Jarrod Kimber's Blog, page 56
June 19, 2012
Tom Maynard and PK Dharma
Tom Maynard looked like he was scientifically designed to play cricket. Tall, coordinated, athletic and when you watched him play it was if he wasn’t the son of a former cricketer, but that his father’s memories had been transplanted into his body.
At Surrey, Jason Roy bangs it, Ramps is class, and RHB runs around like a evil prince from a Disney film. Yet, I can’t remember being at a Surrey game and people not stopping mid conversation to comment about Maynard’s batting.
With Runako Morton I’ll always remember the crazy backlift. For Maynard, it’s just how much he looked like he belonged out on a field.
Not everyone had seen Maynard, and at cricket functions in the future those who have will tell those the others what a special talent he was.
For PK Dharma, the Tamil Nadu all rounder, it seems even fewer have seen him. There was no massive outpour from twitter by Indian players. His father was not known in the industry, and with only two list a games to his name, he hadn’t given himself much time to be appreciated.
Cricinfo says he was a right arm medium bowler. And that is all his page will ever say.
I’ll never know if he bowled off cutters, mixed up his pace, swung it, or even on quicker pitches liked to bounce people.
Before he took his own life I never knew PK Dharma existed. And had he not, I might never have.
It’s sort of stupid even writing this post, if it weren’t for the fact that these were cricketers that died, I wouldn’t be typing now. But the truth is that because of cricket I do care about these two men. I can’t stop that.
When I was young, one of my father’s team mates died. I think he’d retired by then, or was close to it. I remember being at his wake held at the cricket club, and every single story I heard was about his exploits on the cricket field. This was a man who just played for fun on the weekend, nothing more. He had a full life outside the game. Yet he was a cricketer, and that’s what people talked about that day. I learnt more about cricket that day than I had in the four years before that. Some of it was coaching, I think the old guys wanted to take their mind off their friends death. But mostly it was that really meant something.
Back then, I didn’t know what it was. But I felt like I was part of it.
Tom Maynard’s batting memories will remain with me forever and PK Dharma will always be someone I wish I could have known more about. Regardless, these are young men who died too soon.
Cricketers.
June 11, 2012
June 10, 2012
Sunil Narine, day 1 of bowling (First day on the job and a body is found in the dumpster)
Mysteries get solved in an hour on TV. Law and Order, CSI and Midsomer Murders have all confirmed this for us. But for Sunil Narine, one day with 15 overs, no wickets and 69 runs is not the conclusion to the story.
Narine has had a charmed existence for many reasons since he entered top-level cricket. He wasn’t thrust in as a teenager. The pitches he has played on have been exceptionally sympathetic to spinners. He’s played when people are trying to slog him. And no one can pick him. Today was different.
The pitch was good enough for a No. 11 to make a record score. Graeme Swann didn’t take a wicket. And the England players could wait for the bad balls, rather than attacking him. Also, Narine bowled poorly.
That kills me to say it because I really believe he could be a special talent. But if this was the first time you’d seen him, you could be forgiven for thinking Shane Shillingford should have got another game.
Narine bowled far too many bad balls. There weren’t many absolute howlers. But his length was consistently wrong. It was too short. As I nerdishly obsessed over his pitch map, it was clear that at least a third of his deliveries were just too short.
While Graeme Swann was consistently at the four metre mark, Narine was dropping them at the six metre mark. That’s not good enough for a top class spinner. Good batsmen just milk that for singles and the odd boundary. Then to compensate he floated up half volleys.
In their own ways, KP and Bell have had their own problems with spin. I think both would have been happy to face Narine for the first time with half volleys and half trackers coming at them.
Once KP saw that Narine was struggling, he ripped his chest apart and yanked out each individual organ. Back foot drives, front foot sixes, and scoring at will from a bowler who looked like he had no plans at all.
Even off the pitch England were attacking Narine. In the Sky box Nick Knight showed that for the knuckle carrom ball (still weirdly unnamed), Narine had a potential giveaway. Using his thumb on the ball for that delivery, but not for his normal offspinner. A few quick checks on youtube prove that isn’t always the case. But it’s decoding the mystery.
Not that England needed to decode the mystery. Bad lengths helped them, but so did the lack of turn for his knuckle ball. By design it can never be a ball that turns viciously, but it barely whispered at all. Making it more like a non sizzling arm ball that limps on a pitch like this.
Even against the awkward-looking nightwatchman in fading light with a collection of fielders looking for a chance, Narine still struggled to look capable of bamboozling anyone. It was his easiest chance for his first wicket in Test cricket.
