JOHN WISDEN & CO

An imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

50 Bedford Square, London WC1B 3DP

WISDEN CRICKETERS’ ALMANACK

Editor Lawrence Booth

Co-editor Hugh Chevallier

Deputy editors Steven Lynch and Harriet Monkhouse

Assistant editor James Coyne

Contributing editor Richard Whitehead

Production co-ordinator Peter Bather

Chief statistician Philip Bailey

Proofreader Charles Barr

Database and typesetting Stephen Cubitt

Publisher Charlotte Atyeo

Consultant publisher Christopher Lane

Reader feedback: almanack@wisden.com

www.wisden.com

www.wisdenrecords.com

Follow Wisden on Twitter @WisdenAlmanack and on Facebook at Wisden Sports

A CIP catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library

“Wisden” and its woodcut device are registered trademarks of John Wisden & Co

This electronic edition published in 2013 by Bloomsbury Publishing Plc

© John Wisden & Co 2013

Published by John Wisden & Co, an imprint of Bloomsbury Publishing Plc, 2013

ePub ISBN 978-1-4081-9226-9

All rights reserved

You may not copy, distribute, transmit, reproduce or otherwise make available this publication (or any part of it) in any form, or by any means (including without limitation electronic, digital, optical, mechanical, photocopying, printing, recording or otherwise), without the prior written permission of the publisher. Any person who does any unauthorised act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages.

Visit www.bloomsbury.com to find out more about our authors and their books. You will find extracts, author interviews, author events and you can sign up for newsletters to be the first to hear about our latest releases and special offers.

CONTENTS

Preface

Part One – Wisden’s 150th

Ten Moments in Time

Five Cricketers of 1864-88 by Simon Wilde

What editing Wisden meant to me

The Cricket Reporting Agency by Murray Hedgcock

A production in five acts by Robert Winder

Wisden – a timeline

Engraved in the memory by Rupert Bates

Collecting Wisden by Patrick Kidd

1864 and all that by Hugh Chevallier

Part Two – Comment

Wisden Honours

Notes by the Editor

The KP summer

It’s tough being Kevin by Patrick Collins

KP and Twitter by Jarrod Kimber

Excommunication and reintegration by James Coyne

Tendulkar’s 100 hundreds by Simon Barnes

The fastest spell of all? by Christian Ryan

The hardest decision of my life by Steve Davies

150 years of Yorkshire CCC

No laughing matter by Duncan Hamilton

An old saw cuts no ice by Chris Waters

The Leading Cricketer in the World, 2012

Michael Clarke by Greg Baum

50 years of touring England (and Five Wisden Trophy moments) by Tony Cozier

Christopher Martin-Jenkins 1945–2013

Flowing conversation by Mike Selvey

A bank of happy memories by James Martin-Jenkins

Tom Maynard 1989–2012

United in grief by Steve James

Cricket and corruption: For the better – or worse? by Ed Hawkins

Wisden’s writing competition 2012

Five Cricketers of the Year

Hashim Amla by Neil Manthorp

Nick Compton by Richard Latham

Jacques Kallis by Christopher Martin-Jenkins

Marlon Samuels by Tony Cozier

Dale Steyn by Telford Vice

Farewells

Dravid and Laxman by Rahul Bhattacharya

Andrew Strauss by Scyld Berry

Ricky Ponting by Gideon Haigh

Mark Ramprakash by Barney Ronay

The one-day game: Five decades of hits and giggles by Tanya Aldred

A question of talent by Mike Atherton

Part Three – The Wisden Review

Cricket books, 2012 by John Crace

Cricket in the media, 2012 by Jonathan Liew

Cricket on Eurosport by James Coyne

Cricket and blogs, 2012 by S. A. Rennie

Retirements by Steve James

Cricketana by David Rayvern Allen

Cricket and the weather, 2012 by Philip Eden

Cricket people by Ali Martin

Cricket in the courts in 2012

Cricket and the Laws in 2012 by Fraser Stewart

Chronicle of 2012

One hundred years ago

Fifty years ago

Obituaries

Part Four – English International Cricket

England in 2012 by Stephen Brenkley

England players in 2012 by Lawrence Booth

Pakistan v England in the UAE, 2011-12

Review by John Etheridge

First Test by Derek Pringle

Second Test by George Dobell

Third Test by Paul Newman

Sri Lanka v England, 2011-12

Review by Dean Wilson

First Test by Lawrence Booth

Second Test by Vic Marks

England v West Indies, 2012

Review by Mike Selvey

First Test by Andrew Miller

Second Test by James Coyne

Third Test by Julian Guyer

Oh yeah, Tino by Alan Tyers

England v Australia, 2012

Review by Richard Hobson

England v South Africa, 2012

Review by Simon Wilde

The tough guy toppled by Telford Vice

First Test by Hugh Chevallier

Second Test by Lawrence Booth

Third Test by Steven Lynch

India v England, 2012-13

Review by George Dobell

The repeat performance by Vic Marks

Revenge – and a reality check by Anjali Doshi

First Test by Dean Wilson

Second Test by Gideon Brooks

Third Test by Suresh Menon

Fourth Test by Richard Hobson

Part Five – English Domestic Cricket

LV= County Championship, 2012

Review by Neville Scott

Friends Life T20, 2012

Review by Alan Gardner

The Final by Hugh Chevallier

Clydesdale Bank 40, 2012

Review by Jon Culley

The Final by James Coyne

Women’s cricket in 2012

European cricket in 2012

Cricket in Ireland by Ian Callender

Cricket in Scotland by William Dick

Cricket in the Netherlands by David Hardy

Part Six – Overseas Cricket

World cricket in 2012 by Simon Wilde

ICC World Twenty20, 2012-13

Review by David Hopps

The Final by Vic Marks

Women’s World Twenty20, 2012-13 by Alison Mitchell

Australia in 2012 by Daniel Brettig

Bangladesh in 2012 by Utpal Shuvro

India in 2012 by Anand Vasu

New Zealand in 2011 by Andrew Alderson

Pakistan in 2012 by Osman Samiuddin

South Africa in 2012 by Colin Bryden

Sri Lanka in 2012 by Sa’adi Thawfeeq

West Indies in 2012 by Tony Cozier

Zimbabwe in 2012 by Mehluli Sibanda

Afghanistan in 2012 by Shahid Hashmi

Women’s cricket in Afghanistan by Tim Wigmore

Canada in 2012 by Faraz Sarwat

Kenya in 2012 by Martin Williamson

Kenya’s Maasai cricketers by Barney Douglas

Cricket Round the World

PREFACE

The American satirist Ambrose Bierce once wrote a review consisting of a single line: “The covers of this book are too far apart.” As far as we know, Wisden escaped his censure, although it may have helped that he appears to have vanished on Boxing Day 1913 in Chihuahua, Mexico – where sales of the Almanack have always been disappointing. I trust Ambrose would have appreciated that the 150th edition was never going to be one of the slimmer volumes. A special Part One marks the milestone, and the Comment section – including Notes by the Editor – now makes up Part Two.

For the sake of simplicity after a year in which England played bilateral series against five different opponents, we have included all their matches in one section, so there is no longer any need to jump around to piece together the chronology; since recent editions have included special Ashes sections, this seemed like the logical next step.

The cover has been tweaked too, with pride of place given to the Eric Ravilious wood engraving that first appeared on Wisden 75 years ago. The familiar photo jacket will return next year.

Wisden has adapted in other ways. The first Wisden India Almanack, edited by Suresh Menon, was published in December, and this year has already included the launch of The Nightwatchman, a new quarterly magazine. Along with our regular online publication, Wisden EXTRA, it means the long-form writing that is central to Wisden is now more available, all year round, than ever.

The compilation of Wisden 2013 required another frighteningly dedicated team effort. Hugh Chevallier, our co-editor, was a beacon of strength and sagacity; deputy editors Harriet Monkhouse and Steven Lynch were their tireless, eagle-eyed selves; assistant editor James Coyne was indispensable. Christopher Lane deserves special mention for his contributions to the 150th section.

At Bloomsbury, my thanks go to Charlotte Atyeo and Richard Charkin for trusting us to get on with the job. Peter Bather processed proofs with his customary good humour, and Stephen Cubitt and Mike Hatt typeset as diligently as ever. Thanks, too, to Philip Bailey for his painstaking statistical work, and to Lee Clayton and Les Snowdon on the Daily Mail sports desk for allowing me once more to sink so many hours into Wisden. Natasha Fletcher was a constant source of support.

Among this year’s pages are reflections of the future and the past. For the first time, Wisden is publishing the best article received from a reader – a competition we hope will become a tradition. We are confident the much-missed Christopher Martin-Jenkins would have approved, and are honoured to be able to run one of CMJ’s final pieces, his appreciation of Jacques Kallis, at last a Cricketer of the Year. One institution on another: it felt about right for the 150th.

LAWRENCE BOOTH

Earlsfield, March 2013

WISDEN’S TEN MOMENTS IN TIME

And the game changed for ever

Which of W. G. Grace’s feats was the most resounding? And which aspect of Twenty20’s gold rush best captured its impact on the modern game? These were the kinds of questions to which Wisden hoped to find a convincing answer when it chose the ten most seminal moments in the years spanning the Almanack’s 150 editions. The list that emerged contains some that will come as a surprise: among readers who entered our competition to guess the ten, no one managed more than six. But then consensus would have spoiled the fun.

We stipulated that a moment could not be an era – though an era could be sparked by a moment, which we interpreted loosely, to avoid the reduction of everything ad absurdum and so awarding pride of place to the Big Bang. So West Indies’ 15-year reign didn’t count, but the series which triggered it – their thrashing by Australia in 1975-76 – did. And we made a plea for “lasting resonance”. Don Bradman’s duck in his final Test innings in 1948 felt like a one-off shock; Bodyline, a tactic designed to tame him, reached beyond the skeleton of statistics and deep into cricket’s bone marrow. Few entrants were brave enough to omit it.

Otherwise, the Wisden team were guided by judgment and a little gut instinct. Who changed batting for ever: Grace in 1871 or Bradman in 1930? We went for Grace, who – as Ranjitsinhji explained – invented an entire methodology, of which Bradman would become the most ruthless exemplar. Was the first Gillette Cup in 1963 more significant for one-day cricket than India’s 1983 World Cup win? We thought so, but only just.

Or did this clash with the choice of the Indian Premier League’s first auction, in 2008, ahead of Twenty20’s appearance on the county scene in 2003? We deferred to impact: in 1963, part of an otherwise forgettable decade for cricket, the Gillette Cup stood out; but the gates to Twenty20 mega-wealth opened widest at the IPL auctions, rather than five years earlier around the shires.

After Bodyline, readers’ most common picks were Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket, the Oval Test of 1882 that spawned the sport’s greatest and oldest rivalry (though it seems Wisden did not refer to the “Ashes” until the late 1920s), the Basil D’Oliveira affair, and the exposure as a cheat of Hansie Cronje. Many others failed to make the cut, though no individual wore more hats than Sachin Tendulkar (Old Trafford 1990, the first double-century in one-day internationals, 100 hundreds, and so on). In fact, Tendulkar does feature – as the victim of the first TV run-out – but, for our purposes, individuals were secondary to moments, not vice versa.

The three readers who came closest to matching our choice in the competition trailed in Wisden 2012 were Annette Rabaiotti from London, Richard Kemp from Leeds, and Peter Handford from Western Australia. They each win a £100 voucher to spend on sports books published by Bloomsbury. Twenty-five runners-up each receive a copy of the Fire in Babylon DVD.

THE TEN MOMENTS

W. G. Grace (1871)

The Oval (1882)

Bodyline (1932-33)

The Gillette Cup (1963)

Basil D’Oliveira (1968)

Australia 5 West Indies 1 (1975-76)

World Series Cricket (1977-78)

Technology’s entrance (1992-93)

Hansie Cronje (2000)

The IPL auction (2008)

1871: W. G. Grace rewrites the record books

At first, bowlers held the upper hand in first-class cricket, helped by rough, almost unprepared pitches. Then came WG. He had hinted at exceptional talent, but in 1871, the year he turned 23, Grace reshaped the game. No one had previously made 2,000 runs in a season. Now he made 2,739, a record that stood for 25 years. The next-best was Harry Jupp’s 1,068, and of the 17 first-class centuries that year, WG made ten. Batting was never quite the same again.

Grace buried the quaint notion that scoring on the leg side was ungentlemanly. He batted in a way we would recognise today: usually a decisive movement forward or back, bat close to pad, although he was also a master of what Ranjitsinhji called a “half-cock stroke”, which we would probably term playing from the crease. In his Jubilee Book of Cricket, Ranji wrote: “He revolutionised cricket, turning it from an accomplishment into a science... He turned the old one-stringed instrument into a many-chorded lyre, a wand... Until his time, a man was either a back player like Carpenter or a forward player like Pilch, a hitter like E. H. Budd or a sticker like Harry Jupp. But W. G. Grace was each and all at once.” STEVEN LYNCH

From Wisden 1872: MCC and Ground v Surrey at Lord’s

In cold dry weather this match was played out in two days, MCC and G the winners by an innings and 23 runs. There was some superb batting by both Mr W. Grace and Jupp; in fact, it is the opinion of many that the 181 by Mr Grace and the 85 by Jupp in this match are their most skilful and perfect displays of batting on London grounds in 1871. Mr Grace was first man in at 12.10; when the score was 164 for four wickets Mr Grace had made exactly 100 runs; when he had made 123 he gave a hot – a very hot – chance to short square leg, but he gave no other chance; he was much hurt by a ball bowled by Skinner when he had made 180, and at 181 Southerton bowled him, he being fifth man out with the score at 280. Mr Grace’s “timing” and “placing” the ball in this innings was truly wonderful cricket; he appeared to hit “all round” just where he chose to, and placing a field for his hit was as useless as were the bowler’s efforts to bowl to him. Mr Grace’s hits included a great on-drive past the pavilion for six, four fives (all big drives), and 11 fours.

1882: The Ashes are born

The history of England v Australia, the mother of all Test series, was first distilled into a minuscule urn-shaped vessel, then pressure-cooked to create a hyper-contest for the 21st century. But time and distance cannot diminish the role played in the creation myth by a single game. The Oval 1882 was a microcosm of the tension that has never left the Ashes.

Australia’s indomitability was summed up by their first-day recovery from 30 for six and Fred Spofforth’s demonic bowling – inspired, legend has it, by W. G. Grace’s caddish run-out of Sammy Jones. More than 2,000 Tests have taken place since, but Australia’s seven-run victory remains in the top ten tightest wins.

The paroxysms of the umbrella-gnawing spectator resonate with fans on all sides of all sporting divides, as does the Sporting Times’s mock obituary shortly afterwards, the first truly memorable example of English cricket’s gallows humour. England had lost to Australia before, but only ever while out of sight, out of mind, on the other side of the globe. This was an awakening in every sense. A rivalry that, according to the newspaper, was dead as soon as it began would attain a life of its own. ANDREW MILLER

From Wisden 1883: the run-out of Jones in Australia’s second innings, leaving them 114 for seven and with their overall lead 76...

Jones was run out in a way which gave great dissatisfaction to Murdoch and other Australians. Murdoch played a ball to leg, for which Lyttelton ran. The ball was returned, and Jones having completed the first run, and thinking wrongly, but very naturally, that the ball was dead, went out of his ground. Grace put his wicket down, and the umpire gave him out. Several of the team spoke angrily of Grace’s action, but the compiler was informed that, after the excitement had cooled down, a prominent member of the Australian eleven admitted that he should have done the same thing had he been in Grace’s place. There was a good deal of truth in what a gentleman in the pavilion remarked, amidst some laughter, that “Jones ought to thank the champion for teaching him something”.

...and England’s run-chase

England, wanting 85 runs to win, commenced their second innings at 3.45 with Grace and Hornby. Spofforth bowled Hornby’s off stump at 15, made in about as many minutes. Barlow joined Grace, but was bowled first ball at the same total. Ulyett came in, and some brilliant hitting by both batsmen brought the score to 51, when a very fine catch at the wicket dismissed Ulyett. Thirty-four runs were then wanted, with seven wickets to fall. Lucas joined Grace, but when the latter had scored a two he was easily taken at mid-off. Lyttelton became Lucas’ partner, and did all the hitting. Then the game was slow for a time, and 12 successive maiden overs were bowled, both batsmen playing carefully and coolly. Lyttelton scored a single, and then four maiden overs were followed by the dismissal of that batsman – bowled, the score being 66. Only 19 runs were then wanted to win, and there were five wickets to fall. Steel came in, and when Lucas had scored a four, Steel was easily caught and bowled. Read joined Lucas, but amid intense excitement he was clean bowled without a run being added. Barnes took Read’s place and scored a two, and three byes made the total 75, or ten to win. After being in a long time for five Lucas played the next ball into his wicket, and directly Studd joined Barnes the latter was easily caught off his glove without the total being altered. Peate, the last man, came in, but after hitting Boyle to square leg for two he was bowled, and Australia had defeated England by seven runs.

1932-33: Bodyline divides two nations

Lucky was the young sheep-station owner, Ian McLachlan senior, who spent the Sunday after Bodyline’s fever-pitch Adelaide Saturday in the company of Douglas Jardine and others. A beach excursion to Victor Harbour; that night, McLachlan and Jardine roomed together.

“It’s going to muck up cricket,” said McLachlan, as lights went out, “because you’re going to have cricketers playing in things like baseball masks.”

“Oh, don’t be silly, laddie.”

Bumper bombardments and throat-side field settings did not become the new normal, nor did baseball masks (nor, yet, helmets). Spin bowling survived as cricket’s guileful art. Even Don Bradman – as exotic as a nine-legged octopus, his fast yet failsafe 1930 mega-scoring having triggered Bodyline’s genesis – half-faltered only briefly. He put ointment on his bruises and for the rest of his days averaged 100.12.

What lingered was psychological, a suspicion of the English gentleman, a sense that, while Australians wish to win, the English will break bones/rules/morality to win, a slow-blooming independence. Australia’s ride through our current decade’s economic travails is something Treasurer Wayne Swan attributes partly to “an enduring determination for our country never again to be at the whim of anyone”. That determination’s cause, Mr Treasurer? “I believe, Bodyline.” CHRISTIAN RYAN

From Wisden 1933: Notes by the Editor (Stewart Caine)

The ball to which such strong exception is being taken in Australia is not slow or slow-medium but fast. It is dropped short and is alleged in certain quarters to be aimed at the batsman rather than at the wicket. It may at once be said that, if the intention is to hit the batsman and so demoralise him, the practice is altogether wrong – calculated, as it must be, to introduce an element of pronounced danger and altogether against the spirit of the game of cricket. Upon this point practically everybody will agree. No one wants such an element introduced. That English bowlers, to dispose of their opponents, would of themselves pursue such methods, or that Jardine would acquiesce in such a course, is inconceivable.

To the abuse of this Law may fairly be traced the trouble which has arisen in Australia during the tour now in progress. In suggesting, as has the Australian Board of Control, that bowling such as that of the Englishmen has become a menace to the best interests of the game, is causing intensely bitter feelings between players and, unless stopped at once, is likely to upset the friendly relations between England and Australia, the Commonwealth cricket authorities seem to have lost their sense of proportion. The idea that a method of play to which, while often practised in the past by Australian as well as English bowlers, no exception had been taken in public could jeopardise the relations of the two countries, appears really too absurd.

From Wisden 1934: The MCC team in Australasia

Suffice it to say here that a method of bowling was evolved – mainly with the idea of curbing the scoring propensities of Bradman – which met with almost general condemnation among Australian cricketers and spectators and which, when something of the real truth was ultimately known in this country, caused people at home – many of them famous in the game – to wonder if the winning of the rubber was, after all, worth this strife.

1963: The Gillette Cup is launched

Like sex (according to Philip Larkin, at least) one-day cricket, in the manner in which we now know it, began in 1963. The year before, a pilot competition – the four-team Midlands Knock-Out Cup – had attracted some attention, but now all the counties were involved. In a 65-over-a-side knockout format (just imagine: 130 overs a day) was born the great-great-grandfather of all the World Cups, Premier Leagues and Big Bashes we see today.

So too, simultaneously, came the notion that county cricket could attract sponsorship. The story has it that those from Gillette charged with negotiating a deal arrived at their meeting at Lord’s with a substantial figure in mind, and departed having apparently financed the competition from the petty-cash box. But it was a beginning. Crowds flocked to the matches, ponderous though the first format was, and the Lord’s final was established as the county game’s day out. Such success spawned new competitions: the Gillette (still the name many think of when speaking of county one-day cricket) was reduced to 60 overs a side; then came the 40-over John Player League, the 55-over Benson and Hedges Cup, and finally Twenty20. The genie was out of the bottle. MIKE SELVEY

From Wisden 1964: The Knock-Out Cup

The new Knock-Out competition aroused enormous interest. Very large crowds, especially in the later rounds, flocked to the matches and 25,000 spectators watched the final at Lord’s, where Sussex narrowly defeated Worcestershire by 14 runs in a thoroughly exciting match. It says much for the type of cricket that tremendous feeling was stirred up among the spectators as well as the cricketers, with numerous ties being decided in the closest fashion. At Lord’s, supporters wore favours, and banners were also in evidence, the whole scene resembling an Association Football Cup Final more than the game of cricket, and many thousands invaded the pitch at the finish to cheer Dexter, the Sussex captain, as he received the Gillette Trophy from the MCC President, Lord Nugent.

There were two points which invite criticism. Firstly, the majority of counties were loath to include even one slow bowler in their sides and relied mainly on pace; and secondly the placing of the entire field around the boundary to prevent rapid scoring – Dexter used this tactic in the final – became fairly common. The success of the spinners at Lord’s may have exploded the first theory.

There is no doubt that, provided the competition is conducted wisely, it will attract great support in the future and benefit the game accordingly.

1968: The D’Oliveira Affair exposes apartheid

The story of Basil D’Oliveira is one of the most romantic in the history of sport. A non-white man is prevented by apartheid from displaying his exceptional cricketing talents in his native South Africa. So he travels to Britain, where he endures a period of misery and loneliness before his genius is fully recognised and he is selected to play for England.

This part of the story is a fairytale come true. But D’Oliveira’s selection for England was more than a dream: it was also a political statement, because it smashed the apartheid myth about the superiority of the white race. Elements of the British cricketing establishment were sympathetic to the apartheid regime, and he was initially omitted by MCC’s selectors from the tour party for South Africa in 1968-69, despite having made 158 against Australia in the final Test of the summer. But when seamer Tom Cartwright pulled out of the trip, D’Oliveira was chosen to replace him. South Africa cancelled the tour.

The consequences of the international row that followed were enormous. Large sections of the British public were educated about the brutality and ugliness of racism. South African sporting links with England were broken off. The isolation of the apartheid regime deepened. Through it all, D’Oliveira maintained his integrity, and displayed a palpable decency in a crisis that transcended sport and helped bring an unspeakably evil social system to an end. PETER OBORNE

From Wisden 1969: The D’Oliveira Case, by Michael Melford

To the non-cricketing public, D’Oliveira’s omission immediately after his innings at The Oval was largely incomprehensible. It was easy for many to assume political motives behind it and a bowing to South Africa’s racial policies.

More knowledgeable cricketers were split between those who agreed that on technical grounds D’Oliveira was far from an automatic choice and who were doubtful if he would be any more effective in South Africa than he had been in the West Indies, and those who thought that after his successful comeback to Test cricket, it was “inhuman” not to pick him.

Some holding the latter opinion were also ready to see non-cricketing reasons for the omission... Much was said which was regretted later – four out of 19 members of MCC who resigned in protest applied for reinstatement within a few days – and Lord Fisher of Lambeth, the former Archbishop of Canterbury, was prompted to write to the Daily Telegraph condemning a leader “which appeared to cast doubt on the word of the selectors”.

A group of 20 MCC members, the number required to call a special meeting of the club, asserted this right, co-opting the Rev. D. S. Sheppard as their main spokesman. For three weeks the affair simmered like an angry volcano.

1975-76: Defeat in Australia sparks West Indies’ pace revolution

Their heaviest and most humiliating defeat created the philosophy that led to West Indies’ domination through the 1980s and beyond. The 5–1 thrashing in Australia, inflicted mainly by the menacing pace of Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson, supported by Gary Gilmour and Max Walker, convinced captain Clive Lloyd of the effectiveness of “three or four quick bowlers on your side”. He noted that every West Indian had “at some time or other felt the pain of a cricket ball, sent down at great speed, thudding into their bodies”; his players were “determined never to let it happen again”.

India’s record 406 for four to win the Port-of-Spain Test two months later, against a team containing only one genuine fast bowler, reinforced Lloyd’s opinion. From George Francis, Learie Constantine, Herman Griffith and Manny Martindale before the war, to Wes Hall, Roy Gilchrist and Charlie Griffith two generations later, the resources had always been available. Now, through the vagaries of nature, and fired by competition, they exploded in profusion, mostly imposing giants who worked in tandem. In their 82 Tests in the 1980s – West Indies won 43 and lost eight – 16 fast bowlers gathered 1,257 wickets. Between June 1980 and February 1995, they went unbeaten in Test series. It was the greatest dynasty in the history of the game. TONY COZIER

From Wisden 1977: West Indies in Australia, by Henry Blofeld

Australia was the first time [Clive Lloyd] had found himself under real pressure as a captain and he did not find the going easy. When the strain was greatest he did not seem able to control his own nerves as he would have liked when batting and as captain he was never prepared to speak firmly to his batsmen and to tell them how he expected them to try to play the fast bowling on the steep bouncing pitches.

1977-78: World Series Cricket shakes the foundations

When media mogul Kerry Packer approached the Australian Cricket Board in June 1976 with a handsome offer to televise Australian cricket, the administrators dismissed him without misgivings, content with their existing relationship with the national broadcaster. They underestimated Packer’s determination. Taking advantage of growing disgruntlement about pay and conditions, he secretly recruited dozens of players from Australia, West Indies, South Africa, England and Pakistan to participate in a punishing schedule of made-for-TV matches in Australia, including the first played at night under lights and in coloured clothing with white balls.

Administrators were immediately hostile, their rhetoric turning into bans and court actions, and World Series Cricket was slow to take off in the 1977-78 season, despite boasting the cream of the world’s players. But in 1978-79 it became a success, as the official Australian team, denuded of talent, were badly beaten in the Ashes. Forced to sue for peace, the ACB agreed to welcome back their prodigal sons and award broadcast rights to Packer’s Nine Network – rights they have retained to this day. The legacy of the enterprise was growingly acute understanding of the value of the sport as a television property, which others might exploit if cricket failed to do so, and better pay for elite cricketers. GIDEON HAIGH

From Wisden 1978: Notes by the Editor (Norman Preston)...

As things stand at the time of writing at the New Year no solution would appear to be in sight and the cricket authorities, particularly those in England, who spend thousands of pounds raising young talent to the top level, run the risk of losing players to any rich entrepreneur, for Packer could be only the first in the line. I feel that those who signed for Packer were placed in a dilemma – loyalty to those who nurtured them or the attraction of financial reward for playing another kind of cricket that excludes them from first-class recognition because it is outside the bounds of the International Cricket Conference.

...and The Packer Case, by Gordon Ross

At this point the only cricketing subject being discussed from the highest committee room in the land to the saloon bar of the tiniest inn, was “Packer”, and from all the multifarious points raised, one was likely to be proved the dominant factor in the end. In this age of extreme partisanship, had non-partisanship cricket any future? Does the world not want to see England beat Australia, or Arsenal beat Tottenham, or England beat Wales at Twickenham – or vice versa, according to particular loyalties? Could a collection of players, however great, stimulate public interest, when there was nothing on the end of it, except a considerable amount of money for the participants? The fact that tennis players and golfers are a constant attraction was irrelevant; they are individuals playing for no one but themselves. And moreover, the whole crux of this matter was linked to big business – the business of television, and not so much to the furtherance of cricket or cricketers.

1992-93: Technology takes its bow

Some events develop significance later, others are recognised immediately. This belonged in the second category. There was surprisingly little resistance to the use of television replays for line decisions on India’s trip to South Africa late in 1992. But it still felt bizarre to have finally reached this point after the embarrassment TV had been causing umpires for decades.

On the second day of the First Test at Durban, Jonty Rhodes swooped at backward point and flicked an airborne throw to Andrew Hudson at short leg. Umpire Cyril Mitchley was “almost certain” Sachin Tendulkar had been run out but, having been a consultant during the system’s trials, had no hesitation in referring it. Third umpire Karl Liebenberg held his breath: there were no fixed cameras at square leg, and everything depended on the midwicket cameraman. But the shot was there. Liebenberg pressed the green light (for “go”, which in those days meant “out”), and Tendulkar’s dismissal had taken just 34 seconds longer than normal. “I felt instantly the game had changed for ever – and for the better,” said South African captain Kepler Wessels.

After domestic use of the referral system revealed its imperfections, fixed cameras – known as the Pana-eye – were implemented in South Africa two years later. They became standard after that. Today, we have the Decision Review System, when money and politics allow. Even the umpires have accepted that their word is no longer necessarily final – a profound shift in the game’s psyche. NEIL MANTHORP

From Wisden 1994: The Indians in South Africa, by Richard Streeton

The tour will be remembered for the introduction of ICC’s scheme for independent umpires and even more for the South African board’s experiment using television replays to settle difficult line decisions. It was a successful innovation, welcomed by most players and officials after some initial reservations. Hitherto, for as long as the game has been played, batsmen have received the benefit of an umpire’s doubt. When officials on the field felt unable to decide, a third umpire in the pavilion watched video replays to rule on run-outs and stumpings (and hit-wicket decisions, though none arose). A green light signalled that the batsman must go, and red that he was not out. Invariably the crowd buzzed with excitement as they waited and at some grounds they were able to watch the big-screen replays at the same time.

2000: Hansie Cronje admits to match-fixing

The unmasking of Hansie Cronje marked the end of cricket’s jolly, even deluded, innocence – both because of the nature of the offence and the identity of the offender. Cronje was a national captain of enviable standing, the prototypical hard-but-fair, principled, devout all-round competitor. He was exposed as the ultimate con artist, the betting mafia’s perfect partner, ready to manipulate the scripts behind scorecards. These extremes of his persona contained the game’s essential truths, its well-disguised lies and the distance it had travelled in the last few decades of the 20th century.

With Cronje came the deadening awareness that cricket’s ethos could be easily corrupted by its best practitioners; that players from all over the world, not merely from the shadowy Orient, could be primed to participate in a world of faux cricket; that the simplest of temptations – starting with friendly free dinners, a wad of cash and, ridiculously, tragically, a leather jacket – could lure respected pros into a dragnet of organised crime. Through his acts and, as importantly, his confession, Cronje became living proof that an old, much-loved game had been poisoned at its very roots. Cricket remains sullied by the cynicism. SHARDA UGRA

From Wisden 2001: Notes by the Editor (Graeme Wright)...

Cronje’s worst crime was not against cricket – accepting the bookies’ bribes or trying to fix matches – but against morality and decency. It was in the way he ensnared the two most vulnerable members of his team, Herschelle Gibbs and Henry Williams. Cronje’s white team-mates could afford to send him on his joking way with a rejection; he was just the captain, one of the boys. For Gibbs and Williams, however, even in the rarefied atmosphere of the new South Africa, Cronje was the white man in charge. It takes more than a rainbow for generations of social conditioning and economic deprivation to be washed away.

...and A Game in Shame, by Mihir Bose

Cricket corruption, like taxes and poverty, may always be with us. But after cricket’s annus horribilis of 2000 we can, for the first time, understand how a combination of players’ greed, dreadful impotence and infighting by cricket administrators, and a radical shift in cricketing power from England to the Indian subcontinent helped create cricket’s darkest chapter.

2008: The first IPL auction puts a price on everything

The Australian seamer Nathan Bracken put it best: “You want to know what you’re worth – and you don’t want to know what you’re worth.” In no dressing-room did the tussle for players’ services cause as many ructions as it did in Australia’s. At a glittering auction in Mumbai on February 20, 2008, Cameron White got more money than the recently retired Shane Warne and Glenn McGrath, while David Hussey was considered a more valuable prospect than Ricky Ponting or Matthew Hayden. “It’s probably only me and Matty that will have any reason to be jealous of anybody else,” wrote Ponting in a newspaper column after Andrew Symonds went for $1.35m.

There were raised eyebrows in India as well, with Sreesanth and Ishant Sharma getting far more lucrative contracts than Anil Kumble, who had carried the country’s bowling for more than a decade. The traditional yardsticks of a player’s worth were disregarded, as the franchises’ bean-counters spoke of “marketability” and other imponderables. Lalit Modi and his cohorts constantly emphasised “bigger, better, faster, more”. It seemed futile to deny this was more seductive than “smaller, worse, slower, less”. DILEEP PREMACHANDRAN

From Wisden 2009: Notes by the Editor (Scyld Berry)

The IPL is a clever mixture of ingredients because its administrators have understood their market – their mass market. Although it is impossible to be sure from such a recent perspective, it looks as though the supranational IPL is the single biggest change in cricket not merely since the advent of the limited-overs game in the 1960s but of fixtures between countries in the 19th century: that is, since the invention of international or Test cricket.

Above all, until the time of writing, the IPL has had luck on its side. As the world went into economic crisis, the IPL gave every appearance of bucking the trend. The two auctions of players which it staged, the second on February 6 this year, must have appealed to anyone who has played Monopoly: they gave the franchise-owners the feeling they had power over the world’s finest cricketers, and everyone else the illusion. At a time of the most serious recession since the 1930s, Andrew Flintoff and Kevin Pietersen were signed for two years at $1.55m per six-week tournament (or pro rata for the number of games they played). The IPL radiated wealth, well-being, exuberance, and prospects for future growth: in a word, hope.

FIVE CRICKETERS OF 1864–88

Too good, too soon

SIMON WILDE

With the exception of eight wartime years, Wisden has been choosing its Cricketers of the Year ever since editor Charles Pardon introduced the award in 1889. That means the Almanack went through 25 editions – exactly one-sixth of its life – before the honour was first bestowed (to six Great Bowlers of the Year). Who, then, might rank as the most deserving cases for the quarter-century between Wisden’s first edition in 1864 and Pardon’s brainwave?

It was a time of great change for cricket. Overarm bowling was legalised. County clubs replaced travelling teams as the game’s power bases, and competed on an annual, if ad hoc, basis to identify champions. And international matches took off. The first Tests were played in Melbourne in 1876-77, triggering a regular exchange of tours between England and Australia. These contests became the ultimate gauge of ability, although the annual meetings between the Gentlemen and the Players at Lord’s were almost as significant.

Unless W. G. Grace was batting, bowlers were largely dominant. Pitches and outfields were often rough, and individual centuries rare for everyone except Grace: Richard Daft, an expert player of fast bowling, managed just seven hundreds in a career spanning more than 30 years.

Grace was still good enough to be named a Cricketer of the Year in 1896 at the age of 47. Other leading players from 1864 to 1888 who were later recognised by Wisden included Johnny Briggs, George Lohmann and Bobby Peel (all among the first picks in 1889); Billy Barnes, William Gunn and Arthur Shrewsbury (all 1890); and Walter Read (1893). Among Australians honoured were the great bowling partnership of J. J. Ferris and Charles “The Terror” Turner, both selected in 1889; Jack Blackham, recognised as the first great wicketkeeper, in 1891; and all-rounder George Giffen, in 1894.

If Grace was the batsman by which every bowler was measured, then ALFRED SHAW (1842–1907) is a must-pick. There was no shortage of bowlers capable of operating for hours on end and cutting swathes through batting line-ups, but none was as consistently accurate as Shaw, who took more than 2,000 first-class wickets at 12 apiece in a career almost exactly spanning this period (he started in 1864 and stopped playing regularly after 1886). “He was a remarkably good ‘head’ bowler,” said the Lancashire and England batsman Dick Barlow, “with a wonderful capacity for finding out a batsman’s weak points; and could vary his bowling according to the state of the wicket as could no other bowler I ever saw.” No one has taken 2,000 so cheaply, and the cost of his 186 wickets in 1880 – 8.54 each – is the lowest for any bowler claiming 100 in a season.

A short-built purveyor of medium-pace who spun the ball or made it break off the pitch, Shaw was accepted as the best bowler in England between 1870 and 1880. Grace said he did not find it difficult to keep him out on a good wicket, but had to be patient to score off him. Yet this was to damn with faint praise: Shaw took Grace’s wicket 49 times, more than any bowler. Perhaps more pertinently, relations were not cordial after Shaw turned down Grace’s terms for a tour of Australia in 1873-74, objecting to the second-class facilities on offer for the pros. Three years later, in Melbourne, he bowled Test cricket’s first ball.

Shaw was as much entrepreneur as player, and acted as joint-promoter of four tours of Australia between 1881-82 and 1887-88, on the first of which he was captain. He also arranged the first British Lions rugby trip, to Australasia in 1888. Perhaps galvanised by the riches the supposedly amateur Grace had accrued, Shaw championed the professionals’ cause, and led a strike at Nottinghamshire in 1881, demanding contracts that would guarantee a benefit season, which for many was an essential means of survival. The dispute did not stop him later captaining Nottinghamshire – in an era when amateur leadership was the norm – and taking them to four straight titles.

The fragmented organisation of early Tests meant few players commanded regular places in national sides, but one who did was GEORGE ULYETT (1851–98) of Yorkshire. He toured Australia five times, played in 25 of England’s first 33 matches, and was good enough to be selected for either his aggressive batting or round-arm fast bowling; he was also a fine fielder. He once hit a ball over the roof of the old pavilion at Lord’s, and split Charles Bannerman’s finger during his 165 in the first-ever Test, forcing him to retire hurt. In that game, the Melbourne Argus said Ulyett was “pitching his cannon shots... not more than halfway down”. One of the few Tests he missed was Australia’s first in England, in 1880, when he and others refused to play in protest at a recent riot during a match in Sydney – an unexpected stand for a fun-loving man nicknamed “Happy Jack”.

In the period up to mid-1888, only three men scored more Test runs and only three took more wickets than Ulyett; overall, he gave 949 runs and 50 wickets to England’s cause. Their first Test victory was aided by a pair of Ulyett fifties, and he bowled with genuine speed to rout Australia at Lord’s in 1884, claiming seven for 36.

Billy Bates, a fellow Yorkshire professional, made 656 runs and took 50 wickets in 15 Tests between 1881 and 1887, but all those games took place in Australia. Bates lost out on selection at home to amateurs who were rarely free to tour. One such was ALLAN GIBSON STEEL (1858–1914), known by his initials because he had six brothers, three of whom played, like he did, for Lancashire. He was restricted by his work as a barrister to one tour of Australia, in 1882-83 (averaging, in the Tests, 45 with bat and 17 with ball), but played in England’s first nine home Tests, contributing strongly in Ulyett’s absence to a win in 1880, and leading them to a 3–0 trouncing of Australia in 1886. Like Ulyett, Steel was a genuine all-rounder – an attacking middle-order batsman and a leg-spinner who could turn it both ways; unlike Shaw, he was more interested in wickets than maidens.

Steel was educated at Marlborough and Cambridge, and in his first full season of first-class cricket, in 1878, claimed 164 wickets at 9.43 apiece. For eight years, he rivalled Grace as the most glamorous cricketer in England. As the journalist and broadcaster Alan Gibson – who always included Steel in his all-time XIs on account of his Christian names – later wrote: “He used to wear a pill-box cap, a lavish moustache, a shirt buttoned to the neck, and a swaggering sash – at least that was how he liked to be photographed, the pattern of a Victorian gentleman/cricketer.”

In 1884, Steel became the first to score Test centuries in both England and Australia, as well as the first to score a Test century at Lord’s, where he has pride of place at the top of the honours board. His record with the ball was less remarkable in Tests (29 wickets at 20) than in first-class cricket (789 at under 15). But as late as 1926, the historian H. S. Altham stated: “Even today he must be written down as the best leg-break bowler in history.”

After the last of Steel’s 13 England appearances, in 1888, only one batsman had scored more Test runs at a better average – WILLIAM LLOYD MURDOCH (1854–1911). Armed with a small physique, quick footwork and stylish off-side strokes, Billy Murdoch was the outstanding Australian batsman of his era, a prolific accumulator on good pitches – his 211 on a flat’un at The Oval in 1884 was Test cricket’s first double-century, and its highest score until 1903 – but technically good enough to cope in all conditions. He was the nation’s champion, and it was his run-out that triggered that riot in Sydney. “He always thought he was going to make a century,” said C. B. Fry. “At least he did not think he was not going to, no matter whether he had a month of minute scores behind him.”

Murdoch made 153 in the first Test ever played in England, in 1880, and scored more than 1,300 first-class runs on each of three subsequent visits. He led Australia on all of them, and was the first successfully to combine captaincy with consistent personal performances. A qualified solicitor, he gave up serious cricket after marrying into a mining family in the mid-1880s, having fallen out with the Australian authorities over the share of gate receipts awarded to players. But he was lured back to lead the 1890 Ashes trip. He became a close friend of Grace, and joined an English tour of South Africa in 1891-92, appearing in one match now deemed of Test status.

Murdoch played in 16 of Australia’s first 17 Tests. The only one he missed was the very first, when his omission – as possible wicketkeeper – prompted Australia’s best bowler to withdraw his services. FREDERICK ROBERT SPOFFORTH (1853–1926) was without question the greatest Test bowler of this period, and a key figure as Australia challenged England’s notion of supremacy.

Fred Spofforth began as an underarm bowler, but changed after watching the English cricketers on their 1863-64 tour. After his boycott of the inaugural Test, he took four wickets in the Second. In 1878, he caused a sensation by claiming ten as the Australians dismissed MCC twice in a day at Lord’s, for 33 and 19. He would henceforth be known as The Demon. Injury prevented him from playing in the 1880 Test, but in 1882 he bowled Australia to their famous win at The Oval after England – including Grace, Ulyett and Steel – had been left 85 to win. Incensed by Grace’s devious run-out of Sammy Jones, who had left his crease to repair a divot, Spofforth urged his team on with the words: “Boys, this thing can be done.” And he saw that it was, taking seven for 44 to clinch victory by seven runs.

A bank clerk who later became a tea merchant, Spofforth was essentially a medium-pacer from 1878, but he was a lean 6ft 3in and bowled with such skilful intensity that he struck dread into many batsmen. About two-thirds of his 853 first-class wickets were taken on five tours of England. He dismissed Grace 20 times, took the first Test hat-trick and, at the end of his last Test in January 1887, had picked up more wickets (94 at 18 each) than anyone.

Spofforth and Murdoch both eventually settled in England and, like the three Englishmen, played beyond the advent of the Cricketers of the Year. Ulyett and Steel appeared in their final county games in 1893. Spofforth, who turned out occasionally for Derbyshire and in festival matches, played his last first-class match in 1897, as did Shaw. Murdoch, who qualified for and captained Sussex, enjoyed a fine season in that year, when he scored 1,283 runs and led the county to sixth in what was now a properly constituted Championship of 14 teams. He might have been an imaginative inclusion among a Five, but Wisden – which had yet to pick an overseas county player – ignored his claims. No longer.

Simon Wilde is cricket correspondent of The Sunday Times and editor of Wisden Cricketers of the Year 1889–2013, to be published in October 2013.

WHAT EDITING WISDEN MEANT TO ME

A cottage industry

John Woodcock (1981–86)

Almost from the first moment I could read, I seem to have had a copy of Wisden at my bedside, and could never be separated from it as a cricket writer. But the thought of editing it had never occurred to me – until the seed was planted in the Long Room at Lord’s at the wedding reception of Brian Johnston’s daughter, nine days after Norman Preston, the Almanack’s tenth editor, had died. Also at the reception was the managing editor of the then publishers, Queen Anne Press; the idea was floated, and things moved on from there.

That I managed to do the job at the same time as being the cricket correspondent of The Times was due to two people – Graeme Wright, who was to become my successor, and Christine Forrest, a neighbour of his and as dependable as she was receptive. Technically and administratively they were indispensable. For the first time in its history, Wisden was a cottage industry, operating from under my thatched roof in the Hampshire village of Longparish.

As the voice of cricket, it imposes on the editor a singular responsibility. If that sounds self-important, nothing that Sir Donald Bradman said in his letter to me on my appointment made me think otherwise: there was no doubting his affection and respect for the great work, nor the delight he took from his own collection.

It must still be fun choosing the Five Cricketers of the Year and keeping the cognoscenti guessing while about it, and the annual encyclical (dubbed Notes by the Editor) remains the one universally quoted cricket article of the year. But if offered the job again today, I’d know I would not be up to it. For one thing, like old John Wisden, I don’t have an email; for another, I might submit to the need to put Twenty20 cricket in its place, and that would never do.

Graeme Wright (1987–92, 2001–02)

Being editor of Wisden was never my ambition, however much I was enjoying my involvement in the Almanack as assistant editor, first to Norman Preston, then to John Woodcock, and as the director of John Wisden & Co responsible for publishing it. However, the editorship, coming on John Woodcock’s recommendation in 1986, was an honour not easily declined.

From a practical viewpoint, it enabled me to continue streamlining the day-to-day systems of the Almanack and, while meeting demands to build the value of the business, maintain a sensible cover price. What I might have wanted to do personally was very much secondary to what was best for the book. It was not what being editor meant to me, therefore, but what Wisden meant to others – not only current readers but readers in the future.

It seemed to me that the Almanack served manifold purposes. It was a book of record as well as records, it was literary and, most importantly, it had become an institution. Within the game, and indeed beyond the world of cricket, Wisden was trusted. Its continuity, its independence and the balance of its writing had won it the rare cachet of integrity. Posited between cricket’s political and economic byplay and its passionate grassroots support, Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack had established itself in the public consciousness as a voice of reason and the champion of everything, real and mythical, that cricket is meant to represent.

Maintaining this integrity and promoting the Almanack were what being editor of Wisden meant to me. There was nothing egotistical about it, that’s for sure. But it was an immensely enjoyable time, thanks to the support, company and friendship of everyone involved in cricket, particularly the writers worldwide, but no less the administrators who, I see looking back, all too often bore the brunt of my Notes.

Matthew Engel (1993–2000, 2004–07)

Fallible memory suggests I took the call on the Bakelite phone we had received as a retro wedding present. It always crackled. But I was convinced I heard Graeme Wright ask if I wanted to be editor of Wisden, an idea that had never previously crossed my mind. I said yes instantly. Well, you would, wouldn’t you? I never regretted it, even when wrestling with the Minor Counties before an icy December dawn, or enduring a particularly ghastly board meeting.

The book was on the up: John Woodcock had beefed up its cricketing and literary heft; Graeme had transformed its internal systems. But I sensed there was a fascinating challenge: making sure the book kept pace with the changing game, while remaining true to itself.

That much I hope we achieved in my first term. I made a comeback because I perceived a second challenge: adjusting to the fact that, in my three-year absence, the internet had gone from novelty to necessity. This task was thwarted by decisions taken well over my head, and remains ongoing.

The title “editor of Wisden” opened doors far beyond cricket. Within the game, the job ensured my opinions were always heard and sometimes listened to; now and again they even made a difference. It gave me a seat in the Test match press box, but the freedom to slope off. More than anything, I loved wandering round the county grounds, watching, enjoying the crack, and scrawling the odd note, that just might – the next April – blossom into a Note.

Mostly, the task was internal, but I loved that too: good writers wanted to be in Wisden, and it was a joy reeling them in. There was pleasure to be had even on a micro-level. I have spent years being absurdly proud that I changed Wisden house style for numbers so that, more elegantly, we used “ten” in text instead of “10”. I have just been told by Wisden’s deputy editor, Harriet Monkhouse, that I didn’t actually do that. Having Harriet to correct my false memories was a special delight. I had a terrific team, and we laughed a lot.

Tim de Lisle (2003)

Editing Wisden meant a lot, despite, or because of, doing it only once. It meant driving a classic car, and feeling even greater respect for the engineers. (To the long-suffering permanent staff, it was probably more like an episode of Yes, Minister.) It meant receiving an email from a contributor saying, “Hope you’ve enjoyed your year of being George Lazenby.” It meant being infamous for 15 minutes, when we announced that Wisden would have its first cover photograph. To Ian Wooldridge of the Daily Mail, this was “scarcely less heretical than slapping a picture of Judas Iscariot on future editions of the Holy Bible”.

It meant standing on the shoulders of giants. John Woodcock had brought wisdom to the Almanack, Graeme Wright had widened its horizons, and Matthew Engel had added wit and waspishness. But there was still something missing. Ever since the social revolution of the 1960s, Wisden had been out of tune with the times, a curious fate for a yearbook.

We tried to make it brighter, livelier and more penetrable. We took the best section of the book, the front, and doubled it. We encouraged subscribers to order another copy for a tenner, for their son or nephew – or daughter or niece. And we made sure the cover reflected the previous year in cricket rather than just the ways of previous Wisdens.

The designer was Nigel Davies, who has done more than anyone to make cricket publishing visually literate. He left most of the furniture in place, from the stumpy stature to the funny old font. The cover star was Michael Vaughan, in a shot chosen for its joy. It was black and white, to avoid clashing with the perennial primrose. Giles Smith in the Daily Telegraph said I had tried “to bring the Almanack kicking and screaming into the 1920s”.

Scyld Berry (2008–2011)

In my four years, I tried to give cricketers more of a voice. I brought in the records of every Test player, so those of the past could be heard; and asked former players to write, when it was not the time for reporters to report; and had county players interviewed to follow them through their season. Wisden had always been strong on the what, where and when; less so on the how and why, perhaps because most editors had not played the game themselves. And I tried to do what it said on the tin, to make it a cricketers’ almanack, as well as a cricket followers’. That is how it started when John Wisden, the former Sussex professional bowler, provided a player’s view.

I also tried to make it the home of creative cricket writing by introducing longer feature articles than had been known before, insofar as the budget allowed. The revisionist assessment of Sir Donald Bradman on the centenary of his birth was the first; another the article on the 1911 All-India tour of England, the most extraordinary of all cricket tours, which took three years to come to print. And I tried to give Test cricket the primacy it deserves by commissioning eminent former players from various countries to act as selectors and pick their World XI for each year.

Many of the most interesting aspects of cricket have yet to be scientifically explained. As the batsman hits a cover-drive off a fast bowler, what goes on in his brain, because it is a physical impossibility for the untrained brain to react in time? Why do bowlers, often left-arm spinners, get the yips? So much remains to be unearthed. The Test-match game is the thing, and what the ball does is its essence.

Lawrence Booth (2012–)

I picked up my first Wisden in 1990, having just turned 15, from Blackwell’s, Broad Street, Oxford. It cost £15.50 (you’ve got to love the 50p), which probably made it the most expensive book I had ever bought. But until I’d stumbled across old copies of the Almanack in my school library a couple of years earlier – Mr Noll, the head of history who doubled up as librarian, was a cricket nut – I hadn’t even known it existed. Now I was hooked. And if anyone had told me I’d be editing the thing a couple of decades later, I’d have questioned their sanity.

The job was just too implausible to have counted as an adolescent dream and, when the possibility cropped up out of the blue, I may have kept my composure. Matthew Engel, whose editorship I had been lucky enough to work under, once compared editing Wisden to a tropical garden – so much pruning and chopping. Wonder of wonders, I’d been allowed in to smell the orchids. Thanks to Scyld Berry, the place was pristine.

What have I had to do in the first two years? Maintain the book’s exacting standards, of course, which – it turns out – does not happen overnight. But also extend its relevance beyond its pages. Our website now bears some of the strain. Facebook and Twitter play their part too; Sydney Pardon would have been a formidable tweeter.

Above all, the internet means we have to fine-tune the relationship in Wisden between words and numbers. It’s always struck me how many people think of it as a book of stats, when it contains so many interesting stories too. Changing perceptions is one task. Another is to remind myself that the age of instant comment still has room for the more considered perspective – perhaps more than ever before.

THE CRICKET REPORTING AGENCY

Boy! Copy! Telegram!

MURRAY HEDGCOCK

No celebration of 150 editions of Wisden would be complete without acknowledging the major role played in its life by the Cricket Reporting Agency. The agency were equally at home in the scullery and at high table, overseeing the Almanack’s editorial production from 1887 until 1965, and providing seven editors until 1980. They are Wisden’s unsung heroes.

Charles Pardon founded the CRA on April 17, 1880, taking with him staff from the Sporting Press Agency, which had employed him as a reporter but folded following the death a year earlier of the owner, George Kelly King. There were various homes for the new agency. The first reference in Wisden came at the end of the 1891 preface, which placed them at 112 Fleet Street. Later, they moved down the road to No. 85, where they were a tenant of the Press Association at Byron House, until it was demolished in 1935. The new building would be occupied by Reuters, though the CRA (and PA) – after a temporary spell round the corner at 23 St Bride Street – returned to the new premises to rent office space.

Agency reporting is traditionally factual, straightforward and reliable, qualities which were to characterise the early style of Wisden itself. But there was also a financial imperative not to waste words: the length of agency reports determined their cost, and press telegrams were not cheap. The charge was one shilling for every 75 words transmitted between 9am and 6pm, and for every 100 words between 6pm and 9am.

Press reports were originally sent from the local post office or, increasingly, from a dedicated telegraph office at the ground itself. A row of small uniformed messenger boys sat at the back of the press box, chattering animatedly as they waited to be despatched with newspaper copy on a stentorian shout of “Boy!”, “Copy!” or “Telegram!” But this was no simple task either. Wisden 1893 carried a study of facilities for journalists, written by a future editor, Stewart Caine, who described the shortcomings of some counties: “When telegraph wires were extended to the ground, no effort was made to place the press box and the telegraph office in proximity.”

Overseas scores for early Wisdens were taken initially from Australian and other newspapers, arriving in the UK many weeks or months after the games had finished. It was not until 1928-29 that a CRA staff man was sent to cover an MCC tour. The reports by Sydney Southerton, another editor-to-be, on the 4–1 defeat of Australia were well received, lively and forthright, and in 1932-33 Southerton was meant to go again. But after some debate with PA, Reuters insisted on sending their own man: Gilbert Mant, a hard-working 30-year-old Australian on the London staff, who had reported little cricket, and now kept strictly to his brief to refrain from comment.

Sixty years later, Mant wrote of his dilemma over England’s tactics. Saying he was “sickened” by Bill Woodfull’s injury in the Adelaide Test, he added: “I was in a hopeless catch-22 situation... If I showed the slightest sign of taking sides about Bodyline, or suggesting it was a threat to cricket, my reports would be censored, and I would probably be replaced. That was when I felt that Sydney Southerton should have been there instead of me. Southerton, writing under a byline, would probably have been able to speak his mind about the general atmosphere... So, reluctantly, I joined Jack Hobbs [reporting via a ghostwriter for the News Chronicle and Star] in not rocking the boat... I was to some extent leading the British public astray. It has been on my conscience ever since.” Southerton was to make a scathing attack on Bodyline, sight unseen, in his editor’s Notes in 1934, which leaves one to wonder how differently the series might have been presented to England had he, not Mant, reported from Australia.

The CRA sent journalists on tour more regularly after the war. In 1955, one of them, Reg Hayter – the agency’s chief cricket reporter – went on to launch his own agency, a high-pressure training school for many sportswriters who graduated to Fleet Street. But the CRA sent no one to South Africa in 1964-65 and – with their future in some doubt – they were taken over by PA in 1965. Terry Cooper, who was signed by the CRA in 1962, married one of the agency’s secretaries, and later reported on cricket and rugby for PA until his retirement in 1999, explained the takeover: “The penny dropped with PA – they were paying us for something they could do themselves.”

But it was the CRA editors who set the firmest stamp on the Almanack, from Charles Pardon in 1887 to Norman Preston in 1980. The only non-CRA Wisden editor in that time was Haddon Whitaker, who presided over four Almanacks during the Second World War. Pardon himself worked on only four editions, but longevity was generally a hallmark: his brother Sydney worked on 39, Caine 47, Southerton at least 32, Wilfrid Brookes 15, Hubert Preston 51 (he missed the 1916–1920 editions while on military service), and his son Norman 47. Between them, the seven CRA men edited 90 Wisdens.

Because of the influence exerted on the agency from their foundation by Charles and his two brothers, the CRA were often known simply as Pardon’s. The trio had tackled their new roles with youthful enthusiasm (Charles was 30, Sydney 25, Edgar 20), and were rewarded in 1886 when Wisden’s owner, Henry Luff, invited the CRA to compile the following year’s Almanack, with Charles as editor. So began the association that would sustain Wisden for nine decades. When Charles died, aged 40 – Edgar would die eight years later – Sydney stepped in and, over the next 35 editions, forged the Almanack’s reputation as cricket’s most authoritative voice. On his death in 1925, Wisden described him as “the man who shaped the Almanack into the publication it is today”.

The CRA also campaigned for a more satisfactory method of deciding the County Championship than simply awarding it to the team suffering fewest defeats – the method used from 1865 to 1886. The agency proposed one point for a win, and half a point for a draw. But this produced its own problems, notably in 1889, when Surrey, Lancashire and Nottinghamshire all finished on 10½. Reacting promptly, the counties and MCC devised a new system which, with adjustments, still applies today.

After the Pardons came Caine. He had been at the CRA from the word go, was close to the Pardons, and edited Wisden’s Rugby Football Almanack for the three years that it ran from 1924 to 1926. Sydney Southerton was the son of the round-arm slow bowler James Southerton, who was the oldest player to make a Test debut – at 49 years 119 days at Melbourne in 1876-77, in Test cricket’s inaugural match – and the first Test cricketer to die, a little over three years later. Sydney was working as a ship’s steward when he met Jack Blackham’s 1893 Australians aboard the Liguria en route to England. He was engaged as scorer for the tour, and Sydney Pardon, impressed by his work, employed him at the end of the season as the CRA’s statistician. Widely known as “Figure Fiend”, Southerton later became a partner, editing Wisden in 1934 and 1935. His end was sudden: at the age of 60, he collapsed and died after proposing the toast to “Cricket” at the Ferrets Club dinner at The Oval in 1935.

In fact, five of the seven CRA men to edit Wisden died while still in the job. The exceptions were Wilfrid Brookes, who resigned abruptly after the last of his four Almanacks in 1939, having overseen the major revamp of the 75th edition, and was hardly heard of again until his obituary was published in Wisden 1956; and Hubert Preston, who did not edit the first of his eight Wisdens until he was 74 – comfortably the oldest starting age for any of its editors.

The Preston dynasty had begun in 1944, when Hubert was appointed editor. He learned his trade at the Manchester Guardian’s London office and had a brief spell farming in Canada. He joined the CRA in 1895, became a partner in 1920, and did not retire until 1951. By then, the CRA had four partners: the two Prestons, plus Ebenezer Eden, who was credited in 50 Almanacks up to 1975, and Harry Gee, who worked on the 1934–1971 editions. Leslie Smith, who first contributed to Wisden in 1935, was never a partner, but played a central role. He died in 2011, aged 97.

Norman Preston, who joined the agency in 1933, succeeded his father in 1952, and would guide Wisden through 29 editions. Following Hubert’s death in 1960, Neville Cardus wrote in Wisden that he was “with [Sydney] Pardon and Stewart Caine, the most courteous and best-mannered man ever to be seen in a press box on a cricket ground”. Preston, Eden and Gee all accepted positions at PA after the merger in 1965, but when Preston retired in 1968, Wisden’s association with PA came to an end, though he continued to edit the Almanack as a freelance until his death in 1980.

Today, the contribution of the agency to cricket reporting is commemorated by the Sydney Pardon press box at The Oval. On the first floor of the new OCS Stand, opened in 2005, it houses up to 70 journalists – all heirs of the pioneers of the Cricket Reporting Agency.

Murray Hedgcock is a London-based Australian journalist who came to England in 1953, hoping to see Australia retain the Ashes. They did not – but he has remained loyal and optimistic at every succeeding series.

Additional research: Christopher Lane

BEHIND THE SCENES AT WISDEN

A production in five acts

ROBERT WINDER

Wisden has endured bombing and bankruptcy – but the Almanack never missed a year. Not all its heroes have been cricketers, however, and not all have been honoured or thanked. Here are five men who, inadvertently or otherwise, helped shape Wisden.

When John Wisden died in 1884, single and childless, Henry Luff acquired his company. As well as publishing the Almanack, John Wisden & Co were primarily a sports-equipment retailer, with a shop near Leicester Square: its spirit lives on in the red tiling above a fast-food joint in Cranbourn Street. But without Luff, the book might have folded. There was keen competition (from, among others, James Lillywhite), and the 1886 edition nearly failed to come out altogether, eventually emerging in December with a sheepish apology: “Messrs John Wisden & Co desire to express their regret at the delay which has occurred in its publication – a circumstance due to the long-continued indisposition of the Compiler [the editor, George West].” Only decades later, when Wisden had grown into a collector’s item, would the importance of not skipping an edition become clear: Luff’s determination had helped preserve the continuity on which the value of the whole set depended.

Luff strengthened the sports company by making it a manufacturer, and rejuvenated the book by handing it to a new generation. The Pardon brothers ran the Cricket Reporting Agency, which placed journalists at matches to submit copy to newspapers. They were responding to the same technical advances that had played midwife to Wisden itself: wireless telegraphy and industrial-age printing. In 1887, Charles Pardon became editor; his brother Sydney, younger by five and a half years, took over in 1891, and remained until 1925. In availing himself of this fresh blood, Luff – who died in 1910 – placed the Almanack in the hands of a dynasty that turned it into an institution.

Charles Pardon edited only four editions, but his third – in 1889 – launched a feature that would become an essential part of the Almanack’s appeal. The Cricketers of the Year was inspired by another new technology (photography), and Pardon included medallion portraits of “Six Great Bowlers”, provided by prominent photographers E. Hawkins & Company of Brighton. Wisden went on to make an annual award to the season’s leading players, later prompting Sydney Pardon to declare that this was “proving so acceptable... there is no likelihood of the Almanack ever again being published without one”.

This showed that Wisden was not only a careful keeper of scores and records, and a stern Victorian preacher when it came to Laws and etiquette, but a wholehearted celebrant of individual feats. This may have cut across the classic ideology of team spirit, but in reality it was a central part of cricket’s fabric. The quality of the images meant that “the faces will be easily recognised” – no small matter at a time when cricket followers only rarely glimpsed their heroes. Sydney Pardon would go on to be the grandest editor of them all (for 35 years), but Charles’s innovation has been a Wisden hallmark ever since – a little touch of Oscar in the spring.

When in 1938 John Wisden & Co appointed Whitaker’s – owners of another famous almanack – as publishers of Wisden, Haddon Whitaker took charge. Along with Wisden’s own editor, Wilfrid Brookes, he instigated a thorough overhaul, introducing many elements – such as the yellow cover and the wood engraving by Eric Ravilious – that would become permanent. At the outbreak of the Second World War, Brookes resigned, and Whitaker became editor. As during the previous war, there was little cricket to describe; inevitably, the main event was an expanded Obituary. And against a background of strict paper rationing, wartime sales shrank to barely 4,000 a year.

On December 30, 1940, the Whitaker’s office near St Paul’s was destroyed in the worst night of the Blitz. Yet somehow Wisden, as per the motto of the time, kept calm and carried on. In 1943, Whitaker appointed Hubert Preston, a long-time Wisden aide, as editor for the 1944 edition, and thus the Almanack entered a new era. It was the start, too, of a second Wisden dynasty: his son Norman took over in 1952 and edited the book until his death in 1980. But if it hadn’t been for Haddon Whitaker, they might never have got the chance. With pleasing modesty, Whitaker later referred to himself as an “interloper” among the distinguished line of cricket reporters who came before and after.

As the chief engineer of the Co-operative Wholesale Society’s retail empire, Ken Medlock was cut from a different cloth. In 1960, he was elected to the main board. A keen club cricketer for Birch Vale in the Peak District, he was surprised to see on the agenda of his debut board meeting in Manchester a proposal to dissolve John Wisden & Co, which the Co-op had bought out of receivership in 1943. Even though he was the new boy on the team, Medlock took a deep breath. “We must be out of our minds,” he said. “Don’t you realise we are talking about liquidating the most famous name in cricket?”

After a flutter of consternation, Medlock arrived at the John Wisden & Co works in Penshurst, Kent, where he found elderly craftsmen and a dispirited management. He moved fast, replacing staff and streamlining product lines until, a decade later, it could be sold to Grays of Cambridge. None of this concerned the Almanack directly, whose contract with Whitaker’s assured its immediate future. But Medlock’s influence was profound. In 1963, the Almanack’s centenary year, he and his friend Sir Learie Constantine gained permission from MCC to award the Wisden Trophy to the winners of England–West Indies series. As Medlock’s trophy celebrated its 50th birthday, the man himself (born in 1914) was not far off his 100th.

At the height of his bad-boy fame, Mick Jagger did not always boast of his fondness for cricket, but he spent hours following it on television at home in Chelsea. Even when he visited his reclusive American neighbour, Paul Getty, he would – as Getty later put it – insist on watching “this ridiculous game”.

Getty’s own life had been stalked by tragedy. In 1971, his second wife, Talitha Pol, died from an overdose, and two years later the older of two sons from his first marriage, John Paul Getty III, was kidnapped in Italy. When the initial ransom demand was refused, the boy’s right ear was hacked off and sent to a newspaper in Rome. But the “ridiculous game” to which Jagger had introduced the older Getty would at least, in time, play a consoling part in his life.

Armed with a colossal inheritance from his family’s oil interests, Getty went on to befriend cricket’s leading personalities, finance new architecture at Lord’s, and build his own, Gatsbyish, ground at his Wormsley home in the Chilterns. In 1993, when Wisden was seeking a new owner, he stepped in. It did not need saving, as such: it was a profitable enterprise in its own right. But it did need a devoted and steady proprietor – and it found one. Under Getty’s wing (and the editorship of Matthew Engel) the Almanack grew in prestige as the game entered the electronic age. Jagger’s oblique place in the story reminds us that cricket’s relationship with rock music long predates the snatches of “Another one bites the dust” that blast across today’s Twenty20 grounds.

Robert Winder is author of The Little Wonder: A History of Wisden.

WISDEN – A TIMELINE

1826

John Wisden (JW) is born in Brighton.

1850

JW takes ten wickets in an innings for North v South at Lord’s. All are bowled – still a unique feat in first-class cricket. He also sets up in business, selling cricket gear in Leamington.

1852

JW and Jemmy Dean form the United All-England Eleven.

1855

JW opens his “cricket and cigar” shop at 2 New Coventry Street, London.

1859

JW plays in the USA and Canada on the first overseas tour by an English team.

1863

JW retires from the game.

1864

JW publishes his first Cricketer’s Almanack. The editor for the first 16 editions is W. H. Knight.

1870

The title is changed to John Wisden’s Cricketers’ Almanack (the second apostrophe moved in 1869).

1872

Wisden’s shop moves to 21 Cranbourn Street, London; it remains open until 1928.

1880

The first of seven editions edited by George West.

1884

JW dies in his flat above the Cranbourn Street shop. The business is bought from his estate by Henry Luff.

1887

The first of four editions edited by Charles Pardon, and the first to have its content compiled by the Cricket Reporting Agency.

1889

Wisden selects its first Cricketers of the Year (“Six Great Bowlers”).

1891

The first of 35 editions edited by Sydney Pardon.

1896

The first hardback edition. JW & Co open their second London shop – in Great Newport Street.

1901

Sydney Pardon starts “Notes by the Editor”.

1910

Henry Luff dies. His son, Ernest, takes over the business.

1911

JW & Co receive a royal warrant to certify their “appointment as Athletic Outfitters to the King” (George V).

1914

JW & Co are incorporated as a limited company with their shares divided among several investors.

1920

JW & Co merge with Duke & Son, a sports manufacturer specialising in cricket balls.

1923

JW & Co publish their first Rugby Football Almanack. It lasts three editions.

1924

The Almanack exceeds 1,000 pages for first time.

1926

The first of eight editions edited by Stewart Caine.

1934

The first of two edited by Sydney Southerton.

1936

The first of four edited by Wilfrid Brookes.

1938

J. Whitaker & Sons Ltd (“Whitaker’s”) become Wisden’s publisher and immediately conduct a thorough overhaul. Changes include dropping “John” from the title, the introduction of yellow linen covers for the limp version (technically, it was not a paperback), and adding Eric Ravilious’s wood engraving of top-hatted cricketers to the front cover.

1939

Because of failings in the equipment business, JW & Co go into receivership.

1940

The first of four editions edited by Haddon Whitaker. The Notes in all four are written by Raymond Robertson-Glasgow. Whitaker’s offices are destroyed in the Blitz.

1943

JW & Co are bought out of receivership by the Co-operative Wholesale Society.

1944

Wisden’s factory in Mortlake is destroyed by a bomb. Although still published by Whitaker’s, Wisden is moved to the Sporting Handbooks imprint, in which JW & Co have a half share. The first of eight editions edited by Hubert Preston.

1952

The first of 29 edited by Hubert Preston’s son, Norman.

1957

Whitaker’s buy JW & Co’s half share in Sporting Handbooks, who continue to publish Wisden under licence.

1960

Facsimiles of early editions are produced for the first time.

1961

JW & Co amalgamate their Duke and Wisden cricket-ball manufacturing business with those of Gray-Nicolls, Surridge and Ives in a joint venture company, Tonbridge Sports Industries. The Great Newport Street shop is closed.

1963

The 100th edition is marked by the introduction of the Wisden Trophy, to be contested in all future Test series between England and West Indies.

1965

The CRA merge with the Press Association. The hardback version has a dust jacket for the first time.

1968

Norman Preston retires from PA, thus ending the PA/CRA editorial arrangement with the Almanack, which had been responsible for 82 editions. Preston continues to edit Wisden on a freelance contract.

1970

Grays of Cambridge Ltd purchase JW & Co (including their stake in Tonbridge Sports Industries) from the Co-operative Wholesale Society.

1979

Queen Anne Press (a division of Macdonald and Jane’s Publishers which, in 1982, came under Robert Maxwell’s control) succeed Sporting Handbooks as Wisden’s licensed publishers. The magazine Wisden Cricket Monthly is launched, published under licence from JW & Co.

1981

The first of six editions edited by John Woodcock.

1984

The centenary of John Wisden’s death is commemorated with the unveiling of a new headstone for his grave in London’s Brompton Cemetery.

1985

McCorquodale plc purchase JW & Co from Grays and re-establish JW & Co as Wisden’s own publisher.

1986

Grays of Cambridge buy back 50% of JW & Co to become joint owners with McCorquodale (who are later acquired by Bowater plc).

1987

The first of eight editions edited by Graeme Wright.

1988

Colour photographs are included for the first time.

1993

The first of 12 editions edited by Matthew Engel. Paul Getty purchases JW & Co from Grays and Bowater. The combined total of pages in all editions exceeds 100,000.

1995

A limited-edition leatherbound version is introduced.

1998

An Australian Wisden Almanack is launched, lasting eight editions.

1999

The (British) Almanack exceeds 1,500 pages for first time.

2000

Wisden names Five Cricketers of the Century: Don Bradman, Garry Sobers, Jack Hobbs, Shane Warne and Viv Richards.

2001

Wright returns as editor, while Engel takes a sabbatical. Wisden Online is launched.

2003

The only edition edited by Tim de Lisle features Wisden’s first cover photograph and names its first Book of the Year. JW & Co buy The Cricketer magazine (which is merged with Wisden Cricket Monthly to form The Wisden Cricketer) and the website Cricinfo (into which Wisden Online is integrated). Paul Getty dies. His son, Mark, takes control of JW & Co.

2004

Engel returns as editor. Wisden introduces a new annual accolade: the Leading Cricketer in the World.

2006

A large-format version is introduced. Across all formats, Wisden sells over 50,000 copies.

2007

Cricinfo is sold to ESPN; The Wisden Cricketer to BSkyB.

2008

The first of four editions edited by Scyld Berry. The Wisden Schools Cricketer of the Year award is introduced. Bloomsbury Publishing plc purchase JW & Co from Mark Getty.

2009

Claire Taylor is the first woman to be named a Cricketer of the Year.

2011

The Shorter Wisden ebook is introduced.

2012

The first edition edited by Lawrence Booth. The 2013 – and first – edition of Wisden India Almanack is launched in late December.

2013

The 150th edition is published.

Compiled by Christopher Lane

WISDEN’S TOP-HATTED GENTS

Engraved in the memory

RUPERT BATES

They were never honoured as Cricketers of the Year. But a batsman and a wicketkeeper – both nameless, both virtually faceless – have adorned Wisden now for 76 springs. The wood engraving of the Victorian duo in top hats is one of the sport’s most charming and recognisable images. And yet cricket knows little of its creator.

Also celebrated for his watercolours, book illustrations, ceramics and lithography, Eric Ravilious was commissioned to produce the engraving by Robert Harling, the typographer asked to redesign the 1938 Wisden. Harling knew Ravilious had a “special enthusiasm for the game” – though no doubt his deep Wealdean Englishness and sense of tradition helped too – and wrote: “His engraving of mid-19th century batsman and wicketkeeper remains an ideal graphic introduction to one of England’s most durable publications.”

The engraving briefly lost its cover-star status in 2003, when a photograph of Michael Vaughan relegated it to the spine of the book’s jacket, incurring the displeasure of some traditionalists. It was immediately restored to the cover in 2004, while staying on the spine as well. And so, for ten editions now, including this one, Ravilious’s creation has been more visible than ever.

Educated at Eastbourne School of Art, he won a scholarship to the Royal College of Art. But Ravilious died in 1942 aged 39 when, as an official war artist and honorary captain in the Royal Marines, his plane was lost on a search-and-rescue mission off Iceland. And while it was clear he was never going to decorate Wisden through his on-field achievements, he did leave his indelible mark. In the words of cricket bookseller John McKenzie, the engraving “remains the face of Wisden”.

A preparatory sketch from a Ravilious scrapbook has another cricketer in the frame, dressed in top hat, waistcoat and bow tie, with a marquee in the background. Although he wrote many letters to family and friends, he appears never to have explained the inspiration behind the engraving. One theory is that he gained it from a pub sign in Sussex, the county in which he spent most of his life and which provided the backdrop to some of his greatest work, including watercolour landscapes of his beloved South Downs. The Cricketers Arms in Berwick, near Firle – a village where he spent much time – has a top-hatted Victorian batsman on its sign. And the one at the Bat and Ball Inn in Hambledon, admittedly some 60 miles away in Hampshire, also depicts a batsman and wicketkeeper.

But Anne Ullmann, Ravilious’s daughter (he also had two sons), insists: “My father soaked up ideas for work wherever he went, but never copied – and I don’t believe for one minute that the design was a copy. He may have seen an inn sign with cricketers or, as the sketch suggests, he may have watched a match played in mid-19th century costume. Or he may just have been playing around with ideas for the engraving. But what remains is one hell of a cracking design, and I pray it may represent Wisden for many years to come.”

Whatever the origin, we do know for certain that Ravilious played cricket, if at a lowly level. In 1935, he wrote of turning out for the Double Crown Club, a dining club for printers and book designers, against the village team at Castle Hedingham in Essex, where he lived for a while. He said the game went on “a bit too long for my liking and I began to get a little absent-minded in the deep field after tea”. He made one not out in defeat, and bowled a few overs. “It all felt like being back at school, especially the trestle tea with slabs of bread and butter, and that wicked-looking cheap cake.” He went on to record the comment of the Double Crown captain Francis Meynell that his bowling was “of erratic length, but promising, and that I should have been put on before. Think of the honour and glory there.”

In another game at Castle Hedingham, with his wife Tirzah (a talented artist herself) “in charge of the strawberries and cream”, Ravilious talked of hitting three sixes. “It is, you might say, one of the pleasures of life, hitting a six.”

A shy man, but amusing and invariably cheerful, Ravilious enjoyed the Bohemian company of his artistic friends, who talked of his “Pan-like charm” and the sense that he was always “slightly somewhere else” – no doubt sketching in his head at fine leg, whistling “Better than a Nightingale” below his boater, oblivious to the ball heading his way. Yet it seems no other cricket theme danced on his easel or wood block. Instead, there is a rich and varied output of beautifully observed landscapes, street scenes, ceramic designs for Wedgwood – including a mug to commemorate the coronation of King George VI – and, in his last years, images of war. The Daily Telegraph called his death “the greatest artistic loss Britain suffered in the Second World War”. And in 2011, the art critic of The Observer, Laura Cumming, called him “the lost genius of British art”.

Ravilious saw only five of the Almanacks to carry his engraving. Yet his work – in many ways a distillation of Englishness – lives on.

Rupert Bates, a sports and property writer, is Eric Ravilious’s great-nephew.

COLLECTING WISDEN

Volume control

PATRICK KIDD

Like kisses and cars, everyone remembers their first Wisden – and few people stick at just one. Who does not feel the thrill of dipping into an ancient volume and reading of tales, famous or obscure? I still recall the delight when I bought the 1977 Almanack, looked up what Essex were doing on the day I was born, and saw that, not only did a young G. A. Gooch, my boyhood hero, make a century, but their opener, who made 40, was my future form tutor, M. S. A. McEvoy.

As a Wisden collector, though, I am a rank amateur, with a set going back no further than 1950. I look with envy at those who own eight yards’ worth of Almanacks, from the fragile early softbacks, through the chocolate hardbacks, the salmon-pink cloth covers and, since 1965, the familiar yellow and brown dust jackets, whose colouring always makes me think of streaks of yeast extract over the lid of a Marmite jar.

To build a full collection now, especially in good condition, is costly. Tim Knight, of Knight’s Sporting Auctions in Norwich, estimates a complete set would cost £300,000, but could fluctuate wildly, depending on quality. “Condition is everything,” he says. “I’ve seen 1900 hardbacks differ by a couple of thousand pounds.” Knight says the type of book also matters: “In 2008 we sold an 1896, the first year Wisden was in hardback, for £22,000. Exactly the same book with soft covers can be bought for a few hundred.”

Sir Tim Rice, the lyricist, bought a complete set from Surrey cricket bookseller John McKenzie in the early 1970s for £750, using what he calls “my ill-gotten gains” from the musical Jesus Christ Superstar. “I was fairly relaxed about such a serious investment,” he says now; the Sunday Times described the purchase as “little short of insanity”.

Few in those days cared about collecting a shelf-load of reference books. McKenzie had bought his own full set at Sotheby’s a year or two earlier for £420. “I keep them out of sentimentality,” he says. “They’re the only ones I won’t sell.” He was aware of one set around that time, not complete but with every Wisden from 1879, going for just £66.

“People just didn’t want to know about cricket,” McKenzie says. “Booksellers would store them in warehouses.” In 1981, after the Wisden market started to boom, he optimistically tried to sell an entire set for £10,000. “I couldn’t get a bid. Now you can get that for one edition.” His 2012 catalogue featured a rebacked 1869 for £18,000, an 1866 with original soiled wrapper for £12,000, and a 1916, which contains the obituaries of W. G. Grace, Victor Trumper and the poet Rupert Brooke, for £8,000.

The first Wisden cost one shilling. The same book would now set you back at least £20,000 – or almost £180 a page. The 1875, which had a shorter print run than previous years, is also highly cherished. Wartime Almanacks are at a premium, especially 1941, when only 800 hardback copies were printed. Of the post-war years, 1971 can sell for up to £100 because fewer copies were printed: a paper shortage didn’t help, but it was also thought England’s series the previous summer against a Rest of the World XI, who stepped in for the ostracised South Africans, would entice fewer readers.

The Wisden market peaked from 2004 to 2009. “That was very buoyant,” Knight says. “It has maybe dropped a little, but the market is holding up well. If anything is recession-proof, it may be Wisdens.”

The collectors are a curious fraternity: obsessive, pernickety and knowledgable but also, in the main, supportive of each other. Many seasoned collectors mentor newer members of the tribe, helping them to understand what to pay and where to find rare editions.

Chris Ridler started collecting in earnest in 2005, when a family member gave him a 1950 hardback to supplement a collection he had built back to 1976. Early on, he sold some shares and went to an auction with £60,000 to spend. “I was outbid on everything but an 1891,” he recalls. After that, he made it his business to study the market properly. “The most important part about collecting is knowing which books are rare,” he says. He also advises never to buy a hardback after 1965 without a dust jacket: “You’ll only end up buying the original one day, and then have a spare that no one wants.”

Ridler completed his full set in September 2010 with the purchase of his second 1875 copy. He had sold the first, when there were still a few gaps in his collection, for a record eBay price of £15,000 to fund a website, www.wisdenauction.com, where collectors can seek and trade copies. He upgrades his copies when he finds better-quality ones. “I went from paperbacks to hardbacks, then to those in top-notch condition,” he says. A lot of the early ones were rebound, and Ridler is ten original covers short. “They were really fragile,” he says. “The books were only 1cm wide and they fell apart.”

He envies those who started earlier and could get bargains. Ridler, who has studied dealers’ catalogues going back 35 years, says that in the early 1980s one dealer sold a softback 1896 for £65 and a hardback of the same year for £90. “Today a paperback would be worth £400 and the hardback £25,000,” he says. “You wouldn’t want to be the person who chose to save £25.”

One of his favourite copies is from 1941. He had been bidding on this rarity on eBay but, as the auction neared its end, he had to attend an antenatal class. Asking his mentor to help out, Ridler instructed him to go up to £650 and was delighted to win the auction for £620. The book was then lost in the post.

Devastated, Ridler did at least get his money back, but for his next birthday his wife, Catherine, found another copy as a surprise present. The record fetched at auction for a 1941 was £2,300 in 2007, but Ridler will not sell the copy his wife bought, even though he has since acquired a better-condition one for £1,200. Ridler needed a friend again to complete his set: he was umpiring in a club match as the 1875 edition was auctioned. At tea, he switched on his phone to discover he had paid £12,000. An 1875, rebound without covers, sold in December 2012 for £22,500.

Sometimes people pay a premium for sets with special provenance. Sir Pelham Warner’s bound set, given to him by Wisden – the company – as a wedding present, sold for £7,800 at auction in 1980, while W. G. Grace’s set of the first 38 Wisdens fetched £94,000 in 1996. The set in the MCC library was acquired in 1944 from the estate of Sir Julien Cahn, the eccentric philanthropist, who had been given the books up to 1931 by cricket historian F. S. Ashley-Cooper.

Occasionally you come across individual Almanacks that once had an important owner. The most famous is E. W. Swanton’s 1939 edition, stamped “not subversive”, that sustained him for three and a half years in a Japanese prisoner-of-war camp, and is now in the Lord’s museum.

Ridler’s collection includes editions owned by John Arlott (1864) and George Duckworth (1933), a 1936 signed from Wilfrid Brookes to Norman Preston (the seventh and tenth editors), and a 1941 signed from Hubert Preston (the ninth) to a young Reg Hayter, the cricket journalist.

There are Wisden collectors all around the world. Darren Harold from New Zealand says the internet has made it possible for him to build a collection, although the postal costs are immense. “Being overseas, I can’t just pop into a second-hand bookshop to browse, and there are very few Wisden collectors in New Zealand, so most of my buying is from the UK,” he says. Like Ridler, he uses a mentor.

Harold admits that, when he was young and devouring biographies of his favourite cricketers, he had no interest in the Almanacks: “I figured Wisdens were bed-time reading for British anoraks. But one day I flicked through a copy at a book sale. I was hooked – the words brought contests to life.”

He began his collection with a boxful bought off an elderly man who was going into a rest home, and he now has a complete set back to 1921. He is less worried about quality, though. “It’s about the cricket for me, not the cover,” he says. The oddest volume he owns is a 1963 centenary edition bound in psychedelic pink.

Everyone has their own motivations for building a collection, but perhaps the most important advice Ridler can give a collector is to actually read the books, which he does regularly, even taking them on flights. “After completing my set, I picked up my 1864 and started to read it,” he says. “It was quite nerve-racking to open a book that cost £11,000, but it seems a waste just to keep them on the shelves.”

Patrick Kidd writes for The Times. He bought his first Wisden in 1995.

1864 AND ALL THAT

A foreign country

HUGH CHEVALLIER

The original Wisden was an eccentric little volume. Only 85 or so of the book’s 116 pages were devoted solely to cricket. In the main, these contained scorecards from remarkable matches played over the previous 50 or 60 years. The first card that readers encountered, on page 27, was of a match from 1855 – nine years earlier – in which the Earl of Winterton’s Shillinglee side dismissed the 2nd Royal Surrey Militia for nought. Also in Wisden’s first offering were the Laws of Cricket, dates of various players’ first games at Lord’s, and “long scores” (centuries) hit in “great matches” since 1850.

But the volume’s principal eccentricity lay either side of that crickety core. The first 12 pages were taken up by a calendar of notable dates and phases of the moon, so justifying the term almanack (in which such information was traditionally found). Some of these calendar entries had a cricketing bent: February 15 recalled a match on ice in 1838, while modesty did not prevent July 15 celebrating the day “John Wisden bowled all the wickets in the 2d in. of the South, in the match at Lord’s, North v South” – though there was not enough room to mention it had happened in 1850. Some had little sporting connection: “Papal supremacy destroyed by Act of Parliament, 1559” declared April 8. Sometimes it was hard to tell: “Israel Haggis, of Cambridge, b. 1811”, read January 23.

Meanwhile, several of the last 15 pages – despite a notice “to the Reader” that complained of “the confined nature of an Almanack” – were given over to wide-ranging trivia. These ran an unlikely course, from notable dates in the history of China (“the opium dispute commenced, 1834”) to the “brass bell weighing 17cwt… cleft by the hammer while ringing, from the effect of the severe frost on January 4, 1861”. And in the spirit of those trivia, Wisden 2013 here presents its own eclectic collection of abstruse facts, illustrating how the world has changed since the first editions were offered for sale.

Also in 1864…

Five pirates were publicly hanged at Newgate prison… an explosion at a gunpowder depot at Erith on the south bank of the Thames killed at least eight and was felt as far away as Cambridge and Guildford… and war finally resolved the Schleswig–Holstein question (that had famously perplexed so many).

Wisden Honours

THE LEADING CRICKETER IN THE WORLD

Michael Clarke

The Leading Cricketer in the World is chosen by the editor of Wisden in consultation with some of the world’s most experienced cricket writers and commentators. The selection is based on a player’s class and form shown in all cricket during the calendar year, and is merely guided by statistics rather than governed by them. There is no limit to how many times a player may be chosen.

FIVE CRICKETERS OF THE YEAR

Hashim Amla

Nick Compton

Jacques Kallis

Marlon Samuels

Dale Steyn

The Five Cricketers of the Year are chosen by the editor of Wisden, and represent a tradition that dates back to 1889, making this the oldest individual award in cricket. Excellence in and/or influence on the previous English summer are the major criteria for inclusion as a Cricketer of the Year. No one can be chosen more than once.

WISDEN SCHOOLS CRICKETER OF THE YEAR

Thomas Abell

The Schools Cricketer of the Year, based on first-team performances during the previous English summer, is chosen by Wisden’s schools correspondent in consultation with the editor of Wisden and other experienced observers of schools cricket. The winner’s school must be in the UK, play cricket to a standard approved by Wisden’s schools correspondent and provide reports to this Almanack.

WISDEN BOOK OF THE YEAR

Bookie Gambler Fixer Spy by Ed Hawkins

The Book of the Year is selected by Wisden’s guest reviewer; all cricket books published in the previous calendar year and submitted to Wisden for possible review are eligible.

WISDEN–MCC CRICKET PHOTOGRAPH OF THE YEAR

was won by Anthony Au-Yeung

The Wisden–MCC Cricket Photograph of the Year is chosen by a panel of independent experts; all images on a cricket theme photographed in the previous calendar year are eligible.

Full details of past winners of all these honours can be found at www.wisden.com

NOTES BY THE EDITOR

On an overcast, late August afternoon in the ECB’s clean-cut offices at Lord’s, English cricket tried to put a brave face on a miserable month. Andrew Strauss looked wistful but resolute as he resigned the captaincy following the loss of a Test series and the No. 1 ranking, both to South Africa. Beside him sat Alastair Cook, in the same sensible grey suit that spoke of a very British response to a crisis, of keeping calm and carrying on. Kevin Pietersen hovered in spirit, if not in person. And next up for the Test team was a tour of India, perhaps the last place to sort out a domestic. As the room filled with uncharitable thoughts of a hospital pass from a man who played fly-half at university, Cook did well not to drop the ball.

Things were about to get worse. After flunking their World Twenty20 defence in Sri Lanka (though without Cook), England were thrashed in the First Test at Ahmedabad, leaving them one defeat away from matching the record eight they had suffered in 1984, 1986 and 1993, an era when English summers were nothing without a fiasco or three. Exasperatingly, they were being made to look fools by Asia’s spinners yet again. Would someone please change the record? Did anyone even know how?

Even now, the answers seem implausible. In a heady fortnight, England won at Mumbai, then Kolkata. Soon, Christmas was coming early: on December 17, in a wood-panelled conference room at the Vidarbha Cricket Association Stadium in Nagpur, Cook could finally relax. A turgid draw had secured a 2–1 win, instantly established his authority and drawn some sort of line under the year’s traumas. Crisis management wasn’t supposed to be this straightforward.

England have won Test series from unpromising positions before: the Ashes of 1954-55, 1981 and 2005; India in 1984-85 and Sri Lanka in 2000-01. But there may never have been a set of circumstances so loaded in the opposition’s favour. Others would have battened down the hatches and waited for spring. Cook came out fighting, bloody-minded but with a clarity of thought, taking on India’s slow bowlers with a more open stance, lighter footwork and straighter hitting. Only freak occurrences could stop him: a first-over stumping, a first-ever run-out, a pair of umpiring gaffes.

In the course of three hundreds, a trio to rank with any by an England cricketer, he grew into a leader of men – first equalling, then breaking, the national record of 22 centuries in Tests, which seemed to have stood since biblical times. Throw in the 2010-11 Ashes, and he had now scored 1,328 runs at an average of 102, with six hundreds, in England’s two most significant away wins of the modern era. For once, Bradmanesque felt not like a cliché, but the only adjective up to the job.

As with all good captains, Cook coaxed and cajoled. Matt Prior fed off his defiance during the follow-on at Ahmedabad. At Mumbai, Pietersen – now cock of the walk, not elephant in the room – compiled his own third hall-of-fame innings of the year, after Colombo and Headingley. Monty Panesar, mistakenly omitted at first, settled into a mesmeric groove. James Anderson and Steven Finn found reverse swing in Kolkata. Graeme Swann chipped away, troubling not merely left-handers. By the time Jonathan Trott and Ian Bell were grinding out hundreds at Nagpur, England had rediscovered the joys of team spirit.

Victory in India was as stirring as it was unexpected, for earlier in the year there had been a damning hint of the malaise that struck after 2005. By their own admission, England were complacent at the start of 2012 in the UAE against Pakistan. And in the First Test against Sri Lanka at Galle in March, they tested out Einstein’s definition of insanity, sweeping straight balls again and again while appearing to expect a different result. After brushing aside West Indies in the first part of the summer, they were then outclassed by South Africa, who spent the year establishing themselves as the world’s best Test team, and the start of 2013 confirming it.

The defeat at Lord’s prompted Strauss to suggest that England preferred being “hunter” rather than “hunted”, which said a lot about the national sporting psyche. But they had been seduced by talk of a legacy: committing the oldest crime in cricket’s book, they took their eye off the ball. Cook demanded his players refocus, and so joined Douglas Jardine, Tony Greig and David Gower as the only England captains to win a Test series in India. The London Olympics didn’t hand out gold medals for pleasant surprises but, in the most memorable year for British sport, the cricketers had finally chipped in.

We really need to talk about Kevin

Tea was approaching on the second day at Nagpur when Anderson bowled Virender Sehwag for a duck and ran straight into the arms of Pietersen at backward point. The explanation was disappointingly simple, a case of falling headlong into the nearest embrace. But the symbolism! After a year in which Pietersen bestrode social media like a virtual colossus, here was the strangest thing: a real-life exchange with a previously hostile team-mate, and not a BlackBerry or an “LOL” in sight. It felt like a modern morality tale.

There were moments in 2012 when Pietersen’s behaviour appeared to recall the Italian footballer Giorgio Chinaglia, who was once asked if it was true he had played with Pelé. “No,” he said. “Pelé played with me.” Cricket, some suspected, existed only as an extension of Pietersen’s whims (and unlike team, cricket definitely had an “i” in it). Emboldened by a lucrative new Indian Premier League deal, he was arrogant, attempting to bulldoze over the terms of his central contract. He was self-pitying, claiming he had never been looked after. And he was a man apart, sending silly texts to the South Africans.

What happened next was a mishmash in many genres. A soap opera became a panto when Pietersen was booed at a county match in Southampton. His team-mates cast themselves in a Whitehall farce, giggling in the wardrobe as Pietersen was mocked on a fake Twitter account. Other nations enjoyed a comedy in several acts, not least when his role at the World Twenty20 was confined to a TV studio. And over in the Theatre of the Absurd, ECB chairman Giles Clarke spoke of reintegration – cricket’s noun of the year. Then there was Nagpur’s Bollywood hug. We await the musical.

The inner workings of the English game were thrust into the spotlight. Despite armchair diagnoses, only the dressing-room knew just how troublesome Pietersen had become; for outsiders to lecture Andy Flower on man-management was plain ludicrous. But as his exile dragged on, the ECB began to look petty, if they showed their faces at all. Pietersen’s pursuit of Twenty20’s riches at the expense of the Test side – the format which had made his name – was unattractive, although these attitudes can filter down from the top. And if there was a have-cake-and-eat-it feel to his simultaneous grouse about excessive cricket and his yearning for the IPL, it was hard to ignore a wider truth: a bloated schedule has asked the players to make unfair choices. The dilemma is not going away, however much English cricket wishes it would.

Earlier in the year, there had been a hint of double standards, too. When Stuart Broad branded county newspaper reporters “liars”, “muppets” and “jobsworths” – on Twitter, naturally – the slurs evaporated into cyberspace. Yet when Pietersen questioned the commentary credentials of Nick Knight, who works for Sky Sports, bankrollers of the English game, he was fined. Insults were being graded by the supposed importance of their victims.

But all was not lost. In India, England were a better, more watchable, team for the inclusion of a fully engaged Pietersen. And, painful though the process was, the ECB had waylaid his international retirement. More than that, they may have saved a man from himself. Pietersen, it turned out, needed England more than he realised, just as England were acknowledging they would prefer not to live without Pietersen; no one said marriages of convenience were easy. Yet amid it all were perhaps the stirrings of a realisation – that while hero-worship at the IPL may feed the ego, a long Test career is more likely to nourish the soul.

Tired but not emotional

Strauss deserved better than the finale he got, but his response to the turmoil that dominated the run-up to the Lord’s Test against South Africa showed why he had been one of England’s most respected captains. Diplomatic and authoritative, he emitted just the right sort of anger – steam, not lava. And when he told team-mates of his retirement, he did so by letter. He treated others with respect as a matter of course; usually, they returned the favour.

Like Cook, Strauss had inherited a mess involving Pietersen, and set about the repair work with diligence and honesty. Between England’s defeat on his first trip in charge, in the West Indies in early 2009, and the loss to Pakistan nearly three years later, Strauss led them to seven Test series wins and a draw. He won the Ashes home and away, becoming only the second Englishman – after Len Hutton – to achieve the feat in two full series against a full-strength Australia. All that had been missing was victory in Asia and against South Africa, though even the 1–1 draw there in 2009-10 was cast in his own unflappable image.

It was odd to think that, less than a month before everything unravelled, England might have topped the world rankings in all three formats had it not rained in Birmingham during the one-day thrashing of Australia. While it’s true that Strauss quit Twenty20s in 2009 and 50-over internationals in 2011, he could claim some credit for creating a dressing-room which had grown to expect success. That – and not the confusion at Lord’s – was his true gift to the English game.

