Jarrod Kimber's Blog, page 53
August 20, 2012
VVS: a cricketer
It’s sort of hard to talk about VVS Laxman without talking about how pretty his batting was.
The man could cover drive from the rough outside legstump better than most people eat soup, and do it prettier than Bryce Dallas Howard.
But, he was more than just a pretty blade.
VVS could have quit cricket before he even started it, he could have become a doctor, or lawyer, or classy hotelier.
It would have been easier than playing for India for 16 years. Or even making it to the top in the first place.
Some players play to win, that sort of Ricky Ponting sickness.
Some players play for the adulation, Sourav Ganguly’s main reason for being.
Some players play because they can’t do anything else that good, Shane Warne wouldn’t be a doctor.
And then some players play just because they love cricket.
VVS had that. Really, he could have left the game a while back. Once he disassembled Australia like they were a Mr Potato head, he was a legend. The rest didn’t even need to happen. No one was going to forget that innings.
Instead he stuck around through form lapses, Greg Chappell and India’s decline.
At any time he could have jumped off the bus and run for the hills.
His average was not untouchable, and in years to come, people will look at it and wonder why we all drool when we talk about him. It wasn’t how many runs he scored, it was when he scored them and how he scored them. He’s not a man who deserves to be put into a spreadsheet.
Considering he was never going to be captain, couldn’t enhance his reputation, India were getting worse and worse, has a back essentially made of ice cream cake and he’s not been a run machine for some time now, he’s had plenty of opportunities to leave cricket over the last few years.
And he hasn’t. From what I can tell, not because of ego, wins or because he had nothing else to do, but just because he likes to play cricket.
Cricket is what makes him happy.
It’s not often you get a professional sportsman who plays just because he loves the game, without trying to prove anything to anyone, but just because of the thrill he gets out of playing a good shot.
Players who make it look as easy as VVS do are often said to not care as much as others.
But VVS spent hours just trying to unpretzel his back before each Test day. He screamed at Ojha to run to win that Test in Mohali. He put his body and mind through everything in Kolkata. And I still remember the look of horror on his face the day he went out to Brad Hogg. Cricket just got inside of him, and even now he plans to continue playing in the Ranji trophy without a spine that wants him to. Cricket and him were made to be together.
When someone like him moves on, even if it was time for him to go, cricket loses something. It loses a star, a poet and a cricketer.
VVS was as pure as any cricketer before him. A cricketer’s cricketer. Perhaps he would have been a great doctor, or lawyer, or anything else he wanted to be, but I’m glad he chose cricket, and consider myself lucky to have seen him play. I’d like to thank Baba Krishna for giving VVS cricket, and giving us VVS.
Cricket will move on without him, but it will miss him. Very very will never quite do him justice, it was always to clumsy a term for someone that special.
August 19, 2012
August 18, 2012
Morne the Hippo
Morne Morkel has always interested me. There’s something about him that makes me think Boris Karloff would have loved to play him in a film. There’s a large loveable flawed silent monster feel to him. Slightly doomed perhaps, but able to wreak amazing damage, even if by accident.
Even his name sounds like a made up villains name.
While Dale Steyn has a vicious face, and Vernon Philander has the cunning eyes of a man who would make a mint on Wall St, Morne looks like a friendly tourist bus driver.
Batsmen have told me it’s scary facing him. And you can certainly see why. Pace, bounce and inconsistency are about the last thing you want to see coming at you from the other end. Even if he’s got a idiosyncratic run up of a man who is less predator and more guy who checks the oven’s off three times before leaving the house.
On his official website, Morkel has a diary, in it he writes “We just had our final practice session before the series starts tomorrow! The boys are looking good and ready to go. I hope we can deliver something special this series and that we’ll get off to a winning start! Thank you so much for all of your messages!” That’s a lot of exclamation marks for a man who beat your brains in with a cricket ball. He also says that if he wasn’t playing cricket, he’d be a doctor, unlike most quicks who like to send people to the doctor.
The website also states that his favourite animal is the Hippo. Whether by accident or design (like his bowling) he’s picked the animal that is most like him. It looks cute and cuddly, is a favourite of those who liked stuffed toys and isn’t the sort of animal you’d think would want to kill you. But they do, oh how they do. They were actually built with massive canine teeth and razor sharp incisors just to cut you open and kill you. Much like Morne with his height and pace.
