Grand Poobah of the Loyal Order of Water Buffaloes, he’s just really good. Anderson won this Test. Forget edges, infrared technology, and umpiring errors. Remember Jimmy Anderson.

Remember him taking the wicket of Australia’s bravest warrior, a man who was ignored for years, underperformed for a time, and worked like a possessed man for that one last chance. A man who had pushed Broad aside. Mocked Finn. And kept out Swann. A man who had dragged the corpse of the Australian batting line up within 15 runs of victory.

A man who stood his ground even when he knew he was condemned. Because he just couldn’t walk off. He couldn’t leave until they made him. He wasn’t made to leave by infrared, stump mics or Erasmus. It was Jimmy who done it. He was the man who shook the tortoise off, and the reason it was there in the first place.

The simple plan

James Anderson wasn’t looking at his captain. James Anderson wasn’t looking at the catcher. And James Anderson wasn’t even looking at Graeme Swann in the seconds after his Chris Rogers wicket.

Anderson was looking at someone though. He was pointing. He was screaming. He was connecting with a special person on the balcony. It was passionate and romantic. But instead of a beautiful woman wearing a white gown leaning seductively on the balcony, it was the round, flushed face of David Saker.

James Anderson points to David Saker on the England balcony after removing Chris Rogers © Getty Images

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Related Links

Report : Late wickets lift England in victory pursuit

Players/Officials: James Anderson | Chris Rogers | David Saker

Matches: England v Australia at Nottingham

Series/Tournaments: Australia tour of England and Scotland

Teams: Australia | England

James Anderson wasn’t looking at his captain. James Anderson wasn’t looking at the catcher. And James Anderson wasn’t even looking at Graeme Swann in the seconds after his Chris Rogers wicket.

Anderson was looking at someone though. He was pointing. He was screaming. He was connecting with a special person on the balcony. It was passionate and romantic. But instead of a beautiful woman wearing a white gown leaning seductively on the balcony, it was the round, flushed face of David Saker.

Saker didn’t blow a kiss at Anderson; he just gave him the thumbs up.

Only lip readers will know, or at least think they know, what Anderson said to his beloved coach. Anyone who didn’t believe in cricket coaches might have been converted by this dramatic moment. Saker is certainly of more use to Anderson than merely driving him to and from the ground.

This all came about, like the best crime films, with a plan.

The plan was not all that complicated. Anderson would bowl around the wicket to Rogers. He would pitch it up on off stump. There would be a short midwicket. And Rogers would eventually flick one in the air to the short midwicket.

It could have been something Saker had seen in this innings. Or it could have been something Saker remembered from a Shield match against Rogers in 1999. It’s even possible that Rogers showed the weakness to chipping in the air when Saker was Victoria’s assistant coach.

Saker coached Peter Siddle and James Pattinson before leaving Australia for the England job. He was under Cricket Australia’s nose for over five years. Victoria’s fast-bowling line up was scary, and Saker was getting credit. In any of the many recent overhauls Saker could have been tempted back home to finish the job he started at Victoria.

Instead he plots the downfall of his countryman and gets screaming adulation of the opposition.

It wasn’t just any wicket either; this flaccid flick from Rogers was what has given England their chance to win. With Rogers at the crease, Australia had one end locked tight. Rogers had dulled Graeme Swann. Australia had moved past 100. Michael Clarke was still with him. There were reasons to be optimistic. Hell, there were reasons to tease random English people that their 10-0 prediction may not last until lunch on Sunday, if you’re that kind of fan.

And it wasn’t as if a James Anderson late-hooping million-dollar ball took him out. The ball couldn’t have been any straighter if it were a Southern Baptist Preacher. It wasn’t particularly quick, maybe the slightest bit of pace off. It played no tricks off the pitch. Had there not been the yellin’ and screamin’ at Saker on the balcony, it would’ve looked like a lucky wicket.

Maybe it was. But England seemed to get a lot of lucky wickets. They continually aimed at Shane Watson’s massive front pad until they hit it. They gave Ed Cowan a part-time spinner to hit out of the rough knowing that he might be more likely to have a go off Joe Root than Swann. They kept the ball in the place Clarke is most likely to play a half shot and nick behind.

But until tea, England were ordinary. They were flat. Steven Finn was hidden. Swann looked out of sorts. Anderson was manageable. And Broad looked more pantomime villain than cold-blooded assassin. They were playing like a side who thought 311 runs were way too many for Australia, even though the evidence was proving otherwise.

According to Ian Bell, the break came at the right time. Sitting his bowlers down, the man with the round face and Australian accent gave them new plans.

After tea Australia lost four wickets. They had to use their Ashton Agar. They only scored 63 runs in 34.2 overs. They lost all advantages. And referrals. They were naked.

Saker and Anderson had made them so. The coach, his ‘most skillful bowler in the world’ and their simple plan.

From Warne to Agar, a conveyor of depression

Before the Test there was a skinny teenager with a baggy cap hanging around the Australian nets. He was smiling, laughing, fiddling with his cap, and having a great time. It looked like someone’s nephew had been allowed pitch access. Instead it was the 13th post-Warne spinner.

While the entire cricket world was looking at Fawad Ahmed, Ashton Agar could have been dancing a naked watusi and still got no coverage. Even when Ahmed went home, Ahmed had more press than Agar. Then if people ever dared look past Ahmed, it was all about Nathan Lyon. While some ex-players had suggested Agar, it was never really pushed as all that serious. Agar did no press, had no hoopla, and it is doubtful how many people knew he was even in the country.

Now all that has changed. He’s been interviewed more times than he’s shaved. His story is amazing. On the face of it, it’s got to be the most amazing story of any Australian spinner since Warne. He scores flashy runs, he takes important wickets, he fields like a pro. His loose limbs look designed to be used for 170 Tests.

But the story of the spinners since Warne includes a 12-wicket haul on debut, the biggest smashing of any spinner, a man leaving for a TV career, a bloke the selectors even knew nothing about and a man retiring with a broken heart. If Agar is the new saviour, he’s lifted by the corpses of 12 other spinners.

This dark road started with Stuart MacGill as Warne’s dramatic and often reliable understudy. He waited so long to be the main man, Warne’s exit should have meant he strode onto the scene with his jolly swagger and angry face. Instead his knee was dodgy. And his TV career gained momentum. At one stage it seemed Cricket Australia didn’t even know where MacGill was. When they did, it was because they’d followed the trail of long hops. His knee forced him out of the team.

It was another aged wristspinner with international experience who replaced MacGill in the Test team. Yet, no matter how much experience Brad Hogg had, he was never a Test match bowler. His wrong ‘un is hard to pick, although not always as hard to pick as sloggers in the Big Bash make it look. His stock ball was never threatening, a bad sign for Test spinners, and against India he was outbowled by the part time offerings of Michael Clarke and Andrew Symonds. Not that it mattered, as he retired shortly after that series.

MacGill was brought straight back for a tour of the West Indies. There, he played like a member of the Fanatics had been pulled out of the crowd after a few drinks. He ran like a man with cardboard knees. And then he retired mid-series.

