Indoors. Outdoors. Gosforth, UAE, Australia. Yorkshire. Especially Yorkshire. There are many things to be said about Cricket in the current era.
 |
Perhaps the main benefit of having two hemispheres on Earth, is that cricket can be played all year round. While we digest the T20 World Cup and ponder exactly England conceded the first Ashes test before a ball was bowled, there have recently been T20 internationals and test matches between India and New Zealand, Bangladesh and Pakistan and the West Indies versus Sri Lanka to enjoy. Sadly, COVID fears put paid to South Africa v the Netherlands in the 50 over format, which could have been the first instance of Dutch being the lingua franca for a List A game of cricket. Also, the Abu Dhabi T10 tournament provided a safe haven for Chris Jordan to hide out after that over against New Zealand. Sadly, climactic conditions north of the equator preclude outdoor cricket, though the local indoor version continues to thrive. I speak from experience, having comprised 50% of the crowd for Tynemouth’s glorious return to the indoor game in the Northumberland CCC semi-final of the National Indoor 6-A-Side competition at South North, where we were pitted against Cowgate and Stocksfield on October 31st.
Back in March 2020, when the world was young and the Government hadn’t quite got the handle it has now on the COVID pandemic (I’m joking of course), I journeyed to Horwich Sports’ Centre, across a romantically deserted car park from what was formerly known as the Reebok Arena, the home of Bolton Wanderers, to see Tynemouth fall to defeat for the third successive year in the Northern Area Finals of the ECB National Indoor 6-A-Side Cup. This was the week before lockdown, and it proved to be the last organised game of its type for over 18 months as the competition has gone into abeyance. Now, it is back and TCC are giving the tournament another shot. Of course, the results of Martin Pollard’s medical issues preclude our very own Mike Brearley of the indoor game from taking part; instead he is the tactical Svengali passing on sage words of advice to new captain Andrew Smith, the man once described as “the MVP of the indoor game” by the legendary Eddie Collins. The umpire, not the former lead singer of Orange Juice, in case you were wondering.
Captain Smith had assembled a team comprising: himself (obviously), Owen Gourley, David Mansfield, Joe Snowdon and the McGee brothers, Ben and Dan. Here are the young men, as Ian Curtis once said. First game in the triangular tournament was Cowgate easing past Stocksfield, who we then played. Batting first, Mansfield and McGee senior excelled, allowing us to compile a par for the course 123/4. Good tight bowling meant the result was never in doubt as Stocksfield were restricted to 97/5, enabling them to head back to the Tyne Valley before the deciding game had even started. Cowgate won the toss, put us in and we struggled to score, with only Dan McGee, contributing a scarcely believable unbeaten 40, making a significant contribution as we crawled to a disappointing 94/5 from our 12 overs. All credit to the lads though; they bowled immaculately as Cowgate subsided to 64 all out, meaning we’d booked a slot in the Northumberland final on December 12th, where we’d need to play much better to get through that contest.
They didn’t in the first game against Tynedale in the finals, losing by 32 runs after being dismissed for 84. At that point qualification looked impossible, so I headed off to the pub as I was off on the Monday. Surprisingly I made an error, as South North beat Tynedale and Tynemouth then beat South North. Sadly, after the slide rules and log tables were consulted, Tynedale went through on net run rate and Tynemouth finished runners-up. Unlucky lads.
T20 World Cup:
Like so many sporting competitions in this world, the 2020 T20 Cricket World Cup took place in 2021. I’m not even sure where. I think it was originally supposed to happen in Australia, and then it got switched to India, but ended up taking place in the UAE and Oman because of COVID. Probably. Anyway, it was definitely the seventh occurrence of this tournament and, with the top 8 ICC ranked countries qualifying by right, or more properly the top 7 countries and India as hosts (yeah, I know…), there had to be a kind of preparatory repechage to ensure Bangladesh and Sri Lanka got through to the Super 12s, to avoid making a show of the concept of test playing nations. It was at this early stage we saw a bit of giant killing; Namibia beat Ireland to send the boys in green home in disgrace. Still, now Ireland are a test playing nation they can get on with the real business of conducting a “no holds barred inquiry” that doesn’t come up with any tangible insights into their failure, like a proper cricketing nation with proper cricketing administrators. The other qualification group saw Bangladesh finish second after losing to Scotland who finished top with a 100% record. It was really quite touching to see blokes you know from the NEPL, like Mark Watt (ex-Tynemouth) and skipper Kyle Coetzer (Benwell Hill) on the world stage.
Sadly, Scotland had peaked too soon and lost all their subsequent group games, including against Namibia, who they would have expected to beat. Indeed, most of the super 12 games produced fairly predictable outcomes; as expected West Indies were too old and India too complacent, with South Africa, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Afghanistan just not good enough to make a significant impression. Post-tournament analysis of the competition has been largely negative, but I enjoyed it, even if the script became clear once we got to the semi-final stage; bat first and you win, because of climactic conditions as much as tactics and teamwork. In the qualifiers, Pakistan swatted aside all-comers and seemed to be the only team capable of halting England, despite the latter’s stumble against South Africa. England eviscerated the West Indies, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh and Australia in the group stages. Putting Australia to the sword was, in retrospect the worst thing England could have done, as the Aussies awoke from indifferent slumbers, got their act together and deservedly thumped both Pakistan in the semi and New Zealand, who beat England with all good wishes because of their superb sporting ethos, in the final.