Yet there was a regret that went beyond the events of the summer. Strauss had been full-time captain for only three and a half years. Graeme Smith, his resilient South African counterpart, took charge in April 2003. Smith did assume the job as a far younger man, but there was a more significant discrepancy: in the period in which Strauss captained in 45 Tests, Smith did so in 27. Neither figure was ideal. South Africa don’t play enough series of four games or more; England play too much full stop. Even without the burdens of the limited-overs roles, Strauss had every right to be worn out. Here’s wishing Cook a prosperous reign. It may be too much to hope for a long one.

The roaring forties

It is often said, usually by bowlers, that cricket is a batsman’s game. But South Africa’s pace attack have blithely ignored the maxim. Not long before they dismantled England, Dale Steyn, Vernon Philander and Morne Morkel had blown Australia away for 47 at Cape Town. Then, at the start of 2013, they humiliated New Zealand (45 at Cape Town) and, with the help of Jacques Kallis, Pakistan (49 at Johannesburg). There had been only 17 totals of under 50 in Tests before this trail of destruction, and 11 of those came before the Second World War. England’s nadir against the South Africans last summer was a positively zenith-like 240, which history may yet record as some kind of triumph.

The power of three

Perhaps we should have been surprised they were playing South Africa at all. In between their 2012 meeting and the next, in 2015-16, England will have played 24 Tests against either Australia or India. By the end of the 2015 Ashes, the Australians will have visited this country for bilateral series five summers out of seven. And when Australia arrived in India in February 2013, it was for the fifth Border–Gavaskar Trophy series in six years. The main reason given for England’s hosting of Australia for five one-day internationals last season was mutual back-scratching: Australia are hosting England in a pre-World Cup triangular tournament in 2014-15. The third nation? That will be India.

The players from these three teams may grow sick of the sight of each other, but the accountants will probably not. Last summer’s downgrade of South Africa’s visit to a three-Test series for the first time in 18 years was a woeful piece of planning that could not be explained away entirely by the Olympics.

Part of the charm of the big series resides in its sense of occasion. But ten straight Ashes Tests from July to January will be less of an occasion, more of a routine. And if the cycle of two series against Australia every four years was disturbed to spare England winters containing both an Ashes and a World Cup, then no such excuse can be made for Australia’s swift return here in 2015. Not since the start of the 20th century, when only three sides played Test cricket, have 15 Ashes matches been crammed into so short a span.

Last year, we fretted about Twenty20 overkill. That process continued when Sri Lanka cancelled Test series against West Indies and South Africa in 2013 because of the IPL and their own 20-over league, while South Africa themselves replaced the Boxing Day Test with a game of Twenty20 against New Zealand. Now we face another extreme: over the next three years, one of the most durable encounters in all sport will be stretched to its limit. Administrators will point to full houses as proof that all is well. But a little of the magic will be lost.

Ever increasing circles

It remains to be seen how Australia’s talented but injury-prone seamers cope with ten successive Ashes Tests, although Michael Clarke has done his best to portray rotation as a necessary evil. The Australian hierarchy have even come up with a condescending piece of jargon for their policy. All hail “informed player management”. England, who are resigned to it as well, prefer the less slippery “rotation”. You get the gist.

Yet you wonder about the point of it all if, fitness permitting, teams are disinclined to field their strongest side – a basic principle of international sport which, thanks to the schedule, has been made to look like a hopeless ideal. England’s one-day defeat in India in January 2013 rang hollow without Trott, Anderson, Broad and Swann. Spectators wondering which star players they won’t be seeing any time soon may sympathise with the French existentialist philosopher who once asked for a coffee without cream. “We’re out of cream,” said the waitress. “Would you like it without milk instead?”

Even Andy Flower admitted defeat in November, agreeing to hand England’s limited-overs coaching duties to Ashley Giles. This was presented as a piece of forward thinking by the ECB. And in the circumstances it probably was: if an HGV needed to get from Portsmouth to Aberdeen and back in 24 hours, you’d hope for two drivers. But when cricket’s talent has to job-share to stay awake at the wheel, you know something is wrong.

A turn for the worse?

Comparisons flowed with Jim Laker and Tony Lock while Swann and Panesar were harvesting their 19 wickets at Mumbai in November. Swann is now at Nottinghamshire and Panesar at Sussex but, like Surrey’s Laker and Lock, they were once team-mates, at lowly Northamptonshire. This is relevant, for what happened at the Wankhede came with a health warning – and not just for India’s batsmen.

The county circuit has not traditionally offered spinners much solace. Swansea used to do a bit, as did the Essex outgrounds and Old Trafford. But Wantage Road would rag square – excessively so in the end, and Swann and Panesar had to learn about bowling on less helpful pitches too. But show them a turner, especially one with the pace that was on offer in Mumbai, and they will show you how to exploit it.

The spinner’s paradise has now vanished from county cricket altogether. Last season, the weather didn’t help. Neither did a fixture list in which half the Championship matches were over by June 9, when slow bowlers in England are still coming out of hibernation. But it is also a question of attitude. Points penalties just aren’t worth the risk, and since Northamptonshire were caught out in 1998 even their pitches have retreated into the Stepford Wives blandness of the domestic game. Just as endemic is a culture in which captains prefer the safety-first of medium-pace: among English-qualified spinners who will still be playing in 2013, only Chris Nash of Sussex and Steven Croft of Lancashire finished in the top 30 of last summer’s national averages. And even Nash and Croft would not describe themselves as frontline spinners.

Slow bowlers on the up, such as David Wainwright, Danny Briggs and Simon Kerrigan, are battling a system in which not one of the 18 first-class headquarters in England can be regarded as spin-friendly; the gradual disappearance of outgrounds further precludes variety. If England are to keep winning Tests in India, this has to change – with pitch liaison officers instructed to show more leniency to turners than seamers. Peter Such, appointed last summer as the ECB’s spin guru, is aware of the conundrum, and will need to bring to his job all the resolve he once showed while making a 72-minute duck for England.

Cricket’s crown princes

Of course, you have to be careful what you wish for. In India, it turns out, they have a different problem: the wrong kind of spin. Throughout the Test series against England, their captain M. S. Dhoni pleaded for the magic formula that would help his side exact revenge for the 2011 whitewash. But no groundsman could play the sorcerer’s apprentice. After India had taken the lead at somnolent Ahmedabad, Mumbai was too quick, Kolkata ended up helping England’s seamers, and Nagpur died a slow death.

Dhoni claimed that India’s defeat, only their fourth in a home Test series in a quarter of a century, was nothing compared with the pain of the first-stage exit at the 2007 World Cup, which was either disingenuous or deeply worrying. But the result was the lesson the cricketing world wanted India to learn: power has its uses – and its limits. When Prabir Mukherjee, Eden Gardens’ 83-year-old curator, refused to do the BCCI’s bidding, he also set an example to the non-Indian members of the ICC.

We may, though, have to defer our hope that power will spawn responsibility. Interviewed by ESPNcricinfo shortly before the Mumbai Test, BCCI president N. Srinivasan was asked about the IPL’s global impact, and whether his board should be “thinking about world cricket”. He got full marks for brutal honesty: “There’s a lot that the BCCI is doing for Indian cricket.” Srinivasan was also asked about the possibility of an IPL window, which would restore at least some order to the Future Tours Programme. He replied: “You must understand that it is not ICC who can offer a window. The FTP is among ten members, so ten members decide.” Srinivasan knows very well how votes tend to be cast at the ICC – and why.

Last summer, the people of Liechtenstein went to the polls to vote on the right of Crown Prince Alois to veto the results of referendums: three-quarters wanted the veto to remain. The ICC’s Full Members had already undergone their Liechtenstein moment when no one properly challenged the BCCI’s instant rejection of the Woolf Review, which had called for the game’s governing body (the ICC, that is, not the BCCI) to adopt greater transparency and an independent executive board, among other doomed proposals. As long as a majority of Full Member nations remain in India’s pocket, administrators can peddle the illusion that cricket’s politics operate in a free world.

And then there were not very many

It seems inadequate to talk about Sachin Tendulkar in terms of an era: in cricket’s geology he’s a one-man eon. But his struggles against England came after the Test retirements of Rahul Dravid, V. V. S. Laxman and Andrew Strauss. Ricky Ponting and Mike Hussey quickly followed. One day soon, we will be without Jacques Kallis and Mahela Jayawardene. An age of distinguished batsmen, brought up before Twenty20 asked a generation to recalibrate their loyalties, will soon die out.

But these names go beyond nostalgia. They are or were not just prolific run-getters, but ambassadors; and if Ponting occasionally belonged to the plainer-speaking school of diplomacy, his concern for cricket’s well-being was in his genes. When these men speak, others listen; they are not rent-a-quotes. Dravid was already a member of MCC’s world cricket committee before he retired, and Strauss has an executive role written all over him. The appointment of Anil Kumble as chairman of the ICC’s cricket committee was a good move. But too many slip through the net. It would be a shame if they are allowed to drift away from the running of the game, which needs more globally respected former players to reassert cricket’s integrity.

This is not mere window-dressing. Cricket’s fight against corruption continues to strike an underwhelming note. Once more, the most revealing work into the subcontinent’s betting markets came from a journalist: Ed Hawkins’s Bookie Gambler Fixer Spy is Wisden’s Book of the Year. But its suggestion of foul play at the 2011 World Cup semi-final between India and Pakistan met a predictable fate: the ICC rejected the claim, the BCCI expressed outrage. The suggestion may be wrong, but we are yet to hear how the tweet sent to Hawkins by an Indian bookmaker could so accurately map out the course of the Pakistan innings that day in Mohali.

To dismiss him as a publicity-seeker, as some did, was facile: the book has yet to be written whose author hopes for poor sales. And the moral high horse is no place to keep in touch with events on the ground – recently retired players are closer to reality than any ex-businessman, lawyer or even policeman. Cricket owes it to itself to listen. Yet the perception is that our sport is concerned primarily with safeguarding its reputation – and all too willing to turn a blind eye.

Still hazy after all these years

In August, the Surrey spinner Murali Kartik was jeered at Taunton after he Mankaded Somerset’s Alex Barrow. Kartik had already warned Barrow about backing up too far, and was not breaking any law. Still, Surrey later said sorry, compelled by some nebulous nod to the spirit of cricket. It was the wrong way round, like the English habit of apologising after someone has stepped on your foot. The contrition should have been Barrow’s, for trying to pinch a few yards that weren’t his to pinch.

It is unclear whether this topsy-turviness has its roots in the historical subservience of prole bowlers to bourgeois batsmen; or in the fact that the man who gave his name to the deed in the late 1940s, India’s Vinoo Mankad, was cheeky enough to enact it at Sydney, a bastion of cricket’s white ruling classes. Either way, it’s time to move on – and for the batsmen to stop acting hard done by.

Players applaud the spirit of cricket in theory, but struggle with it in practice. Occasionally the notion can act as a corrective; mainly it is too vague, which may be why MCC’s Spirit of Cricket Cowdrey Lecture usually addresses its theme only in the loosest sense. After delivering last year’s speech, Tony Greig chatted on stage with Mark Nicholas, Derek Underwood and Stuart Broad. Up cropped the subject of walking – a spirit of cricket favourite. The four pros were unanimous: walking was a waste of time. Not for them the conceit that cricket should have to elevate itself above the standards of everyday life.

Greig’s death in late December inadvertently reawakened the debate. His alliance with Kerry Packer to set up World Series Cricket was regarded as the ultimate betrayal of the game’s spirit. Yet by forcing the national boards to accept they had been paying their best players less than was fair, Greig did a favour to every cricketer who succeeded him. The jeers at Taunton suggest the spirit of cricket remains an elusive notion.

Growing pains

Jim Troughton definitely smelled of champagne as he emerged from a raucous dressing-room on a sunny September afternoon in Worcester. Fair enough, too, for his Warwickshire side had just secured the Championship with a round of matches to spare, and the players were drinking not just to celebrate, but to forget the pain of 2011, when Lancashire pipped them to the title on the final afternoon. But this whiff of glory was more noticeable for being slightly incongruous: county cricket and glamour rarely rub shoulders, and they will do so even less from 2014, when the Twenty20 Cup is due to take place throughout the summer, not in a block in June and July, as previously.

In fact, there is something to be said for this. With most games scheduled for Friday evenings, spectators may finally be able to get to grips with the calendar. The threat of the jet stream again heading south and staying put will be less serious for a competition not played in one go. And counties may be obliged to employ fewer overseas players, since Twenty20 specialists are less likely to pop in and out – a trend that has damaged the rapport between them and their clubs and fans.

But this is an issue that has been fought over by 18 counties, all with their own priorities. And so there is a flip side. Twenty20 without glamour is like Test cricket without the forward defensive, or one-day internationals without another paranoid tweak of the playing regulations. Other countries stage their Twenty20 domestic tournaments in a block, which – like it or not – suits the format’s biggest stars, their suitcases never quite unpacked. The Morgan Review proposed the change from 2014; it did so with the best of intentions, and the counties are acutely conscious of the need for stardust. But the tournament risks evoking a nice cuppa rather than a glass of bubbly. Ten years after it first hit the county scene, our Twenty20 cricket could be heading for middle age before it has reached its teens.

Are you sitting comfortably?

The tiff between Test Match Special and Test Match Sofa, a group of friends who began providing ball-by-ball commentary on the web in 2009, might normally have been dismissed as a piece of media self-importance. But it was more than that. For while TMS were far from flattered by what they regarded as Sofa’s imitation, they knew there was no law to stop them. At first, the ECB were annoyed too, fearing a dilution of the radio rights, for which the BBC had paid – but at the start of 2012 the deal was renewed, for six years.

Naturally, the friction has suited the underdog. But were Sofa really treading on TMS’s toes – or even endangering the ECB’s earnings? And why has no one followed Sofa’s lead, as some have feared? (Answer: because live commentary takes time, effort and money.) Besides, the two have different audiences; it’s hard to imagine that all the 20,000 or so who tuned in on a daily basis to Sofa during the India–England Tests had come from TMS’s large and loyal listenership.

TMS retains four major advantages: its history, its stars, its professionalism, and its status as a rights-holder, which allows access to venues, players and the big-match buzz. To fret over Sofa is like Barbra Streisand falling out with the manager of the local karaoke bar. Sofa needn’t be seen as a menace, either to a radio institution whose longevity is part of its appeal, or to the ECB’s bottom line. Cricket needs all the friends it can get. It ought to be the richer for two disparate voices, united by one passion.

What’s come to perfection perishes

You may have noticed that Wisden is celebrating its 150th edition – in plain English, its sesquicentennial. A certain amount of self-regard is inevitable, but not, we trust, too much. Anyway, you never know what is lurking among the family silver.

The Almanack has always striven for accuracy, while being forlornly aware that this is far from the same thing as perfection. In 1950, the report of Cambridge University’s match against Yorkshire recorded three debutants for the county: the third of them was Fred Trueman, “a spin bowler”. In 1976, praise was lavished on “the amazing Kallicharran”, after Viv Richards ran out three Australians in the World Cup final. And in 2009, the name of the Haileybury bowler was given as J. W. D. Hughes-D’Aeth, when it should have been W. J. D. Hughes-D’Aeth, as any fule kno.

But these things happen in a publication that has been weighing in at 1,000 pages for 90 years, and at 1,500 since 1999; this year’s edition takes the total number in the Almanack since 1864 to 133,491. The miracle is that these things don’t happen more often. If you find an error in the 150th, please be gentle.

THE KP SUMMER

It’s tough being Kevin

PATRICK COLLINS

A few weeks after the close of the 2012 season, Geoffrey Boycott used his pulpit in the Daily Telegraph to tell Kevin Pietersen some home truths. Cricket, he said, was a unique sport in the way it accommodated individuals within a team framework. He explained: “There is room for talented people because nobody wants to watch 11 robots. There is even room for awkward so-and-sos, as long as everyone is clear about the team objective and the individual doesn’t put ‘I’ before ‘team’.” And he concluded: “When Alexandre Dumas wrote The Three Musketeers, their motto was exactly what it should be in cricket: ‘All for one and one for all.’ I think Kevin has forgotten that.”

It was easy to imagine the derision in the Pietersen camp. Here was Boycott, the ultimate awkward so-and-so, championing the cause of the collective. Why, it was practically a definition of hypocrisy. Who could take him seriously? The answer, I suspect, is a substantial majority of the cricket-following public.

The English game has always revered its gifted nonconformists. From the likes of Compton and Trueman, through to Botham and Flintoff, special indulgence has been granted to those who ruffle the feathers and raise the spirits. Some may have feet of clay, others may be characters verging on caricatures, yet affectionate memory cherishes the purple passage, the golden hour. Pietersen has given us many such moments, yet affection continues to elude him. There are reasons for this, and most of them involve self-absorption, self-promotion and a distressing absence of self-awareness. Boycott’s analysis feels uncomfortably accurate.

Clearly, things would have been far easier had the player not possessed so much talent. A mundane Test cricketer would have been cast aside with sympathetic platitudes and sighs of relief. Terms such as “difficult” and “disruptive” would have been murmured at unattributable briefings, and the phrase “not a team player” would have carried the force of a professional obituary.

But Pietersen is different, his ability unquestioned and his Test record formidable. He has achieved the kind of eminence which enables him to be known by his finest innings. There was the 158 to secure the 2005 Ashes at The Oval, and the nerveless 227 at Adelaide in 2010-11. Then, in 2012, came three of the finest innings the modern game has known: in Colombo, at Headingley, and most dramatically, most violently, at Mumbai.

His batting has also evoked comparisons with some of the great ones, most frequently Hammond and Dexter. Once, as I passed a bibulous lunch in the Harris Garden at Lord’s, I heard an elderly member assert that Pietersen was “the closest thing to Jessop I’ve ever seen”. Since the Croucher played his last Test in 1912, the claim seemed a touch implausible, yet heads nodded approvingly.

In fairness, the richness of Pietersen’s talent can unhinge even the most sober of judges. When the mood is upon him, he bats like a demented philanthropist. His improvisations are stunning, his imagination is beguiling. He invents strokes, seemingly on a whim, and he has the eye, the timing and the grizzly strength to bring them off with a flourish. On such days, he reduces the science of field placing to a quivering lottery.

Similarly the bowling. One recalls the bellowing bewilderment of Dale Steyn as Pietersen flipped him through midwicket en route to his 149 at Headingley. Allan Donald, South Africa’s bowling coach, described the performance as “the innings of a bit of a genius”. No, reservations about Pietersen do not concern his skills.

Yet reservations exist, and they are both real and relevant. Indeed, they may be traced back to when he left his native land. He departed with a flounce, citing an unconvincing quarrel with the quota system. Certainly the move to England opened up the kind of commercial opportunities which were less easily available at home, yet his instincts and his attitudes remained essentially South African. As one of his former colleagues put it: “He even retained that famous South African sense of humour.”

So his course was set. Aware that an English mother and four years’ residence would enable him to play Test cricket for his adopted country, he worked unsparingly on his game. Just as nobody ever questioned Pietersen’s ability, they never doubted his diligence. He had a proper respect for his own burgeoning talent, and he refined it over hour upon arduous hour in the county nets at Nottingham.

But still popularity evaded him. Some tell us he has always wanted to be loved. Others, more perceptively, observe he has a strange way of showing it. In the course of a distinguished career, Jason Gallian played three Tests for England and scored more than 15,000 first-class runs, yet he is destined to be chiefly remembered as the Nottinghamshire captain who hurled Pietersen’s kit from the dressing-room balcony at Trent Bridge.

Earlier in the match, Pietersen had told his skipper he wasn’t happy, that the pitch wasn’t up to his standards, and that he wanted to leave. He said he was surprised and disappointed at Gallian’s reaction. He joined his chum Shane Warne at Hampshire in the winter of 2004, won his first Test cap the following season, and made just one Championship appearance for the county in the next five years. “Geographically, it just doesn’t work,” explained Pietersen, helpfully. “I live in Chelsea.” Before joining Surrey, he thanked all and sundry “for the support I have had during my time at the Rose Bowl”. Once again, he seemed surprised when his departure was not widely mourned.

In this respect, as in many others, his reactions resemble those of the professional footballer. Loyalty to club or country is often lightly bestowed. When Pietersen first started playing for England, he said: “You are brought up to be loyal to the country you are in, but I have never been totally patriotic to South Africa.” Upon touring that country, he announced: “I just sat back and laughed at the opposition, with their swearing and ‘traitor’ remarks… Some of them can hardly speak English. My affiliation is with England. In fact, I’m going to get a tattoo, with three lions and my number underneath… No one can say I’m not English.”

The power of the trite gesture: kiss a badge, choose a tattoo, assert your allegiance with a needle. As football long since discovered, it is a crashingly simple and curiously effective ploy.

England were swift to embrace this stunning talent. He announced himself during that tumultuous Ashes series of 2005, and set a pace which rarely faltered. Occasionally, there would be criticism of a reckless dismissal, but his sheer weight of runs provided an eloquent response. They gave him celebrity status, and he greeted it like an old mate. No longer Kevin Pietersen, he became “KP”, maker of headlines and friend of the famous. The brighter the spotlight, the more he appeared to relish it. As England captain, Michael Vaughan handled him astutely. “You can see how he winds people up, but he just needs managing,” Vaughan would say.

Managing him was one thing, but giving him the keys to the train set was quite another. The captaincy of England demands all manner of qualities which Pietersen quite clearly has never possessed. And yet, in the face of all the evidence, he was chosen to succeed Vaughan. He lasted for three Tests and five months before the ECB sacked him, a removal they presented as a resignation. The details of his ham-fisted attempt to depose coach Peter Moores are now the stuff of history, although when they come to write the textbook of witlessly incompetent coups, they may well find space for the Pietersen Manoeuvre, which involves issuing a “back me or sack me” ultimatum before disappearing on a winter-sun holiday in South Africa.

As ever, the small incidents stuck in the mind. There was his eager espousal of the terminally naff. He once asked for a meeting with Simon Cowell, and emerged, star-struck, to declare: “That guy’s a legend!” Then, shortly before the infamous Stanford tournament in Antigua, he fatuously insisted he would be as keyed up as on the first morning of an Ashes series. Little things, yet they illustrated an attitude which was hopelessly ill-suited to the task of leading the national team.

England were fortunate in that the entire, turbulent affair enabled them to give the job to the man who ought to have had it in the first place, and Andrew Strauss became one of the finest Test captains of the modern era. Yet they were also fortunate in Pietersen’s response to his reduction to the ranks. Piqued, he simply toiled at his technique. His consolation came in his enormously lucrative association with the Indian Premier League, a competition which helped lift him from mere affluence to genuine wealth.

And Strauss appreciated the efforts his predecessor was making. “Nine-tenths of my time as England captain, I found him a good guy to have in my team,” he would say. “He set the right example in practice, and I felt he could have been far more resentful of me in the sense that he had been removed as captain before I took over.” From time to time, Pietersen’s real feelings would emerge, as in the aftermath of the successful Ashes defence in 2010-11: “You know what, I have never said this before, but I got rid of the captaincy for the good of English cricket, and we would not be here today if I had not done what I did then.” Thus was history bizarrely rewritten.

By now, there were rumours that Pietersen was not getting on with colleagues. This was not a complete surprise. Graeme Swann’s clunking conviction that he has a talent to amuse is not to every taste while, on his day, Stuart Broad appears capable of out-preening Pietersen. But nothing prepared us for the sky falling in during the second half of 2012.

Again, the bare bones are familiar. Pietersen announced his retirement from one-day internationals, which instantly invoked a clause in his central contract preventing him from playing Twenty20 cricket for England too. The storm broke at the close of the Headingley Test, as Pietersen threw a titanic strop at the press conference. It was part-truculent: “I’ve gotta go home. I’m not waiting for Strauss.” It was part-paranoid: “You’re gonna make me out to be the bad guy.” But it was mostly bathetic, gloriously so: “It’s tough being me.” He suggested that the next Test, at Lord’s, might be his last. It was evidently designed to threaten, but came out in the manner of Miss Violet Elizabeth Bott: “I’ll scream and scream until I’m sick!”

Then the claim that he had insulted his own captain in text messages to the South Africans tossed a gallon of petrol on to the flames. Strauss was widely acknowledged as a figure of dignity and gravitas, the kind of individual rarely found in public life, far less in international sport. Unconvincingly, Pietersen insisted the texts were “provocative” without being derogatory, but the uncomfortable reality had already dawned. Hence his celebrated YouTube clip, in which a disembodied voice, apparently his agent’s, fed him some gentle full tosses masquerading as questions, and he answered with a series of wooden clichés.

He renounced his decisions. He would play whenever, and in whatever form, England requested: “I can’t wait to play in Straussy’s 100th Test match next week. These things make me happy.” Headingley had been a mistake: “I am who I am in terms of shooting from the hip occasionally. I bat like that [self-conscious smile, reeking of rehearsal].” It was sensationally awful.

Pietersen was dropped for Straussy’s 100th Test, with the skipper remarking that his place was “untenable”. Warne, sounding not at all like a crass Australian stereotype, suggested the two men could have “gone down the pub and had a beer. And if they’d punched the absolute whatever out of each other to sort it out, so be it”. Strauss announced his retirement, insisting it had absolutely nothing to do with the Pietersen affair. Before making his retirement public, he spent half a day composing personal, handwritten letters to every player. He didn’t write to Pietersen; instead, he made do with a text message.

Pietersen was left out of the squad for the one-day matches with South Africa, as well as the World Twenty20 but, after some faintly demeaning negotiations, he was brought back for England’s tour of India. The new captain, Alastair Cook, gritted his teeth and said: “Time hopefully will be a healer, and we will be able to move on.”

Much was made of Pietersen’s “reintegration”, and the extraordinary innings at Mumbai represented stunning evidence of how much he had to offer the England cause. An abiding image of the celebrations which followed their series victory is of Pietersen grinning at the camera, the autographs of his team-mates scrawled across his shirtfront. The picture positively screamed “reintegration”, and the message was convincingly conveyed.

Yet, awkwardly, some recalled his character traits, his unfortunate habit of listening only to bad advice, of taking unsound decisions, of allowing ego to overrule judgment. And they recalled the assessment of a wise old pro. During the summer, Derek Pringle had cast a cold eye over the central character in this dubious drama and delivered a sombre verdict. “Like Shakespeare’s seven ages of man, cricketers have three phases of their playing life,” he wrote. “At first, they play for love and experience, then, as they begin to improve, they play for glory, before they spend their dotage chasing the money. Pietersen is a brilliant batsman, but he has entered that last phase.”

Of course, the man who became KP will dismiss such caution. He plays on because it makes him happy, because it’s important to him, because he really, truly believes he is English. The old pros and the awkward so-and-sos, they’ll never understand. It’s tough being Kevin.

Patrick Collins, five times winner of the Sports Writer of the Year award, is chief sports writer for the Mail on Sunday.

KEVIN PIETERSEN AND TWITTER

A beer with Barack

JARROD KIMBER

Whether Kevin Pietersen was texting in Afrikaans, saying sorry or having his genius mocked, it all seemed to end up on Twitter. This was strange, because his own tweets were not that exciting.

He warned Roman Abramovich, Chelsea FC’s oligarch owner, not to sell Frank Lampard: “Lamps shows who the boss is today. YOU DARE, Roman!” He congratulated his old mate Yuvraj Singh on his comeback after cancer: “@yuvsingh09 great stuff pie chucker… Be strong champ!!!! #yuvstrong”. And when Sachin Tendulkar retired from one-day cricket, he ventured the view that Tendulkar had been a pretty good player: “Statistics NEVER lie! They tell a very true story. Well done Sachin! What an incredible ODI career #thebest”.

But give Pietersen a smartphone and a way of conversing with the world, and you could hardly expect him to stay out of trouble all the time. “Can somebody please tell me how Nick Knight has worked his way into the commentary box for the Tests??” he fumed in May. “Ridiculous.” It felt odd for anyone to worry about Knight, who is more likely not to pass judgment on anything, and take his time doing it. But then Pietersen did not always appear to have thought things through: during the Indian Premier League, he would chat on Twitter to the league’s former commissioner Lalit Modi, who just happened to be mid-lawsuit with ECB chairman Giles Clarke – Pietersen’s boss.

Somehow it seemed appropriate that, even when he wasn’t on Twitter, he was – in a manner of speaking. The fake account @KevPietersen24 became a social-media sensation, claiming to speak directly from his ego. Many seemed happy to suspend disbelief, and the account was followed – and commented on – by England players. At one point Pietersen himself got involved in the fun, retweeting a doctored tweet which purported to show the US president Barack Obama suggesting a beer with the fake KP. In a strange summer no one dared rule out the possibility.

But the account began to annoy him, not least because he suspected team-mates had set it up. In fact, it had been started by a friend of Stuart Broad – and, to complicate matters, on an evening when Broad was with his friend, Richard Bailey, aka @Bailsthebadger. Broad was tweeting pictures of Bailey too. Bailey admitted: “Yes the parody was me. It was for humour purposes only and as soon as I realised it was upsetting people I took it down.”

Alas for Bailey – and the England dressing-room – Piers Morgan, the former editor of the Daily Mirror and a friend of Pietersen, would not let the matter lie. Having outed Bailey in the first place, Morgan tweeted: “Broad can collude with parody KP account, Swann can slag KP off in a book – no action taken. Total, shameful hypocrisy.”

It was one of many tweets from Morgan defending Pietersen that must have confused his followers in America, where he hosted a chat show on CNN. Thanks to Morgan – in his own mind, at least, which was all that mattered – and England’s desire to win in India, Pietersen returned to the fold. After the series was sealed at Nagpur, Matt Prior tweeted: “Love this! @kevinpp24 is so reintegrated he’s walking around with all our names on his shirt!” And if it was on Twitter, who could doubt it?

THE PIETERSEN SAGA

Excommunication and reintegration

May 31

Pietersen announces his retirement from all limited-overs international cricket with immediate effect, because of “the intensity of the international schedule”.

Jun 10

Pietersen suggests the ECB alter their central contracts to allow him to play Twenty20 while skipping one-day internationals.

Jul 13

After hitting 234* for Surrey at Guildford, Pietersen confirms negotiations are in progress for a possible return in all formats. But he adds: “I cannot keep playing every single day’s cricket. I’ve never been looked after.”

Jul 18

England omit Pietersen from their provisional squad of 30 for the World Twenty20.

Aug 4

Pietersen makes 149* on the third day of the Second Test at Headingley, pointedly raising his bat in the direction of his wife, Jessica, rather than his team-mates.

Aug 6

Appearing alone in the post-match press conference, Pietersen launches an extraordinary outburst. “I can’t give any assurances that the next Test won’t be my last,” he says. “I’d like to carry on, but there are obstacles. It’s tough being me playing for England.”

Aug 9

A parody Twitter account – @KevPietersen24 – which lampoons Pietersen’s personality, is closed down by its owner Richard Bailey, a club cricketer from Melton Mowbray and a friend of Stuart Broad and Alex Hales.

Aug 10

Pietersen is reported to have sent derogatory text messages about Andrew Strauss to South African players during the Headingley Test. South Africa’s tour manager Mohammad Moosajee insists the texts contained “friendly banter”. Matt Prior phones Pietersen to try to break the impasse.

Aug 11

Pietersen posts a video on YouTube unconditionally pledging himself to England in all forms of cricket, and retracting his demand to play a full season in the next IPL.

Aug 12

England delay their squad announcement for the Lord’s Test for five hours, then leave Pietersen out after he fails to deny the texts story.

Aug 14

Pietersen apologises to the ECB by email for what he terms “provocative texts”. Broad denies he is behind the parody Twitter account.

Aug 19

Pietersen plays his first match since Headingley, for Surrey against his former county Hampshire in the CB40 at Southampton. He is booed by sections of the crowd.

Aug 24

ESPN STAR Sports confirm they have signed Pietersen for a studio analysis role during the World Twenty20.

Aug 29

Strauss retires, maintaining the Pietersen saga has nothing to do with his decision.

Sep 7

The ECB award a new round of central contracts; Pietersen’s name is missing.

Sep 18

Pietersen is left out of England’s Test squad to tour India in November.

Oct 3

Pietersen appears alongside ECB chairman Giles Clarke at a press conference in Colombo, pledging himself to England, and signs a four-month central contract. Clarke says: “In our society we believe that, when an individual transgresses and then apologises, it is important that they should be given a real opportunity to be reintegrated into our society.”

Oct 7

In a radio interview, ECB chief executive David Collier says members of the South Africa team “provoked” Pietersen into sending the texts, prompting an angry response from Cricket South Africa. Eight days later, Collier apologises.

Oct 18

Pietersen, after meeting Andy Flower, Alastair Cook and other senior players in Oxford, is added to the Test squad for India.

Nov 19

England lose heavily in Ahmedabad – Pietersen makes 17 and 2 – but go on to win the series 2–1 after a swashbuckling 186 from Pietersen in the Second Test at Mumbai.

Jan 9

ECB announce Pietersen has signed a full central contract.

Research by James Coyne

TENDULKAR’S 100 HUNDREDS

The glory was in the number

SIMON BARNES

I would have preferred 99. I thought that was enough. But on March 16, 2012, Sachin Tendulkar reached his 100th international hundred, a century of centuries. And I think there would have been more elegance – perhaps, paradoxically, more sense of completion – if he had stopped before he got there.

He had collected 51 centuries in Test cricket and another 49 in one-dayers, each an unprecedented figure on its own. When combined, they ask for a redefinition of such inadequate concepts as excellence. If you look long enough at a fine Islamic rug, you will eventually find the purposed error: the deliberate imperfection which shows that the humble artist had no thoughts of beating God at his own game; a humility concealing the arrogant thought that, without such a flaw, people might genuinely have mistaken the artist’s work for God’s.

A flaw humanises and, by doing so, reminds us that something great has been performed by someone just like us: a person who bleeds when pricked, sleeps in a bed at night, eats, digests and defecates. “Cricket is my religion, and Sachin is its God,” as the Indian cliché goes. The fact is that Tendulkar was born as we were and will die as we will ourselves. It’s harder for humans to do things in real life than it is for a god in a story. Shouldn’t we celebrate Tendulkar for his humanity, for what he achieved, despite the inevitable fallibility of humankind?

After all, Sir Donald Bradman left cricket on 99, not a hundred. Tendulkar and Bradman have long been twinned in one of sport’s impossible comparisons. Would Bradman have worn a helmet and played the Dilscoop had he been a 21st-century cricketer? Would Tendulkar have gourmandised in the manner of the Don? In a game obsessed with statistics like almost no other, Bradman has a Test average with a number that sings out to cricket followers like a line of poetry: 99.94. The poetry is all in the missing 0.06 – the six lost hundredths.

For a long while, it seemed as if Tendulkar’s ultimate stat would have the same sort of humanising fallibility, the not-quite-purposed flaw. For unending months, the figure of 99 overshadowed everything he did. He claimed he wasn’t thinking about it; certainly, he did all he could not to. But everyone else in India was mad on the subject. He couldn’t order a paratha on room service without the floor-boy asking when the 100th hundred was going to come.

India’s tour of England in 2011 was memorable for the hundred that never was. I could feel in my bones during that series – and I don’t think I was alone – that the 100th hundred would eventually come as a moment of supreme bathos. The situation demanded it. I even predicted it would be against Bangladesh or Zimbabwe. I didn’t, though I should have done, suggest it would come in a losing cause, as Bangladesh beat India by five wickets at Mirpur in the Asia Cup. The only glory of that day was in the number itself.

Which is not to say that numbers lack glory. Sport’s all-time great numbers include ten, for Pele. The figure 147 haunts snooker, to the extent that players will chase the maximum break at the expense of mere victory. Four, as in minutes and a mile, was a compelling number in athletics; similarly another type of ten, as in seconds and 100 metres. One is a magic number in golf, just as 100 is in cricket. Baseball has .400, for the batting average that has become extinct. These days, even the finest hitters average in the .300s (you get a baseball average by adding up the number of times the player hits the ball and safely reaches first base, then dividing by the number of at-bats).

The lost .400 average demonstrates one of sport’s eternal truths: that while the great players are always great, overall standards tend to rise. Dare we suggest that duffers were more common when Bradman batted? After all, of his 6,996 Test runs, 1,968 came at home against modest attacks from India, South Africa and West Indies, and at an average of 140. And though it’s true Tendulkar has made five hundreds in nine Test innings against Bangladesh, he has faced a wider variety of attacks and conditions. It may be no surprise that his average is merely in the mid-50s. Bradman got more bad balls to hit, just as the batters from baseball’s golden age got more sluggable pitches. The same principle holds true in English football: in 1927-28, Dixie Dean scored 60 league goals; in the Premier League season of 2011-12, the top scorer was Robin van Persie, with 30.

Perhaps Tendulkar’s century of centuries will become another of those lost standards: something that says important things not just about the person who achieved them, but about the times in which the record was achieved. It’s not precisely that no one could ever be as good as Bradman – just that no one will have the same opportunity to collect such an average. And perhaps that will be the same with Tendulkar’s century. For what international career in this intense age will ever last as long as his?

Other sports throw up records that seem unbeatable. When Mark Spitz won seven swimming gold medals at the Munich Olympic Games of 1972, it seemed like a record for all time. But Michael Phelps managed eight at Beijing in 2008. He now has 18 golds over three Games, and 22 medals all told. Multiple medal-winning is more possible in swimming than in any other Olympic sport, but those figures – 18 and 22 – will take a great deal of beating. Phelps and Spitz stand out over the narrative of swimming like Tendulkar and Bradman in cricket. The numbers tell the story.

There are those who believe Sir Steve Redgrave’s five golds in five successive Olympics is an even finer achievement. Rowing is an endurance event and it is hugely demanding: doubling up – and Redgrave tried that in 1988, when he won gold and a much-forgotten bronze – is considered next to impossible. Five is a number that fizzes and burns across Olympic history.

Oddly, cricket’s big numbers are more readily compared with the numbers amassed by athletes in individual sports. That’s because cricket, not quite uniquely, is a team game based on individual duels. It has always tended to celebrate the individual above the team. Every cricket follower knows that the highest individual Test innings is Brian Lara’s 400 not out against England in 2003-04 (a few can tell you, without pausing for breath, that the highest team score is 952 for six declared, by Sri Lanka against India in 1997-98).

There are two categories of statistical measures in sport: the first for one-off, or season-long, performances; the other for career-long achievements. We are obsessed by the notion of greatness in sport, and we traditionally measure this in terms of career. Tendulkar and Bradman stand out by whatever stats you care to call up, but it is their career-defining figures, the 99.94 and the 100, that really count.

I once conducted an argument in the pages of The Times with the cricket correspondent, Mike Atherton. I suggested Andrew Flintoff was a great cricketer, because he was great for a single summer that changed English cricket. Atherton said that wasn’t good enough for greatness. I’m prepared to argue my point to this day, but I have to concede that the popular measure of sporting greatness must span an entire career. (What about Bob Beamon, then?)

So, as we look for career-long stats relating to individuals, we must look first to golf. Golf is not a sport in the manner of cricket, since it requires no running about and no physical risk. Still, it is a pleasant pastime for people who are too old for sport or who lack the taste for it. The number we use to measure a golfer is 18: the major tournaments won by Jack Nicklaus.

Everyone in golf expected that number to be overhauled with insolent ease by Tiger Woods, who collected 14 while dominating that sport as no individual had ever done (as Bradman had dominated cricket, in fact). But then came the incident in November 2009 – unforgettably summed up in the headline “crouching tiger, hidden hydrant” – that precipitated Woods’s personal crisis. At the end of 2012, he remained stuck on 14. His lifetime achievement will be measured by how close he gets to, or by how far he surpasses, the figure of 18.

In tennis, the measure of greatness is the number of singles victories in the grand slam tournaments. The open-era champion here is Steffi Graf on 22, with Martina Navratilova and Chris Evert on 18 each. In the men’s game, Roger Federer is the leading all-time player with 17. Of the top four currently playing, Rafael Nadal has 11 and Novak Djokovic six. Andy Murray has one: in another era, one less stuffed like a Strasbourg goose with talent, he would surely have collected more. Yet we measure him not by his ability, but by his number.

When Federer was at the top, he was considered to be the finest player to have lifted a racket – tennis’s Bradman, nothing less. Before him came Pete Sampras. Sampras was no artist, like Federer. He had a game of brutal, pared-down simplicity: the last great serve-and-volleyer. People said that he was boring. I used to reply: well, if you find excellence boring, find something more your size. I believe wrestling is rather amusing.

I loved watching Sampras, especially at Wimbledon, as he made his inevitable march on the previous highest total of slams. He eventually passed Roy Emerson’s 12, winning 14 before he retired. Perhaps the finest tennis match I have seen was the Wimbledon final of 1999, when Andre Agassi, at the very peak of his game, played a perfect match against Sampras. But Sampras simply moved beyond perfection and beat him – impossibly, unforgettably – in straight sets.

He won the match on a second-serve ace. Afterwards, an American journo asked: “What was going through your mind at the time, Pete?” There was a baffled pause, before Sampras said: “There was absolutely nothing going through my mind at the time.”

And I was enlightened. I was enlightened in the sudden manner of a Zen follower. It was in that Zen doctrine of no-mind – the notion that too much thought gets in the way of truth – that Sampras had his being. He is, or was, the Zen master of sport. I wrote this, and later received a letter of agreement: “And I am a Zen master myself…”

There is something of the same quality in Tendulkar’s batting. It is by no means complete, and against England before Christmas every run was a struggle. But Tendulkar at his peak had, more than any other batsman I have watched, the ability to play the ball rather than the situation, to immerse himself in the moment rather than the myriad distractions. There was always that touch of serenity about him: each shot not forced, but the inevitable consequence of the question set by the bowler.

Which is why the final, slightly sordid, journey to the 100th hundred was so painful to watch. It was as if Tendulkar had set aside his strongest asset – his indifference, his serenity, his no-mindedness – and was, at the end of it all, hamstrung by numbers. Tendulkar and Bradman have each left a single unforgettable, and perhaps unbeatable, magic number. I’d still have preferred it had they both been 99.

Simon Barnes is chief sports writer of The Times.

THE FASTEST SPELL OF ALL?

Jeff Thomson is annoyed

CHRISTIAN RYAN

Jeff Thomson, running late, rolls over, sits upright, thinks of the many annoyances and injustices in his life, remembers how he hates liars and cheats, gets out of bed. He often drinks Scotch instead of beer because beer hangovers wake him up feeling bloated and lethargic. This morning he is in a lousy mood, cranky, but loose, which for Thomson is the optimum state of being for a day’s fast bowling. Without a glance in a mirror, he stuffs his white clothes under an arm and leaves the house on the last day of 1973.

The first inkling that this day’s cricket may not be like other days comes when opening batsman Rob Jeffery shapes to play a hook shot. Jeffery is young, 20, and in the space where his two front teeth should be are two false teeth, the real ones having been knocked clean out when, aged 16, he hooked and top-edged fast bowler Dave Gibson of the Waverley club. “Please pick up my teeth,” said Jeffery, seeing the teeth sitting pitchside, as he was helped off. Today he has a mouthguard on, no helmet; the cricket helmet’s invention is four years away. He, a left-hander, notices that when Thomson bowls, the ball gives the impression it is following him. Jeffery’s plan, same as Jeffery’s plan always is, is to step back in his crease and hook behind square. He goes to do exactly this, thinking “I’m in position but this ball’s on to me quicker than what a ball’s ever been” – except the thought is barely half hatched, some kind of skating premonition, because this ball actually is on him, on his right shoulder, bulleting into it, a blast of agony, then Jeffery feels his legs crumpling from beneath and his body toppling backwards on to the stumps.

Until this instant, the nine batsmen yet to bat have sat at ease, on the grass, sort of watching, sort of not bothering. Now, heads lift. Some players hop to their feet. The captain Barry Knight, who played 29 times for England, feels his mind coil back to a day it hasn’t alighted on in years – Ilford, 1957, Essex against West Indies, quiet morning, the kid Roy Gilchrist bowling. Next ball whipped clear of batsman, stumps, wicketkeeper and rebounded, with an echoey pock, off the sightscreen.

Jeffery, safely on the sidelines, does not take his pads off, just sits, pads on; minutes later he sees, with a surprise, he’s shaking.

John Pym got the best view – 22 yards away, non-striker’s end – of the Jeffery ball. Pym, unlike Jeffery, is no step-back-and-attacker. If an hour and a half’s batting is up and the ball a bit bruised, Pym’s job is done. He has faced Thomson many times. Since the last time, he has read something batsman-turned-classy-journo John Benaud wrote: something about 23-year-old Jeff Thomson having turned himself into the world’s fastest bowler. So that week Pym asked Barry Knight to lug the bowling machine into the practice nets and switch the setting to a click under 100 miles an hour. One–oh–oh.

Straight away, even before Jeffery’s been hit and gone, Pym realises, “Unbelievable. This ball’s coming down at least ten per cent faster than the machine.” Pym concocts a strategy: he’ll hover on tiptoes, weightless, poised to duck or weave or block, and he will not swing his bat back at all because there is simply no time. Then the Jeffery ball explodes before his eyes. Pym’s thinking now, “I’ve got to do something, otherwise I’m gunna be target practice here.” He re-schemes things: he’ll afford himself a wafer backswing, six inches, enough to deflect the screaming ball behind square leg or through the slip cordon and no glorious-uncertainty-of-cricket way known will a fielder risk laying a hand on it. The first time he tries this the bat jabs back five of the preconceived six inches when – how is this happening? – the ball’s too fast for his swing, it has clipped the bat’s inside edge, leg stump’s cartwheeling. Pym is walking off, disbelieving. “Not fair” – the feeling punches him in the guts, then, “Oh well, at least I’m alive.”

Thomson has been annoyed all season. This is round ten, at Bankstown Oval, of the Sydney first-grade competition of 1973-74. It is Mosman against Bankstown, two suburbs separated by Sydney Harbour Bridge and 20-odd miles of motorway. Every cricketer in this city hears it said that the state selectors won’t cross the bridge to see Bankstown’s players. Thomson, the fourth of Don and Doreen Thomson’s five sons, grew up on Market Street, Bankstown. Two-thirds of Bankstown houses are fibro-cement constructions. In Mosman, the verandah posts are sculpted timber, and the roofs terracotta-tiled, “red-tiled roofs of comfort” the poet Henry Lawson called them, and jacaranda-lined avenues wind up hills and in semi-circles.

Bankstown bat first, scoring 186. Sometime before play the pitch, uncovered, was gently rained on. When the ball bounces, it puts a dent in the mud-like surface, and as the mud slowly dries these dents are effectively cemented in, which is the recipe for a pitch that’s pockmarked and lumpy, but later on in the afternoon, not yet. Thomson, the No. 8, crouches bent-kneed and fidgety, hacking his bat up and down in readiness like a weed-cutter’s rusty shears. Yet his 29 out of 186 is Bankstown’s second-top score. One swing of Thomson’s sends the ball orbiting high above the fieldsmen, 20 metres beyond the fence and into the nearby high school, a furious swipe.

Reasons for annoyance centre on an October evening when the New South Wales XI for the season’s opening interstate match was about to be announced. Leg-spinner Kerry O’Keeffe told Thomson you’re not in it, “oh, that’d be bullshit,” Thomson replied, but then the selectors confirmed it. Thomson’s previous first-class game had been for his country against Pakistan. None for 100, he’d taken; with a broken left foot, he’d bowled. Now he was considered not good enough for the state. Thomson carries inside him an urgent sense of right and wrong. Sometimes he leaps wrongly to the conclusion he’s been wronged; this time, no doubt, he’d been wronged, right? He rang his Bankstown captain Dion Bourne to say meet me down at Bankstown Sports Club.

“The pricks,” said Thomson. He talked about how upset he felt, about knocking people’s arms, legs, heads flying. He said it again. “Pricks.”

When Thomson bowls, the climax of a weird shuffling trot that verges on pony-like, his feet perform a last-second cross-shoe slide, then his right leg tilts and braces, his elongated left leg kicks out horizontally at the batsman, and his left arm points skywards, fingers and thumb at full stretch – so completing his temporary self-transformation into a human slingshot – and by this stage his long hair is standing up on end, his white flannels tend to be flapping out around his backside, and his eyes fix so insistently on their target that the muscular torsion this involves is visible when freeze-framed, hollowing out his cheeks and sending a crooked leer ripping across his face. It is – no other word works – beautiful. Here is one subsidiary word – eerie: the ball, dangling low, behind his back, is almost but never quite within the batsman’s sight line.

A cricket player’s physicality expresses itself mysteriously.

Behind every cricketer is another cricketer.

Thomson’s dad, Don, bowled with the same action. Years away Thomson’s own boy, Matt, will have the same action. Two other sons do not bowl often but when they do it is with the same action.

Imagine adding annoyance and a miscarriage of justice and a simmering two-month thirst for vengeance to that action. At Coogee, Drummoyne and Marrickville ovals, the wickets and casualties mounted. Against Balmain, he clipped a chunk of Balmain wicketkeeper Kerry Thompson’s ear off and the ball kept going. “A little piece of your ear’s missing,” Dion Bourne offered helpfully, “down near the fence with the ball.”

The Pym ball was an inswinging yorker. Next in is Billy King. “Same ball to Kingy,” silly mid-off Barry Thebridge wanders over to tell Thomson. “He won’t get behind ’em.” Thomson does not really need to be told. People have been underestimating Thomson’s IQ for years. They still underestimate it. But he ranked in the top five students at Condell Park Primary and had his pick of high schools – and one day in the future, in Perth, he will win not only the Fastest Bowler in the World competition but the $A1,000 bonus prize for most accurate.

Thomson bowls the same ball again. This time it is off stump that’s cartwheeling.

Greg Bush, the non-striker, who overheard the Thebridge–Thomson conversation, smiles at Thomson: “Pretty impressive.”

The hat-trick ball climbs off one of the dents in the pitch and misses Barry Hyland’s shoulder. Hyland is batting at five instead of his regular three because he is wearing new glasses. When Thomson’s next over begins it is Bush on strike. Bush turns and peers round. Something he has never seen: the slips and wicketkeeper are stationed nearer to the sightscreen than the pitch. This is Bush’s sixth first-grade match. At 18 he balances studying law with playing cricket, the thing that he loves, and 14 years from this day he will encounter the massive Barbadian Wayne Daniel on a wet Manly Oval wicket. Daniel will rifle a ball up his armpit, and he will hear Daniel’s mouth in his ear, “Hey, man, what you get behind the ball for, man, you’re mad?” That will seem like nothing next to facing Thomson today. No chance of a backswing: time only for a short-armed bunt. Even so Bush, a left-hander, is managing to discern the blur coming at him, and because Thomson is angling the ball across and away from him he feels comfortable. He gets away two scoring shots: a forward punch off a full toss, when Thomson slips a little in his run-up, and a backward jab off a short one.

Hyland’s new glasses are worrying him. Bush pokes towards gully, tries for a single, Hyland shouts no. It is overcast but not cold. The honking traffic is loud and the atmosphere dead. A hundred people, rough count, are present. The sightscreens are too low to cover the bowlers’ arms. Bush has a reputation for not scaring. Next ball, the ball after Hyland’s “no”, is the first ball on the line of Bush’s body. It pitches on leg stump, neither full nor short. One small step lands Bush squarely behind it. This ball leaps. It has its own mind. Bush thrusts his gloves and bat handle up, up to about nose level. But the ball is like a wave breaking, over the top it crashes. Bush staggers and falls. He puts a hand to his right eye. “Have a look,” he hears. He looks: blood on the glove. Thomson walks back to his bowling mark, and stands. Bush’s eye, people notice, looks to be sort of hanging, not sitting correctly in its socket, the most shocking and grotesque cricketing injury, everybody knows, that they ever have seen or will see.

Bush’s team-mates, on the boundary, heard the thud, then a crack.

Garie Beach, Norah Head, Maroubra, The Entrance: at a string of far-from-stress escape hatches along the coast of New South Wales, Thomson and his friend Lenny Durtanovich, later Pascoe, would surf and talk to girls. Thomson cannot remember a time in his life when he did not want a boat. As a kid he asked for toy boats, while dreaming of the real thing. Later, older, still not a boat owner, he and Greg, the third brother, would select some ocean rocks to stand on, and fish off them, sometimes through the night, a metal spike to cling to when the surf turned treacherous on top of them. Thomson played many sports, not just the working-class ones. In his Bankstown backyard flattened by five boys’ footfall he gouged holes in the grass, and put soup cans in the holes, to create a golf course. Beach excursions with Lenny happened Saturdays – days of no school, or work, days of invariably turning up late for cricket.

Durtanovich and Thomson were Punchbowl High partners in shooting pigs, catching fish, pulling birds, taking wickets. Durtanovich shook out eight for 21, Punchbowl v Birrong. Thomson smashed that with nine for three, Punchbowl v Belmore. Occasionally Thomson would catch sight of Alan Davidson or Graham McKenzie bowling on TV – “like watching fuckin’ paint dry”. Davidson’s inswinger dipped devastatingly late. McKenzie had a Mona Lisa of an outswinger. Not impressed, was Thomson: “pace and more pace” was more fun and also bothered batsmen. He was six when he bowled his first bumper. At 12 he’d get through 50 eight-ball overs on a Saturday, spread across Under-14s, 16s and C-grade, jogging from venue to venue on days Dad didn’t drive him. At 14 he bowled a ball that sent a wicketkeeper flying. Once, when Wes Hall ventured to the far-out western Sydney sticks to teach Australian children how to throw, Thomson threw further than Wes.

Twenty was a complicated age. Those fond of Thomson – and not many who glimpsed a layer beneath the bloodthirsty persona were not – believed that if not for the Bankstown postcode he’d have been opening the nation’s struggling Test attack with young Dennis Lillee of Western Australia. Instead that summer, 1970-71, Thomson was dropped from Bankstown first grade to third grade for an afternoon (he took ten for 31) when club officials tired of the surf/girls preoccupation and the lateness.

Thomson’s attitude to cricket was: “I mean, you have to play all afternoon, so what’s the hurry to get there?”

In the middle of Bankstown Oval lies a red pool. David Colley, the incoming batsman, sees it on his slow walk out. Greg Bush’s blood. Sort of “squeezey” looking, like squirted sauce. Sick feeling in the stomach. Red blood on white creaseline. Try not to step in it. Colley gave Bush a lift to the ground that morning. Try not to get your friend’s blood on you. Blood on the creaseline, behind it, in front of it. Red splash in the line of all three stumps. Got to know where middle stump is. Colley asks the umpire for middle and marks the spot with his boot. Red on white boot.

Colley’s presence today has been playing on every player’s mind. Colley is one of three fast bowlers – Steve Bernard and Gary Gilmour are the others – in the New South Wales team. Tapping his bat in blood he hears voices from behind. “This is the one we want, Thommo, this one’s yours.” They think Thommo should be picked for New South Wales before Colley. Thomson thinks Thommo should be picked. What else is Thomson thinking? – the usual stuff against Mosman – “pack of jerks”; “fancy bats”; “elegant and clever”. Colley himself got thinking, before heading out to bat, “I’ll try to stir Thommo up. Make him bowl short and go crazy and try to kill me. Might be my best chance.” So he put his New South Wales sweater on. Thomson sees the sweater. The day is, still, not cold. The fieldsmen standing closest think they see white in Colley’s face. Colley, inside – “I’m not going to dog it” – is fixed tight on a plan, to go back, and across, get yourself behind the ball when it comes…

The ball is fairly full and swinging in. Colley is a long way away, maybe a metre away, the place where he’s backed away. Leg and middle stumps are out of the ground. Colley sees nothing – too quick – hears nothing, and seconds later will remember nothing of this. Still, now, he cannot find the memory, and nearly 40 years have gone.

Lying on a stretcher in the corridor between the teams’ change-rooms, Bush hears a roar, and knows: Colley out, first ball.

Colley returns, looks around, thinks that’s strange – three batsmen, all of them out, have not unbuckled their pads. The three sit still, smiling, but not happy smiles, or normal.

One, Pym, is having hazily philosophical thoughts, like what are we doing here, this is supposed to be a game, and another, Jeffery, is thinking he does not want to bat again today, over and over he thinks this, aware that the thought is surely futile, such is the speed of batsmen’s comings and goings.

Sandy Morgan, at No. 7, once a Queensland all-rounder, is next in. He feels no nerves. He has clarity. Thomson shuffles up to bowl and Morgan steps away two paces to leg. Morgan is like a flashing neon white flag. But he does not get paid for cricket, he is fresh-embarked on a stockbroking career that is shaping up promising, and the Test aspirations he had he has left behind. So he steps away two paces, bat waving, “There are the stumps, Jeff, knock ’em over, don’t hit me.” Morgan survives a ball but not many.

Bush, still on the corridor floor, hears the excited shouts.

Once, on a terrace outside Roselands Shopping Centre, schoolboys Thomson and Durtanovich had a disagreement about who had broken more batsmen’s fingers lately.

All day a complicating fear has dangled over proceedings. A year ago at this ground Barry Knight bowled a beamer at Thomson’s head from 16 yards and everyone’s been wondering if Thomson is plotting retaliation. Knight had his reasons: Thomson had earlier flung at the head of Mosman’s last man Bill Carracher two that bounced plus another that didn’t. Also, Knight did not (the long version goes) mean it – simply tore in off the long run thinking bumper, until the realisation hit him that an ageing Englishman’s attempted bumper might provoke mere laughs, which was when drifting into his subconscious came a seething Trevor Bailey, his idol, beaming a New Zealander from the front creaseline, and Knight decided good idea, front creaseline, still thinking bumper, but then five or six strides from delivery his thinking got scrambled, bumper turning to beamer, and in his distraction he skipped past the umpire, past the front creaseline, and staggered several yards on accidentally. Anyhow, Thomson ducked.

Knight is the new batsman. Thomson does not retaliate. Knight gets behind the ball, protecting his stumps. The fieldsmen, noticing this, are impressed. But before Knight can think of a run he pops up a catch.

Since first learning cricket, aged eight, on London’s Wanstead Flats with some older boys, and in the street against a lamp-post, and with his friend George Catchpole on a wooden pitch his dad built from disused doors, Knight has either practised his batting or batted in actual matches, be it at street, net, club, county, Test or grade level, virtually every dry day. Conservative estimate (Barry’s): 200 balls a day, 73,000 balls a year, which makes, pushing 36 years of age, 2.04 million balls faced in a cricket-devotional lifetime so far. Not one of the two million-plus compared with facing Thomson, that creeping-hysteria sensation of having no reaction time, of hoping and trying to bob on the back foot and somehow pick the ball out of your swimming line of vision – actually, thinks Knight, as he slopes off Bankstown Oval, a tremor of recognition, “I’ve had this feeling before.” On a drab day in Peterborough, 1956, a teenaged Knight passed Essex team-mate Geoff Smith on his way to the wicket. Smith was whimpering, on a stretcher. The ball had struck him under his pad’s knee-roll, the jolt shifting the knee out of alignment: Smith lbw b Tyson 0. Knight faced five Tyson balls, none straight. Two bumpers, a beamer, one pitched up outside off, another pitched up and scudding leg side – Knight knows this because he turned and looked, afterwards. When the five balls were flying at him he could make out only the faintest shadow, or no shadow. Exact same thing facing Thomson.

Frank Tyson managed five or six overs at that top velocity. Thomson, word on the circuit has it, is good for a dozen or 20.

The ambulance driver, trying to reach Bush in the corridor, cannot get through the gates. It is New Year’s Eve and Bush has a date with the girl who lives next door. He wonders about stitches; if they are needed, what might his face look like? The ambulance driver gives up. Bush is carried out to the street. At Bankstown Hospital he is X-rayed and let go. The date is off, Bush and the girl next door stay in, but there is more cricket to look forward to, a one-dayer, and he’ll play if he gets the all-clear in the morning from his nearest hospital. There, an eye specialist interrupts his holidays to say: “Look up. Look right. Look left.” Bush obeys, or thinks he does. The eye does not budge. The bone beneath it, the orbit bone, is smashed – that was the crack team-mates heard – and also sunken, rendering his two eyes crooked. Trapped and tangled in broken bone are the surrounding muscles. The eyeball’s a blood clot. Bush will recover and play on, for decades. But first, a delicate operation, then a month in a bed in an old people’s annexe of Royal North Shore Hospital, lying perfectly still, lest the eye bleed and he blind himself, listening to every ball of Australia and New Zealand on radio.

Pym is laying bets with team-mates on whether Thomson can bowl six byes – can actually bowl a cricket ball out of the ground.

Thomson has a strained calf, or groin, maybe slipped in his run-up again. Might have figures of six for four. No full scorecard is available. Four men bowled, one caught, one hit on the shoulder and out hit wicket; one more hit in the eye and hospitalised. But, now, Thomson must stop.

He will bowl many more fast spells. But on December 13, 1975, something – something inside, and barely traceable – changes. A flatmate of Thomson’s, 22-year-old wicketkeeper Martin Bedkober, is batting in a Brisbane grade match. He lets a short ball hit his chest. The bowler is a medium-pacer. Bedkober waves help away, then falls. Not long after, he is dead: a blood clot, in the spot where the ball struck, the hospital doctor cannot push oxygen through. Thomson will think, after this, “There’s no point trying to knock a bloke out.”

On the afternoon before Christmas, 1976, Pakistan’s Zaheer Abbas spoons up an attempted pull shot in Adelaide. The bowler Thomson dives for the catch, midwicket Alan Turner dives simultaneously, and they crash. Neither man gets up for a while – and Thomson’s right shoulder bone is wrenched five centimetres away from the joint. He will bowl again in his life, many times, but with a longer run-up, and without the same serene elasticity in the moment before delivery. Seldom will a ball, neither full nor short, leap with the steep menace of old.

First, his psyche; a year after, his shoulder. He is reduced, cut down – this man who on the last day of 1973 bowled faster probably than anyone in the universe ever has, and faster, perhaps, than the universe wanted him to bowl.

Christian Ryan lives in Melbourne, writes and edits, and is the author of Golden Boy. His latest book is a pictorial collection of essays, Australia: Story of a Cricket Country.

CRICKET AND SEXUALITY

The hardest decision of my life

STEVE DAVIES

I’d always known I was gay, but for a long time it wasn’t an issue. It helped that I was good at sport, because at school that was a route to popularity. But when I started touring with England, the dynamic changed. I couldn’t face long trips away from home trying to hide my sexuality the whole time. So before the last Ashes series, I made sure my team-mates knew. That was two and a half years ago. And it was the best decision I’ve ever made – even if it was the hardest thing I’ve ever done.

But I knew I had to: it was eating me up inside. When I was at home I felt all right, because I was with my family, and I’d told them when I was 19. I hated being on tour, though. The actual cricket was fine, but the social situations were not. If you go out in the evenings as a sports team, you sometimes attract interest from girls, and I found that uncomfortable. A two-week trip would feel like two years. And the Ashes tour was going to last three and a half months. I’d had a couple of instances where I’d been out in gay clubs and been recognised, and I knew I couldn’t go on like that. Keeping it quiet all that time would have been horrific.

The players’ response was amazing, and Australia turned out to be a very special trip. My life has changed since I came out. I feel so much more confident and happy. And I can now count Elton John among my friends, which is something not many cricketers can say…

Your sexuality is no one’s business but your own: whether you choose to come out or not is an incredibly personal matter. No one should be made to do it, and you’ve got to choose a moment you feel completely comfortable with. But hopefully I’ve proved that, since the announcement was made publicly in February 2011, being a gay cricketer is not an issue – that it can be done.

I think it’s difficult telling people you’re gay in the sporting world. But it’s getting a lot easier, to the point where I honestly don’t think people care. Being a cricketer helps, because it’s a decent world, and I haven’t had a single jibe. In fact, the banter has been good, in both the England and Surrey dressing-rooms, and I occasionally like to get a reaction out of team-mates by pretending to take offence on behalf of the gay brethren. One county colleague – I won’t name and embarrass him – has even learned a thing or two: he thought all gay guys were as camp as Christmas. I hope I’ve opened one or two eyes.

I’ve been asked why, if coming out as a cricketer isn’t an issue, other professionals haven’t followed suit. I can see it’s a bit of a contradiction: if something really isn’t taboo, why the silence? I think it goes beyond cricket, both because sexuality is still an issue in some parts of society, and because of the personal nature of the decision.

Everyone has a different set of circumstances. Being gay and not being able to tell anyone can be a lonely place. I know a few people who have told their parents and then been kicked out of their own homes. But the ingredients were there for me to tell people. I’m lucky to have a supportive and loving family, and the way Andy Flower and Andrew Strauss handled breaking the news to my England team-mates was brilliant. But I can’t pretend I didn’t have sleepless nights worrying about their reaction.

What has been encouraging, apart from the indifference in the cricket world, is the response from elsewhere. I was hoping my story would help others, and I got plenty of support on Facebook, Twitter and in letters. One guy aged 21 and really into his sport wrote to me saying he was gay and that no one knew about it. He said he felt fake socialising with his friends, and that my story helped a lot. Plenty have said that. It makes me feel like I can do some good.

The one thing that does annoy me at times is when people say: “You must know whether so-and-so is gay.” I don’t – and I don’t think I have what some people call a “gaydar”. I also find the idea that I might be attracted to my team-mates in the shower a ridiculous one. They’re more like family to me.

The truth is, I don’t know if there are other gay county cricketers out there. If there are, I do hope they will look at my experience and realise that coming out is not necessarily an ordeal. But I would stress again that the decision has to feel right. And I’m certainly not here to lecture them.

The process has been surreal at times. When the story broke, I went to buy the papers at my local garage, and could see my face on the front pages from 30 yards away. That was an uncomfortable time. But it turned out to be the right thing to do. Now, I just want to be recognised as a good cricketer. If people aren’t mentioning my sexuality by the time I retire, I’ll be happy with that.

Steve Davies has kept wicket for England in eight one-day internationals. He was talking to Lawrence Booth.

150 YEARS OF YORKSHIRE COUNTY CRICKET CLUB

No laughing matter

DUNCAN HAMILTON

At the rump end of 1933, an impish, greying and bandy-legged middle-aged man travelled by bus and on foot across the high-ridged toe of the Yorkshire Dales to make an unannounced house call. Under his arm he carried a brown paper parcel, which contained a belated wedding gift. He’d bought it especially for the groom; whether the bride liked it, wanted it or would find any practical use for it was immaterial.

The recipient was Bill Bowes, and the generous giver Emmott Robinson, who told Bowes on the doorstep what the thick wrapping concealed, so ruining the element of surprise. “I’ve brought you a weather glass, Bill,” he said. “It’s same make as mine, an’ tha wants to look at it night and morning. It’s seldom that I’ve been let down, an’ it’s nice to know when there’s a sticky wicket in t’offing.” Robinson wasn’t being flippant: he spoke solemnly. As though regarding the barometer as the bowler’s equivalent of the philosopher’s stone, he began an elaborate description of its benefits. “He instanced matches when Yorkshire had sent the other side in to bat,” remembered Bowes. “Occasions when a little more confidence in the barometer would have helped, and left the house with a parting injunction, ‘Be sure that tha makes good use of it.’”

From a first-floor window in my home I can follow the curve of the rutted lane along which Robinson went, clutching that parcel. Poking between the trees I can see the Indian-red tiles of the roof of Bowes’s old semi-detached, which overlooks the Wharfe valley. And, passing the front door, I imagine the two of them standing beneath the lintel. In my mind’s eye, Bowes nods his surprised thanks and the garrulous Robinson gossips away in front of him.

It’s an ostensibly minor moment; an obscure exchange that, I suppose, seems insignificant amid the brass-band-and-bunting celebrations arranged for Yorkshire’s sesquicentennial summer of 2013. Landmark anniversaries are essentially about the remembrance of things past and, since history is made up of the biography of Great Men, Yorkshire have a lot to draw on. Old ghosts will be summoned: Lord Hawke and Wilfred Rhodes, F. S. Jackson and J. T. Brown, Schofield Haigh and Alonzo Drake. But I think the vignette about Robinson and the barometer contains something subliminally telling, and is useful in understanding three fundamental aspects about Yorkshire: how seriously they take their cricket; what it required to achieve the unmatched glory of 30 official Championships won outright, and another that was shared, grudgingly, during those 150 crowded years; and, improbable as this seems, why the county’s long period of trophy-austerity turned so poisonous and militantly rebellious.

No one was more authoritative about Yorkshire than J. M. Kilburn, who as correspondent of the Yorkshire Post counts as the Herodotus of Tyke territory. He either saw or knew, with a casual familiarity, almost everyone now honoured in Headingley’s impressive museum. George Hirst coached him, speaking in a voice so hoarse that any instruction must have sounded like gravel pouring down a chute. He observed a padded-up Herbert Sutcliffe writing his correspondence in immaculate copperplate, stopping unperturbedly in mid-sentence when the pavilion bell obliged him to go out and bat. He counted Len Hutton as a friend; and Hutton reciprocated, also counting him as an educational tutor. He wrote about Brian Close as a callow teen, saw almost all Geoffrey Boycott’s formative innings, and Ray Illingworth’s first, tweaked delivery. He said some of his grandest days were spent admiring “the rampant” Fred Trueman flattening the stumps.

Kilburn always maintained that Yorkshire’s success was based on what he called “the many strivers, the bread and butter cricketers”. Robinson belongs in that category. Statistically he doesn’t rank among the greatest of the club’s great. He didn’t make his debut until 1919, aged 35, when he was called up to fill one of those tragic gaps created by the First World War. He retired, aged 47, in 1931 after taking 100 wickets in only one season and scoring 1,000 runs just twice. He was one of those figures whom P. G. Wodehouse – fond of the cricketing idiosyncratic – could have invented if God had not got there first. His cap was askew. He wore loose, wrinkled whites, each creased trouser leg rolled up as though, like a Scarborough holiday-maker, he was about to paddle into the North Sea. But, as the ultra-professional, Robinson had a scrupulous devotion to his business. Every evening he wrote his observations into cheap notebooks, compulsively accumulating intelligence which, he said, comprised: “Wheer t’batsmen got t’runs, how they got out, their best shots, state o’ t’wicket an’ stuff like that.” He lived Yorkshire cricket 24 hours a day during the summer and thought about it all winter.

Robinson strikes me as the personification of Yorkshire cricket’s character. In approach, opinion and belief he also represents the way in which Yorkshire are seen by outsiders – and how they relish seeing themselves: earnest, thrifty, ruthlessly efficient and hard-bitten, intolerant of failure and possessing a never-give-summat-away-for-nowt attitude that no dictionary definition of competitiveness has ever adequately captured. Those attributes are not, and never were, exclusive to Yorkshire; but Yorkshire – through Robinson and his ilk, before and afterwards – embodied them more than the other counties, and treated the game with the greatest profundity.

The barometer is proof. Robinson thought minutiae mattered. He’d been schooled to explore and exploit any advantage, however minuscule. He was reminding Bowes of his duty to do the same, thus perpetuating the Yorkshire credo forged when Victoria was Queen, and “Spy” decorated Vanity Fair with caricatures of Grace and Spofforth. It hinged on two connecting philosophies: the impossibility of being too eager to win, and the indisputable fact that nothing else bloody mattered. However hoary and tattered by overuse, it is obligatory to quote that sentence synonymous with Yorkshire – “we don’t play for fun” – simply because the stony phrase is convenient shorthand to explain their approach without the need for much elaboration. The more interesting aspect is how it became the first tenet of their faith.

The judgment of posterity constantly shifts. But Yorkshire are what they are because of Lord Hawke. When he became captain in 1883 every one of the regular XI counted as an alcoholic except Louis Hall, who was a teetotaller. Sir Home Gordon, Hawke’s bosom buddy, described Yorkshire as “easy-going, self-indulgent”, and “far too polite to run a man out”. Hawke turned them into the Championship’s first superpower through the imposition of his will and personality, which was benevolently patriarchal on the surface and harder than metamorphic rock beneath. Gordon insisted he once heard a Yorkshireman triumph in a cricketing debate over a Lancastrian with the finality of this declaration: “I know more than you anyhow, for I’ve shook ’ands with Lord ’Awke and that’s more than you ever did.”

The keystone of Hawke’s success was a move so obviously sensible that you can only suppose his predecessors must have considered it as well, but were too timid or bone idle to implement the thought. Hawke decided to treat a pro like a pro, as opposed to some inferior subspecies. He secured winter payments for them and awarded “mark money” (dependent on his own scoring system of achievement) and decent bonuses to those he called “my dear boys”. Just as a gentleman ought to do, he spoke about the morality of playing “in the proper spirit” and the need for “sportsmanlike unselfishness”. But Hawke made Yorkshire slickly businesslike and gave them a corporate-style uniformity of purpose. When circumstances demanded, he also knew how to handle the axe: the boozers and the backsliders were got rid of – Hawke just cut them down. He sacked Joe Preston, so fond of his ale that he died at 26; Hawke’s diagnosis of the cause was the coldly euphemistic “he had too many friends”. Ted Peate went too, after gluttonous overindulgence caused him to swell to 16 stone. Also booted out was the perpetually inebriated Bobby Peel, who – it was claimed – tried to bowl from stump to sightscreen in a beery fug after assuring Hawke: “I’m in fine fettle this morning, m’lud.” Peel is said – surely apocryphally – to have then urinated against the same sightscreen on his slow, zigzagged slump back to whence he had drunkenly come.

The inking of the plates to produce John Wisden’s first Almanack and the official formation of Yorkshire were as near as dammit simultaneous and nicely serendipitous. Wisden has always been there to record that life at Yorkshire is seldom in equilibrium, and that their politics are complicated and often acrimoniously personal. In a game of word association the instant response to the utterance of “Yorkshire cricket” is likely to include the following: rows, rifts, rivalries, recriminations, upheavals, crises, civil wars. Even Hawke experienced these in the arm-wrestle between Leeds and Sheffield to determine which represented the beating heart in the Yorkshire body. This wasn’t a polite kerfuffle of Victorian manners. In the 1890s, there were calls to sack a committee that reformers condemned as “effete” and “out of touch”, which is archaeological proof – were any still needed – that trouble at t’mill brewed well before the more recent winters of discontent.

Everyone is entitled to be stupid on occasions; but Yorkshire, it must be said, have been guilty of abusing the privilege because of their tendency to always have breath to spare for a good argument. Think of the early to mid-1950s, when dressing-room disharmony – as much as the Surrey of Lock and Laker – left the county barren of titles. Think of the end of that decade, when Johnny Wardle dabbled with high explosives by disputing the decisions of his captain, Ronnie Burnet, and inevitably blew himself up. “Doesta think tha’s been a fool, Johnny?” asked a pitman bluntly when Wardle spoke at a South Yorkshire Miners Institute in the aftermath of his sacking. “Aye, I have,” he confessed. And think of some of the unedifying spectacles of the late 1960s, the 1970s and the early to mid-1980s, which led to the club looking like a ramshackle vehicle bearing an illustrious name. A lot of grown men, who ought to have known better, behaved like the stereotypical I’ve-had-it-tougher-than-thee Yorkshireman satirised by Monty Python.

Headingley became the cricketing equivalent of the House of Medici. Divisive scheming obstructed the business of winning the Championship. The web of macho, ideological power struggles and score-settling became so convoluted that the club strangled themselves with it. The bickering sounded puerile and self-serving then, and most of the decisions taken seem to defy every principle of common sense when analysed now.

Close was abruptly given the option of resignation or the sack after leading them to four Championships and two Gillette Cups. “How long have I got to decide?” he asked. “Ten minutes,” came the reply. The committee had already prepared different statements to accommodate whichever answer he gave. In shock, Close later vomited. Illingworth was regarded as a rebel for wanting the security of a contract, and despatched with the curt, cruel instruction that he could “take any other bugger” with him when he left. John Hampshire found the sour atmosphere intolerable, and announced he was off to discover “if it was possible once more to find joy… in cricket”. Trueman felt so isolated from Yorkshire – a jobsworth attendant even denied him access to the car park – that he wouldn’t walk through the gate on principle.

In the matter of Boycott, the county seemed never to tire of hearing their own voice; nor did Boycott himself. His admirers worshipped him from the prayer mat. His detractors regarded him as the Tudors regarded Richard III. This provided splendid entertainment for the sort of voyeur who instinctively rubbernecks at a motorway pile-up. My favourite quote from the interminable period when the pro- and anti-Boycott factions were trying to reduce one another to pulp didn’t come from a player or an official. Illingworth, back at Headingley as team manager, was told by Mrs Illingworth, sick of the strife and animosity her husband had to endure: “The day you come home from Yorkshire and tell me you’re finished will be the happiest of my life.”

Yorkshire struggled to cope with their loss of supremacy and had what was tantamount to a full breakdown. If there’s a plea of mitigation to be made for those torturous seasons, it is this. No county feel the weight of their past as Yorkshire do, or the obligation to maintain their reputation. No county have such a regal sense of entitlement. And no county so strongly believe that identity, ego, independence and self-worth are at stake in their cricket. As a polymath, John Arlott could express this sentiment and mean it: “I’ve enjoyed cricket more and served it better for realising it was never the be-all and end-all of everything.” No one ever said that in Pudsey.

The fact that Yorkshire have won only one Championship in 44 years makes winning another urgent. The current president, Mr G. Boycott of Fitzwilliam, is adamant about that. On assuming office he declared: “I know what the members value and that is Championship cricket.” He was repeating only what Hutton and Sutcliffe and Rhodes had said before him; and what Hawke said before any of them. But I can hear someone – who long ago toted a barometer across God’s Own Country purely for the sake of his beloved club – saying a loud “Amen” in agreement.

Duncan Hamilton is the award-winning author of Harold Larwood: The Authorized Biography of the World’s Fastest Bowler.

STRONG YORKSHIRE, STRONG ENGLAND?

An old saw cuts no ice

CHRIS WATERS

When eyebrows were raised over the make-up of the England squad for his first Test as chairman of selectors, Raymond Illingworth of Pudsey was unequivocal: “Just tell them that a strong Yorkshire is a strong England.” Among his choices were the Yorkshire pair of Craig White and Richard Stemp, along with Worcestershire’s Bradford-born wicketkeeper Steve Rhodes.

It was hard to be entirely sure whether Illingworth’s remark was tongue-in-cheek, but it served to cement a cliché. For the idea that a strong Yorkshire does indeed mean a strong England is so deeply embedded in the game’s culture that, in some parts of the country – especially north of Derbyshire and south of Durham – it practically passes as established fact.

Perhaps it would have been churlish to point out that, by the time Illingworth trotted out the mantra ahead of the Trent Bridge Test against New Zealand in 1994, Yorkshire and England had provided a grim twist. Yorkshire finished 13th that summer, and no higher than eighth between 1981 and 1995 – a period when first West Indies, then Australia, were the strapping Blutos of international competition and England more like Popeye shorn of his spinach. But has the national side really done better in those eras when Yorkshire have prospered, and vice versa? Or is it a myth to rival the Cottingley Fairies?

As with many a cliché, no one seems to know where it actually comes from. Enquiries to eminent cricket historians elicit blank responses and tentative replies. “Didn’t someone like Lord Hawke say it?” Possibly. But if Ashes supremacy is the yardstick of English strength, the cliché is manifestly more fiction than fact, even dating back to Hawke’s day. When Yorkshire achieved their best run under his captaincy, with four titles in five years around the turn of the century, England lost four successive Ashes series, despite fielding Yorkshire’s George Hirst, Wilfred Rhodes, Jack Brown, Stanley Jackson and Ted Wainwright.

And when Yorkshire won four consecutive titles in the roaring ’20s, England began the decade with three botched Ashes campaigns, even though their side included Yorkshiremen Herbert Sutcliffe, Percy Holmes, Abe Waddington and Arthur Dolphin. In the not-so-roaring ’30s, when the county secured seven Championships, Australia relinquished the Ashes only once, during Bodyline. In those years, Yorkshire supplied Len Hutton, Maurice Leyland, Bill Bowes, Hedley Verity and Arthur Wood, all of whom played when Hutton made 364 at The Oval in 1938.

A more apposite theme continues to emerge: “When one team is strong, the other is not.” When England regained the Ashes in 1953 after a 20-year gap, it was the first of three successive wins against Australia, which along the way featured Hutton, Willie Watson, Bob Appleyard, Johnny Wardle and – when he was not in the disciplinary doghouse – Fred Trueman. Yet the Championship decade was dominated by Surrey, who claimed seven straight titles.

Australia regained the urn in 1958-59, before grimly holding on to it for another five series, yet in 1959 Yorkshire chose the moment to embark on a run of seven titles in ten seasons, a period in which Trueman, Illingworth, Brian Close and Geoffrey Boycott all represented their country. That sequence ended in 1968, when Australia kept the urn with a 1–1 draw in England. Sure enough, by the time England next seized the Ashes, under Illingworth in 1970-71 – they went on to relinquish them only three times until 1989 – Yorkshire’s fortunes were already on the wane.

Even as England achieved the most celebrated Ashes series victory of all, in 2005, Yorkshire were competing in the Championship’s lower flight. Four years earlier, the club had won their only title since 1968 at a time when – guess what? – England had not long fallen to the foot of the unofficial world rankings. And when England climbed to No. 1 in 2011, Yorkshire were relegated. The Test side two summers ago contained only one Yorkie – Tim Bresnan, the personification of a strong Yorkshireman, if not a strong Yorkshire.

Debatable at best, delusional at worst, the famous old saying grows increasingly inapt. Nowadays, how can any county – not just Yorkshire – be strong if England spirit away their best players and systematically erode the significance of the Championship? To judge by the composition of contemporary England teams, perhaps it is time to modernise the maxim. How about: “A strong South Africa is a strong England”?

Chris Waters is cricket correspondent of the Yorkshire Post. His book, Fred Trueman: The Authorised Biography, was Wisden’s Book of the Year in 2012.

THE LEADING CRICKETER IN THE WORLD, 2012

Michael Clarke

GREG BAUM

At Bangalore in 2004, after the 23-year-old Michael Clarke had made a fizzing century on debut for Australia, team-mate Darren Lehmann declared he should play every Test for the next ten years, even if it meant forfeiting his own place. At Brisbane six years later, when Clarke stood in as one-day skipper against England, he became the first Australian captain in living memory to be booed by a home crowd. In 2012, he passed 200 four times in Tests, a feat not achieved even by Don Bradman – and the hallelujahs rang out.

Excitement, disappointment, re-endearment, respect: this is the not uncommon J-curve for a major cricketer. In Clarke, the plotted points read something like this: infatuation, disillusionment, rehabilitation and, last year, awe. It is a capital J-curve, exaggerated in proportion to his talent.

Clarke arrived with a gift, but in public estimation then acquired baggage, and has taken until recently to shed it. Like Steve Waugh, he is from Sydney’s unpretentious western suburbs. Unlike Waugh, he was seen to develop pretensions – glamour girlfriend, fast car, endorsements portfolio – until it seemed Australia saw more of him straddling the centrefold crease than the batting crease. In a country in which the buzzword for two decades or more has been aspiration, this would not have mattered, except it led to a presumption that he was neglecting his cricket and squandering his privilege.

Clarke’s rise coincided with Australia’s decline. This made him an easy scapegoat, most acutely at the end of the 2010-11 Ashes fiasco. When a dressing-room altercation two years earlier with the flinty Simon Katich finally became known, the public sided with Katich, believing the scrapper had taken the pretty boy down a notch. And when Clarke decamped briefly from a tour of New Zealand to deal with the break-up of his relationship, the late Peter Roebuck tore strips off him for dereliction of duty.

In Cricket Australia’s high office, Clarke was thought to lack the necessary gravitas. To this day, it is hard to imagine him delivering a Bradman-style dissertation, or even a Mark Taylor-style reflection. He speaks plentifully, but with a side-of-the-mouth tic, and an almost perverse resolve to stick to the team-first dictum, even when a little personal elaboration would cause no offence. He is no one’s idea of a statesman.

But nor is he the shallow and indolent playboy of popular imagination. He works hard at his game; the legacy is a chronically sore back. He spurned the modern cynosure of the Indian Premier League at its formation to stay home with his ill father. When he suspected Twenty20 was retarding his development, he gave it away at international level altogether. Fortified, Clarke began to answer critics and doubters in the only idiom he knew: runs, runs, and more runs.

In Clarke’s batting maturity, five precepts are evident. The first is range. With an unerring eye, he affronts the ball on the rise as assuredly as anyone can ever have done. Yet he also plays so late that bowlers and slips throw up their hands in anticipation of the lbw that rarely comes. For bowlers, there is almost no margin for error; for Clarke, a repertoire lacking only the hook shot.

The second is the natural’s gift of timing. Late in 2012 against Sri Lanka, while hampered by injury at Hobart and Melbourne, he would stab down on yorkers with no thought other than of survival, yet still the ball would squirt from his bat like a pip from an orange.

The third is a delightfully twinkle-toed approach to spin bowling, so at odds with the modern modus of swatting from the crease.

The fourth is temperament. He is capable of batting for hours and days at a consistent tempo, through lulls, beyond spurts and notwithstanding scares. Sometimes, even when compiling an enormous score, he looks oddly vulnerable, almost inept, particularly to bowling aimed at his head. But he shrugs off these moments as he might flies, regards a gram of luck as the reasonable corollary of kilograms of estimable batting, and his innings rolls on.

The fifth, encompassing all four, is strength of character, irreconcilable with his erstwhile image, but now undeniable. Immediately on returning to New Zealand after sorting out his domestic crisis, he answered the howling reproof with a century.

In the wake of the Ashes, Clarke replaced Ricky Ponting as Test captain and, as Australian cricket modernised, he was made a selector too. This imposed on him a heft of responsibility few previous captains have had to bear, liable to crush a faint mind. His stream of runs increased to an outpouring. In his first 21 matches in charge, he averaged 69, with eight hundreds.

Moreover, he quickly revealed himself as an intuitive and adventurous leader in the Taylor mould. Never, if he can help it, does he let a match stand still, or simply run its course. He makes judicious declarations, sets designer fields, rotates bowlers often, and is unafraid to tear up the rulebook, trusting instead in his instinct. When trying to bowl out stubborn Sri Lanka at Hobart, he gave an over to wicketkeeper Matthew Wade. In the bald context of this essay, perhaps that sounds gimmicky. In the match, it altered the rhythms. Australia won.

In 2012, we witnessed a full flowering of the lavish batting talent announced so spectacularly all those years ago in Bangalore. The year began with 329 not out against India, the biggest Test innings ever played at the SCG, curtailed only by his own declaration, with Bradman’s (and Taylor’s) 334 one hit away. Even then, some suspected he was playing for public favour. A double-century followed at Adelaide before, at the start of the 2012-13 season, free-hitting back-to-back doubles against South Africa. He rounded off the year with his first century in a Boxing Day Test, against Sri Lanka, compiled while nursing a pinched hamstring that reduced him to walking between the wickets, but made no appreciable difference to the sweetness of his strokeplay. His score, 106, was also his calendar-year average; only Bradman, Sobers and Ponting before him had reached New Year’s Eve on such a plane. And his 2012 Test aggregate of 1,595 placed him nearly 350 runs clear of his nearest rival, Alastair Cook.

As 2013 began, Clarke deserved to feel content: all the caps fitted. He was 31 – prime batting age – rich in form and circumstance, with a low-profile wife and few of his old affectations. He had earned rave reviews as a batsman and captain; under him, an experimental Australian team had lost only one of seven series, to top-ranked South Africa. The ambivalence of public and critics was forgotten, except in one detail: a perception that he should bat higher than No. 5. While an in-form Ponting was ahead of him, it didn’t matter, but a succession of greenhorns had since been exposed. Clarke could reasonably answer that it had been decades since the best batsman axiomatically arrived at No. 3. But No. 4 seemed sensible.

Still, mountains loomed. The retirements of Ponting and Mike Hussey a month apart left Clarke as the only fixture in Australia’s batting order, isolating him as no one had been since Allan Border, and imposing on him an Atlas-size burden, as a still-insubstantial team contemplated two Ashes series. Though his own man as captain, he depended on Ponting for almost grandfatherly support; that is gone. More even than Ponting ever was, Clarke is both captain and batting fulcrum. And it looks like being the making of him.

THE LEADING CRICKETER IN THE WORLD

2003 Ricky Ponting (A)

2008 Virender Sehwag (I)

2004 Shane Warne (A)

2009 Virender Sehwag (I)

2005 Andrew Flintoff (E)

2010 Sachin Tendulkar (I)

2006 Muttiah Muralitharan (SL)

2011 Kumar Sangakkara (SL)

2007 Jacques Kallis (SA)

2012 Michael Clarke (A)

Players can be chosen more than once for this award.

50 YEARS OF TOURING ENGLAND

The ride of a lifetime

TONY COZIER

Nepotism has got itself a bad name, so I’ll plump for “fatherly favouritism” as the catalyst for my career, which has tracked cricket’s most exciting, erratic and exasperating team for more than half a century. This year, sober to relate, marks 50 since I first covered a West Indies tour of England.

Jimmy Cozier was, at various times, editor of three West Indian papers, before setting up his own, the Barbados Daily News, in 1960. In England in 1950, he had been the lone Caribbean chronicler of a series that first established West Indies as a genuine force. Presumably he considered his only son his logical successor. His present on my eighth birthday was the 1948 Wisden; seven years later, he got permission for me to be excused from school in Barbados so I could file for St Lucia’s The Voice (circulation 2,500) during the Kensington Oval Test against Australia. He sent me off to university in Ottawa to study for a journalism degree, but the arctic winters and lack of cricket on the curriculum prematurely ended that venture.

So I recognised he was a soft touch when I put it to him that I should cover West Indies in England in 1963 for the Daily News. The deal was that the paper would look after the flight and provide a modest stipend, beyond which I would fend for myself. It meant staying in YMCAs and B&Bs unless I could bunk up with school friends who had gone on to further studies in the UK; at 23, it was hardly an imposition.

I spent the summer criss-crossing the counties, hitching a ride in the team’s baggage van or the Ford Zephyr of Roy Lawrence, the melodious Jamaican who was the West Indian voice on Test Match Special. My daily reports were tapped out by typewriter on to special mustard-coloured cable forms (specimens still available at any reputable museum), and filed at the nearest post office – in London I tended to use the Embankment – for transmission to Barbados. It was a tiresome business.

On the back of the 1960-61 tour of Australia, that 1963 trip proved another triumph. Frank Worrell, in his final series, was again the revered, level-headed leader of the brilliant young brigade he had nurtured: Garry Sobers, Rohan Kanhai, Wes Hall, Lance Gibbs, now joined by Charlie Griffith. Denis Compton rated it “undoubtedly the best cricketing side in the world”. As soon as Basil Butcher stroked the winning runs in the final Test to secure the inaugural Wisden Trophy, created to mark the 100th edition of the Almanack, the Oval outfield was engulfed in a joyous tsunami, it seemed, of every one of the thousands of West Indians who had made their homes in south London a decade earlier. By the end of the summer, MCC had altered West Indies’ tour cycle to England from six or seven years to three or four. Worrell’s knighthood in the New Year’s honours was the perfect way to top things off. It all made for good copy. Circulation at the Daily News took an upturn. Cozier senior was delighted. My future was set.

Through the bad times that have overtaken West Indies cricket, and even through the good, when they twice stood unquestionably at the pinnacle of the world game (first in the mid-1960s, then for 15 years until the mid-1990s), there have been confusion and controversy. This was inevitable, perhaps, given the existence of a dozen nations, all with their own governments, anthems and flags, and united only by a game bequeathed to them by British colonialism.

So there has never been a dull moment. And without the initial paternal push, I might otherwise have been confined to some humdrum occupation. The alternative has taken me to vastly different locations: they don’t get more disparate than Peshawar and Dunedin, or Chittagong and Canberra. I’ve delighted in the constantly passing parade of great players and great matches. As a television commentator, I’ve been first-hand witness to the revolutionary changes instituted by Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket, as well as the Twenty20 tournaments that have transformed cricket’s character. And, before the elimination of Test-match rest days, there was always the fun of Sunday games on English village greens with press teams or Brian Scovell’s intrepid Woodpeckers.

By the time I returned to England in 1966, radio commentary had been added to my roster. When Roy Lawrence, by now head of Radio Jamaica’s sports coverage, was summoned back for the Commonwealth Games in Kingston in August, TMS agreed to his recommendation that I should fill in for the Headingley Test. The prospect of joining famous men whose voices we had listened to since schooldays was intimidating; a combination of the presence of an even younger first-timer by the name of Christopher Martin-Jenkins, the relaxed ambience, and a West Indies innings victory proved an ideal introduction. Like the entire summer, the match was dominated by the incomparable Sobers (174 runs, eight for 80). He was later eulogised in a calypso by the Mighty Sparrow as “the greatest cricketer on earth or Mars”. I certainly have seen none better.

I’ve been on TMS for every West Indian tour of England since, and it has led to many similar assignments elsewhere. There have been the predictable clashes with passionate fans back home, but only once has the TMS connection caused any strife. BBC Radio Four used to insist on having a commentator at the ground from 8am to set the scene for the day’s play. I had drawn the short straw for the final day of the 1984 Lord’s Test, but I’d forgotten my special MCC pass, and the ageing steward – protecting the North Gate as if with his life – refused me entrance. Panicking that I’d miss my slot, I pressed the accelerator and moved slowly forward, only for the steward, by now red-faced with indignation, to throw himself across the bonnet. The intervention of his West Indian colleague, whom I’d known from Barbados, saved the day. “Just pay the £10 parking fee, Tony,” was his common-sense solution. The report lasted 90 seconds.

Such was West Indies’ command in Wisden Trophy contests in those days that you turned up wondering not if they would win, but by how much. The transformation has been abrupt and complete. From 1973 to 1989-90, they won 25 Tests to England’s two, among them a pair of 5–0 blackwashes. Since 2000, the count favours England 17–2, including a 4–0 whitewash. This is one reason – along with health and safety – why West Indians no longer swarm across the outfields at The Oval and Lord’s. It is no longer their team, as it was their grandparents’. While the current generation have gravitated to football and athletics, the disenchantment is left to their relations back home. And for all the happiness over last year’s victory at the World Twenty20 in Sri Lanka, an overall revival is likely to be a long time coming.

Even with the debilitating combination at domestic level of a weak board, a militant players’ union, poor pitches, erratic umpiring and constant changes of captain (nine since 2000) and coach (six in the same span), it is difficult to comprehend the speed at which West Indies have plunged from a position of pride to virtual irrelevance.

The 2000 series in England typified another factor: attitude. It was, without doubt, the most miserable tour I have been on. West Indies’ innings victory in the First Test at Edgbaston prompted such complacency that it was followed by three defeats – and this was a team including Brian Lara, Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh. The indignity of 54 all out at Lord’s, 50 years after their historic maiden victory in England at the same ground, followed by defeat in two days at Leeds, left Lester Armoogam – an elderly Trinidadian who followed them round the world – in tears. The response of some players after the Headingley humiliation was to head off to Manchester on the scheduled fourth day to watch Trinidad’s Dwight Yorke in action for United.

The debate had once been simply over which team were stronger: those of the 1960s, fashioned by Worrell, the father figure venerated by his players, or those moulded by Clive Lloyd, his 1980s equivalent. Now we wonder whether they will ever pull themselves out of their slump. Between 1976 and 1988, West Indies did not lose a Test in the Wisden Trophy, home or away. The origins of this period of dominance were in the 5–1 drubbing in Australia in 1975-76, inflicted by a fast-bowling quartet spearheaded by Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson. From there on, Lloyd packed his teams with West Indian Lillees and Thomsons. A host of worthy contenders couldn’t get a game, except with English counties – or on two rebel tours of South Africa.