Australia had gone from three experienced wrist spinners to none. They would also be the last three spinners given the opportunity to step down.

After outperforming Bryce McGain in the Shield final by taking four wickets and scoring 89, Beau Casson was MacGill’s back up on that Windies tour. Like MacGill, he was a promising wristspinner who had fled Perth for Sydney searching for more friendly conditions. Instead of the confidence of Warne, the cockiness of MacGill or even the steadiness of Hogg, Australia had Casson crying as he received his cap.

Even in a decent Australian team, against a poor West Indies team, Casson looked nervous and out of place. His first innings seven overs cost 43 runs in a total of 216. In the second, with the West Indies chasing a nominal target, his left arm wrist spin took 3 for 86. There was still little confidence, but he was just a young wristspinner, he would have plenty of time to improve.

Except he never played again. Since that time Casson has been thrown out of a Shield game for bowling too many full tosses. He resorted to playing cricket in Darwin to recapture his form, and then after a brief, unsuccessful, comeback retired because he had tetralogy of fallot which sounds like a World of Warcraft-style game but is actually a dangerous congenital heart defect. Casson is now 30, still retired, and played 12 first-class games after his one Test.

Cameron White didn’t believe he was a spinner when he was picked. If Warne’s belief in himself was his most remarkable quality, White’s lack of belief made his selection remarkable. As captain of Victoria, White had bowled less and less over the years, using himself as little more than a sixth or seventh option on the darkest days. Australia ignored that and White travelled to India to team up with Jason Krejza. Except, Krejza didn’t play, White did.

White did take the wicket of Sachin Tendulkar in the first Test. But Sachin does like to help out debutants. In four Tests White ook five wickets for 342 runs. But perhaps the most interesting moment was when he bowled a ball that barely touched the pitch. It was the wide that was so bad, it travelled from country to country telling everyone Australia was becoming less and less of a force in world cricket.

White was once called The Next Warne; mind you that was before most people had seen him bowl. White now occasionally bowls medium pace. He still rarely bowls legspin, and has played no more Tests.

As White bowled truckloads of doorknobs and longhops in India, Krejza sat by and watched. Krejza had an interesting past: he once tested positive for cocaine and claimed his drink was spiked. At the time Michael Brown, speaking for Cricket Australia, said: “I saw a report recently that stated there were around 4,000 reported cases of drink spiking last year and higher-profile athletes and celebrities can be targeted.”

In 2006 it was doubtful that Krejza was high profile, a celebrity or was even recognisable to people who hadn’t met him multiple times. When he was selected, in 2008, he was still largely unrecognisable.

As each Test in India passed, it seemed weirder and weirder that Australia wouldn’t try Krejza. The official word was that he wasn’t ready yet. They said it so many times I’m sure the transcribers stopped writing it. It also didn’t seem to matter that White had never been ready. By the last Test, they were 1-0 down and had little choice but to throw him the ball. Suddenly he was ready, or he was there, fit, and an actual spinner.

What happened next was perhaps one of the oddest debuts in history as Krejza did what almost no bowler has ever done: he pretended runs didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that he was bowling to Sehwag, Dravid, Tendulkar, Laxman, Ganguly and Dhoni, the ball was going to be flighted and ripped. And he did it again and again and again and again. It was the way spinners bowl in nets, only he was bowling to legends of the world, who were hitting him for sixes and fours; that he ignored.

There were also wickets. Oh, so many wickets. Wickets everywhere. Eight of them in the first innings alone. For only 215 runs. And off only 43.5 overs. Flight, six. Flight, four. Flight, wicket.

In the next innings he just continued to do the same. 4 for 143 off 31. They were 12 wickets of the most surrealist insanity you could ever see. There is no computer in the world, or even human brain, who could fully work out what had actually happened in this Test.

The selectors gave Krejza another Test, he took one wicket, never failed another drug test and hasn’t played Test cricket since.

It is almost impossible to tell the entire story of Australia’s next spinner, even though he only played one Test. McGain went from an office worker to an Australian spinner after turning 30. In his 20s he wasn’t even always in his club side’s first XI. It was the story that never looked like happening. Casson was picked ahead of him after McGain had bowled poorly in the Shield final because he opened up the callous on his spinning hand when swimming in salt water. He injured his shoulder when he was picked to tour India and had only one game to provide his fitness to tour South Africa, a tour that he missed the flight for.

His body and mind were telling him what people had told him for years: you shouldn’t be playing Test cricket. But his record was good, and his comeback game ended in a messy five-wicket haul and he eventually caught a flight to South Africa.

When he was finally picked, it was because Marcus North, who’d been given a chance to play as a batsman partly because of his offspin, was sick in South Africa.

McGain was 36, and had dreamed longer than most about this. That dream went horribly wrong as McGain was essentially caught in the middle of a Sharknado without a shotgun or chainsaw.

The locals still say: “On a sunny day when the Newlands pitch is flat, if you listen carefully, you can still hear McGain scream.” McGain’s figures were 149 runs from 18 overs. The wicket column was not required. Strangely, McGain never played another Test match.

Nathan Hauritz always looked too demure and kind to be a cricketer. He should have been a paediatrician or a McDonald’s manager. Instead he became an offspinner and as early as 2002, when he was only 21, he played one-dayers, and in 2004 he played a Test cricket in India, and was outbowled by Clarke who took 6 for 9. When he was picked the second time, it was because McGain was injured, and Krejza was injured between his two Tests. At that stage Hauritz wasn’t thought good enough to be playing for New South Wales. Hauritz had been picked from Sydney grade cricket.

For the 2009 Ashes he was Australia’s first-choice spinner, and outbowled Graeme Swann at Cardiff. But he was never truly loved or believed in. He often chipped in, but never more than that. Ponting wanted him to develop new strings to his bow, or even evolve a new bow, but essentially Hauritz bowled close-to-the-stumps offspin with friendly drift that spun back in. He was an anti-mystery spinner. He would never ever be more than that. And Australia was desperate for more than that. Hauritz continually improved his skills, but he couldn’t produce magic tricks with plumber’s hands.

They told him to improve his batting. And he did. They told him to be more aggressive. And he did. They told him to take five-wicket hauls. And he did. They told him to believe in himself. And he did. And they picked someone who wasn’t quite as good and he never played again. Hauritz is still only 31, has not played a Test since 2010 and will finish with a bowling average of 35 from 17 Tests.

After he was dropped there was a story that he was selling his Australian kit at a garage sale in disgust. It turned out to be not true. But if anyone had a right too, it was Hauritz.

Due to an injury to Hauritz, Steve Smith was picked to play a series against Pakistan in England. Smith had long been seen as a potential all-round option for Australia. He had even taken a seven-wicket haul in Shield cricket; there were Shield spinners who didn’t take seven wickets in a summer. He could get turn. His fielding was amazing. And he was an attacking, if flawed, batsman.