For England, injuries to Archer, Roy, Mills and the continuing absence of Ben Stokes stacked up and they ran out of steam at the crucial point, which coincided with the arrival of Steve Algarve-Bruce as a spectator, interestingly enough. The question about whether it is time to move on and refresh the England squad is a moot one. With the next T20 World Cup taking place next year in Australia, it seems sensible to tinker slightly with the squad (surely Willey should have been in there ahead of Wood?), to give many, if not most, of them a last shot at glory. However, events off the pitch seem to have rendered any discussion of the art of playing the game irrelevant, in the light of the terrible institutional racism described by Azeem Rafiq and confirmed by Adil Rashid.
Racism and Yorkshire CCC:
At the highest level of the game in this country, it is utterly inconceivable that players or administrators could participate in or turn a deaf ear to racism in any of its despicable forms, but only if the game we’re talking about is football. Without question, football is the game of multi-ethnic, working class urban areas. Any city or large town you care to mention that’s within a significant conurbation, is an inclusive, tolerant sporting microcosm of what an ideal society would look like; different cultures, languages, nationalities, regardless of gender or sexuality, play the game from age 7 to 70 without race being an issue. Alright, so the seething hate-filled open sewer of Twitter gives voice to morons, but their numbers are minimal even if their effect is destructive. Football, it must be said, has learned from the past and is evolving rapidly following the child abuse scandals involving the likes of Barry Bennell and George Ormond.
Is cricket like this? Well, at club level in the north east, once you get beyond Asian pros in the NEPL, it seems that race divides. I don’t want to seem to embrace tokenism, but Tynemouth were in the happy position of playing Ricky Handa and Rashid Hassan for the whole of last season, unlike many other clubs in the NTCL and the North East Midweek League. On August 12th, the day after my birthday, we beat Ashington Rugby CC to win the NTCL Midweek League. In celebration of both events, I brought along a slab of Punk IPA and another of Strongbow Cloudy Apple to share among the lads. On the way to the checkout in Morrison’s, I saw a large bag of sausage rolls reduced, so took them along in lieu of a buffet. Ignorantly, I thought nothing of it until the end of the game when I doled out the goodies. What about poor Rashid? I’d brough alcohol and pork; two decidedly haram items, but nothing for him. The biting guilt of enabling exclusion still troubles me now.
There is, and I don’t know the historical reasons for it, a kind of segregation in recreational cricket around Tyneside and North Durham that means, for instance, Whitley Bay 1s are entirely Asian and Whitley Bay 2s are entirely white, while Blue Flames, Civil Service, Clara Vale, Cowgate, GEMS, Kimblesworth, Newcastle City and several others are Asian clubs. As I say, I don’t know why this was the case; in the past, were Asian players excluded from white teams, or did they prefer to remain in their own community? I have no idea. Over in County Mayo, Ballaghderreen Cricket Club was formed by workers from a halal meat factory in the town, with the idea of playing games against anyone as the game was non-existent in the town. That’s a happy instance of organic growth, looking for community cohesion not separate development.
However, in the professional game, news of the scandal enveloping the ECB, Yorkshire and Essex has been met with shock and revulsion, but do I detect a lack of surprise at the revelations about the prevailing culture at Headingley and in Chelmsford? While Yorkshire is the cradle of this filth, there can be little surprise that Essex, the home county of Thatcherite arrivistes and small-minded 4x4 driving Brexit bores, harbours a streak of prejudice central to its DNA like poison running through a stick of minty Clacton rock. In 1992 during an episode of the current affairs discussion programme Devil’s Advocate, a fiery and voluble Darcus Howe questioned the complacent Trevor Bailey about the latter’s racist comments regarding the touring Pakistan side at the conclusion of the Oval test on Test Match Special. Bailey’s refusal to apologise as he felt he’d done nothing wrong is the kind of bigotry I thought had died out years ago, until I discovered this is the sort of thing Martyn Moxon could probably get on board with.
Meanwhile Yorkshire, for so long the sporting eugenicists of the County Championship, have never dismantled that humourless front, comprising stereotypical intolerance and a curmudgeonly rejection of anything foreign. Loudmouth Tory bullshitter Michael Vaughan has lost his BBC gig for the Ashes; good. His unconvincing denial of a nasty racist sneer at his clubmates in 2009 should, if proven, see him removed from the public eye. Matthew Hoggard should have known better, though his apology to Azim Raziq for the vile slurs he issued in ignorance, seems genuinely contrite. It still cost him a booking as keynote speaker at the NEPL dinner though. Fair play to them for this stance.
And now Yorkshire have engaged that most erudite of Talk Sport pundits, Darren Gough, the sort out the fetid miasma of the three Ridings; he’s more likely to be a useless idiot than a useful one. First thing up, he has to clamp down on the various miscreants. Gary Balance should serve a retrospective punishment for his hideous conduct, while his erstwhile flatmate and fellow opener Joe Root has some examining of his conscience to do. I’m not suggesting England ought to follow Australia in dispensing with their captain, but the Ashes series has considerably less significance than English domestic cricket getting its house in order.
No comments:
Post a Comment