There was always one straight-forward motivation for those playing under Worrell and Lloyd – winning. There was another significant element when the opponents were England, especially in front of their newly domiciled kith and kin from the 1950s. There had long been images of joyous, guitar-strumming calypsonians parading across Lord’s following the historic 1950 victory; now, boisterous cavorting West Indians rejoicing at yet another victory became a regular feature on English grounds. “History does come into play,” said Viv Richards, who wore his heart on his sleeve and the Rastafarian colours on his wristband. “These were the colonial masters who had passed the game on to us. There was obviously a lot of passion whenever we played.” That passion was further fired by the boast of England captain Tony Greig prior to the 1976 series that he would make them “grovel”. It was an ill-chosen word from a white South African at the height of the global resistance to apartheid. As a consequence, Greig’s stumps were regularly rearranged by Michael Holding, Andy Roberts and Wayne Daniel, and West Indies won 3–0.

Along the way, I’ve found myself having to clarify my racial background, confusing to those unaware of the Caribbean’s cosmopolitan mix. A dumbfounded waitress once put it: “Hey, youse is a black voice coming from a white mouth!” I am white, born and bred in Barbados, and my accent is the same as those she would have heard from West Indian settlers on any British street. Of course, I couldn’t be seen on radio, prompting one racist letter-writer, enraged by a ferocious spell of West Indian pace, to address me as “you black bastard”. He insisted: “You should go back to where you came from.” It particularly amused Henry Blofeld.

Even London bobbies were fooled. The Saturday of the 1976 Lord’s Test was the only day washed out during that drought summer. It gave me the chance to catch up in the bar under the grandstand with expat friends from home. Soon I was surrounded by West Indians stridently arguing about the game, as they tend to. Spotting me in the corner as the only white face in a sea of black, two policemen broke through: “You all right, sir?” They were smartly sent on their way by the Caribbean congregation.

Certainly, I have never found my colour an issue among the players. Reds Perreira, who worked on radio for several tours, and I were often the only West Indians relaying the news back home. The days of Holding, Ian Bishop, Jeffrey Dujon and other former Test players doing commentary were still some way off. So too was the distrust of the media by those who interpret any description of a reckless stroke or a wayward spell as a threat to their now lucrative livelihoods.

It was clearly an advantage to have been roughly the same vintage as the modest stars of the 1960s, played club cricket against some, and known most as friends. And for three decades they were winning – it didn’t matter what was said about them. Indeed, Reds and I often found ourselves treated virtually as members of the support staff, invited to their Christmas celebrations in Australia and India, and included in a separate team photo for our albums. As the generation gap widened, such camaraderie has understandably turned to respect for age and longevity. At least, I hope that’s what it is.

Tony Cozier has covered the West Indian team in all the major cricket countries (and some minor ones) since 1962, including every Wisden Trophy series bar one.

FIVE WISDEN TROPHY MOMENTS

TONY COZIER

Wes Hall – Lord’s, 1963

On a dank June morning, Wes Hall had slept in and missed breakfast, so his captain Frank Worrell gave him two hard-boiled eggs and a packet of salt on the bus ride to Lord’s for the last day of the Second Test. Somehow, this helped sustain him through a 24-over spell from the Pavilion End, lasting from the delayed start at 2.20 to the dramatic final over: Colin Cowdrey, arm in plaster from a break inflicted by a Hall thunderbolt the previous day, came in at No. 11, before David Allen kept out Hall’s last two deliveries.

Garry Sobers – Lord’s, 1966

It was Sobers’s summer – batting, bowling, catching, captaining. He would rate the unbeaten 163 in the second innings at Lord’s as his best, above even his 254 for the World XI at Melbourne five years later. When he was joined at 95 for five midway through the fourth day by his cousin David Holford, West Indies were just nine ahead. “The only way you were going to get out of this was to play shots,” he reasoned, typically. “You couldn’t defend for a day and a half.” He told Holford the pitch was like Kensington Oval back home, and there should be nothing to worry him. Nothing did. When Sobers declared next day, Holford was 105, their stand a record 274, and the match safe.

Michael Holding – The Oval, 1976

It was a parched summer – with the Oval outfield as barren as the Sahara, and the pitch as flat as a runway. There were double-hundreds for Viv Richards and Dennis Amiss, and 1,507 runs at nearly 54 a wicket. Yet Michael Holding, driven by flawless rhythm and Tony Greig’s pre-series promise to make West Indies “grovel”, glided in from the Nursery End to destroy England twice with pace and pinpoint accuracy. Of his 14 wickets, 12 were either bowled (Greig twice) or lbw. Awesome.

Gordon Greenidge – Lord’s, 1984

At lunch on the final day, MCC president Alex Dibbs hosted West Indian High Commissioners and journalists at lunch. By then, West Indies – needing 344 after David Gower’s declaration – were 82 for the run-out of Desmond Haynes. The consensus was a draw, but sheer bluster prompted me to counter with: “We’ll piss it” – or words to that effect. And, incredibly, West Indies did, with 11 overs and nine wickets to spare, as Gordon Greenidge pummelled a commanding 214 alongside the unflappable Larry Gomes.

Malcolm Marshall – Headingley, 1984

Within an hour of the start, Malcolm Marshall had copped a double fracture of his left wrist fielding at gully; the team doctor advised he would be out for ten days. But an unexpected twist changed the plan. Gomes was on 94 when Joel Garner was ninth out. Assuming the innings was over, the players headed for the pavilion – only to find Marshall coming the other way. Left arm in plaster, his box forgotten in the rush, and batting exclusively with his right hand, he saw Gomes to his landmark. Ten minutes later, Marshall was back, fracture still strapped, to embark on figures of seven for 53. It was daring typical of a team that took the series 5–0.

CHRISTOPHER MARTIN-JENKINS, 1945–2013

Flowing conversation

MIKE SELVEY

We called him The Major. There was nothing secret to it, nothing to do with a military bearing, or clipped diction and moustache to match. One day he blustered his way into the press box. “Hampshire won,” he announced to nobody in particular. “Did it, Major?” we chorused, echoing Basil Fawlty. And so The Major he became – or sometimes, to a very select few, Stork, which is considerably more obscure and will remain so.

The Major became a legend, the stories told and retold, embellished, enhanced, and even invented. He could be calamitous. Things happened to him that simply did not to other people. Pick someone to play him in a biopic and it would have to be Rowan Atkinson. It was a trait I first encountered on the 1976-77 tour of India, when he was a young BBC correspondent. Seeking to travel by cab to the local studio of All India Radio, he found himself sitting an hour later outside a remote refinery belonging to Oil India.

This sort of thing continued right through our acquaintance, whether he was inadvertently shedding golf clubs like confetti through the centre of Bridgetown as we raced madcap for a tee-time in our mini-moke, late as ever; or snipping through the wire of his Walkman headphones while attending to his newspaper cuttings and wondering why the music had stopped; or going to the wrong hotel – or, on one occasion, the wrong international ground in London for a match he was late for in any case.

He was notoriously (and often infuriatingly) tardy, to the extent that his memorial service at St Paul’s should have been scheduled as “11.15am for 11” as a mark of respect – with directions to the wrong church. The famous incident in which he mistook a TV remote control for his mobile phone and actually tried to dial on it really did happen, although as the sole witness I can say it was rarely in the manner or location in which the story is often told. His capacity to render laptops unusable – merely by looking at them, it seemed – was uncanny, as if he had mystic powers, the sort of thing that should have been harnessed by the secret service. He would laugh at all this, of course, rather revelling in his reputation, not least because he understood the affection behind the ribbing. He even played up to it.

And then comes the other side of him. In an appreciation elsewhere, I suggested cricket had lost perhaps the best friend it has ever had, a thought I stand by. He was a prolific writer on the game, not just as a most respected and authoritative correspondent for the Daily Telegraph and then The Times, but in his numerous books and as editor of The Cricketer. He championed the sport, and all who played it, with remarkable zeal.

Surely, though, it is as a supreme broadcaster that he will be best remembered. Once he had stumbled, tripped and fumbled his way into his commentary position, and dumped down the big A4 leatherbound desk diary in which he scrawled his notes, his cricket commentaries were a benchmark for lucidity, knowledge, observation and humour.

Working with him as a summariser, which I was fortunate enough to do for the best part of a quarter of a century, was a joy. There are commentators who insist on taking each over uninterrupted, then hand over for a breather. Some dip into the summariser’s time as well. But with The Major it became a conversation, rather than a series of disjointed interjections. Very quickly I got to understand how he worked, when it was appropriate to speak, and when to let him go so that it flowed seamlessly. That was his skill, not mine, for he controlled it all, using his deep knowledge of cricket and cricketers not to pontificate, but to draw things from me, in the way an advocate might a witness.

Only once did I see him flummoxed. Like many cricketers, I used rhyming slang by habit, so if I were to say that someone was having treatment on their Vanburn, you might surmise Holder, or shoulder. During one commentary stint, he thought he would have a stab. “I’ve been having some trouble with the old Conrad,” he said. At first it stunned me, and then I corpsed – so badly I had to leave the commentary box. He meant Conrad Black. I am sorry to say my only thought was of a former West Indies opener by a different surname.

Mike Selvey is the cricket correspondent of The Guardian.

A bank of happy memories

JAMES MARTIN-JENKINS

“Any relation?” It’s a question I’ve been asked almost daily, it seems, for nearly 40 years. “Yes,” I reply; and gladly, too. For being the “son of” was never a heavy burden. Rather, life with CMJ was invariably fun and interesting; it was also unusual, privileged, and – needless to say – dominated by cricket.

Many of the qualities highlighted by his colleagues in tributes following his death were equally evident at home. He was hard-working, conscientious to a fault, and always in a rush – less because he was disorganised, more because he took on too many commitments in his eagerness not to let people down. He was a good mimic and even better joke-teller; competitive; enthusiastic; devoted to my mother; and absolutely – though never unthinkingly – committed to cricket and its well-being. He also enjoyed many of life’s other refined pleasures, especially classical music, decent wine (less so food), the natural world, and good literature, without ever becoming an expert, or pretending to be. He was punctilious about grammar and properly pronounced vowels. But he was not a snob – anything but. He was liberal, fair and decent, plus God-fearing (increasingly so), thoughtful and kind.

For so accomplished a public performer, he was rather shy in social situations, and far from garrulous. Perhaps that’s not unusual. But his job – and therefore my childhood – certainly was. Most of my friends had a dad who worked in an office and came home every evening, or at least at the weekend, and certainly at Christmas. I didn’t. Most families went on summer holidays, too. Save for a few days in Devon snatched between Tests, we didn’t.

Then again, most children didn’t hear or see their dad on radio or TV on a regular basis, as my siblings and I did. And my access to a game I was born to love was a rare treat indeed. What fun it was to accompany dad to a match – to Chelmsford, say, or Southampton or Hove – standing as still as a statue in the back of the commentary box, or playing cricket on the outfield in the tea break, or being introduced to and getting autographs from my playing heroes, then watching and waiting (there was always a lot of waiting), while he recorded or wrote his report of the day’s play. We were normally the last to leave the ground, often well after dusk.

Then there was touring with the England team as a child, sometimes for several weeks. Who else can boast of learning to walk in Australia and to swim in India, of being thrown into a pool by Ian Botham, of standing in the commentary box as England won the Ashes at the MCG in 1986-87 and the one-day series at the WACA that followed, then returning to Melbourne in 1992 to witness Wasim Akram blow away England and win Pakistan a World Cup final? I can, and more. I batted against Trevor Bailey on the beach in Barbados, then met two of the Three Ws at a cocktail party the next evening. And I bowled to Sir Len Hutton in his garden.

So I have a lot to thank him for. And a bank of happy memories – shared, I hope, by my children, who are old enough, just, to remember him as the concerned and caring grandfather he was. (The modern world’s ready supply of video and other archives, plus my father’s excellent autobiography, will help them fill in the gaps.) They may recall his near obsession with golf, which he took up too late in life to have been as good as he would have liked, and the practice putting green he installed at home in an attempt – vain, it transpired – to improve his short game. They may also recall his ongoing battle – equally in vain – with the many rabbits that used to attack his beloved lawn.

What’s likely to be my enduring feeling? Pride – when he wrote well or spoke eloquently, when he stuck to his guns on an unfashionable point, when people laughed, nodded vigorously in agreement, or exclaimed to me, as so many have: “Don’t you look and sound exactly like him!”

I didn’t always agree with everything he said, and rarely sought his advice on matters outside sport, but how fortunate to be able to wake every day and read or listen to what the old man had to say. It saved on phone bills, anyway. And yes, he may have had a wonderful collection of faux swear words, but he did occasionally swear in private, and with the proper words too – mostly at the rabbits…

James Martin-Jenkins is a partner in a business-intelligence firm, and a keen sportsman. He lives in London with his wife, Nicola, and their three young children.

A full obituary of Christopher Martin-Jenkins will appear in Wisden 2014.

THOMAS LLOYD MAYNARD, 1989–2012

United in grief

STEVE JAMES

After turning left at Oval underground station, we looked desperately for the Hobbs Gate and the end of a bike ride that had begun in Cardiff the previous day at dawn. The sight that greeted us was wholly unexpected: hundreds of people cheering and clapping. A gap opened. We cycled through the car park and out on to the Oval turf. Around the ground we went, led by Matthew Maynard, on a tide of emotion.

I’d never expected to be on that outfield again, and I wish I’d not had to return. But on August 21 we were there in tribute to Matthew’s son, Tom, who had been tragically killed on June 18. The match was a CB40 encounter between Tom’s two former counties, Surrey and Glamorgan. And our 170-mile journey, organised by Ian Williams – a friend of the Maynard family for over 20 years – was the first event to raise money for the Tom Maynard Trust, set up “to help the development of aspiring disadvantaged cricketers and other sportspeople who require support with different aspects of their career development”.

The 30-strong peloton featured Andrew Flintoff and many past and current Glamorgan players – including Will Bragg, David Brown, Jamie Dalrymple, Andrew Davies, Darren Thomas and Ryan Watkins – as well as Jason Ratcliffe and Paul Prichard, two former county players who now work for the PCA. As it reached the pavilion, both teams filed down the steps, united in their grief.

A video montage celebrating Tom’s career was played on the big screen, then Richard Thompson – the Surrey chairman who had taken part in the ride alongside his chief executive Richard Gould – presented Matthew with Tom’s posthumous county cap and a Surrey shirt, with his number (55) on it. The Surrey players all bore it on their shirts, just as the Glamorgan team wore 33, Tom’s number during his time with them.

There was a presentation of cheques from the Trust to David Lloyd of Glamorgan, and Matthew Dunn and George Edwards of Surrey (who were represented by cricket manager Chris Adams). Next came a minute’s applause for Tom. It was heartbreakingly emotional.

Seeing up close the effect it had, I have no idea how the two teams managed to play the game that followed so soon afterwards. That Surrey won was irrelevant: this was about helping a family come to terms with the unimaginably premature loss of their son. I know that the ride helped Matthew enormously in giving him a focus.

On his forearms, he now has two tattoos. On one is the first line of the poem Lend Me A Child by Edgar Guest, which was read by Matthew’s brother Charlie at Tom’s funeral at Llandaff Cathedral on July 4: “I’ll lend you for a little time...” On the other it says: “Forever in our hearts. Thomas Lloyd.”

The cycle ride and the creation of the Trust will hopefully ensure that young Tom Maynard, a cricketer of as much natural talent as his father, remains in all of our minds.

For details of the Tom Maynard Trust, please visit www.tommaynardtrust.com

CRICKET AND CORRUPTION

For the better – or worse?

ED HAWKINS

Never meet a hero, they reckon. But what of a villain? Say hello to Vinay, from Bhopal, capital of the central Indian state of Madhya Pradesh. He is an illegal bookmaker, which also makes him a scourge of the game, and a malevolent, match-fixing mobster. Right?

When I met Vinay in a hotel lobby, the reputation of his brethren – there are estimated to be more than 70,000 bookies in India – preceded him. All, bar those who work at racecourses (where gambling, so the argument goes, is based on skill rather than luck, and therefore socially acceptable) are illegal. It is said – by the ICC, corruption officers, national boards and player bodies – that the illegal bookies are dangerous men from the underworld. People fear them. And so, in truth, did I, as I waited for Vinay, nervously tapping my feet to inane pan-pipe music.

Yet when he arrived, I immediately felt at ease. There was no cloak, no dagger. His smile was brilliant, his handshake warm, his enquiry after my health genuine. We had already exchanged emails, Twitter messages and phone calls. What followed was a crash course in India’s vast gambling industry. Over several weeks as part of my research for a book on corruption in cricket, I would spend time living with him and his family, and watch him run his business (he also owned a construction firm); I would hide from the police, learn how bookies control betting markets, and hear of fixes before they happened. When we parted, I told Vinay of my initial apprehension. “Me?” he guffawed. “This is too much amusement for me. I hope you know me now, ya? But perhaps I understand why you were like this. Bookmakers in India are supposed to be all bad. No. We are trying to make our living in a corrupt country, and we do this by taking any opportunity we can.”

The backdrop to my visit was the sound of exploding myths. Chief among them was the notion that it is possible to place a bet on a no-ball, a misconception that called into question the precise nature of the conviction of Salman Butt, Mohammad Asif and Mohammad Aamer in the spot-fixing trial of November 2011 – though there is no doubt that the News of the World sting showed them to be corruptible. But preconceived notions about corruption in cricket simply collapsed, for it is just not possible to bet on the minutiae of a match: a batsman scoring a certain amount of runs, a fielder being placed in a particular position, a bowler operating from a specific end – or even sending down a pre-designated no-ball. Why? Because just as Indian bookies are not the threatening hoodlums of popular depiction, neither are they knuckle-dragging imbeciles. “Do you think we’re fools?” asked Vinay. “If someone says they want this no-ball bet for big monies, and I’m Ladbrokes in London, I tell them to go away. No bookmaker in the world takes this bet.”

One does not need to be invited into Vinay’s home to understand that any bookie worth his salt would suspect that this customer had inside information. Yet throughout the Southwark trial of the three Pakistanis and their agent, there was a wilful acceptance that the News of the World would have been able to place a bet on the timing of a no-ball, had they so wished. This was clear from the sentencing remarks by Mr Justice Cooke: “Bets could be placed on these no-balls in unlawful markets, mostly abroad, based on inside advance knowledge of what was going to happen… Individuals in India were making £40,000–£50,000 on each identified no-ball. On three no-balls, therefore, the bookmakers stood to lose £150,000 on each bet by a cheating punter.”

In fact, this is impossible. The illegal Indian market is highly organised and, crucially, uniform. It offers only four markets for its gamblers: match odds, innings runs (known as lambi), brackets (the number of runs scored in a certain amount of overs), and lunch favourite (essentially, betting that the team who are favourites at lunch in a Test, or at the innings break in a limited-overs match, will go on and win the game). In the case of the lambi and brackets, a spread is set for the number of runs to be scored, and gamblers bet over or under.

The odds for these markets are provided by four syndicates, who have reached the top of the food chain through their expertise in the field. They charge a fee to bookmakers to use those odds, then take a cut of the profits from all over the country. Think of the syndicates as wholesalers, and the bookies as convenience-store owners, who buy the goods, then sell them on. Vinay is what is known as a first-tier bookmaker. Occasionally, because he is highly regarded, he acts as one of the syndicate heads, who are often based in Mumbai or Dubai, sending out odds to bookies lower down the chain; bookmakers from the second, third or fourth tiers have fewer customers, and receive the odds via SMS, with the syndicate able to reach hundreds of them at once using bulk messaging software. “All bookies in India are connected,” said Vinay. “They will send on the prices to even more.”

Because the syndicates are so dominant, the potential for the manipulation of markets is obvious. And it is certainly more profitable than paying a bowler to overstep. “The Indian market is very big and powerful,” Vinay told me just before England’s one-day international against India at Hyderabad in October 2011. “There are much smarter ways to manipulate betting. Look, I’ll show you.”

On his laptop he logged on to Betfair, the person-to-person betting exchange with more than 4m customers around the globe. After it was announced India had won the toss, he sent updated odds to 200 bookmakers across the country. On the match-odds market, India were favourites at 1.95 (even money would be 2.00). These decimal odds translate into the traditional fractional odds used in the UK as 20-21: in other words, if you bet £21 you can win £20.

“Now watch how I move the Betfair market,” said Vinay. When he sends the SMS to his cohorts instructing them to lower the odds, they flood Betfair with money – or, to be precise, with people prepared to place bets at these odds. He explained: “It is currently India 1.95. Watch how they become 1.85 in line with our odds… wait, you’ll see here how it works… we want to get India short.” Vinay was keen to price India as short as possible because he knew most of his punters would back the home team. Since an Indian victory would have been certain to cost him money, he wanted to discourage punters from backing them. Seconds later, he chirped: “There, you see: India 1.85 now on Betfair. We have moved the market.” And all this from a text message which simply read: “India 85”.

This, of course, is not corruption – just the sheer weight of (illegal) Indian money. Yet no matter what wagers are struck, the bookmaker and the syndicates are able to avoid losses by using betting exchanges to hedge their bets. For example, a bookie may have accepted a wager from any Tom, Dick or Hari of £10 on England to win at even money. This has the potential to cost the bookie £10. However, when England’s odds during the game drift to 6-4 (greater than even money) – either because momentum has shifted towards India, or because Vinay has manipulated the market from a hotel room in Bhopal – the bookie can lay off, or hedge, his bets. The original bet risks him £10. But by placing a wager himself on England at odds of 6-4 for £10, he stands to win £15 if he’s successful: £15 minus £10 is a guaranteed profit of £5. (In the case of an Indian win, Vinay would have hedged his position too, although – because of the amount of money wagered on India – he would be merely seeking to reduce his losses to a manageable level.) Now consider the potential when four or five figures are involved.

Hedging is not illegal, but it shows that corruption is not an exact science: there is more than one method and more than one protagonist. The assumption that it is largely bookmakers who fix matches would appear to be wrong. Vinay worries that punters close to players or officials do the fixing, costing him money. Yet there seems little doubt that the all-powerful syndicates have massive influence, as well as the funds and organisational ability, to fix elements of matches – or even the results themselves.

The bookies and the professional punter can be considered enemies, in the mould of the old-fashioned pork-pie-hat-wearing odds-maker and his traditional chancer customer. It is a war for inside information: who knows more? The only consistent loser is the less clued-up customer, who is in effect betting blind. The syndicate operates a subtle fix. By sending out false odds via their bookies, they tempt customers into taking them. Vinay gave the example of how, armed with prior knowledge that a well-known Test match in 2011 would not end in a draw – when a draw looked at one stage the only possible result – the odds were set so that more people would bet on the stalemate. This is a ruse that hundreds of thousands fall prey to, and the money tots up.

The professional punter can do likewise, but he is a simpler operator. His original way of making money from fixes, which would have been used in the days of Hansie Cronje – and before the betting exchanges were commonplace – is less sophisticated. It requires much poking and prodding of contacts up and down the country, hoping minions will then place the bets correctly. It is a system that primarily takes advantage of the sheer size of the industry: a few lakh in Mumbai (one lakh equals 100,000), a few more in Delhi, a few more somewhere else. Next week, mix it all up again in an attempt not to draw attention to the scale of the enterprise – and hope you don’t get found out.

“The punter will have his friends placing the bets all over,” said Vinay. “There is a big connection. Some punters are connected like the bookmakers are connected. If a punter has 50 friends, he can get 50 bets.” The aim of fragmenting his bets by placing many smaller ones instead of a couple of large ones is to prevent the bookmaker from suspecting inside knowledge.

The subtle nature of the sting fuels the belief that a wide array of markets are available to bet on in India. But it is not because there is a betting market for fielding positions that a syndicate or punter has cajoled a captain into moving a fielder from third man (there is no such market). It is because, without a third man in the first ten overs of a one-day international, more runs are likely to be scored. This allows the syndicate to set false odds on a bracket, knowing that, if they offer runs in the first ten overs at, say, 70–75, most gamblers will bet under. Similarly, a punter who has a close friendship with a batsman might have arranged for him to score fewer than 25. This will give him an edge when it comes to the lambi, bracket and match odds. If it sounds like insider trading on the stock market, that is precisely what it amounts to.

Unfortunately for cricket and the ICC’s Anti-Corruption and Security Unit, it is almost impossible to prove. The fixes are so minute – at least in terms of the impact on the match result – as to be virtually undetectable. How, for example, could the ACSU prove in court that a batsman has scored deliberately slowly for just one over in a Twenty20 match to sate a syndicate or a punter playing the brackets?

But the ACSU do not help themselves by failing to grasp how the illegal market in India works. They were embarrassed when Ravi Sawani, their former boss, admitted in the Southwark trial he had not heard of the term “bracket”. They should also be pilloried for failing to grasp the nuances of spot-fixing, wrongly believing there are manifold markets for bookmakers or gamblers to exploit. Yet we should not simply criticise the governing body. Rarely are players, the collective, admonished. “It’s down to them to take ownership,” said an ACSU source. “A few players have said: ‘There should be more ACSU people.’ No, we should have 20 guys on the field naming the two who are at it.”

There is hope – but only a little. If India’s bookmakers were legalised, they would have to operate exactly like Ladbrokes or William Hill. That would mean an end to the credit system, where bookies accept customers on trust. Instead, they would need money in their account to wager. And to have an account, they would have to hand over their personal details. When accounts are kept and verified, you have a paper trail. If you have a paper trail, you have no rogue punters setting up fixes with their friends in cricket teams. At a stroke, the potential for corruption would be reduced by half.

Vinay is not convinced: “People say: ‘Legalise betting in India and fixing will stop.’ Yes. We are ready to pay tax. I’m tired of paying off the police. But it will not stop fixing. Never.”

Ed Hawkins is the author of Bookie Gambler Fixer Spy: a journey to the corrupt heart of cricket’s underworld. It is Wisden’s Book of the Year for 2013.

WISDEN WRITING COMPETITION WINNER, 2012

South African Time

BRIAN CARPENTER

It is a warm evening in south London, with just a hint of the hazy stickiness that infuses the capital’s air when the temperature and humidity climb. It is July 2012 and the sunshine comes as welcome relief after weeks of sullen skies and intense rain.

The Oval is tense as Kevin Pietersen searches for the fluency and restless innovation which are the leitmotifs of his best batting. The South African attack is fast, skilful and persistently accurate. On 14, Pietersen is dropped at second slip by Jacques Kallis. It is an illusory release of pressure.

He has added only two runs before his stumps are shattered by Morne Morkel, a gangling young Afrikaner with gentle features which contrast sharply with the coltish aggression of his bowling, where pace and bounce are all. Pietersen, with his proud, upright bearing and composed demeanour, leaves the field. The mood is heavy with the scent of unburdened emotion and thwarted ambition.

One of the South African team is Hashim Mahomed Amla, a 29-year-old from Durban who is now among the world’s greatest batsmen. He has met Pietersen before. In 1999, Amla and Pietersen played for KwaZulu-Natal against England. Pietersen saw himself as a shackled, repressed talent, forced to bowl off-spin while dreaming of a better life abroad; Amla was 16, saturnine and clean-shaven, yet to become the wearer of the second-most-celebrated beard in cricket history.

A few months later, Pietersen left South Africa. Amla stayed, endured dark times and eventually flourished. His batting is a potent amalgam of technical precision, fluid timing and understated power. In 2012, in England, this is as good as the batsman’s art can get.

The history of South African Test cricket is weighed down by unfulfilled expectations and denied promise. Great, great players – Pollock, Procter, Richards, van der Bijl – went to their cricketing graves without an extended opportunity to display their talents on the widest stage. But this is to say nothing of the legions of cricketers who, because of their race, were denied the chance to stand even on the rung below.

Once upon a time, Amla would have been the player required to leave his homeland to realise his potential and live out his dreams. It would have been the destiny of Pietersen, with his expensive Pietermaritzburg education and his apparently inviolable sense of self-certainty, to wear the national cap.

Amla is a modest, reserved, devout man. He wastes little emotion but, as he leaves the field at the close of a day on which he has completed the highest individual score by a South African Test batsman, he exudes calm satisfaction. His place in history is secure.

Cricket is a game of conjunctions, of ironies, of veiled resonances. When Hashim Amla was a boy, his country didn’t have an international team. Now, for him and his nation, the feeling of belonging is sweet.

This is their time.

Brian Carpenter grew up watching Middlesex and England in the 1970s and 1980s. He is now often to be found on Gimblett’s Hill at Taunton or in the Warner Stand at Lord’s. He blogs at differentshadesofgreen.blogspot.com

THE COMPETITION – THIS YEAR AND NEXT

Wisden received more than 100 entries for its first writing competition. They arrived from all corners of the globe, all ages, and both genders. The standard was almost invariably high, and the business of judging tricky. In the end, though, the editorial team were at one in selecting Brian Carpenter as the first winner of what is intended to become an annual award. The prize is publication, adulation, and an invitation to the launch dinner.

There are one or two minor changes of housekeeping for the 2013 competition, and the basic rules are given below. Anyone who has not been commissioned for Wisden before can take part. Entries, which should not have been submitted before and are restricted to a maximum of two per person, must be:

1. the entrant’s own work;

2. unpublished in any medium;

3. received by November 30, 2013;

4. between 480 and 520 words (excluding the title);

5. neither libellous nor offensive;

6. related to cricket, but not a match report.

Articles should be emailed to almanack@wisden.com, with “Writing Competition” as the subject line. Alternatively, they can be posted to: Writing Competition, John Wisden & Co, 13 Old Aylesfield, Golden Pot, Alton, Hampshire GU34 4BY. Please provide your name, address and telephone number. Bloomsbury staff and those who, in the editor’s opinion, have a working relationship with Wisden are ineligible. The editor’s decision is final. Once again, we look forward to reading your contributions.

THE 2012 ENTRANTS

Brian Baker; Andrew Bloxham; Keith Booth; Geoffrey Brooks; Michael Burnett; Malcolm Burr; Gordon Campbell; Jonathan Campion; Brian Carpenter; Paul Caswell; Jeff Chandler; Matthew Cheadle; Simon Cleverley; Terry Coffey; David Cohen; Angus Cooper; Gerry Cotter; Terry D’Arcy; Martin Davies; Tim Day; Ewan Day-Collins; Viraj R. Deshpande; Aditya Deuskar; Ethan Dwinger; Phillip Edwards; Simeon Edwards; Giles Falconer; Keith Feaver; Alex Fein; Stewart Francis; David Fraser; Allan Garley; Stephen Gibbs; Tony Giles; Yaron Gottlieb; Ian Gray; James Greenbury; Rory Gribbell; Jon Guard; P. J. Hadcock; Mike Harfield; Brian Harwood; Mike Hill; M. J. Holmes; Irfan Nazir; Georgia Isaac; Nilesh Jain; Steve Jennings; Philip Jones; Shyam Krishnan; James Lawrence; Roger Lewis; Amy Lofthouse; Howell Lovell; Michael Mackenzie; Edmund Martin; David Matthews; Neil Matthews; Paul Mercer; Keith Miller; Peter Miller; Greg Morrissey; David Moyes; Nayeem Islam; John Newth; Murrell Osborne; Ken Payne; David Pennington; Lionel Pike; David Potter; Samanta Priyanka; Ravi Kumar Putcha; Satish Kumar Putcha; Partab Ramchand; Keith Riches; Chris Rigby; Martin Roe; Mark Sanderson; Apurv Sardeshmukh; Christopher Sharp; C. J. A. Slater; Alan Smith; Chris Smith; Stuart Smith; Joshua Spink; Michael Strong; Tom Stuttard; S. B. Tang; James Thomson; Fergal Tobin; Denis Vaz; Malcolm Watson; John West; Robert West; Alan White; Reg White; Simon White; Trevor Woolley; Peter Yarlett; Zeeshan Mahmud.

FIVE CRICKETERS OF THE YEAR

The Five Cricketers of the Year represent a tradition that dates back in Wisden to 1889, making this the oldest individual award in cricket. The Five are picked by the editor, and the selection is based, primarily but not exclusively, on the players’ influence on the previous English season. No one can be chosen more than once. A list of past Cricketers of the Year can be found at www.wisden.com

Hashim Amla

NEIL MANTHORP

Hashim Amla enjoyed one of the most productive tours of England ever seen. In all three formats he was prolific, top-scoring in eight of his 11 international innings. His triple-century in the First Test at The Oval was as career-defining as it was nation-defining: he was the first South African to reach the landmark. It was an epic, and the fact that it laid the platform for a famous series win marked it out for eternal fame. By the time he added another century, in the Third Test at Lord’s, he had edged past even Jacques Kallis as the wicket England craved most.

Amla produced yet another hundred in the one-day series, at Southampton, prompting coach Gary Kirsten to purr: “The pitch was extremely awkward, the bowling very good. To make 150 out of 287 rates it very highly, probably in the top three one-day innings for South Africa.” Accolades kept coming his way as the year progressed; by the end, he had scored 1,950 runs in all internationals, at an average of nearly 63.

Inevitably, there was much talk of his heritage and its historical significance. But Amla, a 30-year-old, third-generation South African, downplays the situation without demeaning it. “The post-apartheid era has been around for a long time, so we are accustomed to seeing people of all races representing South Africa,” he says. “I understand that older generations may find some satisfaction in my achievements, but it is not a factor for me or the team. We were just little boys when Nelson Mandela was released from prison.”

A simple question reveals his essence: does he see himself as a role model? “You are a role model as an international sportsman. The only choice is whether you are a good or a bad one. I would like to be a good one.” And Amla means to be a role model to everyone, irrespective of colour, creed or religion.

On the subject of natural talent, a condition he is accused of possessing with every new example of genius, he smiles knowingly: “There’s no substitute for hard work. Even those players who make it look easy, they all train hard. There’s such a thing as natural talent, and no such thing as natural success.”

Minor frailties in his technique were exposed when he made a false start to his international career back in 2004-05. He played round his front pad, and was dropped after two Tests at home to England amid whispers of tokenism. He also struggled against the short ball, and spent close to 100 hours in Kingsmead’s indoor school facing thousands of bouncers from a bowling machine at full pace. After 15 Tests, he averaged 25 – a figure he has since doubled. That was not, as Amla says, a result of natural talent.

And yet he clearly has something. Whereas others see fielders, Amla sees gaps. It accounts for his occasionally extraordinary shot selection, such as leaping towards cover and flicking decent deliveries through the leg side from outside off stump. “Sometimes you need to hit the ball where the bowler doesn’t want you to,” he says, trying hard not to sound confrontational. “I’m sure it does upset bowlers, but that’s not my aim. I just want to score runs.”

The wrist skills which characterise his run-making are not, in fact, a legacy of his Indian heritage. His grandparents emigrated from Gujarat 60 years ago, but his blood is “South African green”, and his subcontinental batting skills are all self-taught. It is Amla’s ability to manoeuvre himself, at times un-obtrusively, into unorthodox positions that makes his batsmanship appear less outrageous than it really is. Only the most discerning observe his ability to toy with the bowler and create scoring opportunities. The off-stump guard he took to Graeme Swann during the Oval Test was a classic of the genre; by the end of the series, Swann was bowling without a slip.

HASHIM MAHOMED AMLA, born in Durban on March 31, 1983, encounters awe on a regular basis, but he does not encourage it. Awe, he feels, should be reserved for those with a special dispensation in life, not for a cricketer who – like him – happens to lead a simple existence according to the principles of his religion. He does not enjoy the spotlight, nor when his cricket is linked to his Muslim faith. He sees his religion, personality and cricket as existing concurrently, but separately, and finds it peculiar that people should seek a special explanation for his ability to cope with, say, the tension of a Lord’s century or a steepling catch in the deep with a series at stake. Amla’s Twitter lexicon is more Durban hipster than cricketer: were he not a batsman, he’d be a surfer.

His aura and influence within the team are as profound as they are unintended. The way he goes about his daily life has changed the perspective of team-mates. On tour, Morne Morkel has been known to appease his own stresses and strains just by spending time in Amla’s hotel room. An Afrikaner in the room of a Muslim: nothing to them, earthquake to social historians. Even the traditional drinkers in the squad adore Amla for his non-judgmental approach. Despite refusing to wear the logo of the national sponsor – Castle Lager – he thoroughly endorses personal choice. He has gone out of his way to make team-mates aware he is neither disapproving nor uncomfortable when they celebrate victories in the traditional way.

Captaincy is a tricky subject. He’s very good at it, and everyone wants him to do it, but he’s only reluctantly willing, not keen. Amla understands the political expediency and other benefits of occupying a position of national leadership. But he also understands his game well enough to know that the most likely result is fewer runs. He was Under-19 captain when South Africa were beaten by Australia in 2002, and had the captaincy of KwaZulu-Natal thrust upon him at the age of 21. The first worked, the second didn’t.

A glorious 2012 has left him thinking of nothing but the next innings. “Things have a way of sorting themselves out. For now I am simply loving the game. This Wisden honour is very, very special. I do not regard myself in the same company as many previous winners.” The modesty would have England’s bowlers ruefully shaking their heads.

Nick Compton

RICHARD LATHAM

When Somerset declared on 512 for nine against Worcestershire on the penultimate day of the County Championship, Nick Compton was on 155 and six runs adrift of a first-class average of 100. This was a feat only four men had achieved in an English summer since the war (five, if you include Australian tailender Bill Johnston, who was dismissed once in 17 innings in 1953). In the event, he ended up settling for a first-class average of 99.60 and – in case sceptics wondered whether his stats had been misleadingly massaged by a huge 236 against Cardiff MCCU at the start of April – a Championship figure of 99.25. Among batsmen who had played at least ten innings, that average placed him 26 runs ahead of the next best. His first-class tally of 1,494 runs was 280 more than second-placed James Hildreth, a Somerset team-mate – despite Compton missing three matches with a back injury.

It was a gargantuan effort in a summer which, certainly in the matches played before the break for Twenty20 cricket in mid-June, was tailor-made for seam bowling. The fact that he had missed out on another statistical landmark earlier in the season barely seemed to matter. Compton had been robbed by rain of the chance to become the first player since Graeme Hick in 1988 to score 1,000 runs before the end of May, having chalked off nine of the 59 needed against Worcestershire at New Road when the heavens opened on May 31. On June 1, he was finally out for 108.

His early-season performances, which included 99 against Middlesex, 133 against Worcestershire and an unbeaten 204 against Nottinghamshire, had made their impression. In September, Compton’s immense powers of concentration and exemplary technique won him the reward he most coveted: a place in England’s Test squad for the tour to India, where he was an able lieutenant as Alastair Cook’s opening partner, even if the big score he craved eluded him.

NICHOLAS RICHARD DENIS COMPTON was born in Durban, South Africa, on June 26, 1983. His parents Richard – who played first-class cricket for Natal and was the son of England’s Denis – and Zimbabwean mother Glynis had backgrounds in public relations and journalism. Early education was at Clifton Preparatory School, Durban, and Compton made his first cricketing trip to England on a school tour aged 12. After periods at Hilton College and Durban High School, where he played under Hashim Amla, the opportunity arose to study at Harrow on a sports scholarship. He immediately helped secure a first victory in 25 years over Eton at Lord’s – “a magical day” – and by his third year he was captain, while also securing a contract with Middlesex. He began a social science degree at Durham University, but a persistent groin problem, which eventually led to surgery, curtailed his cricket; he never completed the course.

Once fully fit, Compton took well to county cricket, and was a three-times winner of Middlesex’s Young Player of the Year award – named after his grandfather. In 2006, he scored 1,313 first-class runs and was selected for the England A tour to India and Bangladesh, working under Andy Flower – then a batting coach – at Loughborough. In Bangladesh, he topped the averages, and his career appeared to be blossoming. But a shock was around the corner. The following season he managed only 385 Championship runs, and was dropped by Middlesex.

“It was a shattering experience,” he says. “I felt I was close to playing for England at the start of the summer, and being left out by Middlesex – unjustly, in my opinion – hit me hard. The next 14 months were really tough.” After only three Championship appearances in 2008, Compton decided to head to Australia during the winter to try to regain his confidence.

In the summer of 2009 Compton regained a regular first-team place. It was then that Somerset stepped in. “Even though I had enjoyed a better season with Middlesex, I felt the time was right to cut my ties,” he says. “I wanted to push myself and play in the first division of the Championship.”

Leaving London for the quiet of the West Country proved more taxing than Compton had expected. He struggled to fit into an established batting line-up, and found socialising difficult, admitting to feeling “pretty lonely at times”. Asked to be the rock which would allow more free-scoring players like Marcus Trescothick, Hildreth, Craig Kieswetter and Peter Trego to play their shots, he lost sight of natural strengths.

“I found I was trying to impress the other batsmen, which made me feel pressurised,” he says. “After three months, I changed my whole mindset, concentrating more on occupying the crease, and my form improved.” In the winter, he played first-class and Twenty20 cricket in Zimbabwe, enjoying success in both formats before returning to Taunton intent on forging a regular first-team place. A solid summer brought 1,010 Championship runs – only Trescothick made more for Somerset – including a top score of 254 not out against Durham at Chester-le-Street. “I was proud of that season. I felt I had put down a marker, and that only fine-tuning was necessary to bring further improvement.”

That fine-tuning involved hours of the most arduous practice, both at Taunton and with his batting coach Neil Burns, the former wicketkeeper. Compton makes a habit of facing bowling machines set at 99mph for two- or three-hour sessions, having dimmed the lights in the indoor nets. “The aim is to make conditions as uncomfortable as possible and see how long I can maintain concentration. There is a fear factor, and it’s often very cold too. You get hit and there are times when you just want to walk away, but I figure if I can handle that, nothing in games is going to intimidate me.”

While Compton is immensely proud of his grandfather’s achievements, he is very much his own man. Coming from a cricketing family, he had a bat in his hand from as early as he can remember, but he never received coaching from Denis. “He did offer me one piece of advice when I was playing in his back garden one day. My dad was giving me some underarm throwdowns, and my grandfather was sitting on his porch, probably sipping a port or brandy. I was tapping the ball back with a high elbow and he yelled out: ‘For God’s sake, hit the bloody thing!’”

Jacques Kallis

CHRISTOPHER MARTIN-JENKINS

The best, most classical and most durable all-rounder of his generation, and arguably of all time, was the mighty difference between South Africa and England in the summer of 2012. His presence gave the tourists an enviable balance, leaving England – who dared not bat their wicketkeeper Matt Prior at No. 6 to accommodate an extra bowler – outgunned.

Kallis’s implacable alliance with Hashim Amla made possible England’s humiliation at The Oval, where his unbeaten 182 was as easy to miss as any such score could be. He also bowled with shrewdness and calculated venom, undermining England’s first innings with the vital wickets of Kevin Pietersen and Ian Bell, and swallowed fast, flying catches at second slip.

Only a Lord’s century remained out of reach, though last summer he was not helped by two contentious decisions. Overall, he was for South Africa what he had been for at least 15 years: a pillar and a rock. At last, the claim in 2012 that he had never quite received the credit he deserved felt wrong; but the comparisons with Garfield Sobers did not.

Born in Cape Town on October 16, 1975, JACQUES HENRY KALLIS was quickly recognised as a special talent at his school, Wynberg Boys’ High, a couple of miles from Newlands, his spiritual home. Indeed, the school’s cricket field was renamed “The Jacques Kallis Oval” in 2009. He first played for his country, against England in the Durban Test of 1995-96, at the age of 20. Batting at No. 6, he made a single in a rain-ruined draw, and did not get a bowl, but his bit part proved misleading: other than a spell out of the Twenty20 side, he has been an essential selection ever since. That Oval hundred was the 43rd of his Test career (only Sachin Tendulkar has more), to go with 17 in one-day internationals. Injuries have been rare, perhaps because of a bowling action reminiscent of Alec Bedser: sideways on, with the left arm leading, a full turn of a strong frame, and a surging follow-through.

Like Jack Nicklaus, the greatest of golfers, he has kept extraordinary command of his emotions, his expression inscrutable until he takes another wicket or reaches another century. Then a wide smile lights his even wider face. He has been a model not just of batting and bowling technique, but of the game’s chivalrous spirit: England recall Kallis walking at a crucial moment in a World Cup game at Chennai in 2011, having accepted the fielder’s word that a potentially contentious slip catch had carried. Yet he is as intensively competitive as anyone. He is, in fact, driven by his will to succeed.

Massive strength and a temperament as cool as an igloo have made him the most consistently formidable all-round cricketer since the era of Botham, Imran, Hadlee and Kapil – and, like them, Kallis has done things his own way. He ascribes his longevity to managing his fitness: “I’ve always tried to listen to my body and pick up early warning signs. In the early days I trained all day and bowled in the nets. I was in my mid-twenties when I realised I had to change.”

As a batsman he quickly learned to switch off between deliveries; a monumental calm has always pervaded his cricket. Once set, often from the first ball, he looks unmovable, as he confirmed during his unbroken stand of 377 with Amla. Impressive rather than exciting, and utterly orthodox, he rarely looks hurried; his bat appears broader than the Laws allow. Only his strike-rate has drawn criticism: just occasionally, he has seemed wrapped up in personal battles, and once or twice in mid-career he failed to produce the gear-change his team needed.

His omission from the 2007 World Twenty20 may have focused the mind, for barely a week after the tournament he dominated Pakistan’s Test bowlers on their notoriously slow pitches, scoring 155 and 100 not out at Karachi, then 59 and 107 not out at Lahore. Soon after, at home to New Zealand, he scored 186 and 131 in successive innings.

To select from his achievements feels invidious, but a few feats capture him best. In 2001-02, he went 1,241 minutes – nearly 21 hours – between Test dismissals. Two years later, he made centuries in five successive Tests, one short of Don Bradman’s record. Depicted by some, at times fairly, as a reluctant bowler, he finished the England tour with 555 international wickets, to say nothing of 319 catches.

Short but intensive preparation has been vital to these insatiable performances. “The key,” he explains, “is to treat every ball you bowl or face as if it’s the real thing. With that intensity you can do your preparation in 20 balls rather than an hour or two. I learned a long time ago that physical preparation for international cricket takes place a long time before the match. It’s mental preparation that counts on the eve of the match.

“I’ve never had to question my motivation, never questioned the reason I go to work every day. I stay fresh by getting as far away from cricket as possible between tours and games. I don’t watch any cricket and I certainly don’t talk about it.”

His escape to private life is easier in Cape Town than it would be if home were Kolkata or Mumbai. “I prefer to play golf than watch cricket,” he admits. “I do whatever I can to make the game feel fresh again the next time I play.” And his willingness to muck in was exemplified when, as part of a team-bonding exercise before the England tour, Kallis – who loathes heights – jumped ten feet into an Alpine lake.

How much longer Kallis will devote to the game is, inevitably, uncertain. The calamitous ending to the career of Mark Boucher, his close friend, gave him reason to consider his future early in the England tour. But Gary Kirsten, long a team-mate and now the national coach, has a plan. After managing Sachin Tendulkar’s cricketing autumn while coaching India, Kirsten hoped he could persuade Kallis to play at the 2015 World Cup. It would be a record-equalling sixth, and he would be 39. Whenever he does decide to call it a day, cricket will have lost a true phenomenon.

Marlon Samuels

TONY COZIER

The transformation of Marlon Samuels from troubled underachiever to elite performer read like a Hollywood script. The steady improvement of West Indies after years of similar frustration was no coincidence. Together they served as a reminder that, for all the headlines gathered by Samuels’s fellow Jamaican Usain Bolt and the other Caribbean medallists at the London Olympics, it was cricket that first established the region’s reputation for sporting excellence.

The performances of Samuels in England surprised many, if not the man himself. In three Tests, he failed to pass 50 only once in five innings, averaged more than 96, and made the stump mike essential listening with his ice-cool rejoinders to the sledging. More runs at home to New Zealand soon after confirmed this was no fluke and, by the time he was winning the World Twenty20 final almost on his own, he had established himself in the upper echelons of global batsmanship. A maiden Test double-hundred followed in Bangladesh. It was some turnaround – and only a little of the sheen was removed when he became involved in a petty altercation with Shane Warne in Australia’s Big Bash League early in 2013.

Fast-tracked into the Test team at the age of 19 after only seven first-class matches, Samuels was restricted to 29 caps and an average of 29 over the next eight years because of his cavalier approach. He was also forced to remedy his flawed off-spinner’s action. When he was found guilty of links with a Dubai-based bookmaker ahead of a one-day international at Nagpur in January 2007, and banned for two years, even from club cricket, the feeling was that Samuels – who protested his innocence – might have been swayed towards another profession. His good looks and lithe physique had already earned him work as a male model. Instead, the affair stiffened his resolve.

“All I ever wanted to do was play international cricket and make a name for myself,” he says. “The two years that were taken away enabled me to look at myself. I never thought of quitting. I made up my mind that I was going to come back and show them that nothing could break me that easily.”

He adopted a rigorous routine. Morning work in the gym from eight to 11 was followed by afternoon sessions in the nets against the bowling machine or willing friends, then yoga in the evening. Though never a heavy drinker, he gave up alcohol altogether. His suspension ended in May 2010, and his form in the Caribbean’s regional four-day competition the following year (853 runs at 65) guaranteed a swift recall to international cricket. He inevitably took time to readapt, and even turned down the chance to play at the 2011 World Cup, telling the selectors he was “not 100% ready”. And there were further problems when he signed belatedly for Pune Warriors ahead of the 2012 Indian Premier League, knowing the tournament clashed with a home Test series against Australia.

But the West Indies Cricket Board agreed to his suggested compromise – skip Australia, play the first half of the IPL, then rejoin his international team-mates in England. His reason for preferring the chill of a northern spring to the challenge of facing Australia on home territory revealed an ambition not previously obvious: “England, not Australia, were the No. 1 team at the time, and I felt that, if I could dominate against them, it would push me closer to being No. 1 in the world.”

Immediately, it became clear this was no braggadocio. Scores of 31 and 86 at Lord’s, 117 and 76 not out at Trent Bridge, and 76 at Edgbaston were compiled with the effortless elegance that had always typified his batting; now he came with diligence too. Two months later in the Caribbean, on the 50th anniversary of Jamaica’s independence he made 123 in a first-innings total of 209 against New Zealand in his native Kingston, then carried West Indies to a 2–0 triumph with a second-innings 52. In October in Colombo, his breathtaking 78 off 56 balls paved the way for victory over Sri Lanka in the final of the World Twenty20. No one – not even Chris Gayle and his Gangnam Style dancing – embodied their renaissance better than Samuels.

Those who remembered him as a boy prodigy were surprised only that his talents had taken so long to bear fruit. MARLON NATHANIEL SAMUELS, born in Kingston to Philip and Daphne on January 5, 1981, was nurtured at Melbourne, one of Jamaica’s most renowned clubs, and Kingston College – a school with a rich sporting tradition and a cricket coach, Roy McLean, whom Samuels credits with first recognising, then shaping, his rare ability. He hoped one of the first initiatives of his new Marlon Samuels Foundation would be to renovate Kingston College’s facilities.

His parents had no special love for cricket, but he and his four brothers (plus three sisters) enjoyed the advantage of living within walking distance of Melbourne, where they could rub shoulders with Michael Holding and Courtney Walsh. Robert, the eldest, and ten years Marlon’s senior, was a solid left-handed opener who went on to captain Jamaica and play six Tests, against New Zealand and Australia in the late 1990s. Twins David and Daniel were useful club players. But Marlon was the special one.

By the age of 15, he had reeled off 16 hundreds for college and club, and Jamaica included him in their Red Stripe Cup side a year later, with Walsh captain and Robert an opener. But dismissed for two and one on debut, Marlon was immediately consigned to the youth team. The West Indies selectors were more convinced, though, picking him for two successive Under-19 World Cups, and two matches against the touring Pakistanis in 1999-2000. When Shivnarine Chanderpaul succumbed to injury on the tour of Australia later that year, Samuels was summoned. They might as well have tossed him to the saltwater crocs.

But their hunch was justified: in his second Test, at the MCG, he made an unbeaten 60 out of 165, then 46 out of 109. He would beat even Brian Lara to the top of West Indies’ series averages. Wisden remarked on his “impressive cool”. But in the years ahead there was too much cool and not enough substance. Viv Richards, then the travelling chief selector, wanted to send him home from a tour of India in 2002-03 for breaking the team curfew. The board disagreed, and at Eden Gardens he scored his maiden Test hundred in his only innings of the series. His first one-day international century quickly followed, at Vijayawada. Yet Samuels soon dissolved into irritating inconsistency. And he was perplexed and unsettled by it all.

“I never knew when I’d be playing from one match to the next, so I couldn’t plan my game as I wanted,” he says. “I kept hearing I was left out for some attitude problem, but they never explained to me what it supposedly was. I just kept on hearing that I was too cool, too laid back.”

It was no coincidence that he approached his best in South Africa, in 2007-08, almost as soon as Gayle, a compatriot and trusted friend, took over the captaincy. Samuels compiled his second Test hundred, at Durban, and averaged 52. Then in quick succession came the problem with his action and the ICC ban. His future was in obvious doubt. Yet his spirited resurrection ensures it no longer is.

Dale Steyn

TELFORD VICE

It took a girl of no more than ten years old to cut to the chase of what it means to be Dale Steyn. “How do you manage to have fun and look so angry at the same time?” she asked him earnestly at a sponsor’s farewell before South Africa flew to Australia late in 2012 to defend the No. 1 ranking earned so emphatically in England a couple of months previously.

How indeed? Not for Steyn the despising sneer of Allan Donald, Makhaya Ntini’s brooding brow or Shaun Pollock’s cool detachment from the blood-in-the-boots business of fast bowling. Instead, like some demented cartoon elf, Steyn’s eyes flash frequently with dark wonder at the fact that he is armed with a skill that could kill.

Everyone who faced him in South Africa’s Test series in England survived to tell the tale, but only in a manner of speaking. Fifteen times he dismissed his quarry. And he did so as he always has, with deliveries that seemed almost unfair. How could they swing so sharply at such extreme pace? Their violence was clinical, just like his career strike-rate of 41 balls per wicket – bettered only by four men, including team-mate Vernon Philander, in Test history.

Two other factors played a part as well. One was the almost other-worldly experience undergone by Steyn and the rest of the squad before the tour, with South African explorer Mike Horn in the Swiss Alps. Clambering over mountains and glaciers, they appeared to stumble across aspects of their characters they never knew existed. The other was the cruel fate of Mark Boucher, whose career was ended when a bail hit him in the eye on the first day of the trip, at Taunton.

“Going to Switzerland was a revelation for us, and the Mark Boucher incident left a deep impression,” says Steyn. “I probably realised things aren’t as bad on the cricket field as I sometimes make them out to be.”

In short, reality bit like it had rarely bitten before. They stopped being a mere team, becoming instead a band of men united in a cause. “Something changed,” he says. “I definitely saw that. There’s great bonding and camaraderie between the guys, and it showed in England. We can handle those tough times because we can overcome them.”

It was earlier on that fateful day at Taunton that Steyn laid down his marker for the bigger battle to come. He took the new ball, and his first delivery hooked away wickedly from Arul Suppiah’s bat. Steyn completed his follow-through with a forlorn raise of the hand, as if to say: “If only he was good enough to get an edge.”

Several of those who tangled with Steyn in the summer were indeed good enough – and they paid the price. After crucially halting England’s serene progress on the second morning of the series, at The Oval, he took five wickets in the second innings on a pitch still lacking demons, as South Africa dispelled bumptious English doubts about whether they belonged on the same field. Another four crashed in the first innings at Lord’s, among them the linchpin wickets of Alastair Cook and Jonathan Trott; between them, the pair fell seven times to Steyn in the series.

To see him slay another victim with what seemed an utter lack of effort was to see a man live up to his billing. Quite simply, he looked like the world’s best fast bowler, and performed accordingly. More than that, he looked as if he had been doing so for most of his life. He is, it has been said before and will be said again, a natural – a bundle of fast-twitch fibres and aggressive intent lurking in a body perfect for its role.

It’s hard to imagine that DALE WILLEM STEYN was not already a fast-bowler-in-waiting when he was born on June 27, 1983, in Phalaborwa, a town of fewer than 13,000 souls, in the rural north-east of South Africa. But much needed to be done if he was to fulfil that destiny as spectacularly as he has. Throughout his career, he has been among the best conditioned of South Africa’s players; happily, serious injury has left him alone. But the confident, wisecracking athlete he would become is a far cry from the unsure young bowler he once was.

Initially, Steyn seemed spooked by his own powers, hesitant to let fly with all the velocity he had at his disposal. This was most apparent in his first three Tests, against England at home in 2004-05. He bowled tentatively, taking eight wickets at 52. The eight no-balls he sent down in nine overs in England’s second innings at the Wanderers sealed his fate: he was dropped.

Perhaps it was not the done thing for country kids to hold the spotlight on the world stage. It was certainly not the done thing for them to play cricket at a high level. But Phalaborwa is also a place of extremes: its open-cast copper mine is, at almost 2km across, Africa’s widest man-made hole, and summer temperatures reach 47°C. Steyn’s confidence duly caught up with the rest of him. Soon, the man emerged in full.

An important moment arrived shortly after lunch on the first day at Centurion against New Zealand in November 2007, when he put opening batsman Craig Cumming in intensive care with a delivery that hit him in the face and caused 23 fractures. Steyn made a cursory check on his prone opponent, turned on his heel, and went back to his mark to await his next target.

In March 2008, in his 20th Test, Steyn reached 100 wickets more quickly than any South African. A month later, the ICC put him on top of their bowling rankings, where he has remained. He was also the ICC’s Test Player of the Year in 2008. Those are the prizes of his carefully aimed anger. Off the field, he has a penchant for retro trainers, fishing, and midnight dashes for ice-cream. That’s where the fun comes in. But don’t be fooled.

FAREWELL (1): DRAVID AND LAXMAN

Two southern gentlemen

RAHUL BHATTACHARYA

“Nusrat singing, Laxman and Dravid batting – TV on mute, and yoga.” A note from an acquaintance in Mumbai had this description of his perfect day. Rahul Dravid and V. V. S. Laxman marked their Test debuts within six months of one another in 1996 with accomplished half-centuries. Sixteen years later, they announced their retirements in accomplished press conferences, also within six months of each other. But this note came not on the occasion of a batting feat or a retirement. It was, in Indian shorthand, an ode to long-form cricket – and the pair that most profoundly summoned its sensation.

Consider the correspondent’s other passions. A partnership of Laxman and Dravid could contain both the incantatory rapture of Nusrat Fateh Ali Khan and the meditative discipline of yoga. One might say Laxman was the rapture and Dravid the discipline, but that would not only be partially false, it would be to miss the point. The beauty of a jugalbandi, a duet between classical soloists, is in the interplay. A jugalbandi is a duet in the same way as a batting partnership: not simultaneous, but one performer at a time, in improvisatory rotation. The great sitar player Ustad Vilayat Khan said the idea was to both showcase and subdue oneself. As he hands over to his partner, the artist must judge how much to dissolve the tune. Dravid and Laxman dissolved into one another more harmoniously, more significantly, than any other Indian duo.

Separately, theirs were brilliant careers. Dravid’s was colossal. He played 164 Tests, faced more deliveries than anyone in history (31,260), and made more runs (13,288) than all but two. He became the first man to 200 catches, most of them snaffled at first slip. For a supposed misfit in one-day internationals, he still racked up over 10,000 runs at nearly 40. Though he enjoyed neither, he kept wicket or opened the innings with courage and competence, whenever needed. In a tumultuous stint as captain, he oversaw a first-round World Cup exit and Test series victories in the West Indies and England.

Laxman, who when picked for India still hadn’t ruled out returning to medical studies to become a doctor like his parents, scored close to 9,000 runs in 134 Tests. Against Australia, the premier team of the era, he struck ten sublime international centuries, including one that may just be the greatest innings in all cricket. Like Dravid, he caught well at bat–pad, then in the slips. Sometimes vice-captain, he was seen by younger team-mates as the avuncular bridge between generations. They called him mama, or uncle. These are the bare facts.

Part of their harmony was that Laxman and Dravid were similar and dissimilar in equal measure. They were both from southern India – Laxman from Hyderabad, Dravid from Bangalore – and were both gentlemen (south Indians will think this a tautology). Raised on matting wickets, they enjoyed bounce and back-foot play. They were tall, wristy, hit the ball along the ground, and possessed what cricket watchers refer to as “temperament”.

For all that, they could give off very different impressions: Dravid seemed to care a little too much, Laxman not enough. This may be because Dravid perspired heavily and tended to grimace, whereas Laxman looked always a serene stroller in pleasant climes. It may be because Dravid committed himself to sincere footwork, whereas Laxman (against pace) trusted his hands and the curvy abstractions of what he once told me was his “bat flow”.

Sporting impressions are rarely false. It’s just that sportswriters, like cartoonists, exaggerate the features. As with David Gower, the game looked easy in Laxman’s lovely hands. He was Goweresque in only that respect. He was not to be spotted swooping in a biplane over his team-mates, or sozzled at an official reception. He was a diligent man, who worked all career at ironing out any incriminating casualness from his strokes; a religious man, who can quote verses from the Bhagavad Gita, and in the early years could be seen muttering a prayer (to the saint Sai Baba) as he faced up.

Meanwhile Dravid, given to over-intensity, honed relaxation into a fine art. Before matches, he willed himself away from self-torture through video analysis and training sessions, to long lunches, long sleep, and slow living. Waiting to bat, he watched the game only briefly. He was no contest, it is true, for Laxman, who was fond of showering when the man before him went in, and thereafter might be found lying under a table listening to music on headphones.

When his turn arrived, Dravid strode out briskly to the centre. On certain days, with chest and arm guards in place, his back erect and knees high for a man with pads, it could be said he marched out. Laxman appeared sometimes belatedly, somewhat gingerly (bad knees), with a pacific, Mona Lisa quasi-smile, and collar turned up in the Hyderabadi way. At the crease they were calm, immersed in their work like artistes. They were happy to bat for hours, days. Occasionally Dravid responded to sledging, though in an upstanding kind of manner. Laxman seemed not to notice at all. While fielding in the slips they talked to each other, Dravid told journalist Nagraj Gollapudi, “about kids, house construction, plumbers, electricians, running errands”.

The mammoth partnership has usually been the preserve of those in successive batting positions. Only seven pairs in Test history have put together two or more triple-century stands, as Dravid and Laxman did. These have been either openers – Herschelle Gibbs and Graeme Smith – or batted close together: Bill Ponsford and Don Bradman, Kumar Sangakkara and Mahela Jayawardene, Younis Khan and Mohammad Yousuf, Hashim Amla and Jacques Kallis, Ricky Ponting and Michael Clarke. But Dravid and Laxman batted at opposite poles of the middle order, at first drop and fourth. Three-hundred-and-something runs for the fifth wicket suggests more than appetite: it suggests valour.

Valour was scarce in the times we refer to. To understand Indian cricket at the turn of the century, consider the sequence: clean-swept in Australia, clean-swept at home by South Africa, the resignation of a deflated captain (Sachin Tendulkar), the naming of the previous captain (Mohammad Azharuddin) and several players in a match-fixing scandal. To passionate fans, cricket felt desperate; to others, it felt wholly discredited.

Kolkata, 2001: it was a day short of the Ides of March. But the 14th was no less portentous for Australia’s Caesar, Steve Waugh. On that day two years previously, a beleaguered West Indies side had risen again in Kingston: from 37 for four overnight, Brian Lara and Jimmy Adams batted almost all day and overturned a series. Australia had advanced since, revivified by the phenomenon of Adam Gilchrist, the tank–sniper combination of Matthew Hayden and Justin Langer, and Waugh’s own ruthless ambition. Forget losses: they barely did draws. Going into Kolkata they had racked up a world record 16 straight Test wins. The latest of those was a three-day demolition of India in Mumbai. And in Kolkata, a quartet of Glenn McGrath, Jason Gillespie, Michael Kasprowicz and Shane Warne had bowled Australia to a 274-run lead.

The rest is an Indian fairytale: Laxman the last man out in the first innings for a dashing 59, asked to keep his pads on by his captain and the coach, swapping positions with a struggling Dravid in the follow-on, the two coming together in the second innings with Laxman almost upon his century but India still behind Australia’s first-innings total.

And then the batting, and batting, and more beautiful batting, over a short evening, the whole of March 14, and then some more. Laxman curling the ball through imperceptible gaps, Dravid regaining lost form through pure unblinking will, Laxman now flick-pulling the fast bowlers as if tossing frisbees, now driving them on the rise, sinuous jabs that raced improbably across the big green outfield, Dravid now blocking, now shouldering arms, now leaning back to cut, the old sureness slowly redeveloping, Laxman inside-outing Warne miraculously from far outside leg stump, now whipping him against the turn, Dravid, fully restored, emboldened to come down the track himself and wrist Warne across his break, all of this in the huge sound and growing belief of a hundred thousand in Eden Gardens, an energy that must be experienced to be understood.

Laxman batted ten and a half hours for 281. Dravid was run out for 180 after nearly seven and a half. Together they put on 376. These were runs made in some discomfort: Laxman had been listing, much like a ship, and his back had to be realigned by the physio during the intervals; Dravid, battling the high humidity of Kolkata and his own rate of perspiration, cramped with dehydration. Around their necks both wore strips of towel drenched in ice-water, and they returned to a dressing-room installed with drips. India won the Test, magically, then the series. If a virtue of sport is to make a people cast aside their troubles, not by fantasy but aspiration, here it was.

Three seasons on, the Indian team were finding their way in the world – but not yet in Australia. At Adelaide, they were 85 for four, trailing by 471, doomed to a ritual humiliation. Despite the absence of Warne and McGrath, the task didn’t look hard: it looked hopeless. India hadn’t won a Test in Australia for 23 years. Of the 26 Tests that Steve Waugh had captained at home, Australia had won 21 and lost one (a dead rubber in the 2002-03 Ashes). Soon the familiar chemistry between our like-and-unlike couple began to galvanise into something close to inevitability.

Here, Dravid played the lead. He was back at No. 3, and in the form of his life. The previous year he had hit Test centuries in four successive innings, three of them in England, including a defensive tour de force at Headingley. Sunny Adelaide allowed him to be more expansive. His handsomest stroke, the front-foot drive through cover, he repeatedly demonstrated, bending low on his left knee like a skater and letting his arms arc out. Astonishingly, he brought up his century with a miscued pull – for six. He even surprised himself when, late in the collaboration, he looked at the scoreboard to find he had outscored his partner. “Yeah, jeez, not bad for a blocker, huh?” he told the sportswriter Rohit Brijnath.

This time they put on 303: Laxman 148, Dravid 233. In a neat inversion, as Laxman had set up Kolkata with a first-innings fifty, here Dravid anchored a hard fourth-innings chase with 72 not out. When he cut the winning runs to the boundary, Waugh made a point of retrieving the ball from the gutter and handing it over. Waugh retired after the series, and to write a foreword to his autobiography he invited Dravid, a much younger man who had once sought him out to ask how to take his game to a higher plane.

There was much more to Dravid and Laxman than these two partnerships – and also, of course, often much less. Laxmanophiles were bewildered that a batsman of his calibre should average so far below 50, appalled (and secretly charmed) by his running between the wickets, and plain frustrated when the ball seamed about and he poked to slip; against England he averaged 30. Likewise, Dravid partisans could try to construct defences for his unflattering averages against Australia and South Africa, the best bowling attacks of the time – but how to enjoy his most tuneless offerings, the 16-off-114-balls variety, except by wilful perversity? (Dravid, who had not just the cussedness but also the humour to perpetrate these innings, once raised his bat to applause from an Australian crowd after a single.)

Indians place on a pedestal the twin epics because of what they were, and also because of their associations. To think of Dravid’s 233 at Adelaide is also to think of his monumental 270 in Rawalpindi, 148 at Headingley, or 93 at Perth – all setting up ground-breaking overseas victories. To think of Laxman’s Kolkata masterpiece is also an oblique tribute to its younger brothers: from late 2010 alone, extraordinary fourth-innings chases against Australia and Sri Lanka, and a third-innings 96 in Durban when nobody else in the match touched 40.

Team success cannot and should never be a necessary or a sufficient condition for a cricketer’s accomplishments, but in the Indian instance it felt urgent. The Indian side of the 2000s was up against a history of flickering achievement amid lethargic underperformance. Of the batting line-up instrumental in overturning that history, Dravid was the spine and Laxman the nerve. Their runs were tough, elegant and vital. Their manner was classic. The echoes of Kolkata and Adelaide rang down the decade, in far-flung venues and memories, and in notes from cricket watchers to one another.

Rahul Bhattacharya is the author of Pundits from Pakistan and The Sly Company of People Who Care, winner of the 2012 Ondaatje Prize.

FAREWELL (2): ANDREW STRAUSS

Skilful juggler, born leader

SCYLD BERRY

No modern captain has had such a beneficial effect on the England team as Andrew Strauss. Nasser Hussain changed losers into draw-ers, then Michael Vaughan changed draw-ers into winners. But when Strauss took over as the official captain in January 2009, he not only turned losers into winners in a few short months, but changed the collective culture, for good – in both senses of the word. A group of individuals who had often put self-interest first were transformed by his vision into a team dedicated to England and excellence.

Retaining the Ashes in 2010-11 by winning 3–1 (all three by an innings) was Strauss’s proudest achievement. Regaining them in 2009, after inheriting a crisis, was his cleverest. By then, the legacies of Vaughan and his coach Duncan Fletcher had evaporated. He had a resentful predecessor in Kevin Pietersen, no permanent coach, and the uncomfortable knowledge that he had been chosen as a last resort, in the absence of any succession planning. Why Strauss should have been regarded as a last resort is puzzling, given how well he had led the side when filling in for Vaughan in 2006. Perhaps it was a result of his self-effacement, his refusal to blow his own trumpet, and of modern society’s inability to recognise true worth.

In any event, when Strauss’s team left for the West Indies for his first series as full-time leader, it was the only case in modern times of a captain – not a manager or coach – being in overall charge of an England tour. In an emergency, Strauss was to decide. This was a measure of the chaos in English cricket after the sudden and simultaneous departures of Pietersen and the coach Peter Moores.

Strauss, however, is a skilful juggler: he can keep three cricket balls on the go. He was lucky, too, in having Andy Flower, of like mind, elevated from batting coach to team director after a caretaker role in the Caribbean. Even so, it was a magnificent achievement to regain the Ashes in 2009. Australia scored eight centuries to England’s two; Australia had three bowlers who took 20 wickets or more, England none; Australia averaged 40 runs per wicket, England 34. These stats add up to the biggest steal in Ashes history. And by The Oval, it was a patchwork that Strauss led into the field: Andrew Flintoff was on his last legs, Alastair Cook and Paul Collingwood had played only one innings of note apiece, and Pietersen was not even there, absent injured since the Second Test at Lord’s.

Yet Strauss took England over the line, leading from the front, changing the culture. For example, he instituted the practice after a day’s play of toasting a team-mate who had scored a hundred or taken five wickets, following a brief speech by someone who volunteered. He understood the importance of celebrating as a side.

He had read up on Churchill before taking over, and learned from Vaughan how to put his players at ease so they performed their best. Still, Strauss was a born leader. He did not have to raise his voice: everyone listened because he was so clear in thought and word. Graeme Swann, who stood at second slip alongside him, said: “It was a calming, almost fatherly feeling to know that, in the middle of a maelstrom, he would make the right decision.”

Strauss was manifestly not in it for his own glory: it was typical that the England record he set was for the most catches (121) by a non-wicketkeeper, which benefited the team far more than his reputation. He was in it to instil his values and beliefs about what was best for England – but only after listening, not dictating. He had a sense of humour, at least until the job weighed him down in 2012, and therefore of perspective. He never forgot what a privilege it was to represent what became his country from the age of six, or the sacrifices his family made. His manners were always exemplary: he was never confrontational, never thought himself above the law, never looked down on anyone. He would talk with, and ask a polite question of, even the most anorakish England fan. And he became statesmanlike in his pronouncements about wider issues, such as match-fixing, or those beyond sport.

Cricket was not an end in itself. He did not love batting like, say, his former partner Marcus Trescothick, which is why he retired from all cricket as soon as he had finished with England. For him, cricket was the means for undertaking challenges and stretching himself. It could have been another sport. When his prep-school headmaster sent a letter to the warden of Radley College, Dennis Silk, about the 11-year-old preparing to enrol there, he wrote four pages on the promising rugby of this young fly-half. Only as a postscript did he add: “He also has the makings of a useful cricketer.”

It was this love of a challenge which enabled Strauss to compose two or three of the most valuable innings ever played for England. His 129 in the deciding Oval Test of 2005 kept them in the game, when no other specialist batsman made 50 in their first innings: typical, again, that everyone forgets Strauss and recalls Pietersen’s 158 in their second. His 161 at Lord’s in 2009 gave England the psychological lead; and they were soothed by his brace of 55 and 75 at The Oval in the last Test. So long as Strauss was in, England were winning on all these momentous occasions. One false move and they would assuredly have lost the match and series; yet Strauss walked the tightrope while millions watched, without looking down.

Once Strauss got the team culture right, everything flowed from there – like hanging wallpaper properly from the picture rail. His record as England’s Test captain by the start of 2012 was 21–5. He had led England to No. 1 in the rankings by supplanting India 4–0. Sir Leonard Hutton and Michael Brearley, if you count the 1978-79 tour of Australia during World Series Cricket, had been the only other England captains to win Ashes series home and away (Percy Chapman won the Oval Test of 1926 after Arthur Carr had drawn the first four, then won again in Australia). But they played when England were the only country with a professional domestic circuit. Strauss made them No. 1 on a level playing field.

Self-doubt set in last year. Trying to retain their status – an arithmetical calculation – may have distracted England from winning the next Test. His playing of spin improved after the 3–0 defeat by Pakistan in the UAE – and he was already the only England batsman to score two centuries in a Test in Asia – but the mental side was more important to him than technical competence. He felt he was past his prime; and he had shown by resigning the one-day captaincy after the 2011 World Cup that he would never linger once he had concluded he had given his best.

He was still enthused by the problem-solving side of captaincy, at which he was masterful. But he felt worn down by attending not only to every player, but to all the members of the management team, and had too little energy left for his own game. And that was before Pietersen rocked the boat with his “provocative” texts to the South African tourists, so that instead of concentrating on squaring the series at Lord’s and celebrating his 100th Test, it was back to fire-fighting. Of all England captains, Strauss did not deserve his end to be like his beginning.

Only Hutton, from my reading of England’s history, has had such a beneficial effect. He took over in a similar state of chaos in 1952, as both the last resort and the first professional captain since the 19th century. England had been thumped by Australia since the Second World War, and had thumped no one in return, yet he transformed them into the team of the 1950s. Both Hutton and Strauss conserved runs in the field, identified players of inner strength, and built a team in their own image.

Both were criticised for being too cautious. Let Strauss speak for both in response: “Based on my own experience, if you starve batsmen of runs they will get edgy, and are likely to get themselves out. That was my philosophy, but if a bowler came up and said, ‘I want an extra catcher,’ I would say, ‘Perfect, let’s go along with it.’ Normally, though, the bowler hated going for runs. Jimmy Anderson, for example, felt his best way was to starve batsmen, and the way to get the best out of a player is to let him do what he wants. You don’t tell Jonathan Trott to score more quickly, because he averages 50 and knows what he’s doing.

“It’s very easy for commentators and the public to say, when the ball flies through fifth slip: ‘You should have had a fielder there.’ But that is a bit facile. It is your strategy that wins you games and series, and the most important part of captaincy is to create an environment in which you make best use of the players you have.”

Hutton and Strauss: archetypal northern pro and southern amateur type. Poles apart on the surface but, from what I saw when ghosting them, very similar: both outwardly calm, quiet and shrewd problem-solvers who knew their own mind and the direction in which England’s cricket should head. I like to think of it as an endorsement, or seal of approval, that Hutton’s grandson Ben was Strauss’s best man.

When Hutton looked back on his captaincy, after half the Establishment had hoped he would fail so that an amateur could be reinstated, he used to say, with the pauses that were characteristic of his speech: “I never... I never wanted... I never wanted to make... a smell.” And, miraculously in this age of intense media scrutiny, Strauss did not do so either: there was no howler, no on-field incident that went undefused, no gesture to any umpire or opponent, not a single word out of place in a press conference or captured on a stump mike. He was dutiful, and selfless in his service to his players and country, until the last.

Scyld Berry, editor of Wisden 2008–11, is the cricket correspondent of the Sunday Telegraph, where he ghosted Andrew Strauss’s column.

FAREWELL (3): RICKY PONTING

The very essence of desire

GIDEON HAIGH

“Catch, Ted,” said Ricky Ponting. “Catch, Ted.”

It was late in Australia’s morning training session ahead of next day’s Perth Test against South Africa. The small knots of onlookers had moved on; only a handful of players remained. Still in his pads, Ponting was sitting on a bench after a long stint facing net bowlers and throwdowns, and watching a helmeted Ed Cowan practise his short-leg catching with coach Mickey Arthur. “Catch, Ted,” he would repeat as each hit went in. “Catch, Ted.”

Nothing so unusual about that. In his long career, Ponting had made a habit of being among the last to leave training. Except that, unbeknown to those beyond the team and their immediate circle, he had just a couple of hours earlier confided that this, his 168th appearance – equalling Steve Waugh’s national record – would be his farewell Test. It remained at that stage Australian cricket’s best-kept secret. “Catch, Ted,” he repeated. “Catch, Ted.”

After one last surveillance of the practice area, Ponting shouldered his backpack, tucked two bats under his arm, and began wending his way to the dressing-room – the same one from which he had emerged 17 years earlier, a fresh-faced youngster of 20, to make his Test debut against Sri Lanka. Twenty minutes later, it was official. Amid a gathering sense of anticipation and occasion, Ponting walked into a room in the bowels of the WACA, accompanied by his wife, his daughters and finally his team-mates, who ringed the back wall. There had been tears earlier, Ponting admitted: “I tried to tell them a lot, but I didn’t get much out. As I said to the boys this morning, they’ve never seen me emotional, but I was this morning.” Now he was more composed, and there was relatively little theatre, certainly when compared to the lusty salaams that accompanied the departures of his eminent contemporaries Steve Waugh and Shane Warne. Fifteen minutes later, the journalists were composing their obsequies. It had all been disarmingly matter-of-fact – very much the Ponting vein.

And thus did an era pass that had been a long time in the fading: the era of Australian dominance, of which Ponting, and not merely his bustling, bristling batting, but his hairy-armed, spitting-in-his-hands presence, had been a personification. Australia had ceded their No. 1 Test ranking in August 2009, and their No. 1 one-day ranking three years later. Since then, all that had remained had been Ponting – and now he, too, was to go.

He had opened up in that time a sizeable gap between him and the next-highest Australian Test run-scorer, Allan Border. And even if his form had been more variable than of yore, an Australian order with his name in it could not help bear a strong look; he drew, of course, on a massive estate of international runs in all conditions and all climes. But the clock had been running down. He had passed the captaincy on to his dauphin, Michael Clarke, with promising results. Yet the wins were coming harder, and wins were what mattered to Ponting above all else.

“Seriously,” he had said to Cowan just before the Sheffield Shield final earlier in the year, “you don’t really think I give a toss about hundreds, do you?” Cowan had joked to Ponting about the possibility he might emulate Sachin Tendulkar and score a hundred international hundreds. In reply, Ponting had enumerated all the trophies and garlands Australia had won in his career – a lengthy list. Winning: it wasn’t everything, but to Ponting it had always been the main thing.

The Test would not be kind to Ponting in either individual or collective terms. He was pushing string uphill with his batting, and made only four and eight. He looked on in the field as Australia gave up 569 in South Africa’s second innings. The tributes flowed almost for the game’s duration. An especially moving one came on the final day, when South Africa’s captain Graeme Smith formed his fielders into two lines so as to applaud him to the wicket, partner Cowan joining in; when he was out, every member of the visiting team went to him individually to shake his hand; there were further impressive displays of cricketing confraternity as the game ended. But you got the feeling Ponting would have swapped them all for a win, even just for a few extra runs.

If desire could be bottled, it would be distilled from essence of Ponting. Sometimes in his career, more of that had seeped out than even he could handle. He had a way of remonstrating with umpires that recalled the Mike Gatting school of diplomacy, although it often looked worse than it was: Ponting tended to be a barrack-room lawyer rather than a potty-mouthed pouter. The first thing he expressed when he sat down at the end of the match, in the same room in which he had started it, was his disappointment at the result and regret that he had not made a few more: “It has been a hard week, and we haven’t got the result we were after and I haven’t got the result I was after.” The desire was still there; it’s just that the capabilities could no longer stretch to the same height.

Now he was prepared to take questions about his career, about which he had earlier been reticent. His daughter Emmy was sitting on his knee and, in the way little children have of objecting passively to their parents doing something when they should be available for play, stuck her fingers in her ears. Everyone else in the room, though, was spellbound. Normally, press conferences take place in a fairly formulaic fashion: they pretend to answer; we pretend to listen. Ponting’s press conferences, though, were not like this. He was one cricketer who always gave straight answers to straight questions, and the impression of having thought about them. This was no exception. And as he spoke, there was otherwise complete silence. You could almost hear the tape recorders rolling.

In due course, he began to recite some thanks. Family. Friends. Management. Sponsors, some of whom had been with him from the very beginning, when a local bakery had sponsored his performances at Mowbray Cricket Club in Tasmania. He thanked that club too, with a cough and a sniff. “It’s getting a bit harder.” No – there would be no tears. “The Mowbray Cricket Club, if they see me up here like this at the moment, they’ll be all over me. That’s the place I learned the game, and the person I am was moulded from my background and my upbringing. What you’ve seen over 17 years is a result of my early days at the Mowbray Cricket Club. Thanks to the boys back there.”

Cricket Australia. Cricket Tasmania. The pragmatist and the fantasist in Ponting showed through when he revealed that he knew when his next training was, for the Hobart Hurricanes in the Big Bash League, and that as a result he would be in the vicinity of Bellerive Oval for the next Test. “Who knows, I might even be around for the first day of the game,” he joked. “If I am, I might even join in the warm-up with the boys and see if there’s just one more chance!”

“The boys”: they came up a lot. It is funny how athletes always use the words when they are talking about team-mates. Once in a while, it’s “the guys”, but usually discussion circles back to “the boys”. I dare say a detractor of sport would decide this is because sport keeps athletes in a state of arrested development, of perpetual childhood; maybe there’s some truth in that. But it is perhaps also this that allows them to express themselves: when adult doubt and cynicism set in, it is time to go.

Not that Ponting finished his career as anything other than an adult. His wiry frame and sun-burnished face were those of a man who had seen the world; there was knowhow and wisdom on the game he loved in his every utterance. But to see him to the very end throwing himself around at training, standing in the huddle, singing the team song, enjoying the banter, was to be reminded how sport preserves in us the happiest parts of ourselves.

The boys: how he would miss them. And how they would miss him: not just his run-getting, but his body-and-soul commitment to the commonweal, audible in his voice as he watched Cowan taking his catches, always upbeat, always encouraging, always urging them on. Now he was off to see them one last time as a player, with a final: “Thanks, everyone.” It was we, of course, who should have been doing the thanking.

Gideon Haigh is a journalist. His latest book is On Warne.

FAREWELL (4): MARK RAMPRAKASH

Farewell, then, the 1990s

BARNEY RONAY

Last summer, with his retirement still reassuringly distant, Mark Ramprakash gave a speech at Lord’s in which he confided that, if he could go back and change any aspect of a magisterial, furiously intense, operatically unyielding 26-season career, he would perhaps like to have “taken things a little less seriously”.

For the confirmed Rampraphile it was hard to know how to respond. Certainly, as career retrospectives go, it’s up there with Eric Cantona announcing that perhaps he shouldn’t have bothered being quite so enigmatic; Jean-Paul Sartre coming out in his dotage against berets and casual sex; or The Clash wishing they’d just been a little less cross about everything and spent more time on The Kenny Everett Show.

A Ramprakash who takes things a little less seriously. This is, of course, not just alarming and undesirable. It is also pretty much unimaginable. Across all disciplines there is a certain kind of sportsman who becomes, inexorably, public property – just as Ramprakash has long been cherished as an object of private fascination for a generation of diffuse, faithful, still painfully expectant career Rampraphiles.

Even now it seems inconceivable that an English summer will be allowed to take place unaccompanied, for the first time in a quarter of a century, by the quiet certainty that at any given moment on some distant patch of green ringed by sparsely peopled plastic seats, Ramprakash will be taking guard, dipping his knees, rehearsing with machine-gun ferocity that crisply laundered off-drive, entirely gripped by the prospect of another six-month odyssey of largely overlooked first-class run-harvesting.

Naturally, Ramprakash will be defined to a degree by the greatness-shaped hole at the centre of his career, as a talent that remained forever sputtering and smoking on the launch pad of what should have been a brilliant Test-match span. This is the ex-pro’s line, the baffled captain’s verdict: if only Ramps could have relaxed a little, laughed it up, taken a chill pill.

This is also to misunderstand completely his broader appeal. If Ramprakash had a cricketing superpower, it was the ability to dust everything he touched – every cobwebbed outground, every deathly four-day draw – with that distinct and indissoluble sense of gravity: he took guard 1,221 times with the same glowering, insatiable intent, and remained almost to the very end the most vibrantly promising 41-year-old batsman in England.

It was all terribly serious. I can remember watching, gripped, as Ramprakash played out three consecutive maiden overs of lard-arsed roundarm all-sorts on some dying September afternoon at a deserted Oval, bat raised like a lance, front knee flexed, off stump painstakingly aligned, a cricketing Don Quixote still toting about the imprint of his own vanishing greatness. Oh aye. It were proper champion.

You see, though. This is what watching Ramprakash could do to you. Or at least, it could if you’d been there – and at an appropriately impressionable age – right from the start. Because with Ramprakash’s passing something else has disappeared from view. Farewell, then, the 1990s. For English cricket you were the worst of times – and also the worst of times. The most obviously talented batsman of England’s shredded generation, Ramprakash was also the last man standing, the last reminder of that peculiar drowned world, and nobody speaks to the ruined grandeur of a lost decade quite like Ramps.

For the adolescent spectator it was a genuinely compelling era to follow cricket in earnest. Presided over by mute, baffled men, with a Test team of tubby indispensables leavened by the usual sweating, ruined debutants, each on-field humiliation seemed to peel away a fresh layer of frowsty pre-Victorian infrastructure, the whole sorry edifice crumbling away before our eyes like a lath and plaster wall in the process of being cheerfully torn down by an Australian with a jackhammer.

Emerging into this, the young Ramprakash seemed an almost shockingly hopeful figure. Making his Test debut at 21 he looked, even then, curiously complete, rock-star handsome, the only modern person in English cricket, coming out to bat already goggle-eyed with epic-scale obsession. At which point everything started to go wrong. Ramps and Test cricket: it was never really going to work out. Wrong genius, wrong time.

Those who carry the scars of the 1990s can fantasise about the productivity of a young Ramprakash nestled within the velvet embrace of the current England regime (a two-year bedding-in period, then 23 Test hundreds, 40 hundreds, 80 hundreds). Instead Ramprakash’s career was a masterpiece of departures. First dropped in August 1991, he was dropped in total 12 times, remaining on the verge of being recalled by the England team – broken only by those tortured interludes when he was actually in the England team – for 18 years, or the entire adult life, to that point, of this writer.

In between there were the horribly involving failures: a series against Pakistan where he seemed to have become, at last, entirely immobile at the crease, unable even to twitch or flinch or blink as the ball thudded into the pads; followed by the driven-to-distraction dismissals of an extended mid-career congealment (I managed to crash my first car while listening in dismay to the Test Match Special description of one particularly rank caught behind off Nathan Astle’s slow-medium slingers).

There were two high-class Test hundreds, the second a brilliant 133 against Australia’s greatest Test attack, before that extended backwoods flowering at Surrey. The TV highlights reel that accompanied news of Ramprakash’s retirement paid due respect here, the Test-match footage rapidly dwindling into a succession of wobbly county-ground shots: unworthy bowlers thrashed through the pigeons at extra cover, half-track pies despatched with snake-hipped fury into semi-deserted stands, and finally that 100th hundred, celebrated by holding up a disappointingly small bottle of champagne in front of not very many people at all.

And yet he embraced the smaller stage with inspirational zeal. What Stakhanovite commitment! What reproachful tenacity! In scoring 50,651 career runs Ramprakash ran at least 380 miles, or the entire length of England, with a bat in his hand. To the last there remained a purity to his cricket, and in his departure an accompanying sense of wider ending.

Let’s face it: no one is going to do this again in a hurry. The list of those who have scored 100 first-class hundreds runs from W. G. Grace (1895) to M. R. Ramprakash (2008). Currently, domestic cricket looks so fractured and frayed, so distracted by the promiscuous global whirligig of format-shift and calendar-overload that it seems possible the list may in fact now be closed for ever.

With Ramprakash’s departure, the 1990s may have finally receded, but he remains a perhaps unexpectedly ennobling presence: cuffs buttoned, defensive bat gymnastically thrust, unslakable in his absolute conviction that this – all of this – really, really matters.

Barney Ronay is a sportswriter and columnist for The Guardian.

THE EVOLUTION OF THE ONE-DAY GAME

Five decades of hits and giggles

TANYA ALDRED

The cricketer of 1963 wore a woolly jumper, collected his wages in old money, and tidied his short hair to the side with a neat parting. But he was also a revolutionary. On May 1 – a year after the experimental four-county Midlands Knock-Out Cup – Lancashire and Leicestershire stepped out for the first match of the Gillette Cup at Old Trafford. It rained, and the one-day game had to be finished on day two, with Lancashire winning by 101 runs and Brian Statham taking five for 28. But something had changed for ever: that September, 23,000 attended the first Lord’s final, where Sussex squeezed out Worcestershire.

Fifty years later, domestic one-day cricket has pulled on a bewildering number of costumes: 65 overs, 60, 55, 50, 45, 40 and 20. There have been coloured clothes, floodlights, pinch-hitters, Jacuzzis and miked-up fielders. Revitalised, endangered, usually a muddle, it has given immense pleasure.

Five men who loved playing it share their memories here, one from each decade. Norman Gifford, now back as Worcestershire’s spin-bowling coach, is lyrical about the 1960s; David Hughes clever on Lancashire’s golden 1970s; Clive Radley modest about Middlesex in the 1980s; and Paul Smith idiosyncratic on Warwickshire’s dominance of the 1990s. Jeremy Snape completes the story as he recalls his time at Gloucestershire and Leicestershire.

The 1960s – Norman Gifford

When the Gillette Cup started, we just played it like a normal three-day game, with three slips and a gully. Worcester had a strong side, and it wasn’t until we reached the final that we came up against a team doing anything different. The Sussex captain Ted Dexter would put some thought into who he wanted to bowl, and what field he was after. It was a bit of a shock: for someone of his stature to do that was significant.

Being at Lord’s for that first final was a tremendous experience. For those of us who hadn’t played Test cricket, it was a completely new experience: there weren’t many watching the Championship in the 1960s. I was Man of the Match, even though we lost, and picked up a gold medallion.

During the decade, totals got bigger, and the game evolved. Batsmen became more inventive. When it started, they valued their wickets above all. The need to get runs on the board was foreign to them – they had demons to overcome. Similarly, line-and-length bowlers found it difficult. People assumed medium-pacers and fast bowlers would be the most effective, but it soon became clear we spinners were important too.

People remember the ’60s as a dull time for Championship cricket, although for us – winners in 1964 and ’65 – it was exciting. But for sides at the bottom it could be run-of-the-mill. The one-day stuff suddenly gave them an opportunity to win something.

Standards of fitness are far greater now, but the equipment is better too. The boots for the quick bowlers used to be heavy and awkward, and the bats smaller. We certainly weren’t acrobats. When the 40-overs John Player League was introduced in 1969, it was viewed by players as Twenty20 was in 2003.

But I loved all the one-day competitions, and wouldn’t have played as long as I did without them. I went to five finals – but lost all bloody five!

Gifford played for Worcestershire and Warwickshire between 1960 and 1988. He took four for 33 against Sussex in the first Gillette Cup final.

The 1970s – David Hughes

A lot of our guys had come out of the Lancashire and Yorkshire leagues, which were real cut-throat jobs, so we were steeled in one-day cricket. Most of our pre-season training involved visits to RAF Sealand in north Wales, and the instructors used to put us through it.

We had lots of all-rounders, whereas many counties were picking the teams they had done in the 1960s, full of specialists. The quality of our fielding kept us apart: we didn’t carry anyone, we all had strong arms, and we were quick. We won a lot of games by saving runs. And in Farokh Engineer and Clive Lloyd we had two of the best overseas players in the business.

Under Jack Bond’s captaincy we won five one-day trophies, including a hat-trick of Gillette Cups from 1970. We had huge crowds – maybe 25,000 – for most of our games. Other teams were getting 5,000, and some were intimidated by the Old Trafford atmosphere. Lancastrians can be a noisy bunch.

We were one of the few sides that looked in depth at who we were up against, where they scored their runs, what sort of bowling they had. We didn’t have the technology, but we did have a great camaraderie with the umpires, and we used them to find out what other pitches were like, who didn’t fancy the short ball, and so on. One of the first things Jack introduced was a lengthy team sit-down to discuss the opposition.

Jack retired in 1972, and David Lloyd took us to three successive finals in 1974–76. Half of that great team then retired, and we never really recovered. But we were there at the beginning of tactics in one-day cricket. Mind you, we didn’t have all the background staff they have now. We always had trainers, a doctor and a physio, but no one for the mind. We didn’t need people telling us what great players we were.

The 1971 semi-final against Gloucestershire is one of my most precious memories. The nine o’clock news was postponed, and it was really dark. In fact, the more I talk about it, the darker it gets! There were 25,000 people there: our late chairman Cedric Rhoades took the sightscreens out to fit in more spectators, and the kids on the grass pushed the rope in. It was such a dramatic climax.

Hughes played for Lancashire between 1967 and 1991. He hit 24 in an over from off-spinner John Mortimore to win that 1971 Gillette Cup semi-final.

The 1980s – Clive Radley

We were a little bit ahead of our time in one-day cricket, without really knowing it. But it certainly wasn’t through any deep thinking about the game. Mike Brearley preferred to cajole – or possibly bollock – players on an individual basis. He was less formulaic than those who had gone before. Don’t give him too much credit, though: we had a great side.

Our bowling was capable of both getting wickets and keeping batsmen quiet: Philippe Edmonds, John Emburey, Wayne Daniel, Mike Selvey and Vintcent van der Bijl. The seamers were very good at the death, too.

Things got more athletic as the decade went on, and we started doing a bit more in the gym in pre-season. Fielding circles arrived in 1981. Before that, we could put everyone back on the boundary in the last ten overs and close the game down. Seam bowlers used to be hidden in the field: they’d stick out a size 11, or let someone else chase. Now, they had to start putting in a dive.

I was fairly fit even in my forties, and the slide I used in order to ground my bat between runs just developed naturally as it seemed the quickest way to get back down the other end; it didn’t damage the old knees because I didn’t bat in studs. My forte was nicking and nudging. Mike Gatting and Roland Butcher were good at smacking the ball, so if they were going at five an over and I was going at three, we were doing well.

The first person to play the reverse sweep in county cricket must have been Mushtaq Mohammad, against Fred Titmus. He told me he’d got fed up with six–three leg-side fields. It was a great stroke, and I must have batted with Gatt while he got 300 runs with it. But after he got out in the 1987 World Cup final, he didn’t play it for another two years. I wish I’d played it myself, but I had my method, and there wasn’t much time to practise.