In his first Test he took 3 for 51 in the second innings, which sounds good. But at the other end North took 6 for 55. In his following six Tests he took one more wicket. Now Smith has somehow made himself a No. 5 batsman, which at times looked even less likely than him making it as a bowler. In this Test, he hasn’t bowled a ball on a pitch that has taken spin. He will bowl again, infrequently and probably inconsequentially.

The man who replaced Hauritz was Xavier Doherty. Doherty had been a quality limited-overs bowler, who would often stop midway through a delivery before completing it, like the great Satchel Paige. It was one of the few tricks he had. His bowling average was always massively high in first-class cricket. His selection came more from the belief than if you tossed up anything left-arm slow to Kevin Pietersen he would stumble over it and fall on his face. He didn’t. Instead he used Doherty as dental floss.

No one ever expected to see Doherty again, but he kept popping up. Generally he went unnoticed unless he was ripped apart like he was when he had to bowl an over with Kieron Pollard and Chris Gayle at the crease in the final over of Australia’s semi-final of the World T20. His last Tests against India had him being economical and as threatening as a Dixie cup. His Test average is now 78, and something magical or horrible would have to happen for him to ever come back.

Michael Beer was picked because of his local knowledge of Western Australian pitches. The only problem being that he had only just moved there, and had played less on the WACA than Hauritz had. Beer had only played five first-class matches; it was if the selectors had been driving past a bus stop and seen Beer flicking the ball to himself and thought: “Well, he has strong fingers.”

It was probably the selection that confirmed the fate of the selection panel and coach of the time.

It wasn’t that Beer was rubbish. It was just that he wasn’t very exciting or dynamic. He was a big lug of a spinner who turned the ball an appropriate amount, but rarely more. In two Tests, Beer has three wickets. The two most interesting things about him are that he was the last wicket of the 2010-11 Ashes and that had he not got injured, we might never have seen his understudy Agar in this Test match.

Glenn Maxwell made his debut in India. Because if you have a young all-round spinning talent you want to destroy, that is the place to do it. Maxwell is an awkward spinner. For the first few years of his career, Victorian fans thought he was there for his fielding. Maxwell has endless confidence; according to some he has a bathtub of X-Factor. His jerky round-arm style looks very part-time, and until he started bowling around the wicket to right handers, he looked very ropey indeed. But he kept improving, so Australia picked him against India and he took wickets.

Now his good balls were more than okay but his bad balls could be seen in any pub side in the world. And there were a lot of them. But in two Tests he took seven wickets of varying luck and skill. Unfortunately for him, he also made only 39 runs in those two Tests, and Australia decided that he wasn’t needed for the Ashes and may not factor again until the next Test tour to the subcontinent.

Even if he was in full uniform, you could walk past Nathan Lyon and not know he was an Australian cricketer. Which is what he did in his career for a while. For 22 Tests he was almost always Australia’s first-choice spinner. Even if in India he’d been dropped.

Ashton Agar, Australia’s 13th Test spinner since Shane Warne, celebrates his first Test wicket: England’s captain Alastair Cook. But is he the one? © Getty Images

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Related Links

News : Agar joins Waugh in Ashes pantheon

Features : Agar lives a life-changing dream

Report : Agar’s world records create extraordinary day

Players/Officials: Ashton Agar

Matches: England v Australia at Nottingham

Series/Tournaments: Australia tour of England and Scotland

Teams: Australia

Before the Test there was a skinny teenager with a baggy cap hanging around the Australian nets. He was smiling, laughing, fiddling with his cap, and having a great time. It looked like someone’s nephew had been allowed pitch access. Instead it was the 13th post-Warne spinner.

While the entire cricket world was looking at Fawad Ahmed, Ashton Agar could have been dancing a naked watusi and still got no coverage. Even when Ahmed went home, Ahmed had more press than Agar. Then if people ever dared look past Ahmed, it was all about Nathan Lyon. While some ex-players had suggested Agar, it was never really pushed as all that serious. Agar did no press, had no hoopla, and it is doubtful how many people knew he was even in the country.

Now all that has changed. He’s been interviewed more times than he’s shaved. His story is amazing. On the face of it, it’s got to be the most amazing story of any Australian spinner since Warne. He scores flashy runs, he takes important wickets, he fields like a pro. His loose limbs look designed to be used for 170 Tests.

But the story of the spinners since Warne includes a 12-wicket haul on debut, the biggest smashing of any spinner, a man leaving for a TV career, a bloke the selectors even knew nothing about and a man retiring with a broken heart. If Agar is the new saviour, he’s lifted by the corpses of 12 other spinners.

This dark road started with Stuart MacGill as Warne’s dramatic and often reliable understudy. He waited so long to be the main man, Warne’s exit should have meant he strode onto the scene with his jolly swagger and angry face. Instead his knee was dodgy. And his TV career gained momentum. At one stage it seemed Cricket Australia didn’t even know where MacGill was. When they did, it was because they’d followed the trail of long hops. His knee forced him out of the team.

It was another aged wristspinner with international experience who replaced MacGill in the Test team. Yet, no matter how much experience Brad Hogg had, he was never a Test match bowler. His wrong ‘un is hard to pick, although not always as hard to pick as sloggers in the Big Bash make it look. His stock ball was never threatening, a bad sign for Test spinners, and against India he was outbowled by the part time offerings of Michael Clarke and Andrew Symonds. Not that it mattered, as he retired shortly after that series.

MacGill was brought straight back for a tour of the West Indies. There, he played like a member of the Fanatics had been pulled out of the crowd after a few drinks. He ran like a man with cardboard knees. And then he retired mid-series.

Australia had gone from three experienced wrist spinners to none. They would also be the last three spinners given the opportunity to step down.

After outperforming Bryce McGain in the Shield final by taking four wickets and scoring 89, Beau Casson was MacGill’s back up on that Windies tour. Like MacGill, he was a promising wristspinner who had fled Perth for Sydney searching for more friendly conditions. Instead of the confidence of Warne, the cockiness of MacGill or even the steadiness of Hogg, Australia had Casson crying as he received his cap.

Even in a decent Australian team, against a poor West Indies team, Casson looked nervous and out of place. His first innings seven overs cost 43 runs in a total of 216. In the second, with the West Indies chasing a nominal target, his left arm wrist spin took 3 for 86. There was still little confidence, but he was just a young wristspinner, he would have plenty of time to improve.

Except he never played again. Since that time Casson has been thrown out of a Shield game for bowling too many full tosses. He resorted to playing cricket in Darwin to recapture his form, and then after a brief, unsuccessful, comeback retired because he had tetralogy of fallot which sounds like a World of Warcraft-style game but is actually a dangerous congenital heart defect. Casson is now 30, still retired, and played 12 first-class games after his one Test.

Cameron White didn’t believe he was a spinner when he was picked. If Warne’s belief in himself was his most remarkable quality, White’s lack of belief made his selection remarkable. As captain of Victoria, White had bowled less and less over the years, using himself as little more than a sixth or seventh option on the darkest days. Australia ignored that and White travelled to India to team up with Jason Krejza. Except, Krejza didn’t play, White did.