Even with all these natural attributes, Morne struggled for a few years to become a regular for South Africa. He’s currently ranked 9th in the world in the Test bowling rankings. And despite all this natural talent he’s only got a bowling average of 30. Which for a normal bowler is quite decent, but if you’re Morne it seems under par.
Recently I was trying to find a match where I thought saw Morne have a break down mid over and let go about 20 runs including wides and no balls against Bangladesh. I was convinced that I’d seen it, so I went through the ESPNcricinfo archives looking for it. I found the Test, but instead of the car crash I expected to find, he’d taken 4/73.
Then I kept looking through his figures, and to my mathematical challenged mind I started seeing a pattern, no matter what the circumstances, or seemingly how good or bad he’d bowled, Morne often ended up with roughly 4/80.
Now I say roughly, because it’s not an exact science. But in his first Test he took 3/86, and today he took 4/80, in between other innings have happened that occasionally prove my point, and sometimes do anything but. It’s not scientific, or even that often an occurrence, but there is something about Morne that just screams he’s going to take 4/80.
The day I looked up the Bangladesh match was during the first Test at the Oval, where he finished with 4/72. At the time I wrote, “If I survive the apocalypse, I bet I’ll check the scores and Morne Morkel will still have 4/80.” Yesterday on twitter and the Two Chucks I said Morne Morkel continues his trudge towards a 4/80. And he did. Now, I’m not saying I’m an oracle (I am), I’m saying Morne Morkel is a hippopotamus with a statistical anomaly that doesn’t happen that often.
Morne has all the skills of a brilliant hunter that could travel the world and devour the weak, but something isn’t quite right. At the moment he is the hippopotamus that waits for someone to fall out the boat, and then kills them, rather the kind who tip them out of the boat in the first place. 4/80, rather than 4/40, if you will.
August 17, 2012
August 13, 2012
KP, Trust and Unity
It’s a shame, that at least for the short term, the ECB and Kevin Pietersen aren’t together anymore. They do seem to deserve each other right now.
One party drops certain players based on derogatory private texts they haven’t seen, and another releases a hammy video the night before selection decision instead of just making a call, or sending a text.
Right now the sticking point seems to be that KP may or may not have sent a derogatory text to the South Africans. He’s not publicly stated that the texts weren’t derogatory. And the ECB have had enough.
And as Hugh Morris says: “The success of the England team has been built on a unity of purpose and trust.”
Trust is the key word there.
When KP walked into meeting after meeting with the ECB only for his private communications to be leaked to the media, where was the trust then? Where was the unity? What was the purpose?
No ECB employees or board members were dropped for their behaviour.
And I’m no KP sympathizer. KP has played this as badly as he has ever played any left-arm finger spinner. Publicly, he’s looked like a buffoon. Privately, he’s whinged and moaned. And in meetings about his future he’s been naïve and bullish (if you believe the leaked information). Almost every piece of action he has taken has been easily mocked by his critics. And this is a man of many critics.
Yet, for all his faults and missteps and badly premeditated actions, the reason for him not playing in this next Text is a private communication between him and a friend. A member of the opposition, perhaps, but a member of the opposition that he smashed around the park last weekend.
KP has essentially been suspended for doing what every single one of us has done in our life, complained to a friend about our boss.
It seems about as petty a reason to drop someone as you can find. He didn’t break the law, he didn’t publicly abuse anyone, and he performed at the absolute maximum of his abilities, he just also had a private sulk.
What of other private communications? Should Giles Clarke, Andy Flower and Hugh Morris state publicly that in no conversations with anyone, via text, email or over the phone have they ever said anything derogatory about Kevin Pietersen? Trust.
Or should they just announce that in a show of good faith they are instigating an independent inquiry into who leaked the information?
We all make mistakes, and both sides have made a meal of this consistently, so why not just have a meeting with the aggrieved parties and let them chat about it. Keep the details of the meeting private. Let those upset by possible naughty texts explain why. And let those who feel that he can’t trust his employers to confront them, and perhaps even apologise for being a bit of a tool at times.