I never took part in any game that matched our Benson and Hedges Cup final against Essex in 1983. They were 127 for one chasing 197, and the Middlesex supporters had left the ground. We had given the game up, and everyone was round the bat. I caught Keith Fletcher at silly point off Edmonds, and the rest collapsed. It was just one of those days.

Radley played for Middlesex between 1964 and 1987. He won the match awards in the 1983 Benson and Hedges Cup and 1984 NatWest Trophy finals.

The 1990s – Paul Smith

Warwickshire’s one-day success wasn’t a fluke. We had every character and skill imaginable, and then this bloke came along with a massive passion for what he did: Bob Woolmer. Chalk and cheese were Woolmer and Dermot Reeve, our captain. Woolly would say: “Why don’t you go to bed at ten o’clock, like I do?” Reeve wanted to go out and enjoy himself. But it worked.

Tactically, we were miles ahead of the rest. We had the balls to do what they could have done but didn’t want to. In the 1990s in general, you had to be in people’s faces, and we played a different type of cricket, with lots of reverse sweeps and tip-and-run. And we had big strikers of the ball. It wasn’t popular. I remember our batsmen reverse-sweeping, and the commentators saying it wasn’t in the spirit of the game. Brian Lara said we should look at where the gaps were, not the fielders. It made you think very differently.

Woolmer provided a sprinkling of gold dust. People think of his computers, but they forget about the hours he spent in the nets, in the middle, in restaurants – all that time with the guys, talking to them, thinking about them.

We turned up at Old Trafford once, and Woolly took out a tennis racket and hit catches to us. The crowd were shouting: “Aww, don’t you want to hurt your hands?” But they didn’t realise that, from 50 feet up, a tennis ball will bounce out, so it was teaching us about soft hands. He also introduced warm-downs, even though they were the last thing we wanted to do.

Woolly said to us at the start of the 1994 season that we could win all four competitions. I thought he was barking mad. But we nearly did. Shortly after, Jason Ratcliffe moved from Warwickshire to Surrey, and he reckons it took other counties five years to catch up with us.

Smith played for Warwickshire between 1982 and 1996. He was part of the winning team in four Lord’s finals and won the Gold Award in the 1994 Benson and Hedges Cup final.

The 2000s – Jeremy Snape

During my time at Northamptonshire, the focus was on talent. But at Gloucester we trained as a team – and to a different intensity. The fielder went from being someone who defends the ball to someone who attacks the batsman. We would stand in a ring, like fishermen tightening the net. The batsman would hit it hard to point, and the fielder would return the ball just as hard to Jack Russell, who would take it in front of the batsman’s face. It was oppressive and claustrophobic. Our coach John Bracewell shifted our mindset, from cricketers to athletes who play cricket.

We saw ourselves as underdogs. We worked exceptionally hard, and there was me, Martyn Ball and Kim Barnett trying to take pace off the ball, on slow, knee-high wickets, with big outfields, and batsmen caught in the deep. We played ugly cricket – but we won.

When I moved to Leicestershire before the 2003 season, we weren’t challenging in the Championship, so we focused on Twenty20. We worked out how to pace the initial impetus phase of an innings, the building phase, and the crescendo. We caught other sides out. Everyone was thinking fast bowlers should bowl as fast as they can, but that creates pace and angles. And batsmen thought they had to be ultra-aggressive, whereas we’d worked out the value of players like Darren Maddy and Brad Hodge – one a hitter, the other a rotator.

It was a time of innovation, too. I was in the nets with H. D. Ackerman when he asked me to help him practise his six hitting. So I pulled out the pin and bowled a looping hand grenade. He said: “Don’t be stupid, I can’t hit that!” A light bulb went on, and the moon-ball was born. Batsmen would think: “I can’t get out to that, it’s only 40mph...”

Twenty20 has definitely benefited the wider game. In my early career, a yorker could land anywhere under a batsman’s feet. Now, it has to be on the white line of the batting crease to compensate for batsmen’s power and scoop shots. And people are much more comfortable in high-pressure run-chases: they get 250 in 50 overs easily. In the 1990s and early 2000s, it was all about protein shakes and bleep tests; in the last six to eight years, it’s been more pitch-maps and Hawk-Eye. There are no secrets now. The only competitive advantage is what goes on inside players’ heads.

Snape played for Northamptonshire, Gloucestershire and Leicestershire between 1992 and 2008. He won four Lord’s finals with Gloucestershire, and the Twenty20 Cup twice with Leicestershire.

Tanya Aldred writes about sport for the Daily Telegraph.

A QUESTION OF TALENT

Art and graft

MIKE ATHERTON

Boy, he looked good. Sitting there in his crisp, grey suit, hair slicked back, tanned, square of jaw, he looked as if he could have played for another decade. But Mark Ramprakash had decided enough was enough. The runs had not flowed with their customary ease and, midway through his 26th summer in the first-class game, it was time to reflect on what had gone, rather than speculate about what was to come.

Rightly, the valedictories were gushing. This was a batsman, after all, who had scored over 35,000 first-class runs at an average of 53, and joined the elite group of those who have made more than 100 first-class hundreds. Because of the impact an expanded international game has had on appearances in domestic cricket, he could well be the last member of the club. At every level except the very top, he made batting look easy. He was a fine player.

Many pieces were written about Ramprakash in the days after his retirement, and many included the phrase “the most talented player of his generation”. A few suggested his talent was unfulfilled, which seemed a little harsh, even if it reflected his travails in over a decade of Test cricket. The implication was that he had underperformed, a view based on a perception of the ability he was blessed with.

Talent. We have a curious relationship with it in English cricket. If it is generally defined as possessing either a natural gift, or a capacity for success, then our game invariably tags as talented those who enjoy the gift, but not necessarily the success. Many England cricketers who have struggled to establish themselves in the international game – Chris Lewis, Mark Lathwell, Owais Shah and Ravi Bopara, to name four recent examples – are routinely described as being among the most talented players of their time.

The notion of a natural gift has taken a battering in recent years, thanks in particular to the work of one scientist. The Swedish psychologist K. Anders Ericsson has gone a long way towards deconstructing the myths of talent by showing that elite performance is almost always the result of ferocious hard work, relentless self-improvement and specific, rigorous practice – all within a cultural context in which the appetite for self-improvement can flourish. In other words, few have reached the top without putting in the hours.

Ericsson’s work is now widely accepted, but there are still some who believe in inherent or inheritable gifts. For sports such as basketball, which require genetically linked physical advantages, it is hard not to sympathise with this view. But whichever side of the divide you tread, it should be obvious that the term tends to be applied retrospectively. In describing someone as talented, we do not really mean they have some innate predisposition to perform; rather, it is a convenient way of explaining their achievements (or even, in English cricket, their shortcomings).

In looking for examples of talent, we nearly always exaggerate the importance of an eye-catching moment, or a graceful style. Aesthetics outweigh almost everything else. Ramprakash’s feats were far from modest, but it was his elegance – the ease with which he appeared to play, the extra time he appeared to enjoy – that encouraged the notion he was unusually talented.

Very few observers, by contrast, would describe South Africa’s Graeme Smith as naturally gifted. With his wide, ungainly stance, strangling grip, and closed-face back-lift, he makes batting look hard work. And yet his method makes perfect sense. In an era where bowling at fourth stump is accepted practice, and when fielders in the arc between wicketkeeper and point often outnumber the rest, Smith’s refusal to hit in areas traditionally regarded as left-handers’ strengths gives him an advantage. More than 8,500 Test runs at nearly 50 as an opening batsman suggest he possesses talents that transcend mere aesthetics (or their absence).

Most of us are prone to this weakness of falling for the kind of talent that a moment of brilliance implies: a breathtaking stroke, a scintillating piece of fielding. As a result, we underestimate the gifts given to those who achieve consistently, if not spectacularly. After watching a young Dwayne Smith, the West Indian all-rounder who had made a rapid century on Test debut, smash a length ball from Steve Harmison over midwicket and out of the ground in Trinidad some years ago, I turned to my companion and said: “I’ve just seen the next great West Indian batsman.” One shot was enough to fool me. All through the disappointing years that followed, I kept expecting what I thought was exceptional talent to blossom. It never did.

We are apt to hold too narrow a definition of what constitutes talent. One of Ramprakash’s contemporaries was Graham Thorpe. More than a decade ago in Colombo, I watched him score a hundred against Sri Lanka’s spinners in conditions that could not have been more testing, with the sun beating down and the pitch disintegrating into dust. His strokeplay was not eye-catching; in fact, the innings was devoid of any flowing shots at all. But what an innings it was – one of the finest I ever saw from an England player.

That day, Thorpe revealed so many different aspects of his talent. He played the ball off the pitch later than any of his team-mates. It takes a particular gift to let the ball keep coming and coming until the bowler is almost yelping with success, but he adopted a kind of French-cricket technique, keeping his back-lift low, and turning the blade with his wrists at the last moment to pierce gaps that most others would have needed satellite navigation to find. His talent was to adapt to his surroundings.

As for my own career, I take an innings of 99 at Headingley against South Africa in 1994 as one that revealed my own special – for want of another word – talent. It was after the dirt-in-the-pocket match at Lord’s and, in the intervening week, I had to cope with an unusual degree of public interest, with a tabloid tracking my every movement. Between Tests, I had not been able to practise, and there had been no county match for Lancashire.

The attention was not on my batting, but on my captaincy and character. I had been forced to sit through two torturous televised press conferences, and to listen to a range of critics, from the comedian Jimmy Tarbuck to the chairman of the Headmasters’ Conference, who sought my resignation. It was an uncomfortable time, and before I walked out to bat, I had not given a moment’s thought to the innings. I scratched around for a couple of hours before lunch, and forced myself into some kind of rhythm by dint of nothing more than pure bloody-mindedness. But what I had managed to do, between walking to the middle and facing the first ball, was to put the events of the previous fortnight to the back of my mind. I am certain that, in the same circumstances, not many of my contemporaries could have played that innings, that day.

The ability to shut out the noise and the clamour is something I see now – to a far greater degree – in Alastair Cook. It is not an aptitude that stands out, is easily recognised, or regarded as exceptional. Hidden from view it may be but, set against the requirements for success at international level, with all its pressures, it is a talent as important as the ability to play a good-looking cover-drive. It is only now, after over 7,000 Test runs and more hundreds than any other England player, that observers (I have been more guilty than most) are starting to think of him as gifted.

Barring injury, illness or misfortune, Cook – who is only just entering his prime – will probably become the greatest batsman England have ever produced; greatest, that is, in terms of run-scoring, record-breaking and hundred-making. The adjectives that accompany most of his innings are hard-working, focused, driven, effective, pragmatic – as if these attributes, and Cook’s supreme thirst for self-improvement, are not identifiable talents in themselves.

They are submerged beneath a game that sometimes stands out only for its ordinariness. Yet Andy Flower has commented upon his world-class facility to score through the leg side and off his hip, a gift those at Essex quickly recognised; his ability to shut out extraneous detail, and his concentration levels, speak of a particular talent too. The way he out-thought and outmanoeuvred India’s spinners during consecutive hundreds in Ahmedabad, Mumbai and Kolkata over the winter revealed a cricketing intelligence not shared by many of his team-mates. His hundred in Mumbai was certainly less spectacular than Kevin Pietersen’s, but can we really say Cook is less talented? He simply possesses different strengths.

Talent may or may not be innate but, in all its facets, it certainly exists to be developed, honed and crafted. The more humdrum aspects of the game – the ability to work hard, stay focused, adapt to circumstance, bring your best game to the crease time and again, despite all the distractions – are all gifts, just as much as sweet ball-striking.

One of the sweetest strikers in the English game right now is Bopara. The consensus is that he is more naturally gifted than Cook but, as he sat at home over the winter, watching him compile hundred after hundred, how Bopara must have wished for some of his talents – the ability, for example, to put a run of bad scores behind him, or to compile the kind of ugly runs that would keep him in the team from one game to the next until form returns, as Cook did memorably against Pakistan at The Oval in 2010.

In one of his more poetic moments, Friedrich Nietzsche said: “All great artists and thinkers are great workers, indefatigable not only in inventing but also in rejecting, sifting, transforming and ordering.” Cook is indefatigable in ordering his gifts, but no doubt it will be his Essex team-mates, Shah and Bopara, who are remembered as the more talented.

Being tagged as supremely talented also diminishes Ramprakash’s achievements, because the implication is that the game came easily to him. If it looked that way, it was on the back of unstinting hard work. Having played with him for over a decade, I would not disagree with anybody who called Ramprakash the most dedicated batsman of his generation. As for the most talented? Well, that depends on your definition.

Mike Atherton is cricket correspondent of The Times. He played 115 Tests for England, and captained them in 54.

CRICKET BOOKS, 2012

Stealing Christmas

JOHN CRACE

Cricket may be some way off the dodgy expenses claims and cosy kitchen suppers with powerful members of the media that have been enjoyed by politicians in recent years, but it can hardly lay claim to utter transparency in all its affairs. To many outsiders, the sport’s governing bodies still look suspiciously like old boys’ clubs, and their decision-making processes often have all the openness of a group of cardinals at a papal conclave. So, as a gesture of candour, I propose to break with tradition, name my cricket book of the year up front, and declare an interest, for my choice is published by Bloomsbury, the owners of Wisden. You will have to take my word for it that no money has changed hands; but then any of you who have had business dealings with Bloomsbury shouldn’t find that too hard to believe.

Hundreds of millions of pounds were definitely changing hands in other areas of the game, and this was the subject of Bookie Gambler Fixer Spy by Ed Hawkins. This wasn’t the best-written book of the year – after a while, the breathless present tense becomes rather too, well, breathless – but it was far and away the most important, because it tried to get to the heart of the betting scandals that continue to dog the game.

Listen to the ICC and cricket’s anti-corruption units, and you might imagine skulduggery was largely a thing of the past. Journalist and betting expert Ed Hawkins thought so too, until he started hearing rumours from Indian bookmakers that it was alive and kicking. One game in particular was brought to his attention: the 2011 World Cup semi-final between India and Pakistan at Mohali. According to his sources, “India would score more than 260... then pak will cruise to 100, then lose 2 quick wickets, at 150 they will be 5 down and crumble and lose by a margin of over 20 runs.” As Hawkins and an old friend, Cherenne, sat down to watch the match on television, they grew progressively quieter. It’s true that India made exactly 260 rather than more, but Pakistan reached 100 for two, slipped to 106 for four, lost their fifth wicket at 142, and were all out one ball before the end of the final over for 231. “You’ve stolen Christmas from me,” Cherenne said as she left. “I’m never watching a game with you again.”

Hawkins was halfway through a one-man, heart-of-darkness voyage in investigative gonzo journalism to see what else he could uncover. And it hadn’t taken him long to make considerable progress after heading to India and meeting a host of spivs, runners, fixers and Mr Bigs, whose real names remain unclear. The evidence he discovered was damning on a circumstantial level, if not conclusive proof. But that was neither here nor there, for the advantage Hawkins has over other writers who have tried to get to the bottom of match-fixing is that he understands the mathematical nuances of betting.

The big scams, such as the Cronje affair and, allegedly, the 2011 World Cup semi-final, may be the easiest for the lay person to grasp. But what Hawkins shows is that, because of the phenomenal amount of money wagered at any one time on even the most insignificant televised match, a very small amount of information can nudge the odds firmly in the bookmakers’ favour. It’s all about probability. A bookie with the right algorithms can make a fortune in marginal, high-volume bets from knowing something as simple as who will bat first. Throw in the knowledge of a bent, bought player, and it’s a licence to print money.

In the process, Hawkins also exposes the 2010 Pakistan spot-fixing scandal – for which the cricket authorities were quick to claim the moral high ground – as something of a show trial. The whole purpose of the no-ball scam was not to influence the betting, but merely to prove that Salman Butt, Mohammad Aamer and Mohammad Asif could be got at. Bookmakers follow betting patterns on a second-by-second basis: if anyone tried to place a bet on something as specific as a no-ball, it would be rejected as abnormal. Whatever else bookies may be, as Hawkins points out, they are not stupid. But others appear to be. The real importance of this book lies in its existence. Over the past 15 years, the cricket authorities have spent millions of pounds on various match-fixing investigations and have uncovered very little. Armed with what was almost certainly an extremely modest advance, Hawkins on his own has uncovered substantially more, in less time.

I can’t remember Gideon Haigh ever constructing a duff sentence, and On Warne more than maintains his reputation as the most literary of the current breed of Australian cricket writers. There have been countless biographies – not to mention autobiographies – of “the greatest spin bowler who ever lived”™, and Haigh sensibly eschews this route, despite having spent more time with Warne over the years than many of his predecessors. Instead, as the title suggests, he has opted for something rather bolder: a philosophical treatise on the meaning of being Shane Warne; a deconstruction of genius.

If some of the material feels relatively familiar – the betting scandals, the weight-loss drugs, the infighting in the Australian dressing-room – Haigh’s approach casts them in a new light. While never less than forensic in his analysis, he makes us reconsider the sheer physical exertion and contortion in imparting so many revolutions on a ball, hour after hour, year after year; the burden of being every captain’s go-to bowler; the expectation of being asked consistently to win the unwinnable; and the sheer absurdity of finding a unique talent in someone who would be just as happy sitting on a beach, drinking beer with his mates.

My only small reservation is that Haigh perhaps loves his subject just a bit too much. Plenty have queued up to knock Warne for his off-field behaviour and, as an author, Haigh is within his rights not to join in. But, while never avoiding the difficult issues, he does tend to give Warne the benefit of the doubt. Take the incident in which Warne and Mark Waugh were found to have accepted money from an Indian bookmaker on the 1994-95 tour of Sri Lanka in exchange for information about pitch conditions and team selection. Haigh’s view is that it was an act of naivety on a very demanding tour, no real harm was intended or done and, however badly Warne and Waugh might have acted, they looked like saints in comparison with the Australian board’s handling of the situation.

All of which may, or may not, be true, but it rather misses the central point that Warne and Waugh did take the money on offer, and should have known better; deep down, they probably did. But why did no one else in the Australian team do the same? Why did they not even think to ask their team-mates whether they thought it was a good idea? Haigh is equally lenient in regard to Warne’s diet, drinking, gambling and womanising, his attitude being that countless other cricketers have done the same or worse; that Warne’s behaviour away from cricket is a personal matter; and that he gets more flak simply because of his celebrity. These are valid points, but they close down the argument rather than open it up. The aim is not to pass moral judgment on Warne – as far as I’m concerned, he can do pretty much what he likes – but to understand him. Why is he so self-destructive? Is there a relationship between his personality flaws and his bowling genius? I’m fairly sure there might be, if you looked carefully enough.

With its subtitle of “Manliness, Yorkshire Cricket and the Century that Changed Everything”, Max Davidson’s wonderfully entertaining We’ll Get ’Em In Sequins nails its quirkiness to the mast from the off. Which immediately requires a second disclaimer for mentioning another Bloomsbury title so soon. I haven’t been got at. Honest. Nor is it a coincidence. Rather it’s a matter of common sense. Cricket has become far more of a niche market in recent years, as book sales have declined substantially and mainstream publishers have become cautious about commissioning anything at all. So when a publisher does commission a talented writer with a proven backlist, it shouldn’t come as a total surprise if the book turns out to be a good one.

When Davidson saw Darren Gough competing in tight-fitting spandex and sequins under strobe lighting on BBC TV’s Strictly Come Dancing, he realised that the long-established link between Yorkshire cricket and testosterone-heavy displays of manliness had just been smashed in front of his eyes. “Was that thunder in the distance?” he writes. “No, it was generations of Yorkshire fast bowlers turning in their graves. What had gone wrong? Or – depending whether you were Old Yorkshire or New Yorkshire – what had gone right? Wasn’t there something rather exhilarating in a 90mph fast bowler and lusty tail-end batsman who could also do a nifty foxtrot in an outfit that glittered like a Christmas tree?”

We’ll Get ’Em in Sequins is divided into chapters on seven of the greatest cricketers to play for Yorkshire – George Hirst, Herbert Sutcliffe, Hedley Verity, Fred Trueman, Geoffrey Boycott, Gough and Michael Vaughan – and can be read pleasurably in that way. Cumulatively though, the book amounts to rather more, as what emerges is an intelligent and touching social history of a sport and a county that were dragged, at times kicking and screaming, from the repression of the Edwardian era, via the Angry Young Men of the post-war period and the reluctance to engage with women’s rights and social diversity, through to the all-singing, all-dancing man hugs of the early 21st century.

Davidson’s approach does have its minor drawbacks. I’m all for seeing cricketers as rooted within the social mores of their time – not enough writers have done this – but they are also individuals responsible for their own actions. Even by the standards of their day, Trueman and Boycott took boorishness and self-centredness to new levels. My favourite chapter by far, though, is the one on Verity, in which Davidson perfectly captures his reserve, dignity and self-sacrifice. The description of Verity’s war service is almost unbearably moving, and it remains a goal of mine to visit his grave in Sicily.

One of the perennial genres of cricket writing is the ghosted autobiography of the senior, well-established international, and this year’s pick of the bunch is James Anderson’s Jimmy: My Story. I don’t know Anderson at all, but he has always come across as a nice bloke, even when he was larging it up as the tyro with the red streak in his hair. And his book, the story of his rise, fall and rise again as an England player, does nothing to disprove the notion. Here is a thoughtful, determined and quite gentle man working hard to develop his skills and maximise his success as a bowler.

The inevitable downside of this sort of book is that it feels as if it has been written by committee, with his agent checking every chapter to make sure Anderson has been outspoken enough to secure a newspaper serialisation deal, but not so much that he will risk offending the ECB or any of his current team-mates. As a result, we get a lot of cod psychology about how a man called James – a laid-back guy who wouldn’t say boo to a goose – has to turn himself into fearsome Jimmy, the lairy geezer who is never short of a few insults for opposition batsmen. The first time he describes the process, it’s quite interesting. By the fourth or fifth, I’m ready to skip a few pages.

More troublesome are the diplomatic omissions. By far the biggest story in the England camp over the past 12 months has been Kevin Pietersen’s falling out, and subsequent rehabilitation, with the squad. And as a long-term member of the England team, Anderson is ideally placed to offer an insider’s-eye view. We get nothing. Nada. I appreciate that the book’s deadline may have predated the denouement of the Pietersen affair, but KP had long been an accident waiting to happen, and Anderson’s unwillingness to offer anything but total admiration for him leaves the reader in an unconvincing no-man’s-land. Describing his match-winning 151 in Colombo early in 2012, Anderson writes: “At that point things could have gone either way, but he well and truly took the game out of the Sri Lankans’ reach by playing one of the innings that has made him as popular as he is with England fans.” But what about Pietersen’s popularity within the team? Surely relations must have been fairly toxic by then.

The other fascination with this genre is the way in which history gets rewritten. When England beat Australia in 2005 for the first time in 18 years, the consensus was that the success was partly down to Michael Vaughan’s captaincy. Seven years later, Anderson has become the first player to offer an alternative view, claiming Vaughan never made him feel relaxed. “I actually felt alone and isolated when I most needed support,” he writes. “Good captains get players to perform above themselves at times by putting their players at ease, and although a lot has been made of Vaughan’s laconic style, I never felt comfortable playing under him. I never felt like he rated me: the language that he used with me was seldom positive and I didn’t like that.” I can’t help feeling that, in seven years’ time, Anderson will have something more insightful to say about Pietersen when he writes his inevitable second autobiography. If you can wait that long, that should be the one to buy.

Which brings us to that other long-time cricket favourite, the post-retirement, second-career-as-a-commentator, doyen-of-the-game’s memoir, complete with a foreword by Sir Ian Botham – though why so many continue to ask him for his endorsement is never entirely clear. Botham is so competitive – or possibly insecure – that he can’t resist putting his subject down, even when he’s trying to be nice. His contribution to Jackers, A Life in Cricket by Robin Jackman (with Colin Bryden) is a case in point. “I am always happy when we are in the same town for a few days as there aren’t many people who are easier to take money off on a golf course,” writes Botham. “If he drills a good drive, it goes about the distance of my wedge!” With friends like these...

There again, it has to be said that, though Jackman might have a good story to tell, he doesn’t seem to be in any hurry to do so, preferring to act as the after-dinner raconteur with tales, not always entertaining, of beer- and gin-soaked evenings with other players. Each to his own, however, and I dare say there are some who will find this an entertaining and quick read. Personally, I could have done with a great deal more self-analysis. It may not be easy for Jackman to accept that his career was defined as much by what happened off the pitch during the 1980-81 England tour to the West Indies as it was by his performances on it. But that is the way it is: more people will remember Jackman for being the man whose decision to play club cricket in South Africa in the 1970s eventually led to the cancellation of the Georgetown Test.

Jackman is quite eloquent on the manoeuvrings that surrounded that tour and eventually kept it on track. But on his choice to play in South Africa, he is almost entirely silent. The country were banned from Test cricket in 1970, after the ICC recognised what most other countries and sports had grasped many years before: that the apartheid regime was morally and politically repugnant. Jackman must have been aware of this, so why did he choose to spend his winters away from Surrey playing cricket there? Was he not that bothered that the black population was being brutally repressed, kept out of key jobs (cricket included), and forced to live in segregated squalor? Or did he just think it was nothing to do with him, and everything would be OK so long as he kept the money – and his eyes shut? He never says.

He’s also silent on his decision to settle in South Africa after giving up cricket in England, other than to say he had met a lovely South African woman, Vonnie, whom he married. It wasn’t as if he was returning to the country of his birth. He had been brought up in the Home Counties and, given the fallout from that 1980-81 West Indies tour, I would have expected Jackman to harbour at least some reservations about emigrating to an apartheid state once he had become aware of other people’s strength of feeling. But no. Instead, he writes about the black resistance groups in Zimbabwe as terrorists, with seemingly no understanding of the decades of white colonialism that had sparked the guerilla wars. I don’t expect politics to be every cricketer’s strong suit, but this is ridiculous, and Jackman leaves me with the feeling – rightly or wrongly – that, however much progress South Africa has made since readmission, it is still dominated by a white cabal.

A rather more revealing and intimate portrait of a South African cricketer from roughly the same era comes in the shape of David Tossell’s Tony Greig. For the last 30 years or so, the former England captain and all-rounder had, as Gideon Haigh pointed out, “been barely remembered as a cricketer”, while Mike Atherton contended: “Greig remains one of the most underrated England cricketers of the post-war period.”

Three things defined Greig in the public memory: his ill-advised declaration that he was going to make the 1976 West Indians “grovel”; his leading role in Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket revolution; and his nationality. All three rightly take centre stage in Tossell’s book, but so too does Greig himself, the flawed man whose father was an alcoholic, who suffered from epilepsy since he was 11, who took all criticism – fair or unfair – head on, without ever asking anyone to make excuses for him. And, along the way, we learn that Greig was a better cricketer than he was given credit for. His Test batting average of 40 was higher than both Botham’s and Andrew Flintoff’s; his bowling average was poorer than Botham’s, but on a par with Flintoff’s. Furthermore, Greig achieved six five-wicket hauls, to Flintoff’s three – and in fewer Tests. All of which suggests he ought to be remembered as being among the three best English all-rounders of the post-war era.

The real pleasure of this book, though, is that Greig’s story has been told by a first-rate sportswriter. This is no ghosted part-work, overfilled with self-justification and interminable anecdotes of parties and tour drinking bouts which so often are passed off as intimacy and self-revelation. Greig appears to have given Tossell carte blanche to write what he wanted, and encouraged his family to have their say – not all of it flattering. The book unwittingly became a fitting tribute to a man who died at the end of 2012, and was unusual in putting his integrity before legacy. Above all, it comes with the ring of truth. Yes, Greig never denied that qualifying for England was an act of career pragmatism, but never once was he an apologist for apartheid. Nor did he downplay, or have any regrets about, his mercenary role in the professionalisation of cricket. All that’s missing is any sense of gratitude from many of the players whose financial futures he was instrumental in securing.

By the end of the book, Greig is still not an easy man to like, but it’s impossible not to feel the ice round him melt a little. He was so gloriously difficult. We tend these days to want to package our sports stars into easy, media-friendly compartments. Even in his late sixties, Greig refused to be pigeon-holed. South African, Australian or English? His idiosyncratic TV commentary consistently failed the Tebbit Test everywhere he went.

There again, Icki Iqbal’s utterly charming The Tebbit Test: The Memoirs of a Cricketing Fanatic exposes the jingoism at the heart of this infamous proposition. In 1990, Norman Tebbit – a former Tory cabinet minister – argued that ethnic minorities in Britain revealed their true nationality by the cricket team they supported. It’s unlikely you will have heard of Icki Iqbal, so let me fill you in. He was born in 1945 in Pakistan to a well-off, middle-class family, and has been obsessed with cricket ever since 1954, when the Pakistanis began to make their presence felt in international cricket. He moved to England in the mid-1960s, worked hard as an actuary, and is now as British as anyone. He even supports England.

But his journey hasn’t been quite as straightforward as Tebbit might have liked. Almost every sentence of this book speaks of a man with a Pakistani soul. His enthusiasm for English cricket is based partly on familiarity, but largely on disillusionment caused by corruption in the subcontinental game. Iqbal has become fed up with defending the indefensible. Had he not lost his faith in Pakistani cricket, there’s little reason to believe he would have transferred allegiance.

And why should he? Multiculturalism is one of Britain’s great success stories. Partisanship is hot-wired into every true cricket fan, and shouldn’t be readily transferable. I have my own sliding scale of prejudice in international cricket. When England are playing, I always support them. If not, my pecking order runs Pakistan, West Indies, India, Sri Lanka, New Zealand, Australia and South Africa. I’ve no idea how many Tebbit Tests I fail along the way, but I’m really not bothered. In my world, the main test is just being passionate about cricket. If you are, then you’re welcome.

Social history is also central to Gentlemen & Players: The Death of Amateurism in Cricket by Charles Williams. Few sports have reflected the English class structure quite so rigidly, and Williams offers a faithful account of the development of the modern game through the social make-up of county cricket. What’s most astonishing about the Gentlemen–Players divide is not that it ever disappeared, but that it took so long to do so. The idea of a posh amateur being able to tell a county which dates he fancied playing on during his summer holidays is beyond parody. Class barriers were coming down throughout Britain after the Second World War, but cricket managed to maintain them until 1962. Then again, MCC were in charge...

For Williams, the inevitable and necessary end of cricket’s class divide is not without its losses, for he believes something of the game’s spirit went with it. I’m not so sure. If the only way a sport can retain its ethos is by hanging on to inequality, then it was probably not as pure as it was cracked up to be. Moreover, as Williams’s book makes clear, it was more often than not the Gentlemen who were the most ruthlessly professional.

Phil Tufnell never got close to the genius of Shane Warne on the field, but he is more than his equal along the dodgy road of post-cricket celebrity, where the boundaries between being laughed with and laughed at become increasingly blurred. Warne should take Tuffers’ Cricket Tales away with him on a Trappist retreat for a week before it is too late and, on his re-emergence, vow never again to take fashion advice from Liz Hurley or adopt a haircut that looks 20 years younger than his body.

I realise I’m stepping even closer to grumpiness than usual here, and I concede there is something to be said for live and let live. Tuffers is clearly having a good time in his new life, and a lot of people seem to get pleasure out of it, so what’s the harm? Well... it just all seems so trivial. I want to remember Tufnell as the man who spun out West Indies at The Oval, not as some half-wit on reality TV. And this book of recycled anecdotes, packaged in a series of bite-sized paragraphs under subheadings such as “Puking in Ealing” and “The Crepe Suzette Pan of Uncertainty”, has clearly been published with his new fan base in mind.

The thing is, I don’t believe a word of it. This new cor-blimey geezer feels like a total reinvention. He was born Philip Clive Roderick Tufnell, and went to an independent school. Was his laddish persona a self-cultivation? If so, his performances as a pundit on Test Match Special take on a darker meaning. Tuffers’s role on TMS is to be the informed bloke calling out from a sea of posh establishment voices, the man of the people who may frequently get his words and thoughts confused, but has a heart of gold and speaks the truth to Joe Public. If Tuffers isn’t really like that at all, then his shtick is insincere and patronising. I know I’m being harsh, but I feel disappointed. I loved watching Tufnell bowl, and I can’t bear the fact that, if he carries on putting his name to books like this, he’ll principally be remembered as having sold out.

Not that there’s anything wrong with wanting to make cricket funny. It’s the trying too hard that’s the problem. The game itself is so shot through with hubris that only those running it seem not to notice. Left to its own devices, humour will almost always find a way to land a laugh.

A few years ago, the actor and stand-up comic Miles Jupp performed a one-man show about his efforts to become a cricket journalist covering an England Test tour; he has now extended that riff into Fibber in the Heat, a gentle – and genteel – unrequited love affair.

Like many of us who are blessed with next to no natural ability for cricket, but have a borderline-obsessive desire to follow it, Jupp wondered – during a career break from playing Archie the Inventor in the touring production of the children’s show Balamory: Live! – whether he might be able to combine his passion for cricket with something that could loosely be called a job. And so, having maxed out his almost non-existent contacts book, he eventually found himself with two letters inviting him to contribute the occasional freelance report for the Western Mail and BBC Radio Scotland during England’s 2005-06 trip to India.

As it happens, I found myself doing something rather similar in 1992, when I managed to persuade the Pakistan cricket team to let me hang around with them during the 1992 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand so I could write a book about Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis. I can therefore testify that every word Jupp writes resonates with eternal truth, failure and laughter – though in my case it took several years to appreciate just how much funnier everyone else found the experience than I did.

Jupp lives constantly on the verge of being found out. He’d like to write several probing features for the Cardiff-based Western Mail about how Welsh-born Simon Jones’s injury has unbalanced the squad, but his day-to-day preoccupations are far more mundane: worrying if he has the right accreditation, worrying that the other hacks have made separate travel arrangements, worrying whether he’s going to get into the press box and find there’s nowhere for him to sit, worrying that no one is going to invite him out in the evenings and that he will be spending night after night feeling homesick in the not-very-nice hotel he can barely afford. Worrying, always worrying.

It has to be said that Jupp came rather closer to making it as a proper member of the British cricket media corps than I ever did, but he fails for much the same reason. At heart, he is just too much of a fan to be a reporter. I never could get used to the po-faced silence of the press box, where cheering a century was the last word in poor form. I knew the game was up when I found myself celebrating with Wasim inside the Pakistan dressing-room at the MCG after he had just bowled his country to victory in the final, rather than trying to get a few quotes I could sell. I just couldn’t imagine ever wanting to go back into the press box. And yes, that night I too failed the Tebbit Test.

Marcus Berkmann set the benchmark for heroic tales of failure in amateur cricket with his 1995 book Rain Men. It chronicled the weekly incompetence and petty rivalries of his nomadic team, the Captain Scott XI, and established a new – and welcome – sub-genre of cricket writing in which the terminally useless and unfit, who make up 90% of the world’s players, get their day in print. Sustaining interest and comedy in people known to nobody but the author and a few close friends is a hard act to pull off. Since Berkmann, many writers have met with varying levels of success.

One of the typical problems with this sort of book is being able to believe that the team are quite as bad as portrayed. Amateur cricketers are prone to self-deprecation, and I’ve lost count of the number of times over the 30 years I’ve been playing for the particularly useless Hemingford Hermits that opposing captains have said before the start, “Oh we’re really not very good at all – seven of our best players are on holiday,” only to find we are 13 for five after six overs. So I’ve become deeply suspicious of cricket writers bearing gifts of false modesty. I will, though, make an exception for Not Out First Ball, by Roger Morgan-Grenville and Richard Perkins, a book that oozes charm and humour from the very first page and, most importantly, describes failures of the terminally delusional so accurately that I could almost believe one of the more disloyal members of the Hermits – and disloyalty is written into the team’s DNA – had written a roman à clef.

Every familiar character is writ large. The captain who has never quite been able to come to terms with the fact he is no longer head boy of his minor public school; the fast bowler whose shoulders went 20 years ago, and can now only pitch one ball in six; the opening batsman who can’t get the ball off the square, and is invariably one not out after ten overs; the wicketkeeper who can no longer bend his knees. Then there’s the sledging. Why would anyone want to undermine the opposition when there’s so much more fun to be had from rubbishing your own mates? If the White Hunter Cricket Club doesn’t exist, it ought to. And if it does, the Hemingford Hermits will give you a game.

I shouldn’t end, though, without a brief salute to the pamphlets that cricket enthusiasts continue to self-publish. A special mention should be made of Triumph at Wattle Flat: When Castlemaine Beat the Poms, by Richard Mack. I’ve no idea what spurs a man on to research a minor game between the first English side to tour Australia in 1861 and a Castlemaine XXII, and then write it up in such depth. But I’m glad that men like Richard Mack exist. Cricket – and cricket writing – wouldn’t be the same without them.

John Crace is the author of ten books on subjects from cricket and football to fatherhood and literature. He is also a TV reviewer and columnist for The Guardian.

WISDEN BOOK OF THE YEAR

Since 2003, Wisden’s reviewer has selected a Book of the Year. The winners have been:

2003

Bodyline Autopsy by David Frith

2004

No Coward Soul by Stephen Chalke and Derek Hodgson

2005

On and Off the Field by Ed Smith

2006

Ashes 2005 by Gideon Haigh

2007

Brim Full of Passion by Wasim Khan

2008

Tom Cartwright: The Flame Still Burns by Stephen Chalke

2009

Sweet Summers: The Classic Cricket Writing of JM Kilburn edited by Duncan Hamilton

2010

Harold Larwood: The Authorized Biography by Duncan Hamilton

2011

The Cricketer’s Progress: Meadowland to Mumbai by Eric Midwinter

2012

Fred Trueman: The Authorised Biography by Chris Waters

2013

Bookie Gambler Fixer Spy by Ed Hawkins

CRICKET IN THE MEDIA, 2012

The goldfish bowl

JONATHAN LIEW

The world of cricket media is a smaller one than many of the men and women who inhabit it – men, mostly – would like to admit. Peer inside the press box at a Test match, and you will find friends and enemies sitting side by side, former team-mates and foes brushing against one another as they queue for the sweet trolley. The analogy of the goldfish bowl is apposite – not least because cricket journalists continue to eat for as long as you keep feeding them.

In such an environment, where information and disinformation spread like contagion, where a rumour can be halfway across the ground before the truth has got its pads on, it is unsurprising that beefs develop. In that respect, 2012 was a more rancorous year than most. Nourished by the onrush of social networks, the cyclic plod of quotes-driven journalism, and the unshakeable fondness of the press for writing about themselves – guilty as charged, by the way – the media, more often than is customary, became the story.

In April, as Andrew Strauss struggled for form in Sri Lanka, Graeme Swann turned his irritation on the assembled press corps. “It’s obvious there’s been a little bit of a witch-hunt towards him that I think is unjustified,” he said. “He hasn’t shown any signs of being under any pressure. We only realised he was under scrutiny because some of us can read.”

For while the world of cricket media remains small, its reach and penetration are now unprecedented. Online newspaper articles can be shared over oceans and across national borders. Tweets and television broadcasts ping across the globe at all hours of day and night. Throw enough opinions at the dressing-room and, eventually, some will slip under the door.

Ex-players, especially recent ex-players, can sometimes provide the most injurious criticism, and perhaps Michael Vaughan’s verdict on Strauss’s captaincy struck a nerve in the England camp. “If he clings on to the job and doesn’t score runs, then he runs the risk of it turning nasty,” he wrote in the Daily Telegraph. “My fear is that if he carries on and has a poor start against West Indies, then the selectors might have to remove him from the team.”

In truth, the tone of Strauss’s inquisitors was never quite as shrill as his supporters claimed. “There is nothing fundamentally so wrong with Strauss’s technique that a little serious time and reflection in the nets is not likely to solve,” wrote James Lawton in The Independent. “Removing him from the captaincy, or pushing him towards resignation, would surely stand out as remarkable folly even by the old standards of English cricket.”

Of course, we all know how Strauss’s story ended. Indeed, at his final press conference he revealed he had been considering retirement for six to 12 months. Perhaps, in hindsight, there were cracks beginning to appear in his immaculate edifice. Back in Sri Lanka, he responded with uncharacteristic exasperation to the assertion by Bob Willis on Sky Sports that he had given up the England one-day captaincy at the behest of his wife. A surer-footed Strauss would have thrown Willis’s comments out with the rubbish. Instead, he bit. “That was pretty disappointing,” he said, “considering the person in question knows neither me nor my other half.” Whether he was referring to his wife or Andy Flower, of course, is a matter of tangential discussion.

May brought more shenanigans, as Kevin Pietersen was censured for tweeting criticism of Sky’s Nick Knight. It was a classic non-story, utterly extraneous to the game itself. But with Fleet Street struggling to drum up much interest in a one-sided series against West Indies, it could scarcely have been more perfectly timed. A delighted Daily Mail emblazoned “SKYGATE” on its back page, following up the next day with a “SKYGATE EXCLUSIVE”, in which Paul Newman revealed Pietersen had “held clear-the-air talks with Nick Knight to thrash out their differences” and “explained his feelings face-to-face”.

Surprisingly, given all the air-clearing, difference-thrashing and feeling-explaining, this particular storm blew over quickly enough. More of Pietersen later – you can be assured of that – but the Knight rumpus turned out to be a neat portent of the summer to follow, when cricket had to shout like never before in order to be heard.

In the larger sporting patchwork of 2012, after all, cricket was the merest stitch, the Basil D’Oliveira Trophy proving no match for Team GB’s deluge of gold, silver and bronze. While Britain held the biggest sporting party in its history, cricket bumbled along at the peripheries, maintaining a dignified detachment from London’s orgy of precious metal. In truth, it was not until England’s win in India at the fag end of the year that cricket enjoyed anything like a firm grip on the nation’s consciousness.

To every action there is an equal and opposite reaction, and there was a snide subtext to the giddy euphoria that greeted the Olympics. Football suffered most harshly, but cricket received its sideways glances too. “Cricket and rugby, with their positive celebration of alcoholic excess, should be taking a hard look at how they regard their paying customers,” wrote Richard Whitehead in The Times. “London 2012 has reminded us of one long-forgotten thing: that watching sport can be, above all, about pure, innocent fun.”

Beyond the soul-searching, our national summer sport was faced with the dilemma of whether to ingratiate itself with the ecstatic throngs, or tough it out until the Olympic tsunami subsided. Some cross-breeding did occur: Jonathan Agnew chuckled his way through the archery at Lord’s, while Mike Atherton, cricket correspondent of The Times, wrote a number of fine Olympic-themed essays.

Given London 2012’s immense drain on resources and space, most of the dailies deserve praise for operating a near full-strength cricket service. Coverage of the county game was generally threadbare, though there was nothing exceptional in that. But when the national press gathered at Headingley for the Second Test against South Africa, they were rewarded for their fidelity with the story of the year.

On August 6, Usain Bolt destroyed the field in the 100 metres, Jason Kenny triumphed in the men’s sprint cycling, and Britain’s showjumpers won their first Olympic gold for 60 years. But it was a measure of the gravity of the Pietersen saga that, the following morning, The Sun, Daily Mirror and Daily Star all found space for it on their back pages.

Pietersen’s collision with the media had been brewing all summer. It began in July with an interview in the Daily Mail, when he spoke for the first time about his retirement from one-day internationals. “I’ve read and seen that we had heated discussions,” he said. “Well, that’s a lie. Whoever told the media that is a liar.”

The suggestion that Pietersen had demanded to be excused from Test duty to play in the Indian Premier League had generated a tranche of negative comment. “It takes a vaulting arrogance to believe you can return to a forum that has made its negotiating position extremely clear with a new set of conditions,” a seething Derek Pringle wrote in the Daily Telegraph. “By doing that, he brings his mercenary instincts, which many feel were his prime motivation when first qualifying for England, to the fore.”

Now, after it emerged he had sent questionable texts to the opposition, it was open season. Suddenly, all the old preconceptions began to resurface. “Suggestions that Pietersen is not the only one seriously at fault are far from convincing enough to enlist sympathy for the transplanted South African,” wrote Hugh McIlvanney in The Sunday Times. And in the Daily Telegraph there was this from Peter Oborne: “Pietersen is the latest white South African to use his selection for the England cricket team to promote his personal ambitions. Ultimately, Pietersen has not much idea of what it means to be British.”

Perhaps the most astonishing philippic came from Michael Henderson, a long-standing and now gleeful detractor. “Those of us who have never accepted him as a bona fide Englishman,” he trilled in the Daily Mail, “have been expecting this balloon to go up since the moment he made his Test debut against Australia in 2005.”

But the best was yet to come. On a late-night discussion show on BBC Radio 5 Live the following week, Henderson embarked on a deeply addled, barely comprehensible, hugely entertaining ten-minute tirade that began as a broadside against Pietersen and ended up insulting virtually the entire cricket-loving public. “Everybody loathes Pietersen,” he asserted confidently, before turning on Pietersen’s defenders, who included fellow guest Paul Burnham of the Barmy Army. “I think people know who I am in this game,” he continued. “I know seven ex-England captains. I spent three days in the MCC president’s box – no riff-raff there.” It was a bizarre outburst, characterised by frequent interruptions and curt answers, and it ultimately told us a good deal more about Henderson than Pietersen.

There were rare voices of calm amid the collective lunacy. Vic Marks wrote a considered defence of Pietersen in The Guardian: “There has been a whiff of witch-hunt about his omission, as a cricketing establishment closes ranks on an outsider. Some seem to be relishing his comeuppance.” But it was a measure of Pietersen’s estrangement from the media that, when he chose to break his silence, it was via his personal YouTube channel. In September, omitted from England’s World Twenty20 squad, he flew out to Sri Lanka to work as a pundit for ESPN STAR Sports. It felt like a divorce, and in more ways than one.

Of course, we know how Pietersen’s story ended too. His match-winning century at Mumbai completed a bizarre cycle of disintegration and reintegration, with his celebrity friend Piers Morgan among the first to exult. “He’s a consummate professional,” he wrote in his Mail on Sunday column. “He’s also a great, loyal friend, someone who’ll go the extra mile to help you if he can. We had breakfast together in Chelsea a few weeks ago…”

As the year ended, the media were forced to contemplate their own relationship with Pietersen. His talent had never been in doubt; nor had his flaws. But which outweighed the other? The answer, it seemed, was almost entirely determined by events. Even as the praise flowed like wine – a Guardian leader marvelled at the “concentrated focus that produced a dazzling, inventive, brilliant series of strokes” – there remained a suspicion that Pietersen’s next peccadillo would see the tide turn against him yet again. One fancies it will ever be thus.

The fixation with Pietersen may also be seen as a symptom of the increasingly narrow purview of newspaper sport desks. England or nothing; KP or nothing. It is certainly true that the wailing over Pietersen drowned out a number of worthwhile stories. The climax of the County Championship was one notable example.

But in cricket’s foothills, the shires were fighting back. The Daily Mirror website and ESPNcricinfo launched county blogs for the first time, their coverage augmenting existing online offerings from The Times, The Guardian and the Daily Telegraph. In May came the launch of The Cricket Paper, a new weekly offering from Greenways Publishing priced at £1.50. Its tone was refreshingly sober, its scope – “from Test match to village green” – satisfyingly broad.

Even in the traditional outlets, there were frequent affirmations that cricket journalism need not be hewn from the same changeless rockface. Peter Hayter’s moving interview with James Taylor in the Mail on Sunday, in which the young England batsman shared his memories of his friend Alex Wilson, who died in a tragic accident in late 2009, was touching and brilliant. Scyld Berry’s lament on the decline of state school cricket in the Sunday Telegraph, meanwhile, was superbly researched and powerfully argued.

On such fare does the goldfish bowl roll on: dwindling but defiant, frequently vilified but unstintingly vital. One fancies that this, too, will ever be thus.

Jonathan Liew writes for the Daily Telegraph.

CRICKET ON EUROSPORT

Breaking the sound barrier

JAMES COYNE

“Where the English language is unspoken there can be no real cricket, which is to say that Americans have never excelled at the game.” It’s hard not to chuckle at Neville Cardus’s classic put-down, whether you agree with it or not. But even he failed to foresee the impact globalisation would have on his beloved sport.

On a second-floor office above a bank in downtown Belgrade, Cardus’s axiom is being spectacularly undermined. England are collapsing to India’s spinners at the World Twenty20, and two Eurosport commentators, Predrag Vukanovic and Vladimir Ninkovic, are telling the Balkans about it in Serbian. Their language varies only minimally from Bosnian, Montenegrin and Croatian, something Eurosport takes advantage of by screening its Serbian coverage across the former Yugoslavia. Albania have to make do with the feed from Germany – who knows what might have happened if C. B. Fry had accepted the throne?

On holiday in Sarajevo a few days later, walking past the Catholic cathedral impeccably rebuilt after the siege, I notice something on a TV screen in one of the many indistinguishable café-bars on the main drag – it’s England v New Zealand in the Super Eights on Eurosport 2. I ask a waiter (in English) if he can turn the volume up, and what he thinks of the game. “Very weird,” he fires back.

This is the third time, after England 2009 and West Indies 2010, that Eurosport has purchased the World Twenty20 feed from ESPN STAR Sports – and given 18 different languages the keys to the kingdom of cricket. It costs Eurosport a pittance by modern broadcasting standards, but then cricket has to compete with snooker and Polish football in the schedule. Cricket aficionados, usually high-ranking officers in the national associations like Ninkovic – general secretary of the Serbian Cricket Federation – are brought in to provide expert analysis, and spread news of their crusade. Ninkovic knows what he’s talking about, and proudly shows off an Essex cap collected from Reece Topley on the boundary at Chelmsford. For enthusiasts like him, Eurosport, Facebook and YouTube have been a revelation.

Naturally, there is the odd cautionary tale: in Romania, the lead commentator is a football man, who speaks in terms of points rather than runs, and hollers every time a run is scampered, let alone when a boundary is hit or a wicket taken. The Romanian cricket authorities are lobbying ICC Europe and Eurosport to have him gently moved aside for the next tournament.

Vukanovic, though, is a consummate broadcaster, blessed with a deep, authoritative baritone. He knows who all the players are, and what they do – which, in the case of Irfan Pathan opening the batting, is not very much. As Jade Dernbach is whacked for consecutive fours by Gautam Gambhir, Ninkovic ribs England about the number of South Africans playing for them. Vukanovic has called five tournaments to date, so perhaps a touch of Twenty20-weariness has crept into his commentary. “The Champions League is a nice competition,” he tells me later. “I expect a few surprises, because the top cricket stars look like they are on holiday in South Africa.”

As England slide to defeat in Colombo, it doesn’t take long for the duo to diagnose that young English batsmen struggle to read spin bowling out of the hand. By the time Jonny Bairstow is cleaned up trying to slog Piyush Chawla, foxed by a googly, mild mirth has broken out in the commentary box. It’s strangely reassuring that, even in Belgrade, English cricket is capable of being a laughing stock.

CRICKET AND BLOGS, 2012

On the outside looking in

S. A. RENNIE

In 1956, Len Hutton – newly retired and hired by the London Evening News to give his thoughts on the Ashes – was barred from the Lord’s press box because he wasn’t deemed a proper sportswriter. E. M. Wellings, the paper’s cantankerous cricket correspondent, objected to Sir Len’s use of a ghostwriter, forcing one of England’s greatest captains to go and do his work outside, like a naughty schoolboy. The landscape has changed considerably: nowadays, bloggers get press passes, while ghosted columns and autobiographies are old hat. But the debate over what constitutes cricket journalism continues.

Some regard today’s bloggers with the same disdain. Last year, evidence came in a tirade from an employee of the United States of America Cricket Association against ESPNcricinfo writer Peter Della Penna for his criticisms of the administration – or, as USACA’s unofficial Facebook page put it, his “unethical, journalistic bias”. Ending up with a verbal pitchmap that resembled Mitchell Johnson’s bowling on a bad day, the page administrator – USACA executive secretary Kenwyn Williams – sprayed his invective in the direction of anyone who dared register disagreement (and, in many cases, their disbelief). This broadside was also directed at Cricinfo’s executive editor Martin Williamson: “In the USA, journalists need to be QUALIFIED and belong to an organisation that endorses their profession… I beg Peter and Martin to prove to me they are qualified as journalists. They are internet bloggers and have NO journalistic privilege. NONE!!!”

Williams was dismissed for his role in this social-media meltdown, and the Facebook page deleted. But when the worst insult that can be aimed at a journalist is to call him a blogger “using the internet to spew venom”, it reflects the common view that a blogger is a mere hobbyist, undeserving of consideration or courtesy.

Even if you are a blogger whose work is deemed worthy of inclusion on, say, the website of a national newspaper, there is no guarantee you’ll be paid. With the print media scrabbling around for a viable business model, newspapers are now “partnering” with bloggers. In the case of The Guardian, this means reproducing articles from blogs on a section of their website called the Guardian Sport Network. Cricket blogs include “99.94” at nestaquin.wordpress.com, and theoldbatsman.blogspot.co.uk. This has ruffled a few feathers in the blogging community. One of the writers of “99.94” was forced to defend himself against the accusation he was taking jobs away from professional journalists, and admitted he felt uneasy. Others wondered if the failure to pay people for their work was rather un-Guardian.

And yet one man’s “open journalism” is another’s free content. Exposure and increased site traffic are the carrots dangled in front of aspiring journalists, even if exposure won’t pay the bills. As Ant Sims pointed out at wicketmaiden.com/cricket-bloggers-write-free-profit: “Next time you’re at the shop, rattle off all the sites you are writing for for free, tell them about the exposure it’s getting you and try using it as currency.”

If remuneration is seen as one validation of a blogger’s worth, recognition by the sport’s great and good is another sign that the genre is being taken more seriously. In March, Sky’s Mike Atherton interviewed Mohammad Aamer on his release from prison after the Lord’s no-ball saga. I wasn’t entirely satisfied by some of Aamer’s responses, and wrote an article about it at www.legsidefilth.com/?p=634. I was pleasantly surprised when Atherton not only responded in the comments section, but was happy to answer questions raised by others.

Bloggers may often feel as if they are writing in a vacuum, even if they begin only with the objective of writing for themselves, or believe there is something that needs to be said that no one else has. But Atherton’s comment that “some of the best cricket writing at the moment is on blogs” received plenty of attention. Jarrod Kimber, at blogs.espncricinfo.com/sadisthour wrote: “Atherton’s comments don’t legitimatise cricket blogging. But I think, to bloggers, tweeters and all those who chat about cricket for no money, they know that, if they produce quality and act like normal human beings, people like Atherton will feel comfortable enough to interact with them.”

One recent trend has been the rise of collectives, communities of cricket bloggers run either by fans or, on a more commercial basis, by professional media organisations. thesightscreen.com features a variety of writers, including Kimber, Jon Hotten and Masuud Qazi, whose article comparing the Pakistan–England series to chaos theory was inspired off-the-wall analysis.

But as bloggers become assimilated into collectives, commercial endeavours and the mainstream media, they risk diluting the independence of unaffiliated observers who are on the outside, looking in. The lone blogger may be an endangered species, but notables include Freddie Wilde, whose blog at fwildecricket.blogspot.co.uk features his entertaining “Twitter at the Tests”. Scott Oliver at reversesweeper.blogspot.co.uk takes a more academic and philosophical approach, combining tales of league cricket with and against Imran Tahir, Tino Best and Rangana Herath, with references to David Hume and non-linear thermodynamics. As you do.

By far the best newcomer this year, though, has been Darren Harold, who writes as “A Cricketing Buddha” at donningthewhites.blogspot.com. His five-part series on New Zealand’s Wisden Cricketers of the Year is full of scholarly enthusiasm for his country’s cricketing history, and is a must-read. In his essay “Why blog? Why not?” he says: “I try to write a number of pieces that give me a reason to go back in time, often inside my own memory banks, and read about the deeds of some of my heroes, and their heroes.” With his passion for the game’s past, and an understanding of its ties to the present, Harold’s blog encapsulates everything that is best about amateur cricket writing.

S. A. Rennie blogs at legsidefilth.com.

RETIREMENTS

Guts among the glitter

STEVE JAMES

We should have known that Andrew Strauss would call it a day at the end of the 2012 season. The signs had been there: the gradual decline in form that had not quite been arrested by two centuries against West Indies in May; and the various pieces of symbolism that attached themselves to the final Test of the summer, at Lord’s – his 100th as a player, 50th as captain, and at his home ground, where his Test career had begun eight years earlier. Even so, like all the best-timed retirements, it still felt like a bit of a surprise.

It was presumed that Strauss would oversee Ashes series in 2013 and 2013-14 – if not by the man himself. As he put it: “I’d run my race.” In truth, the race had been run in his own mind long before he misjudged a straight one in his final innings. But, in a move as classy and understated as the letters he handwrote to all but one of his team-mates to tell them of his decision, he offered his intentions only to his closest confidants. There was never going to be the circus of a farewell series that might have shifted focus away from the team.

Strauss achieved nearly all an England Test captain could hope for, principally Ashes victories home and away, and the No. 1 ranking. He also made 21 Test centuries, leaving only Wally Hammond, Colin Cowdrey and Geoffrey Boycott ahead of him at the time. The Kevin Pietersen saga alone threatened to spoil the dignified manner of his departure.

By contrast, another Middlesex product, Mark Ramprakash, made only two Test hundreds. But he scored 68 more first-class centuries than Strauss (114 to 46), though he did play in 461 matches to Strauss’s 241 in a 26-year career culminating in 11 seasons at Surrey after he left Middlesex in 2001. Ramprakash should be remembered as a great of the county game, and I have seen no better technician. But at international level, he was granted 52 Test caps, and must be considered a failure. One is left to wonder what might have been had he played under a central contract, or been made England captain when he was interviewed for the job along with Nasser Hussain in 1999.

Another cricketer of passion and longevity, Robert Croft, felt he had more to give. But eventually, at 42, he called time, having taken over 1,000 first-class wickets and scored more than 10,000 runs – a unique achievement among Glamorgan cricketers. I played alongside him in 1989, when he made his debut against Surrey at The Oval, and also five years later at the same ground, when we played in a Second XI match, after being dropped by captain Hugh Morris. For us both it was a significant and timely jolt from our reveries. Two years later, Croft made his Test debut, again at The Oval.

To use his favourite rugby analogy, he always said playing for Glamorgan was like representing Wales, with England akin to the British Lions. He won 21 Test caps, and was never less than passionate, as witnessed by his battling batting to save the Old Trafford Test against South Africa in 1998.

Jonathan Batty spent most of his career at The Oval, but never did receive England’s call. I played against him there in 1999, when his cheekbone was broken by a vicious delivery from Simon Jones, bowling at a ferocious pace in tandem with the equally hostile Jacques Kallis. Batty, a dependable wicketkeeper and useful batsman, played in Surrey’s next Championship match – the guts among their glitter. At one stage, he accepted the tricky task of captaining the glamour boys, which said much for his character. He finished his playing days a popular figure at Gloucestershire.

Will Jefferson wound up at Leicestershire, but it was at Essex that his huge promise as an opener emerged (and at 6ft 10½in, he was the tallest-ever specialist first-class batsman). In their two-day match against the touring Australians in 2005 – when Alastair Cook (214) and Ravi Bopara (135) made names for themselves – it is easily forgotten that Jefferson hit a quick 64. He played superbly in Leicestershire’s 2011 Twenty20 triumph, success which he ascribed to the soothing powers of Bikram yoga, but a rare hip condition ended his career at the age of 32.

Charl Willoughby played at Leicestershire and Somerset (as well as gaining two Test caps for South Africa), before finishing his career at Essex. A left-armer, he was not quick. But he possessed the rare skill of late swing, to the extent that, in six seasons for Somerset, he claimed 347 wickets, often when Taunton was at its flattest.

Michael Di Venuto won two Championships, in 2008 and 2009, with Durham. He had retired from Australian state cricket in 2008, but continued in the county game, spending six years in the North-East after spells with Derbyshire and Sussex. He was a top-notch left-hander, and was unfortunate to have been limited to nine one-day internationals by Australia’s batting riches. Di Venuto took advantage of his heritage to play for Italy in the 2012 World Twenty20 qualifying tournament, but with modest returns.

Ben Scott, a wicketkeeper with Surrey, Middlesex and Worcestershire, was as silky as any gloveman of his generation – including James Foster – but was often discarded in favour of better batsmen. Another keeper, the South African-born Gerard Brophy, could certainly bat, and in four years at Northamptonshire and seven at Yorkshire (where, remarkably, he received a benefit season) he scored over 5,000 first-class runs.

Yet another wicketkeeper, Paul Dixey, left the game aged only 24, having played just 22 first-class matches for Kent and Leicestershire. And James Cameron, a useful Zimbabwean-born all-rounder, was 26 when he informed Worcestershire he wanted to pursue a career in finance. Derbyshire’s off-spinner Jake Needham, just 25 and surprisingly deprived of opportunities given his natural ability to spin the ball, had already announced he would do the same.

CRICKETANA

What am I bid?

DAVID RAYVERN ALLE N

As the auction merry-go-round continues to spin, it becomes increasingly difficult to discern who is actually doing the bidding. The internet – even the humble telephone – offers anonymity, and not just for the big spenders. At all the major cricket auctions, from London to Cardiff via Nottingham, Leicester, Chester or Ludlow, sales rarely have as many as 30 people in the room. And even when bids are seemingly placed in person, the real purchaser may often be hiding behind a frontman, occasionally two. A decoy can be useful when highly desirable items are on offer – and when serious money and the thrill of the chase allow an auction house to assume an air of machismo and flirt with the world of espionage…

Not that everyone warms to the drama of the saleroom. The book dealer Christopher Saunders claims there are too many cricket auctions: “They tend to devalue the product, particularly when eBay is a continuous auction.” There is a counter-argument: since cricket booksellers issue an average of two or three catalogues a year, why shouldn’t there be as many sales? Saunders also bemoans the damage caused by VAT at 20% and high postage charges: “It costs £5.40 to send a catalogue to Australia or New Zealand. It becomes prohibitive.” One man’s misfortune, of course, is another’s opportunity, and there are bargains available. “With the market for run-of-the-mill items in the doldrums, there has been no alternative but to reduce prices.” Yet the illustrated catalogues produced by Saunders, Surrey dealer John McKenzie and others are inviting, and there are plenty of high-end items to pore over: Saunders was offering juvenilia, runs of Almanacks and much offbeat material in between.

McKenzie, meanwhile, was celebrating 40 years in business with his 174th cricket catalogue. Some of the 918 entries were exceptionally scarce: early F. S. Ashley-Cooper booklets; a first edition of James Dance’s Cricket: An Heroic Poem (from 1744); the Rev. John Duncombe’s parody Surry Triumphant (1773); and a second edition of Thomas Boxall’s Rules and Instructions for playing at the Game of Cricket (c.1801–02). None was especially cheap, but many items found buyers.

The chances are high that those buyers will be men: Saunders counts only ten women among his thousand or so active clients. But they seem unperturbed at entering what is widely seen as a male preserve, and collecting for themselves. However, McKenzie thinks there may be vicarious purchasing at work: “It’s difficult to quantify. They could be buying for their husbands.”

Whoever is doing the purchasing, there are traps, especially online, for the unwary. The old adage – if something looks too good to be true then it probably is – still applies. “Customers ring me,” says McKenzie, “and declare they’ve purchased an original autograph of, say, Victor Trumper or Joe Darling for less than £50 – and they don’t realise they are almost certain to be fakes.” These deceptions can emanate from almost anywhere in the world. It remains a case of caveat emptor, wherever the sale takes place.

In his March auction, Trevor Vennett-Smith sold a striking oil painting, thought to be by A. L. “Toby” Grace, of a boy doing homework and looking longingly out of a window at a game of cricket. The painting was probably commissioned by bat-makers Gunn and Moore for their showroom, before being passed to Nottinghamshire and England star Reg Simpson, a director of the firm. It raised over £7,000 after premium and VAT had been added.

Vennett-Smith also sold the extensive personal paper-based archive of former England captain Freddie Brown. There had been doubt about ownership but, once this was resolved, the two albums – containing telegrams, dinner menus, letters, snapshots, scorecards and the like from his playing career – fetched around £18,000. In November, the first half of Denijs Morkel’s archive came up for sale. He played 16 Tests for South Africa between 1927-28 and 1931-32, before moving to Nottingham, where he captained Sir Julien Cahn’s XI, made guest appearances for MCC and played a few wartime (non-first-class) games at Trent Bridge. The scrapbook, containing unusual ephemera, went for £2,700 on the hammer.

The focal point of Tim Knight’s March sale was two exceptional watercolour portraits of W. G. Grace by Louisa Townsend, an inaugural member of the Royal Society of Miniature Painters. She had painted Grace in 1915, the year of his death, and this appeared as a frontispiece in his Memorial Biography, edited by Lords Hawke and Harris, together with Sir Home Gordon. The larger of the two watercolours on sale at Knight’s was a very similar portrait, showing Grace in a striped dark suit. This fetched £20,000 on the hammer, while the exquisite miniature in a cameo oval mount and ornate gilt frame realised £15,000.

Another outstanding feature of the auction was a fine collection of nine early 19th-century English School studies of young cricketers. These ranged from a somewhat naive oil of a youngster with dog and bat, to a watercolour-and-pencil painting from the circle of Henry Edridge that showed a youth nonchalantly leaning on his bat. The prices also ranged widely, from a few hundred pounds to nearly £5,000. Some were acquired by MCC. In Knight’s summer sale, The Log of a Trip in the Earl of Sheffield’s Yacht, the Heloise, to Boulogne and back by “One of the Team”, July 1890 had an estimate of £1,000–£1,500. When the gavel fell, bidding had reached an extraordinary £14,000. Also sold during the year were a couple of important sets of photographs: nine sepia action prints of WG by the pioneer of sports photography in Britain, George Beldam; and an album belonging to Frank Gilligan. Each made £4,000.

The highlight of Christie’s cricket year was the sale of Victor Trumper’s collection of photos from the 1909 Australian “confines of lunacy” tour of England (Trumper’s last), plus a few images from 1902. The album was a gift from the tour manager, Frank Laver. The winning bid was £13,000.

In an Olympics-crazy year, any mention of a gold medal guaranteed attention. Graham Budd Auctions (in association with Sotheby’s) sold “a rare and historic gold medal presented by the Melbourne Cricket Club” to the English cricketer E. F. S. Tylecote to commemorate the first Ashes series in 1882-83. It fetched £3,000 in May.

As 2012 drew to a close, Mullock’s three-day, 2,560-lot sale at Ludlow found a lone bidder competing against an absent opponent to secure one of the scarcest of all Wisdens. The 1875 edition carried an estimate of £2,000–£3,000. From the podium, John Mullock nursed the bidding carefully, increasing the total by small amounts. Gradually the would-be purchasers dropped out, leaving the auction-room warrior – watched closely by his anxious partner beside him – together with his unknown online adversary.

The hush was tangible, the tension crackling. Nearly ten minutes had passed since bidding began: “£12,000… 12,200… 400… 600… 800… £13,000…” And still it went on… The pause before the next figure was offered grew longer from both sides. Mullock’s gavel was about to descend. The online bidder had waited too long. Everybody in the room was about to cheer, when – in the nick of time – another bid came over the ether. “£18,800… £18,800… for the third time, £18,800. Going once, going twice…” Crash! The room bidder’s arm had dropped. The price had gone too far, and a murmur of sympathy went round. But who was the winner? It turned out to be a private collector in Australia, so there was a degree of satisfaction for some that the contest had been between two individuals and did not involve a corporate body. For lovers of cricketana – and spectacle – such a titanic struggle is what auctioneering is all about.

CRICKET AND THE WEATHER, 2012

Thank heavens for small mercies?

PHILIP EDEN

When I remarked in these pages last year that “sooner or later… a very wet April and May is bound to come along”, I little realised it was round the corner. May’s rainfall was actually close to the average, but April, June and July were all exceptionally wet. Indeed, both April and June set records, and in rainfall statistics for England and Wales that date back to 1766 there is no other instance of two record months occurring in the same year.

According to the Wisden Summer Index (see Wisden 2004 for the exact formula), this was the worst summer since 1987 and the ninth-worst since 1900. The total rainfall for May to August, averaged over England and Wales, was the third-highest recorded and the highest since 1917. The number of dry days, meanwhile, was the fourth-lowest, and the lowest since 1924. Flooding, however, was less widespread than in 2007, because the rain in 2012 tended to be spread out over longer periods, whereas five years before it was concentrated into single days. Temperatures, although subdued, were not especially low; similarly, the number of sunshine hours was consistently poor – though again nowhere near a record. We should, perhaps, be thankful for small mercies.

The English season began earlier than ever, with the first university matches being played on March 31, but ended early too: the previous ten had all extended beyond September 16. Frustratingly, March had been a dry month with an unequalled spell of warmth and sunshine towards its end. The rains, though, had already set in by the time the Championship started on April 5, and practically every match scheduled during April was seriously interrupted. In two instances, at The Oval and at Bristol, four-day games were wholly washed out.

May 17 marked the beginning of a dry fortnight – and the start of the Test series against West Indies. The First Test was played under cloudy skies with a cold wind, but the Second, which finished a day early on May 28, was warm and sunny throughout. The Third, in mid-June, was strafed by frequent rain.

There were further dry interludes in late-July, coinciding with the First Test against South Africa, while August was largely dry and rather warm in East Anglia and South-East England; other parts of the country were much less fortunate. The first ten days of September were also dry and warm, before the weather tailed off.

The meteorological statistics, averaged over England and Wales, for the 2012 season, were:

Each summer has slightly different regional variations, though in most years northern and western counties are cooler, cloudier and damper than those in the east and south. The Wisden Summer Index compares the summer county by county. In essence, an index over 650 indicates a good summer; one below 500 a poor one. Values for the summer of 2012 against the average for the standard reference period of 1981–2010 were:

The bad weather during 2012 was spread fairly evenly across the country, with every county recording a deficit of 116 or more. Yorkshire, Hampshire, Essex, Middlesex and Surrey had the lowest deficits, while Durham and Somerset had the largest. Only four counties scored above 500, while three scored below 400, with Durham’s 342 comfortably the lowest.

Taking a national view, 2012’s index of 455 was 127 points below the year before, and 48 lower than 2007 – the previous worst of the 2000s. The last six summers, 2007–2012, represent the poorest run since 1977–82.

Highest: 812 in 1976

Lowest: 309 in 1879

CRICKET PEOPLE

Dealing in millimetres

ALI MARTIN

Simon Taufel does not like the word “retirement”. He insisted upon its removal from the media release announcing his decision to step down from the ICC Elite Panel of Umpires. The 41-year-old Taufel instead “moved on” to become ICC Umpire Performance and Training Manager after 13 years, 74 Test matches, 174 one-day internationals and 34 Twenty20s. For much of that time, he was widely regarded as the best umpire in the world.

A reputation for accuracy, and an ability – according to his friend and fellow Australian umpire Daryl Harper – to turn the panel’s workshops into “Simonars”, make his next step a logical one. “I have a passion for development and helping others achieve their goals,” says Taufel, who intends to spend more time with his wife and their three children. The Lahore terrorist attack on March 3, 2009, in which six policemen and two civilians were killed midway through a Test between Pakistan and Sri Lanka, changed his outlook. Part of the convoy of players and officials ambushed by gunmen near the Gaddafi Stadium, Taufel witnessed the death of his driver, Zafar Khan.

“He was simply taking some people to a Test match, and then his wife and children lose him for ever,” he reflects. “That is just not fair. There were lessons for cricket to learn that day, sure, but for me it was about more than that. Life and families are precious.”

Five Umpire of the Year awards from 2004 to 2008 demonstrate the respect commanded by Taufel, who made his international debut at Sydney in January 1999 and stood down after October’s World Twenty20 final in Colombo. Alastair Cook even apologised to him once after a day’s play for referring one of his decisions, despite Cook being proved correct. Taufel recognises that the Decision Review System helps the dialogue between players and officials, as well as the chance to improve the accuracy of umpires: “We used to deal in centimetres, now it’s millimetres.”

And his favourite decisions? Taufel is especially proud to have had the “courage and knowledge of Law” to give Inzamam-ul-Haq out obstructing the field in a one-day international between Pakistan and India at Peshawar in February 2006. He also mentions working with Billy Bowden and TV official Ian Gould to rule that Sri Lanka’s Angelo Mathews had turned a potential six into a three with an astonishing piece of fielding on the boundary during a 2009 World Twenty20 match at Trent Bridge. A former seamer in Sydney’s Northern Suburbs, Taufel hopes others are encouraged to take up what is now a full-time profession; his 13 years as an umpire were juggled with a job in the printing industry. He says: “When it came to finishing, I always aimed to have people ask ‘why did you?’ rather than ‘why don’t you?’ If people talk about my time and the subject of umpiring positively, then I’m satisfied.”

“A labour of hate” is how Jim Cumbes jokingly describes the legally fraught redevelopment of Old Trafford, from a rundown but historic ground to a striking modern venue that hosts an Ashes Test in 2013. Having retired in December after 25 years at Lancashire – as commercial manager, then chief executive – Cumbes is proud of his legacy, and the battle won to get there.

A dual sportsman from 1965 to 1982, he bowled seam for four first-class counties, and was a top-flight goalkeeper in England and North America. Reflecting on his most illustrious opponents, he verges on blasphemy: “Pelé was just a magically dynamic attacking player, but I think George Best edged him. He was good enough to star anywhere on the pitch.”

Cumbes was approached by Tranmere Rovers, West Bromwich Albion and Worcestershire for commercial-manager roles as his playing career drew to a close. New Road appealed most, only for Worcestershire chairman Ralph Matkin to pass away on the morning they were due to discuss the matter. But the offers he was receiving meant Cumbes felt “someone was trying to tell me something”, and he played on for a season as Warwickshire’s Second XI captain in 1982 in tandem with commercial duties, before going full-time during five years of off-field success that prompted Lancashire’s interest.

“I was the only county commercial manager, and my approach was simple: try new things and repeat those that worked,” he says. He became chief executive in 1998, and would test out his level-headed outlook during an arduous legal battle in 2011, in which the owners of the nearby White City retail park called for a judicial review into the £70m redevelopment of Old Trafford and the surrounding area. Cumbes and Lancashire, who had pressed on with the building work while the lawyers fought it out, emerged victorious that July.

By the end of the season, captain Glen Chapple, coach Peter Moores and director of cricket Mike Watkinson had taken a team tipped for the drop, and playing home fixtures on outgrounds, to the Championship. But the relegation that followed in 2012 has done little to dampen Cumbes’s optimistic spirit: “The talent’s there to bounce back, and our ground’s now a world-class arena.”

Towering over all England’s international venues is Mike Hutton, a man whose indifference to heights and Arctic conditions ensures television audiences are treated to stunning aerial views from the camera known as a cherry picker, 55 metres above the ground. A professional cameraman since 1977, Hutton’s first taste of cricket came on West Indies’ tour of India in 1994-95. And he volunteered for the loftiest job in the sport ten years ago, after a colleague’s heart condition prevented him from continuing. “It is an absolute privilege: the game, the views, the teamwork,” says Hutton, who has not looked back, and is not especially fussed about looking down either.

The rolling Hampshire countryside and the Isle of Wight in the distance are what make the Ageas Bowl his favourite location to shoot from the platform on top of the crane, manned at ground level by colleague Steve Allan.

Asked, as he often is, about the danger of becoming a human lightning rod, the 62-year-old Hutton employs North Yorkshire phlegm: “I have picked up a good knowledge of clouds and can see storms developing from a fair distance. Sometimes you get a twinge of vertigo, but on the whole I’m fine with it.”

CRICKET IN THE COURTS

Carpeted in Kidderminster

STANFORD JAILED FOR 110 YEARS

Allen Stanford, 62, the corrupt financier once hailed as the saviour of cricket, was sentenced to 110 years in jail by a court in Houston, Texas. Judge David Hittner described Stanford’s corrupt $7bn Ponzi scheme as “one of the most egregious frauds ever presented to a trial jury in federal court”.

The judge ordered Stanford to forfeit $5.9bn in assets, though investigators found very little of his fortune. At least 30,000 people were said to have lost money as a result of bogus investments by the Stanford International Bank. Many of his victims – including one woman whose family lost $4m – were in court to hear Assistant US Attorney William Stellmach tell the judge: “From beginning to end, he’s treated his victims like roadkill. Allen Stanford doesn’t deserve anyone’s sympathy and he doesn’t deserve your honour’s mercy.”

In 2006 Stanford was knighted by the Antigua government. In 2008 he flew into Lord’s by helicopter where a Perspex case ostensibly containing $20m in cash was waiting – the purse for a Twenty20 match between a team of West Indians and an England XI. He was fawned on by the game’s leading officials. Within a year US investigators had gone public with their allegations, and Stanford was in jail.

Stanford blamed his downfall on “Gestapo tactics” by prosecutors which provoked a run on his banks. He said: “I am and will always be at peace with the way I conducted myself.” Sentencing him on March 6, Hittner made most of the 13 separate sentences consecutive rather than concurrent, which means Stanford will die in jail unless the conviction is overturned or he is pardoned.

SWANN FINED

England off-spinner Graeme Swann was fined £1,383 by Kidderminster magistrates on June 1 for speeding and failing to respond after his Jaguar was caught doing 74mph on a 50mph stretch of road in Herefordshire. Swann was said to have sent no reply to five letters requesting the name of the driver.

He told the court he had written to West Mercia Police after the first letter, saying his agent was driving, but had not received the other four. Philip Worrall, defending, said they were probably not delivered because they were addressed to West Bridgend, Nottingham, not West Bridgford. “We find the prosecution more credible,” said magistrate Tim Morris.

CAIRNS WINS TWITTER LIBEL TRIAL

The former New Zealand all-rounder Chris Cairns won £90,000 damages at the High Court in London on March 26 after suing the former Indian Premier League commissioner Lalit Modi for accusing him of match-fixing. This was said to be the first libel case involving a Twitter message.

Modi was estimated to be facing a bill of £1.4m, including legal costs, after a 24-word tweet sent in 2010 claimed Cairns had a record of fixing. Mr Justice Bean said Modi had “singularly failed” to provide evidence to back up his claim, or even to show there were reasonable grounds for suspicion. He also criticised the aggressive nature of the defence, which included Modi’s counsel calling Cairns a liar 24 times; the judge said this had led him to increase the damages by £15,000. An appeal was thrown out in October.

The allegation stemmed from Cairns’s time captaining Chandigarh Lions in the Indian Cricket League, the failed rival to the IPL. Cairns faced criticism for bringing the case in the UK, where there were estimated to be between 35 and 100 people who read the tweet. Padraig Reidy of the pressure group Index on Censorship called his decision “one of the most clear-cut cases of libel tourism we have seen”; libel lawyer Mark Stephens called the case “ridiculous” and said it should have been struck out.

JOSHI JAILED FOR SEX OFFENCES

The Indian off-spinner Uday Joshi, who made his name playing for Sussex in the 1970s, was jailed for six years on March 9 for sexually abusing a boy while playing and coaching in Northern Ireland in 1979.

A 45-year-old man gave evidence at Belfast Crown Court about three incidents that took place when, as a 13-year-old, he and Joshi stayed in the same house. Joshi denied all the allegations and said nothing untoward had happened, but he was convicted unanimously after a five-day trial.

Judge Gemma Loughran said she accepted that the offences had been wholly out of character for Joshi, a 67-year-old married father of two, but said they had left the victim with a chronic adjustment disorder and anxiety. Joshi was barred for life from working with children. On December 19, an appeal was dismissed. He took 557 first-class wickets in a 17-year career, mainly for Sussex and Gujarat.

AZHARUDDIN’S LIFE BAN OVERTURNED

Twelve years after being banned for life for match-fixing by the Indian cricket authorities, the former national captain Mohammad Azharuddin had the ban set aside by the Andhra Pradesh High Court on November 9. The court said he had not been given the chance to state his case, and that the claims were unsubstantiated. Asked whether he regretted playing 99 Tests and not 100, Azharuddin said, “Maybe I was destined to play 99 Test matches and that’s what the Almighty wanted. I would not like to dwell on the past. I am an MP and would like to focus on the development of my constituency, Moradabad.”

SACKED EXECUTIVE AWARDED EIGHT-FIGURE SUM

Tim Wright, the British former chief executive of IPL franchise Deccan Chargers, was awarded £10.5m on July 16 by the High Court in London for breach of contract when he was dismissed in 2009. The Chargers’ owners, the Deccan Chronicle, did not attend the trial because they disputed the court’s jurisdiction, and were subsequently reported to be in financial difficulties. Wright insisted the contract was subject to UK law.

LIFE SENTENCE FOR NZ CRICKET BAT KILLER

A New Zealander admitted bashing his de facto stepfather to death with a bat, before going on to play cricket the next day. Christopher Glenn Gleeson, 25, was jailed for life, with a minimum of 11 years four months, in the High Court at Christchurch on April 17. Gleeson pleaded guilty, but offered no explanation.

CRICKET AND THE LAWS IN 2012

Fatal distraction

FRASER STEWART

Steven Finn has demolished many stumps during his career, but it was his disruption of the wrong set that caused a stir in 2012. While Finn had occasionally broken the non-striker’s wicket with his knee throughout his career, the quirk came to a head during the Second Test against South Africa at Headingley. On the first morning, he knocked into the wicket during his delivery stride at least twice before umpire Steve Davis signalled dead ball when it happened again. It was from this delivery that Graeme Smith edged to Andrew Strauss at slip – but the dismissal didn’t count.

At the time, no specific Law dictated that a bowler should be penalised for accidentally disturbing the non-striker’s stumps, and rarely was dead ball called on such occasions. However, Davis chose to apply Law 23.4(b)(vi), which states that either umpire should signal dead ball when “the striker is distracted by any noise or movement, or in any other way, while he is preparing to receive, or receiving a delivery. This shall apply whether the source of the distraction is within the game or outside it. The ball shall not count as one of the over.”

Jeff Crowe, ICC’s match referee at Headingley, confirmed to MCC that Finn had broken the wicket at least twice prior to the Smith incident. Both batsmen complained it was a distraction, and Finn was told to move over. Davis himself was also said to have found it distracting. Law 23.4(b)(iv) states that the umpire should call dead ball if “one or both bails fall from the striker’s wicket before the striker has had the opportunity of playing the ball”. The reference to the striker’s wicket indicates dead ball should not automatically be called if the wicket at the bowler’s end is disturbed.

Whether the striker is distracted is a moot point. Smith hit two subsequent balls for four when Finn had broken the wicket, only for a call of dead ball to cancel out the runs. If the striker really feels he is distracted, he can pull away, though this may not always be possible with a bowler as fast as Finn.

The ICC introduced a directive to their umpires that such incidents should result in a warning at the first occasion, followed by the call of dead ball on subsequent occasions (although Finn, deemed a repeat offender, was told during the one-day series in India in January 2013 that he would get no warning, and was subsequently denied the wicket of Suresh Raina at Mohali, with Davis again the umpire). But MCC felt this directive was unfair to batsmen, who could be denied runs. And there is no reason why the second breaking of the wicket should be more distracting than the first.

After discussing the matter at length, MCC decided in February 2013 to change the Law so that, from October, a no-ball will automatically be called should the bowler break the stumps during the act of delivery. This removes the burden from the umpire to rule whether the batsman really has been distracted.

The players’ knowledge of the Laws is sometimes questionable – and ignorance can definitely be costly. When Jonny Bairstow was caught by Gautam Gambhir at silly point on the stroke of lunch on the third day of the Second Test against India at Mumbai in November, it was via Gambhir’s chest and the grille of his helmet. Law 32.3 states “it is not a fair catch if the ball has previously touched a protective helmet worn by a fielder”. But by the time TV replays showed what had happened, Bairstow had left the field and lunch was almost over.

In scenes reminiscent of those described here last year, when Ian Bell was reprieved after being initially given run out during the Trent Bridge Test against India in 2011, the England management attempted to have the decision overturned during the interval. India chose not to withdraw the appeal, as was their prerogative: unlike the more complicated circumstances of the Bell run-out, this was nothing more than an umpiring error. However, had Bairstow known the Law – he admitted he didn’t – he could at least have mentioned to the umpire that he felt the ball had struck the helmet (Gambhir said he was unaware of the Law too). He would then have been reprieved by the third umpire.

Then, in Kolkata, Alastair Cook was run out in bizarre circumstances, taking evasive action at the non-striker’s end as Virat Kohli threw the ball from midwicket. Cook had backed up a couple of metres down the pitch, but turned to regain his ground after seeing no run was possible. He was leaning towards his crease in order to tap his bat down but, just inches before doing so, took evasive action as the ball passed him. It hit the stumps – and Cook was out for 190.

The Laws do contain a section designed to protect a batsman from being out if he is attempting to avoid injury. The relevant part of Law 38.2 says a batsman is not run out if “he has been within his ground and has subsequently left it to avoid injury, when the wicket is put down”. The key is the first six words: Cook had not returned to his crease before taking evasive action, and the umpires could not therefore enact Law 38.2(a). Had he tapped his bat down, then taken evasive action, he would have been protected. His reaction suggested he was aware of his blunder, and he later confirmed it was a “brain fade”.

The running out of the non-striker by the bowler remains one of the most emotive dismissals, and tempers frayed when Surrey’s Murali Kartik removed Somerset’s Alex Barrow that way in a Championship match. The Laws allow the bowler to run out the non-striker before he enters his delivery stride, which starts when the back foot is planted. The ICC and the ECB have altered this for their regulations, with the aim of keeping the non-striker in his ground for longer. The ECB’s wording is: “The bowler is permitted, before releasing the ball and provided he has not completed his usual delivery swing, to attempt to run out the non-striker.”

Neither the Laws nor the regulations state that a warning should be given, although convention suggests it is preferable. But Kartik had already warned Barrow: while the affair was unsavoury to many, Kartik had done nothing wrong. The bowler is normally painted as the villain in such a scenario, but it is the batsman who is gaining an unfair advantage, whether wilfully or inadvertently.

With TV umpires often scrutinising no-balls at the fall of a wicket, many have questioned whether the no-ball Law is too strict, and the bowler should get the benefit of the doubt on in marginal cases. Law 24.5 explains that the bowler’s front foot must land with some part of the foot, whether grounded or raised, behind the popping crease. Law 9.3 additionally defines the popping crease as the back edge of the crease marking. If the bowler’s heel is on the line, and nothing behind it, then the delivery is a no-ball. It also makes no difference how thick the markings are: it is the back edge of the line that matters.

There has to be a precise point at which the delivery goes from being fair to unfair. You could redefine the Law, but you would only be shifting the problem, not solving it: the umpire would have to check whether the line was touched, or completely overstepped. It would be the same problem, but moved to a different area. The problem here is not with the Law, but with bowlers overstepping. MCC accept that a centimetre here or there won’t necessarily give the bowler an unfair advantage. But unless there is a clear point at which fair becomes unfair, the confusion will only increase. Shades of grey may have been all the rage in 2012 but, in the case of the no-ball, black and white is essential.

Fraser Stewart is Laws manager at MCC.

The current code of the Laws appears on the MCC website (www.lords.org).

CHRONICLE OF 2012

SKY NEWS

January 1

Australian Test players were irritated when their prime minister, Julia Gillard, told an official reception for the Indian team that her country’s cricket fans were “looking forward to what may be a very special hundred made in Australia” – meaning Sachin Tendulkar’s 100th international century. Michael Clarke said his team hoped the century would come somewhere else. His team-mate Mike Hussey called the prime minister’s comment “strange”.

NDTV.COM

January 6

The newly elected chief of Sri Lanka Cricket, Upali Dharmadasa, said he had held a puja to drive out demons he held responsible for the board’s cash crisis and the team’s poor results. “I am a businessman and I know the effects of these evil spirits.”

DAILY TELEGRAPH

January 20

The German footballer Didi Hamann claimed to have lost £288,400 on a single cricket spread bet. In his autobiography, Hamann – best-remembered as a defensive midfielder with Liverpool – said he had “bought” an Australian innings against South Africa at 340 for £2,800 a run. Australia collapsed for 237, thus costing him 103 x £2,800. “The next day, when I looked at the mess that was me in the mirror, I said, ‘Didi, things have got to change.’”

SOUTH MANCHESTER REPORTER

January 26

Manchester City Council approved a plan to turn Longsight Cricket Club, where the touring Australians were beaten in 1878, into a housing estate. Eighteen men of Longsight (including G. F. Grace and W. R. Gilbert) overcame the Australian XI by two wickets. A century later, the club was one of the strongest in the area, but the East Road ground had been closed since 2004 because they could no longer afford the upkeep. The bowling green will stay, alongside 65 houses and 18 flats.

SOUTH ASIAN TIMES

January 30

An umpire killed a 15-year-old spectator after he ran on to the field to dispute a decision, according to police in Kishoreganj, Bangladesh. The youth, named as Nazrul Islam, rushed on after a batsman was given not out, and accused the umpire of bias. An argument ensued, then the umpire took a bat and hit the boy, who showed no immediate signs of injury but died of internal bleeding next day. The umpire, who was not named, was in hiding.

THE AGE

February 12

The waiting list for the Melbourne Cricket Club has now surpassed the population of Hobart and stands at 217,000. It is estimated that it now takes 22–23 years to join the 61,500 full members and gain full privileges at major MCG occasions. About 3,000 vacancies occur each year, but the list is growing inexorably because there are 15,000 new applicants. However, the club have lost contact with many of those waiting because they have moved so often.

THE AGE

February 13

The Melbourne Premier match between Prahran and Richmond at Toorak Park was halted after just nine balls when a fielder became suspicious about the length of the pitch. It turned out to be at least two metres too long. This was the second such incident in Australian club cricket in the 2011-12 season, and both involved Test players. Ryan Harris was playing in the first match. This time it was Cameron White, who made 147 – on a re-marked pitch.

THE ISLAND

February 17

World Cup-winning captain Arjuna Ranatunga condemned the treatment of the trophy Sri Lanka won under his leadership in 1996. It was apparently damaged when on display at an exhibition, and two gold rivets went missing.

THE ISLAND

March 1

Thirty Colombo schoolboys were arrested after climbing the walls of a nearby girls’ school and demanding money to support their “Big Match”. The contests between rival schools are an important part of Sri Lankan cricket tradition and have long been accompanied by a student-rag atmosphere. However, police had specifically issued a warning through the media that girls’ schools were off limits. The boys were given a further warning and released without charge.

BBC

March 3

The Afghan National Army beat a British military team to win a two-day tournament in war-torn Helmand Province. The British also lost to a team of Afghan interpreters. Lt-Col Tim Law of the Royal Artillery said the Afghan side turned out to be “absolutely fantastic”. More than 1,500 supporters ran on to the pitch after the soldiers dismissed the British for 75, a 90-run win.

MUMBAI MIRROR

March 11

Cricket Australia flew a cup to mark Sachin Tendulkar’s 100th international hundred to every venue where he played in Australia in 2011-12, awaiting the moment for presentation, which never came.

ITV NEWS

March 23

Seven-year-old Charlie Allison from Colchester has become an internet sensation after the release on YouTube of a video of him batting in the nets, driving, pulling and reverse-sweeping with near-professional aplomb.

SPORT 360°

March 27

A painting depicting the highlights of Tendulkar’s career, by the British-based artist Sacha Jafri, has been sold for $750,000. The proceeds will go to the M. S. Dhoni Foundation to support poor children.

PRESS TRUST OF INDIA

April 2

The Mumbai Cricket Association intends to shower Tendulkar with a hundred gold coins for reaching 100 international centuries.

INDO-ASIAN NEWS SERVICE

April 13

Former Indian captain Mohammad Azharuddin, now an MP, scored a century for the Indian Parliamentarians in Dharmasala to beat a rather less expert team of their British equivalents, the Lords and Commons, by 56 runs.

ESPNCRICINFO

April 24

Ratilal Parmar, 56, whose hobby is collecting banknotes that have special associations with Sachin Tendulkar, has acquired a new prize: a ten-rupee note numbered 240412, the date of Tendulkar’s 39th birthday. Parmar wants to present his hero with the notes connected with his milestones, especially 160312, the date of the 100th international hundred. He estimates he has spent a million rupees building his collection, sometimes by pleading with bank clerks for help.

ORMSKIRK ADVERTISER

April 26

An off-duty nurse, watching the Second XI match between Burscough and Rainsford in Lancashire, went to the rescue after Burscough’s Carl Lydiate left the field with chest pains. His team-mates assumed he had indigestion. “I could tell he was in trouble,” said Hayley McCullough, “because he was grey, sweating and saying his chest was feeling crushed.” She stayed with him until the ambulance arrived and Lydiate could receive treatment for a heart attack. John Williams, chairman of the Liverpool Competition, said: “This is a timely reminder to us all that coaches need to keep their first-aid certificates up to date.”

THE TIMES EDUCATIONAL SUPPLEMENT

April 27

Teachers have posted hundreds of complaints on an online forum about the idiocy of school inspectors from the British inspection body OFSTED. One PE teacher was allegedly told the lesson was “unsatisfactory as there were children doing nothing”. The judgment was overturned after it was pointed out that the pupils were fielding in a cricket match.

DAILY RECORD

April 27

Taxpayers have paid £3,000 over the past two seasons so a worker could be employed to throw back balls hit over the fence at Dunfermline Knights’ ground in Scotland. The club lost part of their McKane Park pitch due to flood prevention work, and the land was never reinstated. Fearful that fielders would injure themselves fetching the balls, Fife Council paid a member of the contractors’ staff £10 an hour to throw them back. Robert Oxley of Taxpayer Scotland said the affair was “barmy”.

BBC

May 7

The former England one-day captain Adam Hollioake, 40, achieved a draw on his debut as a mixed-martial-arts cage fighter in Queensland. Hollioake said he loved every minute of his brawl with Joel Miller in front of a 1,500 crowd on the Gold Coast, though his wife Sherryn did not. After a bad first round, Hollioake outfought his opponent in the final two. He has been through many travails following the death of his brother Ben, including bankruptcy. He said of Sherryn: “She is a beautiful person and she wants me to follow my dreams. But I just think at the moment she wishes my dreams were something else.”

SOUTHERN DAILY ECHO

May 8

David Taylor, Totton & Eling’s new captain/coach, scored 330 not out for the second team against bewildered Southern Premier League Division Three rivals Trojans, having turned out to get some batting practice when the first team’s match was called off. He hit 31 sixes and 19 fours off 160 balls in a total of 412 for three; Trojans mustered 103. Taylor, 37, had played for Worcestershire and Derbyshire.

DAILY TELEGRAPH

May 12

British prime minister David Cameron told how he had found his wife Samantha playing French cricket with a bat signed for him by Sachin Tendulkar in the grounds of Chequers and had to warn her: “No, darling, put it down; this is probably the most valuable possession I have.” He donated the bat for an auction at Lord’s raising £3,400 for the Rwanda Cricket Stadium Foundation.

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

May 17

Australian captain Michael Clarke and his girlfriend Kyly Boldy married in secret in the Blue Mountains, announcing the news on Twitter, and taking friends and Cricket Australia by surprise. This disappointed magazine editors, who would have paid substantially for exclusive rights to the wedding pictures, but won praise from other quarters. “No deals, no media, no $$$s, just family and class,” tweeted one fan.

SUNDAY EXPRESS, MUMBAI

May 27

Arjun Tendulkar, the 12-year-old son of Sachin, hit his maiden century in the Mumbai Cricket Association’s Under-14 trials, scoring 124 for Khar Gymkhana against Goregaon Centre.

CRAVEN HERALD & PIONEER

May 28

Settle beat Stacksteads in Division Two of the Ribblesdale League by 452 runs in a 45-over match. Settle captain Nick Cokell scored 275 not out in a total of 467 for one. Stacksteads were then bowled out for 15, the lowest score in the league since 1931. “I’d never even scored a century before,” said Cokell. “To be fair, Stacksteads were gracious in defeat.”

