Jonathan Liew's Blog, page 46

Our shared values deserve better than a pointless term like ‘spirit of cricket’ | Jonathan Liew

The culture of English cricket is but one concept of morality – no person, and certainly no country, has a monopoly on virtue

So let’s talk about Nepal v Ireland in the Oman Quadrangular Twenty20 series last year. Ireland are 114 for eight in the 19th over when the ball is hit towards mid-on. The Oman bowler Kamal Singh lunges at it in his follow-through. At the same time the Ireland non-striker, Andy McBrine, tries to scamper through for a single. The pair collide. McBrine falls over. Singh keeps his balance, and tosses the ball to the wicketkeeper Aasif Sheikh, with the batter still sprawled on the turf, miles out of his ground.

The laws of cricket have nothing to say on situations such as this. Neither player is deliberately obstructing the other; neither player can avoid the collision without giving up a significant sporting advantage. Sheikh is perfectly at liberty to complete the run-out. But he does not. He holds on to the ball and lets McBrine complete the single, an act of sporting goodwill that will later earn him the International Cricket Council’s Spirit of Cricket award.

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In Bazball World England win Vibes Urn – but Australia superior in reality | Jonathan Liew

In this series everyone’s a winner, until pesky facts get in the way – and Ashes defeats on home soil are not forgotten

The bars are empty. The food village is deserted. Fish goujons and hog roast slowly drying out on industrial hotplates. Stewards perched on the edge of their boundary chairs, no longer looking out for potential oil protesters. Long faces in the Long Room, the members in mutiny. They haven’t been this angry since the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket report came out. In the middle, Ben Stokes playing cricket from the gods. The target is thinning. The Ashes are alive.

What larks we had! They talk in the England camp about making memories, and as the noise swelled, as the afternoon throbbed with possibility, as a million text messages pinged across the ether reading “get yourself in front of a telly”, perhaps this was exactly what they had in mind. Cricket as pure liquid entertainment. Cricket as national fixation. Cricket as the very best time of our lives, a red ball and a red pounding heart.

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England’s men of Bazball are putting fun before winning. Why not try both? | Jonathan Liew

Ben Stokes’ side could be forgiven for their unwavering commitment to Bazball if it meant winning 10 out of 11 Tests

And frankly, is this not what the people want? Australia may be on the verge of going 2-0 up after enduring the worst of the conditions, the loss of their champion spinner and an out-of-form No 3 batter. But these are mere details, and the men of Bazball do not trouble themselves with details. Could they have gone harder? Could they have lost their wickets in even more perplexing ways? Could they have thrilled us even more? When cornered, don’t back down. Double down.

For all the wildness and weirdness of the darkening evening, this Test turned on the slapstick of the morning session, when England resumed with a slight advantage on 278 for four and were dismissed just 15 overs later. There is a school of thought out there that if you appreciated England’s style of cricket when they were winning, then it is unfair to criticise it when it fails to come off. This is a little bit like arguing that if you have ever enjoyed a meal at a restaurant, you are not entitled to complain when they give you E. coli on your next visit. It’s just the way they cook. They’re taking a whole new approach to gastronomy. And ultimately, when you get down to it, is there really any difference between fine dining and violent diarrhoea?

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England’s persona non grata Duckett takes big step on road to redemption | Jonathan Liew

Ben Duckett’s Test career appeared to be finished in 2017 but his busy 98 at Lord’s embellished a stirring comeback story

It was actually a vodka and lemonade, not that it really matters. Everyone assumes that the drink Ben Duckett tipped over James Anderson during the ill-fated 2017-18 Ashes tour – the drink that looked like ending his international career for good – was a pint of beer. To a large extent, I think, this is because Duckett basically looks like a pint drinker. You can almost see it nestled in his meaty hand: one arm resting on the wood-panelled bar, the other showing you a picture of a new sports car on his phone.

And for years this is how Duckett has existed in the imagination of the English cricketing public: as a kind of caricature, a known known, the guy with all the talent in the world but none of the common sense. The Perth incident – as well as a separate mishap in which a hungover Duckett vomited over coach Trevor Bayliss on a plane – left him persona non grata in English cricket, which feels rather quaint now we know about all the other things that were happening in English cricket at the time.

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Anderson needs to find his missing swing before England run out of time | Jonathan Liew

After bowling 15 wicketless overs with unstinting accuracy, Australia still managed to surge ahead as he failed to pose a legitimate threat

A while back, in an attempt to preserve his sanity amid the deluge of swill and slander that populates his social media feeds, Jimmy Anderson decided to take advantage of the Twitter function that allows users to mute certain words and phrases. The list of banned terms provides a surprisingly acute insight into the psyche of a bowler who, on some level, has played his entire career against the background noise of doubt and scepticism, judgement and extrapolation.