This was an ordinary display from Narine. He would have expected to do better, at least of keeping the scoring rate down, if not taking a wicket or two. His day could have been better had Adrian Barath taken a sharp chance at short leg from Ian Bell. It is a place that if Narine does have a successful career in Test Cricket many catches will go to. Today it was just another disappointment.
There were also good signs. Darren Sammy didn’t hide Narine away, and he even kept attacking fields for as long as possible. Narine might have lost the swagger he had in the IPL, but he didn’t fall apart. And his offspinner, when pitched in the right place, is still a staggeringly good delivery that should test batsmen all over the world.
Even with today, I’m not willing to right off Narine on a pitch that the only wicket for spin to either side went to the smooth straight’uns of Marlon Samuels. That doesn’t mean for lovers of quality spinners, Narinites and mystery spinner buffs (of which I’m all three) today wasn’t a bit like the opening scene of one of those crime shows where two people sharing banal conversation bump into a corpse in a dumpster.
June 7, 2012
The new Jack Potter: Sunil Narine
West Indies cricket has been playing a nauseating film noir movie on loop for over a decade now. The one thing they’ve been missing is the exciting, quirky, deformed character that steals the focus. In cricket, no one does that better than a mystery spinner. Just the term mystery spinner gets people ferociously excited.
One tweet was it all it took for me to get my twitter followers fired up. The press box also got engaged. All I’d done was try to remember the name of the Australian part-time spinner who bowled a doosra as a party trick without ever trying to make a career out of it. I received blank stares from many in the press box, and from twitter names were flung at me. Some odd, like Clarrie Grimmett and Bishan Bedi. Even Colin McCool was mentioned. Probably, just because someone wanted to say Colin McCool.
Eventually it was Mike Atherton in the press box, and former Notts finger spinner Paul McMahon on twitter, who correctly named Jack Potter, the Victoria batsman-cum-spinner from the 1960s. I say spinner on purpose, as Espncricinfo and Cricket archive both have him down as a legspinner, but the stories are that he bowled off spin.
Jack Potter may in fact be the ultimate mystery spinner, as he never even played a Test, hardly bowled at all, was rumoured to have shown Warne the flipper, and according to Richie Benaud and Wally Grout, had an offspinner that went the other way. Yet for all the talk, stories, and interest, he took 31 wickets in 104 first-class games at an average of 41. Presumably some with doosras, others with flippers, and the rest from another ball he invented while playing Yahtzee.
Yet here we were, 44 years since Jack Potter played first-class cricket, and people were still talking about him. Mystery spinners, even the part-time ones, do something weird to cricket fans.
As is the case with Sunil Narine, who really doesn’t need a Mohawk to get attention.
I’m a sucker for any spinner. But throw an air of mystery and the unknown into the mix, and I go a bit crazy. This is possibly why during one of those conversations that you don’t entirely think through; I said that Sunil Narine could be the best spinner in the world at the moment. It’s a pretty big call at the best of times, but the fact I said it to an ECB employee who is also a friend of Graeme Swann made it even more explosive. A predictable argument followed.
His perfectly sound theory was that no one who hadn’t played a Test could be thought of that way. My less sound, but still reasonable theory was that mystery bowlers could only be at their best when no one knew how to pick them, and that is right now for Narine. That while players like Vettori, Swann, Herath, Lyon and others had proved themselves on the world level, Narine was probably at his absolute best right now. And I think that best could be as good as Johnny Cash at San Quentin.
Of course I could be wrong. Narine has only played six first class games, and in a poor quality domestic competition. My assertion of how good he is can only be based on the cricket I’ve seen him play. In the Champions League he looked a class above. Against Australia he looked like a potential home-wrecker. And in the IPL he was the best bowler in the whole tournament.
Yet, even I have to admit there have been spinners before who have bowled well in limited-overs cricket when the opposition is trying to score or smash every ball, who struggle when the batsmen play patiently in Test cricket. That could happen to Narine, but I don’t think it will.
Narine’s one magic trick is a delivery that spins away from right-handed batsmen, that no one seems to be able to pick from the hand. That is not something that should only work in the limited-overs slogfest, that should work in every form of cricket, against every type of player, on almost all surfaces around the world. To virtually all batsmen who have faced him, how to pick the ball that spins the other way is a mystery, and that makes him deadly.
Mysteries don’t last forever. Once upon a time Bernard Bosanquet’s wrong ‘un was seen as a mystery, but batsmen worked out over time that a wrong’un had more of the back-of-the-hand facing them than a normal leggie. Of course , Abdul Qadir claims to have two wrong uns (at least). One, that eagle-eyed batsmen can see, and another called a finger wrong un that he has only ever passed down to Imran Tahir and Shahid Afridi because its power is deadly. Without Qadir talking, passing it on to me directly, I assume it is the same or similar to Anil Kumble’s wrong un that is held between the thumb and index finger and doesn’t show the batsman the back of the hand.