White did take the wicket of Sachin Tendulkar in the first Test. But Sachin does like to help out debutants. In four Tests White ook five wickets for 342 runs. But perhaps the most interesting moment was when he bowled a ball that barely touched the pitch. It was the wide that was so bad, it travelled from country to country telling everyone Australia was becoming less and less of a force in world cricket.

White was once called The Next Warne; mind you that was before most people had seen him bowl. White now occasionally bowls medium pace. He still rarely bowls legspin, and has played no more Tests.

As White bowled truckloads of doorknobs and longhops in India, Krejza sat by and watched. Krejza had an interesting past: he once tested positive for cocaine and claimed his drink was spiked. At the time Michael Brown, speaking for Cricket Australia, said: “I saw a report recently that stated there were around 4,000 reported cases of drink spiking last year and higher-profile athletes and celebrities can be targeted.”

In 2006 it was doubtful that Krejza was high profile, a celebrity or was even recognisable to people who hadn’t met him multiple times. When he was selected, in 2008, he was still largely unrecognisable.

As each Test in India passed, it seemed weirder and weirder that Australia wouldn’t try Krejza. The official word was that he wasn’t ready yet. They said it so many times I’m sure the transcribers stopped writing it. It also didn’t seem to matter that White had never been ready. By the last Test, they were 1-0 down and had little choice but to throw him the ball. Suddenly he was ready, or he was there, fit, and an actual spinner.

What happened next was perhaps one of the oddest debuts in history as Krejza did what almost no bowler has ever done: he pretended runs didn’t matter. It didn’t matter that he was bowling to Sehwag, Dravid, Tendulkar, Laxman, Ganguly and Dhoni, the ball was going to be flighted and ripped. And he did it again and again and again and again. It was the way spinners bowl in nets, only he was bowling to legends of the world, who were hitting him for sixes and fours; that he ignored.

There were also wickets. Oh, so many wickets. Wickets everywhere. Eight of them in the first innings alone. For only 215 runs. And off only 43.5 overs. Flight, six. Flight, four. Flight, wicket.

In the next innings he just continued to do the same. 4 for 143 off 31. They were 12 wickets of the most surrealist insanity you could ever see. There is no computer in the world, or even human brain, who could fully work out what had actually happened in this Test.

The selectors gave Krejza another Test, he took one wicket, never failed another drug test and hasn’t played Test cricket since.

Jason Krejza took plenty of wickets, but also went for plenty of runs © AFP

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It is almost impossible to tell the entire story of Australia’s next spinner, even though he only played one Test. McGain went from an office worker to an Australian spinner after turning 30. In his 20s he wasn’t even always in his club side’s first XI. It was the story that never looked like happening. Casson was picked ahead of him after McGain had bowled poorly in the Shield final because he opened up the callous on his spinning hand when swimming in salt water. He injured his shoulder when he was picked to tour India and had only one game to provide his fitness to tour South Africa, a tour that he missed the flight for.

His body and mind were telling him what people had told him for years: you shouldn’t be playing Test cricket. But his record was good, and his comeback game ended in a messy five-wicket haul and he eventually caught a flight to South Africa.

When he was finally picked, it was because Marcus North, who’d been given a chance to play as a batsman partly because of his offspin, was sick in South Africa.

McGain was 36, and had dreamed longer than most about this. That dream went horribly wrong as McGain was essentially caught in the middle of a Sharknado without a shotgun or chainsaw.

The locals still say: “On a sunny day when the Newlands pitch is flat, if you listen carefully, you can still hear McGain scream.” McGain’s figures were 149 runs from 18 overs. The wicket column was not required. Strangely, McGain never played another Test match.

Nathan Hauritz always looked too demure and kind to be a cricketer. He should have been a paediatrician or a McDonald’s manager. Instead he became an offspinner and as early as 2002, when he was only 21, he played one-dayers, and in 2004 he played a Test cricket in India, and was outbowled by Clarke who took 6 for 9. When he was picked the second time, it was because McGain was injured, and Krejza was injured between his two Tests. At that stage Hauritz wasn’t thought good enough to be playing for New South Wales. Hauritz had been picked from Sydney grade cricket.

For the 2009 Ashes he was Australia’s first-choice spinner, and outbowled Graeme Swann at Cardiff. But he was never truly loved or believed in. He often chipped in, but never more than that. Ponting wanted him to develop new strings to his bow, or even evolve a new bow, but essentially Hauritz bowled close-to-the-stumps offspin with friendly drift that spun back in. He was an anti-mystery spinner. He would never ever be more than that. And Australia was desperate for more than that. Hauritz continually improved his skills, but he couldn’t produce magic tricks with plumber’s hands.

They told him to improve his batting. And he did. They told him to be more aggressive. And he did. They told him to take five-wicket hauls. And he did. They told him to believe in himself. And he did. And they picked someone who wasn’t quite as good and he never played again. Hauritz is still only 31, has not played a Test since 2010 and will finish with a bowling average of 35 from 17 Tests.

After he was dropped there was a story that he was selling his Australian kit at a garage sale in disgust. It turned out to be not true. But if anyone had a right too, it was Hauritz.

Due to an injury to Hauritz, Steve Smith was picked to play a series against Pakistan in England. Smith had long been seen as a potential all-round option for Australia. He had even taken a seven-wicket haul in Shield cricket; there were Shield spinners who didn’t take seven wickets in a summer. He could get turn. His fielding was amazing. And he was an attacking, if flawed, batsman.

In his first Test he took 3 for 51 in the second innings, which sounds good. But at the other end North took 6 for 55. In his following six Tests he took one more wicket. Now Smith has somehow made himself a No. 5 batsman, which at times looked even less likely than him making it as a bowler. In this Test, he hasn’t bowled a ball on a pitch that has taken spin. He will bowl again, infrequently and probably inconsequentially.

The man who replaced Hauritz was Xavier Doherty. Doherty had been a quality limited-overs bowler, who would often stop midway through a delivery before completing it, like the great Satchel Paige. It was one of the few tricks he had. His bowling average was always massively high in first-class cricket. His selection came more from the belief than if you tossed up anything left-arm slow to Kevin Pietersen he would stumble over it and fall on his face. He didn’t. Instead he used Doherty as dental floss.

No one ever expected to see Doherty again, but he kept popping up. Generally he went unnoticed unless he was ripped apart like he was when he had to bowl an over with Kieron Pollard and Chris Gayle at the crease in the final over of Australia’s semi-final of the World T20. His last Tests against India had him being economical and as threatening as a Dixie cup. His Test average is now 78, and something magical or horrible would have to happen for him to ever come back.

Michael Beer was picked because of his local knowledge of Western Australian pitches. The only problem being that he had only just moved there, and had played less on the WACA than Hauritz had. Beer had only played five first-class matches; it was if the selectors had been driving past a bus stop and seen Beer flicking the ball to himself and thought: “Well, he has strong fingers.”