ESPNCRICINFO

May 30

The theory that moisture makes a cricket ball swing is false, according to researchers at Sheffield Hallam and Auckland Universities. Tests using 3D laser scanners and an atmospheric chamber, reported in the journal Procedia Engineering, found no link between humidity levels and sideways movement. Altitude and the age of the ball did have an effect, however.

AUSTRALIAN ASSOCIATED PRESS

June 2

Actor Jason Alexander, best known for playing George in Seinfeld, posted a thousand-word apology after repeatedly calling cricket “a gay sport” on an American chat show. Some of his followers on Twitter had told him they were both gay and offended. There were no reports of complaints from cricketers.

THE HINDU

June 5

Sachin Tendulkar has been sworn in as a member of the Indian upper house, the Rajya Sabha. “It has been my dream to be remembered as someone who worked for all sports instead of just cricket statistics,” he said after taking the oath. However, he warned that, as an active player, he would continue to focus on his own game. Tendulkar was chosen as one of the 12 members of the parliament the president is allowed to nominate, although some critics claimed that a sportsman did not fulfil the criterion of “special knowledge or practical experience in… literature, science, art and social service” specified for selection under the constitution.

DVLAREGISTRATIONS.DIRECT.GOV.UK

June 9

Lot 1706, W15 DEN, was sold for £1,500, almost four times its reserve price of £400, at the regular British auction of personalised car registrations. The buyer would also have been liable for a further £524 in extra fees and tax.

BBC

June 11

Barrington were bowled out for six by Huish & Langport in Somerset League Division Two. They had safely reached three for nought, but eight batsmen fell for ducks in reply to their opponents’ 195 for seven. Huish & Langport captain Dominic Shillabeer took seven for two.

PETERBOROUGH TELEGRAPH

June 11

In Division Four of the Huntingdonshire League, Ramsey Third XI were bowled out for 12 by Yaxley Second XI. There were six ducks and a top score of three in reply to a Yaxley total of 105. “It’s not as though we had a bad team out either,” Ramsey player Richard Clarke said. “We had three experienced second-team cricketers in the side, but they were all given out lbw, which was crucial.”

SCARBOROUGH NEWS

June 13

An Under-13 match between Scarborough and Bridlington was halted when a seagull stole one of the bails. The Scarborough players were coming out to field when the bird swooped on its prize, which was lying just behind the stumps. Umpire Barry Rudd tried to chase the bird but it flew off. Scarborough coach John Green said: “Our lads must have been traumatised by what they’d seen as we lost the game.”

PRESS ASSOCIATION

June 17

Three nine-year-old boys were injured when a tree fell on them on a windy day as they waited to use the nets at Spencer CC in south-west London. The senior team were playing against Cheam when the incident happened. Cricketers and spectators freed the boys before an air ambulance arrived. The boys were named as Lewis Gaston, Aidan Oakley and George Roberts.

BOLTON NEWS

June 19

Elton and Edgworth of the Bolton Association played each other at first- and second-team level on Sunday, and both games were tied. In each case, the chasing team needed two off the last ball, but could manage only a single.

HEYWOODCC.CO.UK

June 21

Heywood fast bowler Humza Naeem had figures of 5–3–9–8 in an Under-18 match against Oldham, who were all out for 15. Heywood won by 127 runs.

DONCASTER FREE PRESS

June 22

Rossington Main CC were banned from the South Yorkshire Senior League until the end of 2013 because players had abused league officials on Twitter.

TIMES OF INDIA

June 23

An animal-rights group has lodged a legal complaint against the Indian Test-player-turned-politician Navjot Sidhu after he arrived at a court hearing on an elephant.

THE CRICKETER/CLUB-CRICKET.CO.UK

July

Left-arm pace bowler Gareth Fisher had an analysis of 4–1– 4–9 for Colchester & East Essex in the Essex Premier League, news that might have delighted the former England left-armer John Lever – had his son James not been playing for the opposition. The young Lever was one of seven Woodford Wells batsmen out for nought in a total of 24 after they had reached ten without loss in the first over. Fisher’s figures, which included four in four balls, and six lbws, beat the 45-year-old club record of nine for five, held by the former Ipswich footballer Ted Phillips. Almost the only spectator in 2012 was Ray Hollingsworth, who was operating the scoreboard when Phillips achieved his feat in 1967.

DOWN RECORDER/CRICKETEUROPE

July

Dundrum’s Indian professional Raviraj Patil hit six sixes in an over in the Ulster Shield for Dundrum at Sion Mills. In all, 39 came off the over: three deliveries were called wides as the bowler, Andy Lucas, tried to stop Patil getting near the ball. The previous day he had scored 53 from 15 deliveries, and team-mates had started goading him into trying for six sixes. This time he scored 167 off 78. The Sion Mills ground is best known as the scene of West Indies’ humiliation in 1969, when Ireland bowled them out for 25.

DAILY MAIL

July 1

England team members could be investigated by HM Revenue and Customs as part of an inquiry into the use of image-rights companies by the players. According to the Companies House register, 11 of the 13 contracted England players had companies of this kind.

CLUB-CRICKET.CO.UK

July 2

The Club Cricket Conference have asked members for ideas about how to deal with flying cricket balls after Dymchurch CC in Kent became the latest club to be ordered by a local council to erect high nets – or move.

ESPNCRICINFO

July 3

The record for the longest continuous match has been broken again, this time by Loughborough University staff, who battled atrocious weather for 150 hours 20 minutes. One substitute fielder was allowed per side. “We had torrential rain and hailstones the size of golf balls but, in true British tradition, we kept calm and carried on,” said organiser Chris Hughes.

ESPNCRICINFO

July 4

Eleven-year-old Kieran Gray of Maidenhead & Bray’s Under-13s took the first six Taplow wickets in an over – and was then taken off to allow his team-mates to bowl. His figures thus remained 1–1–0–6. His first five victims were bowled, the last caught at cover. Taplow, 21 all out, lost by 131 runs.

LANCASHIRE TELEGRAPH

July 17

The Worsley Cup quarter-final between East Lancashire and Enfield, supposedly a one-day game, stretched for more than a month owing to continual rain. East Lancashire captain Ockert Erasmus finally settled the game by 11 runs with a hat-trick on July 12, just when Enfield appeared to be heading for victory, 33 days after the match should have started. This was the 12th scheduled day and the fifth actual playing day of a match staged on two different grounds – along the way it was switched to Enfield, which was slightly drier. The Warwickshire all-rounder Keith Barker began the game playing for his home club Enfield and took an early catch but, when it rained after four overs, had to leave – and could not be replaced.

NORTHERN STAR, LISMORE

July 18

A father and son took five wickets each in an innings for Goonellabah Workers Sports against Southern Cross University at Bexhill, New South Wales. Michael Mansfield, 56, took the first five wickets for five. He was replaced after his maximum five overs by his 17-year-old son Kody, who claimed the remaining wickets for 16. The university were 51 all out and lost the 30-over match by 29 runs.

COLOMBO PAGE

July 19

A teachers’ union protested when 117 schools in Hambantota postponed exams because of two one-day internationals between Sri Lanka and India being held in the town.

COURIER-MAIL, BRISBANE

July 24

The former Test batsman Dean Jones, 51, dislocated his finger when his golf club hit a tree root in his first tournament since he gained his professional card to compete in the Australian senior tour. He popped the finger back in and carried on. His caddy was Graeme Hick.

MUMBAI MIRROR

July 26

King’s Circle in Mumbai was closed for an hour as bomb disposal units and dogs examined a cricket ball embedded with the dial of a watch which had been left by a tree. It turned out to be an IPL souvenir.

DECLARATION GAME

August

With the weather so wet that play was obviously impossible, Bournemouth and Oxford decided to settle their British Universities & Colleges quarter-final without either side travelling. The tie was decided by a long-distance bowl-out, staged in their own home-town indoor schools, and watched by umpires who kept in contact by mobile phone. Bournemouth won.

MALVERN GAZETTE

August 27

Liz Hurley and her partner Shane Warne are believed to have bought Donnington Hall, a £6m mansion near Ledbury, Herefordshire. “I think Shane would get a game for us,” said Jim Sandford, chairman of nearby Eastnor CC.

THE SPIN

September 12

Rock star Alice Cooper, 65, visited the Test Match Special box at Lord’s during the South Africa Test. On being introduced, Geoff Boycott shook hands with Cooper’s wife.

THE GUARDIAN

September 18

Officials at Trent Bridge strategically wheeled a sightscreen into position to protect Nick Clegg, the unpopular deputy prime minister, from protesters when he arrived for a meeting with colleagues.

THE INDEPENDENT

September 19

Lifeboats had to rescue 11 people and a dog after the annual Brambles cricket match in the middle of the Solent. The sandbar pitch, normally exposed for about an hour at the lowest tides of the year, remained waterlogged because of a strong westerly wind, and the match had to take place with the players, from two rival yacht clubs, at least ankle-deep in the sea. One boat ran aground, and another had engine trouble on the return journey.

MAIL ON SUNDAY

September 23

The England fast bowler Graham Dilley, who died of cancer in 2011, aged 52, left nothing in his will once debts and outstanding matters had been settled. Dilley, twice divorced, had hoped his money would be divided equally between his four sons. One of them, Paul, said: “Money was never part of our relationship. He was a top-class bloke and was there when you needed him.”

DAILY MAIL

September 26

Former England opener John Edrich, 75, said he was cured of cancer by injections of mistletoe extract recommended by Stefan Geider, a doctor near his home in Aberdeenshire. Edrich was diagnosed with a rare blood cancer in 2000, and five years later appeared close to death. Seven years after that, he was back playing golf three times a week and saying he felt on top of the world. The plant has been known for decades to have some anti-cancer properties, but researchers say it can have terrible side-effects, and even Dr Geider admits: “It does not work for everybody. It’s not a miracle cure.”

ESPNCRICINFO

October 12

Jade Child from Launceston, Tasmania, set a world record for the longest net session, batting for 25 hours and facing 15,701 deliveries from a bowling machine and local bowlers. The previous record stood at 12,353 balls.

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

October 17

Australian prime minister Julia Gillard made Sachin Tendulkar an honorary member of the Order of Australia on a visit to India, but the award came under fire for not meeting the rule that such awards for non-Australians should reflect “extraordinary service to Australia or humanity at large”. Independent MP Rob Oakeshott said: “I love Sachin, I love cricket, but I just have a problem with soft diplomacy. It’s about the integrity of the honours list.”

THE HARVARD CRIMSON

October 25

The United States’ two most famous universities, Harvard and Yale, met for their first-ever cricket match, under floodlights in front of a crowd of 15. Although Harvard had a team in the 19th century, Yale did not, and Harvard cricket had been moribund for more than 80 years. Harvard won by 177 runs.

THE INDIAN EXPRESS

November 1

Nine-year-old Aman Tiwari may have been saved from losing an arm because he was hurt when playing cricket. Though hit by only a tennis ball, he was in extreme pain, and doctors were able to diagnose bone cancer far earlier than would have otherwise happened.

THE TIMES

November 2

Charles Fenton, 92, and believed to be the oldest umpire in the country, may be able to continue in the job in 2013 after all. He was originally forced to announce his retirement after 61 years officiating in the Derbyshire and Cheshire League because without an extra premium insurers refused to provide cover for anyone over 85. However, publicity-minded bookmakers Paddy Power offered to pay the extra. “What kind of skipper declares with his batsman on 92?” said a spokesman.

HINDUSTAN TIMES

November 2

Bone-density tests initiated by India’s cricket board, which are supposed to be able to measure young people’s age accurately, have shown that many Under-16 players are over-age. Of 32 probables for Mumbai’s Under-16 team, 11 were said to be ineligible; similar numbers were reported elsewhere.

SUN HERALD, SYDNEY

November 11

Sydney High were bowled out for nought by King’s School in a Fourth XI match, with King’s bowler Brad Thomas taking six wickets, his victims forming two separate hat-tricks. King’s hit the winning run off a dropped sitter first ball. The sides then split into two scratch teams and played a far more satisfying Twenty20 fixture.

THE TIMES

November 17

The pavilion at Malpas CC, on the outskirts of Newport, South Wales, achieved an unbeatable niche in political history when it was used as a polling station in Britain’s first elections for police commissioners, and no voters at all turned up. Council officials waited in vain for 14 hours for any of the 8,278 electors in Bettws Ward to exercise their democratic rights. Turnout nationally was about 15%, a record low.

DAILY TELEGRAPH/THE GUARDIAN

December

Andrew Flintoff had an operation to repair a torn shoulder ligament after his first fight as a professional boxer. It was unclear whether the injury was sustained during his points victory over the American, Richard Dawson. Flintoff took a standing count in the second round, but held firm to win a narrow decision. The bout, much-hyped and much-criticised, looked, said The Guardian, “more like two burly farmhands trying to fend off a swarm of invisible bees than a boxing match”.

PRESS TRUST OF INDIA

December 10

A 15-year-old was allegedly beaten to death by two of his friends after dropping a catch in a game at Lakhimpur, near Lucknow, police said.

DAILY TELEGRAPH

December 12

Civil servants in the Department of Communities and Local Government accessed leading websites 54 million times in the previous month, according to a survey by officials. This included 383,000 hits for ESPNcricinfo.

SYDNEY MORNING HERALD

December 19

Australia’s Transport Accident Commission defended their choice of Shane Warne to front a road-safety campaign less than a year after he was involved in a road-rage dispute with a cyclist.

BURY TIMES

December 27

Brooksbottom won their 50th anniversary Boxing Day match against Tottington St John’s by nine wickets. Alan Fletcher, who started the fixture in 1963, bowled the ceremonial first ball. “We were really lucky with the weather,” said Tottington official Kieran Coe. “It stayed dry and mild until we had finished playing, then it poured down.”

MUMBAI MIRROR

December 28

Thirteen-year-old Bhupen Lalwani of Don Bosco School, Matunga, became the latest addition to the list of players who have made extreme scores in Mumbai’s annual Giles Shield. Lalwani scored 398 out of 715 for five against IES Modern English School (Dadar), who lost by an innings and 590. He said “it hurt” to miss a quadruple-century.

We welcome contributions from readers, especially items from local or non-UK media. Items from club or school websites are also accepted. Please send newspaper cuttings to Matthew Engel at Fair Oak, Bacton, Herefordshire HR2 0AT (always including the paper’s name and date) and weblinks to almanack@wisden.com

ONE HUNDRED YEARS AGO

from Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack 1914

NOTES BY THE EDITOR [Sydney Pardon] On the whole one may look back on the season of 1913 with keen satisfaction. Before the season began there was certainly reason to feel apprehensive... at a private meeting eleven of the leading counties had agreed among themselves to support a proposal by Lancashire to reduce the scope of the Championship by excluding from the competition four or five of the weaker clubs. On the face of it this seemed an unsportsmanlike proceeding, and naturally there was an outcry.

NOTES BY THE EDITOR [Sydney Pardon] As I have said more than once in Wisden, it was not until Association Football became such a power in the land that people began to think county cricket could live on gate money. The various committees are now recognising that it is to a larger membership they must look for security. One point, generally overlooked by those who cry out about bad times, is that the expense of running a county club has in these days increased to an extent out of all proportion to the amount of money paid by the public for admission to the matches. For the time it lasts cricket is the cheapest amusement I know of, and there is no safe way of making the general public pay more than they do.

NOTES BY THE EDITOR [Sydney Pardon] With regard to England’s position in the cricket world at the present time things could not be better... there is no denying the fact that we are just now very strong. In Hobbs we have, I think, the best bat in the world, Bardsley being at the moment his nearest rival, and in Barnes, beyond all question, the best bowler. That our strength is so largely professional is matter for regret, but this is a state of things that may soon change.

PUBLIC SCHOOL CRICKET IN 1913 Of general interest to school cricket... is the influence of swerve in modern bowling, and the danger of its overcultivation at the expense of spin and length among Public School bowlers. More than once this year I have heard the lament by a cricket master, “Oh! So-and-so was a most promising bowler with a good action and command of length and spin, but he learned to swing, and since then he has lost his length and direction, and has done nothing except get an odd wicket in the first over or two, or after the 200.

THE AUSTRALIAN TEAM IN AMERICA From the end of May [1913] to the end of September an Australian team toured in America. The trip was quite unofficial in character and had no connection whatever with the Australian Board of Control, the side being got up and managed by Mr Benjamin. A huge programme of over 50 matches was completed, the Australians winning nearly all of them and only losing one... Bardsley, Macartney, and J. N. Crawford were in the Australian team, Macartney making seven scores of over a hundred, and Bardsley six.

KENT v WARWICKSHIRE, AT TONBRIDGE, JUNE 19, 20, 21 [1913] The resumption of fixtures between Kent and Warwickshire after a lapse of 14 years yielded the most remarkable day’s play during the whole of the season... Warwickshire were left with a lead which looked certain to decide the match in their favour. Blythe and Woolley, however, making the most of the conditions, actually dismissed Warwickshire in 45 minutes for 16, the two famous left-handers being quite unplayable, but after this startling achievement, it was impossible to believe Kent would be capable of hitting off 147 runs. Before lunch Humphreys and Seymour were disposed of for 16, 18 wickets so far having fallen in the day for 60 runs. Afterwards, however, Woolley hit away with such dazzling brilliancy that, under conditions which still placed batsmen at a marked disadvantage, he scored 76 in 80 minutes, Kent gaining a truly memorable victory by six wickets.

LANCASHIRE v YORKSHIRE, AT LIVERPOOL, JULY 10, 11, 12 [1913] The occasion of the King’s visit to Liverpool was seized upon to arrange an additional match between Lancashire and Yorkshire. A very interesting contest ended in favour of Lancashire by three wickets, but, of course, the game did not count in the County Championship. The outstanding feature of the match was the bowling of Dean who, taking 17 wickets, accomplished a feat which has only been performed on seven other occasions in modern cricket.

STAFFORDSHIRE IN 1913 As usual Barnes was the outstanding player of the Staffordshire eleven, his doings against some of the second-class county teams being of such a wonderful nature that Staffordshire generally had an easy task when he was in form. He took 65 wickets for just over six runs apiece, and finished up second in the batting figures with an average of over 40 runs an innings.

Compiled by Christopher Lane

FIFTY YEARS AGO

from Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack 1964

CRICKET BOOKS by John Arlott 1963 has been marked by the publication of a cricket book so outstanding as to compel any reviewer to check his adjectives several times before he describes it and, since he is likely to be dealing in superlatives, to measure them carefully to avoid over-praise – which this book does not need. It is Beyond A Boundary, by C. L. R. James (Hutchinson: 25s.) and, in the opinion of this reviewer, it is the finest book written about the game of cricket.

NOTES BY THE EDITOR [Norman Preston] Wisden itself made an indelible contribution to the summer by the appearance on April 19 [1963] of the 100th edition. The newspapers, television and sound radio were lavish in their praise and they treated it as a national event. I don’t think I am giving away any secrets when I say that even the publisher was surprised by the public demand for the Almanack. It ran into three impressions by the printers before everyone was satisfied. Naturally, Wisden, which specialises in cricket facts and records, established its own record of sales. The firm of John Wisden and Co. Ltd. commemorated the event by launching The Wisden Trophy, with the approval of MCC and the West Indies Cricket Board of Control, to be played for perpetually between England and West Indies in the same way as England and Australia contest the Ashes. West Indies have become the first holders of the trophy, which is being kept permanently in the Imperial Cricket Museum at Lord’s.

NOTES BY THE EDITOR [Norman Preston] Bowlers in England last summer had their first experience of operating with the front foot as the marker for a legitimate delivery. The experiment was confined to county and university cricket and not to the Tests as West Indies did not wish to conform until they had had more practice at it in their own islands. Although some bowlers expressed themselves forcibly as being against it most of them soon became accustomed to the new condition and at the end of the season MCC considered the experiment designed to prevent unfair drag quite successful.

NOTES BY THE EDITOR [Norman Preston] [1963 was] notable for the successful introduction of the Knock-Out Competition, which in future will be called The Gillette Cup. For years there was talk of introducing such a tournament, but the diehards always had their way because of the obstacles of solving a drawn tie and particularly in finding gaps in the Championship programme and suitable grounds. Happily the modern generation decided to take the bold step, but I doubt if anyone anticipated that the final at Lord’s in September would attract, as it did, a full house of 23,000 – the first all-ticket cricket match with a sell-out before the first ball was bowled.

CRICKETER OF THE YEAR, D. B. CLOSE Because he was senior professional with the club, and the job was his by right, Yorkshire in 1963 offered the captaincy to their all-rounder Brian Close... who hitherto had never quite accomplished what was expected of him. It was a trial appointment. Nobody quite knew how it would work out. The result was astonishing. Almost overnight it seemed that Brian Close matured. He showed a knowledge of his own team and the play of opponents which immediately stamped him as a thinker and tactician. His field placings were as intelligent and antagonistic as any seen in the county for 25 years and, like Brian Sellers before him, if a fieldsman was required in a suicide position the captain himself was first for the job... Determination and purpose came into his own cricket. He regained his place in the England team and won national approval for the unflinching way he played the West Indies fast bowlers, Hall and Griffith. To his own great delight he saw Yorkshire, in their centenary year, to their 28th outright Championship success.

WEST INDIES IN ENGLAND, 1963 No more popular side has ever toured the old country and with so many thousands of the coloured population from the Caribbean having emigrated to the big cities of Great Britain the cricketers received plenty of support from their own people... By their sparkling batting, bowling and fielding they caused the whole nation to follow the progress of the Tests... Worrell’s shrewd appraisement of the strength and weakness of the opposition, and his ice-cool control in all types of situation inspired his men and compelled them to give of their best including their last ounce of energy. No wonder they emulated the deeds of the 1950 side and carried off the rubber by the same margin – three victories to one... Sobers was the strong man of the party... in almost every game he played he contributed some outstanding performance. He left his imprint on every field he played... as the outstanding performer and all-rounder in present-day cricket... By the success in the Tests, Frank Worrell was the first captain to receive The Wisden Trophy and he flew home with his men to a tumultuous welcome in Kingston, Jamaica.

ENGLAND v WEST INDIES, SECOND TEST MATCH, AT LORD’S, JUNE 20, 21, 22, 24, 25 [1963] One of the most dramatic Test matches ever to be played in England attracted large crowds and aroused tremendous interest throughout the country. All through the cricket had been keen and thrilling, but the climax was remarkable, Cowdrey having to go in with a broken bone in his arm... When the final over arrived any one of four results could have occurred – a win for England, victory for West Indies, a tie or a draw. The match was drawn with England six runs short of success and West Indies needing one more wicket... When Hall began his last dramatic over eight were needed. Singles came off the second and third balls, but Shackleton was run out off the fourth when Worrell raced from short leg with the ball and beat the batsman to the bowler’s end. That meant Cowdrey had to come in with two balls left and six wanted. He did not have to face a ball, Allen playing out the last two. If he had to shape up, Cowdrey intended to turn round and bat left-handed to protect his left arm... Those who saw it, and the millions who followed the game’s progress over television and radio, were kept in a constant state of excitement. It was a game to remember.

MCC v WEST INDIES, AT LORD’S, MAY 18, 20, 21 [1963] West Indies won by 93 runs with half an hour to spare... Hunte, acting-captain because of injury to Worrell, did not enforce the follow-on although 186 ahead. When he declared, MCC needed 266 in four and a quarter hours... Substitutes were required for Worrell, Allan and Gibbs. Gibbs was prevented from bowling for a time when he returned to the field and Hunte wanted to put him on immediately. The umpires considered this came under “fair and unfair play”, as he came “warm” from the pavilion and all the other players were “cold”. When he bowled half an hour later he soon finished the innings.

from Wisden Cricketers’ Almanack 1965

AUSTRALIA v SOUTH AFRICA, FIRST TEST MATCH, AT BRISBANE, DECEMBER 6, 7, 9, 10, 11 [1963] The match was made memorable by the no-balling of Meckiff for throwing and his subsequent retirement from first-class cricket... [In a] dramatic over... [he] was no-balled by Egar on his second, third, fifth and ninth deliveries. That was his only over. Egar was booed and Meckiff was carried shoulder high by a section of the crowd at the close... No play was possible on Monday and on the fourth day extra police were sent to the ground because of fears that the umpires, selectors and Benaud might be molested because of the Meckiff incident.

COMMONWEALTH XI IN PAKISTAN, 1963 The Commonwealth team, under the managership of A. R. Gover, made a highly successful tour of Pakistan during November and December. Not surprisingly the side, packed with well-known international cricketers, had considerable spectator appeal. Altogether over half a million people watched the six matches of the tour – 400,000 at the three first-class representative games... T. W. Graveney hit 500 runs in the three major matches for an average of 100 and the West Indies Test players R. B. Kanhai and B. F. Butcher also entertained the huge crowds.

Compiled by Christopher Lane

OBITUARIES

The obituaries section includes those who died, or whose deaths were notified, in 2012, unless otherwise stated. Deaths in 2013 – including Christopher Martin-Jenkins, who died on January 1 – will feature in next year’s Almanack.

ABEYNAIKE, RANIL GEMUNU, who died on February 21, aged 57, was a true all-rounder – player, coach, groundsman and commentator. A handy batsman and a slow left-armer with a rather jerky action, he took six wickets for the Sri Lanka Board President’s XI against a strong Pakistan touring team in January 1976, and played against Tony Greig’s 1976-77 MCC side, before several seasons with Bedfordshire. In 1982-83 – the year after Sri Lanka’s inaugural Tests – he scored 171 for the Sinhalese Sports Club against the Police, sharing a big opening stand with Arjuna Ranatunga. Abeynaike made another hundred a fortnight later, but never cracked the Test side. He later became groundsman and general manager at Colombo’s SSC, although he was better known as a TV commentator. “He talked a lot of common sense about the game,” said Ian Chappell. “And he did the best pitch reports I’ve heard.”

AKBAR, SAEED SHAHID, died on November 28, aged 54. Shahid Akbar was a youthful prodigy who never fulfilled the promise which prompted 1970s contemporaries to imagine him opening India’s batting with Sunil Gavaskar. A wristy left-hander and superb fielder, he played 31 first-class matches, mostly for Hyderabad, with a best of 97 (run out) against Tamil Nadu at Madras in 1977-78.

ALAGANAN, R. BALU, who died on October 11, aged 87, captained Madras (now Tamil Nadu) to their inaugural Ranji Trophy title in 1954-55. In the final, against Holkar at Indore, Alaganan made 56 not out from No. 9 in the second innings, adding 77 for the last wicket with M. K. Murugesh; Madras won by 46 runs. Alaganan surprised some by retiring after that triumph, which came in only his sixth first-class match and at the age of 30. He turned instead to administration – he was the state association’s vice-president for 25 years from 1961, and assistant manager on some Indian tours – and commentary, becoming a popular voice on All India Radio.

ALEXANDER, LEONARD JAMES, who died on July 22, aged 90, kept wicket for Tasmania in nine matches between 1946-47 and 1951-52. In the last of them, at the MCG, he allowed no byes in Victoria’s innings of 647.

ALI, ASHRAF RAJA, died of a suspected heart attack on October 21, aged 36. Raja Ali was a member of the Railways team who won two Ranji Trophies. A big-hitting left-hander who started his career with Madhya Pradesh, Ali averaged almost 40 in first-class cricket, with nine centuries, three of them (including his highest, 148 against his former MP team-mates) during Railways’ first title season in 2001-02. He also made 80 in the successful 2004-05 final against Punjab. “I used to call him Sankat Mochan [crisis man],” said the former Indian leg-spinner Narendra Hirwani. “I still wonder how he kept his cool under pressure.” Ali played some one-day games for Central Zone, whose players wore black armbands during the Duleep Trophy final in Chennai which coincided with news of his death.

ALIMUDDIN, who died on July 12, was an early star of Pakistan cricket, winning 25 Test caps between 1954 and 1962. Well-built and attacking by nature, he scored an unbeaten 103 against India at Karachi in 1954-55, when his partnership of 155 with his captain Abdul Hafeez Kardar came at almost a run a minute – an unheard-of rate in the usually sepulchral matches between the two countries at that time. He made 109 against England in 1961-62, also at Karachi, after a period out of favour, and scored 12 other centuries in a long career that stretched to 1967-68, after which he had a brief spell as national coach. “He was not just a stylish player but a very decent human being,” said Hanif Mohammad, a frequent opening partner. “He was very good company, and entertained us through his songs.” If Alimuddin’s published date of birth (December 15, 1930) is correct, he was 81 when he died – but that would mean he made his first-class debut in a Ranji Trophy semi-final in India in February 1943 at the age of 12, which players from the time discount. It seems likely he was five or six years older: Nasim-ul-Ghani, a Test team-mate, suggested he was nearer 90. Alim eventually settled in London, where he worked for Pakistan International Airlines – the uncertainty about his age caused problems with his pension; it was restored after Pakistan’s president intervened.

ANANDAPPA, IGNATIUS, who died on July 4, aged 73, was a club off-spinner who later turned to umpiring. He stood in three Tests – the first, against Australia in Colombo in August 1992, was also Muttiah Muralitharan’s debut – and seven one-day internationals in Sri Lanka in the 1990s.

ATHAR ZAIDI, SYED HUSSAIN, who died on November 30, aged 66, was a stocky umpire from Lahore who stood in eight Tests and ten one-day internationals between 1984 and 2002. Aleem Dar, now on the ICC’s elite panel, credited Athar with persuading him to take on the job: “He taught me all the basic principles needed to become a good professional umpire.”

BEAUMONT, RICHARD, collapsed on the field on August 4, shortly after taking five wickets for Pedmore against Astwood Bank in the Worcestershire County League. He was airlifted to hospital, but pronounced dead shortly after arrival. He was 33. “There was no sign of what was to happen,” said Astwood Bank’s captain Steve Adshead, the former Gloucestershire wicketkeeper. “He had been bowling really well.”

BHAGALIA, SALIM, who died in November, aged 90, was one of the best fast bowlers to emerge from South Africa’s Indian community in the 1940s, although he was denied the chance of first-class cricket by his government’s policies. A left-armer with a fiery temper, Bhagalia spearheaded Transvaal’s successful bid for the national non-white competition in 1951. A knee injury finally forced him to retire at 59.

BHIKANE, KISHOR PRAKASH, was killed while returning from a club game on March 4, when his motorcycle – which he had been awarded as the best bowler of the Maharashtra Premier League Twenty20 tournament in 2011 – collided with a truck near Latur, on the road between Pune and Mumbai. Bhikane, 24, was a medium-pacer who had played three first-class and several limited-overs matches for Maharashtra.

BLAKE, Rev. Canon PETER DOUGLAS STUART, who died on December 11, 2011, aged 84, showed enormous promise as a stylish batsman and an imaginative, enthusiastic captain at Eton in 1945. Three years later, he became the first post-war player to be capped by Sussex. “I think they saw him as future captaincy material,” said Hubert Doggart, a contemporary at Hove. But Blake’s priorities were to change: he served in the army in Germany immediately after the war, and listened to evidence in the trials of Nazi war criminals from the Ravensbruck concentration camp. He decided his future lay in the church and, after reading theology at Oxford, was ordained in 1955, later becoming rector of Mufulira in Northern Rhodesia (now Zambia). He had a notable career in Africa, working with young people and supervising the building of two churches. At Eton, where he was also a successful boxer, Blake had carried the batting in his final year, scoring nearly 800 runs, including five centuries, although Wisden noted that the club sides among the opposition were not as strong as usual. He played for Sussex between 1946 and 1951, and Oxford University from 1950 to 1952 (captaining them in his final year), scoring 2,067 runs at 22 in 58 matches, including three hundreds and a career-best 130 against Worcestershire in the Parks in 1952.

BRIDGE, DEREK JAMES WILSON, who died on March 13, was a pillar of Dorset cricket, playing for the county for 20 years from 1949, as captain from 1954 to 1966. He later served as their secretary and president, and was also president of the Minor Counties Cricket Association from 1997 to 2002. An off-spinner, Bridge dismissed Cyril Washbrook with the first ball he bowled for Dorset, and in all took 429 wickets for them, in addition to scoring 3,705 runs: he took eight for 35 against Oxfordshire in 1962. Bridge was an Oxford Blue – but for rugby, rather than cricket: he was an England triallist and represented the Barbarians. He did play one first-class match for Oxford University, and three for Northamptonshire, in 1947. He later became a schoolmaster, and ran the cricket at Sherborne for 21 years.

BURGIN, ERIC, who died on November 16, aged 88, was a medium-pacer from Sheffield who played a dozen matches for Yorkshire, nine of them in 1952, when they finished second in the Championship to Surrey – despite Burgin’s six for 43 in a nine-wicket victory over the eventual champions at Headingley. Shortly before that, in the Roses match at Old Trafford, Burgin had opened the bowling with Fred Trueman – whom he had coached at Sheffield United CC – and took five for 20 with what Wisden called “accurate inswingers”, as Lancashire were skittled for 65. Trueman, who cut down his pace when he saw how his partner was bowling, ended up with five for 26. But Burgin was already 28, and other, faster, bowlers moved ahead of him the following season, when he made only one Championship appearance – although he did have the satisfaction of dismissing Australia’s openers, Arthur Morris and Graeme Hole, at Bradford. Burgin was also a useful footballer, a centre-half, who captained York City. He later served on Yorkshire’s general committee.

BYRNE, PETER EDWARD, who died on December 9, aged 70, was a familiar face in the media centre at Lord’s, as a scorer and knowledgeable statistician, and for some years provided the facts and figures for Middlesex’s match programmes. He was married to Lilian, MCC’s famously volatile receptionist, until her death in December 2006. A vice-president of The Cricket Society since 2009, he was also passionate about football – unusually following both Spurs and Arsenal – and an authority on ice hockey.

CARR OF HADLEY, LORD (Leonard Robert), PC, who died on February 17, aged 95, was Secretary of State for Employment, and then Home Secretary, in Edward Heath’s Conservative government (1970–74). In 1976, after 26 years as an MP, Robert Carr became a life peer, and was soon appointed chairman of Prudential Assurance; he was a familiar figure at cricket presentations for the tournaments sponsored by the company, which included the World Cups of 1979 and 1983. He was also president of Surrey in 1985-86.

CARRIGAN, AUBREY HERBERT, died on May 23, aged 94. Aub Carrigan was a key member of the Queensland side for seven seasons after serving as a gunner in the Second World War. His team-mate Ken Archer remembered him as “no stylist, but with a powerful bottom hand, particularly when he was cutting, a good competitor and a good athlete”. He made a habit of scoring runs against touring teams, hitting a neat 100 in quick time against Freddie Brown’s 1950-51 England side, followed next season by 169 out of 253 while he was at the crease against the West Indians, when he hammered the point boundary every time leg-spinner Wilf Ferguson dropped short. Carrigan’s medium-paced bowling was useful enough to be given the new ball occasionally: he took four for 95 against South Australia in 1948-49. In addition, he was a versatile and gifted fieldsman. Made captain for his final season in 1951-52, he led Queensland out of the cellar to joint-second in the Sheffield Shield, before spending a successful summer as professional with Church in the Lancashire League. Talented in a number of sports, Carrigan played on the wing in Australian Rules football, appearing in five national carnivals; he also won a state table tennis championship after entering on the day of the tournament following a casual suggestion from a friend. In later life, he represented Queensland at lawn bowls.

CARTER, RAYMOND GEORGE, died on November 13, aged 79. Ray Carter was a versatile bowler who could switch from pace to off-spin, a development initially forced on him when he returned to Warwickshire in 1955 after National Service to find competition for fast-bowling spots. “He was tall and slender, with long arms and legs,” remembered his former team-mate Billy Ibadulla. “Depending on conditions, he could change to brisk off-break bowling – and on helpful pitches he could be more than a handful.” In 1957, Carter took five for 56 against Nottinghamshire with his quicker stuff, then seven for 57 with off-cutters a fortnight later to set up victory over Gloucestershire at Bristol. He took 70 wickets that year, and 81 in 1958, with a career-best seven for 39 against Worcestershire at Edgbaston – a “devastating” piece of fast-medium bowling, according to Wisden, which included a spell of 8.4–6–7–5. Thereafter, he was increasingly troubled by a back injury, which forced his retirement in 1961.

CHERRY, HUGH, who died on October 14, aged 81, devoted much of his life to Warwickshire, as a committee member and manager of the Under-19 side for more than 40 years. Jim Troughton, who captained the county to the 2012 Championship, was one of many to emerge from the youth system set up largely by Cherry. “He played an integral part in the development of lots of young cricketers,” said Troughton. “They owe Hugh a debt of gratitude. He was loved by all the guys, and he didn’t mind having the mickey taken out of his distinctive Yorkshire accent.”

CHESTERTON, GEORGE HERBERT, MBE, who died on November 3, aged 90, was one of a vanished breed of amateurs whose season did not begin until his teaching duties were over for another year. Yet Chesterton was unlike many of his kind in two crucial respects: first, his talent was such that no professional resented his late-summer arrival; second, he put in long days of toil as a bowler, rather than lording it as a batsman. His first-class career stretched from 1948 (when he represented Free Foresters) until 1966 (MCC), but his reputation rests chiefly on his seven seasons with Worcestershire in the 1950s. Contemporaries compared his bowling to Derek Shackleton or, later, Tom Cartwright: naggingly accurate medium, sometimes quicker, off 12 paces. Mainly, he swung the ball away, but the odd one came in. “God knows how,” he confided to his biographer, the former Hampshire cricketer Andy Murtagh.

Chesterton began a 76-year association with Malvern College as a pupil in 1936, but the school moved to Blenheim Palace three years later when their buildings were requisitioned by the War Office. At Blenheim, he was hauled before the Duke of Marlborough after breaking a window in the long library while practising his catching. He joined the RAF after school, trained as a pilot in Canada, and danced with Katharine Hepburn and Gypsy Rose Lee on an R & R visit to New York. He flew Sterling bombers, dropping SOE agents into the occupied countries, and towing gliders on D-Day, and into the “cauldron of horror” at Arnhem. Chesterton took up a deferred place at Brasenose College and made his Oxford debut in 1949, playing in a celebrated win over the New Zealanders. One of his earliest victims had been the young Tom Graveney: “He was deceptive, bowling inswingers and little cutters, slightly quicker than he looked.” Chesterton took five for 22 in the victory over Yorkshire, and afterwards was approached by a reporter who, appraising his features, called to his colleague: “Don’t bother with the camera, Charley – he’s 27, not 17.”

He returned to Malvern in 1950 to teach geography and coach cricket, and his first appearance for Worcestershire came that August. Thirty wickets in six games – including six for 61 against Lancashire at Old Trafford and six for 59 against Somerset at New Road – confirmed he was no makeweight. “He was amazing,” said Peter Richardson, his captain in 1956 and ’57. “You could use him as an opening bowler, but also as a stock bowler: he had enormous energy. He bowled beautifully – and he did it all with a smile on his face.” Chesterton had been offered the chance to succeed Ronnie Bird as Worcestershire captain in 1955 but, although he was keen and the school were willing to grant him time off, it would have hampered his ambitions to become a housemaster: teaching always came first. He played his final game for the county in 1957, having taken 168 wickets at under 20 in 47 matches, but continued to represent MCC on tours of Ireland until 1966. His best figures – seven for 14 – had come at Dublin’s College Park in 1956. His overall record was 263 wickets at 22.78 in 72 matches.

Chesterton was an institution at Malvern: housemaster, deputy head, then acting-headmaster in his final year, 1982. He also wrote a history of the school, and lived in a house behind the tennis courts until his death. He founded the Chesterton Cup for Midlands schools, was schools sport correspondent of The Times, president of the Cricketer Cup, and club president of Worcestershire between 1990 and 1993. He was also the co-author, with Hubert Doggart, of Oxford and Cambridge Cricket (1989), wrote a wartime memoir, and was the subject of Murtagh’s 2012 biography, A Remarkable Man. He received his MBE from the Queen two weeks before he died.

CLARK, GEORGE, who died on September 2, aged 85, served Essex for 29 years, principally as a dressing-room attendant at Chelmsford. He was a man who believed there was no crisis that could not be eased by a cup of tea. Ronnie Irani remembered: “When I arrived for my first day at Essex and walked through the gates, he said, ‘I can’t believe Lancashire have let you go, and I am so happy you’ve joined Essex.’ As a young man who had just left home for the first time and travelled over six hours on the train, his words always stayed with me.” Irani was even prepared to tolerate Clark sitting next to him to smoke his roll-up cigarettes. He was, said Nasser Hussain, “Essex through and through”.

COLEMAN, ROBERT GORDON, who died on August 21, aged 90, was a journalist who worked mainly for the Melbourne Herald. He wrote several books, including one that threw fresh light on the Pyjama Girl Murder (a notorious crime in 1930s Australia), and Seasons in the Sun, a huge history of the Victorian Cricket Association.

COOPER, GRAHAM CHARLES, who died on April 18, aged 75, played more than 250 matches for Sussex over 15 years from 1955. “Coop had a talent with both bat and ball, with a certain cocky bravado,” remembered Ted Dexter, his captain for many years. “But I always thought he was a little short of confidence. Nevertheless, he was a survivor, and clung on to a place in a decent side for quite a few seasons.” Capped in 1961, Cooper usually went in after Sussex’s strokemakers, and often shored up the innings from No. 7, where he scored both his first-class hundreds: 141 against Warwickshire in 1960, and 142 against Essex at Hove in 1963 after entering at 55 for five. He was able to use the long handle if required: in the second year of the Gillette Cup, in 1964, he and Jim Parks rescued Sussex, the holders, against Durham (then a Minor County) by piling on 134 in an hour. Cooper was also a handy off-spinner: he finished with exactly 100 wickets, including five for 16 against Warwickshire at Edgbaston in 1961, and five for 13 against Oxford University in 1963. Among the victims was the Nawab of Pataudi, soon to be Cooper’s county captain.

COURY, LEROY ARTHUR, died on October 22, aged 76. Coury’s leg-breaks and googlies, allied to Edgar Gilbert’s left-arm spin, played an important part as St Kitts dominated the annual Leewards Islands tournament, which predated the smaller territories’ introduction into the Caribbean’s domestic first-class competition (as Combined Islands) in 1966. Coury played seven first-class matches for the Leewards, the last against the touring Australians in 1965. A businessman of Lebanese descent, he was a benefactor to several young cricketers, and a long-standing member of the St Kitts Cricket Association.

COWLEY, TERENCE JOHN, died on January 30, aged 83. In another time and another place, Terry Cowley would surely have worn the Baggy Green – but he played for Tasmania when their cricket was largely ignored by the mainland. Local cricket historian Rick Smith is unequivocal in nominating him among the best bowlers ever to represent them. Cowley – who started in 1948-49, and was captain for his last five seasons, from 1956-57 – moved the ball both ways in the air and off the pitch at a pace which was as deceptively sharp as it was chokingly accurate. Australia’s wicketkeeper Don Tallon, on his way to England in 1953, grumbled after facing him: “Bloody hell, you spend all your time playing against Alec Bedser, and you come down here for a couple of social games and have to face him all over again.” He took five for 92 against the 1958-59 MCC tourists, and two seasons later castled Garry Sobers in successive matches. In Launceston grade cricket, where his geniality and wisdom made him a revered figure, Cowley took 908 wickets at just over ten apiece. His younger brother, Ian, played four games for Tasmania in the early 1960s.

COX, CLIFFORD, died on February 4, aged 79. Lancashire-born Cliff Cox became a pillar of cricket in Canada, opening the batting for the national team and captaining them in the annual match against the United States in 1969 and 1970. He later served on the Canadian cricket board, and was a strong advocate of the women’s game. An MCC touring team played a match in his memory at the picturesque Brockton Point ground in Vancouver in July 2012.

COXON, ALAN JOHN, who died on November 7, aged 82, was a left-arm medium-pacer who played 17 times for Oxford University between 1951 and 1954. His only Blue came in his second year, when he entered at 127 for seven in the follow-on and made 43 not out – the next-highest score of his career was 16 – as Oxford salvaged an unlikely draw against an attack led by Cuan McCarthy and John Warr, two Test fast bowlers. Hubert Doggart, in the Varsity Match history he co-wrote with George Chesterton, recalled “Coxon, Oxford’s No. 9, heading a short-pitched ball from McCarthy with remarkable insouciance to cover point”. Coxon played only one further first-class match, for MCC against his former university at Lord’s in 1958. He was employed by the brewers Guinness for many years, supervising their operations in Nigeria and, later, working in the Far East and South America.

CRAWFORD, MICHAEL GROVE, who died on December 2, aged 92, was Yorkshire’s treasurer for 30 years, and the club’s chairman at the time of Geoff Boycott’s sacking in 1983. This was overturned by the membership, and the committee resigned; Boycott played on for three more years. “He was a real gentleman,” said Robin Smith, a recent Yorkshire president, “an urbane and friendly person of unquestioned integrity.” The softly spoken Crawford had been a proficient all-round sportsman, a football Blue at Cambridge and a batsman good enough to score several half-centuries for Yorkshire’s Second Eleven, which he captained in 1951. He also played one Championship match in August that year, skippering against Worcestershire at Scarborough in the absence of Norman Yardley: Yorkshire went down to an eight-run defeat which harmed their title chances (they eventually finished second, behind Warwickshire). In 1952 he shared leadership duties in the Second Eleven with Ronnie Burnet, and their paths would cross again six years later when Crawford – who captained Leeds CC throughout the 1950s – was asked to take charge of the first team as Yorkshire doggedly searched for a suitable amateur captain. He declined because of the demands of his accountancy business: 39-year-old Burnet got the job instead, and led Yorkshire to the Championship in 1959.

CURRAN, KEVIN MALCOLM, died after collapsing while jogging in Harare on October 10, aged 53. Kevin Curran’s performance in Zimbabwe’s sensational victory over Australia in their first match in senior international competition, at the 1983 World Cup, established a template for his career. On that seismic day at Trent Bridge, he made vital runs, took a key wicket and contributed to a fine fielding performance; Curran was not a player to be kept out of the action for long. Duncan Fletcher rightly gained the plaudits for his 69 and four wickets in that game, but Curran made 27 in a sixth-wicket partnership of 70 with his captain to rescue Zimbabwe from early calamity, then removed Allan Border. Later in the tournament, he made 62 against West Indies at Edgbaston, then hit 73 and claimed three for 65 – both one-day international career-bests – against India at Tunbridge Wells. Fletcher recalled: “Kevin always genuinely believed that any difficult situation was a challenge to be overcome.” Curran also played in the 1987 World Cup in India and Pakistan, but made little impact: his international career ended after 11 matches, with 287 runs at 26, and nine wickets at 44.

Instantly recognisable by his surfer-style blond hair, Curran was a hard-hitting presence in the middle order, bowled fast-medium (and occasionally quicker), and was an electrifying presence in the field. “As a youngster, his returns to the keeper would be scrappy – until it was run-out time,” said Fletcher. “Then the ball would be right above the stumps from the outfield, or a direct hit when closer in.” In England, Curran was best known for the 15 seasons he spent with Gloucestershire and Northamptonshire, when he was one of the best all-rounders in the domestic game. An Irish passport – his paternal grandfather had emigrated to Southern Rhodesia in 1902 – meant he did not count as an overseas player, and he joined Gloucestershire in 1985, when his 52 wickets helped their rise from last in the Championship to third. Wisden felt a pace attack of Courtney Walsh, David Lawrence and Curran might be the most formidable the county had ever deployed. He was admirably consistent, passing 1,000 runs in four successive seasons, and adding 65 wickets in 1988, and 60 in 1990, after which Gloucestershire released him amid stories of dressing-room disharmony. Senior coach Eddie Barlow insisted Curran’s departure was “in the best interests of the club”.

He decamped to Northamptonshire, where his friend Allan Lamb was captain: “He was an abrasive sort of player, but an excellent team man. He got up people’s noses a bit, and you definitely wanted him on your side.” Curran contributed fully to four successive top-five Championship finishes, and took three for 41 in the NatWest Trophy final victory over Leicestershire in 1992. “He always felt he was better than anybody else, and I liked that,” said Lamb. “He would always say ‘give me the ball’ if we needed a wicket, or ‘I’ll bat at three’.” Lamb also remembered a subtle motivator: “He got on really well with Curtly Ambrose, and he was good for him. Sometimes he’d say: ‘I think I’m bowling faster than you this morning, Curtly.’”

In 1993, Curran finished second in the first-class bowling averages, with 67 wickets at 19, including a career-best seven for 47 against Yorkshire at Harrogate. He succeeded Rob Bailey as Northamptonshire captain at the end of the 1997 season after topping 1,000 runs that summer – including a career-best 159 against Glamorgan at Abergavenny – but the club endured a poor time under his leadership, and he was relieved of the post a year later. He returned for just one more season. He played for Natal in 1988-89, and Boland in 1994-95 and 1997-98, and finished his career in 1999 with 15,740 runs in 324 games at nearly 37, including 25 centuries, and 605 wickets at 27. When Zimbabwe achieved Test status in 1992, Curran was completing a ten-year residency qualification in the UK, and decided not to return. He did, however, fill a number of key roles in Zimbabwe cricket, initially as assistant coach of the national team, then as Phil Simmons’s successor as head coach, between 2005 and 2007. He had also coached Namibia and been head of the Zimbabwe Cricket Academy. He went on to become a national selector, and at the time of his death was coach of Mashonaland Eagles.

He leaves three sons, who all inherited their father’s talent. Tom played for Surrey Second Eleven in 2012, Sam was Zimbabwe’s junior cricketer of the year in 2011, and Ben has also displayed great potential. Mashonaland chief executive Vimbai Mapukute said of Curran: “I have yet to meet a man more passionate about cricket in this country.”

CURRIE, MARGARET JOYCE, died on October 5, aged 80. Joyce Currie (later Inness) was a bowler from Christchurch, quite speedy for women’s cricket in the 1950s, who played three Tests for New Zealand. She opened the bowling in a soggy draw at The Oval in 1954, and won two further caps when England toured in 1957-58, taking three for 36 in the First Test at Christchurch. During her England tour Currie claimed six for 22 – from 20 overs – against the West at Torquay.

DALVI, MADHAV MANGESH, who died on October 1, aged 87, made a remarkable start to his first-class career late in 1947, following innings of 81, 63 not out and 67 in a Bombay festival tournament with 150 not out on his Ranji Trophy debut, for Bombay against Sind, then hitting 143 against Maharashtra. Thus after four matches he averaged 168. He couldn’t keep that up, although he did score 110 in the 1948-49 Ranji Trophy final victory over Baroda. He lost his place in a strong side in the late 1950s, but reappeared as Vidarbha’s captain in 1961-62, making centuries in what turned out to be his last two first-class games before a car accident ended his playing career.

DHARMA, PANDIAN KUMAR, was found dead at his home in Chennai on June 20. He was 20, and had seemingly committed suicide. Dharma made two one-day appearances for Tamil Nadu, and the day before his death had been playing a club final at the Chidambaram Stadium, in which he was apparently disappointed to take only one wicket. “He was a promising youngster who turned into a fine all-rounder,” said Sridharan Sriram, the former Indian one-day player who was Dharma’s club captain.

DICK, IAN ROBINSON, died on September 5, aged 86. He captained the Western Australian Colts against the 1950-51 MCC tourists, and later that season played as a batsman against Queensland in what was to be his only state match, despite scoring nearly 9,000 runs for his club, South Perth. A gifted hockey player, Dick played for WA from 1946 to 1959, and represented Australia in all their internationals for a decade from 1948, captaining them in the 1956 Melbourne Olympics, when he scored the first goal of the tournament. His brother, Alec, played once for WA in 1948-49, and he was a cousin of Alex Robinson, who also died in 2012.

FORMSTONE, GEORGE HAYNES, died on December 30, aged 81. Haynes Formstone, from Wrexham, devoted his life to cricket in Denbighshire, where he was honorary secretary for more than 50 years and rarely missed a game. A special match to celebrate his half-century was staged at Brymbo in July 2006.

FORTE, Major JOHN KNOX, MBE, who died on August 9, aged 96, kept cricket alive in Corfu, where he was the British vice-consul from 1958 to 1971. His initiatives included an appeal to readers of the Daily Telegraph, which produced 50 bats and 350 balls, and a pleasant history of cricket on the island, Play’s the Thing, in 1988. This included tales of a batsman who was a heavy scorer, even though his ample stomach forced him to bat one-handed, and an unsuccessful attempt to introduce women’s cricket, which was soon banned by the military governor after a lady batsman was smacked on the nose by a bouncer. By 2012 there were 14 cricket clubs in Greece, 11 of them on Corfu. Forte (pronounced “Fort”) also produced several travel books and guides, which helped popularise the island as a holiday destination. As a 15-year-old Bradfield schoolboy, he had taken two for four at Lord’s.

FUARD, MOHAMED ABDAL HASSAIN, died on July 28, aged 75. Abu Fuard was a prime mover behind Sri Lanka’s push for Test status: he enlisted the help of prominent politicians, including the cabinet minister Gamini Dissanayake, who joined the national cricket board and added gravitas to the Sri Lankan delegation at the ICC. Sri Lanka finally became a Test-playing country in 1981-82 – “the greatest day in the life of Abu Fuard”, according to his friend, the journalist Elmo Rodrigopulle. As a player, Fuard had been a tall, canny off-spinner, armed with what would probably now be called a doosra. In April 1961 he impressed the Australian team en route for England, dismissing Bill Lawry and Bob Simpson; their captain, Richie Benaud, said he wished he could take Fuard with him for the Ashes. In all, he represented Sri Lanka (then Ceylon) for 15 years, taking six for 31 for the Board President’s XI against an International XI, composed mainly of English county players, in March 1968. He was Sri Lanka’s manager/coach at the inaugural World Cup in 1975, and assistant manager for the next one, in 1979, when they beat India; he was also in charge when Sri Lanka won their first Test, against India in Colombo in September 1985. Fuard had a ten-year spell as a national selector, for a while chairing the panel, and was also instrumental in redeveloping grounds – particularly the Asgiriya Stadium in Kandy – to make them suitable for international cricket.

GAUNT, RONALD ARTHUR, died on March 30, aged 78. Red-haired and robust, Ron “Pappy” Gaunt – whose nickname came from the American bantamweight boxer “Pappy” Gault – was arguably the cream of the crop of fast bowlers who made life miserable for visiting batsmen on the peppery Perth pitch in the second half of the 1950s. Broad-shouldered and unrelenting, he had a smooth action which hid a wicked bumper among his customary outswingers. John Rutherford, Western Australia’s first home-grown Test cricketer, remembered him as “fit as a bull and the quickest bowler in the state team of his time”. He recalled the 20-year-old Gaunt’s first match, against Queensland in 1955-56, when he bowled Neil Harvey’s older brother, Mick, with a lightning full toss which sent stumps and bails hurtling towards the keeper. The following season he cut a swathe through New South Wales at Sydney: a career-best seven for 104 was made up exclusively of Test players. As a left-handed batsman, he generally aimed to hit the ball as hard as he could in the arc between long-on and midwicket; occasionally it worked, and he took 20 off an over of Ian Crowden’s off-breaks at Hobart in 1961-62.

But it was Gaunt’s misfortune to be competing for a Test spot with Alan Davidson, Ray Lindwall, Ian Meckiff and Graham McKenzie: his three caps were spread over six years. Called to South Africa as an injury replacement in 1957-58, he bowled Dick Westcott in his first over at Durban, but had to wait nine hours for his next success, eventually removing the somnolent Jackie McGlew. A side strain robbed him of a month’s cricket early in the 1961 tour of England, but good form later on, including six for 50 against Somerset, earned him a chance in the final Test at The Oval, where he removed Raman Subba Row, Ted Dexter and Ken Barrington. John Arlott enthused that Gaunt “made the ball dart and dive about like a swallow chasing flies”. And finally, at Adelaide in 1963-64, after being flayed by Eddie Barlow and Graeme Pollock, Gaunt rebounded by dismissing Colin Bland and Peter Carlstein in successive overs. These three appearances, plus two second-string tours of New Zealand were scant reward for his talents.

In 1960 Gaunt, who worked as a sales representative for Walpamur Paints, took his colour cards across the Nullarbor Plain to Melbourne, in search of further employment and cricket opportunities. There he cut his run-up significantly – and his pace slightly – without reducing his effectiveness, and became an important element of the Victorian attack for four seasons. He remained a significant influence at the Footscray club, where his wise advice helped shape four future Australian bowlers in Alan Hurst, Merv Hughes, Colin Miller and Tony Dodemaide, who praised Gaunt’s “patient and knowledgeable” skills as a coach.

GHOSH, HAROLD, who died on January 17, aged 75, had a long career in Indian domestic cricket, which stretched from December 1951, when he was 15, until 1974-75. Initially a left-arm spinner, Ghosh became a solid left-hand batsman who made four Ranji Trophy centuries, the highest an undefeated 166 for Railways against a Delhi side including the young Bishan Bedi, on Christmas Day 1965. The nearest he came to representative honours were two matches for North Zone against touring teams in the 1960s.

GIBSON, DAVID, died on June 7, aged 76. Tall, well-built and able to generate pace and bounce from a rhythmic run-up and a side-on action that made the purists purr, David Gibson had what it took to become a fast bowler at the highest level. He was useful with the bat, too, and his athletic movement around the field hinted at a man who had represented England schools’ rugby XVs at full-back. But Gibson’s career was stalled at a key moment by a knee injury, and he was never quite the same bowler. Instead, he became a respected coach, all the while leaving former Surrey team-mates to wonder what might have been. The full promise of Gibson, who hailed from Mitcham, was underlined on his Championship debut, at the age of 21, against Gloucestershire at Bristol in July 1957. He took ten for 132 but, such was Surrey’s strength in the year of a sixth successive title, that he played just once more that summer; they were match figures he would never better.

He made a more substantial contribution in 1958, deputising when illness sidelined Alec Bedser. He claimed 37 wickets, and came to the fore as Surrey began to rebuild when their years of domination ended. In 1960, Gibson took 90 wickets at 17, including seven for 26 against Derbyshire at The Oval. It remained his career-best, and earned him his county cap. There were 95 wickets in 1961, when he was in with a chance of international recognition. “The selectors were certainly looking closely at him after those two outstanding seasons,” said Micky Stewart. But he suffered his first serious knee injury in 1962, and attention switched elsewhere. He recovered sufficiently to have another magnificent season in 1965, taking 86 wickets at 20 and scoring 996 runs at 34. Against Leicestershire at The Oval he was bowled by Peter Marner two short of what would have been his only first-class century. “He had the ability to bat at six or seven if he had really wanted to,” said Stewart. Further knee trouble in 1966, however, more or less put paid to his career. There were just a handful of appearances thereafter, including a remarkable performance for the Second Eleven at Guildford in 1969, when he finished with figures of 16.4–10–13–10 as Sussex were skittled for 35. Bob Willis and Robin Jackman remained wicketless.

Gibson nicknamed “Hoot” in tribute to an American cowboy actor called Hoot Gibson, retired at the end of that summer, after taking 552 wickets at 22 in 185 matches, and scoring 3,143 runs at almost 19. He had already taken MCC coaching qualifications and, at the behest of Stewart, the county’s new cricket manager, he returned to The Oval in 1979 as county coach. Stewart said: “He was very good technically with bowlers – excellent at getting the information across in a way that could be understood.” Later, Gibson emigrated to Australia and moved to Bowral. One day in 2007, he arrived at the Bradman Museum and offered his services, mentioning that he “knew a bit about the game”. He became a popular guide, and a kindly coach to children visiting the nets. “We were honoured to have such a distinguished Pommy in our midst,” said the curator David Wells. “Ill health forced his withdrawal from volunteering, but he did manage to attend the opening of the International Cricket Hall of Fame in November 2010, and I vividly remember him proudly wearing his Surrey blazer.”

GIFFORD, JOSHUA THOMAS, MBE, who died on February 9, aged 70, was a giant in British horse racing. In the first half of his career, Josh Gifford was champion National Hunt jockey on four occasions; in the second, he became one of racing’s most successful trainers, for ever associated with the storybook triumph of Aldaniti in the 1981 Grand National. Yet visitors to Gifford’s yard in Findon, on the Sussex Downs, were often left wondering if he hadn’t chosen the wrong sport. There were cricket pictures on the walls of his home, cricket books on the shelves, and a faithful dog called Sobers. He regretted, he said, not making more of the talent he showed as a boy and, although a batsman, remained proud of dismissing Brian Lara in a charity match. He had his own wandering XI and, every September, Alan Lee – the former cricket correspondent of The Times who now covers racing – took a team to the lovely sloping ground at Findon, where Gifford was by turns cussed opening batsman and generous host. “Despite being so late in the season,” said Lee, “the sun shone every time for 21 years.”

GLASGOW, CARL VIDAL, who died on March 23, aged 69, was secretary and legal adviser to the Windward Islands Cricket Board for many years, and managed the Windward Islands team. Julian Hunte, the West Indies board president, called him “one of the stalwarts of cricket development in these islands”.

GODSON, ALFRED THOMAS, died on May 4, aged 94. Fred Godson umpired 29 first-class matches, all at the Adelaide Oval, between 1961-62 and 1973-74. In November 1969, it was the genial Godson and his fellow umpire Col Egar who recalled John Inverarity (now Australia’s chief selector) after he was bowled by an abruptly deviating ball from Greg Chappell in a Sheffield Shield match between South Australia and Western Australia. A swallow was found near the pitch; the umpires called dead ball for the dead bird; Inverarity resumed his innings, and took his score from nought to 89.

GOURLEY, IAN, who died on December 7, 2012, aged 70, was a stalwart of the Woodvale club in Belfast. For some years he was treasurer of the Irish cricket board, and also served as chairman and president of the Northern Cricket Union in Ulster.

GOVENDER, JUGOO, who died on September 6, aged 74, was an off-spinning all-rounder and fine slip fielder who played 42 matches now considered first-class, mainly for Natal’s non-white side in the 1970s. He scored 74 against Eastern Province in February 1978, after taking five for 27 against Transvaal in the previous match. Govender, who became a headmaster, was also a talented footballer.

GREGG, DONALD MALCOLM, died on September 26, nine days after his 88th birthday. He made his debut for South Australia, aged 30, on Christmas Day 1954, having lost his youth to war: he was 25 before he played top-grade club cricket in Adelaide. Although he lacked real speed, he was accurate, and his ability to swing the ball late both ways helped him to three five-fors, the best of them five for nine in South Australia’s inaugural match against Tasmania, in 1956-57. He had an admirer in Bill O’Reilly, who praised him for bowling “tenaciously” and “carrying the fight right up to the batsman”. He was a member of the South Australian Metropolitan Fire Service for nearly 50 years.

GREIG, ANTHONY WILLIAM, died on December 29, aged 66. For a brief few years in the mid-1970s, Tony Greig was arguably the leading all-rounder in Test cricket – a belligerent middle-order batsman capable of match-turning hundreds, a wicket-taking bowler (in two styles) who bristled with attacking intent, and a magnificent fielder in any position. By 1975, he was pouring those attributes into gung-ho leadership of England. Throw in his iridescent stage-presence, and it is easy to see why he was talked of as cricket’s first superstar.

Greig’s on-field credentials are worth re-establishing, for in the decades that followed his sensational defection to Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket in 1977, they were easily overlooked. Instead he was recast as the man who preferred the Australian dollar to the England captaincy, the rebel who led a sport towards enslavement by television, and the broadcaster who coarsened the art of commentary. Typical was Daily Mail columnist Quentin Letts’s scabrous piece on him in his 2009 book 50 People Who Buggered Up Britain. Perhaps he was resented the more for being the harder to pin down: he was raised in South Africa, but played for England; embraced as a commentator in Australia, having been lionised as a player in India; and loved in Sri Lanka for his unfailing endorsement of the island and their cricketers.

Greig was born in Queenstown in the Eastern Cape to a Scottish father and South African mother. His was an archetypal white middle-class South African upbringing (although his parents were liberal in matters of race), and a young Greig barely paused for breath between games of cricket, tennis and rugby. At home he played cricket for hours with “Tackies”, the family gardener, who had an inexhaustible appetite for bowling. The only blot on a sunny landscape was epilepsy, first revealed when he collapsed playing tennis aged 14. In the main, Greig managed to control the illness for the rest of his life.

He attended the local Queen’s College, a favourite winter destination for Sussex cricketers, who returned to Hove with glowing reports. It was the influence of Mike Buss that secured a trial, and Greig set off for the south coast soon after his first-class debut for Border in February 1966, aged 19. Opportunities were rationed, but he made a century in each innings for Colonel L. C. Stevens’ XI against Cambridge University at Eastbourne, and took three West Indian wickets for A. E. R. Gilligan’s XI at Hastings. Sussex offered him a contract and, with some reluctance, his father heeded Greig’s pleas to put cricket before a place at a South African university. Permission came with a proviso: he had four years to reach the top. It was a mission that began spectacularly on his Championship debut, against Lancashire at Hove in May 1967. Coming to the wicket with Sussex 34 for three against an attack led by Brian Statham and Ken Higgs, he made 156, showing scant regard for the principles of early-season batting in England. Two months later, he took eight for 25 against Gloucestershire.

He passed 1,000 runs and 50 wickets in each of his first three seasons with Sussex and, if centuries and five-fors proved elusive, his true qualities transcended statistics – an unshakable confidence, a desire to attack in any situation, and a talent for inspiring those around him. At 6ft 7½in, and strikingly blond, he also exuded charisma. “He was just so different,” said team-mate Peter Graves. “He had that boyish exuberance. And he was noisy.”

By 1970, Greig had completed his residency and – while his former countrymen embarked on their 22-year exile – was selected for England against the Rest of the World at Trent Bridge. Characteristically undaunted, he took four for 59 on his first day in international cricket, then hit two of his first three balls for four. But he was less successful at Edgbaston and Headingley, and was dropped for the final match. His next career boost came from an unlikely source. Garry Sobers was leading a Rest of the World squad to Australia in 1971-72 and, when Mike Procter withdrew, he suggested to Don Bradman, overseeing the tour, that Greig should take his place. Arriving in Adelaide, Greig survived a mortifying moment when he palmed off his luggage on the bespectacled, cardigan-wearing figure who greeted him. Only later did he twig: the bagman was Bradman. But it was a successful trip. Greig played in all five of the unofficial Tests and, by the time the Australians arrived in England in 1972, the selectors gave him another chance.

Greig was a ray of light in the First Test at a gloomy Old Trafford, top-scoring twice, with 57 and 62, taking four wickets, and exciting Jack Fingleton: “Greig was an outstanding success, proving himself England’s best all-round gain in years.” Thereafter, his performances were less eye-catching, but further mature displays came that winter in India. At Delhi, he shared a Christmas Day stand of 101 with his captain Tony Lewis, helping England to victory; at Calcutta, he took his first Test five-wicket haul; at Bombay, he made his first century. “We sat down for a long chat over a glass of wine at the end of the tour,” Lewis said. “One thing we had in common was that we were both always looking ahead of the game, not back on it. We both believed in trusting your luck and obeying your gut instinct.”

So began the years of Greig’s pomp. From the trademark upturned collar, everything about him seemed designed to attract attention: at the crease, he held his bat high in defiance of the textbook (Bradman tut-tutted), and used his tremendous reach to get on the front foot as often as possible. His cover-driving of fast bowlers was a display of power and elegance. When bowling, his hectic approach was a mass of pumping legs and jutting elbows. In the field, he was seldom far from the action, staring batsmen down from close in, or grasping edges in the slips.

He was appointed vice-captain to Mike Denness for the tour of the West Indies in 1973-74, but in the First Test in Trinidad, his combativeness backfired. Fielding the final ball of the second day at silly point, Greig spotted that Alvin Kallicharran, unbeaten on 142, had begun to walk off, and threw down the non-striker’s stumps. Having not yet called time, umpire Douglas Sang Hue had no option but to uphold the appeal. The England team left the field to a fusillade of boos, and things might have turned nasty had the scoreboard operators altered the number of wickets. Even so, the presence of angry supporters outside the ground persuaded Sobers to drive Greig back to the hotel. An evening of intense diplomatic activity ensued, ending with Kallicharran’s reinstatement. England issued a statement apologising for Greig’s “instinctive action”, and next morning he reluctantly agreed to shake Kallicharran’s hand.

When England returned to the Queen’s Park Oval for the final Test, still trailing 1–0, Greig produced perhaps his most unlikely match-winning performance, taking eight for 86 in West Indies’ first innings with brisk off-breaks. He had experimented with them in the Second Test in Jamaica, but purely as a defensive measure. Now, the extra bounce at Port-of-Spain made them a viable attacking weapon, and he added five for 70 in the second innings as England squared the series. Alan Knott called it the finest off-spin bowling he had kept to, but for Derek Underwood it paradoxically marked the end for Greig as an effective Test bowler: “At Trinidad he just hit the right rhythm and pace, but after that he never knew what to do, or what to bowl, on any particular day or wicket.”

Another thrilling performance followed later that year, this time with the bat, at Brisbane. Arriving at 57 for four, with Jeff Thomson and Dennis Lillee in full cry, Greig launched an extraordinary counter-attack, driving with savage intent and cutting anything short over the heads of an astonished slip cordon. He scored 110. “It was one of the best half-dozen innings I ever saw,” said John Woodcock. Greig’s relish for a battle was never more obvious than when he infuriated Lillee by treating bouncers with an exaggerated trembling of the knees, and signalling his own boundaries. His colleagues were impressed by his impudence but appalled by the likely consequences: “Think of the poor bastard at the other end,” Underwood told him. It is easy to imagine the television mogul Kerry Packer noting this bravura performance and luminous screen presence.

When England’s shell-shocked team quickly embarked on a home series with Ian Chappell’s bruisers, Denness was on borrowed time, and resigned halfway through the First Test. Greig’s captaincy credentials had been buffed by, among others, E. W. Swanton (an improbable, but staunch, supporter), Ian Wooldridge and Wisden, although Greig himself felt he had been offered the role only because there were no alternatives. Keen to add backbone to England’s fragile batting, he sought the opinion of umpires, who told him Northamptonshire’s No. 3, David Steele, was the man to stand up to Lillee and Thomson. It proved a shrewd move: in contrasting styles, Greig and Steele restored national pride on a sunlit first day at Lord’s. Greig made 96, Steele 50 and, though the match was drawn and Australia protected their 1–0 lead for the rest of the summer, there was a seismic shift in atmosphere. “He was such a great competitor,” said Steele.

With no England tour that winter, Greig accepted an offer to play grade cricket for Waverley in Sydney, where his on-field success became almost incidental to business contacts and promotional deals. Back in England, he gave an interview to the BBC’s Sportsnight programme ahead of the 1976 West Indies series. Irked by what he saw as the journalist’s emphasis on the qualities of the opposition, he retorted: “I’m not really sure they’re as good as everyone thinks they are.” Next came a comment destined for folklore: “If they get on top, they are magnificent cricketers. But if they are down, they grovel, and I intend – with the help of Closey and a few others – to make them grovel.” From any previous England captain, the remark might have been dismissed as crass psychology; from a white South African, it was just crass. The West Indians were furious. During a long, hot summer, England’s optimism of 1975 drained away in a 3–0 defeat, although Greig responded with a typically feisty century in the Fourth Test at Headingley, before finally grovelling himself, on hands and knees, in front of jubilant West Indian supporters at The Oval.

If Greig had learned something about public relations, he soon put it to good use in India. His charm offensive began before a ball was bowled, when he ostentatiously praised the local umpires. Ahead of one game, he made his men don blazers and jog around the outfield, waving to the crowd. If Greig was in the middle when a firecracker went off, he would fall to the ground as if he had been shot, and he encouraged Derek Randall to play to the gallery too. Thought was also given to the serious business of winning matches. Underwood recalled: “Before we left for India he said to me, ‘You are going to win us the series. If you don’t want to play in any of the games outside the Tests, just let me know and I’ll make sure you don’t have to.’ Nobody had spoken to me like that before.”

Greig’s leadership was inspirational, never more so than in the Second Test at Calcutta, where he batted for more than seven hours with a fever and in a state of near-exhaustion to score 103. It was his second truly great Test innings – and this time in a winning cause. The series was secured when England went 3–0 up at Madras, to complete Greig’s finest hour as captain. Before the party left India, Gubby Allen wondered aloud to friends: “Is he really too good to be true?”

An answer of sorts was around the corner. At the Centenary Test in Melbourne, Greig again showed slick PR skills with a letter to the Age newspaper, thanking the city for its hospitality. But he immediately boarded a flight to Sydney: Packer, owner of Channel Nine, wanted to see him. Infuriated with the Australian Cricket Board’s refusal to sell him the TV rights to Test cricket, Packer was plotting to set up his own breakaway series – and the telegenic Greig was vital to the plan.

Greig was offered $A90,000 for three years, with the guarantee of a job for life at the Packer organisation. He wanted time to think it over, but did not need long. Returning to London, he was ambushed by Eamonn Andrews for This is Your Life, but found time to make contact with Packer’s other English targets. Two days later, he flew to Trinidad to help recruit West Indians and Pakistanis playing a Test there. Packer’s heist remained secret for a few more weeks, long enough for the Australian touring party to arrive in England to defend the Ashes in 1977. Sussex players noted that the dressing-room attendant was suddenly taking a lot more calls for “Mr Greig”. Eventually, as the news leaked in Australia, Greig issued a statement on May 8, announcing a “massive cricket project” for the next Australian summer. He then headed for Hove, hit 50 from 36 balls against Yorkshire, and told Geoff Boycott in the car park to keep an eye on the morning papers.

Retribution was swift. By the end of the week he had been stripped of the England captaincy while, curiously perhaps, retaining his place in the team, now led by Mike Brearley. It was an odd summer. Against a distracted, divided Australian side, England won easily, with Greig making 91 at Lord’s and 76 at Old Trafford. Brearley was appreciative. “When he was dismissed as captain, he might have shown more resentment, or have been only moderately co-operative,” he wrote. “In fact, he could not have been more helpful.” Elsewhere, there were less kind words: he was, wrote Woodcock, not English “through and through”, and his cloak-and-dagger defection severed many alliances; Greig always regretted not being able to forewarn Alec Bedser, Ken Barrington and Swanton. County dressing-rooms containing Packer players could be chilly places, but Graves insisted there was no problem at Hove: “We wished him well because it was obviously his future.” Tony Lewis saw it differently, calling his behaviour a “betrayal”.

As far as his Test career was concerned, though, that was that. In 58 matches, he made 3,599 runs at 40, with eight hundreds, and took 141 wickets at 32, with six five-fors. Among men to have played at least 25 Tests, only Greig, Aubrey Faulkner and Jacques Kallis have averaged 40 or more with the bat and 33 or fewer with the ball. Overall, in 350 first-class matches, Greig scored 16,660 runs at 31, and took 856 wickets at under 29.

He had never disguised his intention to become “the first millionaire cricketer”. Catching the militant mood of the 1970s, he once stood up at a Professional Cricketers’ Association meeting and suggested a work-to-rule on Sundays. But it was Packer who provided his route to those riches, and the pair strode down the Strand shoulder to shoulder when the WSC players took the authorities to the High Court after they had been banned from the first-class game; the players won. Greig was also at the forefront of promoting WSC in Australia, to the extent that his role as World XI captain became almost secondary. His form was wretched, leading to Ian Chappell’s barb that the World XI was “the best bunch of cricketers I’ve seen – with one exception”. Underwood said: “Out there he was an administrator as well as a cricketer. If there was a problem, he had the job of sorting it out.”

When a peace deal was brokered after two disrupted Australian summers, Packer’s offer of a job for life came good. For the next three decades, Greig was integral to Channel Nine’s coverage. His excitable style – “He’s gone, goodnight Charlie!” – did not please everyone, but his voice became almost as familiar as Richie Benaud’s, and his sparring with Bill Lawry was central to Australian humorist Billy Birmingham’s Twelfth Man parodies.

In the summer of 2012, Greig was invited by MCC president Phillip Hodson, his brother-in-law, to give the Spirit of Cricket Lecture. His first draft included no mention of the Packer years, until he was persuaded the topic could not be ignored, and he was typically outspoken on India’s role in the world game. In October 2012 it was revealed Greig was suffering from lung cancer; two months later, he died in a Sydney hospital after suffering a heart attack at home. On the Saturday morning when Britain awoke to the news, the honours list was published. Denness had been awarded an OBE. It left Greig as the only England captain without such recognition – an outsider to the end.

HARDMAN, THOMAS RICHARD, was found dead in his bed in student accommodation in Leeds on November 28. He was 21. Initial reports suggested no suspicious circumstances. Tom Hardman was a promising fast bowler from Manchester, who made his debut for the Central Lancashire League club Heywood when he was 12, and a useful batsman who scored a century for Lancashire’s Under-17s. He was part of the Leeds/Bradford MCCU side who almost won their initial first-class match, against Surrey at The Oval in April 2012; his first wicket was Tom Maynard. “He was a real hard worker, and a lovely bloke to have around the dressing-room,” said Clive Radley, the former England batsman who coaches the combined MCC Universities team. “His leadership qualities were such that I had already earmarked him for the captaincy in 2013.”

HILL, GEOFFREY HARRY, died on March 13, aged 77. Geoff Hill was a slow left-armer who took eight for 70 against Gloucestershire at Cheltenham in 1958, his first season for Warwickshire, which he ended with 59 wickets at 20. But his form fell away, and he left the county midway through 1960, remaining a prolific wicket-taker in the Birmingham League.

HOAD, EDWARD LISLE GOLDSWORTHY, died on June 13, aged 86. Ted Hoad was a leg-spinner and tailender although, like his father of the same name, who had a long career for Barbados and played four Tests for West Indies, he occasionally opened the batting. He played nine matches for Barbados between 1944 and 1954, recording his highest score of 74 from the top of the order against Jamaica at Kingston in March 1947.

HOW, EDWARD JOSEPH, died on March 29, aged 37, after a fall while skiing in Val d’Isère, in France. Ed How played 14 first-class matches for Cambridge University in the mid-1990s, appearing twice in the Varsity Match, and also won a football Blue. He went into the City, becoming a vice-president of Deutsche Bank, then abruptly switched careers by moving to Charterhouse School, where he taught chemistry and coached cricket and football with enormous enthusiasm. A left-arm seamer, his overall record was a modest 13 wickets at 88, but he did have one golden day, at Canterbury in June 1997 when he took five for 59. His team-mate Ed Smith remembered: “I never like the phrase ‘good club man’, but Ed was all the best things about that expression. He was sociable, warm, generous-spirited and fun-loving.”

HUEY, SAMUEL SCOTT JOHNSTON, died on March 8, aged 88. Scott Huey was something of a legend in Irish cricket, a teasing slow left-armer who took six for 49 and eight for 48 against MCC in 1954 – and finished top of the first-class averages. In 1965 he claimed five for 68 against the New Zealand tourists. In all, he took 112 wickets for Ireland.

HYAMS, JOHN, died on May 2, aged 92. Jack Hyams claimed to have scored more than 125,000 runs and 170 centuries in a club career that stretched for around 80 years – his last matches were played in Spain in 2010, when he was past 90. His deeds were carefully catalogued at home, and included appearances for MCC and Cross Arrows when over 70, as well as several prominent north London clubs. He was also an inveterate tourist and, on his travels, “a tireless dancer every night into his nineties”, according to his friend Michael Blumberg. Hyams had invested in a new bat for the 2012 season, but never got to use it in anger.

HYATT, ROLAND SHANE, died on July 5, aged 50. Roly Hyatt had a fine record in junior and grade cricket, but was unable to translate that into first-class success, despite an extended trial over three seasons for Tasmania from 1983-84. His off-breaks did not spin enough – his career average was over 70 – and an attempt to turn him into a specialist batsman was also unsuccessful, although he did make three fifties against South Australia. After retirement he was beset by financial problems which had legal consequences, compounded by the effect of alcohol on his health.

IFFLA, IRVIN BANCROFT, who died on March 16, aged 88, became a widely admired figure in Scottish cricket after leaving his native Jamaica in 1951 to take up a professional contract with Stirling County. He lived in Scotland for the rest of his life. An off-spinner and useful lower-order batsman, Iffla played four matches for Jamaica before his departure, claiming five for 90 against the 1947-48 MCC tourists. He made an immediate impact in his new country. “He transformed the whole club and the whole of Scottish cricket,” said Raymond Bond, Stirling’s wicketkeeper at the time. “He was a magician with the ball and brilliant with the bat – and people came flocking to Williamfield, Stirling’s home ground, to see him every Saturday.” Iffla also had stints at Ayrshire and Stenhousemuir, both of which, like Stirling, won the league title while he was their professional. Mike Denness, the Scot who went on to captain England, was one of many who benefited from Iffla’s coaching at Ayrshire: “I learned so much just from watching the man, let alone listening to what he was saying.” Iffla continued as an amateur into his sixties, ending his club career with more than 13,000 runs and 1,600 wickets. In 2009, he was granted the Freedom of Stirling; the flag at the city council chambers flew at half-mast for his funeral.

JEGUST, GERTRUDE MARIE, died on February 21, a month short of her 101st birthday. Born in Beckenham in 1911, Marie Jegust was taken to Australia when young: her family helped establish the township of Cowaramup in the south-western corner of Western Australia. In 1930, she became the foundation secretary of the WA Women’s Cricket Association, and seven years later returned to the land of her birth with the Australian women’s team, although she had a modest tour, and did not play in any of the Tests. Her memoirs, 99 Not Out, came out shortly before her death.

JORDON, RAYMOND CLARENCE, died on August 13, aged 75. Always known as “Slug”, because he had collected a blank bullet in his side during National Service, Ray Jordon was Victoria’s wicketkeeper for most of the 1960s. To the seamers, he was safe and unostentatious but, standing up, his speed and sureness were exceptional: 48 of his 238 dismissals were stumpings, five of them from the fast-medium bowling of Alan Connolly, including Ian and Greg Chappell in the same innings. If batsmen were not intimidated by his withering welcome – in a voice “like a chainsaw”, according to Max Walker – they could grow agitated if Jordon decided to lurk in their pocket to a quick bowler. His best match haul was in 1970-71, his final season, when he collected nine catches and a stumping against South Australia. As a batsman, he was a habitual thorn down the list, where he allied a dogged defence to an ability to deal with the loose ones. Jordon’s only century came against South Australia in 1963-64.

He was a noted scrapper, but his willingness to push his luck probably cost him a Test cap. He toured India and South Africa in 1969-70, competing for a place with Brian Taber after the retirement of Barry Jarman. Taber was tried first and, when Jordon was given a game against India’s South Zone, Ian Chappell was convinced he knowingly let Erapalli Prasanna be given out bowled when the ball had rebounded from his pads. Chappell was adamant he would not play himself if Jordon was selected to replace Taber in a Test.

Jordon was a genuine character, and the stories about him are legion; many are true but few are printable. His vocabulary was not for the faint-hearted: one of his friends announced in the tributes column of a Melbourne paper that “Heaven will make a fortune from the swear-box.” Jordon was a dynamic presence in Australian Rules football as an insightful coach of younger players, and was described by Keith Stackpole, a close friend, as “a unique judge of character”, despite his abrasiveness. He had a period as a radio commentator on cricket, and his times on air with Richie Benaud gave a new dimension to Puccini’s “strange harmony of contrasts”. A stroke early in this century saw him draw on his reserves of stoicism, but eventually cancer was too much, even for Slug.

KUNTAL CHANDRA, often known by his nickname “Pappon”, was found dead on the side of a road in Daur, not far from Dhaka, on December 3. Police said the 28-year-old was discovered with injury marks on his throat, and his shirt had been used to tie his hands behind his back. No motive was immediately apparent. Chandra, a wicketkeeper-batsman, represented Bangladesh at the Under-19 World Cup early in 2000. Five years later he scored 33 and 71 on first-class debut, for Chittagong against Rajshahi at Bogra, but played only two further matches, both for Sylhet, in 2007.

KYLE, JACK, who died on June 21, aged 82, was president of the Canadian Cricket Association for 15 years until 1993. He played for British Columbia in the 1950s, and in 1955 scored 93 against Manitoba at Brockton Point in Vancouver, the ground rated by Don Bradman as the prettiest he ever saw.

LACHMAN, RUDY, who died on August 19, aged 50, was a left-hand batsman and slow left-armer from Guyana who played for the United States in the ICC Trophy tournaments of 1994, when he made 75 not out against Argentina in Nairobi, and 1997.

LAMASON, JOY GRACE (née Stenberg), who died on February 16, aged 96, was an all-rounder who played four Tests for New Zealand, taking four for 51 against England at Headingley in June 1954. Her brother-in-law Jack, a Wellington stalwart who toured England in 1937 without making the Test side, married Ina Pickering, who also played four Tests for New Zealand.

LEWIS, KEITH, who died on September 12, aged 89, opened the batting for South Australia in 1948-49, making some useful scores, the highest being 73 against Western Australia at Adelaide. Because he turned up to club practice just after the Second World War wearing his army uniform, he was dubbed “The Colonel”. His father’s sudden death in 1953 forced his retirement from club cricket, and he concentrated on running the family hardware business.

LOMBARD, ELISE, who died on August 9, aged 62, was the only female chief executive in South Africa’s provinces, having been in charge of the Northerns Cricket Union, latterly the Titans franchise, for 32 years. “She was an amazing woman who did so much for the Titans,” said the South African Test player Faf du Plessis, “and always with a smile on her face.”

LOVELL, Sir ALFRED CHARLES BERNARD, OBE, died on August 6, aged 98. Bernard Lovell was one of Britain’s greatest scientists, revered worldwide as a pioneer of radio astronomy. His lasting monument is the telescope at Jodrell Bank in Cheshire that now bears his name. It was built in the 1950s thanks chiefly to his drive and determination, although visitors to the site who arrived at lunchtime might have had to wait while he finished his game of cricket with staff and students. Lovell’s love of the sport began during his boyhood in Bristol, and continued when he accepted a post in the physics department of Manchester University in 1936. Like Sir Neville Cardus, he relished the fact that the city held the combined attractions of Old Trafford and the Hallé Orchestra. Lovell became a devoted follower of Lancashire – he was club president in 1996 – and could not resist exploring how technology might benefit the game, devising a contraption rather like a clock face that kept spectators informed of the state of the light. Lovell was remarkably far-sighted, writing to John Woodcock – then Wisden editor – in 1983 to suggest technology could be used to determine lbws. The TCCB (later the ECB) set up a working party, but the computers involved were too costly and slow. “His wisdom and prescience have been witnessed by the advent of Hawk-Eye,” said Woodcock. Lovell also foresaw the possibilities of the snickometer. Jim Cumbes, the former Lancashire chief executive, recalled: “He invented a device that fixed to the top of the bat and would detect a nick, but when we did a test it picked up the frequency of the local taxi company.”

LYNCH, RONALD VICTOR, died on June 27, aged 89. Slow left-armer Ron Lynch played three matches for Essex in June 1954 and took his four wickets in one innings – for 54 runs against Northamptonshire at Rushden. His county career might have been brief, but he played club cricket for years, for Ilford and later Chingford; he also represented the Club Cricket Conference and served on their committees.

McGIBBON, LEWIS, who died on September 22, aged 80, was a fast-medium bowler from Newcastle who took 33 wickets in 13 appearances for Northamptonshire in the late 1950s after some success in Minor Counties cricket with Northumberland. His best figures were four for 42 against Somerset in 1958, although he did take seven for 14 for the Second Eleven the following year as Worcestershire were bowled out for 45. An accountant, McGibbon served on Northamptonshire’s committee from 1962 to 1980, including a spell as treasurer.

MANGERA, MOOSA, who died on November 15, aged 67, was a useful batsman and fine fielder, often keeping wicket, who played 29 matches now considered first-class for Transvaal’s non-white teams in the 1970s and ’80s. He scored 98 against Eastern Province at Lenasia in 1973-74. Nicknamed “Monkey” because of his speed and agility, Mangera was also a talented footballer and track athlete.

MANZUR AHMED, who died of a heart attack on January 10, aged 54, was the chief executive of the Bangladesh Cricket Board. A former wicketkeeper, he had a long club career, and was the Brunei association’s chief executive before taking up the BCB post in 2010. “The news shocked everyone at the ICC,” said their outgoing chief executive Haroon Lorgat. “I worked closely with him during the organising of the 2011 World Cup.”

MARSHALL, JOHN CAMPBELL, who died on April 26, aged 83, was a batsman who played 16 matches for Oxford University between 1951 and 1953, winning a Blue in his final year, not long after scoring his only century – 111 against Free Foresters in the Parks. Marshall was better known as a rugby player, winning five caps for Scotland at full-back in 1954. He became a teacher, and soon returned to his old school, Rugby, where he took charge of the cricket.

MARSHALL, WALTER MAXWELL MILNE, died on November 24, 2006, aged 86. Max Marshall was a slow left-armer who played a few matches in Trinidad’s Beaumont Cup (not first-class at the time). Later, he was assistant manager on West Indies’ tour of Australia in 1960-61 – which started with the Tied Test at Brisbane. When injuries hit the squad mid-trip, he was pressed into service for his only first-class appearance, against Tasmania at Launceston: aged 40, he scored one not out and did not bowl.

MAYNARD, THOMAS LLOYD, died after being electrocuted on a railway line on June 18, aged 23. During the weekend before his death, Tom Maynard was a cheerful presence on television screens, as a guest on Sky’s knockabout Saturday show Cricket AM and as part of Finishing School, a documentary about the England Performance Programme’s winter training. There had been a chance to glimpse him in the flesh, too, in Surrey’s Sunday afternoon Twenty20 match against Kent at Beckenham. Then, shortly after breakfast time on Monday, came the news that his body had been found on the tracks near Wimbledon Park tube station in south London. Not since the death in 2002 of Ben Hollioake – also of Surrey, also youthful, good-looking and precocious – had English cricket been so numbed by tragedy.

Five weeks earlier, against Worcestershire at New Road, Maynard’s talent had been thrillingly laid bare. With Surrey following on, he made a career-best 143, moving to three figures with a six. The watching Kevin Pietersen called Andy Flower that evening to offer an enthusiastic endorsement. Not that this surprised Graham Thorpe, his EPP batting coach: “Tom scored runs when his team needed them, which is crucial for a player who has potential to get to the top.”

The innings also underlined a new cricketing maturity acquired in his second season at The Oval. “He had moved to another level,” said Dean Conway, the former Glamorgan and England physio who had known him all his life. “Before joining Surrey he had the talent but not the stats.” At his funeral, at Llandaff Cathedral in Cardiff, Hugh Morris – the former Glamorgan opening batsman now managing director of England cricket – said Maynard had first toddled into the dressing-room at Sophia Gardens with his father Matthew at the age of two. Thereafter, he was seldom out of it. Conway remembered: “He became like one of the team. We called him ‘Bruiser’. Even then, he had massive arms and legs.”

Maynard attended Whitchurch High School, a sporting hothouse that also nurtured the talents of Sam Warburton, a future Wales rugby captain, and the Tottenham Hotspur footballer Gareth Bale. From there he went to Millfield where, in his mid-teens, rugby briefly threatened to become his main sport. In June 2007, aged 18, he made a dazzling first senior appearance for Glamorgan, scoring 71 from 75 deliveries against Gloucestershire in the Friends Provident Trophy. At first, his one-day returns were always more eye-catching: in August 2009 came a 57-ball century – one fewer than his father’s one-day quickest – against Northamptonshire. But the summer of 2010 ended traumatically, when Glamorgan missed promotion in the Championship on the final day, and Matthew Maynard lost his job as director of cricket. Shocked by the treatment meted out to his father, Tom relocated to Surrey, joining his old Millfield friend Rory Hamilton-Brown. He was energised by the change, and in 2011 played a full part in their promotion in the County Championship and CB40 triumph. There were 1,022 Championship runs at nearly 41, including a seemingly preordained hundred against Glamorgan at Cardiff. His form earned him selection for the EPP in 2011-12, when he impressed Thorpe on a trip to India. “He came across as a caring and kind young man,” he said. “I thought he learned a lot from that time away in Asia, and on his return to England he really did look the standout batsman at Surrey.”

Matthew Maynard’s abundant talent was never successfully transferred to the international stage, but many believed his son had the temperament and ability to prosper there. Morris called him “a player who was surely destined for the highest reaches of the game, and whose authority and elegance at the crease reminded so many of his father”. Another speaker at Llandaff Cathedral was the Glamorgan captain Mark Wallace. “I will always remember him as the lad who could make me laugh more than anyone else I have ever met,” he said. “I just wish he had never made me cry.”

MISHRA, SIDDHARTHA, who died of cancer on October 30, aged 41, was a writer with a particular fondness for cricket, and the sports editor of the New Indian Express. His last article was about Sachin Tendulkar’s century of centuries. He observed: “This number is perhaps the worst measure imaginable for Tendulkar, blessed – and simultaneously cursed – as he is to turn everything he touches into a record-breaking statistic.”

MKRAKRA, MASIXOLE, drowned in Bathurst, South Africa, on December 17. “Hassan” Mkrakra was 20, and one of a group of youngsters trying to wash themselves in a disused quarry after a week in the bush that included his circumcision ceremony. They were using empty plastic bottles as buoyancy aids, but Mkrakra gave his to a struggling friend before disappearing under the water. He was a promising cricketer who in March 2012 received a standing ovation at a Sporting Heroes dinner at Lord’s, after telling a distinguished audience – including Prince Edward, Derek Underwood and Boris Becker – about the dreams of impoverished youngsters who played for the Tiger Titans cricket team.

MONAGHAN, RUBY, died on June 10, aged 96. Ruby Monaghan (later Lee) grew up playing vigoro, a then-popular blend of cricket and softball for girls, but switched to conventional cricket as a teenager and was selected for New South Wales against the 1934-35 England tourists. In a display of mature concentration and sound defence, she made 25 and 45, adding 84 for the second wicket with Hazel Pritchard. Monaghan, the youngest player in the side, was chosen for the first two internationals of that tour – the inaugural women’s Tests – but was dropped after a highest score of 12 in four innings. She had become the second woman, after Pritchard, to face a ball in a Test match.

MOORE, Sir PATRICK ALFRED CALDWELL, CBE, died on December 9, aged 89. Death held no fears for Sir Patrick Moore, who believed that the end of an earthbound life was merely the start of a new existence. “We go on to the next stage,” he said. “I shall be interested to see what it is. Who knows? It might be somewhere I can learn to bat decently.” Britain’s most famous astronomer, who hosted The Sky at Night on BBC television for more than 50 years, was a devoted cricket lover who kept his size 12 boots on the hearth in his study, next to his 2001 BAFTA award for services to television, and near the 1908 typewriter on which he wrote more than 100 books. He was cheerfully honest about his hopelessness with the bat in Sussex club cricket, but he was more successful as a leg-spinner; his 14-pace run-up was typically eccentric. In one of his final books, Can You Play Cricket on Mars? (2008), he concluded that the contest would be heavily weighted in favour of batsmen, able to hit the ball enormous distances in the thin Martian atmosphere; bowlers would be unable to find any swing, always assuming they could cope with a bulky space suit.

MORTON, RUNAKO SHAKUR, was killed in a car accident on March 4. He was driving home from a club match at the Queen’s Park Oval when his car hit a telegraph pole on the Solomon Hochoy Highway in central Trinidad. He was 33.

Morton was originally from Nevis, which has defied its minuscule size and population (around 12,000) to produce six Test players. His promise was recognised as early as 1996, when he was picked for the regional Under-19 team in three matches against their Pakistani counterparts in the Caribbean. A strong and aggressive batsman, if predominantly bottom-handed, he became one of the leading scorers for the Leeward Islands, amassing 4,104 runs at an average of 44 with 11 hundreds, among them successive innings of 210 against Barbados and 231 against the Combined Campuses & Colleges in 2009.