I doubt he’s the only player in this English team to complain about Strauss, Flower, Giles, Morris or the selectors. Has anyone checked Graeme Swann’s phone to see what he told his friends after being dropped for the last Test? Or did he even test the trust of the team when he released an autobiography that criticised Samit Patel and Pietersen?
The treatment of Patel in Sri Lanka was not exactly all about trust and unity, now was it?
Maybe even Strauss, in a moment of madness and completely out of character for him, said a mildly derogatory not expletive-laden comment to a friend about KP over the last week.
Strauss and Flower are proud and intelligent men who have succeeded in life and lead men well.
Are they really so easily upset by the fact that their most enigmatic and highly strung player might not always love them?
There isn’t an office, art collective, acappella group, or community farm in the world that doesn’t have people who at one time or another don’t get along. It’s what happens in jobs when more than a few people work together. You’re brought together to do a job, it’s nice when you make friends at work, but regardless of what Christian ads from the mid 90s showed, we don’t always get along. What people generally do is work around personalities and just get the job done regardless.
Let’s not say that sport is different. Shane Warne openly despised his coach; there was no need for texts. Shaquille O’Neal and Kobe Bryant hated each other as they won three straight championships. Their hatred even has a wiki page. But they made it through. And Victoria Pendleton hasn’t always pleased her team-mates.
The ECB has to recognize that it’s their job to manage their players, KP’s failure is their failure too.
The ECB has decided to put the personal squabbles first. Only they know how bad this rift is, until they leak it. But by overlooking their own mistakes and focusing on the real or imagined ones of KP it is leading their team into a must win Test match without their in-form match-winner.
It’s not just trust in Morris’ sentence. It’s unity of purpose as well. To be the best in the world. And because of their own and KP’s actions, the lack of trust has led to them abandoning their best chance of winning this Test and staying on top of the rankings.
The ECB want to be No. 1 in the world, KP wants to be a legend. Surely they’re both more likely to do this together than apart.
August 10, 2012
Drunk Homophobic clowns abuse Dale Steyn outside Headingley
Drunken clowns, literally, were seen chanting: “Dale Steyn is a Homosexual” as they left Headingley on Day three.
The fans stumbled from the direction of the old Western Terrace, the loudest and drunkest cricket stand in the UK. Yorkshire CCC have tried to clean up the stand, by placing bigger gaps between the rows and upping security presence. But, idiots, will be idiots. And changing the name of the stand, as already proved at the MCG with Bay 13, to the West Stand, was hardly going to discourage people who like chant that certain people are homosexuals.
The footage is from the end of day three. Day four of the Test coincided with Yorkshire’s biggest lesbian, gay, bisexual and trans (LGBT) event – Leeds pride – held in city centre. The theme for this year’s event was sports. The group are also linked with the Wipe out Homophobia in sport group who’s motto is “challenge and report homophobia in sport”.
Perhaps in next years pride event people can dress up as drunken cricket clowns and kiss passionately.
I told the ECB about the footage, and have now sent it on to them and YCCC. Not that, based on this footage, it’s their fault.
An ECB statement said: ”We work closely with the ground authorities to create a family-friendly environment in all our international venues and will always thoroughly investigate any complaints received. On this occasion no complaint was made by the South African team, but ECB and the ground authorities do take this issue seriously and reserve the right to eject any spectators who persistently use foul or abusive language towards players.”
There are rumours that the chant was also heard in the West Stand, but after a few phone calls and some tweets, I’ve found no proof of that.
Four years ago, the former New Zealand bowler Iain O’Brien claimed he was taunted and called a faggot by Australian fans at the Gabba. Rather than report it officially, he outed the behaviour on his blog. He also blogged about finding the perfect pair of jeans.
Homosexuality is something cricket has barely dealt with. In several Test playing countries it officially remains a serious crime. Cricket has only one openly gay player, Steve Davies of England and Surrey. Despite Davies’ involvement at Surrey, last summer you could purchase t shirts at The Oval that said: “I think he bats for the other side”, with an arrow pointing in the direction of the person next to you. Martin Crowe once stated publicly he wasn’t gay. Crowe was a very stylish batsman.