It was probably the selection that confirmed the fate of the selection panel and coach of the time.

It wasn’t that Beer was rubbish. It was just that he wasn’t very exciting or dynamic. He was a big lug of a spinner who turned the ball an appropriate amount, but rarely more. In two Tests, Beer has three wickets. The two most interesting things about him are that he was the last wicket of the 2010-11 Ashes and that had he not got injured, we might never have seen his understudy Agar in this Test match.

Glenn Maxwell made his debut in India. Because if you have a young all-round spinning talent you want to destroy, that is the place to do it. Maxwell is an awkward spinner. For the first few years of his career, Victorian fans thought he was there for his fielding. Maxwell has endless confidence; according to some he has a bathtub of X-Factor. His jerky round-arm style looks very part-time, and until he started bowling around the wicket to right handers, he looked very ropey indeed. But he kept improving, so Australia picked him against India and he took wickets.

Now his good balls were more than okay but his bad balls could be seen in any pub side in the world. And there were a lot of them. But in two Tests he took seven wickets of varying luck and skill. Unfortunately for him, he also made only 39 runs in those two Tests, and Australia decided that he wasn’t needed for the Ashes and may not factor again until the next Test tour to the subcontinent.

Even if he was in full uniform, you could walk past Nathan Lyon and not know he was an Australian cricketer. Which is what he did in his career for a while. For 22 Tests he was almost always Australia’s first-choice spinner. Even if in India he’d been dropped.

At sixes and sevens: Seven wickets in an innings in his last Test was not enough for Nathan Lyon © BCCI

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Lyon came from nowhere; well actually, he came from the groundstaff. Lyon was the assistant groundsman at Adelaide Oval and had been driving back and forth to Canberra playing second XI cricket for the ACT Comets. Somehow, while all this was happening, he was also picked for South Australia and was the leading wicket taker in the Big Bash for the winning side in 2010-11. It was good timing, as that summer Hauritz was allegedly selling things in his garage, Doherty was being drained of bodily fluids in Adelaide and Beer looked stunned to be involved.

Lyon was picked to travel to Sri Lanka.

Lyon’s first ball in a Test was the wicket of Kumar Sangakkara. It swayed in, dipped nicely and spun enough to take the edge. But he didn’t stop there; he took four more wickets as well. This was a controlled five-wicket haul by an Australian spinner, making his debut against world-class players of spin. A 98 from a No. 11 was probably more likely at that stage. Lyon might have been very similar to Hauritz, close to the stumps, no doosra, decent spin, but he already had the confidence of his team and selectors that Hauritz never seemed to gain.

Lyon probably wasn’t even Hauritz 2.0. There was no doosra, no carrom ball, no anything that went the other way. It was just standard offspin from a country that had never really produced anything better. But Lyon was decent, and consistent. He was given 22 Tests. He was steady, not sexy, but he put the ball where he wanted consistently.

In Adelaide he failed to beat South Africa. And turned himself into a bowling robot for a while. But he had learned from that, he seemed to always be learning, improving. Every article was about how he was getting better, how he’d worked out this Test cricket. Fixed a kink. Tweaked himself in a good way.

Lyon’s best spell of bowling was in Delhi where he took 7 for 94. It looked like a turning point for him. He was no longer just a guy who chipped in, he had fought back from missing one Test, and had done so with his best performance for Australia, and finally making India work hard against spin. In the second innings, the magic disappeared, but he still ended with nine wickets in the match. He’d done it in a way more repeatable and sensible way than Krejza’s big haul. That was also Lyon’s last Test. It was Australia’s previous Test before this one.

Lyon has not spent much time on the field this match, but he was cheering as loudly and voraciously as anyone else during Agar’s innings. Lyon will play Tests again. He’ll play when Australia need two spinners, when Agar is injured, if Agar loses form, or he’ll just be picked randomly when Agar is seemingly the obvious choice.

There will be people who will say that Ashton Agar is the spinner Australia have been looking for. The one that these 12 other bodies have been keeping the spot warm for.

If the dark days of Australian spin have taught us anything, it’s that weird things happen to Australian spinners. We have absolutely no idea what will happen to Agar in the future. He could become a lawyer in Galle, collect a world record amount of kazoos, walk cats for a living, or even play 170 Tests.

Agar is still 169 short of that mark, and he’s still 21 short of the amount of Tests Nathan Lyon has played. He might – however unlikely – never play Test cricket again.

But if the strange sad conveyor belt of Australian spin does move beyond Ashton Agar, he has at least given us something truly remarkable. Warne did that all the time, but just once is pretty nice.

Things we’ve learnt after two days of the Mega Ashes

It was the punch heard around the world despite barely touching skin. David Warner started the mega Ashes with a bang. Many words were written, spoken, yelled. Essentially the whole world decided as one that Australia was just as rubbish as they’d thought before, and now they were idiots as well. They couldn’t land a punch, let alone win the Ashes.

“Australia are buggered, totally, on and off the field. Everyone knows this.”

The intended victim of Warner’s technically flawed wild swing wasn’t Mickey Arthur. Cricket Australia, noticing that something was wrong, threw Mickey Arthur out the door. The people who hired him, and who gave Tim Nielsen a contract extension that was to take him to the end of these Ashes, still remained. But who could worry about some trifling matters when Australia had found the ultimate messiah. A rotund, smoking, beer-drinking coach, who was actually Australian, and not only that, had worn the baggy green on his perfectly round, bald head.

Boof’s boys had replaced Lolstralia. The series would be, we were told, closer than we thought. ‘They’ rated Lehmann and his solid, old-school thinking, and suddenly, right in front of our eyes, England weren’t as good as they had been.

“Darren Lehmann makes everything he touch turn into diamonds and jellybeans.”

Then there was a lull. The press ran out of stories of any interest once Fawad Ahmed went home. England walked around talking up Australia. They would fight. They would be better than you thought. They wore caps on their head. They had Aussie heritage. They had two eyes, a nose and a mouth. It was as if England’s plan was to drown Australia in endless facile platitudes.

“Australia are good enough for England to beat them and it still matter a great deal. We hope.”

On the morning of the first match, several of the Aussie Fanatics had travelled 25 hours by bus from the running of the bulls in Pamplona to see the match. There was a chance that had Australia been sent in and bowled out, the least painful part of the trip would have been sitting on a bus for more than a day after being gouged by a bull.

Instead it was Peter Siddle who did the gouging. Not that he wasn’t ably assisted by an English top-order who thought playing consistent loose shots outside off for hours on end was a good idea. And the more wickets Siddle took, the less likely people would continue to say ’10-0′. By the time Graeme Swann had awkwardly fended a ball to point, England were the team worrying about what people would say about them.

“Aha, we also said England had a weakness for playing stupid shots and the Aussie pace attack was good, didn’t we?”