“Australia” is one of the words Anderson has purged from his timeline. “Kohli” is another. Also: “injury”, “injured”, “done” and “finished”. “Reverse sweep” got muted after Indian fans gleefully celebrated Rishabh Pant swiping him for four in Ahmedabad a couple of years ago. If you tweet the phrase “worse than Steyn”, Anderson will not see it. And then there are the words that have followed England’s greatest fast bowler around like a plague of locusts: “cloud”, “clouds”, “Clouderson”.

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English cricket’s reign of shame exposed with brutal admission of guilt | Jonathan Liew

Damning report must act as a brutal wake-up call and a line cannot be drawn under this with prejudice rife within the sport

You may want to sit down for this part. Turns out – no, seriously – that a sport created and codified for the purpose of allowing rich white landowners to bet against each other, and then exported around the world at gunpoint with the promise that it would civilise savage peoples, may not actually be that progressive.

How can this possibly have happened? Who do we see about this? And who’s asking, anyway?

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The Women's Ashes: Everything you need to know – video explainer

The Guardian's Jonathan Liew explains everything you need to know about the women's Ashes as England and Australia prepare to continue a busy summer of cricket. Liew explains how the women's Ashes works, with a format slightly different to the men's game. The Australia women's team are 'the best team in the world' but, with home advantage, Liew considers whether England could claim their first Ashes victory since 2014. Big grounds are announcing record ticket sales and a supportive home crowd could be just what England need to beat their visiting rivals.

Finally the Women’s Ashes is not an afterthought – and fans are flooding in

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England relied on vibes and sprites when Cummins went a little Bazball | Jonathan Liew

Five tempestuous, hysterical days ended with Australia playing the old-fashioned way until desperation won the day

Everyone talks about big first hours. That’s because first hours need all the hype they can get. Nobody needs to sell the last hour of a Test match. And particularly not a Test on this epic, colossal, orchestral scale, a Test that shook you from its very first ball and never stopped shaking.

Take the devastating tension of a tight Twenty20, the ebb and grapple of a really good one-day international, and then make it big. Stretch it out over almost a week. Throw in some random weather phenomena, enough booze to fill the Caspian, batters forced to bowl and bowlers forced to bat. Cricket: good. Worth your time. Might just catch on.

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Stokes the captain is a fine thing, but England will need the player again | Jonathan Liew

Amid all the razzle and dazzle of Bazball there is a curious gap – a defining performance from the captain himself

Ben Stokes walks to the wicket slowly. This is pretty much the only thing he does slowly these days. Harry Brook tries to say a few words to him as he arrives, but Stokes isn’t really listening. There’s a little poke and a nudge of the pitch, dust and debris swept away with a swish of his bat, a kind of purification ritual, like a sumo sanctifying the dohyo. He takes his time, makes us wait, makes us watch: a man who has long since made his peace with the gaze of others. This is his turf, his team, his time, and there is a certain theatrical flourish to the way he stretches out the moment for all it is worth.

There is a frisson around the ground, and of course there always was when Stokes walked in to bat, but ever since he became captain and began to mould this team in his image he has also batted with the expectation of leadership. With the knowledge that his teammates on the dressing‑room balcony are taking their cue from him, that an entire playing philosophy has been built around his approach. These days when Stokes bats we don’t simply demand to be entertained, but enlightened. We want him to set an example. We want him to blaze the righteous path to truth, ideally by smashing it as hard as possible as soon as possible.

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What we talk about when we talk about cricketing dads isn’t as simple as Bazball | Jonathan Liew

As rain scuttled day three memories flooded back of our annual trip to watch England lose at cricket, and the sense of two lives drifting apart

The rain came to Edgbaston early on the third afternoon, with the Australians still batting and a nasty swirling wind that whipped you in the face like a wet towel.

Edgbaston, it has to be said, is not the most auspicious place to be when it rains. Most of the seats are entirely open to the elements, and so when the weather hits the only places to take shelter are the poky little gangways at the bottom of each stand. And so here we cowered and shivered, pressed up against roughly 2,000 other punters all jostling for this same tiny parcel of dry land, patiently waiting for Damien Martyn and Adam Gilchrist to resume their innings. Dad sipped a cold pint. I drank tea out of a flask. We didn’t talk much. We never talked much.

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