At the moment it seems no one can pick Narine out of the hand© Associated Press
Then there is the flipper, a delivery that seemed to be handed down like a legacy to Australian leggies, in eager anticipation of the one with the skills to use it best. In the mid 90s it was a ball that batsman feared more than a snake in their pillow case. By the late 90s most top-order players seemed to have a handle on it and Warne was using his slider, which had much less of a reputation, but probably got far more wickets for him The doosra was invented (unless you count ol’ Jack Potter’s) by Saqlain Mushtaq. Mushtaq, like creators of Golems, was eventually brought down by the very thing invented to protect them. The doosra is now the staple of several bowlers around the world. And while is legitimacy is often questioned, it seems weird that batsmen claim they can see the arm bend more than 15 degrees on a doosra, yet so many of them still don’t seem to pick the delivery itself.
Then there was perhaps the most intriguing mystery spinner of them all, Jack Iverson. Flicking the ball from Hercules-like fingers like a kid playing with marbles, he predated the carrom ball, and got the ball to spin in both directions while doing so. He only played five Tests, yet Gideon Haigh wrote a whole book about him, and the famous photo of Iverson’s grip is as good as any image from any horror film. Iverson didn’t last long, but like the Velvet Underground, he encouraged others. John Gleeson was one. Gleeson was not as devastating as Iverson, but the English players had a lot of trouble with him. There is the legendary, and perhaps apocryphal story, that Boycott had worked out Gleeson, but didn’t tell the rest of his team-mates so he’d look better.
The very best of batsmen, like Boycott use very low fi ways of working out mystery spinners. The Australians decided that if they played Saqlain Mushtaq like a leg spinner, not an offspinner, so they’d be able to handle his doosra. Paul Adams bowled his legspinner and wrong un at two different vastly different speeds. Even Murali early in his career would bowl his doosra from wider on the crease giving alert batsmen a chance to spot it. There are many tells that help batsmen. A ball that spins usually drifts in the opposite direction. It also has to be pitched in a different place. Some batsmen can see which way a ball is spinning before it lands. And of course, it comes out of the hand differently in the first place.
At the moment it seems no one can pick Narine out of the hand. He bowls a mixed seam so it’s hard to tell which way the ball is spinning, his pace and position don’t seem to vary, the ball doesn’t drift much for him, and his position on the crease isn’t an obvious giveaway. Perhaps only his placement of the ball tells you which way a ball is going to spin, but even then, if that’s all you’ve got to go on, you’re rolling the dice on each delivery.
That doesn’t mean that he will be the best spinner in the world for the next ten years. It may mean for a short while he will be virtually unplayable, and then may just fade away.
Logic would suggest this is the case. Ajantha Mendis is the obvious modern story of a mystery spinner breaking onto the world stage. In Mendis’ first four Tests he took 33 wickets at an average of 18. And that included three Tests against India. He was a sensation. His carrom ball was unpickable to the Indian players, and most other international players. According to many he was to become the next Warne, Murali or Kumble.
But the modern world got hold of Mendis. Unlike Gleeson, no players kept their secrets about Mendis. Because of the IPL, many players discussed the Mendis’ giveaway of his carrom ball. Which had first been picked up by video analysis. This giveaway was simply that when he bowled the carrom ball, unlike his other deliveries, he kept his fingers up like accidental antennas that alerted the batsmen of his intention. He was caught in the modern age of super slow replays, Youtube and the IPL helping players share secrets.
In Ajantha Mendis’ last next 12 Tests he took 29 wickets at 48. He is still a handy limited-overs performer. But was overlooked for the World Cup final and hasn’t been a regular in the IPL for quite some time.
Mendis was all mystery. His problems is that while he is a spin bowler, he doesn’t spin the ball much at all. He has virtually no drift, doesn’t drop the ball, and never beats batsman in flight. He is essentially a slow medium pacer who can move the ball slightly in both directions with a bit of help from the pitch. And his biggest problem is that his stock ball is not dangerous in the slightest. Without a stock ball that creates danger, you’re always going to struggle in Test Cricket.
Narine seems more like a spinner, who has some mystery to him right now. Narine has a brilliant stock ball. So brilliant that the first time I saw his carrom ball, I thought he should bin it, because it just limps off the pitch away from the right-hander whereas the offspinner of Narine is brutal. It rips and bounces. Even without a mystery ball, you can see why Narine would be a handful. It’s also just more than what he can deliver, it’s his poise and intelligence that stick out. He seems to bowl differently to each batsman, almost using their ego or batting stlye to his advantage, like some cunning super-villian. It is old school spin bowling.