That lasted until Ed Cowan played his golden duck drive. Cowan’s innings was a brief break from his chronic vomiting, an illness so bad it landed his daughter in hospital. While the Cowans, and many Australian fans, vomited, Australia fell down from their very brief trip up on to the pedestal. Only Steve Smith hit the ball with any authority, and their very strong tail disappeared almost as quick as they could walk out there. It was every bit as ugly as an ass gouging and 25-hour-bus journey.

“Katich, Ponting and Voges are coughing out runs and we have this lot. Hell, we could even use Warner right now.”

Then Ashton Agar met Phil Hughes. It was supposed to be a 30-run partnership followed by England cranking out a soul-destroying lead. Instead it was one of the greatest partnerships in cricket history. A 19-year-old No. 11 joined by a haunted former boy wonder sounds like the beginning of very depressing indie drama, but instead the game was lifted by the loose limbs of Agar and the technically fraught Hughes. They scored quickly and decisively. They played Anderson out. Bashed Finn when he allowed it. And Agar went after Swann like he hadn’t seen the Brad Haddin dismissal. Instead of rolling over and dying they made history.

“The baggy green, and even the hard green helmet, has a mythical quality that you scientists will never understand.”

England had clearly forgotten all their facile platitudes about how hard Australia would come, and how you can never write them off. Although, they had other things on their mind. They were clearly worried that they were being judged. Andy Flower was the only person who read 1984 and thought Winston Smith had it coming. English players are now judged on how they walk, talk, injure, breath and masticate. Their life is down to a series of boxes and scores. They analyse the best way to walk through the hotel lobby.

But how do you analyse Agar’s batting? Ask Henley or Richmond CC to provide tapes? It’s not the same, and once Agar got into his flow, the England players stood very still, and waited for it to end. They refused to try Stuart Broad, or get him off the field and get him treated. Finn decided to test every part of the pitch. Cook tried as little as possible. And they looked like men who’d lost the instructions and Allen keys for their flatpack furniture.

“These guys have an algorithm to tell them the correct way to suck from a straw, they’re more computer than human.”

It wasn’t until England came out to bat that that both sides played well at the same time. Even if Australia got lucky with some Mitchell Starc rawness and Marais Erasmus randomness. It was the Australia bowlers bowling fast and accurate with Michael Clarke trying things, and Cook and Kevin Pietersen sitting on the bowling. After all the excitement, it was the first time there was quality to match it. It was tough, slow and tense, probably because it was the only thing this series had missed in the first two days.

After two days, we still have no idea how this mega Ashes will pan out. Perhaps Boof’s boys will be too random and strange for the Flower androids.

Maybe that is just another wild nonsensical statement based on one passage of cricket. The mega Ashes is only two days old, but the cricket has already been more interesting and entertaining than anything David Warner does after midnight.

Only 48 days to go.

36 is not enough

The world’s pain is often etched on Peter Siddle’s face. Every groove and undulation tells the story of an extinct animal or a lost city.

That is just when he is bowling, and even being successful.

Today one of those lines would have been for his team’s batting performance. It is barely possible to imagine his grimace as Australia dived off a cliff with bats in their hand.

Whether you’re in the camp that Australian bowlers are overrated and lucky, variously worse than New Zealand’s attack or better than the rampant West Indies of old, it’s pretty clear the bowlers aren’t Australia’s problem. Their problem isn’t even their collection of random flawed spinners. It’s not even that they have a rugby manager. Or that they can’t even throw punches straight.

Their problem is their complete and utter lack of the ability to make runs at Test level with any kind of regularity or consistency.

Remove Michael Clarke – and in general he probably wants to distance himself from this batting line-up – not one player in this side averages more than 36.

Thirty-six.

It’s therefore not all that surprising that they have set up their team so that they bat to 11.

A total of 215, so low that it also gave England a bite at them in the gloom, was always going to be tough for a line-up devoid of Test runs. What happened next as predictable and exciting.

Shane Watson thrust his front pad out like it had high-priority marketing on it, because that is how Shane Watson bats. He also tried to dominate like he did in the tour games, the way he was born to play: big, bullish, and buggering. Instead he was late and out. He wanted this opening spot so badly, but all his desperation did was put him in the firing line of Steve Finn.

When Darren Lehmann shook up the Australian batting order, Ed Cowan bit hard onto Lehmann’s arm and wouldn’t let go. He’d been the least embarrassing of the top order in India, he’d spent months playing county cricket. He was ready, he could do this, and maybe he still can, but today all we saw was one rash attempted cover drive and a quick walk off.

Clarke was beaten by a ball so perfectly deadly it was as if it was made of solid kryptonite.

Chris Rogers came back from 62 Tests off looking fresh and frisky. There is nothing pretty about Rogers. His arm guard seems to have been used in fights with homeless people. His technique is brought together from a collection of techniques he has found in the changerooms of the world. But he plays late, and he’s careful. It’s effective, and he was unlucky on his lbw. But his wicket meant that Australia had given up all of Peter Siddle’s work.

This left Australia only with the eager, technically-flawed, fidgety Smith.

When your team is 22 for 3, this is not the man you want coming to the crease. Smith is many things, but he’s not John Wayne or Steve Waugh.

What Smith lacks in technical ability he does make up in three key areas. His eye is phenomenal. He could spot a raccoon a mile off on a foggy night in a dense forest. His confidence is remarkable. For a player that everyone else has written off, Smith just refuses to believe he isn’t good enough. And then there is his fight. There is a bit of the mongrel in him.

Early on he played a ball to point that his hips were playing to fine leg and his bat was playing to midwicket. The England slips needed drool buckets. Somehow he survived Anderson. He punished Finn every time he made a mistake. And he decided to greet Graeme Swann by putting him back into his own members stand

Smith scored over half of Australia’s runs at a strike rate of 74 and looked as likely to make a fifty as any batsmen on the day. Yet, there will be Australians who wake up, check the scorecard, see that fact, and assume they’re heaving a weird dream which will probably end with ants coming out of their hand.

England only made 45 more than they did that first day at the Gabba, but at the end of that first day at the Gabba Australia’s batting entrails weren’t scattered all over the floor like today.

You may not believe in Steve Smith, and he’s given you plenty of reasons not to, but Darren Lehmann does. And it appears like everyone believes in Darren Lehmann. Darren Lehmann didn’t just pick Steve Smith, he batted him at five: a proper batting position.

It was probably a decision on blind faith, and when only one of your batsmen average over 36, blind faith and the cult of Darren Lehmann is all you have.

Previously at the Ashes

“We were unlucky” “No, you batted like shit and you couldn’t get fucken Monty out”

“I took a hat trick we will win these Ashes” “1/517, fuck.” “517/1, ROFL”.

“Yes, no, no, no, no, no, no, no, no”. “Is this what I think it is” “Yes, these are all that is left of Xavier Doherty”. “Why the fuck doesn’t he sweat?”

“Um, well, you see, I don’t really know what I am doing, so when I was completely awesome and cut your throat out, it was largely by accident. It won’t happen again, probably“

“Don’t drive on the first day in Melbourne.” “Don’t drive the entire team bus off the cliff on the first day at Melbourne.” “We will do the sprinkler on your corpse”.