A volatile temperament that repeatedly led him into trouble, allied to technical defects, limited Morton’s success at the highest level. Yet, as several of his team-mates attested, his love of the game could not be queried. The first of his widely publicised run-ins with authority led to his expulsion from the West Indian board’s initial Academy in 2001. A year later, he left the Champions Trophy early after claiming his grandmother had died. She turned out to be hale and hearty, which – compounded by further indiscretions on an A-team tour – brought him a year-long ban. There were later clashes with the law: a year before his death he and fellow Nevisian Tonito Willett were charged by the T&T police with possession of marijuana, an accusation to which they pleaded not guilty. Friends reported that marriage to a Trinidadian woman, and bringing up their three children, had been a calming influence. After moving to Port-of-Spain, Morton piled up the runs for Queen’s Park, Trinidad’s oldest and most famous club, where he was a popular mentor to young players; chosen for T&T for what turned out to be his final season in 2011, he became one of the few to represent two territories in the regional first-class tournament.

The first of two strikes by senior players opened the way to his Test debut in Sri Lanka in 2005. Like many of the first-timers, he was embarrassed by the mesmerising spin of Muttiah Muralitharan and the swing of Chaminda Vaas. Still, Morton’s breathtaking catching in the slips moved Ian Chappell, commentating on the series, to rate him the best in the position at the time. In 15 Tests up to 2008, going in mostly at No. 3 or 4, Morton averaged just 22. The closest he came to a hundred was at Napier in 2005-06; unbeaten on 70, he was denied by rain. His 67, against Australia at Sabina Park in 2007-08 in a fourth-wicket partnership of 128 with Shivnarine Chanderpaul, was probably his best innings – but the next Test was his last.

Morton was more at home in one-day internationals, in which he averaged 33 despite being shuffled around the order: he was tried in every position from opener to No. 7. He scored centuries against New Zealand and Zimbabwe, although more representative of his belligerence and grit was an unbeaten 90 in Mumbai, in a victory over Australia that helped West Indies to the 2006 Champions Trophy final. Still, the contrasts which made Morton such an enigma had been typified only a few weeks earlier by an innings in a one-day international in Kuala Lumpur – also against Australia, he made a 31-ball duck, a record.

In his eulogy at a service in Trinidad which preceded the burial in Nevis, Brian Lara described Morton as “a fighter [who] worked harder than most, a true team man”. And Chris Gayle, Lara’s successor as captain, tweeted: “We lost a true warrior... heart of a lion. As captain at the time, I wish I had ten Mortons to lead on a cricket field!”

MUNIR MALIK, who died on November 30, aged 78, was a fast-medium bowler who played three Tests for Pakistan, two of them in 1962 in England, where he took five for 128 in 49 overs at Headingley. One spell from the Kirkstall Lane End lasted from 3pm on the Thursday to 1.30pm on the Friday. Munir had come to prominence with five for 12 and seven for 27 as Rawalpindi beat Peshawar in a Quaid-e-Azam Trophy match in December 1958, despite being bowled out for 53 in the first innings. He made his Test debut against Australia the following season, in a match watched by the American president Dwight Eisenhower. Munir’s speciality, according to the Pakistani journalist Qamar Ahmed, was his “vicious leg-cutter, plus a ball which dipped in”. His best innings return – eight for 154 – came in what turned out to be the last match of his ten-year career, for Karachi Whites against Punjab University at Lahore in April 1966.

MURRAY, LANCE HAMILTON, who died on October 21, aged 91, was a significant administrator in Trinidad and West Indies cricket. His flighted off-spin earned him three first-class matches, only one for the full Trinidad side – in 1956, the year the Trinidad & Tobago Cricket Board of Control replaced his own Queen’s Park club as the sole authority for the sport in the country, a move he strongly supported. He was the new board’s first vice-president, and their long-term representative on the West Indian board. He became more widely known as a radio analyst on regional and international matches in Port-of-Spain – and through the success of his son Deryck Murray, the wicketkeeper who won 62 Test caps between 1963 and 1980. In 1992, Lance was awarded Trinidad and Tobago’s second-highest honour, the Chaconia Medal, for his work in sports administration.

NAIDU, TORAM SHESHRAO, who died on April 1, aged 93, was believed to have been the oldest Indian first-class cricketer at the time of his death. Naidu had made his debut for Central Provinces and Berar against Douglas Jardine’s 1933-34 MCC tourists, falling to the Kent leg-spinner “Father” Marriott for a duck. He did better in the second innings, making 32 in a useful stand with his captain, C. K. Nayudu. Naidu played six further first-class matches in a career that stretched to 1951-52, scoring 56 against Hyderabad in December 1945. He was a long-time friend of the former Indian board president N. K. P. Salve, who died on the same day.

NEBLETT, CLEMENT EVERTON, died on holiday in St Vincent in March, aged 61. Clem Neblett was a powerful left-hand batsman and right-arm medium-pacer whose heavy scoring for the Police club in his native Guyana merited more than six first-class matches before he emigrated to Toronto in 1978. He soon became one of the leading all-rounders in local club cricket, and captained Canada in the ICC Trophy tournaments in England in 1982 and 1986. At the time of his death, Neblett had been resident in the United States for nearly 20 years.

NIMBALKAR, BHAUSAHEB BABUSAHEB, who died on December 11, the day before his 93rd birthday, will always be remembered for an innings of 443 not out in 1948-49. Nimbalkar was closing in on what was then the world record – Don Bradman’s 452 not out for New South Wales against Queensland in 1929-30 – when the opposition refused to play on. Kathiawar had been bowled out for 238 on the opening day at Poona, and when Maharashtra reached 826 for four by tea on the third, the Thakore Saheb of Rajkot – Kathiawar’s princely leader – ordered the Maharashtra captain, Raja Gokhale, to declare. If not, his team were going home. Gokhale offered to stop after two more overs, to allow Nimbalkar a chance of the record – but Kathiawar simply packed their bags and left. “Their skipper felt the name of his team would figure in the record books for the wrong reasons,” said Nimbalkar. “I was left stranded in the middle of the ground.” Only at tea had Nimbalkar been told how close he was: “Had I known, I would have gone for the runs.” He had hit 46 fours and a six during more than eight hours at the crease, but there was, though, some consolation. “I got a personal message from Sir Don Bradman,” he said. “Even though he had the world record, and I had only the record in India, he still rated my innings as better.” Strangely, Nimbalkar never won a Test cap, although he averaged more than 56 in a long Ranji Trophy career that stretched into the 1960s; his only taste of representative cricket was an unofficial Test against a Commonwealth XI in 1949-50, when he batted at No. 9 in both innings. “I don’t know why the selectors sidelined me all the time,” he said. “What really hurt me was that some less talented players got a chance to represent the country.”

NORTON, GERALD IVOR DESMOND, died on July 18, aged 93. Ivor Norton was a talented slow left-armer who captained Malvern College in 1938. He had a long club career, and also played two first-class matches for MCC. In the first, in Dublin in 1958, he took four for 44, then five for 26, as Ireland – needing 97 to win a rain-affected match – hung on for a draw at 82 for nine. Two years later, back in Dublin and now 41 years old, he took six for 57 and two for six, to finish his brief first-class career with 17 wickets at 7.82. Norton’s captain in both matches was George Chesterton, another distinguished Malvernian who died in 2012.

PAGARA, THE PIR (Syed Shah Mardan Shah II), who died on January 10, aged 83, was the spiritual leader of the Hurs, a Sufi Muslim community in Pakistan’s Sind province. The Pir was also an early patron of Pakistan cricket, embracing the sport despite the fact that the colonial government had hanged his father during an insurrection in 1943. He refounded the Sind Cricket Association, and entered their team in the Quaid-e-Azam Trophy: in his only first-class appearance he captained Sind against Bahawalpur in November 1953, scoring one and 15. Two seasons later, his own XI took on the touring MCC A-team at Hyderabad. He sponsored several promising cricketers; one of them, the Test fast bowler Mohammad Munaf, once hit him in the groin in the nets, and was dismayed to see a crowd of angry Hurs approaching with raised sticks. The Pir staggered to his feet and restored calm by assuring his followers he was all right. In later years he founded his own political party, the Pakistan Muslim League F (for “functional”).

PAGE, GLENYS LYNNE, who died on November 7, aged 72, was a left-arm spinner who played twice for New Zealand in the inaugural women’s World Cup, in England in 1973. In her first match, at St Albans, she took six for 20 as West Indies were skittled for 61. In December 1971, Page had taken eight for 54 for Auckland against Canterbury, and a few days later added seven for 55 against Otago.

PARR, FRANCIS DAVID, died on May 8, aged 83. There were some sound judges, Herbert Strudwick among them, who saw Frank Parr keep wicket for Lancashire in the early 1950s and concluded that a rival might be emerging for Godfrey Evans’s England place. Instead, Parr’s career ended after 49 matches when he became victim of the martinet Cyril Washbrook’s promotion to the Lancashire captaincy. Washbrook took vigorous exception to Parr’s immersion in jazz music, a world that could hardly have been more different from his captain’s view of county cricket.

Parr employed the hands that were so dextrous in the wicketkeeper’s gloves to play the trombone and, if his cricket career did not reach the predicted heights, his life as a musician proved more fulfilling. In the late ’50s, he was a member of the highly regarded Mick Mulligan Band, with George Melly as lead singer, and also played on stage with Louis Armstrong. Parr was a scruffy bohemian with a relaxed approach to personal hygiene and a penchant for cigarettes and whisky. According to Brian Statham, he “looked what he was: a spare-time musician”; Melly felt he “concealed a formidable, well-read intelligence behind a stylised oafishness”.

He was born in Wallasey, on the Wirral, and made his Lancashire debut at Fenner’s in 1951. The following summer, in only his second Championship appearance, he caught the attention of Strudwick at The Oval. And while his keeping to the spinners was a work in progress, he was acrobatic by the standards of the time, especially for a tall man. He was selected for MCC against Yorkshire at Lord’s in 1953, and asked whether he might be available to tour the West Indies that winter. But he was not selected, and by July 1954 his first-class career was over.

The reason was simple: the intransigent Washbrook had taken over as captain from the easy-going Nigel Howard. He was enraged when Parr arrived for a House of Commons reception wearing a blue shirt and, when Parr produced an untidy performance at Bristol, it was just the excuse he’d been looking for. As the team prepared to head to Edgbaston, Washbrook told him: “Frank, you’re going home.” Exiled to the Seconds, Parr began to play better than ever, leading to discussions about a move to Worcestershire. He might have thrived in the relaxed atmosphere of New Road, but Washbrook put paid to those ambitions with a letter to Worcestershire calling him a “grave social risk”. Parr was devastated. “It’s probably when I took up serious drinking,” he said.

He moved to London and joined the Mick Mulligan Band, whose chaotic years on the road are detailed in Melly’s book Owning Up, which devotes six pages to Parr. He continued to play cricket with a wandering team of jazz musicians called The Ravers, keeping wicket immaculately beyond the age of 60. In his final years, he lived in a council flat not far from Lord’s, where the writer Stephen Chalke was a visitor: “He was a good man, intelligent and sensitive, who lived in a state of complete and utter squalor, existing on coffee, whisky and the odd sausage.” Parr was a regular at ex-players’ evenings at Old Trafford, where Jim Cumbes, the former Lancashire chief executive, recalled: “He used to walk in without fuss, very unobtrusively, looking for the bar. He’d order a large scotch, however early it was. He was always good company.”

PATEL, SANTILAL KARA, who died on November 11, aged 90, was a South African administrator, notably as treasurer of the (non-white) Natal Cricket Board for 14 years from 1977-78, after which they united with the “white” association as the integration process cranked into gear. He was involved with Durban’s Bharat club for more than 50 years.

PAWSON, HENRY ANTHONY, OBE, died on October 11, aged 91. Tony Pawson was one of the last of the brilliant all-round sportsmen who emerged from the public schools and bestrode English sport in the first half of the 20th century. He had a good war, became a successful cricketer and footballer, and world champion fly-fisherman; he later combined a career in business with journalism for The Observer and 14 books. Small and self-effacing almost to vanishing point, he would hardly be noticed amid the bustle of a press box. “Modesty” did not do his demeanour justice: Pawson exuded, if anyone cared to notice, a kind of serenity.

He was the son of Guy Pawson, who captained Oxford in 1910, then joined the Sudan Civil Service: the first fish Tony almost caught was a Nile perch so large it almost caught him. As a 15-year-old at Winchester, he made 237 in a colts match at Lord’s, and in 1940 he emerged, said Wisden, as school cricket’s “batsman of the year” – a cutter and hooker “with a vigilance in defence beyond his years”. Thrust into the war, he was commissioned in the Rifle Brigade, attaining the rank of major, saw active service in Italy and North Africa, and was mentioned in despatches. His exploits included taking part in the bloody battle of Fondouk Pass in 1943, a tank attack he compared to the Charge of the Light Brigade. Once, a bullet passed through his forage cap. Having survived all that, he not surprisingly revelled in the joys of post-war cricket. However, his approach to sport, as well as his status, was amateur. Called up by Kent straight after demob in 1946, he made 90 on debut against Hampshire, and was soon given his cap and told by his captain Bryan Valentine he was in for the season. “Sorry, skipper, I’m off fishing,” came the reply.

Pawson appeared intermittently, but often successfully, for Kent until 1953. His batting never lost its youthful vigour, and his nifty singles were much appreciated by the spectators (though not by some of the old pros). But his remark to Valentine set the tone: he had too much else to do. At first, this was university: he made 135 in the 1947 Varsity Match, and the following year emulated his father by captaining Oxford to victory at Lord’s. Pawson was also a fine footballer – a Blue, an England amateur international, and an Olympian in 1948, before making two appearances for Charlton in the First Division in 1951-52. Asked if he might turn out occasionally, he agreed – assuming that meant the reserves – in return for tickets to the Christmas Day match against Spurs. At the game, the manager, Jimmy Seed, asked him if he fancied turning out on the wing in the return fixture next day. Advised merely to have a pre-match whisky to steady his nerves, he scored the winner. But his main football fame was as the speedy right-winger of the sensational Pegasus team of Oxbridge types that won the Amateur Cup in 1953.

On weekdays, Pawson rose to personnel director of Reed International. In 1968, however, he became cricket and football correspondent of The Observer. Although very part-time, he was game enough to head off from a Test and cover a First Division match immediately afterwards. His writing was elegant rather than glittering, but his work could reveal the competitive steel that underlay his bland persona and apparent dilettantism. For the Cricket Writers’ Club collection of essays, Cricket Heroes, he chose Douglas Jardine. He explained: “Whatever your attitude to a game, if you play at any level, you should play to win, with every fibre of your being devoted to doing well.” And Pawson lived up to his motto in 1984, becoming – at the age of 62 – the first Briton to win the world fly-fishing championship, catching 23 trout in three four-hour sessions on the River Tormes in Spain, the ultimate triumph for his understated skill and determination.

PEART, ERROL, was shot dead in Miami on December 2. He was 59, and had been trying to prevent a robbery at the car wash he owned. Peart, a Jamaican-born opener, was the leading run-scorer for the United States in the 1990 ICC Trophy in the Netherlands with 209, including a century against East and Central Africa.

PERERA, JAYALATHGE BERNARD NIHAL, died on November 9, aged 56. Bernard Perera was one of the Sri Lankan players who took part in an unauthorised tour of apartheid South Africa in 1982, which in effect ended his chances of an international career (the players were originally banned for 25 years, although this was lifted after eight). He went on to coach the national women’s team. A hard-hitting batsman and fine fielder, Perera was Sri Lanka’s twelfth man in their first official Test, against England in Colombo early in 1982, and toured Pakistan shortly afterwards. But he could not break into the side – despite making 56 not out for the Board President’s XI in England’s warm-up game – and signed up for the rebel tour later the same year. His only century came on that trip, in his final first-class match: 102 against a strong South African XI, who won by an innings at Cape Town thanks in part to Graeme Pollock, who fell to Perera’s off-spin for 197.

PERERA, SOMACHANDRA SARANAPALA, died on October 3, aged around 86. Chandra Perera was a Sri Lankan cricket historian and statistician, dubbed the “Walking Wisden” by friends. He used to collect scraps of information and keep them in cardboard boxes, which came in useful in 1999 for a 600-page collection of trivia and statistics called the Janashakthi Book of Cricket, which covered 165 years of the game in Sri Lanka. Perera also produced several books on Sri Lankan schools’ cricket, and numerous souvenir programmes for touring teams.

PILLING, HARRY, who died on September 22, aged 69, was 5ft 3in and thought at the time to be the smallest player in county cricket. But his height proved no impediment during the late 1960s and early ’70s, when Lancashire were the best one-day side in the country. Pilling’s frequent partnerships with Clive Lloyd – more than a foot taller – provided an engaging study in contrasts. Once, the story goes, the two were standing together between overs. “Pilling,” said the TV commentator, “is the one in the cap.”

Pilling began his cricketing life with Staley in the Saddleworth League and, after leaving school, joined Lancashire in 1959 aged 16. Not that the game brought great security: for much of his career he had to find work when the season finished. He made coffins, was an apprentice butcher, put the handles on umbrellas, and worked in a cotton mill. He even shovelled coal. “I was No. 1 shoveller,” he boasted. “Three shovelfuls to a bag – not bad for somebody of my size.” When he joined the staff, he was a leg-spinner standing only 4ft 7in and weighing little more than five stone. Jam and bread, he said, had been among his most regular meals. And the Old Trafford he walked into could be unpleasant: the atmosphere was shaped by autocrats such as Cyril Washbrook (“an arrogant professional who wished he was an amateur,” reckoned Harry), and it would be nearly another decade until Lancashire’s modernisation was led by Jack Bond. “They called them the good old days,” said Pilling, “but they weren’t always.”

For three years he played for the Second Eleven and, when the call came for a first-class match, it was unexpected. “Stand up and give Pierre a round of applause,” ordered coach Stan Worthington. Pilling – who had a haircut his team-mates thought made him look like a Frenchman – said: “It were embarrassing. I had to climb off bus past ’em all clapping.” Pilling played under three captains before Lancashire settled for Bond in 1968. He created a side, partly by accident, which was ideal for the newish game of one-day cricket. Lloyd and Farokh Engineer arrived, Bond was interested in fielding as an attacking strategy, and young locals such as David Hughes and Jack Simmons were, in Pilling’s words, the “kamikaze pilots” who thrashed lower-order runs. The result was Sunday League titles in 1969 and 1970, and a hat-trick of Gillette Cups from 1970. Pilling – now a top-order batsman – was Man of the Match in the first final, despite fearing the format would kill his career. “I was a nicker and a nudger,” he said. “I wasn’t a big strokeplayer. I thought the one-day stuff was just crash-bang-wallop.” As it turned out, his skills of deflection and placement, and his square cut, were perfect attributes: he was the first player to reach 1,000 runs in the Sunday League. “We all adored him in the dressing-room,” said the fast bowler Peter Lever. “He was the essence of Lancastrian cricket. It was almost as if he would die for his team-mates.”

Pilling scored more than 15,000 first-class runs, but never played for England. He came close twice, in 1970 and 1976, when a pair of hundreds in July looked likely to win him a place against West Indies. He remembered driving with the radio on, listening to the squad being called. “They went past ‘P’ and I thought: ‘That’s that, then.’ I’d have loved to have played. Just to get one cap and be given the chance. But I wasn’t everyone’s favourite person.” The dressing-room whisper, perhaps apocryphal, was that Washbrook – who had been an England selector – had warned: “Forget it. He’s a drunkard.” Pilling gladly admitted to liking a few pints, and grinned that he would add a couple of miles to his petrol claims on away trips to pay for them. In truth, he liked too many, and it was after his career ended in 1982 that his drinking became particularly damaging. He described his local pub as “all effin’ and blindin’ and gum boots”. His best mate at Lancashire had been John Sullivan, a former amateur boxing champion, and the pair caused mischief for years. Their dressing-room nicknames of H. Dirt and J. Filth summed up their relationship and pursuits. “We were in a club one night,” said Harry, “and some bloke tried to touch John up in t’toilet, so Sully smacked him once and he were flat out on t’stones.”

There were many more such tales, some of which Pilling would retell at his bungalow outside Bolton. Speaking with quiet generosity of those he had played with and against, he sipped from a pint mug of tea and drew on a roll-up. His little dog never left his side, knowing there were boiled sweets in the pocket of his tracksuit trousers. “No matter where Harry goes now,” said Jack Simmons at his funeral, “he will be loved, because he’ll be as popular as he ever was.”

RAIT KERR, DIANA MARY, who died on December 18, aged 94, was the first curator of the MCC Collection, principally responsible for the vast array of cricket memorabilia accrued at Lord’s over the years. Appointed in 1945, she oversaw the establishment of the MCC museum in 1953; previously, the most interesting items were dotted around the Pavilion. Her father, Colonel R. S. Rait Kerr, was the club’s secretary from 1936 to 1952, and “Miss RK” was one of the first women to attend an MCC dinner (in 1964, when the president Dick Twining began the evening with a well-received “Lady and gentlemen”). She was also – 31 years after her retirement – one of the first group of lady members elected in 1999. Rait Kerr co-wrote (with Ian Peebles) Lord’s 1946–70, a substantial sequel to Sir Pelham Warner’s earlier history of MCC and Lord’s. Although she had no formal library training, she became an expert on cricket’s literary and artistic history, and especially the evolution of players’ dress. She was a stickler for convention, and her sucessor Stephen Green for years remained worried that she might make an impromptu visit – or “inspection” – of the museum. “She did present an air of formidability,” agreed Trefor Jones, another Lord’s colleague. “But actually she was a typical English colonel’s daughter of that era, with more good-natured warmth about her than was apparent on first acquaintance.”

RANA, NARENDRASINH PRATAPSINH, who died of liver failure on May 17, aged 41, was a tall fast bowler who took the new ball for Saurashtra for several seasons in the Ranji Trophy, occasionally with his younger brother Mahendrasinh. Opening the bowling for a weakish team on batsman-friendly pitches at Rajkot meant his overall figures were uninspiring – 46 wickets at 55, with a best of four for 66 against Maharashtra in November 1998 – but team-mates recalled a naturally talented cricketer, from a prominent local family, who was also a handy batsman.

RANDALL, DAVID AARON, who died of bowel cancer on July 6, aged 27, was a fine schoolboy batsman who had been in the running for a place in the England Under-15 team, alongside his friend and club-mate Alastair Cook – they played together for Essex’s youth teams, and also for Maldon. Cook attended Randall’s funeral, and a few days later scored his 20th Test century against South Africa at The Oval. “It’s been an emotional time,” he said. “We’re lucky enough to play cricket, aren’t we? Unfortunately he can’t any more.”

RAZAULLAH KHAN, who died on November 5, aged 75, played 24 matches for various first-class teams in a long career in Pakistan that stretched from 1957-58 to 1972-73, usually keeping wicket. He made 76, his highest score, opening for Khairpur against Karachi Blues – containing the future Test all-rounder Asif Iqbal, whom he stumped – in Lahore in 1961-62. Later he became president of the Hyderabad Cricket Association and a Pakistan board council member, and managed the national Under-19 side.

REES-MOGG, LORD (William), who died on December 29, aged 84, was editor of The Times between 1967 and 1981, and a prominent Establishment figure for many years after that, yet he was best remembered for an editorial written in July 1967 that flew defiantly in the face of Britain’s ruling classes. Headlined “Who breaks a butterfly on a wheel?” it criticised the prison sentences handed out to Rolling Stones Mick Jagger and Keith Richards for minor drug offences, sparking an outcry that led to their release.

Rees-Mogg was descended from a line of Somerset squires, and his roots remained planted in the county’s soil, even when he held high-profile metropolitan positions. He was an enthusiastic supporter of Somerset cricket, wrote frequently about the game, and had seen hundreds by Hammond and Bradman. When he picked his Somerset dream team for The Times in 2007, it drew on decades of first-hand experience. He was also waiting by the phone on the afternoon of September 16, 2010, when Somerset were on the brink of winning the County Championship for the first time. Rees-Mogg was only too willing to write an exultant piece for next day’s paper, but Nottinghamshire snatched the title.

At Charterhouse he was a contemporary of Peter May and was taught by Robert Arrowsmith, the obituaries editor of Wisden. Rees-Mogg was also the first-team scorer – John Woodcock called him “the keeper of the scorebook and, later, of The Times” – and he sometimes introduced cricket into opinion pieces about the great political issues of the day. Writing in The Sunday Times in 1964, he called for Alec Douglas-Home’s resignation in a piece headlined “A Captain’s Innings”. In 1994, he wrote a remarkably deft critique of another prime minister’s leadership: it did not mention John Major by name, but discussed at length the worthy, unspectacular attributes of the Somerset all-rounder Bertie Buse.

ROBINSON, ALEXANDER WILLIAM, died on June 18, aged 87. His first-class career for Western Australia was confined to two matches in 1952-53, but Alex Robinson had a lasting influence in Perth as a club and school coach, and was one of the first to recognise the potential of the teenage Dennis Lillee. He later gained a master’s degree in recreation management from Loughborough University, and moved from teaching to sports administration, eventually being appointed deputy director of WA’s Department of Sport and Recreation. Robinson abhorred the sponsorship of sport by tobacco and alcohol companies, both on health and moral grounds, and ultimately resigned from his State coaching positions. His father (also Alex) represented WA against the 1907-08 MCC tourists and was an outstanding Australian Rules footballer, while his older brother, George, played an important role as a batsman when the state won the Sheffield Shield at their first attempt, in 1947-48.

ROBINSON, HENRY BASIL OSWIN, died on December 21, aged 93. A Rhodes Scholar from Canada, Basil Robinson was a sharp-turning off-spinner who won Blues at Oxford in 1947 and 1948. He took six for 55, which remained his best figures, against Worcestershire at New Road in his first season, and added six more in the 1947 Varsity Match, dismissing Trevor Bailey in the first innings and Doug Insole in the second. The following year Robinson took five for 60 against Sussex, but was needed for only three wicketless overs at Lord’s as Oxford’s seamers wrapped up an innings victory. Robinson went back to Vancouver after that, but returned to England in 1954 as captain of a strong Canadian touring team. He became a diplomat, and later wrote a biography of Canada’s prime minister John Diefenbaker, as well as a family history entitled This Family Robinson.

ROWLANDS, MEYRICK, collapsed and died shortly after being dismissed in a cricket match in Hook, Pembrokeshire, on July 24. He was 60, and had retired as headmaster of the nearby Pennar Community School only four days earlier. “Cricket was his great passion,” said his colleague Martin Cavaney, one of the school’s governors.

SAFIULLAH KHAN, who died on March 20, aged 71, was a left-arm seamer who played 42 first-class matches in Pakistan, mainly for Peshawar, between 1957 and 1975. He took nine for 62 against Railways B at Peshawar in March 1972, and later took up umpiring, standing in several first-class matches.

SALVE, NARENDRA KUMAR PRASADRAO, who died on April 1, aged 91, is the man usually credited with moving the World Cup to the subcontinent. He was the Indian board president at the time of India’s upset victory over West Indies in the 1983 final and, having had trouble obtaining tickets for the big match at Lord’s, hatched the plan over lunch the following day with his Pakistan counterpart, Nur Khan. There was a general assumption that the 1987 tournament, like its three predecessors, would be held in England – but Salve, a long-serving Congress Party MP and minister in Rajiv Gandhi’s government, challenged that cosy arrangement, mobilising the support of sympathetic Full and Associate Members of the ICC in a way not seen before, if increasingly familiar since. The 1987 World Cup was indeed staged in India and Pakistan, with the final at Kolkata: “He was responsible for it becoming the global event it is today,” said N. Srinivasan, the current BCCI president. Salve was a useful club player in his youth in Nagpur, and also umpired three first-class games in the early 1950s. The annual Challenger Trophy (trial matches for India’s one-day side) is named after him.

SARAIYA, SURESH, who died on July 18, aged 76, had been a popular broadcaster on Test cricket since 1969, usually for All India Radio. “Few commentators had his desire and preparation,” remembered his colleague Harsha Bhogle. “He was like a child when we broadcast from South Africa in 1992 – he had tears that morning in Durban, when India played South Africa’s first home Test since 1970.”

SARGENT, MURRAY ALFRED JAMES, died on February 28, aged 83. A late bloomer, Sargent had batted without distinction for the Glenelg club in Adelaide for over a decade from 1947-48. During that time he had two seasons with Leicestershire, where modest success in the Second Eleven was not repeated in the senior side: in 1952, he averaged under 12 from 18 innings. But at the end of the 1950s he suddenly flowered as an opener, and at 32 found himself partnering Les Favell for South Australia for one successful season. Sargent’s obdurate methods brought him 164 in nearly nine hours against Queensland. It was then back to grade cricket, where his run-making continued for another decade. He later turned to administration, serving as a South Australian selector for seven seasons from 1984-85, and Glenelg’s president for 17.

SATHE, ISHAN SUBODH, was found dead on April 18. He was 20. A promising leg- spinner who had played for Vidarbha’s age-group teams and in trials for India’s Under-19 side, Sathe was found hanging from the ceiling fan in his room, not long after an argument with his girlfriend. Narendra Hirwani said: “He had that rare ability to turn the ball sharply.” Sathe had also caught the eye of Sachin Tendulkar, who arranged for him to train with the Mumbai Indians, his IPL team.

SHARP, PETER ANDREW, who died on February 18, aged 72, played eight first-class matches for Canterbury as an off-spinner in the 1960s, taking 21 wickets, but was better known as a radio commentator. “One of the most famous voices in New Zealand cricket has fallen silent,” said his colleague Bruce Russell.

SLACK, JOHN KENNETH EDWARD, DL, who died on May 6, aged 81, scored 135 on his first-class debut, for Cambridge University against Middlesex at Fenner’s in 1954, and did enough in the other matches of his final year to win a Blue, although he was out for 12 and nought in the drawn Varsity Match at Lord’s. That was the end of his first-class cricket: he turned down an offer to play for Middlesex, preferring to concentrate on his legal career, in which he rose to become a circuit judge known for his expertise in fraud trials. Slack had not finished with cricket, though: a club regular for Beaconsfield, he played for Buckinghamshire, and captained them from 1967 to 1969.

SMITH, ARCHIBALD WILLIAM, died on November 1, aged 89. Archie Smith was a pillar of Cornwall’s Minor Counties side for many years, taking 135 wickets, including nine for 49 against Oxfordshire at Penzance in 1953. A headmaster, he founded the Cornwall Schools’ Cricket Association in 1956, and was their first secretary (and treasurer until 1977). “He was a real gentleman cricketer,” said his friend Michael Williams, a local author. “He never appealed for an lbw unless he was absolutely certain it was necessary.”

SNOW, PHILIP ALBERT, OBE, who died on June 5, aged 96, was a first-class cricketer by virtue of five matches, captaining Fiji on a tour of New Zealand in 1947-48. These were given first-class status many years later, almost entirely due to Snow’s own lobbying at Lord’s. The tour caused considerable interest since the Fijian players (not Snow) wore traditional skirts and no shoes, and entertained the crowds with South Sea songs. The team were competitive too, and beat both Wellington and Auckland. As a cricketer, he failed to get even a trial at Cambridge, but in 1937 and 1938 he captained Leicestershire’s Second Eleven, before being appointed an administrator and magistrate in Fiji. He was instantly elected chairman of the Suva Cricket Club, and fell in love with the place. After the war, he founded the Fiji Cricket Association, and set about organising the New Zealand tour. On return to England, he became bursar of Rugby School and, in 1965, Fiji’s representative on the International Cricket Conference (later Council), a post he retained for a record 30 years, devotedly championing Fiji’s cause. He wrote several books, mainly about the South Seas and his family. He also wrote at least twice in old age to the editor of Wisden enclosing his biography for the benefit of his obituarist, in the hope that he would match his older brothers (the novelist C. P. Snow and the Leicestershire cricket historian E. E. Snow) by being included. That he has achieved, but perhaps his greatest wish – the advancement of Fijian cricket – remains unfulfilled.

SPURRIER, MICHAEL CUMBY, who died on July 9, aged 79, was acknowledged as the leading expert on military links with cricket, a subject he covered in some detail in Wisden Cricket Monthly in a series on cricketers decorated for gallantry. He had been in the army himself – a major in the Durham Light Infantry – and was apparently once in charge of transport on an exercise in which he started with 400 vehicles, and returned with 401.

SRINIVASAN, KRISHNASWAMI, died on April 27, aged 82. “Balaji” Srinivasan was an attacking batsman and a polished wicketkeeper who played for Mysore (now Karnataka). He scored 106 against Madras in 1952-53, and the following year played twice for India against a strong Commonwealth XI, in what he was later disappointed to discover were unofficial Tests. Opening in the first one at Nagpur after Frank Worrell had stroked 165, Srinivasan made 67. He was a keen student of the game. “I was interested in the poetry and prose of cricket,” he said. “It made my modest career colourful and enjoyable.”

STOVOLD, MARTIN WILLIS, died on May 11, aged 56. The younger brother of Andy, who had a long career with Gloucestershire, Martin Stovold played for the county too, although his best score in 25 matches was an unbeaten 75 against Oxford University in the Parks in 1980. He managed a solitary half-century in the Championship, 52 against Warwickshire at Nuneaton in 1982, in his penultimate match. After a spell in South Africa, where he coached the young Jacques Kallis in Cape Town, he returned home and took charge of the cricket at Cheltenham College.

SURENDRANATH, RAMAN, who died on May 5, aged 75, was an army officer and hard-working medium-pacer who played 11 Tests for India. He was effective in England in 1959, taking 16 wickets at 26 in a series India lost 5–0, with five-fors at Old Trafford and The Oval. The pick, though, was probably the inswinger that knocked back Peter May’s off stump at Lord’s. In all, Surendranath took 79 wickets on that tour (only the leg- spinner Subhash Gupte had more, with 95), although Wisden was rather sniffy about his tactic of bowling down the leg side to keep the runs down. His Test career was over within 18 months, but he played on for Services until 1968-69. He had taken seven for 14 and six for 62 for them against Railways in Delhi in January 1959, not long after winning his first Test cap, against West Indies, and made 119 against Southern Punjab at Patiala in December 1961.

SWABY, EATON OHIO, who died on February 9, aged 85, was a Jamaican-born fast bowler who made a name for himself in club cricket in south London. He took more than 1,000 first-team wickets for Mitcham – where part of the outfield of their ancient ground became known as “Swabes’s Corner” – before joining Sutton CC in his fifties and turning to coaching.

SWANEPOEL, HEINDRICH, who died of a suspected heart attack while on holiday in Morocco in October, aged 43, was a pillar of England’s blind cricket team, almost ever-present since the side were formed in 1996. He played for the Metro club in London, and was part of the team that won the Blind Ashes in 2004 and 2008. He won a bronze medal in the javelin at the 2000 Sydney Paralympics. “Heindrich was a giant,” said the ECB’s disability cricket manager Ian Martin, “both in physical stature and in terms of his contribution to the blind game as a player and an administrator.”

TAYLOR, PHILIP HENRY, who died on December 1, aged 95, had been the oldest surviving England football international: he won three caps in 1947. He was a key member of the Liverpool team that won the first post-war League Championship in 1946-47, and captained them in the 1950 FA Cup final against Arsenal. Taylor, who was born in Bristol, also excelled at cricket, and opened the batting for Gloucestershire Second Eleven in the late 1930s. For his one first-class outing, however, he batted at No. 8, making two and 12 in a ten-wicket defeat by Kent at Gloucester in June 1938. He later managed Liverpool, and his resignation in 1959 paved the way for the arrival of Bill Shankly.

THAKURI, GANESH BAHADUR SHAHI, died on December 13, aged 40. A wicketkeeper-batsman who played in the 2001 ICC Trophy in Canada, he was “the best Nepali wicketkeeper I have seen,” according to the former national captain Pawan Agrawal. “More importantly, he was a better human being.”

THOMAS, DAVID JAMES, died of multiple sclerosis on July 28, aged 53. There was a time in the early 1980s when David “Teddy” Thomas looked as if he was shaping up to be just the sort of cricketer England were looking for. A left-arm quick bowler who threw everything into his delivery stride following an energetic run-up, he might have added useful variety to the attack, and contributed rapid runs down the order. But he never got the chance to be the new Botham, perhaps because the old Botham was still in full working order. Thomas was named in squads for home Tests, and was twelfth man at Trent Bridge against New Zealand in 1983. It was as close as he came.

Not that he was a man to let it spoil his fun. Thomas – the “Teddy” sobriquet was bestowed because of a hairstyle that had echoes of the 1950s – was a valued member of the Surrey team for ten years, not just for his wickets and runs but for his sense of humour. He also spent one season with Gloucestershire, and in South Africa played for Natal and North Transvaal. But his career ended at 29 when he was diagnosed with MS. He spent his final years in a wheelchair, but remained a jocular, upbeat figure who relished reunions with former colleagues. He had been a chairman of Surrey’s former players’ association.

Thomas came to the attention of Surrey while playing for Beaconsfield, and made his first-class debut in 1977, aged 18. Micky Stewart had captained him in club and ground games, and thought him “hyperactive but a loveble, likeable lad. He couldn’t do anything slowly”. Stewart also recognised his talent: “He had quick hands with the bat and he could whack it. He was an exciting cricketer.” Three appearances for England Under-19s against West Indies in 1978 underlined his potential, but progress for Surrey was no more than steady. Robin Jackman remembered: “He bowled his left-armers at a lively pace and with aggression, but he struggled to swing the ball back into the right-hander, which would have produced many more wickets. Against left-handers, bowled and lbw became serious options.”

Thomas had two exceptional summers for Surrey. In 1983, he took 57 wickets at 31 and scored 937 runs at 36, including centuries against Nottinghamshire and Sussex. The following season he took 60 wickets at 27, including a career-best six for 36 against Somerset at The Oval. Another great moment came in the 1982 NatWest final, when Surrey at last won a one-day trophy after three successive defeats. Thomas took the match award for his three for 26, including Dennis Amiss and Geoff Humpage for ducks. But after 1984 his returns became more modest as injuries reduced his effectiveness. He moved to Gloucestershire in 1988, but MS was discovered when he was examined for a neck injury sustained in a car accident while he had been at Surrey. He retired after making 150 first-class appearances, in which he took 336 wickets at just under 34, and scored 3,044 runs at 20. He was, however, a cricketer remembered for more than bare statistics. “He brought life and soul into any dressing-room,” said Jackman.

THOMAS, MALCOLM CAMPBELL, who died on April 9, aged 82, played four times for Cornwall in the 1951 Minor Counties Championship, scoring 56 at The Oval against Surrey’s Second Eleven. But he found greater fame in rugby, as a goal-kicking centre who won 27 caps for Wales (two as captain) and played four times for the British Lions. He scored the decisive try against Ireland as Wales clinched the Triple Crown in 1950, and later that year was the leading points-scorer for the Lions in Australasia.

TINDALL, RONALD ALBERT ERNEST, OAM, who died on September 9, aged 76, was one of that elite band of sportsmen who packed away their bat as the county season came to a close and immediately donned boots to spend the next eight months playing professional football. Ron Tindall was no makeweight at either sport, appearing in 173 first-class games for Surrey and playing 368 Football League games for Chelsea, West Ham, Reading and Portsmouth. “I was busy all year round,” he said.

Tindall was a south Londoner, born in Streatham, and came to the attention of Surrey while playing in Camberley. An aggressive batsman, off-spin bowler and agile fielder, he signed on at The Oval in 1952, aged 16, but did not make his first-class debut until four years later, and only became a regular in 1960. Progress in his winter employment was swifter. He joined Chelsea in 1953, and made his first-team debut in November 1955, in a side in decline after winning the League Championship the previous season. At the start of the 1957-58 campaign, he began a productive partnership with 17-year-old Jimmy Greaves (“a genius”, said Tindall) that brought them a joint tally of 38 goals that season, and 59 – still a club record – in 1960-61.

He may have been a bigger name in football, but Tindall took his cricket seriously enough to negotiate a contract that allowed him to miss the end of one football season and the start of the next. These were difficult years at Surrey, no longer the dominant force in the domestic game, and they were grateful for Tindall’s steady contributions. In 1962, he scored 777 runs and took 66 wickets, which included his best bowling, five for 41 against Cambridge University at The Oval. Next summer he passed 1,000 runs for the only time, making a career-best 109 not out, also at his home ground, against Nottinghamshire.

In truth, though, he was valued in the dressing-room as much for his elaborate jokes, which meandered to a punchline. And, when captain Micky Stewart introduced football as a means of warming up in the mornings, he was especially popular – at least if he was on your side. Tindall foresaw a future in football coaching or management, and retired from cricket in 1966. By this time, he was playing for Portsmouth – a defender now, rather than a forward – before becoming player/coach, then manager in 1970. Later in the decade, he joined his former Oval team-mates Tony Lock and Peter Loader in Western Australia, where he became director of coaching with the state football federation. Over nearly 30 years he established a considerable reputation, and in 2008 he was awarded the Order of Australia Medal for services to sport.

TOOVEY, ERNEST ALBERT, OAM, MBE, died on July 18, aged 90. The record books would suggest Ernie Toovey had an unspectacular career as a left-hand batsman for Queensland during the first half of the 1950s; his peak was in 1951-52, when he made five half-centuries. He often had to rein in his attacking instincts to shore up his side’s fragile batting, and his total of 150 runs in the match against Victoria at the MCG in December 1951 took almost seven hours. During his second-innings 87, he became, according to him, the only batsman to hit mystery spinner Jack Iverson for six in a first-class match, a feat he would recount with relish. Next season, Toovey slipped the leash against the South Africans at Brisbane, hitting 71 in a partnership of 102 in 89 minutes with Ron Archer. In the outfield, he was both brilliant and sure, and his speed across the ground and the bullet-like accuracy of his returns saved countless runs. He was a state selector for 25 years from 1961-62, helping to lay the foundation for Queensland’s long-awaited Sheffield Shield title in 1995-96. Toovey was also proud of having captained his club side, Norths, with Ray Lindwall as his bowling spearhead.

As a 19-year-old, Ordinary Seaman Toovey, unlike 353 of his shipmates, survived the sinking of the HMAS Perth in the Battle of the Sunda Strait early in 1942. The price of survival, however, was three and a half years as a prisoner of the Japanese, much of it on the Burma railway, where a severely ulcerated leg threatened to turn gangrenous. Toovey dismissed any talk of amputation and underwent excruciating treatment: “Not on your life, I’m going to need that leg to play Sheffield Shield cricket for Queensland.” Early in his captivity, he took part in several baseball matches as a member of an Australian team organised by his camp’s commandant. When a match was organised against the Japanese guards, Toovey cautioned his side that defeat was the better part of valour. After the war, he gave many years to the Returned Services League and the Australian Prisoners of War Association. Much later, he wrote a privately published book on his experiences as a PoW. David Frith, a long-standing friend, paid tribute to an “archetypal Queenslander of the old school: very friendly and generous. Although his memories of his wartime traumas dogged him until the end, he was an infallibly cheerful bloke”.

Toovey subsequently represented Queensland in the Claxton Shield, the national baseball carnival. He was appointed MBE in 1985, and 15 years later received the Medal of the Order of Australia “for service to the welfare of veterans and their families through the RSL, and to cricket and baseball in Australia”.

TRAPNELL, BARRY MAURICE WALLER, CBE, DL, who died on August 1, aged 88, was a medium-pacer whose nine first-class matches – all in 1946 – included one for the Gentlemen against the Players at Lord’s, in which he opened the bowling and dismissed Cyril Washbrook (although not before he had made 105). Trapnell had also played in the Varsity Match at Lord’s a fortnight earlier, when his 41 and four wickets could not prevent an Oxford victory. And just before that, he had taken five for 73 for Cambridge against MCC, also at Lord’s. Towards the end of the season he played his only Championship game, Middlesex’s top-of-the-table clash with eventual champions Yorkshire at Sheffield in mid-August. After this busy summer Trapnell concentrated on his work, becoming a chemistry don at Cambridge, and later headmaster of Denstone College and Oundle School. He was the national Rugby fives champion in 1949.

TURNER, JOHN BERNARD, who died on September 13, aged 63, was a tall opening batsman who scored a record 7,524 runs for Buckinghamshire in the Minor Counties Championship. He played only one first-class match, for the Minor Counties XI against the Pakistan tourists at Jesmond in 1974 – but made it count, hitting 106 in the second innings against a new-ball attack of Asif Masood and Imran Khan.

VAN HEERDEN, CARL, who died on June 19, aged 78, was president of the Free State Cricket Union from 1994 to 1998. Two of his sons played first-class cricket in South Africa.

VINICOMBE, JOHN BROOKS, who died on October 6, 2011, aged 82, was the main sports writer of the Brighton Evening Argus from 1962 to 1994. In a town where the football and cricket teams always produced lively copy in good times and bad, Vinicombe was a well-informed and robust chronicler of their affairs. He greeted visiting journalists at Sussex matches with a warmth tinged by a sardonic humour about the incompetence of the universe, which he would have brought to bear on Wisden for being a year late reporting his death.

VORSTER, LOUIS PHILLIPPUS, was shot dead on April 17, aged 45, the victim of an armed robbery at a petrol station in Gauteng. “Another senseless murder,” observed his former team-mate Jacques Rudolph, while Albie Morkel, another South African Test player, said he had “lost a great friend”. Vorster was a much-travelled left-hander, who made his maiden century for Transvaal against Western Province at Cape Town in January 1988. He entered at 27 for three, against a new-ball attack of Garth le Roux and Steve Jefferies, but went on to score 174, and spent the following summer at Worcester, where he made one first-class appearance, against the touring West Indians, when Graeme Hick scored 172 to complete 1,000 runs before the end of May. Vorster compiled a further five first-class centuries, but never quite made the weight of runs necessary to push for an international place. He became involved in coaching in Namibia, for whom he played in the South African domestic first-class competition as recently as 2009-10.

WADDELL, SIDNEY, who died on August 11, aged 72, was the Arlott of the oche, a man who conferred poetry, literary allusion and a great sweep of history on to the prosaic business of darts commentary. He first brought darts to the small screen in 1972, when he joined Yorkshire Television and created Indoor League as a vehicle for Fred Trueman, who was required to affect a caricature of a Yorkshireman while introducing skittles, arm-wrestling, table football and, of course, darts. Trueman was Sid Waddell’s sporting hero: he contributed a wonderful paean to him in The Wisden Cricketer’s My Favourite Cricketer series, and remained a fan of the game. He wrote two series of Sloggers, a TV programme about a fictional children’s cricket team in Slogthwaite, Lancashire, for which he won a best scriptwriter prize in the Writers’ Guild of Great Britain awards in 1994.

WATSON, JOHN MARTIN, died on March 10, aged 90. Jack Watson was an all-rounder who enjoyed a long career in Minor Counties cricket for Durham (for whom he took 394 wickets at 16) and Northumberland. A policeman, he was also prominent in local football, having spells as a scout for Middlesbrough and caretaker manager of Darlington on no fewer than five occasions.

WHITE, COLIN DEREK, who died on February 27, aged 74, was a stylish left-hander who looked likely to win a Blue for Ted Dexter’s Cambridge University side in 1958. White had made a bright start to the season, but never quite recovered after being hit in the mouth by New Zealand’s Bob Blair. Although he later scored 55 against MCC at Lord’s, White was left out of the Varsity Match after averaging only 15. He appeared sporadically over the next two years, scoring 64 against Nottinghamshire at Fenner’s in 1960, but never did win that Blue. He later became a banker, and a regular club cricketer in Surrey.

WIGGINS, ANDREA, who died of cancer on September 6, aged 41, was part of the ECB’s communications team for nine years, and was a popular figure with colleagues and journalists alike. She was instrumental in devising a lifestyle photography campaign for the England men’s team which attracted widespread media interest, and played a pivotal role in establishing the domestic Twenty20 competition. She left Lord’s in 2009 to become the International Rugby Board’s communications manager.

WILCOCKSON, DAVID, died on June 1, aged 71, having been in a coma for 13 days after being hit by the ball while bowling in a club match in Surrey. “The batsman ran down the pitch and middled it towards him,” said a team-mate. “It went straight into his head and he went down.” He was airlifted to hospital after the incident, in Old Dorkinians’ match against Grafham, but never regained consciousness. Wilcockson had played for the club since 1959, and set himself a target of 3,000 wickets. He finished with 2,899.

WILLIAMS, WENDY, who died on March 3, aged 69, was a Welsh-born bowler with a low slinging action which sometimes endangered the umpire. After narrowly missing selection for England in the first women’s World Cup in 1973, she was chosen for the International XI which also played in the tournament, and appeared in all their six matches. Her six wickets included 12–6–20–3 against New Zealand at Chesterfield, to which she later added 18 from No. 8 as her side completed a last-over victory. “She was very popular,” recalled the former England captain Rachael Heyhoe-Flint, a West Midlands team-mate, “not only because of her cheerful personality but because she was also a qualified physiotherapist, which meant we could get free treatment!” Williams worked with Bernard Thomas, the long-serving England physio, at his Edgbaston sports clinic.

WILSON, DONALD, died on July 21, aged 74. Don Wilson brought the same unquenchable enthusiasm and broad smile to everything he did in a lifetime dedicated to cricket – bowling his canny slow left-arm for Yorkshire between 1957 and 1974, instilling inner-city youngsters with a love of the game as MCC head coach, or genially cajoling his pupils on the playing fields of Ampleforth College. Wilson was one of the mainstays of the Yorkshire team that won seven Championships between 1959 and 1968, emerging from the giant shadow cast by Johnny Wardle to take more than 1,000 wickets. He also played six Tests for England, but perhaps his greatest legacy was turning Lord’s into a centre of coaching excellence. Wilson welcomed them all to the Nursery Ground – goggle-eyed schoolchildren, Test players seeking technical or psychological counselling, and the occasional celebrity. He may be the only cricketer whose autobiography contained a foreword by Peter O’Toole.

His role in Yorkshire’s last great era was almost as treasured for his contribution to the team’s esprit de corps as for his playing efforts. Along with his great friend Phil Sharpe, Wilson was the leader of Yorkshire’s very own choir, and led countless rousing sing-songs in sponsors’ tents and hotel lounges. In a famously combustible dressing-room, the benefit to morale was incalculable.

Born in Settle in the Dales – not a fertile area of recruitment for Yorkshire – Wilson came to the county’s attention in the most startling manner imaginable, bowling Len Hutton in a benefit match between the town club and a Yorkshire XI in 1953. Hutton invited him to a trial and, by 1957, Wilson was taking his initial steps as a first-team player. The following summer, he was the beneficiary of a row between Ronnie Burnet, the new captain, and Wardle. When Wardle was ignominiously sacked, Wilson was handed a frontline spinning role, and in 1959 Burnet’s shrewd management of a group of talented Second Eleven graduates bore fruit with Yorkshire’s first outright Championship since 1946. Wilson contributed 51 wickets.

Standing a fraction over 6ft 3in, he ran in off five easy paces and, after a prodigious leap, bowled with a classically high action. “He expected to take a wicket with every ball,” Sharpe remembered, “and his eyes would nearly pop out.” Wilson’s line was impeccable and he was an acknowledged master of flight. “He was not a big spinner of the ball, although he could when the pitch was turning,” said Sharpe. Now led by the unrelated Vic Wilson, Yorkshire retained the title in 1960, with Don taking 72 wickets, and there were further Championship successes in 1962, 1963 and a hat-trick from 1966 to 1968. Wilson featured prominently in each of these, but his most productive year – 109 wickets at under 14 in all matches – was in the last of those title-winning summers. The Gillette Cup was also won in 1965 and 1969. There were occasional flourishes with the bat, too, notably a one-handed effort with a broken thumb that guided Yorkshire to an unlikely run-chase at New Road in 1961. And in 1967 he won the Sunday People trophy for the most sixes in a season. He was also a fine fielder, especially swooping to his left at midwicket – “the Settle windmill,” according to Sharpe.

Wilson’s love of the stage was cemented in 1961, when he first encountered the Black and White Minstrels in Scarborough. Already familiar to television audiences, they sang traditional American minstrel songs, backed by a glamorous female dance troupe. Several members were cricket enthusiasts. “They loved cricket and we loved the dancers,” said Sharpe. “It was reciprocal trading.” Wilson and Sharpe spent the first half of the winter of 1963 on the road with the Minstrels, working as prompters and backstage factotums. They introduced the repertoire to their team-mates, and the evening performances quickly became as much a part of that Yorkshire side as the Championships. Fred Trueman summed up the mood: “This is my type of music, not this bloody rock’n’roll business.”

International recognition – for his cricket – came in India in 1963-64, when Wilson played in all five Tests and took nine wickets. He also appeared in the fourth and the fifth matches of the 1970 series against the Rest of the World, claiming four wickets, and was selected for the winter’s Ashes tour under Ray Illingworth. With Derek Underwood established, opportunities were limited, and he assumed the role of social secretary, helping to bridge the touring party’s north–south divide so successfully that he was retained after a hand injury looked like ending his tour. He was given a chance in the First Test of the series in New Zealand that followed. His Test record was 11 wickets at 42.

The early 1970s were an unhappy time. Too much work in the nets in Australia caused a fault with his bowling (later diagnosed by Fred Titmus from a photograph), and for a while he suffered the yips. The Yorkshire vice-captaincy also brought conflict with the new skipper, Geoff Boycott. Wilson retired from first-class cricket in August 1974, with 1,189 wickets at 21 in 422 matches. He took 100 wickets in a season five times; only three bowlers have taken more wickets for Yorkshire since the war. But his best figures were for MCC: eight for 36 against Ceylon in Colombo in 1969-70. He scored 6,230 runs at 14, his only century coming against South Zone at Hyderabad on that 1963-64 tour.

Wilson was reinvigorated by two years of captaining Lincolnshire, and began a career in coaching that took him to South Africa, where he was head coach at the Wanderers and undertook some pioneering work in the townships. That led, in 1977, to a phone call from E. W. Swanton, offering him the job as head coach at Lord’s. He thought Swanton must be mixing him up with a Wilson who had played for Kent, but refrained from saying so. Although Ian Botham had been a recent graduate of the MCC Young Cricketers, the coaching system run by Len Muncer was haphazard. Aided by the opening of the indoor school, Wilson embarked on a revolution, and alumni that included Phil DeFreitas, Phil Tufnell, Norman Cowans, Dermot Reeve and Paul Nixon were testament to his success.

DeFreitas had particular reason to be grateful: “When I went for my trial for the groundstaff, I remember that Phil Tufnell and I were told at the end that we hadn’t made it,” he recalled. “But Don had seen something in us, and demanded that we were selected. If it hadn’t been for Don, we wouldn’t have got on the staff.” He also quietly looked after their interests. “We were very often excused the usual groundstaff boys’ duties when the big matches were on,” said DeFreitas. “Don would do his utmost to see that we were somewhere else playing cricket. He told you things straight, in black and white, but we could always have a laugh as well. He was an enormous figure in my life.”

Emerging players from overseas were welcomed, too. An 18-year-old Martin Crowe arrived on a scholarship from New Zealand in 1981. “I remember Don’s eyeballs popping out and his wild enthusiasm for cricket: ‘Now then Crowie, I’m ready for ya, lad,’ as he marked out his run-up.” Between puffs on his small cigar, Wilson would dispense precious nuggets of advice. “He taught me about hundreds,” Crowe recalls. “‘No one remembers 60, lad, only big hundreds,’ he said.”

His house and garden, just behind the Mound Stand, were a popular party venue during Test matches and after one-day finals. Wilson left Lord’s at the end of 1990 and took charge of sport at Ampleforth College, back in his native county. He wrote an entertaining autobiography, Mad Jack (a nickname first bestowed by Burnet), and to his huge delight became president of the Yorkshire Players’ Association. His former spinning colleague Geoff Cope provided perhaps the most fitting epitaph: “I have never found anyone with so much enthusiasm for the game.”

WILSON, JOHN STUART, died on July 2, aged 80. Stuart Wilson, a fast-medium bowler from the Brechin and Forfarshire club, played 16 first-class matches for Scotland. A Manchester-born plumber, he made his debut against Lancashire at Old Trafford in 1957, and started well by dismissing the county’s openers, Alan Wharton and Jack Dyson. Wilson’s best figures of five for 51 came against MCC at The Grange in 1959, while three years later he took four wickets in each innings at Greenock as Scotland won their annual encounter with Ireland.

WIMALADARMA, WELIWITAGODA RAKITHA DILSHAN, died on September 29, aged 27, after watching Sri Lanka’s World Twenty20 match against West Indies on television with some friends earlier in the evening. Some reports suggested drugs may have been involved; one of the other party guests also died. Rakitha Wimaladarma was an off-spinner who claimed 53 wickets, mainly for Saracens, in Sri Lanka’s domestic first-class competitions in 2009-10, including a career-best eight for 68 against the Army; a few weeks later he took 23 wickets in successive matches against Moors and Tamil Union.

WOODHEAD, DEREK JOHN, died on July 29, 2011, aged 76. After scoring an unbeaten century in only his second Sheffield Shield match for Western Australia in 1958-59, Woodhead looked to have a promising career ahead of him as an opener – but after three failures at the beginning of the next season, he was dropped permanently. His thesis Fundamentals and Techniques of Batting in Australia earned him the award of his Teachers’ Higher Certificate in 1969, and is held at the J. S. Battye Library of West Australian History in Perth. He coached the Australian fast bowler Mick Malone and, later, Greg Shipperd, who opened the batting for both Western Australia and Tasmania.

WOOLNOUGH, BRIAN CHRISTOPHER, died on September 18, aged 63. When Brian Woolnough was lured away from his job as chief football writer of The Sun to become chief sportswriter of the Daily Star in 2000, a significant part of the attraction was the chance to write about a wider variety of sports, especially cricket; he also became a familiar face on Sky TV. He was an enthusiastic fast bowler for the Claygate club in Surrey, putting his imposing frame to good use, and retained a love of the game through his years as one of the most high-profile sportswriters in Fleet Street. He was particularly proud of having batted with Rohan Kanhai in a charity match at Lord’s. After joining the Star, Woolnough became a regular in Test-match press boxes in the summer, especially relishing England’s 2005 Ashes triumph. The Oval Test was an annual highlight – on a day with no writing duties, he would join friends and family for a companionable time in the stands.

ZAHIR ALAM, who died of liver failure on May 30, aged 42, was a leading light with the bat for Assam in the Ranji Trophy for several seasons. Against Tripura at Guwahati in 1991-92 he scored 257, and put on 475 with Lalchand Rajput (239) for the second wicket – then a world record, although it has been surpassed three times since.

Wisden always welcomes information about those who might be included: please send details to almanack@wisden.com, or to John Wisden & Co, 13 Old Aylesfield, Golden Pot, Alton, Hampshire GU34 4BY.

THE ENGLAND TEAM IN 2012

Out of the rough

STEPHEN BRENKLEY

Redemption took its time. But when it arrived, the satisfaction almost erased the tumultuous 50 weeks that had come before it – almost, but not quite, because the drama surrounding England throughout 2012, both human and sporting, was relentless, intense and compelling.

The wholly unexpected Test victory in India with which they ended their year was a triumph of plotting and redesign. And it had two overwhelming features: the rehabilitation of a team who had grown dangerously accustomed to losing, and the reintegration of a player, Kevin Pietersen, who had come perilously close to the end of his international career.

England’s batting was now refreshed in body and mind. The bowling attack, led by the superb Jimmy Anderson and buttressed by the admirable Graeme Swann, appeared to have regained its old verve. Perhaps the most significant aspect of all, however, was the galvanic start provided by the 2–1 win over the Indians to Alastair Cook’s tenure as official Test captain. He was exemplary.

Appointed formally, all but routinely, after Andrew Strauss’s retirement on August 29, Cook scored centuries in each of the first three Tests of the series, tailoring his innings to the demands of the team. His authority burgeoned with his form, and the respect he commanded was clear. Party to the dropping of his vice-captain, Stuart Broad, he demonstrated the ruthless pragmatism required of all leaders.

When England lost the First Test at Ahmedabad, their seventh defeat of an increasingly wretched year, it was merely a continuation of an abysmal inability to adapt to the needs of conditions in Asia. Yet by the time hands were shaken on a draw during the final afternoon of the Fourth Test at Nagpur, Cook had helped deliver a seamless transformation. The series-levelling win at Mumbai already ranked among England’s most glorious anywhere, a model example of beating opponents at their own game. To travel then to Kolkata and fashion another comprehensive victory was the mark of a dressing-room genuinely at ease with itself again – if not always with the world outside.

It was Cook’s team now. Strauss’s decision to quit all cricket, which few had seen coming, suddenly assumed a retrospective air of inevitability, as is often the way of such matters. Not that it should diminish a jot Strauss’s contribution as England’s captain: an outstanding leader and a man of honour, he will be fondly recalled. In truth, Cook had two teams, since he retained the captaincy of the one-day side he had gained in 2011. England’s rapid advance in that sphere – they won their first ten completed one-day internationals, before sharing the home series with South Africa – was as marked as their Test deterioration pre-India. This reunification had barely taken place when it was followed by the separation of senior management duties.

England were restored by the win in Mumbai, which eased considerably the announcement of their decision to divide the role of head coach. Andy Flower retained the official title of team director, but would now oversee the Test squad only. The day-to-day affairs of the two limited-overs sides were put in the hands of Ashley Giles, Test selector, successful director of cricket at Warwickshire, and sometime Ashes hero.

These appointments were devised partly to ensure that Flower, with a wife and three young children, could have some kind of home life again, and would thus stay in the job. It was a sign of a confident management prepared to confront not just the gruelling reality of big-time cricket in the early 21st century, but what it might take to stay a few runs and wickets ahead of the pack. Putting the theory into practice could prove another matter, but formulating it at all had been a bold first step.

Victory in India bordered on the miraculous, for England had been under perpetual siege from the moment they began the year as the world’s No. 1 Test side – a ranking reached via the ICC’s endearingly arcane points system and officially bestowed by the award of a large mace. But the mace was an albatross by another name. Instead of carrying it aloft like the glorious prize it was supposed to be, England found it throttling the life out of them. In the United Arab Emirates, they batted awfully against Pakistan. Two months later in Sri Lanka, previous mistakes and lapses against slow bowling on slow pitches went initially unheeded, and they escaped with a 1–1 draw thanks to the first of Pietersen’s three breathtaking centuries in the year, plus the wickets of Swann.

Brief respite at home against West Indies was followed by a loss to South Africa, who deservedly claimed the top ranking themselves. South Africa’s victory at The Oval (hosting the First Test because Lord’s was used for the Olympic archery) was by an innings and 12 runs, yet it was more epic than that: they scored 637 for two and reduced to impotence an attack that imagined themselves the most incisive in the world. The defeat was among England’s most shattering.

From late August on – but, for more acute observers, from long before – events in the dressing-room were dominated by the Pietersen saga. The subsequent attempts to draw a line under an unseemly episode, indeed to airbrush it from history, failed to conceal its tawdriness, significance or sheer theatre. That Pietersen was England’s stellar cricketer was merely emphasised during the weeks the saga rumbled on. It overshadowed the loss of both the South Africa series and the No. 1 ranking, the insipid defence of the World Twenty20 in Sri Lanka, and the squad announcement for the tour of India, for which he was not originally selected.

It had been clear something was up when Pietersen suddenly announced his retirement from all limited-overs cricket at the end of May. Mutterings abounded that relations between him and Flower were strained – and Flower certainly looked strained. A bleak hiatus was eventually reached at the end of the drawn Second Test with South Africa at Headingley, in which Pietersen had scored the second of those three centuries. Clearly not about to let anything lie, he gave a press conference in which he discussed the difficulties of being him. He also floated the prospect that the Third Test at Lord’s could be his last. Within a few days, it appeared his England career might already be at an end, after claims he had sent text messages disparaging Strauss to members of the South African side. Nothing was ever proven, and much was denied, but Strauss’s uncharacteristically bruised reaction told its own story. Relations reached such a low ebb that Pietersen, unwilling – or unable – to deny the allegations, was dropped, and a must-win match became about something else besides: the unity of the squad, the place of the individual in it, and the old mantra that there is no “I” in team. It helped the selectors that Jonny Bairstow, his replacement, made 95 and 54.

England closed ranks, and tried their socks off, but South Africa were simply the better team. It was difficult to tell where Strauss’s mind was. But when he shouldered arms to a straight ball from the estimable Vernon Philander at the start of a potentially fascinating run-chase, it was patently not on the proceedings at hand.

The precise nature of the negotiations which ensued between Pietersen and England will be revealed one day (and what different interpretations they may have). But the ECB went into news-management, or rather news-blackout, mode. Perhaps it was a period when they were damned if they did speak and damned if they didn’t, but the growing tendency to avoid offering reasoned answers to reasonable questions was one that threatened to sully relations with their faithful public. Throughout, it seemed possible Pietersen’s career was over, even while the feeling grew that some senior players might have behaved differently towards him; Flower himself said the strange matter of the fake Twitter account, which poked fun at Pietersen, could have been handled better.

At the end of the Test series, Strauss retired. True to form, he went with the utmost dignity. The Pietersen saga and his retirement were not connected – at least not directly – but it was a huge shame that his announcement should be tarnished. He went, by the way, because he felt he was no longer scoring the necessary runs; two hundreds against West Indies had offered cause for respite, but not genuine rejuvenation.

Pietersen had been signed up to commentate on the World Twenty20 in Sri Lanka and, well though he fulfilled that task, it was clear England were missing him. After their elimination came the beginnings of rapprochement. Giles Clarke, the ECB chairman, and Pietersen gave a surreal press briefing in the bowels of a Colombo hotel, in which Clarke first used the phrase that came to embody the whole shebang: Pietersen was to embark on “a process of reintegration”. Clarke was at his most sonorously grave: “In our society we believe that, when an individual transgresses, and when the individual concerns recognises that and apologises, it is important that individual should be given a real opportunity to be reintegrated into our society. This principle is an essential part of having civilised and sensible ethics.”

Whatever Pietersen was guilty of, this made it seem somewhat more than a bloke in a cricket team not getting on too well with some of the other blokes in a cricket team. A few days later, he flew back to England from South Africa, where he had been playing in the Champions League with Delhi Daredevils. He had a chat with some of England’s other senior players, and it was all done and dusted. He was added to the squad for India, and his limited-overs retirement rescinded.

His presence might have encouraged a semblance of optimism, though it can hardly have infused the team with unbridled confidence. From the first day in Dubai in January, when Pietersen was one of several to fall cheaply to Saeed Ajmal, it had gone too wrong, for too long. Techniques which had coped enviably in Australia and England were suddenly and harshly exposed. England did not know whether to stick or twist: they came out slugging, then tried to retrench. Nearly all the batsmen laboured. Jonathan Trott and Ian Bell, in their different ways, searched vainly for a trusted scoring method. Trott came up with a fighting century in a lost cause at Galle, but was perhaps a victim of the incessant demands made of an international batsman.

From the UAE onwards, Bell rarely made Test runs away from home, which was odd – not only because they had flowed in the previous two years, but because of his renaissance as a one-day opener in Pietersen’s absence (and did enough to retain his place in the 50-over side when Pietersen kissed and made up). That both Bell and Trott finished the year with hundreds at Nagpur embodied England’s revival.

But neither could have played the innings Pietersen did. The last of his memorable treble came at Mumbai, complementing Cook’s wonderfully judged contribution. India’s spinners were repelled, while England’s – Swann and the recalled Monty Panesar – took 19 wickets in a masterful exhibition of harnessing helpful conditions. This was the first time England seemed properly to have learned from past misdemeanours. The sweep shot, both ally and enemy to them for a decade, yielded 59 runs in 44 balls; for India, it brought only 14 in ten. Yet in Nagpur, where the pitch was slower, England realised it was no longer a judicious option.

The bowlers were magnificent. Their status was seriously challenged by South Africa’s hard-nosed batting, but Anderson passed 250 Test wickets early in the year, and Swann 200 at the end, both passing marks set by great forebears: Anderson overhauled his fellow Lancashire seamer Brian Statham; Swann his fellow off-spinner Jim Laker.

In Matt Prior, England still had the best wicketkeeper-batsman in the world, which said much in an accomplished field. His commitment to the team cause could never be doubted, and his telephone call to Pietersen at the height of the shambles was instrumental in bringing the sides together. England finished in good order. Doubts remained over Cook’s new long-term opening partner, though Nick Compton – a newcomer with impeccable heritage – acquitted himself with abundant concentration in India. But seven different players were selected to bat at No. 6, and Joe Root of Yorkshire, not yet 22, ended as the man in possession, evoking the thought he might soon be Cook’s opening partner.

In the middle of summer, a one-day series of five matches against Australia had gone almost unnoticed. Too much else was happening in cricket and beyond. And two Ashes series loomed in 2013. Such casual disregard was unlikely to recur.

ENGLAND PLAYERS IN 2012

LAWRENCE BOOTH

The following 30 players (there were 33 in 2011 and 27 in 2010) appeared for England in the calendar year 2012, when the team played 15 Tests, 15 one-day internationals and 14 Twenty20 internationals. All statistics refer to the full year, not the 2012 season.

JAMES ANDERSON

Lancashire

No bigger compliment came Anderson’s way than Indian captain M. S. Dhoni’s assertion in December that he had been the difference between the sides during the Tests. And if that underplayed – deliberately, perhaps – the role of England’s spinners, then neither was it idle praise. After a slow start to the series, Anderson undermined India at Kolkata with reverse swing, then kept them subdued at Nagpur, where his spell on the third evening was full of heart, skill and athleticism. By then, he had removed Sachin Tendulkar an unprecedented nine times, and he finished the year with 528 international wickets, equalling Ian Botham’s England record. Contrary to the stereotype, the tricky periods had come at home: rested, to his annoyance, for the Edgbaston Test against West Indies, he was comfortably outbowled by Dale Steyn during the defeat by South Africa. But either side of the summer, he got to grips with Asia, taking 30 wickets in nine Tests at under 27 apiece. It was a serious piece of rebranding – more career-redefining even than the 2010-11 Ashes.

14 Tests: 137 runs @ 8.05; 48 wickets @ 29.50.

13 ODI: 5 runs @ 2.50, SR 35.71; 18 wickets @ 26.61, ER 4.71.

JONNY BAIRSTOW

Yorkshire

Questions and answers popped up with indecent haste. The pace of Kemar Roach plainly unsettled him during his debut Test series, against West Indies, yet when Pietersen’s absence gave him another chance, against a speedy South African attack at Lord’s, he batted with exciting assurance for 95 and 54. Then, in India, England didn’t entirely trust him against spin: a stopgap selection with Bell on paternity leave, Bairstow fell on the stroke of a lunch break in his only innings, before slipping behind Root come Nagpur. He managed only one 50-over game all year and, after a promising start in Dubai, his Twenty20 form stalled too: in India in December, he was dropped. Any doubts appeared to surround not his talent, but the best way to harness it.

5 Tests: 196 runs @ 32.66.

1 ODI: 29 runs @ 29.00, SR 55.76.

12 T20I: 142 runs @ 20.28, SR 101.42.

IAN BELL

Warwickshire

Until he helped steer England to safety – and history – at Nagpur, Bell was heading for the worst of his eight full years as a Test batsman. Only at home against West Indies had he flourished; otherwise, he was in danger of reverting to the infuriating pre-2010 model. An integral part of the batting meltdown against Pakistan, he failed to impose himself on South Africa; and, for a while, his mindless first-baller at Ahmedabad, lofting to deep mid-off, looked like the epitome of English ineptitude against spin. But the class that had helped him average 86 over the previous two years reasserted itself in the Fourth Test against India. Oddly, Bell’s unbeaten 116 there was more in keeping with his 50-over form. Refreshed by the challenge of opening regularly for the first time in four years following Pietersen’s temporary retirement, he had sparkled in all three home series, taking a hundred off West Indies at Southampton, then averaging 47 against Australia and 45 against South Africa. His fluency in blue made his Test travails the harder to fathom.

14 Tests: 672 runs @ 33.60.

11 ODI: 549 runs @ 54.90, SR 82.68.

RAVI BOPARA

Essex

It had looked as if 2012 would be Bopara’s breakthrough, when he followed up a favourable impression in the UAE one-dayers with the most authoritative batting of his career during the 4–0 win against Australia. And his busy medium-pacers were proving England’s most economical option. But his return to the Test side, at The Oval against South Africa, was spoiled by two dozy shots, and personal problems ruled him out of the rest of the series. When he came back, for the 50-over matches, he looked like a caught-behind-in-waiting: an average of 91 against Australia now dipped against South Africa to five. His last-ditch selection at the World Twenty20 summed up England’s desperation: with the asking-rate mounting against Sri Lanka, he scored one off six balls. It was all rather painful to witness.

1 Test: 22 runs @ 11.00; no wicket for 78.

14 ODI: 339 runs @ 37.66, SR 80.71; 7 wickets @ 25.00, ER 3.43.

6 T20I: 107 runs @ 17.83, SR 108.08; 1 wicket @ 63.00, ER 7.87.

STUART BROAD

Nottinghamshire

Broad’s performances in the UAE built on his splice-jarring excellence against India the previous summer, but a calf strain cut short his tour of Sri Lanka, and after that he shone only sporadically. Eleven wickets against West Indies at Lord’s were a reminder that he didn’t need to be at his best to cause havoc although, on the final afternoon at Headingley against South Africa, he was genuinely hostile. But two trends were emerging: Broad’s pace dropped to the low-80s – he blamed the speedguns, while the management claimed not to be concerned – and he mislaid the fuller length that had served him well in the second half of 2011. A bruised heel early in India hardly helped, and neither did a total of none for 157 at Ahmedabad and Mumbai. Unimpressed, the selectors dropped him from the Test side for the first time in four years, only weeks after he had been confirmed as Cook’s vice-captain; soon, the heel meant he was on his way home. His year as Twenty20 leader had to be judged by the surrenders to India and Sri Lanka, and he was dragged into the Pietersen affair when forced to deny involvement in a fake Twitter account that had, it transpired, been started by one of his friends. That indignity felt of a piece with a disjointed year.

11 Tests: 277 runs @ 17.31; 40 wickets @ 31.70.

9 ODI: 23 runs @23.00, SR 135.29; 11 wickets @ 33.45, ER 4.65.

12 T20I: 30 runs @ 10.00, SR 83.33; 11 wickets @ 26.54, ER 6.89.

JOS BUTTLER

Somerset

England’s patience was rewarded at Edgbaston in September, when Buttler put a Twenty20 game beyond South Africa’s reach with an awe-inspiring ten-ball unbeaten 32, of which 30 came in a single over from Wayne Parnell. That blast meant a slow start to his international career was forgiven. And 48 undefeated runs off 28 deliveries in the pre-Christmas matches in India, where he replaced Bairstow behind the stumps, confirmed his match-winning potential – especially when his ramp shot was in working order.

1 ODI: 0 runs at 0.00.

14 T20I: 143 runs @ 20.42, SR 133.64; 2 games as wicketkeeper, no dismissals.

NICK COMPTON

Somerset

A prolific season with Somerset and the retirement of Strauss paved the way for Compton’s passage to India, where he contentedly played second fiddle to Cook. His value lay not so much in the runs he scored – in that respect he had a middling series – but in the alliance he forged with his captain. If their partnership of 123 in the follow-on at Ahmedabad might have been England’s most important of the series, then their 165 at Kolkata was not far behind. Compton’s diligence was beyond reproach, and so too his temperament: after two failures in the warm-ups, he forced his way into the Test side with three successive fifties. But it was unclear whether his straitjacket – he scored at 33 runs per 100 balls – had been tailored to circumstance or cut from his natural cloth. On three occasions, he fell between 29 and 37, and a top score of 57 felt, in Indian conditions at least, like a glass ceiling. But a player who was constantly reminded of his dazzling grandfather, and had replaced a modern English great, managed the dual burden with class and composure. Besides, he would always have one over Denis: at Eden Gardens, the Barmy Army honoured Nick with his own song.

4 Tests: 208 runs @ 34.66.

ALASTAIR COOK

Essex

Cook could allow himself a matinee-idol grin when – having just led England to their first Test triumph in India since 1984-85 – it was put to him that his ascent to the captaincy must have seemed like a mixed blessing. In fact, little fazed him, and his haul of 548 runs at Ahmedabad, Mumbai and Kolkata represented one of the feats of an already glittering British sporting year. In Tests, he had endured a quiet time until then, including seven single-figure scores in the defeats by Pakistan and South Africa. But his resilience, refusal to panic, and an enforced sense of responsibility now came together: by the end of the year, only Michael Clarke had scored more Test runs, while Cook – uniquely – could celebrate hundreds in each of his first five Tests as captain (starting with a stand-in stint at Chittagong and Dhaka in 2009-10). As he had done while making the one-day captaincy his own the previous year, Cook added new tricks, leaving the crease to launch straight sixes off India’s spinners: in 2012, he hit five in Tests, doubling his career tally. The single-mindedness which was reflected in Cook’s desire to take Pietersen to India and pick Root at Nagpur had also been evident in England’s one-day fortunes. They won 12 out of 14 completed matches, while none of his team-mates could match his 663 runs, three hundreds or 74 fours. His greatest feat, though, was to assume control so calmly in the post-Strauss era. Famously a non-sweater, Cook had turned a physical oddity into a resounding metaphor.

15 Tests: 1,249 runs @ 48.03.

15 ODI: 663 runs @ 47.35, SR 79.97.

JADE DERNBACH

Surrey

For all the experimentation, an ingredient was still missing: Dernbach could not yet be relied upon to stem the flow. He had his moments, most triumphantly when he gambled on a slower ball from the last delivery of the Twenty20 decider against Pakistan, and deceived Misbah-ul-Haq. He was initially forgiven plenty, bowling more Twenty20 overs than any of his team-mates while conceding more than almost all of them. He celebrated each victim with reassuring intensity, but there was too much anguish in between. And after leaking 7.34 an over in the New Year in India, he was dropped from the one-day side for New Zealand.

5 ODI: 2 runs @ 2.00, SR 33.33; 9 wickets @ 28.33, ER 5.60.

13 T20I: 14 runs @ 14.00, SR 155.55; 13 wickets @ 28.92, ER 8.48.

STEVEN FINN

Middlesex

Menace and promise lurked whenever Finn was handed the ball, but injuries and the seam-bowling hierarchy meant he played in only five of England’s 15 Tests – and just once in consecutive games. Eight wickets against South Africa at Lord’s were overshadowed by defeat but, when he had finally recovered from a thigh injury in India, his post-lunch spell on the fourth afternoon at Kolkata paved the way for a famous win. A strained disc ruled him out of Nagpur, but there was another troublesome body part: his right knee had a habit of knocking into the stumps at the point of delivery, prompting umpires to call dead ball at the second offence, a ruling that cost him the wicket of Graeme Smith at Headingley. He promised to sort things out, but never quite did, and missed out on another wicket at Mohali in January 2013. In the limited-overs formats, he was outstanding – fast, fiery, frugal. Series figures of 40–3–134–13 had helped demolish Pakistan 4–0, and Finn was also a lone flicker of light during the World Twenty20. Now England just needed to keep him fit.

5 Tests: 16 runs @ 8.00; 20 wickets @ 31.50.

14 ODI: 15 runs without dismissal, SR 187.50; 25 wickets @ 20.00, ER 4.20.

11 T20I: 9 runs without dismissal, SR 69.23; 17 wickets @ 16.70, ER 6.76.

ALEX HALES

Nottinghamshire

Less than a year and a half after his England debut, and with Pietersen barely around, Hales could claim to have developed into their leading Twenty20 batsman, finishing 91 runs clear of the pack. His 99 off 68 balls against West Indies at Trent Bridge was a reward for intelligent shot selection, and in the two end-of-year games in India he managed 98 off 68. He even verged on the status of cause célèbre, banned by Nottinghamshire – along with Lumb and Patel – from considering IPL offers. But he knew time was on his side.

10 T20I: 343 runs @ 38.11; SR 137.20.

CRAIG KIESWETTER

Somerset

It seemed like an identity crisis. Finally demoted in the one-day order to No. 6 after 28 innings as opener had brought him an average of all but 30 and a strike-rate of 94, Kieswetter lost more than he gained. It was slightly curious that England persisted with him at the top of the Twenty20 line-up, where a run a ball and only one score over 35 were barely adequate. Too often, he followed the management’s strictures about the preservation of early wickets, but without rotating the strike. And after scoring four off 14 balls in the World Twenty20 against New Zealand, he was dropped. His keeping, on the other hand, improved – not least during the 50-over series against Australia. But it wasn’t enough, and after more struggles, in India in early 2013, he was ditched in that format too.

15 ODI: 203 runs @ 33.83, SR 80.55; 26 catches, 5 stumpings.

11 T20I: 180 runs @ 16.36, SR 102.85; 8 catches, 1 stumping.

EOIN MORGAN

Middlesex

The final act of England’s year was Morgan’s straight six off Ashok Dinda to seal a last-ball Twenty20 win at Mumbai, but almost all his heroics until then had been confined to the 50-over game. In 12 innings, he was not out six times – and England won the lot. It was no coincidence that he was the only player to appear in all 29 limited-overs internationals in 2012, nor that he was entrusted with the Twenty20 captaincy in India while Broad was at home injured. But his Test career stuttered after both his technique and, more unexpectedly, his temperament deserted him against Pakistan’s spinners. By the end of the Indian tour, he had disappeared into the pack, even if he had at least rectified the excessive crouch which had been playing havoc with his balance. Only a return to the Test team, though, would complete the picture.

3 Tests: 82 runs @ 13.66.

15 ODI: 364 runs @ 60.66, SR 98.11.

14 T20I: 243 runs @ 24.30, SR 120.89.

MONTY PANESAR

Sussex

Here was what Panesar had become: an unaffordable luxury in England, but a potential match-winner in Asia, although even there he was no automatic selection. He missed one Test on each of the three overseas tours, but his performances against Pakistan and India would call the selectors’ judgment into question. When he did play, both Strauss and Cook treated him as their No. 1 spinner, partly because he provided more control than Swann: at Nagpur, he bowled 52 overs for 81. But he could be lethal too and – after he was bizarrely overlooked at Ahmedabad – the Wankhede pitch in Mumbai might have been created with his pace and accuracy in mind; he had, he thought, never bowled better. And so the familiar lament: if only Panesar had an all-round game. Two bad drops off Mahela Jayawardene arguably cost England the Galle Test, and he failed to score in five innings out of nine. Such one-dimensionality wouldn’t have been a problem for any other team. But England had Swann.

6 Tests: 26 runs @ 4.33; 33 wickets @ 26.03.

SAMIT PATEL

Nottinghamshire

The worry was that 2012 spelled the beginning and the end of Patel’s Test career. Miscast at No. 7 in Sri Lanka, he was given the chance a place higher against India – but didn’t take it. And when Panesar was belatedly selected, for the Second Test, his bonus gig as back-up spinner became redundant; Root’s selection for Nagpur was the writing on the wall. Patel’s limited-overs performances were not compelling either, save for a skilful 67 off 48 balls in the World Twenty20 against Sri Lanka, when he confirmed himself as one of England’s more natural players of spin. But his gifts were glimpsed too rarely, and his slow left-armers too easily milked. In the field, he earned brownie points for his part in the run-out of Virender Sehwag at Kolkata, yet it felt he was no more than a fluff away from riling the coaches.

5 Tests: 109 runs @ 15.57; 4 wickets @ 64.25.

10 ODI: 101 runs @ 50.50, SR 83.47; 5 wickets @ 58.00, ER 5.00.

11 T20I: 133 runs @ 19.00, SR 119.81; 2 wickets @ 87.00, ER 7.90.

KEVIN PIETERSEN

Surrey

The year ended as it began, with Pietersen getting into a tangle against spin in Asia, but in between he spray-painted English cricket with all the colours of the rainbow. You name it, he did it – and never in half-measures. The early months were either famine (in the Pakistan Tests) or feast (in the subsequent limited-overs matches in the UAE, and during his outrageous 151 in Colombo). Then came fiasco. Emboldened by his new IPL contract with Delhi Daredevils, Pietersen sought to retire from one-day internationals, with apparent disregard for the terms of his central contract: he would have to quit Twenty20 internationals too. A misplaced sense of grievance was not helped by a fake Twitter account in his name. And he became an out-and-out pariah when – a few days after his breathtaking 149 at Headingley and an equally jaw-dropping press conference (“it’s tough being me”) – it emerged he had been sending “provocative” texts to members of the South African team. For England, enough was enough. Pietersen was dropped for the Third Test at Lord’s, then ignored for the World Twenty20 title defence, despite having unretired from the limited-overs formats in August via a YouTube interview. The next episode in the soap opera came during his “reintegration”, a designation dreamed up by ECB chairman Giles Clarke during another bizarre press conference, stage-managed in Sri Lanka, where Pietersen was now providing TV punditry. But Cook replaced Strauss, and wanted his best players in India. After a series of meetings with senior players and support staff, Pietersen was welcomed back, and celebrated with his third Test tour de force of the year, a series-turning 186 at Mumbai. Half-centuries at Kolkata and Nagpur – where he knuckled down for the second-slowest score of 50-plus in his Test career – confirmed his return. The scenic route is rarely straightforward.

14 Tests: 1,053 runs @ 43.87; 5 wickets @ 29.40.

4 ODI: 281 runs @ 93.66, SR 84.38; no wicket for 4 runs, ER 4.00.

3 T20I: 112 runs @ 56.00, SR 130.23.

MATT PRIOR

Sussex

It said plenty for Prior’s stature that a batting average below 40 felt disappointing. And yet the detail did not tally with the bigger picture, of a supreme counter-attacker forever willing to put team before self – a trait exemplified by his initiative in phoning Pietersen and having it out with him at the height of the texting trouble. In India, he added 157 with Cook during the follow-on at Ahmedabad to help convince colleagues the tour needn’t degenerate into a debacle; and he was dismissed for under 40 only once, at Mumbai, when he was run out. Above all, he was Cook’s eyes and ears, maintaining standards in the field, and assuming the vice-captaincy when Broad was omitted at Kolkata. Missed chances were mainly limited to stumpings, although Prior was furious after dropping Hashim Amla down the leg side at Lord’s; like everyone else, he now expected himself to miss nothing. But he remained the best No. 7 in the game, unfulfilled only in his failure to translate his domestic one-day form into an international recall.

15 Tests: 777 runs @ 38.85; 29 catches, 7 stumpings.

ANDREW STRAUSS

Middlesex

He deserved better than to finish by padding up to a straight one from Vernon Philander – a non-stroke that betrayed a body and mind frazzled by the Pietersen farrago. But Strauss could leave with his pride intact: 100 Tests, and 50 as captain, with 24 wins, only two short of Michael Vaughan’s England record. Typically, he wanted no fuss; nor was there any over the easy-to-miss fact that he had ended a difficult summer as his side’s leading Test run-scorer. In truth, the hundreds against West Indies at Lord’s and Trent Bridge bucked the trend: eight times he reached 20 without going beyond the 30s. And if he never ceded the respect of his players, some of his decision-making at the crease fell short of his own high standards; an ill-conceived sweep off Imran Tahir at The Oval, in particular, rang alarm bells. The wider context, however, was indisputable: an era closed when Strauss retired, and it was one of the greatest in England’s history. He concluded it in his own way, quietly writing letters to each of his team-mates – Pietersen excepted. In an understated, English sort of way, you might almost have called them love letters.

11 Tests: 697 runs @ 33.19.

GRAEME SWANN

Nottinghamshire

If Swann’s summer was an extended blip that was hard to ignore, his form in Asia was the work of an off-spinner worthy of inheriting Jim Laker’s mantle. All but ten of his 59 Test wickets – second only to Rangana Herath in the calendar year – came in the UAE, Sri Lanka and India, and at a cost of only 24 apiece. He wasn’t just hoovering up left-handers either: 15 of his 20 wickets in India were right-handers, and at Ahmedabad he passed Laker’s record Test haul for an England off-spinner of 193. Against West Indies in early summer (six wickets at 47) he had been peripheral. But against South Africa (four at 77) he was simply outwitted, both by Graeme Smith, who played him better than any left-hander ever had, and Hashim Amla, who negated him with an off-stump guard; at Headingley, for the first time in 43 Tests under Andy Flower, he was dropped. But Swann’s alliance with Panesar at Mumbai, where they shared 19 wickets, was the best day for English spin since the late 1950s, and his removal of Virender Sehwag with the first ball after lunch on the fourth day at Kolkata changed the tone of the match. He was limited to nine one-day internationals by England’s rotation policy and an ever-present concern over his right elbow, but in Twenty20s he was mean and incisive. The unspoken worry in his 34th year was how much longer he could keep going.

14 Tests: 376 runs @ 23.50; 59 wickets @ 29.93.

9 ODI: 13 runs @ 13.00, SR 92.85; 8 wickets @ 36.25, ER 4.32.

12 T20I: 56 runs @ 28.00, SR 121.73; 17 wickets @ 14.70, ER 5.68.

JAMES TREDWELL

Kent

Unsung and almost certainly underrated, Tredwell quietly established himself as England’s No. 2 off-spinner. Typically, he let no one down, although his work went beyond honest yeomanry: at Lord’s, three South Africans were lured to their doom, all stumped by Kieswetter. And he was England’s least expensive bowler during the drawn Twenty20 series in India.

4 ODI: 7 runs @ 7.00, SR 31.81; 7 wickets @ 19.57, ER 4.41.

2 T20I: 1 run without dismissal, SR 100.00; 1 wicket @ 58.00, ER 7.25.

JONATHAN TROTT

Warwickshire

Innings of 87 at Kolkata and 143 at Nagpur provided a gloss to a difficult year in which his only other century came in defeat at Galle, where it merited more. He kept bumping into nemeses: Sri Lanka’s Rangana Herath removed him three times; South Africa’s Dale Steyn and India’s Pragyan Ojha four each. And yet, with the series at stake in India, there was something reassuring about the prospect of Trott batting for as long as he liked on a shirtfront. The instinct to drop anchor was as ingrained as ever and, while his Test average slipped to a shade below 50, it also remained a fraction higher than those of Cook and Pietersen. His one-day form was unfailingly solid – and resolutely unspectacular. A strike-rate of 62 sounded off the pace, but it chimed perfectly with England’s tactics, especially at home, of careful accumulation against two new balls. The ends usually justified the means.

15 Tests: 1,005 runs @ 38.65; 1 wicket @ 156.00.

14 ODI: 410 runs @ 41.00, SR 62.31.

LUKE WRIGHT

Sussex

The closest thing to a Twenty20 specialist in English cricket, Wright turned himself into a must-have accessory for any self-respecting franchise. Among regulars in the international format, only West Indian Kieron Pollard could better his strike-rate, while his 14 sixes – many of them back over the bowler’s head – were four clear of the next England batsman. Two innings stood out, both at the World Twenty20: an unbeaten 99 off 55 balls against Afghanistan, and 76 off 43 against New Zealand. He finished by playing the all-rounder’s role, sending down seven overs in two games against India after bowling only three in the year until then. All in all, it seemed a lucrative way of doing business.

9 T20I: 252 runs @ 31.50, SR 151.80; 4 wickets @ 19.50, ER 7.80.

AND THE REST…

James Taylor (Nottinghamshire; 2 Tests) was handed a Test debut against South Africa at Headingley following Bairstow’s struggles against the short ball, and Bopara’s personal problems, and he was a determined second fiddle in a stand of 147 with Pietersen. But 14 runs at Lord’s spelled a temporary halt. Joe Root (Yorkshire; 1 Test, 1 T20I) made an instant impression when he ground his way to 73 on a surprise debut at Nagpur, and was rewarded with a place in England’s Twenty20 squad and the Lions captaincy. Chris Tremlett (Surrey; 1 Test) played in England’s opening game of the year, the first of the Dubai Tests, then flew home, wicketless, with a back injury. He never fully recovered. Graham Onions (Durham; 1 Test) managed his first Test since January 2010, when the seamers were rotated at Edgbaston, and would have done even better than four for 88 had Tino Best not erupted. Chris Woakes (Warwickshire; 2 ODI) was limited to six wicketless overs as South Africa coasted home at Trent Bridge, where only Cook made more than his unbeaten 33. England showed faith in the left-arm spin of Danny Briggs (Hampshire; 1 ODI; 3 T20I) by entrusting him with the new ball in the World Twenty20 against New Zealand, although his single over in India was a chastening experience at the hands of Yuvraj Singh. Michael Lumb (Nottinghamshire; 3 T20I) was grateful to make 50 off 34 balls in England’s final game of the year, the Mumbai Twenty20, after one off ten at Pune had raised question marks. Stuart Meaker (Surrey; 2 T20I) hinted at the pros and cons of raw pace, removing Virat Kohli twice while going for nearly nine an over.

PAKISTAN v ENGLAND IN THE UAE, 2011-12

REVIEW BY JOHN ETHERIDGE

Test matches (3): Pakistan 3, England 0

One-day internationals (4): Pakistan 0, England 4

Twenty20 internationals (3): Pakistan 1, England 2

At the end of a tour of wild fluctuations, two whitewashes and apathy among many locals, England emerged with their win–loss ledger marginally in credit but their spirits decidedly in deficit. If a 4–0 victory in the one-day series came as a pleasant surprise, their 3–0 defeat in the Tests that preceded it was nothing less than calamitous. Based on all previous evidence and any semblance of logic, the results were the wrong way round, although England’s 2–1 win in the Twenty20 games at least offered a fleeting adherence to the form guide.

Test cricket was supposedly England’s strength. Yet for all three matches their batsmen were teased and tormented by Pakistan’s spinners. They had no answer, and produced some of the worst statistics for England in any series they had ever played. Then, as soon as the 50-over contests began, England overwhelmed Pakistan with fast-bowling power and four centuries in four games, all from their openers; the 5–0 defeat in India before Christmas seemed like a bad dream. It was only England’s third one-day series whitewash overseas against countries other than Bangladesh and Zimbabwe, and their first in a series of more than three matches. And it was all very confusing.

England’s exploits in Test cricket over the previous couple of years had been such that even a 3–0 defeat could not dislodge them from the top of the ICC rankings. Yet they knew they would never achieve their stated aim of becoming an all-time great Test team unless they improved in Asia.

The tone was set on the opening morning of the First Test, when England entered lunch at 52 for five, with Saeed Ajmal already three wickets into an eventual haul of seven. The batsmen looked undercooked and perhaps even complacent. Their warm-up games had not provided opposition of the highest quality; team director Andy Flower later admitted his side’s preparation for the tour was not all it might have been. And they were certainly unable to read Ajmal’s mixture of off-breaks and doosras. In the manner of Shane Warne, he had made pre-series boasts about another mystery ball – the teesra, or third one. There was little evidence of this new delivery – apart, possibly, from a ball sent down with an almost round-arm action. But his two favourite deliveries proved more than sufficient.

Ajmal finished the three Tests with 24 wickets, although his harvest was not completely unexpected: he had been recognised as the world’s premier spin bowler before the start of the series. In many ways, Abdur Rehman’s tally of 19 proved more damaging. A journeyman left-arm spinner, whose travels had included four club teams in England, Rehman superbly exploited both the uncertainty created by Ajmal at the other end and the tourists’ near-paranoia about the Decision Review System.

England’s nervous, tentative approach with the bat added up to some horrendous figures. The middle-order engine room of Kevin Pietersen, Ian Bell – utterly flummoxed by Ajmal’s doosra – and Eoin Morgan was routinely blown away. Pietersen finished with a total of 67 runs, Bell 51 and Morgan 82, and all three failed to reach 40 in any first-class innings. In all matches on tour, including warm-ups and limited-overs internationals, Morgan had a top score of 31 in 17 attempts. He was dropped for the tour of Sri Lanka soon after.