I think Narine can survive and even prosper once his mystery is unlocked. But maybe I just want to believe that West Indies have a bowler that can win Tests for them for the next decade. The fear is that he will be a guy who can take a few wickets and be nothing more than a quirky little character actor in this long running dark period in the West Indies. They need a hero, or even an anti-hero, and I’m betting and hoping that Narine can be that guy while solving a lot of their problems.
June 4, 2012
Is cricket gay?
Jason Alexander was an inspiration to me as a child. He was like Larry David, but you wanted to have a beer with him as he yelled his latest story of woe while dropping mustard down his shirt.
Recently he called cricket a gay sport.
He said it in the way that people say, “that’s so gay” about a dog or movie they think is overly effeminate, or shit.
Alexander has now taken it back, because, you know, people got pissed off and because after some soul searching he worked out that while in his life gay meant effeminate, camp and fabulous, in some places like the schoolyard and social backwaters people say gay to abuse people.
But that doesn’t change the bigger question, is cricket gay?
To answer this question you need to take a step back. Because first you need to work out whether cricket is male or female.
Some sports are obviously male, like boxing and netball. And some sports are obviously female like rhythm gymnastics and American football.
Cricket isn’t quite so easy to categorise. A fast bowler who likes blood or an opening batsman who attacks is masculine, while a left arm finger spinner or a number six batsman who likes to bat with his collar up is clearly effeminate.
The whites and cable knit sweaters hint at a sport that is fabulous, but the grass and leather stains show that it’s quite grubby.
The protective gear is not pretty or that well made, but the bats are elegant, stylish and they smell better than sex.
The game stops for tea, but doesn’t like the romantic feel of rain.
Everyone wears gloves and hats, but cricket balls really hurt when they hit you, or your groin protector.
Cricket is just to hard to work out what sex it is, let alone what sex it wants to have.
I’d say that cricket is an occasionally well dressed intersex being who veers between asexual and promiscuous with anything that moves. Which, I assume, is what Jason Alexander actually meant.
Cricket is more like that old androgynous person who lives at the end of your street who likes cats and John Coltrane.
May 29, 2012
May 28, 2012
May 27, 2012
Shillingford V Narine
Shane Shillingford is bowling for the West Indies in this Test.
Shillingford has that same pushing-back-at-an-imaginary-person-trying-to-hug-him that Harbhajan Singh does. He gets good bounce. Has a first-class bowling average of 25. Experience over many years of cricket. Has a ten-wicket haul in Test Cricket. Will one day have a stand named after him.
He’s not Sunil Narine.
Sunil Narine has never played a Test, but will probably make more money out of cricket over the previous few weeks than Shillingford ever will. Right now more people are clicking on Narine’s ESPNcricinfo profile, the one that shows his Mohawk well as he smiles cheekily, than have probably ever looked up Shillingford’s profile (which is him looking rather uncomfortable and like he was taken by surprise).
Shillingford was overlooked for the first Test for a debutante; there is not an attack in world cricket that would overlook Sunil Narine right now.
Shillingford is a workhorse, there’s no magic, mystery or mayhem about him. That doesn’t mean he isn’t good. But he’s good as in handy, not good as in Narine.
Narine has tricks that Shillingford will be able to talk about, but probably never replicate. But it isn’t just the tricks that Narine has, his magical mystery ball is amazing, but his normal offspinning delivery is at the moment the best spinning stock ball in world cricket. It bites, and bounces. And even when his carom ball (which if you can pick it, does very little at all) does get worked out, Narine will still be world class.
The best spin bowlers use tricks to confuse batsman who can’t pick it from the hand and embarrass the tail, but it’s the stock ball that you need if you want to be a Warne, Murali or Kumble. Narine is a long way from joining this company, and while his stock ball is far better than that of the last mystery phenom, Mendis, once people pick your trick ball, that’s when it really gets tough for bowlers.
Shillingford’s stock ball is okay. It’s certainly not horrible, and when he’s on a helpful surface he can bowl for an amazing amount of hours and take quite a few wickets. On a surface like this, against a team who is willing to attack him, he looks a bit out of his depth.
In this Test so far, Shillingford is going at 4.7 an over. In the 2012 IPL so far, Narine has so far gone for 5.2 an over.
Today Narine will be watched by close to a billion people, Shillingford by only million or so. One playing for his country. One playing for his financial future.
I hope Narine plays a blinder for Kolkata Knight Riders, wins the IPL and sets up his entire future in one night. But more than that I hope as soon as humanly possible he plays for his region in a Test match.
West Indies have more than a few well-meaning workhorses who are helping them put in slightly improved performances, now they need some magic. And right now, that’s Narine.