“Usman, usman, usman, THIRTYSEVEN. My Usman sucked 37 runs”. “Arise, Pup, our tomatoes are ready”.

“Back to back, bitches.”

“We are so great, we are so great, holy fuck, what the hell is a Saeed Ajmal”

“OMGodponies, we’re gonna beat the Saffas, yes we are, we are awes… Oh no, get it off me, it hurts, it hurts, IT’s KILLING ME”.

“Hey KP, have you met Ashton?”.

The Ashes are here as proved by my trouser press

Men talking about cricket into a laptop.

Can you ask for more?

Rhetorical.

Cricket Sadist Hour: The Anti Pup with Gideon Haigh

It’s a late emergency meeting of the cricket sadist hour where Gideon Haigh repeatedly calls for Darren Lehmann to come back.

And I wonder why the buck didn’t stop where it was supposed to and whether 12 years is enough.

The ballad of Cook’s jaw

Cook stroked his magnificent superhero jawline as the Indians danced and screamed. The whites around his eyes were even more noticeable than usual. It was a look of confusion and defeat.

Maybe he was thinking back to the good old days when Ishant Sharma couldn’t hit the pitch.

Because every ball from that moment on was an attack on English pride.

Ishant Sharma’s slower ball started it. There have been Ishant Sharma slower balls that have ended up in fields surrounding cricket grounds. Somehow Eoin mongrelled his to midwicket. Eoin Morgan. The Eoin Morgan. Out with a chase in hand, but not won.

James Tredwell swings and misses and the Champions Trophy belongs to India © AFP

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Cook stroked his magnificent superhero jawline as the Indians danced and screamed. The whites around his eyes were even more noticeable than usual. It was a look of confusion and defeat.

Maybe he was thinking back to the good old days when Ishant Sharma couldn’t hit the pitch.

Because every ball from that moment on was an attack on English pride.

Ishant Sharma’s slower ball started it. There have been Ishant Sharma slower balls that have ended up in fields surrounding cricket grounds. Somehow Eoin mongrelled his to midwicket. Eoin Morgan. The Eoin Morgan. Out with a chase in hand, but not won.

Ravi Bopara stood at the wicket complaining about the height of his ball for a second or two. This was Ravi’s tournament, his bowling, his slogging and his ball-polishing skills. He had it all. He also had the timing and placement to hook the ball straight to R Ashwin at square leg.

Tim Bresnan has the sort of dependable face you can feel comfortable looking at in a crisis. Finally England scored another run as Bresnan slices away a ball to third man. The refuge of the lucky man.

Now Ravi Jadeja was on: MS Dhoni’s toy-sized Chuck Norris. Dhoni gave him a slip. He’d struck mad, crazy, genius, accidental luck with Sharma’s wickets, but now he was hungry.

Bresnan scored a single off his hip.

It brought Buttler on strike, the back-up Morgan. The man who finishes games for Somerset. Buttler can make 19 in 11 balls look like a Sunday stretch on a sun lounger.

Instead he missed a ball by a distance. Jadeja hit the stumps. England had scored two runs in five balls. Buttler saw a ball in his arc, he tried to destroy it. It got him first.

Broad was now in, he started by hitting the ball straight to cover. There was no run. He ran anyway, then he dived, and almost ripped his shoulder out of his socket only to look up and see that Jadeja had taken the ball in front of the stumps and not even worried about the run out. It was as if he’d know there would be more chances.

The next ball would have three.

Ball 18.4 of the innings was a cricket representation of choking. Jadeda darted it in. Bresnan almost swept himself off his feet. India went up for the LBW. Bresnan panicked and left his crease. Tucker gave the lbw not out. Bresnan stopped. Broad kept running. Then Bresnan slipped. Rohit Sharma ran him out.

All it needed was an actual banana skin.

If India wanted to know exactly what was going through England’s head, they’d seen an exact recreation. Had England won the game from that moment onwards, India would not have been able to look anyone in the eyes again.

Tredwell, the man least likely to save the woman from the oncoming train, was now slogging wildly, almost getting run out, and adding one run to the total.

Broad timed a ball, the first one timed since Ravi’s hook, but hit it so well that a second run was not possible. Not that they didn’t flirt with a run out. At this stage the running between the wickets could have only been more dangerous if they’d done it on fire.

Somehow England had played the previous ten balls so badly that they’d actually taken the pressure off themselves. They choked so hard they’d made themselves the plucky outsiders who could provide an upset.

Broad eyed up the field and decided that he would just try and hit Ashwin as hard as his arms can swing. His arms probably can’t swing that hard, but hey, this is Stuart Broad, he was born for this. Instead he missed, Dhoni took off the bails, and then when Rod Tucker hesitated on the third umpire, stared him down until he did it. For the second time we had a stumping that everyone was 100% sure they knew the answer too, and then Oxenford pressed the random generator and Broad was saved.

Hitting Ashwin on this pitch was like trying to pick the eyes out of a cheetah with BBQ tongs. So it was nice that Ashwin gave England their one big chance, and took the pitch out of the equation and Broad swept it for four.

Now every single person in the world who was watching the cricket knew that Stuart Broad was going to sweep. Dhoni brought in mid off, sent out the square leg. Hitting Ashwin over mid off on a pitch like this for a left hander would take a robot with alien technology. England had a sweeping bowling allrounder who’d faced four balls. Ashwin went short, Broad clunked it, took one.

Tredwell again. There is no casting agent in the world that would ever pick Tredwell for this moment. Not against Ashwin. How would he get his bat anywhere this master tweaker? Well he’d do it as Ashwin dropped short, and Tredwell used every single fibre of his character to force the ball beyond mid off. In a not too distant past, the Indian fielder would have been slow. He would have dived over it. He wouldn’t have dived in the first place. Instead Rohit Sharma chased that ball like it was his inheritance. He was Jonty Rhodes, Ricky Ponting, Trevor Penney and Clive Lloyd. The imagined four became two.

Now Tredwell had to hit a six off the man who in 3.5 overs had bowled a maiden, taken two wickets and had given up only 15 runs. Tredwell, the everyman. Frumpy. Plain. Limited. No Graeme Swann. Up against the might of India. Saving his country from the embarrassment they so richly deserved. Winning their first ever ICC 50 tournament with one big swing.

Never was a hero so unlikely. Never was a play and miss so likely.

You don’t send James Tredwell out to take down a superpower.

India, superpower. Redux.

It was never supposed to be like this. Eoin Morgan was supposed to ice the game with a six over midwicket and an angry smile as Ravi Bopara jumped on him like a victorious elf God. There was to be no choke. No panic. No calamity. No loss.

Instead of being used in photos of the champions, Cook’s jawline was cast as little more than a quick cutaway or a scratching post as he pondered how the hell England lost that game.

The best eight

“I love this format of the eight best teams.”

If you heard it once during the Champions Trophy coverage, you were probably only listening to a few minutes of the coverage. The official memo must have been pretty clear: “This is not a nothing tournament that we once cancelled due a lack of general interest. This is the best eight teams in a ring, duking it out. Sell them on that.”