The top three fared little better. Andrew Strauss extended his sequence to 31 months with only one Test century; like him, Alastair Cook and Jonathan Trott managed only one fifty each. England failed to register an individual century in a Test series for the first time since 1999, when they slumped to the bottom of the Wisden world rankings, and their average of 19 runs per wicket was their lowest in a three-match series since 1888, when Australia’s new-ball pair of Charlie “Terror” Turner and J. J. Ferris were in their pomp.

Well though Ajmal and Rehman bowled, England batted as if petrified of a third, even more destructive, opponent. Let’s call him Mr DRS. The days of spin bowlers looping the ball, landing it wide of the stumps and hoping for turn – with a bat-pad catch the most likely mode of dismissal – appeared to have changed for ever, at least in Asian conditions. Instead, Ajmal and Rehman aimed at pace for the stumps, and allowed England’s inadequacies and the review system to do the rest. A total of 43 batsmen fell lbw – the joint-most for a series of any length, let alone one of only three Tests.

The alarm England’s batsmen inevitably felt about being struck on the pads quickly gave way to panic. This was with some justification, because umpires now seemed more prepared to give leg-before verdicts and, once the finger was up, the umpire’s-call element of DRS in effect made the wicket four and a half stumps wide. England’s concerns infiltrated their techniques and minds. Worried about using their pads, they seemed even more diffident about using their bats: 22 of their batsmen fell lbw, with Ajmal and Rehman claiming 19 between them – Ajmal seven in the First Test alone. The coaching maxim might have been: “You know that stick of wood in your hands? Well, use it!”

Pakistan encountered similar problems, and actually lost more batsmen lbw as the series progressed: three in the First Test, seven in the Second, and 11 in the Third. But while they too struggled against brisk left-arm spin – like Rehman, Monty Panesar won eight lbw appeals – they got into less of a tangle against Graeme Swann’s orthodox off-breaks: he removed four batsmen leg-before to Ajmal’s 11. Crucially, in the Third Test, Azhar Ali and Younis Khan had the nous to buck the trend, scoring the only centuries of the series in a partnership of 216 during which they deftly kept their pads out of the way.

Thrashed by ten wickets in the First Test, England had good opportunities to win the next two. Indeed, they believed they should have won the series. After three days of disciplined cricket in Abu Dhabi, they faltered to 72 all out in pursuit of 145 for victory. Then, in the Third, England reduced Pakistan to 44 for seven on the first morning on their way to 99 all out, before they fought back to become the first team since 1907 to win a Test after being bowled out for fewer than 100 in the first innings of the game.

Crucial to it all was Ajmal, whose skills did not escape controversy. On the first day of the series – the first day, in fact, on which the teams had played each other since the jailing of three Pakistan players and their agent following the spot-fixing scandal at Lord’s in 2010 – his action was called into question. Comments made on television by Bob Willis back in the UK were the catalyst, and there was a flurry of confusion later in the series, when Ajmal appeared to tell the BBC he had been granted permission to bend his arm by 23.5 degrees at the elbow, well outside the permitted 15. The ICC later said the quote had been a product of linguistic confusion, and released the results of scientific tests which showed the extent of Ajmal’s flexion was in fact as low as seven degrees.

Although England coach Andy Flower privately harboured suspicions about Ajmal’s action, there was a desire on both sides to quell any animosity lingering from the toxic 2010 series. And, in Misbah-ul-Haq – who had been left out of those Tests – Pakistan had a captain anxious not to reopen old wounds. He was calm and considered in everything he did, and apparently managed to unite the Pakistan dressing-room, a task beyond many of his predecessors. Misbah’s only skewed judgment came when he was dismissed lbw five times out of five in the Tests, and referred the last four. The technology supported the umpire’s verdict on each occasion.

While England’s batsmen struggled, their bowlers were superb. Stuart Broad and James Anderson were miserly with new ball and old, drilling an off-stump line and extracting enough movement to trouble the Pakistanis. They had next to no support from other seamers. Chris Tremlett flew home for back surgery after the First Test, while Tim Bresnan – forced to return to the UK because the elbow problem on which he underwent an operation the previous November had not fully healed – missed the whole series, although he was able to come back for the one-day leg.

From the Second Test onwards England fielded two spinners, and Panesar – playing international cricket for the first time since he helped save the Ashes opener at Cardiff with the bat in July 2009 – ended with 14 wickets. He was usually the first spinner called on by Strauss and, in his two games, bowled 141 overs to Swann’s 85. Swann ascribed this to the lack of left-handers in Pakistan’s line-up. In truth, Panesar outbowled him.

England enjoyed many aspects of the tour – good hotels, top-notch facilities, no internal flights – but the cricket bug has yet to catch on in the UAE. Crowds were poor, with the Emiratis apparently uninterested, and Pakistani immigrants only occasionally willing or able to surrender a day’s work to travel to grounds not serviced by public transport.

The Dubai Sports City Stadium was surrounded by half-constructed buildings on which the cranes had not moved for several years. It was like a scene from a post-apocalypse movie set. Abu Dhabi’s Sheikh Zayed Stadium was in the middle of the desert, although the building work here, in the wealthiest of the Emirate states, was advancing fast. During the Tests, more than half of the crowd were normally Barmy Army members and assorted other England fans. Relocating matches to the UAE because of security concerns seemed an acceptable compromise for the Pakistan Cricket Board, but this was a home series only in the loosest sense.

When the one-day series started, Cook made centuries in the first two games and 80 in the third, while Pietersen reached three figures in the final two. He described his innings of 130, which ensured England’s whitewash, as his finest in one-day cricket. The decision to promote him back to the opener’s role he performed briefly in the 2011 World Cup – a switch made because of his poor returns at No. 4 and Flower’s suspicion that he needed to refire Pietersen’s appetite for 50-over cricket – was a huge success, and in stark contrast to his travails in the Tests. (The story, of course, would later develop a life of its own.)

Just as influential was Steven Finn. He bowled fast and straight to collect 13 wickets in the four matches, including figures of four for 34 in each of the first two. The power of Finn and England’s other bowlers was too much for a Pakistan side who had not lost any bilateral one-day series in 2011. England were able to rest a number of senior players for the final match and still win.

Cook advanced his standing as a leader, and his aggressive batting persuaded England to add him to the Twenty20 squad as cover because of minor injuries elsewhere, even if he was never seriously considered for a place in the starting team. Broad became England’s third captain of the tour in the Twenty20 matches, and the management seemed happy to continue splitting the job – although the 50-over success under Cook had the unintended consequence of highlighting the Test losses under Strauss. Yet, for the time being at least, Strauss’s position was under no serious threat.

England, the reigning world Twenty20 champions, secured the series by winning the final two matches after a careless defeat in the first. Younger players, such as Jonny Bairstow and Jade Dernbach, made useful contributions, although Pietersen and Swann were crucial too. By now, England were more used to the wiles of Pakistan’s spin bowlers, and more at ease with fields that were less attacking than in the Tests. If the one-day series had come first, everything might have been different. And maybe even a little more logical.

PAKISTAN v ENGLAND

First Test Match

DEREK PRINGLE

At Dubai, January 17–19, 2012. Pakistan won by ten wickets. Toss: England.

A little over two months after three Pakistani players were imprisoned for spot-fixing during their previous Test against England, at Lord’s in August 2010, the sides met at the neutral venue of the Dubai Sports City Stadium. But the impressive, if sterile, ground did not preside over neutral cricket – at least not from the Pakistanis, who immediately located top gear to despatch England inside three days.

If the meeting of these teams, with their history of volatility, was always likely to be unpredictable, few could have foreseen the drubbing suffered by England in their first Test since officially becoming the world’s No. 1 side. To lose by ten wickets was bad enough; to do so after your captain had won the toss, and the pitch offered only moderate assistance to the bowlers, was difficult to credit.

The England attack, it’s true, performed manfully, but the haplessness of the batsmen, who – for only the third time in a Test since the 2006-07 Ashes – were dismissed twice for under 200, meant their efforts were wasted. And central to the demise was Saeed Ajmal, whose jerky mix of doosras and off-breaks brought him match figures of ten for 97, the best by a Pakistani against England for over 24 years.

During the tea interval on the first day – not long before England were dismissed for 192, itself something of a recovery from 43 for five – Bob Willis, summarising for Sky TV in their London studio, threatened to turn the match into a battle of the bent elbow. It was a prompt the British media took up with glee: no sooner had Ajmal completed career-best figures of seven for 55 than his action became the story.

Willis was a professional cricketer from 1969 to 1984, an age intolerant of bowlers with noticeable snap at the point of delivery. His doubts over the legitimacy of Ajmal’s action would have been echoed by many from his era, but the change to the playing conditions in 2005, when the ICC sanctioned flexion of up to 15 degrees, was more significant.

It helped to fan the flames that Ajmal had been reported for a suspect action in 2009 by Billy Bowden, one of the on-field umpires in this Test. Bowden had aired his misgivings during a one-day international against Australia, though Ajmal was cleared on that occasion by experts in human movement at the University of Western Australia. According to their findings, made in controlled laboratory conditions by Professor Bruce Elliott, Ajmal’s bowling arm had 23 degrees of flex at the elbow when it was horizontal – but it straightened by only ten degrees when he bowled his off-break, and by seven with his doosra or quicker ball.

Just in case England had been fussing over their protractors, Ajmal and his captain, Misbah-ul-Haq, also planted the possibility of a new mystery delivery, the teesra – or third one. If it did exist, other than as a deliberate distraction in the build-up to the match, Ajmal didn’t need to harness it: only Trott and Prior appeared able to pick even the standard variations in his arsenal.

The Decision Review System seemed to make England’s batsmen doubly jittery. After they were prevented from using their front pads as a reliable line of defence against spin, their techniques unravelled almost as quickly as their confidence. Pietersen, who before the series referred to the DRS as “that bloody machine”, looked especially confused. Unable to pick Ajmal, and with a long-standing unease against left-arm spin – purveyed here by the accurate Abdur Rehman – he displayed all the existential angst of Edvard Munch’s The Scream during his 29-ball innings on the opening day. Ajmal finally put him out of his misery, lbw for two.

None except Prior, who made an unbeaten 70, and Swann, who swung lustily for 34, offered much of a solution. Prior used his feet well – not in the traditional sense of dancing down the pitch, which English batsmen had long avoided, but by stretching well forward or getting right back. When confronted by Ajmal, so many of England’s batsmen simply shuffled their feet and hung their bats in submission, a strong indication that they hadn’t a clue which way the ball was turning.

Pakistan’s retort was an opening stand of 114 between Mohammad Hafeez and Taufeeq Umar, though that belied the stoic efforts of Broad and Anderson. With England opting for just one specialist spinner (Tremlett was preferred to Monty Panesar), they had to rotate their three seamers. As Swann’s foils, they ran in bravely and – with a little help from Trott, who trapped Younis Khan with a vicious nip-backer – they managed to dismiss Pakistan for 338. Their lead was 146, but England knew it could have been worse.

In the event, any vague sense of relief was fleeting. With their second-innings anxieties focused on Ajmal, England appeared to forget that Umar Gul was no slouch either. Charging in from the Southern End, he dismissed Strauss, Cook and Pietersen in his opening spell – though there was enough doubt over Strauss’s dismissal, caught down the leg side by Adnan Akmal, for him to review it and, later, for Andy Flower to complain to the match referee.

But Gul’s strikes left England’s shaky middle order to confront Ajmal and Rehman. And while the pitch held true, resistance – apart from Trott’s 49 and another cameo from Swann – was token as the spinners shared six wickets. Trott’s efforts at least meant Pakistan needed to bat again, but not for long. Soon after, England were wallowing in their first defeat in ten Tests, since Perth in 2010-11, and their first inside three days since being ambushed by Australia at Headingley in 2009. In those series, England would hold their nerve. Out in the UAE, things were about to get a whole lot worse.

Man of the Match: Saeed Ajmal.

Umar Gul 12– 4–35–0; Aizaz Cheema 12–0– 43–1; Mohammad Hafeez 6–3–5–1; Abdur Rehman 18–5–52–1; Saeed Ajmal 24.3–7–55–7. Second innings—Umar Gul 19–5–63– 4; Aizaz Cheema 7.2–1–9–0; Mohammad Hafeez 2–0– 4–0; Saeed Ajmal 17.3– 4– 42–3; Abdur Rehman 12–2–37–3.

Anderson 30–7–71–2; Tremlett 21–6–53–0; Broad 31–8–84–3; Swann 29.5–3–107– 4; Trott 8–2–16–1. Second innings—Anderson 2–1–7–0; Broad 1.4–1–8–0.

Umpires: B. F. Bowden and B. N. J. Oxenford. Third umpire: S. J. Davis. Referee: J. Srinath.

PAKISTAN v ENGLAND

Second Test Match

GEORGE DOBELL

At Abu Dhabi, January 25–28, 2012. Pakistan won by 72 runs. Toss: Pakistan.

Nobody remembers the first 90% of the voyage of the Titanic. They forget the prompt departure, excellent catering and swift progress across the north Atlantic. No, all anyone talks about is that unfortunate incident with the iceberg.

So it proved with this Test. By the end, few recalled England’s excellent bowling; the dogged 139-run stand between Cook and Trott that seemed to have put them in charge; Broad’s counter-attacking half-century; or Panesar’s six second-innings wickets, in his first Test since July 2009.

Instead, it was all about England’s fourth innings. Set 145 to win, they did not even make it halfway, capitulating for 72 to go 2–0 down with one to play. It was comfortably their lowest total against Pakistan, outdoing 130 at The Oval in 1954, in the first series between these sides, and again at Lahore in 1987-88. It was England’s lowest Test score since 51 in Jamaica in February 2009. And it was only the second time in more than a century they had lost chasing a target under 150.

Whichever way you looked at it, this was a shocking reverse for a team playing their first series since whitewashing India to go top of the Test rankings in August 2011. It was the first time they had lost successive Tests since hosting South Africa in 2008, and their first series defeat in ten, dating back to that 2008-09 tour of the West Indies. Records tumbled as quickly as wickets.

Perhaps it should not have come as a huge surprise. England’s record in Asia promised little: excluding Bangladesh, and including the game in Dubai, they had won only one of their last 18 Tests there. Meanwhile, Pakistan had won six of their previous eight Tests and were unbeaten in six series – including a one-off Test against Zimbabwe – following the tumultuous summer of 2010. Under the captaincy of Misbah-ul-Haq and the genial guidance of interim coach Mohsin Khan, they had developed into a decent side in any conditions, and an excellent one in the UAE.

Abu Dhabi is the driest Test ground in the world, a fact which, combined with injuries to Chris Tremlett and Tim Bresnan, persuaded England to select two specialist spinners, something they had done only once since July 2009. Even more unusually, those two – Swann and Panesar – formed half of a four-man attack. England had not employed a configuration of two fast and two slow bowlers since Kandy in 2003-04.

From a bowling perspective, the tactic worked. Despite losing an important toss, England used the ball with impressive control on a low surface which snared 29 batsmen bowled or lbw – a record for any Test. Broad, in particular, maintained a wonderfully nagging line and length, and the spinners gained turn from the start as Pakistan slipped to 103 for four. If Anderson, normally so reliable, had held a relatively simple chance at slip off Panesar when Misbah was 30, England might have taken an unassailable advantage.

It proved a costly miss. While his colleagues were provoked into errors by England’s persistence, Misbah played with discipline and denial, adding 100 with Asad Shafiq. But it was not all grim attrition: when the field was in, Misbah twice lofted Panesar for successive sixes – with his third and fourth scoring shots and, just as improbably, in the last over of the day. Though Shafiq tarnished his innings with a wild sweep, the value of their partnership became apparent when his wicket was the first of six to go for only 54, the final three falling on the second morning at the same score.

Strauss went early but, during the 50 overs in which Cook and Trott were compiling England’s highest stand of the series, it seemed they would build a match-defining cushion. Trott, though, was bowled by a beauty from Abdur Rehman that turned past his outside edge, and Cook was defeated by Ajmal’s doosra, six runs short of a 20th Test hundred. The middle order flopped again, and it required Broad’s belligerence – he faced only 62 balls – to give England a handy lead of 70.

That looked as if it would be enough when Pakistan slipped to 54 for four second time round. Panesar troubled all the batsmen with sharp turn and, had Pietersen hit with an underarm throw from ten feet and with all three stumps to aim at, Shafiq would have been run out for 26. Instead he and Azhar Ali, two of Pakistan’s younger brigade, demonstrated real composure to add 88. The run-rate barely passed two an over, and Azhar’s 68 spanned four and a quarter hours, but at least they helped Pakistan eke out a lead of 144: not much to bowl at, but enough to set minds racing – on both sides.

Then came the iceberg. England, paralysed with fear and uncertainty, never gained momentum. Struggling to pick the length because of the remarkable pace of Pakistan’s spinners, and wary of missing anything on their stumps on another sluggish pitch, they remained rooted to the crease. Thus encouraged, the bowlers exerted a suffocating grip: Cook’s seven occupied 15 overs before he gifted a leading edge back to the off-spin of Mohammad Hafeez, opening the bowling and evidently a specialist against the left-handers; Strauss’s 32 took 29 overs. When he was fifth out, at 56, the end was nigh.

Already gone were Bell, deceived for the third time in the series by Ajmal’s doosra, plus Pietersen and Morgan, both beaten by Rehman deliveries that skidded on. Trott, batting down the order because of a stomach bug, and Broad were soon defeated by the acute turn of Rehman, who wrapped things up when Anderson swung to deep midwicket. The last five wickets had tumbled in 11 balls, while the waspish, relentless Rehman finished with a career-best six for 25. Only seven men – Charlie Turner, Monty Noble, Aubrey Faulkner, Gerry Hazlitt, Ray Lindwall, Malcolm Marshall and Curtly Ambrose – had taken six or more wickets in a Test innings against England for so few runs. And, with Prior’s dismissal, Ajmal became the quickest Pakistan player to 100 Test victims, in his 19th game. Between them, Pakistan’s spin trio had claimed 19 wickets.

Seven batsmen failed to score more than a single in England’s final collapse, matching the team’s humiliation at Kingston in February 2009, their first Test with Strauss and Flower in charge, and only one short of the Test record of eight, when England dismissed New Zealand for 26 at Auckland in 1954-55. No wonder Strauss said it was “a struggle to think of a loss that has hurt more”.

Man of the Match: Abdur Rehman.

Anderson 19.4–5–46–2; Broad 24–4–47–4; Panesar 33–9–91–1; Swann 18–2–52–3; Trott 2–0–12–0. Second innings—Anderson 14–3–39–1; Broad 20–9–36–1; Panesar 38.2–18–62–6; Swann 27–5–66–2.

Umar Gul 13–1–53–1; Junaid Khan 8–0–33–0; Mohammad Hafeez 22–4–54–3; Saeed Ajmal 40–6–108–4; Abdur Rehman 29–9–67–2. Second innings—Mohammad Hafeez 8–3–11–1; Umar Gul 3–0–5–0; Saeed Ajmal 15–7–22–3; Abdur Rehman 10.1–4–25–6.

Umpires: S. J. Davis and B. N. J. Oxenford. Third umpire: B. F. Bowden. Referee: J. Srinath.

PAKISTAN v ENGLAND

Third Test Match

PAUL NEWMAN

At Dubai, February 3–6, 2012. Pakistan won by 71 runs. Toss: Pakistan.

It seemed appropriate that the Third Test, which produced Pakistan’s first clean sweep over England, should end on a referred lbw decision. The DRS, and the way it was implemented by the officials, had been a leitmotif of the Tests – so much so that the demise of Panesar was the 43rd lbw in all, an unprecedented number in a three-match series. His forlorn decision to ask for a referral felt like an afterthought, which seemed about right: for the final three days of this game, England had been decidedly off the pace.

Played, like the First Test, at the near-deserted Dubai Sports City Stadium, this one outdid even the previous two for unpredictability. England were left to wonder how they could have dismissed Pakistan for 99 on the first day and still lose. Only twice before – in the Ashes-spawning Oval Test of 1882, and South Africa’s first win, at the Old Wanderers in 1905-06 – had they suffered defeat after bowling out a team in their first innings in double figures.

There were two simple reasons for the result. England, their brains now well and truly scrambled by Pakistani spin, mustered only 141 in their reply, when conditions for batting were at their best; and they were unable to separate Azhar Ali and Younis Khan during a second-innings stand of 216 that seemed to mock the loss of 22 wickets for 268 which preceded it. Azhar and Younis might have been playing a different game.

At lunch on the first day, however, which Pakistan took shortly after slipping to 44 for seven, it looked as if England would finish with a consolation win. Led by the excellent Broad, who bowled with Glenn McGrath-like accuracy and hostility for four wickets, they allowed only Asad Shafiq to settle. At the time, his mature 45 out of an eventual total of 99 felt like a futile lone hand. But by the end of the day, with England listing once more at 104 for six, Shafiq’s innings was assuming match-winning proportions.

The opening skirmishes were not a triumph for Simon Taufel. Long regarded as one of the best umpires in the world, he saw three of his decisions overturned by the DRS on his first day in the series. While 16 wickets were tumbling, seven of them to spin, it felt as if the old tradition of giving the batsman the benefit of the doubt – a tacit understanding, admittedly, rather than a Law – was being confined to history.

Pietersen certainly thought so. His problems with the spinners had – despite his denials – almost certainly been exacerbated by his concerns about the DRS, and now Taufel adjudged him leg-before to Abdur Rehman when technology showed the ball was barely clipping leg stump. Even the fact that he had fallen once more to a left-arm spinner, for the 22nd time in Tests, was overshadowed by his evident displeasure at the decision. If Pietersen felt it was guesswork, Taufel had been technically vindicated – although Pietersen claimed he later received an apology from the umpire, himself believed to be no great fan of the DRS. The episode did little to dissuade those who thought the technology risked turning batting, especially on slow pitches, into something of a lottery. With Rehman – bowling wicket to wicket and spearing the ball in – claiming a second successive haul of five or more, England’s lead was kept down to a far from formidable 42.

Now, finally, the series was to see a demonstration of proper Test batting, a display of how to nullify spin – and with it the DRS – by using bat rather than pad, both in defence and attack. Suddenly the pace and nature of the game changed perceptibly as Younis, the old master, joined Azhar, who had made only 94 skittish runs in his previous four innings. As if in defiance of this, he now demonstrated infinite patience and application, compiling a monumental 157 off 442 balls in seven minutes short of nine hours.

Younis complemented Azhar’s substance with his own elegant style, putting together his 20th Test hundred, after a quiet series. When they were finally parted, Pakistan had gone a considerable way towards completing the whitewash. Their total of 365 left England a target of 324, a damning 132 more than they had managed in four of their five innings thus far.

What followed at least regained a modicum of respectability, as Strauss and Cook began with 48 before Strauss played back to Abdur Rehman. Then Saeed Ajmal struck three times either side of lunch on the fourth day, his victims including Cook, who had been becalmed during a four-hour 49, but became the second-youngest batsman, at 27 years 43 days, to reach 6,000 Test runs; only Sachin Tendulkar (26 years 313 days) had got there earlier.

Then Umar Gul took over, claiming four in 30 deliveries – including the hapless Bell, who slapped a long-hop straight to cover – before Ajmal and Rehman finished things off to end the series with 43 wickets between them. Throw in five for Mohammad Hafeez, and Pakistan’s spinners had claimed 48, a national record in any Test series, and only two short of the three-Test record of 50 shared by India and Sri Lanka, both against New Zealand, in 1976-77 and 1997-98 respectively.

While Strauss had arrived talking of Asia as England’s final frontier, and left with it resolutely unconquered, Misbah-ul-Haq spoke of a “dream come true”. After all that Pakistan cricket had gone through, only the most cold-hearted Englishman could begrudge them their triumph.

Man of the Match: Azhar Ali. Man of the Series: Saeed Ajmal.

Anderson 14.1–3–35–3; Broad 16–5–36–4; Panesar 13–4–25–2; Swann 1–1–0–1. Second innings—Anderson 28–7–51–1; Broad 24–7–55–1; Panesar 56.4–13–124–5; Swann 39–6–101–3; Trott 2–0–14–0; Pietersen 3–0–9–0.

Umar Gul 7–1–28–2; Aizaz Cheema 4–0–9–0; Saeed Ajmal 23–6–59–3; Abdur Rehman 21–4–40–5. Second innings—Umar Gul 20–5–61–4; Aizaz Cheema 4–0–9–0; Mohammad Hafeez 5–2–6–0; Abdur Rehman 41.3–10–97–2; Saeed Ajmal 27–9–67–4.

Umpires: S. J. Davis and S. J. A. Taufel. Third umpire: S. K. Tarapore. Referee: J. J. Crowe.

SRI LANKA v ENGLAND, 2011-12

REVIEW BY DEAN WILSON

Test matches (2): Sri Lanka 1, England 1

Noel Coward may have had a point when he wrote about mad dogs, Englishmen and the midday sun – even if he wasn’t necessarily thinking of Sri Lanka in April. But in scorching temperatures, England were as heroic in squaring the series in Colombo as they had been flaky while losing at Galle. If the mercury told a relentless tale, England’s own gauge fluctuated wildly: few sides could have made Asian conditions look both baffling and straightforward within the space of a week as expertly as they did.

They began this brief tour – just two Tests and no limited-overs matches – still smarting from a 3–0 defeat by Pakistan in the UAE, where their travails against spin had been exposed alarmingly. Despite that trauma, they were still favourites to secure a first series triumph in Sri Lanka for 11 years. On paper, a contest between a Sri Lankan team yet to win a home Test since the retirement of Muttiah Muralitharan, and an England side still ranked No. 1, with a bowling attack in rude health and batsmen who surely couldn’t keep failing, would provide only one winner. And yet cricket, as the old pros have it, is played not on paper but on grass – and sometimes on slow turners, where England discovered that Sri Lanka did not need Murali to tie them in knots.

As it was, a 1–1 draw felt about right once the efforts of Mahela Jayawardene, Rangana Herath, Kevin Pietersen and Graeme Swann were stacked up. But, for the third time in the 2011-12 season alone, a high-profile two-Test series was left crying out for a decider. The ECB had wanted a third match, but the hard-up Sri Lankan board had other concerns, so the series was squeezed into a narrow window between the lucrative Asia Cup, whose TV money pleased the administrators, and the IPL, whose contracts placated the players. Test cricket, the sport’s so-called jewel in the crown, was once again being treated like a mere bauble.

With equal predictability, it was the arrival of several thousand British tourists that provided Sri Lanka Cricket with their best gate receipts in years. Australian fans the previous September had paid 500 rupees (about £2.50) for their daily tickets. Now, SLC charged travelling supporters ten times as much in the knowledge that – though many had budgeted for far less – enough of them would be prepared, however grudgingly, to fork out. And so it proved: both the Galle International Stadium and the P. Sara Oval in Colombo were packed to the rafters, even if locals – who had access to poorly advertised tickets at 50 rupees each – were disconcertingly hard to spot.

Many England fans, though, voted with their feet, and instead formed a makeshift terrace on the ramparts of the Galle Fort, from where they could watch the First Test at a distance. Access was free – or at least it was until the final day, when a local politician attempted to charge a 1,000-rupee entry fee on the pretext of holding a party which was not due to start until the evening. The opportunism left a sour taste – as did the litter left behind by spectators on the ramparts – and not everyone made the trip north to Colombo; those who did had no choice but to pay over the odds once more.

The consolation – or possibly the saving grace – came in the form of two absorbing Tests. Central to the plot was Jayawardene, who registered his fifth and sixth hundreds at home against England, a figure bettered only by Don Bradman, with eight. Such was his brilliance in both games that his performance might have been considered career-defining had he not already defined it many times over. Never before, though, had he walked out in successive first innings on a hat-trick. Twice he calmly dealt with an on-song James Anderson – and twice he went on to score centuries. His 180 at Galle may have been an even finer innings than his unbeaten 213 there against England in December 2007, and only when Swann winkled him out on the final morning in Colombo could the tourists feel confident of squaring the series.

Sri Lanka’s victory in the First Test owed just as much to the left-arm spin of Herath. With England apparently opting for a policy of sweep or bust – and often both – he needed to do little more than bowl straight: tentative batting and the presence of the Decision Review System did the rest. Herath’s 12 wickets surpassed anything Muralitharan had managed in ten home Tests against England, who were spared a greater thrashing only by Jonathan Trott’s sensible and unhurried 112.

At Galle, Swann had been accompanied by Monty Panesar and the debutant Samit Patel – the nearest England had come to selecting a trio of front-line spinners since 1987-88, when Nick Cook, John Emburey and Eddie Hemmings all played at Faisalabad. Yet it was Anderson who shone brightest, even though Sri Lanka were allowed to wriggle free from 15 for three in the first innings and 14 for three in the second. For once, England’s fielding was ragged.

Four Test defeats in a row left Andrew Strauss under pressure before the final match of the winter. Not only were his team losing, but his own form had been patchy; another defeat would cost them their No. 1 status. At the Sara, where England had contested Sri Lanka’s inaugural Test 30 years earlier, Strauss’s bowlers were thwarted for a while by Jayawardene. But the England captain and his opening partner Alastair Cook left the sweep back in the dressing-room, and proceeded to play as smartly as Trott had done at Galle. Strauss’s steady 61 removed some of the heat – metaphorically, at least – and allowed him to sit back and enjoy the batting of Pietersen.

An innings of 151 from 165 balls would have been beyond most of his contemporaries. Throw in a smattering of controversial switch hits, and Pietersen’s batting entered the realms of the unique. Swann’s second-innings haul of six for 106, to give him ten wickets in the match, ensured he ended the winter as he began it – ahead of Panesar, who had threatened his status as England’s go-to spinner with 14 wickets in two Tests in the UAE. Tim Bresnan, meanwhile, the man who replaced Panesar in Colombo, could now celebrate 11 Test wins out of 11.

Above all, the win – only England’s second in Asia against a team other than Bangladesh since the 2–1 victory in Sri Lanka in 2000-01 – ensured they would finish a disappointing Test winter still the world’s top-ranked team. It had not been easy. But then, for England on the subcontinent, it rarely is.

SRI LANKA v ENGLAND

First Test Match

LAWRENCE BOOTH

At Galle, March 26–29, 2012. Sri Lanka won by 75 runs. Toss: Sri Lanka. Test debut: S. R. Patel.

The Union Flag that fluttered on top of Galle’s Dutch fort ought to have raised the alarm. It was the wrong way up. Done deliberately, this is supposed to mean SOS; by accident, and it’s anyone’s guess. For much of a game in which England plunged to their fourth straight Test defeat – their worst sequence since the 2006-07 Ashes whitewash – the batsmen seemed determined to provide their own grim twist: Save Our Sweep.

Five men fell playing a stroke that, as England pointed out with some justification, has its place on Asian pitches. But they played it too often, most perilously to full-length deliveries on the stumps: four of the five departed leg-before, with Prior the exception, creaming one into Thirimanne’s midriff at short leg to signal the beginning of the end of England’s fourth-innings hopes.

The chief beneficiary was Herath, whose career-best 12 for 171 made him the first slow left-armer to take ten wickets in a Test against England for 50 years. By doing little more than plugging away on a pitch that demanded caution but should not have provoked panic, Herath spun Sri Lanka to their first home win since Muttiah Muralitharan’s final Test, also at Galle, in July 2010, and to their second-best match figures against England, behind Murali’s 16 for 220 at The Oval in 1998. And if Murali was the more artful, Herath harnessed the zeitgeist: aim for the pads, and leave the rest to scrambled minds and the DRS. Not since Karachi in 1977-78 – when Shakoor Rana was one of the umpires – had England lost six batsmen lbw in a Test innings.

Yet Sri Lanka might have lost had it not been for Mahela Jayawardene, in his first Test as captain for three years and without so much as a fifty in 12 innings. Not long after his arrival, Sri Lanka were 15 for three. But he calmly saw off England’s new-ball salvo, then found a succession of partners happy to play third fiddle (daylight was second).

Even so, England were generous. With Sri Lanka 138 for five – a recovery of sorts, but still below par after winning a crucial toss – Anderson dropped a half-chance as he back-pedalled from slip after Jayawardene, on 64, had failed to cope with Swann’s extra bounce. Then, on 90, he was missed by Anderson again, this time a return catch around his left ear. The next ball was deposited over long-on for six, the shot of a man keen to salt the wound.

For England, it would get worse. Desperate to take the last two wickets, they instead endured a pair of Panesar mishaps. On 147, Jayawardene pulled Anderson’s third delivery with the second new ball to long leg, where Panesar, possibly dazzled by the sun, could only parry it over the rope. In the next over, fate inevitably decreed that it was Panesar who should be standing at mid-on under a steepler as Jayawardene – now 152 – miscued a heave off Broad. Down went the chance, and with it English heads, lifting only when the excellent Anderson finally did get Jayawardene to complete his 12th five-wicket haul in Tests and go past his fellow Lancastrian Brian Statham’s tally of 252 into fifth place on England’s all-time list.

Sri Lanka’s last three wickets had added 127, while Jayawardene’s 180 was streets ahead of Chandimal, who came next with 27. Not only was it his 30th Test century, but his seventh both at Galle and against England. Just as impressive as his occasionally dashing strokeplay was his mastery of the strike: while he faced 315 balls, his ten team-mates faced 268 between them; and he ticked off 51 singles, 23 more than England would manage in total first time round. It was, quite simply, an innings for the ages.

This became even clearer as England subsided to 193, itself a fightback – led by Bell – from 92 for six. Without a carefree last-wicket stand of 36 between Anderson and Panesar, the deficit would have been even greater than 125. Then, when England bowled again, they kept on fighting. Broad knocked over Dilshan in the second over and, when Swann appeared as early as the seventh, he produced a beauty to bowl the left-handed Thirimanne with his second ball. It was 14 for three when Swann had Jayawardene caught at slip, and Sangakkara quickly followed. In all, 17 wickets fell on the second day, equalling the venue record. By the close, Sri Lanka – five down – led by 209.

Cheered on by a crowd of predominantly white faces on the third day – though some were by now rather red, a combination of the sun and anger at Sri Lanka Cricket’s on-the-hoof ticketing policy – England began to believe. And when Swann bowled Herath to pick up his sixth wicket, Sri Lanka were in effect 252 for eight. But Welagedara kept Prasanna Jayawardene company for over an hour before he was caught in the gully off Panesar, and England were further frustrated when – five deliveries later – Broad bounced out Jayawardene, caught at short leg, only for replays to reveal a no-ball. It was one of eight bowled in the match by the usually disciplined Broad; no one else overstepped all game. The 46 runs added thereafter by Jayawardene and Lakmal set England 340, eight more than they had ever made in the fourth innings to win a Test, and 87 more than any side had then managed batting fourth at Galle.

England lost Cook, given out caught behind by third umpire Bruce Oxenford after Rod Tucker had turned down Herath’s appeal, and Strauss on the third evening, then Pietersen, chipping carelessly to short midwicket early on the fourth day. When Bell fell on the sweep to Herath, despite claiming a bottom edge, England were 152 for four – and tottering.

But Trott was playing his own game, mixing stoical defence with an unexpected reverse sweep or two, and Prior – batting at No. 6 ahead of the debutant Samit Patel – knuckled down. Sri Lanka went on the defensive; anything seemed possible. But four balls after Trott had reached his seventh Test hundred (it would become his first in defeat), and with England now only 107 short of their target, Prior’s slog-sweep somehow lodged in Thirimanne’s grasp at short leg. The innings unravelled with indecent haste: the last five tumbled for 12, and England were suddenly one result away from losing their No. 1 ranking. The upside-down flag felt about right.

Man of the Match: H. M. R. K. B. Herath.

Anderson 20.3–5–72–5; Broad 21–3–71–1; Panesar 23–11–42–0; Swann 23–3–92–0; Patel 9–1–27–2. Second innings—Anderson 10.3–2–26–0; Broad 11–2–33–1; Swann 30–5–82–6; Panesar 24–6–59–2; Patel 9–4–9–0.

Welagedara 11–2–46–1; Lakmal 9–2–45–1; Herath 19–5–74–6; Randiv 7.4–0–26–2. Second innings—Welagedara 13–2–40–0; Lakmal 10–5–22–0; Herath 38–9–97–6; Dilshan 12–1–25–0; Randiv 26–2–74–4.

Umpires: Asad Rauf and R. J. Tucker. Third umpire: B. N. J. Oxenford.

SRI LANKA v ENGLAND

Second Test Match

VIC MARKS

At Colombo (PSS), April 3–7, 2012. England won by eight wickets. Toss: Sri Lanka.

In the last game of a chastening winter, England finally demonstrated they were capable of winning a Test in Asia. Not before time, their batsmen gave proper support to the valiant band of bowlers who had sweated buckets from Dubai to Galle via Abu Dhabi without reward. England romped to victory by eight wickets, having won by seven on their previous visit to the cosy Saravanamuttu stadium for Sri Lanka’s inaugural Test 30 years earlier. And they clung to their No. 1 ranking, just ahead of South Africa.

It all seemed so simple again. Anderson was incisive with the new ball, Swann gradually asserted himself on a slow, turning pitch and, in unrelenting heat, the commitment in the field never wavered. That had been the pattern of the winter. But now the batsmen also functioned according to the textbook. Cook and Strauss blunted a modest Sri Lankan attack with the help of Trott. Then Pietersen, suddenly free as a bird, shredded the bowlers in an audacious innings of 151 from 165 balls – England’s highest Test score in Sri Lanka. This was the Pietersen of old, before the burden of captaincy and the disappointment of losing it. He trusted his instincts, and the ball kept disappearing over the short boundaries. He also unfurled his switch hit, causing delight and controversy in equal measure.

Despite yet more Herculean efforts from Mahela Jayawardene – though there is not a rippling muscle to be seen upon him – England ended up as comfortable victors. If there had been a Third and decisive Test, there was a good chance they would have prevailed, but the impending IPL denied them that luxury. Within three days, Jayawardene and Pietersen were Delhi Daredevils team-mates.

Before the match, Strauss in particular was unusually edgy. He gave what, by his standards, was a brusque press conference, in which – despite many invitations – he declined to speculate on his future. For the first time since he took over from Pietersen in January 2009, there had been rumblings about his hold on the England captaincy, not merely because of the sequence of four defeats, but also because of his own lack of runs.

Strauss also had some ticklish selections to make. With Stuart Broad now back home because of a calf injury, Finn returned for his first Test in ten. More surprisingly, Bresnan replaced Monty Panesar, so ending England’s experiment of playing two specialist spinners. Perhaps Strauss was swayed more by the stats than the conditions: in seven Tests together, Swann and Panesar had never experienced victory, while Bresnan could boast wins in all ten previous Test appearances. By mid-afternoon on the fifth day, it was 11 out of 11.

Losing the toss was no great hindrance for Strauss, since Anderson snatched three early wickets, including Sangakkara, out first ball again. Jayawardene, as ever, rescued the situation with another watchful, elegant century, and received dutiful support from Samaraweera and Mathews, back from injury in place of Dinesh Chandimal. Yet when Sri Lanka were all out for 275 before lunch on the second day, England had their chance.

The upper order duly dug in. Their use of the sweep shot was much more sparing and adroit than at Galle, so much so that neither opener dusted off the stroke until the 39th over. Strauss’s 61 stopped some of the rumblings, while Cook and Trott gave a reminder of the rewards of self-denial. Then came Pietersen, who would later be almost at a loss to explain such a spectacular return to form (his Test output over the winter had been far worse than his captain’s). “When I’m in nick, I like to play like that,” he said. “I’ve never been able to explain how I do it. It’s just instinct. If the ball is there to hit, I hit it.”

Sometimes Pietersen smashed balls that were not there to hit. Straight sixes peppered the boxes of the VIPs, and he could not resist employing his trademark switch hit, which led to an unexpected warning from umpire Asad Rauf. Three times in an over Dilshan, bowling off-breaks from round the wicket to a seven–two leg-side field, declined to release the ball because Pietersen – who began the over on 86 and finished it on 104 – was busy changing into a left-hander. On the third occasion, Pietersen received his warning; another would have added five penalty runs to Sri Lanka’s score.

In a rare but justifiable interpretation of the Laws, Pietersen was deemed to be time-wasting because he was causing the impasse that prevented the ball from being delivered. Dilshan was quite entitled to refrain from bowling once he saw Pietersen moving. The only question was whether Pietersen had begun to do so before Dilshan had entered his delivery stride; even with the benefit of replays, it was hard to say.

Whatever the precise sequence of events, the brief stand-off was in danger of overshadowing the fact that Pietersen’s century separated the teams. This was his 20th in Tests, and his 29th in all international matches, taking him past Graham Gooch’s England record; now the batting coach, Gooch was watching with rare contentment from the pavilion. England’s lead of 185 was sufficient.

Sri Lanka, who had sent in nightwatchman Prasad to face one over on the third evening, reached a healthy 215 for four on the fourth before Swann snatched two wickets in the penultimate over. They closed with a lead of only 33. Swann would finish with six wickets in the innings – including the prize scalp of Mahela Jayawardene on the final morning – and, for the second time, ten in the match. He also moved past Tony Lock (174 wickets) to become England’s third-most-productive Test spinner, finishing the series with 182: only Derek Underwood (297) and Jim Laker (193) remained above him. Curiously, Swann appeared to bowl better without having Panesar at the other end.

England needed 94 to win and – despite the early loss of Strauss for a duck and Trott for five – they did not hang around. Pietersen wrapped things up with 42 from 28 balls and his eighth six of the match, a mighty blow over square leg off his sparring partner Dilshan. It was a gem of a knock, bringing delight both to the England team and Delhi, who were eagerly awaiting his arrival in India.

Man of the Match: K. P. Pietersen. Man of the Series: D. P. M. D. Jayawardene.

Anderson 22–5–62–3; Finn 22–4–51–1; Bresnan 21–3–47–2; Patel 16–3–32–0; Swann 28.1–4–75–4; Pietersen 2–0–4–0. Second innings—Anderson 20–6–36–1; Finn 15.5–1–30–2; Swann 40–1–106–6; Bresnan 14–5–24–0; Patel 25–7–54–1; Pietersen 4–0–18–0.

Lakmal 22–4–81–0; Prasad 23–8–63–1; Herath 53–9–133–6; Dilshan 20–4–73–2; Randiv 34.3–4–107–1. Second innings—Dilshan 7.4–1–43–1; Herath 9–0–37–1; Randiv 3–0–16–0.

Umpires: Asad Rauf and B. N. J. Oxenford. Third umpire: R. J. Tucker.

Series referee: J. Srinath.

ENGLAND v WEST INDIES, 2012

REVIEW BY MIKE SELVEY

Test matches (3): England 2, West Indies 0

One-day internationals (3): England 2, West Indies 0

Twenty20 international (1): England 1, West Indies 0

Once upon a time, rather too long ago, the West Indians would roll into town with a swagger, and opponents would obligingly step aside. They had little choice. But if their arrival in England was familiar in one respect – this was their third visit for a Test tour in six summers – the swagger was understandably absent. The decline in their Test fortunes, previously the pride of the Caribbean – indeed the region’s only corporate representation, with the possible exception of the University of the West Indies – had been palpable. And, while a testing early-season tour of England had its moments, they never lasted long enough to change the thrust of the narrative.

The side that arrived in May did so almost unnoticed. In fact, it was barely a side at all, for their strength had been plundered by the lure of the Indian Premier League. Absent from the Test series was a string of players, most notably Chris Gayle – still at odds with the West Indies Cricket Board, despite rumours that the stand-off was being sorted out – and all-rounder Dwayne Bravo. The diamond-studded travellers, Gayle included, were back for the limited-overs games that followed the three Tests, but their effect hardly proved dynamic: West Indies did not win an international match in any format.

During the Tests they were outplayed by a much better side, with England captain Andrew Strauss casting aside doubts about his batting – at least until they resurfaced against South Africa – by making hundreds at Lord’s, for which he received a memorably affectionate standing ovation, and Trent Bridge. The West Indians, under the virtuous leadership of Darren Sammy, at least gave a spirited account of themselves, which in itself exceeded expectation. It was just that their overall efforts tended to be capsized by the occasional catastrophic session.

Hopes were higher for the one-day internationals and especially the single Twenty20 game, the format best suited to their personnel. But the fizz went flat, and West Indies’ only success of the tour came when they thrashed Middlesex in a 50-over warm-up at Lord’s. And instead of being fortified by the return of the IPL stars, as he should have been, Sammy seemed to lose some of his authority.

It was a lazy finish to a trip that had hinted at steady improvement, and it allowed England to shrug off the loss of Kevin Pietersen, whose retirement – later rescinded – from international limited-overs cricket would spark an unedifying chain of events. In the one-day internationals, as in the Tests, they ran out comfortable winners, with Ian Bell, promoted to open with Alastair Cook in Pietersen’s place, scoring a century in the first match, and Cook repeating the dose in the second.

Throughout, however, it was West Indies who faced the greater off-field issues. The impasse between Gayle and the WICB had been the most unwelcome of distractions, disrupting the efforts of coach Ottis Gibson to develop a team in the truest sense of the word, and apparently based on a petty squabble rooted in semantics: two bald men fighting over a comb, as someone put it. The intransigence of the WICB, and Gayle’s occasional faux bemusement, did neither credit. So while Gayle roamed the world, hitting sixes for large sums of money, he became a political football back in the Caribbean. His return to the side was worked out only after the involvement of the premiers of St Vincent, Antigua & Barbuda, and Jamaica, his home country.

All the while, criticism was heaped on Gibson, in particular by a number of West Indian greats, including Sir Vivian Richards and Michael Holding. They discerned a blinkered management style that excluded players Gibson regarded as not fully committed to his personal vision. So the experienced batsman Ramnaresh Sarwan, who had enjoyed such a successful series against England in the Caribbean in early 2009, spent the summer playing for Leicestershire; and the claims of Jerome Taylor, whose legendary bowling spell at Sabina Park in that same series had paradoxically been the catalyst for the renaissance of England rather than West Indies, and who was available again after a lengthy spell of injury, were ignored. Neither, it was argued by Gibson, had demonstrated sufficient commitment to replace more dedicated, if less experienced players – and almost certainly less talented ones.

Preparation for the First Test, in matches against Sussex and the England Lions, was scarcely a success. Hampered by appalling weather, West Indies were restricted to 34 overs in three days at Hove. That was followed by the embarrassment of a ten-wicket defeat by the Lions at Northampton, where the promise of Kieran Powell’s century was offset by hundreds from James Taylor and, in an unbroken opening stand of 197, Joe Root. With weather conditions expected to suit England’s band of seamers, West Indies were given little hope of providing more than token resistance in the Tests.

It was a careless assumption, for at times they played challenging cricket. But they were desperately hampered by the struggles of the top four: Adrian Barath, Powell, Kirk Edwards (who endured a torrid time, was ill during the second innings at Trent Bridge, and dropped for the final Test at Edgbaston), and – most disappointingly of all – Darren Bravo, Dwayne’s half-brother.

On the credit side came predictable resistance from Shivnarine Chanderpaul (or “Chanderwall”, as he had become known over the years, after so many hours playing a lone hand of resistance). Twice at Lord’s he held the line, although he too was absent from the Third Test, for reasons largely unexplained but with speculation ranging from injury to matters of discipline. Despite his runs – he had recently passed 10,000 in Tests – Chanderpaul was no favourite of Gibson’s. In the Second Test, Sammy went a considerable way to answering those who doubted his credentials by surviving a nervy spell late in his innings to register a maiden Test hundred, a vibrant affair full of long-levered strokes.

Kemar Roach put the wind up England with some searing pace: had there been another hour’s play on the penultimate evening at Lord’s, when the ball moved sharply and he had the top order on the rack, there might have been a different result. Roach, unfortunately, was not to last the series because of a shin injury, and neither was the promisingly threatening fast bowler Shannon Gabriel, who made his debut at Lord’s but soon flew home because of back spasms.

If Gabriel had not broken down, however, the series would have been deprived of one of its most memorable passages of play. At Edgbaston, a match in which England rested James Anderson and Stuart Broad – to their evident chagrin – and brought in Steven Finn and Graham Onions, Gabriel’s own replacement, Tino Best, battered his way to 95, the highest score by a No. 11 in Test history. He and the wicketkeeper, Denesh Ramdin, added 143 for the last wicket, just eight shy of the Test record, with Ramdin celebrating his second Test century in controversial fashion by holding up a sheet of paper on which he had written a colloquial retort to perceived criticism from Viv Richards both before and during the series. This show of impertinence – bordering on lese-majesty, given Richards’s status in the Caribbean – would cost him 20% of his match fee. But at least it showed he cared.

The Third Test also saw the first appearance of Sunil Narine, supposedly a mystery spinner, who had been bamboozling batsmen in the IPL, but singularly failed to make any impact here: across the three formats, he managed one wicket for 199.

The surprise success was Marlon Samuels, whose Test career stretched back to December 2000 and included a two-year ban for alleged misdemeanours in connection with subcontinental bookmakers – charges he denied. What was certain was that this maverick batsman had always fallen short of the level his talent demanded. Now, that changed. At Lord’s he made 31 and 86. Then, at Trent Bridge, he scored 117 – his third Test hundred and first for four years, adding 204 for the seventh wicket with Sammy – and an unbeaten 76 out of 165 all out. He batted nearly ten hours in the match, allying the sort of attention span that had previously eluded him with all his customary style. Finally, at rain-sodden Edgbaston, he made another 76. With 386 runs from five innings at an average of 96, there was no question about West Indies’ Man of the Series.

Despite losing the Tests 2–0, they could draw considerable encouragement which they were able to carry over into a home series against New Zealand. But their performance in the one-day games was dismal: the two matches that survived the weather were lost by 114 runs and eight wickets. Gayle’s differences with the WICB had by then been settled, so he joined the squad, only to miss the first match, at the Rose Bowl, through injury. And of the others returning from their IPL commitments, only Dwayne Bravo had any positive impact on a team that now appeared less close-knit than before.

In the face of this, Sammy – who expected and deserved better – shrank back. There appeared, from the periphery, to be a them-and-us situation. Only in the Twenty20 international, at Trent Bridge, did the West Indians compete, and even then they were undone by an extraordinary batting display from the young Nottinghamshire opener Alex Hales, whose 99 was the highest by an England batsman in the format. That innings alone may have been symptomatic of the difference between the sides: somehow, England always found a way. For all their progress, West Indies were evidently still finding theirs.

ENGLAND v WEST INDIES

First Investec Test

ANDREW MILLER

At Lord’s, May 17–21. England won by five wickets. Toss: England. Test debuts: J. M. Bairstow; S. T. Gabriel.

Lord’s is not a happy hunting ground for visiting teams in May. This was the 12th such Test it had hosted since the extension of the international season in 2000, and England had now won eight of them, to go with four draws – plus a sense of ownership that previous generations had been unable to cultivate at their most regular haunt. As with the 1980s West Indians at Bridgetown, or Australia at the Gabba in the 2000s, bearding England in their lair in early-season conditions was becoming one of the toughest challenges in the sport, not least because the opposition tend to be the weaker of the summer’s Test visitors. Thanks to Strauss, who produced a timely return to form with his 20th Test century – and his fifth at Lord’s – West Indies were never quite close enough to parity to threaten an upset. Nevertheless, with Chanderpaul confirming his world No. 1 ranking by scoring 178 runs for once out, they made England sweat.

Despite the margin, the game was as close as any team has come to challenging them at Lord’s, at any stage of the season, since Australia’s victory in 2005. Had a pumped-up Roach been able to bowl more than two fearsome overs in the fourth-evening gloom – when he bounced out Strauss for one, had nightwatchman Anderson caught behind down the leg side, and came within an inch or two of trapping Trott leg-before first ball – the result might have been different. At ten for two overnight chasing 191, then at 57 for four the following morning, England were vulnerable. But Cook closed down the crisis with a sheet-anchor 79, and was perfectly complemented by Bell’s free-wheeling 63 in a match-clinching stand of 132.

In some ways, it had been a curious contest. England’s dominance was at times laughably absolute, not least while Anderson was mocking the West Indian top order with his peerless command of lateral movement. But it was Broad, the less impressive of the two new-ball bowlers, who cashed in on their obvious frailties with a career-best 11 for 165. He joined Gubby Allen, Keith Miller and Ian Botham as the only men to etch their names on to three separate Lord’s honours boards: five wickets in an innings, ten in a match and, thanks to his 169 against Pakistan in 2010, a century.

The public perception of the Test was undoubtedly tainted by the absentees in the West Indian ranks, most notably Chris Gayle, who – despite being more than 4,000 miles from St John’s Wood – snaffled the limelight on the first evening with an incredible 128 not out from 62 balls in the IPL in Delhi. Yet Gayle’s presence hadn’t exactly been conducive to team excellence in the same fixture three years earlier, when he arrived in the country 52 hours before leading West Indies to a three-day defeat. This time, under the dedicated leadership of Sammy, they set out to be greater than the sum of their parts. By and large, they succeeded.

There was a stoicism to West Indies’ performance that could only really be appreciated in hindsight. Perhaps that says more about Chanderpaul’s peculiarly joyless approach to Test batting than anything else but, having spent more than 24 hours at the crease during the 2007 tour, he now loitered for a further ten hours and 25 minutes across 425 balls. With a little more urgency, he could well have become the first visiting batsman since George Headley in 1939 to leave Lord’s with a century in both innings. Instead, he ran out of first-innings partners on 87, and was extracted on the sweep for 91 in the second.

Aesthetics never came into the equation but, on the fourth morning, while he and the rehabilitated Samuels were adding 157 for the fifth wicket to turn an apparently routine defeat into a bid for the spoils, Chanderpaul’s effectiveness was self-evident. Unfortunately, too many of West Indies’ other moments of resistance were undermined by their own failings – most notably a pair of top-order run-outs, one in each innings, and the brace of loose strokes that ended two promising performances from Barath, the young opener from Trinidad.

The most significant innings of the match, and indeed of the series, came from Strauss, who admitted to having removed a “monkey from my back” in recording his first Test hundred since the start of the 2010-11 Ashes, 18 months and 26 innings earlier. After leading his side to four Test defeats out of five in the winter, and turning 35 in March, he recognised the need to silence those who doubted his continued stomach for the role, even if he was still some way from any votes of no-confidence within his team.

Strauss’s home ground – the venue of his century on debut against New Zealand in 2004, and of his most recent hundred on home soil, against Australia in 2009 – was the perfect place to staunch such anxieties. Run-scoring was rarely straightforward against an attack featuring not only Roach but the powerful Shannon Gabriel, who picked up four wickets on debut (followed by a back injury). On 95, Strauss was dropped at slip off a no-ball from Fidel Edwards. But a cathartic cut through backward point off Sammy settled the issue.

From 259 for three overnight, England fell away slightly on the third day as West Indies settled into a disciplined off-stump line – although Bairstow’s working-over on Test debut by Roach was immediately noted by video analysts everywhere. But an unruffled 61 from Bell, and Swann’s carefree 30 in 25 balls, massaged the lead past 150, and the loss of three West Indian wickets for no runs in nine deliveries immediately before tea reasserted the imbalance.

Strauss was eventually pipped to the match award by Broad, whose haul was the best by any bowler at Lord’s since Botham claimed 11 for 140 against New Zealand in 1978. It was, by his admission, a less-than-perfect performance: he was guilty of over-pitching in his early overs, before hauling his length back to cramp West Indies on the drive. But by the end of the first innings he was back in his element, scalping six wickets in his last 50 balls – he claimed the sixth with the first delivery of the second morning – for a Test-best seven for 72.

Despite chasing the game throughout, West Indies found the will to dig in after learning that no tickets had been printed for the fifth day of the match; no one had told them this was standard marketing policy. Trott fell early to Roach on the final morning and, when Pietersen bottom-edged a pull off Gabriel, West Indies were briefly dreaming. Cook’s resolve and Bell’s elegance soon woke them up.

Man of the Match: S. C. J. Broad. Attendance: 108,842.

Anderson 25–8–59–2; Broad 24.5–6–72–7; Bresnan 20–7–39–0; Swann 18–6–52–0; Trott 2–0–7–0. Second innings—Anderson 36–11–67–1; Broad 34–6–93–4; Bresnan 36–11–105–1; Swann 18.5–4–59–3; Trott 6–0–14–0.

F. H. Edwards 25–1–88–1; Roach 25–3–108–3; Gabriel 21.3–2–60–3; Sammy 28–1–92–2; Samuels 14–3–38–1. Second innings—F. H. Edwards 8–0–24–0; Roach 13–2–60–3; Gabriel 5–1–26–1; Sammy 10–1–25–1; Samuels 10.1–0–51–0.

Umpires: Aleem Dar and M. Erasmus. Third umpire: Asad Rauf.

ENGLAND v WEST INDIES

Second Investec Test

JAMES COYNE

At Nottingham, May 25–28. England won by nine wickets. Toss: West Indies.

West Indies came to Nottingham, where they had never lost any of their 22 first-class games – and suffered a few more stinging blows to their regeneration project. The headless rabble that emerged from Caribbean cricket’s crumbling empire had at last been succeeded by a united, workaday team fighting for the badge. Unfortunately, they were also fighting against their own limitations: you don’t win too many Test matches from positions of 63 for four in the first innings, or 61 for six in the second. The contest between England’s four leading bowlers and West Indies’ top four batsmen looked like one of the most uneven in Test history.

Following his tenth defeat in 21 Tests as West Indies coach, Ottis Gibson said he had noticed as many mental as technical flaws in his top order. The task of facing Anderson, Broad and Bresnan with their juices flowing would have been taxing for batsmen of experience; for the tourists’ callow line-up, it was thoroughly disorientating. There was, of course, no guarantee that Chris Gayle’s approach would have served West Indies better. But onlookers could not help wondering what he might have done on the first morning, when they batted in the most amicable conditions imaginable, or on the third evening, when a few crisp blows might have sped them past their first-innings deficit. Instead, a crude collection of swipes and prods left England with only 108 to chase for their record seventh consecutive Test series victory at home.

Trent Bridge was a blissful sight, filled for the first two days by a near-capacity crowd enticed by glorious sunshine and tickets £10 cheaper than the previous year’s Test against India. This beautiful ground will never be the same again: over the 2012-13 winter, the old scoreboard (the first in England to display precise bowling figures upon its completion in 1974) was knocked down to accommodate a second permanent electronic screen, in line with ICC recommendations.

Anderson had a hand in all four early wickets, just one hand in the case of Barath, whose flashing edge lodged in his outstretched left palm at third slip. Even as West Indies were being dismantled, it was clear what a good toss this should have been to win: the ball was doing so little for Anderson that he simply abandoned the outswinger and became a seam bowler for the day.

Bravo drove at Anderson’s first ball from round the wicket, to his cost; Chanderpaul was more fortunate when the next, a well-aimed bouncer, brushed his armguard and whirled safely over the cordon. Four decisions made by Asad Rauf in this match were overturned by technology. The second could easily have killed the contest: Chanderpaul had scuttled to within four of a third successive fifty when he propped forward to Swann and was clipped on the back pad. England’s review showed the ball crashing into off stump, and Swann’s first Test wicket on his county ground, after 24.2 fruitless overs in three matches, was the world’s No. 1 batsman.

At 136 for six, Gibson’s critics were sharpening their cleavers. They reckoned without Samuels, now a 31-year-old father of two – and on the brink of fulfilment. His habit of shuffling across his stumps encouraged England to bowl straight, but he played the ball late with a feather’s touch, unlike the youngsters before him. He shared some delicious verbal jousting with Anderson, who grew frustrated with both batsman and pitch for yielding nothing. “I haven’t found too many bowlers who can bowl and talk,” said Samuels later. “I can bat and talk all day.” But the fact that it had taken this talent nearly 12 years and 70 innings to achieve three Test hundreds did not reflect well upon him or West Indies cricket.

Sammy diced his way to a century, only his second at first-class level, without quashing the suspicion that he was a one-day cricketer in charge of a Test side; one heave across the line against Trott would have shamed Welbeck Colliery’s No. 8. But with a keen eye and strapping forearms, he sent length balls thudding into the boundary boards and kept his team in the match. When Sammy eventually fell to the leg-side trap on the second morning, he and Samuels had put on 204, a seventh-wicket record in Tests on this ground, and for West Indies against England anywhere.

Many blithely assumed that, if West Indies could score 370, England might make 730. It was not that simple. Twice in Roach’s opening spell, Cook nicked deliveries slanted across him, only to be saved by no-balls. His continuing uncertainty outside off stump soon drew him to edge Rampaul, who was conjuring more conventional swing than anyone after missing out at Lord’s with a stiff neck. But Shillingford, added to the side to bowl long, tidy spells of off-spin, was thwarted by batsmen eager to sweep away nasty memories of Saeed Ajmal in the desert, and started pushing the ball through too quickly.

Strauss had cast off his burden with a drought-breaking 122 at Lord’s, and was now climbing into cover-drives as in the glory years. He had passed three figures by the close, only the second instance of opposing Test captains reaching centuries on the same day, after Jackie McGlew, of South Africa, and Peter May at Old Trafford in 1955. It was Strauss’s sixth against West Indies and 21st overall, yet he still had an unwanted reputation to shift: morning-after syndrome. Six times Strauss had slept on a hundred, and never added more than six runs the next day. This time he managed another 39, but it took him nearly three hours, with two sweepers posted on the off side to shackle him. It didn’t help that he had lost Trott, the rampaging Pietersen and Bell – all when set, all lbw playing across their front pad.

Reinvigorated by the second new ball, Roach unleashed an exhilarating barrage at Bairstow, clearly exposing a weakness against fast, short-pitched bowling of which he had seen little in county cricket. West Indies looked more focused in the field than for many a tour to England, and scooped up the last eight wickets for 161.

But honest professionalism and smart bowling plans could not alter the cold reality: to beat good sides you must win the big sessions. West Indies’ recent second-innings performances did not inspire confidence and, when the damage came on the third evening, it felt irreparable – even with Samuels in such sumptuous form. As Kirk Edwards was back at the hotel with flu, Chanderpaul was forced up to No. 4 and out of his comfort zone. He should have known better than to hook Broad’s lifter; had the ball been ten overs softer, though, his top edge would probably have landed tamely in no-man’s land rather than down fine leg’s throat.

At Lord’s, Bresnan’s inclusion had caused some debate. That looked bewildering now. It was he who had stretched out England’s lead and, when it mattered most, he was their canniest bowler, hiding the seam from view and finding reverse swing, apparently from nowhere. Edwards, a quick mover neither to or at the crease, was obliged to trudge out to face Bresnan at 61 for five with eight balls of the third day to see out. No one, least of all Edwards himself, thought he would get that far; two excruciating writhes later, he was crawling back to his bed, poorly, crestfallen and with a first-class tour average of 2.85. For West Indies, so long the sick man of world cricket, the path to full recovery looked steep.

Man of the Match: T. T. Bresnan. Attendance: 51,921.

Anderson 30–12–73–2; Broad 27–4–81–2; Bresnan 27–4–104–4; Swann 20.2–4–62–2; Trott 5–0–24–0. Second innings—Anderson 20.1–6–43–4; Broad 17–5–58–1; Swann 6–1–24–1; Bresnan 17–5–37–4.

Roach 25–1–90–2; Rampaul 32–8–75–3; Sammy 34–3–120–2; Shillingford 26–4–110–1; Samuels 6.4–2–14–2. Second innings—Roach 5–2–16–0; Rampaul 6–2–12–0; Sammy 6–0–32–0; Samuels 5.4–0–18–1; Shillingford 8–1–28–0.

Umpires: Aleem Dar and Asad Rauf. Third umpire: M. Erasmus.

ENGLAND v WEST INDIES

Third Investec Test

JULIAN GUYER

At Birmingham, June 7–11. Drawn. Toss: England. Test debuts: A. B. Fudadin, S. P. Narine.

For a while it seemed the only history this match would make was of the meteorological variety: not since 1964, and Australia’s visit to Lord’s, had the first two days of a Test in England been washed out. But on the fourth morning, with the game going nowhere, came an unexpected Sunday best – or rather Tino Best, who rescued the match from watery obscurity with an astounding innings of 95, the highest by a Test No. 11.

All series, the talk had been of West Indies missing some illustrious names. Now, they shuffled their existing pack: Sunil Narine – finally part of the tour after helping Kolkata Knight Riders win the IPL – and Assad Fudadin were handed Test debuts, and Deonarine and Best drafted in; Kirk Edwards and Shillingford were dropped, while Roach had been ruled out of the rest of the tour with a shin injury, and Chanderpaul was said to have suffered a side strain. But none performed half as entertainingly as Best. His innings – part of a West Indies record last-wicket stand of 143 with Ramdin – was also used as evidence that England had erred in resting both Anderson, left out of the squad entirely, and Broad, omitted shortly before play eventually started on the third day.

Neither was thrilled by the decision, though it had been defended with some passion by team director Andy Flower, and created room for the recall of Finn and Onions, playing his first Test since January 2010 after recovering from a career-threatening back injury. But after Strauss won the toss, England were soon missing Anderson, if not necessarily for his bowling. Barath had made only four when he edged Onions to Bell at third slip, Anderson’s regular haunt between overs: down went the chance. Then, in the second over after lunch, Bell dropped Barath, on 40, in the same position, this time off Finn.

Onions quickly took Bell out of the equation, trapping Barath leg-before in the next over. England’s seamers – headed by Bresnan, soon to surrender his record of winning every Test he had played – belatedly located a better length and began to chip away at the batting. But as at Trent Bridge, Samuels responded well to the bowlers’ chatter and completed an elegant fifty by striking Swann for six and four off successive balls, then pointed his bat at Onions in recognition of their ongoing joust. He eventually fell to Bresnan for 76, and the end of the innings appeared nigh when Rampaul was caught behind off the third ball next morning.

But Best promptly cracked Finn through mid-off for four, then held the pose, paving the way for an unreal session in which he drove England to distraction and the ball to the fence in equal measure. Relatively unnoticed at the other end was Ramdin, who had 63 when Best came in, was dropped on 69 by Pietersen in the gully off Finn, and completed a wicketkeeper’s hundred, full of cuts and deflections. It was his second in Tests, both against England – and was immediately overshadowed when he produced a piece of paper from his pocket bearing the scrawl: “YEA VIV, TALK NAH”.

That followed criticism from Viv Richards during the Second Test, when he had described Ramdin as looking “totally lost”. Given that Richards still seemed in the physical shape of his playing days, Ramdin could hardly be said to have chosen a soft target. Unimpressed by his bravado, the ICC fined him 20% of his match fee.

Meanwhile, boundaries flowed from Best: Bresnan was upper-cut for four and driven for a six. England’s hope was that, like the Australians here in 2005, the closer Best got to an improbable target, the more nervous he would become. So it proved: on 95, he slashed at a wide, slower ball from Onions, and Strauss ran back from the slips to hold on. The manner in which he threw the ball away told of Strauss’s frustration, despite equalling the England record of 120 Test catches, shared by Colin Cowdrey and Ian Botham.

Best had faced only 112 balls, cruising past the highest score by a Test No. 11: Zaheer Khan’s 75 for India against Bangladesh at Dhaka in December 2004. His partnership with Ramdin fell eight short of the tenth-wicket Test record of 151, held jointly by Richard Collinge and Brian Hastings, for New Zealand against Pakistan at Auckland in 1972-73, and Azhar Mahmood and Mushtaq Ahmed, for Pakistan against South Africa at Rawalpindi in 1997-98.

The canny Rampaul quickly removed Cook, before Trott and Strauss – superbly caught by Bravo at first slip off a joyous Best – followed cheaply. At 49 for three, England were in a spot of bother. But Pietersen, in his first innings since announcing his retirement from limited-overs internationals, and Bell batted sublimely, while the only mystery surrounding the Test debut of the feted off-spinner Narine appeared to be why he had failed to live up to the hype. Pietersen looked determined to bring him down to size before, equally unsurprisingly, falling to the less celebrated off-breaks of Samuels.

In the midst of their fluent stand of 137, the umpires twice took the players off for bad light, even though the floodlights were on. At Lord’s, the match had carried on under artificial light when it had been far darker, but that was now forgotten. Umpire Tony Hill lamely justified the decision by saying spectators wouldn’t wish to bat against Best in such conditions, and that his colleague, Kumar Dharmasena, was struggling to see the ball from square leg. On the final day, however, despite a downpour, the officials didn’t call off play until well into the afternoon. To England the series, but to Best imperishable glory.

Man of the Match: T. L. Best. Attendance: 54,620.

Men of the Series: England – A. J. Strauss; West Indies – M. N. Samuels.

Umpires: H. D. P. K. Dharmasena and A. L. Hill. Third umpire: Aleem Dar.

Series referee: R. S. Mahanama.

THE HIGHEST TEST SCORE BY A No. 11

Oh yeah, Tino!

ALAN TYERS

Tino Best fixes me with an intense, earnest look. “I went out there, and I told myself I’m going to play for Denesh Ramdin to get his century,” he says. “I’m going to play sensibly.”

We glance over at the hotel-room TV, which is playing a DVD of his 95 in the Third Test. Best is aiming an enormous slog at his third ball, and missing. “Well, it was a beautiful miss,” he says. “I think I followed through very well on the shot. Very entertaining for the crowd.”

Best laughs heartily. He laughs and smiles a lot, an animated, straightforward face atop a physique of broad-shouldered, gym-dedicated power. “After I got going, Ramdin told me to express myself. I told him if it’s close enough to me I’m going to lick it.” He chuckles with satisfaction on reviewing a joyous drive on the up through mid-off, complete with a showboating, hold-the-pose flourish for the benefit of the photographers – and the affronted bowler, Steven Finn. His company is as infectious, and as guileless, as his batting.

If part of sport’s delight is watching athletically gifted people do incredible things we could never ourselves achieve in a million years, perhaps the most satisfying cricket fantasies have at least a tiny element of plausibility. OK, you definitely wouldn’t be able to bowl like Tino Best in a Test but, given a bit of luck, you might have a chance of batting like him. For two hours and 18 minutes at Edgbaston, Best was living the dream of every club slogger and village hopeful: he was giving it some porridge in a Test match – and it was coming off.

“I give thanks and praise to God that I’m not lacking in confidence,” he says. “I back myself to play my shots, and I like to look stylish doing it.” It was a method both effective and entertaining on a frenetic Sunday morning, when boundaries – many genuine, some slashed – came as quickly as records. First, the highest score by a last man for West Indies against England, beating a mere 19; then a fifty, matching Wes Hall’s record for any West Indian No. 11; then passing his own previous firstclass high of 51. On 76, he became the highest-scoring No. 11 in Test history. Each was ticked off with a sense of theatre and freedom.

“I was thinking about my uncle Carlisle,” says Best of the batsman who played eight Tests up to 1990. “He says to me: ‘You’re a Best, you’re from the Caribbean. You grew up with the legends – show the flair, the determination they played with. This is in your blood.’”

Today’s West Indian players have sometimes found the deeds and words of retired legends more of a burden than an inspiration. Indeed, in this innings Ramdin chose to mark his century by holding up a note answering back to Viv Richards.

“I had no idea he was going to do that,” says Best. “It’s each man to himself. Myself, I feel connected to the past of West Indian cricket. We as a people have come a long way and had a lot of struggles. For us, cricket was something to fight in. People might say I’m over the top, but this is me, a West Indian, playing my cricket the way I live my life.”

As Best’s score grew, so the good humour of England’s bowlers disappeared. There was no mention of the “Mind the windows” incident (when, at Lord’s in 2004, he was stumped after being goaded by Andrew Flintoff into trying to slog Ashley Giles into the Pavilion). For this, Best says, was “a much more serious situation”.

With the temperature rising, his former county colleague Tim Bresnan was treated to some smears over midwicket and a straight six. “Bresnan said to me: ‘We never saw you bat like that for Yorkshire.’ I told him: ‘Don’t you worry about that – this is the big time now. This is the big stage.’”

As the innings blossomed and England wilted, when did he think a century was a possibility? “I was just playing my shots, trying to have a bit of chat, trying to annoy them,” he says. “It wasn’t until I was on 88, and Matt Prior said to me: ‘I bet you can get there in two hits.’ I said, ‘All right, then,’ and he laughed and said, ‘You’re something else, mate.’”

Only on 93, he says, did the magnitude of the situation hit him. Best had stoically resisted the temptations of Jonathan Trott’s dobbers, and survived the short stuff from Finn. With lunch put back up to half an hour, Andrew Strauss had switched his attack again. “I thought, ‘Oh heck, I’m 93 against England in a Test match.’ I tried to hit Onions, and it landed short of Bairstow for two. I tried to get a quick single, but I hit it too hard.” Ramdin rightly sent him back: it would have been a suicidal run. Nerves were jangling.

“As Onions came in, I said to myself: ‘If he pitches this ball close to me, I’m going to lick him back over his head.’ I saw him fidget with his hand as he bowled it. I felt my eyes light up! But of course it was the slower ball, and I was through the shot too quickly.” He skied it, and was caught by Strauss, running back from slip.

“I can’t watch it again,” Best says. “It’s too sad.” But then came another loud laugh. “Still, 95 in a Test match, though! My goal now is to score a hundred. I showed I have the talent. I have been misunderstood but I have a talent and I have something to offer. When people think back to Tino Best, I want them to smile and laugh and say: ‘Oh yeah, Tino!’”

Alan Tyers is the author of WG Grace Ate My Pedalo and CrickiLeaks – The Secret Ashes Diaries.

ENGLAND v AUSTRALIA, 2012

RICHARD HOBSON

One-day internationals (5): England 4, Australia 0

Australia’s players arrived in England with the threat of strike action hanging over negotiations for a new pay deal with their board. As a one-sided NatWest Series unfolded, thoughts of a return home must have seemed increasingly alluring: while the issues concerning terms and conditions were resolved during the trip, questions of a different kind began to emerge – principally, how was it that a side at the top of the ICC rankings could suffer their heaviest defeat in any head-to-head limited-overs campaign?

The scoreline hardly flattered England. If rain had not washed out the third match at Edgbaston, they might easily have completed the 5–0 whitewash required to dislodge Australia and move top of the rankings in all three formats; such dominance would have been unprecedented (even if the Twenty20 listings had been introduced only the previous October). As losses piled up, the tourists did not mince words. Australia’s coach, Mickey Arthur, described his team as “submissive”, “bullied”, and lacking presence, while captain Michael Clarke spoke of “a wake-up call”. It could not have been louder had it been rung from the bells of St Paul’s.

If this all seemed very un-Australian, then England were very English. Team director Andy Flower built a strategy perfectly suited to home conditions and the personnel available. Batsmen with Test-standard techniques were included to combat the two new balls in often tricky conditions, and a bowling attack heavy with specialist pace was threatening throughout. It takes far more than good organisation to overpower Australia so comprehensively, but Flower was entitled to wonder whether his plan could have gone any better. Only the number of dropped catches can have caused any alarm, with the notable exception of Craig Kieswetter’s athleticism behind the stumps. By the end, England had extended their sequence of one-day wins to ten (excluding washouts) since the start of the year.

Any lingering concerns about the top three were removed: not even the harshest critic questioned the right of Alastair Cook, Ian Bell and Jonathan Trott to fill those slots. When Bell fell fourth ball in the final game at Old Trafford, it was his first failure since replacing Kevin Pietersen – now retired from the format, at least for the time being – at the start of the previous series, against West Indies. Circumstances allowed Trott to bat at his own pace, and Ravi Bopara grew in confidence to the point where he supervised the chase in Manchester like Eoin Morgan at his calmest. As he also provided some tight contributions with the ball, Bopara was unlucky that Bell pipped him for the Man of the Series award. Morgan himself put a sorry winter behind him to finish unbeaten in his three innings; his 141 runs came at a strike-rate of 130. Australia had wondered in advance whether Tim Bresnan was a potential weakness at No. 7, but in the event he was not required to bat at all, while Kieswetter at No. 6 faced only 29 balls. In the four games, England lost 14 wickets to Australia’s 32.

Those facts speak for the Australian bowling as well as England’s batting. Only Clint McKay, persevering and accurate, claimed more than two wickets overall. Pat Cummins was forced to return home with a side strain after the first game, a worrying extension to his run of injuries. Shane Watson and Brett Lee followed after the fourth match, at Chester-le-Street, because of calf problems, though not before Lee – who announced his retirement shortly after the tour – had equalled Glenn McGrath’s record of 380 one-day international wickets for Australia. James Pattinson, built up beforehand, did not appear until late in the series – then went wicketless in 16 overs. And Australia lagged even further behind in the spin department, with Graeme Swann outbowling Xavier Doherty before Swann was withdrawn from the squad because of continuing soreness in his right elbow.

Arthur tried to find some comfort, suggesting that England had shown opponents the approach required for the Champions Trophy, which they would be hosting in 2013. The Ashes series later that summer provided another appetising context, with John Inverarity, Australia’s chairman of selectors, saying that David Hussey, Peter Forrest and George Bailey represented the next-best batsmen below those in the current Test team. Hussey (who turned 35 shortly after this series) barely needed experience in England, after much success with Nottinghamshire, but he and Bailey, the Twenty20 captain, both proved inconsistent; the only consistent thing about Forrest was his tentative footwork, exposed by the moving ball. A general uncertainty became evident as Australia tried in vain to reshuffle their hand in the absence of Hussey’s older brother Mike, at home on paternity leave. By the end, the aces were all England’s.

ENGLAND v SOUTH AFRICA, 2012

REVIEW BY SIMON WILDE

Test matches (3): England 0, South Africa 2

One-day internationals (5): England 2, South Africa 2

Twenty20 internationals (3): England 1, South Africa 1

South Africa flew home with England grateful they would not be returning for a bilateral series until 2017. This was their third successive visit – each under the leadership of Graeme Smith – to coincide with the resignation of the England captain: for Nasser Hussain in 2003 and Michael Vaughan in 2008, read Andrew Strauss in 2012. It was a summer in which South Africa won the Tests 2–0 to retain the Basil D’Oliveira Trophy and replace England at the top of the ICC rankings; and it left the hosts questioning not only their own carefully established sense of worth, but the team spirit which had helped get them to the top of the world in the first place.

Quite simply, England fell apart: both on the field, where they never truly recovered after Hashim Amla’s epic undefeated 311 condemned them to a humiliating loss in the First Test at The Oval; and off it, as a split between Kevin Pietersen and other members of the team sprang into public view. Despite batting brilliantly for 149 in the drawn Second Test at Headingley, Pietersen was dropped for the final game, at Lord’s, in part because it emerged he had sent “provocative” BlackBerry messages to South African players (although the ECB later accepted his assurance that the messages had not been derogatory about others within the England camp).

Both teams knew they could not afford to put a foot wrong, but England – defending a record of seven successive Test series wins at home – now found themselves horribly distracted. It was during South Africa’s second warm-up game, at Canterbury, that reports surfaced suggesting Pietersen, who had already announced his retirement from the international limited-overs formats, wanted to miss Tests at home to New Zealand in 2013 to spend more time at the IPL. It was hardly likely to endear him to management or team-mates. Then, ahead of the Second Test, Ravi Bopara withdrew, citing domestic problems. He returned for the one-day internationals and Twenty20s, but his meaningful contributions came only with the ball.

As a result, England were obliged to blood James Taylor at Headingley, and recall Jonny Bairstow at Lord’s not long after he had been dropped amid concerns about his technique against the short ball. Bairstow played two spirited innings but, despite a late fightback engineered by Matt Prior, England’s leading run-scorer in the series, as they chased an improbable 346, he could not prevent defeat. Strauss denied Pietersen was a factor in his resignation, which came after 100 Test appearances, 50 of them in charge. “My race was run,” he said. But not everyone was convinced by his claim; at the very least, the Pietersen affair had overshadowed his farewell – a further source of irritation to other team members.

By contrast, South Africa, who watched the debacle unfold with detached amusement, remained impressively focused, in spite of several potentially destabilising events. Within a week of arriving, Mark Boucher – the veteran wicketkeeper hoping to play his 150th Test at Lord’s – sustained a freak injury at Taunton, where a flying bail struck his left eye. It ended not only his tour, but an unflinching career. His distraught team-mates had to regroup quickly.

A. B. de Villiers was pressed into service as batsman-keeper, with J-P. Duminy slotting in at No. 7, a move that actually strengthened the line-up, even though England managed to keep de Villiers relatively quiet. Boucher’s misfortune, in fact, appeared only to stiffen the South Africans’ resolve. When the series was won, several of them took to the Lord’s outfield sporting T-shirts bearing tributes to their absent friend.

The touring party also had to defend themselves against allegations of leaking the Pietersen texts, a charge they denied. Weeks later, following several apologies to his colleagues, Pietersen was preparing for what ECB chairman Giles Clarke called his “reintegration” to the fold, when chief executive David Collier went even further. “The texts were responses to messages from members of the South African team,” he told BBC radio. “I certainly think that did provoke the situation. There was definitely a policy. There was a tactic that was used.” South Africa, who had maintained all along that the texts were mere banter – a claim undermined by Pietersen himself, with his admission that they were “provocative” – issued strenuous denials, amid talk of legal action; Collier apologised. Whatever the truth, the South Africans never let the matter affect their cricket.

For a team with a reputation for faltering in sight of the big prize, their poise was admirable, and much credit was due to Smith and Gary Kirsten, the coach. While Strauss appeared exhausted by three and a half years of captaincy, Smith’s energy in his tenth year at the helm of the Test side – he, like Strauss, had already ceded the one-day job – seemed undiminished; he even squeezed in a lightning visit home after the Oval Test to attend the birth of his first child. He had, in fact, been talked into staying in charge in 2011 by Kirsten, who may have had personal reasons for wanting to win in England: on each of his three tours as a player, South Africa had blown a 1–0 lead.

Not many rival coaches had got the better of Andy Flower, but Kirsten did. He managed expectation and crises with a sure hand, and it was his idea to take the bulk of the squad to the Swiss Alps for a pre-tour team-building exercise run by polar explorer and mountain climber Mike Horn. They walked and cycled, climbed peaks and plunged into freezing lakes, and arrived in England armed with aphorisms, which were duly aired at every opportunity. Horn must have purred when, with the Tests in the bag, Duminy tweeted: “Getting to the top of the mountain is just the start of the work.” Horn, like Boucher, was with the team in spirit every step of the way.

South Africa might have achieved their main goal, but England rallied to earn a share of the one-day and Twenty20 series, preserving their top ranking in one format and regaining it in the other. But these contests felt like an irrelevance, especially after a dramatic final day of the Test series: they were diminished by rain and the absence of some high-profile personnel, and the 20-over games were used by both sides to experiment ahead of the World Twenty20 (a fat lot of good it did either team). In truth, it was a poorly structured tour, partly because of a clash with the London Olympics. Whatever happened to assurances from both boards that England–South Africa would always be a marquee series consisting of at least four matches?

South Africa won most of the tricks that mattered, and England’s top three batsmen each had a personal nemesis. Morne Morkel, thrown the new ball on the first morning of the series to general surprise, picked up where he had left off in South Africa on England’s tour in 2009-10, tormenting Strauss from round the wicket and removing him with his fourth delivery. Morkel dismissed the England captain only once more, but he was a constant thorn in his side, and Strauss’s last act – padding up to Vernon Philander late on the fourth evening at Lord’s – was that of a man who had simply become overwhelmed. Only once before, against Sri Lanka in 2011, had he averaged fewer in a series of at least three Tests than the 17 he managed here.

Philander – whose ability to swing the ball received belated reward at Lord’s, where he also played two valuable innings – removed Alastair Cook cheaply in each of the three matches after he had begun the series with a century. And Dale Steyn accounted for Jonathan Trott in four of his five completed innings. England’s average score at the fall of the second wicket was 67, to South Africa’s 124. But even that barely did justice to the gulf in quality between the two batting units.

Smith, who had been sidelined before the tour by an ankle problem, as usual scored heavily, taking his aggregate in 12 Tests in England to 1,355. If his century at The Oval in his 100th Test brought the satisfaction of setting up a crushing win, his fifties at Headingley in two opening stands of 120 were equally valuable. His unorthodox method sent England’s bowlers into a predictable tizzy. At Headingley, they came up with all manner of theories, when a simple off-stump line, with a view to an outside edge, was later confirmed as the best policy during the one-day internationals (Steven Finn thought he had removed Smith that way during the Second Test, only for umpire Steve Davis to call dead ball because he had dislodged the bails with his knee).

England presumably spent less time in advance worrying about where to bowl at Alviro Petersen, but he shook off a foot injury to keep them at bay for a nine-hour 182 after they had chosen to field first in the Second Test.

Nothing compared, though, to the majesty and might of Amla who, in going unbeaten for more than 13 hours at The Oval to make South Africa’s first Test triple-century, broke not only records but English spirits. His tactic of moving across his stumps to Graeme Swann was instrumental in the off-spinner going wicketless for 52 overs; Swann was immediately dropped by Flower for the first time since being left out of two Tests in the West Indies in 2008-09.

In Swann’s absence at Headingley, part-time off-spinner Pietersen took a wicket with his second ball, and finished with four in the game, which only highlighted the extent to which England had been thrown off course. For his part, Amla was unfazed by ascending such heights: he crafted runs serenely for the rest of the tour, finishing with 900 in all internationals (including 100 fours and two sixes), and top-scoring in eight innings out of 11.

The series had been billed as a showdown between two experienced and proven pace attacks, and particularly James Anderson and Steyn. It turned out to be a non-event. Anderson’s removal of Petersen for a duck in his opening spell sold everyone – not least himself – a huge dummy, and he soon gave way to frustration as the ball stubbornly refused to be as pliant in his hands as in the opposition’s. His nine wickets in the series cost 40 apiece.

Stuart Broad was well down on his usual pace – the England camp blithely dismissed these concerns – and was little more than a passenger, except for one vibrant spell on the final afternoon in Leeds. Why, wondered observers, didn’t he always bowl like that? Finn, brought in to stir the attack out of somnambulance, looked their most potent weapon, and bowled exceptionally well on the fourth afternoon at Lord’s to keep England in the game.

Steyn it was who first stirred South Africa into action. They had laboured largely in vain on the opening day of the series, but he bounded in on the second morning – the skies now handily obscured by grey cloud – to trigger a collapse; South Africa proceeded to win the next ten sessions too. Steyn was a constant threat, although Morkel, thanks to his height and unorthodox angles, posed the most consistently awkward questions.

Jacques Kallis’s role as a frontline bowler had appeared to be numbered, but he balanced the attack in impressive fashion. His muscular efforts late on the first day and early on the second at The Oval brought the prized wickets of Pietersen and Ian Bell, and gave Steyn the support he needed in slowing England’s advance. And his hard work meant South Africa did not miss Marchant de Lange, who pulled out of the tour in the first week because of a back injury.

As usual, Kallis caught pretty much everything in the field, too, in stark contrast to England’s slapdash handling, another area in which their standards had slipped. South Africa benefited from at least eight spilled catches, the most expensive of which reprieved Amla 40 runs into his 311 (admittedly not even a half-chance to Strauss at slip); Petersen 29 runs into his 182; and Amla, again, by the normally immaculate Prior, when he had scored two of his 121 at Lord’s. Anderson, England’s safest catcher, also put down de Villiers at Lord’s, causing a crucial delay in the push for wickets that might have kept the run-chase to more manageable proportions. Overall, South Africa held 33 catches to England’s 22, and executed three run-outs to one. As so often, the tension told on the side playing catch-up.

All in all, few better prepared, organised or balanced sides have toured England in modern times. South Africa even coaxed a handy performance out of Imran Tahir, a leg-break and googly bowler born and raised in Pakistan but now qualified by residence. Having sought guidance from Abdul Qadir before the tour, Tahir played a small but vital part – bamboozling Strauss at The Oval and outbowling Swann. This wasn’t saying much, but it was enough.

MARK BOUCHER

The tough guy toppled

TELFORD VICE

South African farewells have come in all shapes and sizes. Hansie Cronje left under the darkest of clouds. Shaun Pollock spent an entire one-day series waving goodbye. Makhaya Ntini did so from the back of a golf cart, scuttling around the boundary after a Twenty20 match at a football stadium.

None of the above applies to Mark Boucher, whose 15 years as an international player came to a cruel and sudden end on a grey day in Taunton at the very start of the tour. Imran Tahir bowled Gemaal Hussain. A bail spat from the wicket, as Boucher had seen it do so many times before. Now, though, it hit him in the face and ruptured his left sclera, the white of his eye.

Boucher sank to his knees and put a hand to his head. When he took it away, he was puzzled to see that the fluid on his palm was clear, not red. He took a fewunsteady steps towards the dressing-room, but was unable to continue, and lay face down on the outfield. Unbeknown to anyone, parts of his eye lay scattered on the turf beside him. He was unlikely ever to regain full vision.

To see the embodiment of his country’s cricket ethos toppled was disturbing. There was some mercy in the fact that almost none of the South Africans who had come to take for granted Boucher’s role as the central pillar of that ethos was there to witness his demise. For those who were, the awful memory will live for ever.

It cast a shadow that lingered right up until the dazzling, dying moments of the Lord’s Test – which should have been Boucher’s 150th – when Graeme Smith attended the press conference wearing a T-shirt proclaiming the handwritten message: “We miss u Bouch”.

Even so, this was no sort of climax for a story of talent and temperament welded unusually well into one man. Boucher was what South African cricket likes to think it is, but too often is not: tough, uncompromising, immune to the meltdowns that make mortals out of the rest of us. He was as valuable in the minds of his team-mates and opponents as he was out on the field; slick behind the stumps and solid in front of them. He was also a pain in the backside, which suited South Africa well.

The less celebrated truth was that he was all but a spent force anyway. Boucher had already announced his intention to retire after the Test series, and there was a groundswell of opinion that this would not be a moment too soon. He had long since ceased to be a bulwark of the batting order – his last 19 Test innings yielded only two half-centuries – and there were loud calls for an infusion of young blood from the ranks of South Africa’s crop of promising glovemen, which were ignored.

Those cold-hearted sentiments have now, of course, been swiftly silenced. Which is a disservice to Boucher: he could always handle the truth.

ENGLAND v SOUTH AFRICA

First Investec Test

HUGH CHEVALLIER

At The Oval, July 19–23. South Africa won by an innings and 12 runs. Toss: England.

On a warm Sunday evening, a beery roar spread across the ground: four blokes in yellow jerseys and fake sideburns were basking in vicarious glory after news arrived from Paris that the real Bradley Wiggins – also sporting a yellow jersey, but more authentic facial hair – had been officially crowned as the first Briton to win the Tour de France.

Spectators were in the mood for applause, since they had seen a tour de force themselves. There are few clearer proofs of a batsman’s mental strength or physical adaptability than a Test triple-century, and minutes earlier Hashim Amla had become the first South African to breathe such rarefied air. For at least four reasons it was a genuinely great achievement: with Petersen gone for nought, it was born in adversity; it came away from home against the team rated best in the world; it was an innings of real beauty, with shots played all round the wicket, off front foot and back; and, like only nine of the previous 25 Test triples, it would lead to victory.

In fact it led to more than that: it led to annihilation. No one was sure when England had been so utterly outflanked, though Hastings in 1066 was a possibility. In losing by an innings, Strauss’s team scraped just two wickets, and one of those – Smith bowled via bat and pad – was a touch fluky. Between the dismissal of Ravi Rampaul, West Indies’ No. 10, at Edgbaston in June and the end of this Test, England had taken three wickets, once every 260 runs. As the marauding South Africans raced towards their first victory at The Oval, their pack downed batsmen at an average cost of only 31.

After England’s eventual marmalising, it was hard to recall the optimism of the first day. The word was that South Africa were undercooked and, without Mark Boucher, had lost their soul. De Villiers, the regular one-day keeper, took the gloves, in his 75th consecutive Test – so equalling Boucher’s national record.

The Oval, which was hosting the First Test while Lord’s geared up for Olympic archery, had seen endless rain before the game. Another shower delayed the start by 15 minutes, but Strauss, wary of a pitch expected to deteriorate, batted anyway. He immediately faced Morkel (handed the new ball in preference to Steyn) from round the wicket. The fourth delivery struck Strauss – a serial Morkel victim – on the pads, and Smith, utterly convinced of the shout, successfully challenged the not-out decision.

The next breakthrough, though, was a while coming. Philander had bolted to 50 Test wickets from 1,240 balls, quicker than anyone, but now he went wicketless through a whole day for the first time. Steyn, No. 1 in the world rankings, fared no better as the South Africans failed to wake a comatose surface. With the fielding similarly sleepy, imaginary scoreboards whirred inside spectators’ heads: England would surely make 500, 600 – perhaps even 700. So it was a shock when Trott drove airily, ending his 170-run stand with Cook, who would go on to his 20th Test century, almost a year after his 19th. Still, Pietersen wouldn’t waste such an opportunity, would he? Er, yes. With England in apparent control at 251 for two and the new ball available in moments, he followed an innocuous leg-side bouncer and gloved Kallis to de Villiers.

Next morning, a change in the weather meant England, after sailing serenely through the first day, were suddenly blown on to the rocks. Clouds loured over Kennington, making the ball as skittish as a kitten. Out went a defensive line wide of off; in came vicious, intimidating swing. First overboard was Cook, dragging a loose drive into his stumps. He had played just one other false stroke: a top-edged hook that brought his first six in his 45 home Tests.

Bopara, replacing Jonny Bairstow in the problematic No. 6 spot, botched his return. Leaving his bat pointing skywards like an abandoned periscope, he was caught in two minds about hooking – and behind for a duck. Bell, though, was beaten by classic Kallis. After two outswingers, he left what he thought was a third. But the ball shaped back in to kiss the off bail: England had nosedived from their overnight 267 for three to 284 for six. Prior counterpunched, but the truth was that six of the top eight fell to soft dismissals, and their total of 385 was more a statement of what might have been than of intent.

When Anderson aped Kallis to despatch Petersen for nought (away + away + in = out), England’s failings looked pardonable. But rain that fell just after tea washed more than the players from the field. When cricket resumed at 5.55, it became clear that any scintilla of movement had gone too – at least when England had the ball. Just before the close, Amla, on 40, slashed hard at Bopara. Strauss, the lone slip, fell back to earth with stinging fingertips. As drops go, it was forgivable, but costly.

The left-handed Smith was initially unsettled by Swann, so he eschewed all risk by lunging defensively forward or playing from the crease – a viable option against such sluggish turn. The result was a fifty high on determination and low on aesthetics; at 160 balls, it was his slowest in Tests. (His next fifty, though, came from just 41, as he became the seventh player to mark his 100th Test with a century.) Session merged into session as milestone after milestone slipped by under increasingly blue skies: 200 stand, 100 for Amla, 250 stand...

On the third afternoon, Smith finally made way for Kallis. Not that it made a ha’p’orth of difference: the England bowlers were as threatening as blancmange – though with distinctly less wobble. Still, Strauss did manage a laugh when his throw smashed the sunglasses that had just slipped from his sunhat, a mishap oddly emblematic of England’s plight. More century landmarks peppered play on the fourth day, with the bowlers joining in: 100 for Anderson, 200 for Amla, 100s for Bresnan, Swann and Kallis (his 43rd in Tests), 200 stand...

Amla, who had chosen to defer his Ramadan fast, had an insatiable appetite for runs: on the attack, he was strong, elegant and wristy, while his defence, forward or back, was neat, fluent and commanding. No single shot stood out, but that was testament to his all-round dominance. Against Swann, Amla lingered outside off and played him to leg so effortlessly that the bowler ended with none for 151. And his partner was the Kallis so rarely glimpsed in England – the batsman with oodles of time and every shot in the book... 500 up, 250 for Amla, 250 stand, 300 stand, Amla to 281 (beating de Villiers’s national record), 150 for Kallis, 600 up...