Although, perhaps I’ve got all this wrong. Maybe these clowns weren’t saying “Dale Steyn is a homosexual” in a negative way. Perhaps they were saying that he’s so good, he’s clearly gay, because gay is great. Perhaps if he had taken more wickets they might have chanted “Dale Steyn is intersex”, they’re ultimate accolade.
Most importantly, if you know any of these clowns, feel free to bring them down to the South Africa nets, I’m sure Dale Steyn would love to have a bowl at them.
It should be pointed out that I have no interest in Dale Steyn’s love life preferences. He is free to have sex with anyone he pleases, as long as it’s consensual and legal, and that he never films it and lets it end up on the internet.
August 7, 2012
KP to divorce his parents
Recently I heard Michael Holding say that the players are the children and boards are the parents. It had nothing to do with Kevin Pietersen or the ECB, but was about the disastrous relationship the WICB have with their senior players.
Cricket Boards are usually run by older people, those with business or sports administration backgrounds. That, and their role as employer of the players, gives them a position an authority.
So when these very same people then spill the secrets of one of their own players for political or personal reasons, they should take the toughest fall.
KP has often been a bit of an idiot. He’s an egotist. He likes money. Thinks of himself and his own interests more than most in a team environment. And does things on instinct. The ego, instinct and even the selfish nature of KP are part of what makes him a great batsman. He’s far from the first great selfish batsman, in fact many of the greatest batsmen have obvious selfish tendencies. As many of the greatest cricketers have amazingly big egos. And instinctively doing things is how many athletes live.
But when KP walked into the ECB to speak about anything from captaincy issues, his future in the game or taking time off, no matter how stupid he was, no matter how insane and egotistical his claims were, he was within his right to believe that they stayed with his employers.
They haven’t been. Over and over again, KP’s words have been fed to the media and not by the deputy deputy assistant to the travelling secretary, but by people in high positions that should know and act better. Perhaps we should give them the benefit of the doubt, and say that the leaks are accidental. It’s just that they happen over and over again, and so it’s either unprofessional accidental conduct, or a personal campaign against their own player.
While it’s true KP is trying to – in his words- maximise his opportunities, its not new. Money has always been a factor in cricket. Cricket’s laws were founded on gambling. Amateurs were often paid more than professionals. Cricketers used to retire to get real jobs. Kerry Packer and rebel tours came about because of vast sums of money. And the latest instalment is when a player retires from test cricket, or international cricket, to play in the IPL. If anything, KP is following in the footsteps of more than a few greats of the past.
Players have missed tours or tests for resting, rehab, depression, family reasons, and even pantomimes. In the past, players would miss Tests just because they didn’t want to go to the sub continent. Rodney Hogg liked being 12th man because he got paid the same and had more time to drink.
Even the rift in the changeroom is nothing new. England changerooms were segregated between amatuer and pro, and old and new players. Big game players who cause a rift are not new either. Shane Warne openly didn’t rate his coach and had a private feud with his vice captain Adam Gilchrist. All players, regardless of their ability, need to be treated differently. The star of Swanny’s diary is probably treated differently than Tim Bresnan.
Of recent times I’ve seen KP’s two greatest hundreds. A hundred in P Sara that gave England the chance to draw a series from behind. And this hundred at Headingley. There is no back up player that England have, or even current player, that has the ability to change a game so violently or anywhere near as fast. KP is something special.
He’s also a professional athlete who only has so many years to make money from his trade. A young dad who wants to see his son. A cricketer who doesn’t like ODI cricket that much. And a rash human being who makes his fair share of mistakes.
KP is not unique, he’s just acted like a spoilt teenager who has been betrayed by his parents.
Both sides want what is best for themselves. Both sides have made mistakes. Both sides have egos and pride. I mean it’s hard to say KP’s ego is the only factor when the other side have Giles Clarke. What needs to happen now is a series of meetings with those inside keeping the information to themselves and trying to find a solution, not make scapegoats.
If KP stops playing for England, he robs himself of glory, the ECB rob themselves of a champion player, and the fans are robbed of something special.
KP leaving Test cricket for good is the worst situation for everyone involved, so why would anyone want that?