That is what the Champions Trophy has become. It was never meant to be that.

The first two tournaments were to grow the game. A tournament in Kenya and Bangladesh to grow the game there. The child of Jagmohan Dalmiya. The money would also be handy to the ICC, who then probably had less staff than the current England team has backroom staff. It was noble and practical when the ICC Knockout Tournament was born.

No one cared about it. Why would you? It wasn’t an Olympics, it was the Goodwill Games.

You may have noticed that Bangladesh are no longer invited to the tournament they first hosted. Of course, they also weren’t invited to the one they hosted. It was an eight-team knockout event, and New Zealand had to play Zimbabwe in a qualifying game to make the tournament. Bangladesh had no games at all. Way to win over the locals. The Bangladesh players were presumably at the grounds, training hard in a passive-aggressive way as ICC officials walked past. South Africa won the tournament.

Kenya, the next hosts, got a qualifying game. They played India. They lost. Bangladesh had a qualifying game against England. They lost. Oddly, Zimbabwe had automatically qualified. West Indies never even made the tournament, as they were knocked out by Sri Lanka in qualifying. The crowds were close to non-existent at some games. Inspired by the great Glen Sulzberger being in their squad, the Kiwis won their first and only ICC event.

In 2002 the tournament was changed to the Champions Trophy and played in Sri Lanka. Five months before the World Cup. Whoops. To celebrate, all ten Test nations played, as did Kenya and Netherlands. Two teams won. There was a washout during the final and on the back-up day. So India and Sri Lanka were crowned co-winners. Which really needs no further comment.

In 2004, it was played in England, and America and Kenya were invited. Kenya were fresh off their 2003 World Cup semi-final, America were hopeless and lost a game to Australia with only 31.5 overs in the entire match. This tournament did produce the most memorable final ever, as Ian Bradshaw and Courtney Browne crept West Indies home with two wickets to spare.

In 2006, the tournament was moved to India. Only the Test-playing nations showed up. Australia won it, and Damien Martyn helped Sharad Pawar off the stage with a push. That was far more memorable than the final, a Duckworth-Lewis smashing of West Indies.

The 2008 edition was placed in Pakistan, so that never happened.

In 2009, South Africa hosted the top eight teams. Pakistan lost the semi-final; the country’s politicians claimed fixing. Australia won the final; they wore white jackets, no one knows why.

With the World Twenty20 doing well, and being played about every 18 minutes, the Champions Trophy was surplus, and now in the way of a more successful and loved tournament. With the Test Championship on its way, the Champions Trophy was easiest to kill.

Few cried. There were no protests at Lord’s or Wankhede. No major petitions. No press outcry. It was just a weird tournament that had never really captured any imagination and was disappearing back into the obscurity that most of the matches were played in.

Had the World Test Championship not been so unattractive to TV companies, the Champions Trophy would have never come back.

But the evolution of the Champions Trophy is exactly what the ICC wants. And by the ICC, I don’t mean the administrators who race around the corridors of Dubai Sport City. I mean the ICC that is the run by the ten cricket boards. The real ICC. The ICC that has gone out of its way time and time again to keep cricket a private club that they hold the keys to.

Before this tournament Ireland tied a game with Pakistan and lost the next match by two wickets. Ireland had no means of qualifying for this tournament, neither did Bangladesh nor Zimbabwe. Like Test cricket, it’s by invitation only. No Banglas, no Zims, no Irish.

At the very least, imagine if the tournament was co-hosted by the Irish. That could be the future model. England and Ireland. India, Bangladesh and Nepal. Australia, New Zealand and Papua New Guinea. These are countries that love cricket. In Ireland they are making it as professional as you can outside the big eight. Nepal’s cricket crowds are some of the best in the world. And according to Gideon Haigh’s piece for the Nightwatchman, Papua New Guinea are mad for cricket.

That’s a utopia where cricket outside the Test-playing nations is actually valued and pushed. Remember how the ICC is structured – ten votes for ten nations, three representatives for every other country that plays cricket.

Some fans and press have revelled in the top-eight notion. They have said that this is how the World Cup should be. It’s quick. Every game matters. And there are no minnow games to ignore.

You can see their point. Of course, if you watch what is actually happening in world cricket, even the big eight don’t matter. It’s easy and lazy to point at India and suggest every single problem in the world of cricket leads back to them. But they have two able and willing accomplices who are happily making the big eight into a powerful three.

Australia, England and India are forming a cabal.

Australia and India played Test series in 2007-08, 2008-09, 2010-11, 2011-12, and 2012-13. Outside of ICC tournaments they have also played more than 20 ODIs and T20s. Australia have not played Bangladesh in a Test match in that time. They have played six ODIs.

England have played Tests against Bangladesh, home and away in 2010. Since then they have played eight Tests against India; next summer they have five more.

Bangladesh have never played a Test match in India. The two played in one series since 2007.

From July 2013 to January 2015, Australia, India and England will have been involved in 19 Test matches together.

Any other country from the “best eight teams” or the ten Test-playing nations is expendable and getting frozen out. This cabal of powerful boards has known that it makes the most money playing each other for a while now. Now the three are cashing in often. They are devolving the game right in front of our eyes.

Last summer South Africa played England for the No. 1 crown in Test cricket. It was a three-Test series. Why? Because England were hosting Australia for ODIs that practically no one will ever remember.

While it is nice to have a well-run, short, sharp tournament without any of those pesky Test cricket strugglers or Associates clogging up the format, if they can get rid of them, who else can they get rid of? Sri Lanka, New Zealand and West Indies don’t seem to make any money. Pakistan are in limbo. And South Africa are stuck in neutral.

What makes any of these countries safe in the future? Other than to host them, India, England and Australia have no real need for global tournaments. They have no real need to play anyone other than each other. They have no real need for a Future Tours Programme. They have no real need for the ICC.

India don’t even need England and Australia. They could easily go the route of American sports and play world championships amongst themselves while using overseas players when required. Australia and England could continue to make solid and dependable money without India.

That probably won’t happen. Although, as the ICC’s film on the history of the Champions Trophy said, this is probably the last tournament. No one knows what will happen next in cricket. Often no one knows what is happening in cricket right now.

A few days after India play England in the final at Edgbaston, the chairmen of the Test-playing nations will meet in London in what is the most important meeting in cricket. During breaks in the meeting, no ex-players will sit at a fake desk analysing what has been said. The press will not be allowed to sit in and judge the meeting. And there will be no facile interviews of board members as they come out of the room. That meeting is more important than the entirety of the Champions Trophy put together. The eight best teams plus the two others will decide cricket’s future. A private club. That we didn’t vote for. Deciding cricket’s future.

Maybe they can replace the Champions Trophy with a Test match championship that only Australia, India and England are invited to.

“Good morning cricket fans, the excitement is really amazing in Chennai, this is a cracking tournament, it’s played by the best three teams…”