Four balls later, in the 184th over, Amla lofted a drive over extra cover. It took him past 300, and from the most exuberant beard in Test cricket there flashed a mile-wide smile. By the time Smith declared at tea, earlier than many expected, Amla had faced 529 balls. It wasn’t quite chanceless – no marathon stretching to 13 hours and ten minutes, the longest undefeated innings in Test history, could possibly be – but it was studded with 35 fours. It was the first triple in England since Graham Gooch’s 333 at Lord’s in 1990, the first by a visiting batsman since Bobby Simpson’s 311 for Australia at Old Trafford in 1964, and unforgettable for its calmness, placement and concentration.

England, trailing by 252, had four sessions in which to save the game. On a pitch that for almost 48 hours had refused bowlers so much as the time of day, it should have been within their compass. Yet the South Africans did find movement, and for the third innings in a row an opener fell for a duck. When Pietersen, unsettled by Morkel’s aggression, lost his middle stump playing inside a straight one, England were 57 for three. That became 67 for four after a nervy sweep from Strauss looped to backward square leg.

Next morning Bopara, looking to belt the leather off a ball better ignored, dragged on, ending a responsible fifty stand. Bell, however, continued the restraint, and with Prior began to hatch an unlikely escape. He inched his way to 50 from 189 deliveries – like Smith, his slowest in Tests – only to be undermined an hour or so after lunch when Prior could resist the sweep no longer: Kallis snapped up the game’s first slip catch as England lost another wicket of their own making. Once Steyn removed Bell with the new ball to leave them 210 for seven, the end was near. With England nine down at 3.40, tea was delayed, and the last wicket came at 3.58. It was a minor inconvenience for South Africa; in truth, England weren’t much more trouble.

Man of the Match: H. M. Amla. Attendance: 103,387.

Morkel 24.5–2–72–4; Philander 27–4–79–1; Steyn 30–7–99–2; Kallis 19–7–38–2; Imran Tahir 19–0–61–1; Duminy 6–1–10–0. Second innings—Morkel 16–0–41–1; Philander 19–6–29–1; Steyn 21–6–56–5; Imran Tahir 32–7–63–3; Kallis 7–1–22–0; Duminy 2–1–3–0.

Anderson 41–7–116–1; Broad 34–6–118–0; Swann 52–10–151–0; Bresnan 37–2–140–1; Bopara 18–1–78–0; Pietersen 3–0–13–0; Trott 4–0–12–0.

Umpires: Asad Rauf and S. J. Davis. Third umpire: H. D. P. K. Dharmasena.

ENGLAND v SOUTH AFRICA

Second Investec Test

LAWRENCE BOOTH

At Leeds, August 2–6. Drawn. Toss: England. Test debut: J. W. A. Taylor.

An absorbing Test was played out against the weird and not-so-wonderful backdrop of the Kevin Pietersen saga. Or was it the other way round? By the end – as Pietersen followed a typically dazzling 149 on Saturday afternoon with a Monday evening press conference full of cryptic self-pity – it was hard to say: the distinction between plot and subplot had become hopelessly blurred. And with the Olympic athletes down in joyful London resembling one big happy family, the dysfunctional England dressing-room felt depressingly out of kilter.

The facts, though, were these: needing victory to stand a chance of extending their sequence of Test series wins at home to a record eight, England could manage only a draw, despite briefly threatening something extraordinary on the final day, the fifth in succession to be interrupted by rain or bad light. Pietersen then announced that the Third Test at Lord’s – on which England’s No. 1 ranking now depended – could well be his last, following a breakdown in relations with his team-mates. When it emerged later in the week that he had sent text messages to the South Africans for which he subsequently felt the need to apologise, he was dropped anyway. Really, you couldn’t make it up.

So much for the scandal. As if in deference to later events, the opening morning of the game itself had a chaotic air. Graeme Swann was omitted after 43 successive Tests, and Finn brought in as part of an all-pace attack – England’s first since they lost here to South Africa in 2003. If selection was made with a poor weather forecast in mind, then Swann’s absence obliged Strauss to bowl after winning the toss. And the move might have paid off, had Cook not dropped a straightforward chance at second slip (Swann’s usual position) when Petersen had 29. Then, in the next over, Finn had Smith caught at first slip on six, only for umpire Steve Davis to signal dead ball because the bowler had disturbed the non-striker’s stumps with his right knee at the point of delivery.

For Finn, it was a familiar problem, though no one could remember an umpire previously denying him – or indeed anyone else – a wicket by invoking Law 23.4(b)(vi), which relates to batsmen “distracted by any noise or movement”. Finn had knocked into the stumps at least three times in his first eight deliveries without interesting Davis, but Smith was now in the umpire’s ear, possibly sensing a chance to unsettle his opponent. Obliged to intervene, Davis did so on Finn’s ninth ball, a split second before Smith edged it low to Strauss. England were disgruntled, but they might have wondered instead why Finn had not ironed out a long-standing quirk.

Two early wickets could have changed the shape of the game – and the series – but England had to wait until the total reached 120 for their first success: Smith clipped Bresnan to short backward square, where Bell was lurking as part of an elaborate leg-side field. Amla was carelessly run out, going for a third, by Bresnan on the cover boundary, and when Kallis edged Anderson to Cook, who this time held on to a tougher chance, South Africa were 157 for three and in danger of surrendering the high ground. But Petersen remained resolute, completing a fourth Test hundred that – had it been a piece of rhythmic gymnastics – would have scored more highly for difficulty than artistic merit.

Armed with the second new ball on the first evening, England stayed in touch by striking twice: Broad’s first Test wicket in 401 deliveries and nightwatchman Steyn. Pietersen’s first contribution was suitably unpredictable as he removed Rudolph with his second ball shortly before lunch on day two, a sharp off-break that immediately called into question the omission of Swann. Petersen, twice reprieved by Hawk-Eye after being given out leg-before on 119 and 124, finally fell for a Test-best 182 after Rod Tucker contrived to miss an edge behind and England asked for a review.

Eventually facing a total of 419 – around 100 more than they might have hoped after South Africa were put in – England survived unscathed until stumps, then slipped to 173 for four moments before tea on the third day. Pietersen had 43 but, when Morkel went round the wicket in the fourth over after the interval, it was as if he had woken the Kraken. Missed on 52 by Amla at short leg, Pietersen pulled the next two balls to the midwicket fence, then drove and carved Steyn for fours. Kallis was pulled for four more, then straight-driven for another. Next over, Pietersen ticked off 7,000 Test runs; six overs after that, he was celebrating his 21st century, pointedly waving his bat in the direction of his wife, Jessica, and only cursorily acknowledging those of his team-mates who had bothered to appear on the dressing-room balcony. His second fifty came from just 52 balls.

He wasn’t finished yet. One murderous lofted straight-drive prompted the bowler, Steyn, to take evasive action, à la Lillee to Botham during the other immortal Headingley innings of 149. Soon after, Pietersen dumped him back over his head for six. This was unmissable: for a while, even the West Stand stopped building beer snakes.

Watching from the other end, defending stoutly, was James Taylor, the thimble-sized 22-year-old making his Test debut in place of Ravi Bopara, who had pulled out for personal reasons. In a game-turning stand of 147, Taylor added a compact 34. It was the innings of a high-class stooge, quietly doing his bit while handing the punchlines to Pietersen. The discrepancy in the batsmen’s heights, with Pietersen nearly a foot taller, merely emphasised the effect.

Pietersen completed a hundred runs in an elongated final session, but fell second ball on the fourth morning to the persevering Morkel, before Prior helped carve out a six-run lead. With more than five sessions to go, anything seemed possible, only for thunder, lightning and rain to limit South Africa’s second innings before stumps to 17 overs.

A draw looked inevitable, even when Pietersen again removed Rudolph – opening because Petersen had a hamstring strain – with his second ball, this time courtesy of a reviewed lbw. After lunch, Pietersen added Smith and Amla, who smacked a full toss to extra cover, at which point Broad took up the baton. Perhaps because he had spent the previous evening watching a DVD of England’s miracle win over Sri Lanka at Cardiff in 2011, when the tourists lost eight wickets in a session, and the Test, he was in the mood for a twist: summoning up an extra yard of pace, Broad embarked on a spell of five wickets in 37 balls. Anderson added Steyn and, when Smith made a second successive surprise declaration, England were set 253 in 39 overs: improbable, but maybe not by the standards of an extraordinary week.

Promoted to open, Pietersen managed three fours in seven balls before toe-ending to mid-on, and Strauss – after following him to 7,000 Test runs – hit a full toss back to Duminy. Cook departed for a resourceful 46, and it wasn’t until Prior, mysteriously coming in after Strauss and Trott, was run out that England gave up hope of a win. Trott and Bell blocked for an hour before hands were shaken shortly after 7.30pm. Had the weather allowed just one more session, we might have had a thriller. In the event, with Pietersen about to face the press, the fun and games had barely begun.

Man of the Match: K. P. Pietersen. Attendance: 54,398.

Anderson 33.2–10–61–2; Broad 35–10–96–3; Finn 32–3–118–2; Bresnan 27–4–98–1; Trott 5–1–9–0; Pietersen 7–0–26–1. Second innings—Anderson 19–7–40–1; Broad 16.4–2–69–5; Finn 14–2–55–0; Bresnan 9–2–40–0; Pietersen 9–1–52–3.

Morkel 32–9–96–2; Philander 30–10–72–2; Steyn 28–8–102–2; Kallis 12–3–34–1; Imran Tahir 23.4–0–92–3; Duminy 1–0–5–0. Second innings—Morkel 10–4–33–0; Philander 6–1–26–1; Steyn 7–1–26–1; Imran Tahir 4–0–20–0; Duminy 2–0–10–1; Kallis 4–2–7–0.

Umpires: S. J. Davis and R. J. Tucker. Third umpire: Asad Rauf.

ENGLAND v SOUTH AFRICA

Third Investec Test

STEVEN LYNCH

At Lord’s, August 16–20. South Africa won by 51 runs. Toss: South Africa.

When a brainless run-out reduced England to 45 for four on the last morning, still 300 adrift, embarrassment loomed – and with it the tame surrender of the No. 1 ranking in Test cricket. They did lose in the end, but only after a thrilling fightback which briefly persuaded an enthralled, engaged crowd that a miracle was possible.

Jonny Bairstow, playing because Kevin Pietersen had been dropped for textual impropriety, lit the blue touchpaper with a 41-ball fifty, Prior and Broad carried on the fight, and Swann swung freely. After tea, 61 runs cascaded from 41 deliveries, but just as Smith – captaining in a Test for a record 94th time – was beginning to look nervous, Swann was narrowly run out, after lashing five fours and two sixes. And, despite a manic episode when the swashbuckling Prior was caught in the covers, then reprieved just before reaching the Pavilion because replays showed Morkel had overstepped, the frolics were about to end. Shortly afterwards, Prior really was out, and Finn went first ball, both victims of the bouncy Philander, who thus added a five-for to two vital batting contributions.

It had been a spirited retort by England, but victory was always tantalisingly out of reach, mainly because of the sort of self-inflicted wounds – especially run-outs and dropped catches – which typified their performances. The result meant a first home series defeat since the loss to South Africa in 2008, and their sixth in 11 Test matches anywhere since reaching No. 1 themselves a year previously.

The last day provided a fitting conclusion to an absorbing match, conducted on a blameless pitch which, 17 days previously, had been the domain of Olympic archers. Around a third of the outfield had been returfed, after temporary stands were removed, with grass grown near Scunthorpe – an Olympian effort of their own from the groundstaff. Away from Lord’s, though, the build-up was dominated by the omission of Pietersen: many wondered how the 149 runs he had scored in the first innings at Headingley could be adequately replaced. Bairstow provided the answer, duly scoring 149 runs in the match, and batting with character and chutzpah.

The imbroglio clearly affected the tight-lipped England camp, however. Strauss, playing in his 100th Test – and captaining for the 50th time – admitted as much afterwards. “It’s been a tough week,” he said, before reflecting on England’s poor run in 2012: “We’ve lost a lot more than we would have wanted to. Whether it was because of a change of mindset – from being the hunters to the ones that are hunted – I don’t know.” Nine days later, he announced his retirement.

Controversy was temporarily forgotten, though, as South Africa dipped to 54 for four after choosing to bat on an overcast first morning. Three of them went to Finn, who displayed a Glenn McGrath-like mastery of the Lord’s slope to defeat Amla, although the wickets of Petersen and Kallis were less classical, both involving leg-side gloves. Petersen’s bottom hand was probably still in contact with the bat handle when it was hit, but third umpire Rod Tucker’s decision to overrule his on-field colleague Kumar Dharmasena in the case of Kallis looked like a blooper: his bottom hand was indisputably off the handle when Finn’s rib-tickler cannoned into it.

South Africa overcame their indignation, regrouping through gritty contributions from Rudolph and Duminy. A maiden half-century from Philander took them past 300, before he became Prior’s sixth victim of the innings – and the second for Swann, restored to the side, complete with severe 1950s haircut, in place of Tim Bresnan. There were three wickets for Anderson, but Broad – in his 50th Test – was a little below his usual pace: England might have wished they had opted instead for Graham Onions, who was released from the squad after the toss, drove up to Trent Bridge, and took nine for 67 for Durham).

Midway through the second day, England were also 54 for four, before a rescue act of their own. Bairstow had been labelled susceptible to the short ball during the West Indies series, but survived a thorough examination from Steyn and Morkel. Tall and slender, though wide-shouldered, as if he’d left the coat-hanger in place, Bairstow played his natural attacking game, adding 124 with Bell to calm English nerves. Bell was well caught at third slip ten overs before the close, but Bairstow survived, having mixed in the occasional fierce cut with his signature peachy on-drives. Next morning, though, he tried one too many after being tied down for 14 balls on 95, and was bowled by the impressive Morkel. England had been closing in on South Africa’s total; they seemed unlikely to get there when Anderson lobbed a catch to gully at 283. But, to wild applause, the last pair inched them level, then just past: as at Headingley, they led by six.

South Africa were quickly back in front, though initial progress was slow. Smith hit only two fours in his first 61 deliveries before cutting Swann to the rope, then was lbw next ball. Shortly afterwards came a match-changing moment: Amla flicked at a leg-side delivery from Broad, Prior covered the ground well but almost overshot the ball, which hit him on the base of the left palm and bounced away. Amla had two at the time and – though Broad was partly mollified when he trapped Petersen in front two deliveries later – he survived to score 119 more.

Batting with the sort of calm, wristy elegance patented by Ranji, Amla did not give another chance. A devout Muslim, he celebrated the festival of Eid with his 16th Test century, and it was a surprise when, halfway through the fourth day, he was again castled by a superb delivery from Finn which this time went up the hill a little. By then de Villiers had also been dropped – on eight, when he chipped a simple chance to Anderson at short midwicket off Swann – and the lead was past 250.

De Villiers advanced to 43 before Strauss clasped his 121st Test catch, to pass the England record previously shared by Colin Cowdrey and Ian Botham. Finn also removed Rudolph during a fine spell of three for 14 in 29 balls. The previous evening he had dismissed Kallis for 31, oddly his highest score in three Tests at Lord’s: it remained a statistical curiosity that, of Test cricket’s five leading run-scorers, only one (Rahul Dravid in 2011) had scored a century there. Kallis immediately reviewed his lbw decision, but had to walk off, disgusted by the DRS for the second time in the match (the snickometer, not part of the review process, later raised the possibility of a faint nick). Kallis cheered himself up by holding on to a couple of screamers in the slips – including one to end the match – and also took his 50th wicket against England to join an exclusive club.

Finn’s spell revived England, but hopes of a swift end – and a more realistic run-chase – were stymied by Philander, who made a forthright 35. Duminy, who survived for 141 minutes, was still there when Anderson, bowling well throughout for little reward, wrapped things up with two late wickets. The first of them was his 50th in Tests at Lord’s: only Ian Botham (69) and Fred Trueman (63) had more.

The target of 346 soon looked far distant when Cook was struck in front, then Strauss – possibly betraying the effects of an enervating week – let one go which was destined to flatten middle stump. The overnight 16 for two got worse when Bell was caught, after a juggle, at first slip, and most of the ground groaned when Trott pushed towards wide long-on, but declined a perfectly feasible fourth run: Taylor, in only his second Test, was stranded – “well stuffed by Trott”, lamented the watching Michael Vaughan.

There seemed no way back after that – and indeed there wasn’t, especially against a side as strong as South Africa, worthy claimants of the ICC Test mace. But England showed enough fight during a classic match, conducted almost throughout in sizzling temperatures, to show why they had been the previous holders.

Man of the Match: V. D. Philander. Attendance: 123,555.

Men of the Series: England – M. J. Prior; South Africa – H. M. Amla.

Anderson 29–5–76–3; Broad 24–4–69–1; Finn 18–2–75–4; Swann 24.2–6–63–2; Trott 6–1–14–0. Second innings—Anderson 25.2–4–73–2; Broad 21–2–85–2; Swann 47–14–94–2; Finn 27–5–74–4; Trott 4–0–11–0.

Morkel 28.3–6–80–4; Philander 24–9–48–2; Steyn 29–4–94–4; Kallis 12–3–29–0; Imran Tahir 14–3–54–0. Second innings—Morkel 17–3–58–0; Philander 14.5–4–30–5; Steyn 16–4–61–1; Kallis 11–2–50–1; Imran Tahir 24–3–88–1.

Umpires: H. D. P. K. Dharmasena and S. J. A. Taufel. Third umpire: R. J. Tucker.

Series referee: J. J. Crowe.

INDIA v ENGLAND, 2012-13

REVIEW BY GEORGE DOBELL

Test matches (4): India 1, England 2

One-day internationals (5): India 3, England 2

Twenty20 internationals (2): India 1, England 1

England left India celebrating a victory for the history books. And yet, in the aftermath of their nine-wicket defeat in the First Test at Ahmedabad, it had been hard to avoid a sense of gloomy inevitability. Ranged against them, apparently, were all their old failings – and some recent ones too: scars from the 3–0 defeat in the UAE by Pakistan and their slow bowlers were still raw. They had not won a series in Asia, Bangladesh excepted, for 12 years; and they had not won in India since 1984-85, when David Gower’s side had become the first – and, until now, only – visiting team to beat them in a Test series after falling behind.

There were doubts, too, about the spirit within the squad. Kevin Pietersen had only just returned on a short-term central contract, having been omitted from the final Test of the home series against South Africa and the World Twenty20 squad following revelations about his relationship with his team-mates. And despite Pietersen’s return, itself a feather in the cap for the new captain, Alastair Cook, there remained selection issues. With the retirement of Andrew Strauss, England had drafted in as opener Nick Compton, an uncapped 29-year-old accustomed to the No. 3 role in county cricket. The No. 6 slot remained a problem, while an injury in the opening warm-up game to Steven Finn, now a first-choice bowler, especially in these conditions, threatened to disrupt their plans from the start.

Neither could there be any doubting India’s determination to avenge their humiliating 4–0 defeat in England in 2011. Talk of payback featured heavily, with the Indian players making it clear England would find life significantly harder in alien conditions. During their three warm-up matches, the tourists were denied exposure to quality opposition. In particular, they faced very little slow bowling, and none of it high-class, before attracting an avalanche of spin in the Tests.

When Andy Flower, England’s head coach, acknowledged after Ahmedabad that he had erred in omitting Monty Panesar, and asked for judgment on his team to be suspended until the end of the series, it seemed he was talking more in hope than expectation. Not for the first time, however, Flower was vindicated: by emulating Gower’s side and turning deficit into victory, England pulled off one of their least expected series wins. For Flower’s opposite number, Duncan Fletcher – who during his time in charge of England had never won a series against India – it was a particularly unpalatable pill.

In the event, India’s tactics backfired, as Cook guardedly admitted he hoped they might. While England’s top order were warming up almost exclusively against an assortment of seamers and part-time slow bowlers, they were also spending confidence-boosting time at the crease. India’s captain M. S. Dhoni kept insisting, to the point of obsession, on turning tracks, designed to capitalise on the two teams’ perceived strengths and weaknesses. But it became clear that – once Panesar had been picked – it was England who had the slow bowlers better equipped to exploit the conditions. And while India persisted with the theory that England’s batsmen could not play spin, they went into games with poorly balanced attacks, including one seamer and three spinners at Mumbai, then – in a dreadful miscalculation – one and four at Nagpur.

At both Mumbai and Kolkata, Tests were played on recently used pitches, although Dhoni’s attempts to put pressure on groundsmen to comply with his demands met with mixed results. Certainly any implied threats from the BCCI about the future of Kolkata’s curator fell on deaf ears: Prabir Mukherjee, a fearless octogenarian, was long past the stage where such intimidation offered any concern, and provided a fine Test pitch. Only the deathly slow surface at Nagpur proved unsuitable for a format fighting for space in a crowded marketplace.

As Dhoni’s stock fell, despite his face-saving – though not series-salvaging – innings of 99 at Nagpur, Cook’s reputation rocketed. Even amid the rubble of England’s rout at Ahmedabad, he had sown the seeds of their resurgence with a second-innings century that proved to his colleagues it was possible to prosper against India’s spinners. In typically undemonstrative fashion, he went on to score centuries in each of the first three Tests, making him the first man to register hundreds in his first five in charge (he had scored one in each of the two Tests in Bangladesh in 2009-10, when he stood in as captain for the rested Strauss). Cook’s air of calm, whether in adversity or triumph, his pragmatic approach to coaxing the best out of the eclectic mix of characters under him, and his desire to succeed meant the post-Strauss transition took place more smoothly than anyone could have dreamed.

Where once he had been an accumulator, satisfied with cutting, pulling and nudging, Cook now showed he had developed a range of strokes to prosper in any conditions. He swept judiciously, a rarity among Englishmen, used his feet precisely, drove sweetly, and demonstrated a willingness to hit over the top. Had umpire Kumar Dharmasena not sawn him off twice at Nagpur – before apologising – Cook would surely have surpassed Ken Barrington’s 51-year-old England record for the most runs in a series in India (594), although he was gracious enough to admit he had received the rub of the green a couple of times; he finished instead with 562, though in four Tests to Barrington’s five. And at Kolkata he became the first England player to rack up 23 Test centuries, and the only man from any nation to pass 7,000 runs before the age of 28. It was monumental stuff.

But Cook’s contribution started long before the team departed for a pre-tour training camp in Dubai. It was partly his determination that helped find a solution to the Pietersen episode after he was left out of the initial touring party, and it was his alliance with Flower that rammed home a no-excuses mindset. Where previous England teams in India had been daunted by the conditions, the travel, the food, the weight of history and just about everything else, this one made a point of embracing the culture and the conditions. Almost without exception – and despite some justification at times – they never breathed a word of complaint. Unsurprisingly, Cook’s presence as a tactician grew too, after a shaky start on the first day of the series. By contrast, Dhoni looked one-dimensional, and England privately noted his tendency to change the field in response to the previous ball.

Where Cook led from the front, others gradually followed. At Ahmedabad, only Matt Prior – a beacon of selfless energy and skill throughout – and Swann rallied round their captain. Even at Mumbai, the excellence of a few compensated for the travails of the rest: Pietersen, with an innings of rare genius, turned the tide of the series, before Panesar, with his best match figures in Tests, joined Swann to claim the best analysis – 19 for 323 – by a pair of England spinners in more than 54 years. Panesar and Swann ended up with 37 wickets at 25 apiece, and a combined strike-rate of 60, easily outperforming their Indian counterparts, Pragyan Ojha and the desperately disappointing Ravichandran Ashwin, who between them managed 34 wickets at nearly 40, with a strike-rate of 86. Seldom, if ever, had overseas spinners so dominated in India.

England were fitter and quicker than India in the field; off it, they appeared more united. Ian Bell, who missed the Second Test in a fruitless attempt to get home in time to witness the birth of his first child, struggled with the bat until a final-day hundred at Nagpur. But he had already pulled off a direct hit from midwicket to run out Cheteshwar Pujara, India’s prolific No. 3, at Kolkata, then a superb catch at short leg – admittedly off the batsman’s elbow – to dismiss him at Nagpur.

Compton, without ever nailing the definitive innings he craved, added solidity, four times in succession putting on 50 or more with Cook; not since Michael Vaughan and Marcus Trescothick in 2002 had the same pair of English openers achieved such a feat. Their overall record – 493 runs at 70 – was 20 better than India’s experienced pair of Virender Sehwag and Gautam Gambhir, whose running between the wickets was a liability. Compton, Jonathan Trott and Finn – in his only Test of the series – weighed in at Kolkata. And at Nagpur, Joe Root, who made a composed debut, could also feel satisfied. James Anderson’s contribution was telling. After an impotent start, he bowled with greater pace than for some time, gained swing – both reverse and conventional – and extracted movement off unhelpful pitches. He was later described by Dhoni as “the major difference” between the sides; his haul of 12 wickets at 30 apiece barely did him justice.

But the tour was not an unqualified success. Stuart Broad, the new vice-captain, struggled with injury and illness, and was dropped for Kolkata amid suggestions from bowling coach David Saker that he had to “front up”. Tim Bresnan, like Broad, finished wicketless, and looked bereft of pace and confidence. Samit Patel’s batting failed to compensate for the limitations of his left-arm spin. Dropped for Nagpur after two matches in which Panesar’s presence rendered his bowling redundant, he finished with doubts over his Test future.

However, it was India who had more headaches. Defeated at home for the first time since 2004-05 – and for only the fourth time in 40 bilateral series since losing to Gower’s England – this was a result to prick the bubble that had been shielding them from the harsh wind of reality. While whitewashes in England and Australia had been excused – erroneously, in the main – on the grounds that conditions had been manufactured to thwart them, the stain on their proud home record could not be so easily ignored.

There were several issues, not least the paucity of fast-bowling options after the dangerous Umesh Yadav picked up a back injury that ruled him out after Ahmedabad; Zaheer Khan faded, and was dropped, five Test wickets short of 300. The lack of fitness among their leading players was damning; so too the decline of Sachin Tendulkar. Only once before had he averaged under 20 in a series of three Tests or more, while 76 of his 112 runs came in one innings, at Kolkata. Even there, he laboured unedifyingly for almost every one. His announcement soon after the series of his retirement from one-day cricket felt as if it didn’t go far enough. Meanwhile, the recall at Mumbai of Harbhajan Singh – who had taken only 18 first-class wickets at 40 each since his previous Test, 16 months earlier – and at Nagpur of Piyush Chawla, a leg-spinner averaging over 40 in his previous three years of first-class cricket, underlined the sense of a nation not boasting strength in depth so much as mediocrity. It had been years since the cupboard looked so bare.

There was some room for optimism. Pujara, unstoppable in the first two Tests, hinted he could yet be a worthy successor to Rahul Dravid, before falling away as umpiring errors and the running of his colleagues conspired against him. Virat Kohli belatedly provided a reminder of his class with a century at Nagpur, while Ojha – despite fading as the series progressed – finished level with Swann as the leading wicket-taker.

But it was telling that, even as Dhoni asked for patience for his team-in-transition, he admitted the pain of defeat was “not even close” to what he had experienced when India were eliminated from the 2007 World Cup. Perhaps their failure to win the two-match Twenty20 series – an unwanted dessert after a satisfying main course, staged just before England returned home for Christmas – stung more. A second-string England side lacking the rested Pietersen and Swann, plus the injured Broad and Finn, came away with a 1–1 draw. Eoin Morgan, captain in Broad’s place, hit the last ball of the second match, at the Wankhede, for six to deny India even minor consolation.

The refusal of the BCCI to accept the Decision Review System led, predictably, to renewed scrutiny of umpiring errors and some poor on-field behaviour. Perhaps the absence of technology’s safety net played on the officials’ minds, with as skilled a judge as Aleem Dar enduring an awful game at Mumbai. While the BCCI’s reservations over ball-tracking technology were at least understandable, many of the errors that affected both sides would have been simply corrected by use of the replay facility. The board’s stance looked stubborn rather than principled.

The same might have been said for their attitude towards the media. The decision to withhold accreditation from several photo-only agencies, and demand extra funds from the BBC and Sky – both broadcast rights-holders – briefly threatened a partial media blackout. Sky opted to commentate from their base in London and rely on the BCCI’s live feed, while most UK publications refused to condone what they saw as an attempt to restrict press freedom, and boycotted live photos entirely; the BBC’s extra costs were paid for by a third party, and they covered the series as planned. The BCCI justified their stance on the grounds that providing floor space for broadcasters incurred extra costs; and some photo agencies, they argued, sold their pictures for commercial gain that had little to do with editorial coverage. There was a little truth in both claims, but it was hard to believe that any short-term benefits of the BCCI’s policy would not be vastly outweighed by the long-term dilution in the value of media rights.

There were concerns, too, about a national board providing TV coverage and still pictures, and employing commentators. It took 40 minutes for Star Cricket, the host broadcasters, to show a replay of Jonny Bairstow’s dismissal at Mumbai after he was wrongly given out caught via the grille of Gambhir’s helmet at silly point. Similarly, an unsuccessful appeal against Trott at Nagpur – arguably the key moment of the fourth day – and the subsequent show of dissent from India’s fielders, led by Kohli, was omitted from the first highlights package. Meanwhile, an incident in the First Test, when Trott said he was unsure whether he had taken a slip catch cleanly (replays categorically showed he hadn’t) was held against England for the remainder of the series.

While it is true that a tour of India does not present the challenges – in terms of hotels and travel – it once did, the record books underline how difficult it is to win there. Many fine teams have travelled to India in hope, and many have left disappointed. The hosts had lost the likes of Dravid, Anil Kumble and V. V. S. Laxman, but still called on nine of the men who had led them to the top of the world rankings. No visiting team had won back-to-back Tests in India since South Africa early in 2000; England had not done so since 1976-77. By any standards, victory ranked as one of the most impressive feats in their Test history.

Ali Martin writes: England’s approach to the one-day series in the New Year was a reflection of their priorities. With the 2013 Champions Trophy being held in England and the 2015 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand, five matches in Asian conditions were always going to sit low on their list. Swann, Anderson and Trott were all rested, while Broad missed the first three games to attend to his sore heel, then the last two when his flight was grounded at Heathrow by snow. Even so, victory in the Tests, and their No. 1 ranking in 50-over cricket, meant England were tipped to fare better than the sides which suffered 5–0 thrashings in India in 2008-09 and 2011-12.

Ashley Giles took on his first assignment as England’s limited-overs coach, following team director Andy Flower’s workload reduction. There were international bows for new grounds at Rajkot, Ranchi and Dharmasala as the Indian board used second-tier locations rather than the big urban centres. And it worked, with each sold-out venue providing a unique match in a range of conditions. For England, it was also a first look at the new 50-over playing regulations. The fast bowlers could bowl two bouncers per over. No more than four fielders (down from five) were now allowed outside the circle during standard overs, while a solitary five-over batting powerplay was to be started between the 11th and 36th overs following the initial ten; as a result, the batting side tended to opt for wickets in hand followed by a late push.

India’s 3–2 victory, built on English collapses in the second and third games, was deserved, even if all five tosses proved match-winning, an advantage most pronounced in the series clincher at Mohali. While weakened of their own volition, England saw two men step up: James Tredwell took 11 wickets at 18, while Root averaged 54 with the bat. But Jade Dernbach went at 7.34 runs an over and was dropped for the New Zealand tour, along with wicketkeeper Craig Kieswetter, who struggled down the order. Pietersen played his first one-day international cricket since coming out of his short-lived retirement, while Bell finished the series as he had the Tests – with a classy unbeaten century.

WINNING IN INDIA

The repeat performance

VIC MARKS

History rarely repeats itself. But cricket correspondents sometimes do. We kept banging on about the similarities between England’s 1984-85 tour of India and this one, mainly because there was some justification for doing so.

On both trips phlegmatic, photogenic left-handers captained England teams (David Gower then, Alastair Cook now), and the bookmakers expected defeat. Both sides lost the First Test comfortably, which increased the gloom, only to fight back and take a 2–1 lead. Then, to the infuriation of home captains past and present (Sunil Gavaskar and M. S. Dhoni), India encountered slow, stultifying pitches – at Kanpur in 1984-85, and Nagpur in 2012-13. Thus on both occasions England were able to draw the final Test without too much bother, and win the series.

But first the differences: fortunately, Cook’s expedition was not marred by assassinations or environmental catastrophes. On Gower’s tour, the Indian Prime Minister, Mrs Gandhi, was shot a few hours after we arrived in Delhi; Percy Norris, Britain’s Deputy High Commissioner, was killed 24 hours before the First Test at Bombay; then there was the Bhopal chemical-plant disaster. At various stages, press and players thought they would be going home. By these standards, the BCCI’s tiffs with English broadcasters and photographers in 2012-13 were not significant.

The two England captains had contrasting tours with the bat. Cook was inspirational for three Tests, but out of sorts at Nagpur; Gower was practically runless until Kanpur, when he scored 78 and 32 not out. However, both men dealt with so-called troublemakers calmly and to everyone’s advantage. Gower was rehabilitating Phil Edmonds, too high-maintenance for previous England captains, and his left-arm spin proved more important than the figures – 14 wickets at 41 – suggest. Cook was rehabilitating Kevin Pietersen, whose 186 in the Second Test at Mumbai was critical to England’s resurgence. More broadly, neither captain allowed their squads to retreat into a siege mentality, which can easily be a trap in India.

England’s spinners outbowled their opponents on both tours, though Edmonds and Pat Pocock were not as prolific as Graeme Swann and Monty Panesar. Their batsmen were often more patient than the Indians, who in both series seemed seduced by the charms of limited-overs cricket. In 1984-85, India were still basking in their World Cup success in England in 1983; maybe that was also the case in 2012-13, after their World Cup victory the previous year. Moreover, for the modern Indian cricketer there is also the lucrative distraction of the IPL.

In both series, the Indian side was restless and introspective. Gavaskar was having a mini-feud with Kapil Dev, while Dhoni had to lead an ageing team, in which players were constantly looking over their shoulders, and their champion, Sachin Tendulkar, played just one innings of significance. To say the least, this was unsettling.

Cook’s England side were almost certainly better than Gower’s, who were missing Ian Botham (resting), Graham Gooch and John Emburey (both banned). But before celebrating such an objective assessment from an old-timer, let us end with this thought: since the talents of the 1984-85 side were so relatively modest, perhaps their achievement was the greater.

Vic Marks toured India in 1984-85 as an off-spinner (but didn’t play a Test), and in 2012-13 as a journalist for The Guardian, The Observer and Test Match Special.

THE INDIAN REACTION

Revenge – and a reality check

ANJALI DOSHI

The Hindi words for “revenge” and “change” are similar, which offered the Indian media an ironic twist and plenty of scope for cheeky puns during the Test series. The rabble-rousing theme of revenge (badla) on England’s arrival transformed into a mocking lament about how nothing had changed (kuch nahin badla) – a reference to India’s 8–0 losing streak in England and Australia – followed by a demand for, yes, sweeping changes (badal dalo).

Clearly, nobody saw the drubbing coming, least of all the official broadcasters – Rupert Murdoch’s Star network – who ran jingoistic promos in colloquial Hindi asking whether India would beat England to a pulp. Once that question had been answered, the promos were pulled off air.

The revenge rhetoric played at full volume when India won the First Test at Ahmedabad, but lost its voice after defeat at Mumbai. M. S. Dhoni’s obsession with pitches came in for sharp criticism, as did the listlessness of the Indian spinners. But it was the hopeless surrender at Eden Gardens that culminated in an uproar over the “humiliation at home” on perpetually hyper news networks, such as Times Now, Aaj Tak and Star News, and fever-pitched calls for “heads to roll” in several newspapers, including the Times of India.

Just when things could not, it seemed, get any worse, came former selector Mohinder Amarnath’s claim on CNN-IBN that Dhoni had managed to hold on to the captaincy earlier in the year only because N. Srinivasan, the BCCI president, had overruled the selectors’ decision to sack him. The insinuation was obvious: Srinivasan, vice-chairman of India Cements, the company that owns the Chennai Super Kings IPL team, was out to protect his franchise’s brand equity by ensuring their skipper remained India’s captain too.

This outburst from Amarnath, who had lost his job after only a year, threatened to overshadow India’s worst performance at home since 1999-2000. But it was followed by more quickfire autopsies from former cricketers, including Sunil Gavaskar, who attacked them for “treating Test cricket in a cavalier manner” in the era of Twenty20, and demanded Dhoni’s instant removal. Only a couple of pieces really attempted to examine the IPL effect on Indian cricket, and the BCCI’s role in the mess. But it was Dhoni himself who came up with the most telling take on India’s priorities, saying this crisis was “not even close” to the early exit from the 2007 World Cup.

India’s crammed schedule provides little time for introspection. So what could have been a watershed moment prompting serious probing by the media and internal reviews by the board, which reported around £100m in revenue in 2011-12, was soon forgotten. After India won the first Twenty20 game against England, newspaper headlines exclaimed: “Make winning a habit” and “Bashing over, time for bash”. When they lost the second at Mumbai, it was already time to preview the limited-overs series against Pakistan.

It was no surprise, perhaps, that the most vociferous critic of India’s trouncing was an Englishman. Geoffrey Boycott was the only commentator “free from BCCI shackles”, as his Star Cricket colleague Sanjay Manjrekar let slip on Twitter. The tweet disappeared from his timeline within minutes.

Anjali Doshi is a columnist for Wisden India and a former cricket editor with the Indian TV channel NDTV 24x7.

INDIA v ENGLAND

First Test Match

DEAN WILSON

At Ahmedabad, November 15–19, 2012. India won by nine wickets. Toss: India. Test debut: N. R. D. Compton.

Anything feels possible on the first morning of a Test. Start well, and the game can unroll like a red carpet at a VIP function. Start badly, and you won’t get past the bouncer on the door. At the Sardar Patel Stadium, India had a blast, while England’s name was not even on the guest list. India’s nine-wicket win did not flatter them, and left England pondering whether their repeated claims to have improved in Asian conditions now bordered on the delusional. Cook, in his first Test as permanent captain, was immense – but only after his team had followed on, 330 behind, and India had found a player apparently capable of matching the sangfroid of the retired Rahul Dravid at No. 3. While Pujara was busy scoring 247 runs without being dismissed – 41 of them as opener in the second innings after Gambhir had returned home to Delhi following the death of his grandmother – the debate about a fading batting line-up seemed totally irrelevant.

Not for the first time in 2012, England’s batsmen were flummoxed by quality spin, the absence of which from their three warm-up games had lent those matches an unreal air. To make matters worse, they picked the wrong side, omitting Monty Panesar and opting instead for a three-pronged seam attack that was badly shown up by the home pair of Yadav and Zaheer Khan. Swann admitted the pitch had been even slower and lower than England had feared, though he fought hard, taking six of the nine Indian wickets to fall and moving past Jim Laker (193) as the most prolific English Test off-spinner of all time. But 13 in the match for Ashwin and Ojha, India’s slow bowlers, told its own tale.

From the moment Cook lost the toss, England were up against it. More specifically on the opening day, they were up against Sehwag, who hurried India to 120 without loss at lunch and, by the 40th over, had completed his 23rd Test century – though only his second against England – from just 90 balls. It had been two years since his previous hundred, but this was worth the wait, full of languid square-drives and matter-of-fact lofts down the ground. When Sehwag was second out for a run-a-ball 117, missing a mow at Swann, India already had 224, and England – who had been slow to respond to his steers to the unguarded third-man region – were lamenting the absence of Steven Finn, who had failed to recover from a thigh injury. Yet their attack of Anderson, Broad, Bresnan and Swann had been at the heart of the 4–0 win over these opponents in 2011. That, though, had been at home. This was Ahmedabad, the city where Gandhi had begun his salt march, and England – as if in homage – were looking distinctly non-aggressive.

Tendulkar came and went quickly, carelessly swatting Swann to deep midwicket, where Patel seemed to be waiting for the miscue, but that merely focused the attention on Pujara, who responded with the kind of remorseless concentration that had once brought him three triple-centuries in all cricket in the space of a month. Fortunate to get away with a leading edge on eight off Bresnan as Anderson misjudged the flight at mid-on, Pujara – from nearby Rajkot – gave his fellow Gujaratis plenty to cheer with an unbeaten double-hundred of stylistic and technical brilliance. In all, he thwarted England for a shade over eight and a half hours, and allowed Yuvraj Singh – returning to Test cricket for the first time in a year, after a battle with cancer – the freedom to settle in. They added 130 for India’s fifth wicket.

England’s reply to 521 for eight began badly. The debutant Nick Compton crawled to nine before he was gated by a delicious off-break from Ashwin, who thus reached 50 Test wickets in his ninth match, quicker than any other Indian (Anil Kumble got there in ten). With 20 minutes of the second evening still to play, Anderson emerged as nightwatchman, but fell almost immediately to Ojha. And when Ashwin removed Trott, caught at short leg, the crumble was on. It continued next morning. In his first international match since reintegration, Pietersen got into a tangle against Ojha, bowled middle stump as his bat came across the line of the ball in a shot that had become known as the curtain-rail, before Bell fecklessly chipped his first delivery to deepish mid-off. Experienced observers wondered whether it was the worst stroke they had seen from an established Test batsman. Cook edged a drive off Ashwin to slip and, from 97 for seven, only Prior’s 48 helped England to as many as 191. Ojha’s five-for was the seventh by a spinner against England in 2012, and his control of flight and direction a joy to behold.

Shortly before 2pm on the third day, England were asked to bat again. Things could hardly get worse; in fact, they got rather better. As one of only two batsmen in his side – along with Pietersen – to have scored a Test century in India, Cook took it upon himself to show that playing spin need not necessarily be torture for an Englishman. Compton tucked into his captain’s slipstream, and their stand of 123 was not broken until the fourth morning. The demise of Compton, hit in line with leg stump by Zaheer, proved India had more than just slow bowling up their sleeve. And though Trott and the frenetic Pietersen – bowled behind his legs on the sweep as he moved too far across – both fell cheaply to Ojha, the next two blows were struck by Yadav. Almost ignored in the first innings, he now trapped Bell and Patel with successive deliveries to reduce England to 199 for five, still 131 behind. If Patel was unfortunate after appearing to edge the ball, then Yadav’s modus operandi was a lesson for England, whose seamers failed to find the same degree of reverse swing. While their trio of quicks would finish the match with combined figures of 72–10–255–1, India’s duo managed 72.3–16–166–7 – and they were faster, too.

Once more, England rallied. Cook, grateful for the absence of the DRS when he missed a sweep off Ojha on 41, was at his obdurate best, and Prior a willing ally. At stumps on the fourth day England led by ten, with five wickets in hand and thoughts turning to Johannesburg 1995-96, when Mike Atherton and Jack Russell – another captain/keeper combination – had pulled off their great escape. But Prior chipped a return catch to Ojha in the tenth over of the final morning to fall for 91 – among England wicketkeepers, only Warwickshire’s Dick Spooner, with 92 at Calcutta in 1951-52, had scored more in a Test in India – and end a partnership of 157 in more than 60 overs. Soon Cook was gone too, bowled by one from Ojha that spun back and kept slightly low. Another eight minutes and he would have outlasted Graeme Fowler’s epic of nine hours 23 minutes at Madras in 1984-85 – still the longest innings played for England in India. The rest followed quickly, leaving Ojha with Test-best match figures of nine for 165.

Dhoni immediately called for the pitch at Mumbai, venue for the Second Test, to spin from the first ball. India were already preparing for the kill. But it was a conviction based on England’s first innings rather than their second. And Cook was evidently not in the mood for his side to make the same mistake twice.

Man of the Match: C. A. Pujara.

U. T. Yadav did not bat.

Anderson 27–7–75–1; Broad 24–1–97–0; Bresnan 19–2–73–0; Swann 51–8–144–5; Patel 31–3–96–1; Pietersen 8–1–25–1. Second innings—Anderson 2–0–10–0; Swann 7.3–1–46–1; Patel 6–0–24–0.

Ashwin 27–9–80–3; Zaheer Khan 15–7–23–1; Ojha 22.2–8–45–5; Yuvraj Singh 3–0–12–0; Yadav 7–2–14–1. Second innings—Yadav 23–2–70–3; Ojha 55–16–120–4; Ashwin 43–9–111–1; Sehwag 1–0–1–0; Zaheer Khan 27.3–5–59–2; Tendulkar 1–0–8–0; Yuvraj Singh 4–0–17–0.

Umpires: Aleem Dar and A. L. Hill. Third umpire: S. Asnani.

Referee: R. S. Mahanama.

INDIA v ENGLAND

Second Test Match

GIDEON BROOKS

At Mumbai (Wankhede Stadium), November 23–26, 2012. England won by ten wickets. Toss: India.

When Cook lost what looked like a crucial toss, he gazed heavenwards in frustration. And well he might have looked away from the source of his expected chagrin – the roughened red Mumbai soil and a pitch, used for a Ranji Trophy match three weeks earlier, that Dhoni had demanded should spin like a waltzer from ball one. Less than ten sessions later, Cook could have been forgiven for falling jubilantly into the Wankhede’s dusty embrace after England had completed a scarcely believable ten-wicket win. It not only dragged them level in the series, but was arguably one of their finest away victories in the 79 years since they had first played Test cricket on the subcontinent, a mile or so away along Marine Drive at the Bombay Gymkhana.

Instead, Cook wrapped his arms round fellow opener Compton, before whipping out three stumps and handing two of them on the dressing-room steps to the pair who had done most to make victory possible – Pietersen, the Man of the Match, and Panesar, a close runner-up. For India, it was only a second home defeat in 24 Tests. Gallingly, they had been trumped in conditions thought to be ideally suited to a three-pronged spin attack, with Harbhajan Singh replacing the injured fast bowler Umesh Yadav; not since India themselves hosted South Africa at Kanpur in 2004-05 had a team entered a Test with only one specialist seamer.

Cook’s was a nice touch after his first victory as full-time captain, which arrested an alarming slide in fortunes since the turn of the year. The personal milestones were a bonus: both Cook and Pietersen equalled England’s Test record of 22 centuries, while Panesar – who finished with a career-best 11 for 210 – shared 19 wickets with Swann, the best performance by English spinners in a Test since Tony Lock and Jim Laker, who also took 19, against New Zealand at Headingley in 1958.

The game had sparked into life immediately: Gambhir tucked Anderson’s first ball through midwicket, then played fatally round the next. It may just have been the only delivery that swung all match, so it was a shame half the crowd were not there to witness it. Vigilant security is one thing, but an inadequate number of turnstiles, and a list of banned items that appeared to expand and contract on a daily whim, are quite another. Spectators eventually reaching the eye of the needle were told they could not bring in cameras, cigarettes, newspapers, water or food. No wonder Test attendances in India are a cause for concern: you are lucky to get in with the shirt on your back. Latecomers were still settling into their seats when Sehwag departed just over an hour later, bowled in his 100th Test by a full-length delivery from Panesar as he aimed to leg. Included here after England admitted their mistake in leaving him out at Ahmedabad, Panesar struck again before lunch, ripping a left-arm spinner’s dream past Tendulkar’s forward prod and knocking back his off stump.

Yet if England were encouraged by two further wickets before tea, reducing India to 119 for five, their galloping enthusiasm had to be reined in, as Pujara – who completed his second hundred of the series after Anderson had missed a tough chance in the gully off Panesar when he had 60 – and Ashwin redressed the balance. A close-of-play score of 266 for six left England supporters, here in greater number than at Ahmedabad, fretful about the prospect of chasing too many batting last. And the momentum inched further in India’s direction next morning, before Pujara finally ran out of patience and partners, stumped by Prior to exit for 135 – his third century in his seventh Test, and the end of 1,015 unbeaten minutes (nearly 17 hours) and 382 runs in two games; for India, only Tendulkar (1,224 minutes in 2003-04) and Rahul Dravid (1,145 minutes in 2000-01) had batted longer between Test dismissals. Swann had already claimed his 200th Test wicket when Harbhajan walked casually across his stumps, but he was fortunate to add Zaheer Khan: even by the low umpiring standards set in this match by the normally excellent Aleem Dar, the decision to give Zaheer out caught at short leg off pad and chest took some explaining.

Cook and Compton began the reply to India’s 327 with a solid 66, but Compton edged Ojha low to Sehwag at slip and, in Ojha’s next over, Trott fell leg-before for a duck. For England, the portents looked ominous – misleadingly so, as Cook and Pietersen came together in a match-winning partnership that would not be broken until eight overs before lunch on the third day. By then, England’s captain and their maverick – one steady, the other spectacular – had put on 206, breaking the ground’s Test record for the third wicket of 194, set by Tendulkar and Vinod Kambli, a pair of Mumbaikars, against England in 1992-93. It was also the 48th century stand in Tests Cook had been involved in, breaking Geoff Boycott’s English record.

This felt apt. A crisp drive wide of mid-off on the third morning had already taken him to his 22nd Test century, where he joined Wally Hammond, Colin Cowdrey and Boycott on England’s top step; he also became the first player of any nationality to score hundreds in each of his first four Tests as captain. Twelve balls later, four made room for five as Pietersen reverse-swept the ineffectual Harbhajan, reaching three figures in 127 deliveries to Cook’s 236. The Mumbai bus system can be even more maddening than London’s but, 31 years after Boycott had equalled a record first set in 1939, England were suddenly celebrating two arrivals at once.

Cook eventually perished to the last turn of the old ball, edging Ashwin into Dhoni’s gloves. And what ended up as the final delivery before lunch then accounted, in bizarre fashion, for Bairstow, handed his chance while Ian Bell spent time at home with his new son. Bairstow was given out caught at silly point as he pushed forward to Ojha, despite replays that showed the ball sticking briefly under the grille of Gambhir’s helmet before dropping into his hands. Law 32.3(e) said this should have been not out, but both Gambhir and Bairstow later admitted they were unaware of it. Not until the local TV coverage replayed the incident less than ten minutes before the restart did England cotton on. In an uneasy echo of the teatime fiasco at Trent Bridge in July 2011, when Bell was given run out, then reprieved, team director Andy Flower quickly made representations to the umpires. Asked on the outfield moments before play resumed whether he wanted to withdraw his appeal, this time Dhoni declined – and he was well within his rights to do so.

Pietersen, meanwhile, batted on, moving to 150 with a cut for four off Ojha, then imperiously slog-sweeping the next ball for six. But, on 186, he deflected Ojha to Dhoni, ending a masterful display of violent intent that had lasted 233 balls. His runs – more than any England batsman had made at the Wankhede, surpassing Graeme Hick’s 178 in 1992-93 – came out of 314 while he was at the wicket. He later called it his best innings, even if he had been helped by the tendency of India’s spinners to drop short. Prior’s careless run-out triggered a collapse which cost England their last four wickets in 13 deliveries, but their lead of 86 felt like decent ammunition for an assault with the ball.

Even so, no one could have predicted what happened next. In the 33 overs that remained on the third evening, India lost seven for 117, five to Panesar, whose extra pace through the air left the batsmen reluctant to commit to the front foot on a surface offering bounce; the demise of Tendulkar, trapped on the crease, was symptomatic. By stumps, India’s scorecard resembled a half-decent poker hand: a pair of sixes, a pair of eights and the makings of a low straight flush. But their stakes were as good as lost. The last three fell in 45 minutes the following morning, when Gambhir’s hopes of carrying his bat were thwarted by another umpiring error: Tony Hill failed to spot an inside edge.

Panesar, though, had been denied the best Test figures by an English spinner in India when Dar contrived to miss Ojha’s thick edge to backward short leg. That record remained with Hedley Verity, a fellow left-arm spinner, and his 11 for 153 at Madras in 1933-34, although Panesar could at least boast England’s first ten-wicket haul in India since Neil Foster’s 11 for 163, also at Madras, in 1984-85.

Regardless, all 28 wickets to fall to bowlers following Gambhir’s removal in the game’s first over had now gone to spin. Perhaps determined not to add to the tally, England’s openers knocked off the runs in under ten overs. India looked ashen-faced. From nowhere, the series had come alive.

Man of the Match: K. P. Pietersen.

Anderson 18–3–61–1; Broad 12–1–60–0; Panesar 47–12–129–5; Swann 34.1–7–70–4; Patel 4–1–6–0. Second innings—Anderson 4–1–9–0; Panesar 22–3–81–6; Swann 18.1–6–43–4.

Ashwin 42.3–6–145–2; Ojha 40–6–143–5; Zaheer Khan 15–4–37–0; Harbhajan Singh 21–1–74–2; Yuvraj Singh 3–0–8–0. Second innings—Ashwin 3.4–0–22–0; Ojha 4–0–16–0; Harbhajan Singh 2–0–10–0.

Umpires: Aleem Dar and A. L. Hill. Third umpire: S. Ravi.

Referee: R. S. Mahanama.

INDIA v ENGLAND

Third Test Match

SURESH MENON

At Kolkata, December 5–9, 2012. England won by seven wickets. Toss: India.

In the days when India merely made up the numbers, their supporters would soften the blow by divorcing team results from individual performances. Gradually, things changed and, by 2009 – when they went top of the Test rankings – there was no longer any need to look for the positives cherished by the losing captain. But after successive 4–0 defeats abroad, India were reverting to type. England, for so long hapless tourists in this part of the world, were doing the opposite. Suddenly, Indian cricket had once more become full of old-style consolation: Rahul Dravid’s three centuries in England, for example, or Kohli’s maiden Test hundred at Adelaide. And anyway, went the argument, India were still kings at home. They had the spinners and, in Zaheer Khan, the master of reverse swing, praised during this game by Anderson, who had copied his practice of hiding the ball from the batsman’s view until the last minute. And, of course, India had the batting, with Pujara the latest exemplar.

This Test put paid to all such consolation-within-consolations, for it proved Mumbai was no one-off. Anderson reversed the ball better than any Indian and, for the second match running, Swann and Panesar outspun Ashwin and Ojha. Batting with authority and purpose, Cook looked good for a triple-century, but had to settle for 190, in the process extending his own world record to a hundred in each of his first five Tests as captain. Only four other visiting batsmen – Everton Weekes, Garry Sobers, Ken Barrington and Andy Flower – had scored centuries in three successive Tests in India. Cook was batting differently, too, and later gave the game’s shorter formats the credit for his extra aggression. At times, as he lofted India’s spinners, there were gasps from his countrymen in the crowd.

India had passed 600 in each of the three previous Kolkata Tests, but now squandered an important toss by making only 316. Against an attack that included Sharma, drafted in as a second seamer to balance the line-up in place of Harbhajan Singh, Cook then put on 165 with the adhesive Compton and 173 with Trott. That helped take England to 523, a total bettered at Eden Gardens among visiting teams only by West Indies (twice – in 1958-59 and 1987-88). And when India lost nine second-innings wickets wiping off the deficit, Sehwag sighed: “Only God can save us now.” More practical believers wondered whether God wasn’t, in fact, biased towards those who helped themselves. Ashwin’s imitation of the boy on the burning deck brought him a fine unbeaten 91, but he was in the team as an off-spinner – and, in his main job, he was a let-down.

The public spat between Dhoni and Prabir Mukherjee, the Eden Gardens groundsman who had described the captain’s call for a turner as “immoral”, kept pre-match discussions moored at a low level. The track chosen was brown, unlike the grey pitches which flanked it, and the bowlers’ run-ups were still visible from the Ranji Trophy match played on it barely a fortnight earlier. In the end, though, it wasn’t the pitch, or its refusal to turn from the start that defeated India, but a better organised England side coming to terms with their own demons in a country where they had not won a series since the days before their captain could even crawl.

India’s consolation was no real consolation at all. Tendulkar’s first fifty in 11 innings was a scratchy knock, serving to highlight his determination but also his decline. When Panesar had asked him to sign the ball with which he had dismissed him for his first Test wicket in 2005-06, Tendulkar had written on it: “Once in a blue moon, never again”. But he had already been proved wrong. And now his struggle against Panesar’s left-arm spin, inside-edging and slicing attempted drives, was symbolic. The gap between the two standing ovations Tendulkar was receiving per innings – one walking out to bat, the other returning – had been getting smaller, so his 76 here, which took him past Sunil Gavaskar’s Indian record of 2,483 Test runs against England, at least provided temporary respite. Yet he could do nothing about a delivery from Anderson – the first after the drinks break on the first evening – that reversed just enough to take the edge. And for those who see significance in such things, the Indian flag on a building outside the stadium was at half-mast.

That wicket reasserted England’s early grip on the match, which had been helped by a terrible piece of running between Gambhir and Sehwag after they had raced to 47 in ten overs on the first morning. England never let go and, at stumps on the second day, were 216 for one, with Cook dominant on 136 – his 23rd Test century, to overtake the national record he had equalled only 11 days earlier in Mumbai. He was not yet 28, prompting many to believe that at least some of Tendulkar’s batting records might one day be his. Cook also went past 7,000 runs in his 86th Test, faster than Viv Richards, Ricky Ponting and Greg Chappell. He was also the youngest to reach the mark, at 27 years 347 days; Tendulkar was seven months older. And Cook’s fluency allowed Compton to find his form in his own time and with his own methods, though he was unlucky to be given out leg-before on 57: replays showed the ball had brushed his glove as he swept Ojha.

India’s big chance had already come and gone when Cook, on 17, edged Zaheer Khan low to first slip, where Pujara couldn’t hold on – another area where Dravid was being missed. When Cook finally fell, having batted eight hours 12 minutes and faced 377 balls, it was refreshing to know that the superman who loomed large in the nightmares of Indian bowlers was in fact human after all. He had never been run out in first-class cricket, but now Pietersen turned Zaheer into the leg side to Kohli, the Indian fielder most likely to pull off a direct hit. Backing up, Cook motioned to regain his ground, only to flinch – bat in the air, and still out of his crease – as the throw whizzed past him on to the stumps. He knew instantly he was out, and later called it a “brain fade”. Only Arthur Morris, Garry Sobers and Younis Khan had been run out in the 190s in Test cricket before; only Mike Gatting and Graeme Fowler, in the same game at Madras in 1984-85, had scored more for England in a Test innings in India.

The last four wickets fell quickly on the fourth morning, yet there was no hint of the drama to follow when India went to lunch at 86 without loss, 121 behind, with Sehwag in battling form. Swann sneaked the first ball after the break between his bat and pad – and soon, as they struggled for breath, India were reeling at 122 for six. Pujara was run out by a brilliant throw from Bell, before Anderson and Finn, finally recovered from a thigh injury and chosen ahead of Stuart Broad, bowled superbly. It was the session that decided the Test – and, it transpired, the series. Finn bowled with pace, angling the ball in to the batsmen, troubling them with bounce, and inducing edges with the one that held its line. Anderson’s control of reverse swing precluded any Cook-like vigil from the Indians. And Tendulkar’s brief stay was up when he misread a straight delivery from Swann and edged to slip.

But to the delight of a gratifyingly large crowd, Ashwin kept fighting, driving the new ball and shielding last man Ojha to avert an innings defeat and a four-day finish. Their stand was worth 50 on the final morning before Ojha fell to Anderson – the off bail taking an age to topple after being kissed almost imperceptibly – giving the fast bowlers six wickets to the spinners’ three. England needed 41 for a 2–1 lead, but slipped to eight for three, including Cook, who became only the second batsman – after England’s Archie MacLaren at Sydney in 1894-95 – to be stumped in the first over of a Test innings. But Bell, back in place of Jonny Bairstow, settled the issue with Compton.

Clearly, India were not handling transition well. Many of those who had helped place them on the pedestal had retired. And those who remained, such as Tendulkar, Harbhajan and Zaheer – who was immediately dropped for the Fourth Test, along with Yuvraj Singh – were floundering. The fielding had also gone backwards, and the many justifications of fielding coach Trevor Penney painted India as a team in denial: “We don’t need specialists,” he said, loyally backing the stragglers. A banner in the crowd read: “Dhoni, we will stand by you.” But India needed more than loyalty.

Man of the Match: A. N. Cook.

Anderson 28–7–89–3; Finn 21–2–73–1; Panesar 40–13–90–4; Swann 16–3–46–1. Second innings— Anderson 15.4–4–38–3; Finn 18–6–45–3; Panesar 22–1–75–1; Swann 28–9–70–2; Patel 1–0–9–0.

Zaheer Khan 31–6–94–1; Sharma 29–8–78–1; Ashwin 52.3–9–183–3; Ojha 52–10–142–4; Yuvraj Singh 3–1–9–0. Second innings—Ashwin 6.1–1–31–2; Ojha 6–3–10–1.

Umpires: H. D. P. K. Dharmasena and R. J. Tucker. Third umpire: V. A. Kulkarni.

Referee: J. J. Crowe.

INDIA v ENGLAND

Fourth Test Match

RICHARD HOBSON

At Nagpur, December 13–17, 2012. Drawn. Toss: England. Test debuts: R. A. Jadeja; J. E. Root.

A Test match that felt like a throwback to a sleepier past produced a series result that was just as unfamiliar to the modern audience: an England win in India. The draw confirmed a 2–1 scoreline, and the sluggish rate of scoring over the five days on a desperately slow pitch mattered not a jot to the victorious Cook, who took the Man of the Series award to boot. The fact that so much rested on the outcome lent a soporific contest a strange kind of tension. Ultimately, though, England batted out their second innings in comfort, and there was something rather low-key – like a County Championship match petering out on a Saturday afternoon – about the conclusion, with hands shaken 50 minutes after tea on the final day. The result had been a formality for several hours as the Warwickshire pair of Trott and Bell stretched their abstemious partnership to 208.

And yet nobody predicted such a dry, dour contest. Following England’s win at Kolkata, pundits expected the surface at Nagpur to generate a positive result, perhaps even inside three days. In truth, there was no meaningful precedent. Curator Praveen Hingnikar – banned by the BCCI from talking to the media before the game following the outbursts of his Eden Gardens counterpart – had relaid the topsoil earlier in the year; this was the first contest since. Hingnikar was more surprised than anyone that cracks in the new surface refused to widen under sunshine. Dhoni remarked phlegmatically that the game could have continued for another three days and still ended in a draw.

Pietersen described the first-day pitch as the least conducive to strokeplay he had ever encountered. Only towards the end of the match, as fresh grass allowed a little more pace, could batsmen feel confident about playing the odd shot. But by then England had no cause for urgency. Except against the new ball, both captains placed fielders for mistimed drives rather than edges, and it was not unusual for batsmen to shape to duck against deliveries that eventually reached them at hip height. The second day produced the most runs, 218; eight individual fifties were compiled from an average of 127 balls; three hundreds from 271. Timeless Tests of yore must have followed the same tempo.

India did not help themselves with an unbalanced selection. Putting all their snakes in one basket, they chose three specialist slow bowlers, plus Ravindra Jadeja, a left-arm-spinning all-rounder handed a debut in place of Yuvraj Singh. Jadeja proceeded to bowl more overs (70) in the match than either Ashwin or Chawla, the leg-spinner picked in place of Zaheer Khan for his first Test since April 2008; a gap of 49 Tests between appearances was an Indian record. The selectors’ error became clear during the game’s opening spell, from Sharma, now the lone seamer, which brought two wickets.

With no bite for their spinners, India were at least spared the threat of Steven Finn, missing because of a back injury when his height might have coaxed something from the surface. Bresnan, his replacement, made little impression, yet one England hunch on selection proved inspired, as the 21-year-old Yorkshire opener Joe Root – replacing Samit Patel, and unexpectedly chosen ahead of both Jonny Bairstow and Eoin Morgan – marked his own debut with a display of rare assurance in an unfamiliar slot at No. 6.

Cook himself suffered his only bad match of the series. After winning his first toss in six Tests as captain, he received two questionable decisions from umpire Dharmasena in a contest that left England repeating their support for DRS. Trott, though, could blame only himself, as he left a ball from Jadeja that went straight on, and Bell succumbed to a timid push to short extra cover, having matched Cook in taking 28 balls over a single. When Pietersen flicked to midwicket to end a restrained 73, the England first innings was tottering at 139 for five. But Root showed the temperament and the light footwork that had persuaded the management his technique would hold up against spin. Prior dug in to confirm his maturity as a batsman for all situations and, by stumps, England were an old-fashioned 199 for five from 97 overs, having faced the equivalent of 80 overs of dot-balls. Next day, the pair extended their stand to 103, and a relatively brisk half-century from Swann – his first in Tests for three years – took England beyond 300. Root’s 73 came from 229 balls, in 11 minutes short of five hours, and he was furious with himself when a leading edge supplied a return catch to the inoffensive Chawla.

A total of 330 looked like par, but superb swing bowling by Anderson on the second afternoon defined the middle of the game. The third ball of the innings nipped in to expose Sehwag’s leaden footwork. Tendulkar was then bowled via an inside edge by a ball keeping a shade low, a dismissal that stirred, rather than advanced, the debate about his future; it was a record ninth time that he had fallen to Anderson, one clear of Muttiah Muralitharan. A series of inswingers set up the left-handed Gambhir for the one going across, and the wicket of Jadeja was Anderson’s 528th in all international cricket, equalling Ian Botham’s England record. Pujara, meanwhile, had already fallen to a fine right-handed catch by Bell at short leg off Swann, although replays showed the ball had deviated from forearm rather than glove.

Crucially, Anderson had forced India – 87 for four at the second-day close – to consolidate when the state of the series required them to be positive. Kohli and Dhoni (to some surprise, he had promoted himself above Jadeja who, a fortnight previously, had become the first Indian to score three first-class triple-centuries) responded by taking 507 balls over a stand of 198, watching every one of them like hawks. Neither man had batted for as long in a Test before, with Kohli in particular fighting against poor form as well as his instinct to attack. He eventually departed straight after drinks in the final session of the third day, having completed his third Test hundred from 289 balls. But, excruciatingly, Dhoni fell for 99, run out by a direct hit from Cook at mid-off as he attempted a desperate single. It was his first risk of the innings, an unthinkable liberty had he been on 98 or 100. The pressure of being in the nineties for more than an hour had finally told.

With time of the essence, India’s approach on the fourth morning was baffling. Ashwin initially chose to turn down singles to keep Ojha away from strike, and only 29 runs came in the first hour – which suited England – before Dhoni declared four runs behind. England had merely to avoid mishaps, and never allowed themselves to be fazed by their slow progress. Cook had one run to his name from 46 balls by lunch, while Compton hit a single four in 134 deliveries before being adjudged leg-before despite an inside edge (although the ball flew straight to gully, so he was out one way or another).

The afternoon roused passions as Trott, in typically single-minded pursuit of runs, opted to hit a boundary off Jadeja from a ball that had slipped from his hand on to an adjacent strip. Although Trott was within his rights, other batsmen might have allowed the umpire to call dead ball. At the close, Ashwin suggested it had been unsporting. Before then, India had suffered more frustration, when Trott survived a strong (but unproven) appeal for a catch behind off Sharma. Ashwin later threatened to run Trott out at the bowler’s end for backing up too far. But Trott remained steadfastly Trott, his self-absorption tailor-made for the situation. By the time he flicked Ashwin to leg slip to depart for 143, made in 405 minutes, England’s lead had advanced to an impregnable 306. It proved the only wicket to fall on the final day. Bell ended a 403-minute innings with 116 not out – his first Test hundred in India – tired but satisfied, while the home crowd were generous but resigned. England cracked open the beers, and began to think of Christmas.

Man of the Match: J. M. Anderson. Man of the Series: A. N. Cook.

Sharma 28–9–49–3; Ojha 35–12–71–0; Jadeja 37–17–58–2; Chawla 21.5–1–69–4; Ashwin 24–3–66–1. Second innings—Sharma 15–3–42–0; Ojha 40–14–70–1; Ashwin 38–11–99–2; Chawla 26–6–64–0; Jadeja 33–17–59–1; Gambhir 2–0–4–0.

Anderson 32–5–81–4; Bresnan 26–5–69–0; Panesar 52–15–81–1; Swann 31–10–76–3; Trott 1–0–2–0; Root 1–0–5–0.

Umpires: H. D. P. K. Dharmasena and R. J. Tucker. Third umpire: S. Ravi.

Referee: J. J. Crowe.

LV= COUNTY CHAMPIONSHIP, 2012

NEVILLE SCOTT

There were times last summer when British life seemed so grotesque you thought you were in the pages of a novel by Tom Sharpe or Mervyn Peake. The Leveson inquiry revealed that the prime minister shared gushing emails with the soon-to-be-arrested editor of a tabloid newspaper, who rode the ranges of Oxfordshire alongside him on a charger supplied by the Metropolitan Police, several of whose senior officers faced allegations of corruption. Vince Cable, the government’s business secretary, described areas of British banking, so critical to the economy, as “a massive cesspit”. And surface-to-air missiles were sited on the roofs of tower blocks up the road from where Graham Gooch first clasped a bat, in innocent days when children still played cricket in London’s East End. To top it all, Derbyshire won their first trophy for 19 years.

Yet seeking sanity in the Championship was to find that the heavens had turned more absurd still. Snow preceded the first day of the season, sleet stopped play at Scarborough on May 4 (when temperatures in torrid Hove soared to 5°C)), swan-upping in mid-July was cancelled due to floods, and the rain barely relented. Out of the cesspit, into the monsoon.

In the words of Captain Scott, counties “bowed to the will of Providence” and, in the face of the non-stop deluge, just 38% of Division Two matches had produced a result by August 18. The season can be starkly summed up: only 68 (of 144) games were won, and 27 of these wins arrived in the first and last fortnights. In between, summer came and went in late May, during seven days that granted another seven results. Half the victories in 2012 were thus secured in five weeks. The rest was rain and pitch inspections.

Worse, of the 13 results that emerged from 14 games in that frigid first fortnight (all rain-interrupted), several were played on pitches that rendered cricket almost a game of chance. By May 6, when a quarter of the campaign had already passed, the overall average cost of a wicket was 24 runs. Batsmen floundered like airline pilots suddenly having to fly without benefit of onboard computers. There were five counties by that date who, in a combined total of 22 games, had managed three batting points between them from a potential maximum of 110; one of them, Nottinghamshire, held second place in Division One.

But the two sides who seized the early advantage retained it. Tables can mislead, for until the final round some teams have played more games than others; but, on the basis of points per completed match, Derbyshire led the promotion race from their third fixture to the finish, and Warwickshire led the title race from first to last.

Warwickshire were worthy champions. Many who had seen them in 2011 (though not the bookies) tipped them for the crown because they had players with the will and nous to respond when required. Four of their six successes had come by late May, with nine men, including Ian Bell during a rare release by England, contributing at least a match-winning performance. The title arrived five and a half playing days from the close, and Varun Chopra was the sole England-raised batsman to hit 1,000 Championship runs.

Nottinghamshire, their only real threat until mid-August, had also won four times by May 28, but would not prevail again in the wet. After their first ten games, the remarkable Andre Adams – who had played in nine – had 50 Championship wickets, 12 more than his nearest rival, and it seemed the title would rest on his private battle with the collective excellence of the Warwickshire attack. But Adams lost fitness, playing only three more games for four more wickets, and his side gave six men to England during the final quarter. When Nottinghamshire and Warwickshire met twice in the last three games, both proved to be draws – inevitably rain-affected.

Leapfrogging Nottinghamshire, who slipped back to fifth, Somerset won their last two matches in that belatedly bright September to take second place, and Middlesex, coming third, achieved their best finish for 17 years. Sussex, either side of the Twenty20 hiatus, eluded the showers to win four successive home games, in all of which they inserted their opponents in contests lasting fewer than 270 overs. They finished fourth.

Durham, ageing in 2011, were now simply aged. In each of their first five games, they fielded at least four players who had passed their 33rd birthdays. Half their first ten matches were lost, and another abandoned, before – with ranks refreshed by two young South Africans – they rousingly won five of their last six, thwarting relegation under Paul Collingwood, a new captain at 36. By then, three former Championship-winning stalwarts had either retired or gone out on loan. Of eight matches on questionable pitches in Chester-le-Street, six reached a result. Each came in the overs equivalent of under three days. In all, even discounting matches where declarations attempted to outwit bad weather, 35 victories (51% of the total) were similarly terse.

Having lost to Middlesex in April, Surrey bitterly castigated the Lord’s pitch – “awful” was one of the milder comments, but the word gained true weight two months later. Surrey’s season was overshadowed by the death of Tom Maynard at 23. It was the club’s third such bleak loss in two generations: Graham Kersey, the oldest at 25, had died in 1997, Ben Hollioake in spring 2002. Their bowling, on paper, had looked strong enough to win the title, but on spinning pitches at The Oval, Surrey needed to stir themselves to win their last two home games and stay in the first division.

Although one round remained, that second Surrey win condemned Worcestershire to relegation. But not for some three hours was Lancashire’s fate sealed over the river at Lord’s; needing victory, they went down blazing, in an impossible attempt to score 304 in 39 overs. They joined Yorkshire in 2002 and Nottinghamshire in 2006 by being demoted the year after taking the title. At least their failure to win any of six games in Liverpool buried the myth that they owed their 2011 triumph to Aigburth: their home and away records that summer were in fact identical. The simpler truth was that a team of largely unspectacular individuals could not again summon the energy to prevail by collective dedication, a reality illustrated by a return of 18 expensive wickets for Kyle Hogg, one of the surprise heroes of the previous season.

If the title race failed to match the drama of the preceding two years, the promotion race was still theoretically alive until the penultimate evening. Kent, a revamped side with enough veteran imports to make Durham look callow, remained unbeaten until August 5. They lost their nerve when set for victory at Derby, to be defeated in the division’s pivotal result. Shocked, they followed with a home loss to Essex, and humiliation came at Cardiff in the last game. It meant Derbyshire and Yorkshire were safely promoted. Both won on the campaign’s final afternoon, and Derbyshire became champions shortly before tea. Four of the team had emerged from their Academy.

It would have been a travesty had Yorkshire been denied. There is no definitive way of measuring the handicap of rain, but they surrendered a realistic possible maximum of 151 points; Essex, also severely hit, lost 142. By the same criteria, Sussex and Derbyshire missed only 57 points each. Of course there is no way of knowing how many of those points they would actually have collected. Until late on, Yorkshire’s attack – on benign home pitches – was statistically among the least penetrative in the country: two of their five wins came after Gloucestershire offered them targets. But with more time, they would clearly have won more matches. The same is true of Essex. Hampshire, however, squandered a real chance. From second place, ten points clear of Yorkshire, they lost their last three games, their attention perhaps deflected towards limited-overs glory.

The rest were never in it. Glamorgan continued to be predictably weaker since boardroom meddling in 2010; Leicestershire managed a better season, despite nine former players appearing for other counties in the Championship (and three for England); poachers still prowl at their gates. Northamptonshire discarded David Capel in July, with the chief executive’s comment that “every coach has his shelf-life in the modern game”, before their worst finish for 34 years. And spirited Gloucestershire, another club strapped for cash, merited more than a second wooden spoon in five summers.

The Championship itself merited far more. Tempting though it is, we cannot blame the ECB for climate change. But, like Albanian despots arranging revotes until they receive the mandate they want, the ECB tried to make clubs accept more Twenty20 in a plan already once rejected. They will get their way in 2014 but, crucially, not at the expense of the Championship. The counties refused any dilution of the competition, and also turned down a proposal to start the 2013 campaign on April 3, even though this meant forgoing participation in the Champions League. Yet that loud infant, Twenty20, still dictates too soon a start. In 2012, two matches were entirely abandoned in the same round for the first time in 25 years. They were scheduled to finish on April 29; in 1993, the inaugural season of a purely four-day Championship, that was the day when the first matches began.

More than half the 2012 Championship was over by June 9, part of the reason why patterns of play have become increasingly formulaic. Ignoring joke bowling, first division wickets fell once every 52 balls last year: in not one of the 20 seasons of four-day play has that strike-rate been bettered. Modern seamers have never had it so good. But for spin, a key element in Test cricket, the decline is profound. If three left-armers, Monty Panesar, Simon Kerrigan and David Wainwright, are removed from the equation, England-raised spinners took fewer than one Championship wicket in eight last year. Behind that leading trio, resources are worryingly diminished.

Of course the damp had much to do with this, but certain trends have been growing for years. Every one of the 16 wins for Warwickshire, Somerset and Sussex came after they batted second and, in terms of wins and losses, all but three teams (Lancashire, Nottinghamshire and Essex) had superior records at home to away, often markedly so. Astoundingly, only four of the 35 victories in Division One came after batting first on winning the toss, the historic choice in Tests; two of the four were at Old Trafford, the other two at The Oval. Pitches, tuned to home attacks, are penalising top-order batsmen and promoting seamers without the skill for international success. It is a process arguably encouraged by a points system that, with good motives, has gone marginally too far towards rewarding wins. Creating low-scoring results, even over three days, becomes all.

With the social base of English cricket quite criminally narrowed, a quarter of Championship appearances last year were made by those who learned the game abroad. Keaton Jennings, the South Africa Under-19 captain in 2011, joined Durham last August, suddenly becoming English. His mother is Sunderland-born; father Ray, however, was formerly South Africa’s national coach, and is now their Under-19 coach. Nick Compton, who made his Test debut in November, and Gary Ballance, named in the England Performance squad, were natives of South Africa and Zimbabwe who came to Harrow at 16 to complete their cricketing educations. This in the context of government figures conceding that the sale of 31 state-school playing fields had been approved in 27 months since the coalition came to power. Visiting supporters at the Tests last year displayed T-shirts with the message: “Our South Africans are better than yours.” They, anyway, could afford to see the joke.

FRIENDS LIFE t20, 2012

REVIEW BY ALAN GARDNER

Nostalgia may not be what it was, but neither is cricket’s youngest format – at least in the country of its birth. This was the year in which concerns about the structure, presentation and economics of domestic Twenty20 in England came to the boil, as players, administrators and fans (if you listened hard enough) pondered the direction taken by an innovation that has been cast as saviour and envoy of the game, as well as its bête noire.

In its tenth year, and now branded as the Friends Life t20, the competition reverted from a two-season embonpoint to a leaner, ten-game group stage, divided into three regions. During a summer that was wetter than Jacques Cousteau’s shower cap, the rain clouds cast a long shadow over the tournament. But the scheduling was a further source of disgruntlement; four home matches in five days for Surrey was just one example of a problematic fixture list.

Poor weather bedevilled the four-week block for the group stage to the extent that several counties called for the tournament to be spread across the season, with matches on specific days of the week to encourage a sense of familiarity with the fixture list among the general public. This echoed the “appointment to view” mantra for Twenty20 espoused by the Morgan Review.

At the same time, the likes of Muttiah Muralitharan, representing Gloucestershire, and Eoin Morgan urged the creation of a franchise system in the mould of Twenty20’s prize peacock, the Indian Premier League, as well as the newly minted Big Bash League in Australia. Cricket’s format wars have never been as simple as Betamax v VHS, and now a significant split had emerged about the way forward for English Twenty20.

A PCA survey reinforced the players’ preference for a dedicated window in which to attract big-name signings and focus broadcaster interest (at a time of disdain for bankers’ bonuses, cynics noted the line that argued for “a significant increase in the prize money at stake”, including £1m for the winners rather than the current £200,000). But “appointment-to-view” would end up winning the day: once again the county game was characterised as being out of touch with the modern world. The move from forward-thinking pioneers to outdated protectorate in only nine years was quite something.

The IPL is cricket’s Lolita, a seductive “trip of three steps down the palate” bewitching those old enough to know better, and by any measure England’s Twenty20 tournament appeared to have faded badly. However, while the competitions do not bear much comparison, it was with a baleful synchronicity that the title sponsors of both – Friends Life and DLF – announced on the same day in August that they would not be renewing their contracts.

In all, 16 of the 90 group games were abandoned without a ball bowled, along with four no-results and ten fixtures shortened by rain. On Friday July 6, seven matches out of nine were washed out, a tidal-wave effect that began with Derbyshire’s game against Nottinghamshire being called off at 10.21am – more than eight and a half hours before the scheduled start – and finally claimed Hampshire v Sussex as it neared the innings break some 11 hours later.

With a third of the group matches affected by rain, debate was rife about the tournament’s structure. Since the availability of England players was almost non-existent, and numerous marquee overseas signings – including Chris Gayle, Lasith Malinga, Saeed Ajmal and Shahid Afridi – had pulled out of deals to play, some of the arguments against spreading the tournament throughout the season were undoubtedly weakened.

Surrey’s chief executive Richard Gould was the most vocal advocate of change, championing the ideas of “scheduling and local heroes” in an attempt to turn casual consumers into engaged fans. His county had already been dealt a difficult hand, with a fixture list that included three games at The Oval between July 3 and July 6, but the death of Tom Maynard meant the rearrangement of another home match, against Hampshire, to July 2. That sequence followed a seven-day gap at the height of the tournament in which Surrey didn’t play a game at all, home or away.

In tough economic times, it was difficult to market multiple home matches so close together, and Gould argued that fixtures in the early part of the week were a hard sell anyway: most counties preferred to play on Friday evenings (and, in London, Thursdays too, a good night for corporate clients) and at the weekend. A league structure played over a few months would be less likely to fall victim to a concentrated period of rainfall, as well as being easier for the punters to understand.

Glamorgan – who, with five of their ten group games washed out, suffered most – and Somerset expressed similar views, although there remained a group of chief executives convinced that a one-hit, short-burst focus on sixes and celebrity was still the way to go. Spectators, meanwhile, quietly questioned ticket prices and the wide variety of start times – 15 of them in the group stage. And all this was without the added headache of having to factor in hosting the ICC Champions Trophy, as 2013 would demand.

In the end, the reformists had their way. After further horse-trading with the counties on the future of the Championship and domestic one-day cricket, and following the results of a fan survey conducted by market researchers Populus, the ECB announced that from 2014 the Twenty20 competition would be played mostly on Fridays.

With the reduction in 2012 from 16 group games per team to ten, a fall in overall gates was to be expected. But the number of rain-affected matches made it difficult to assess the theory that sharpening up the fixture list would create more demand. Competing with football’s European Championship, and advance claims for money and attention from the Olympics, clearly did not help either.

The overall attendance was 313,215 from 90 games, compared with 633,957 from 144 in 2011 – but the average crowd (excluding abandonments) of around 4,500 remained roughly the same. A more useful contrast was with the last time the competition was played in the same structure, during the drier summer of 2009: the overall figure from the group stage that year (with only three abandoned games) was 450,172, and the average attendance 5,000.

Counties such as Essex and Somerset were still able to pack out smaller grounds, and spin atmosphere as well as money, while Nottinghamshire continued to make a success of staging Twenty20 at a Test venue. Trent Bridge has been recognised for providing one of the best spectator experiences on the circuit; the club’s strategy focused on finding the extra 1% off the field wherever they could, with free entry for members, family ticketing packages, live entertainment and imaginative use of their video replay screen. But the word most commonly used by county chairmen to describe attendances was “disappointing”.

The cricket that was played proved solid and competitive, if not spectacular. The average first-innings score (when all 20 overs were available) was a scratchy 151, not aided by slow and often damp pitches. But tension compensated to a degree for a lack of flair: around a third of all completed matches, including the final, were still realistically up for grabs in the last over.

Sussex, led by a gunslinging top order of Chris Nash, Luke Wright and Matt Prior, were the only team to score 200 more than once (they did so four times, including the group match at Hampshire, which was abandoned after 17.4 overs). Nottinghamshire and Yorkshire – who twice broke their own records for opening stands – also piled on the runs. The Midlands/Wales/West Group was the most keenly contested: none of its three quarter-finalists was guaranteed progression until the final round.

There were surprises too. Leicestershire, the defending champions, finished a sorry last in the North Group; Hampshire, the eventual winners, picked up one point (from an abandonment) from their first three South Group games, before going unbeaten through the rest of the competition; Gloucestershire, also-rans in the previous two seasons, reached the last eight, as did Worcestershire, for the first time since 2007; Yorkshire won their first Twenty20 semi-final – beating Sussex, one of the favourites – then lost their first final. More predictably, Northamptonshire won just once, to go with their two victories in 2011.

Tactically, it was a good year for southpaws. The three leading wicket-takers – Yorkshire’s Mitchell Starc, Chris Liddle of Sussex, and Essex’s Reece Topley – were left-arm seamers, as spinners generally struggled on tracks that weren’t for turning (although that didn’t stop Surrey from regularly fielding four). A lack of pace was still useful, however, as the success of Dimitri Mascarenhas, Rich Pyrah and Daryl Mitchell showed. Left-handers also led the way with the bat, with Phillip Hughes (who averaged 100 from eight innings) and David Miller (the sixiest hitter of the tournament, with 21) topping the run charts by some distance.

County culture has always been more underneath the mainstream than against it, so it was perhaps fitting that the majority of the overseas recruits who did end up making an impact were of the low-fi variety. Starc and Miller, both young and exciting but hardly names plucked from the firmament, were central to Yorkshire’s campaign, while Hampshire were inspired in going for the Australian Glenn Maxwell – then playing for South Wilts in the Southern Premier League – as cover for Shahid Afridi. Scott Styris, a nomad of the format, scored the joint-third-fastest hundred in Twenty20 history in Sussex’s quarter-final win over Gloucestershire. His 37-ball century was only the second of the tournament (the lowest number since the inaugural 2003 edition), but was all the more eye-catching for coming at the knockout stage. James Fuller suffered most, conceding 38 runs in one over to equal the record in professional cricket.

In general, the runs flowed during the quarter-finals, with Sussex and Yorkshire passing 200, though three out of four went to form: only Nottinghamshire could not capitalise on home advantage. Hampshire were their nuggety conquerors and, a month later at Cardiff, on another slow, low pitch, Mascarenhas’s side ensured that Somerset’s fourth consecutive finals day would be another unhappy experience. In the other semi-final, a Jonny Bairstow blast was enough for Yorkshire to see off Sussex.

The final was a tale of innocence and experience, not necessarily in diametric opposition. Yorkshire had seasoned traditional grit with young talent in the form of Bairstow, Joe Root, Gary Ballance, Azeem Rafiq and Moin Ashraf; Hampshire, the 2010 winners and semi-finalists in 2011, relied on five players over the age of 30, but still required mature performances from Danny Briggs, 21, and Chris Wood, 22. Miller’s belligerence hauled Yorkshire close, but they could barely touch Wood in the final over as Hampshire claimed a second Twenty20 title.

For both finalists, the Champions League beckoned in South Africa in October. What started out as a summer fling ten years earlier had become a throw-the-kitchen-sink-at-it drama. There may be more angst to come.

FINAL

HAMPSHIRE v YORKSHIRE

HUGH CHEVALLIER

At Cardiff, August 25 (floodlit). Hampshire won by ten runs. Toss: Hampshire.

An astonishing display of brutal strokeplay abruptly transformed a humdrum game into a minor classic. Eleven overs into their pursuit of 151, Yorkshire were languishing at 53 for four, bereft of momentum or confidence. Bairstow, the morning’s star, had barely shone, and Miller had maundered to nine from 18 balls. Their last hope was an innings of comic-strip heroism, which was pretty much what happened.

Miller, it turned out, was simply getting his eye in. Yorkshire had taken two runs from Ervine’s first over, but from his next four balls Miller middled three sixes, all in the V and increasingly humungous. Anyone walking between the ground and the River Taff risked injury as white balls rained down. The volley of maximums put a dent in both the public footpath and the asking-rate and, after 15 runs came from the 18th over, Miller had zipped to 65 from 40 balls with five sixes and five fours. Momentum? Confidence? You bet!

Yorkshire now needed a gettable 21 from 12 deliveries. In fact, since they were ahead on the six-over score, they needed 20 (provided they lost no more than one wicket), and it was Hampshire searching for answers. Left-arm spinner Briggs came up with some, pitching shorter to Miller to limit his potential for straight hitting, and yielding just seven to leave the game delicately poised: 14 (maybe 13) off the last over.

The trouble for Yorkshire was that Bresnan was on strike – though not for long: he skied Wood’s first ball to point, which did at least get Miller to the business end. Wood’s next ball was full, and it was all Miller could do to scrape a single; momentum and confidence were ebbing away. Wood kept his length sensibly full, and as the runs dried up so Yorkshire hopes vanished in a flurry of wickets.

Mascarenhas, keen to scupper his opponents’ successful strategy of setting a target, had chosen to bat – despite Hampshire’s habitual preference for chasing. Progress was tricky on an increasingly slow pitch, and both Adams and Vince fell just as they seemed to be getting its measure. McKenzie, who had endured a poor tournament, was fined for dissent after protesting he had edged a full toss from the combative Rafiq on to his pads. Impatience then did for Ervine, and Hampshire needed the nous of Katich to drag them to 150. That seemed about par until Yorkshire’s top order played a series of panicky strokes. Once again Mascarenhas proved himself the master of cheese-paring medium-pace. Hampshire thought they had removed Miller on seven when he flicked Dawson to McKenzie at midwicket, but the replays – as so often – failed to prove whether the ball had carried. Miller survived to light up the closing stages, and few complained about that.

Man of the Match: D. A. Miller. Attendance: 14,848.

Umpires: R. J. Bailey and M. A. Gough. Third umpire: N. G. B. Cook.

CLYDESDALE BANK 40, 2012

REVIEW BY JON CULLEY

A playing format familiar to domestic audiences in England since the debut of the Sunday League in 1969 does not endure so long without a strong body of followers. As 40-over cricket receives the last rites, there is evidence its passing will sadden more than a few hearts.

The attendance at Lord’s for the Clydesdale Bank 40 final was relatively modest: 17,808, compared to the 25,000 who regularly flocked to the old 50- or 60-over showpieces. But around the country, core support remained steady. For most counties, the average turnout varied from about 1,500 to 3,000 – not spectacular, but at least respectable in a damp summer with 14 outright abandonments.

It remains to be seen whether the reversion to 50 overs in 2014 will have any serious impact on gates. When the Morgan Review – published in January 2012 – recommended English cricket fall back into line with the one-day international format, the counter-argument put forward by many county chief executives was that Sunday afternoon matches, of a slightly shorter duration, were more attractive to young families. The ECB decided they needed a wider range of feedback, and commissioned a survey into the entire domestic structure. Results from 25,000 cricket followers expressed “no compelling preference” for the 40-over format – sealing its fate.

Scotland were resigned to being excluded from the new structure, for the first time in 25 years, and went in search of more fixtures against ICC Full Members and their A-teams. They were right to do so: the ECB’s plans for 2014 included a streamlined 18-county group stage, with Scotland, the Netherlands and the Unicorns all elbowed out. The return of quarter-finals should cut down on the meaningless raft of games at the tail-end of the CB40, which many fear are ripe for spot-fixing when shown on television – something the ECB belatedly recognised by appointing an anti-corruption team to monitor the later rounds in 2012.

Hampshire’s thrilling last-ball triumph over Warwickshire at Lord’s was unusual in a season with few tickertape finishes, and completed a double for them in the limited-overs competitions – the first by a county since Adam Hollioake’s Surrey won the Twenty20 Cup and National League in 2003.

With his innings of 35 in the final, Hampshire opener Michael Carberry nudged ahead of Lancashire’s Stephen Moore as the CB40’s leading run-scorer, despite missing two months of the season with a knee injury. Only twice did Carberry fail to make a half-century, and six of his seven fifties were in a winning cause. He converted two to hundreds, of which his unbeaten 148 against Scotland was the highest by anyone. Carberry’s tally of 16 sixes was bettered only by Eoin Morgan of Middlesex and Yorkshire’s Gary Ballance. And his average over nine innings was a remarkable 85, to go with a strike-rate of 104.

Carberry did not win the title on his own, of course. His opening partner James Vince, with whom he shared two century stands, had his worst summer in first-class cricket, but his best in the CB40. Hampshire’s two most exciting young bowlers, Chris Wood and Danny Briggs, took 19 wickets each, two fewer than the competition’s leading wicket-taker, Ajmal Shahzad, who played all his games on loan at Lancashire. Like Briggs, Gary Keedy, who finished with 20 wickets, was often overlooked for selection in the Championship, but remained vital to his county’s one-day success.

Given that Lancashire won more matches than anyone in the qualifying stage, topped Group A by four points, and had two batsmen – Moore and Steven Croft – scoring over 500 runs, their disappointment at losing to Warwickshire in the semi-final was acute. If any county needed consolation, it was Lancashire: six days after that defeat, they were relegated in the Championship, having won it so memorably in 2011.

A Lancashire player also produced the fastest century, although Tom Smith’s phenomenal 44-ball destruction of Worcestershire came in an abandoned game. Morgan needed just five more balls to make his hundred against Lancashire at Lord’s. His strike-rate over four innings was nearly 147.

Lancashire’s wicket count of 100 was more than any other county, yet it was Warwickshire who possessed arguably the most efficient bowling unit. They took all ten wickets five times in the group stage, and repeated the trick in the semi-final, with three Lancashire batsmen falling to Chris Wright, who supplemented his 62 Championship victims with 20 in this competition.

Luke Wright, of beaten semi-finalists Sussex, scored three hundreds, as did Durham’s opening pair of Phil Mustard – who had a strike-rate of 143 – and Mark Stoneman, who shared three 150-plus stands at home; their team could not win away. Defending champions Surrey lost a crucial game at Southampton in August, a result overshadowed by a first-ball duck for Kevin Pietersen in his first match since being dropped from England’s Test side for the texts saga.

Kent had most reason to grumble about the absence of quarter-finals. They beat Warwickshire home and away, and had a superior run-rate, yet were denied the last semi-final spot on fewer wins – punishment for being the only team to lose to the semi-professional Unicorns. Darren Stevens, now aged 36, took 20 wickets, while Matt Coles began with six for 32 against Yorkshire. That remained the best analysis of the competition, until Abdur Rehman claimed six for 16 for Somerset against Nottinghamshire in August.

For a while, it looked as if the real story would be the Netherlands. They won five of their first seven matches, including victories by one run over Gloucestershire and one wicket over Lancashire. There was also a handsome win at Leicester, where Australian all-rounder Michael Swart scored a century and took three wickets.

His opening partner, Stephan Myburgh, began the competition with 77, 74 not out and 66. But after his hand was broken by Nathan Buck in the return match against Leicestershire, the Netherlands fell away dramatically, losing their last five games – and were bowled out for 57 by Worcestershire and 68 by Lancashire. Their final points haul was worse than they managed in 2011. Despite that, their record over three seasons in the CB40 was superior to four of the counties.

FINAL

HAMPSHIRE v WARWICKSHIRE

JAMES COYNE

At Lord’s, September 15. Tied. Hampshire won by virtue of losing fewer wickets. Toss: Warwickshire.

The Lord’s final, now in its 50th year, was stuck in a midlife crisis – but this game was uncommonly blessed. Contested by two teams in search of a double, it crackled with past, present, or aspiring international cricketers, and was played in an autumnal glow out of step with a miserable summer. For a few hours at least, the imperfections of England’s one-day competition could be forgotten.

Warwickshire required five to win off three balls. Blackwell had lost his head, and his stumps, possibly trying to achieve it in one blow, which brought Carter out to face Kabir Ali – selected ahead of Hamza Riazuddin only at the last minute. Ali, unerringly full, almost had him lbw first ball, then overpitched with the next and was driven past the groping cover fielder for four. One to win off the last: Carter needed only to make contact and Woakes – like Geoff Miller of Derbyshire in the 1981 NatWest Trophy final – would have been up his end in a flash.

Crucially, however, Hampshire’s superb young wicketkeeper Bates was standing up, which minimised the chance of a stolen run. Carter prodded at a dipping full toss – which arrived a bit wider than he thought – and missed; Bates gathered cleanly and quickly destroyed the stumps. Carter hadn’t even left his ground; so distraught was he at this fresh-air shot that he simply turned round and marched back to the Pavilion. Hampshire had tied a match, again. But unlike Twenty20 finals day in 2010 and 2011, there was no need for confusion or super overs: they had won because they lost only five wickets to Warwickshire’s seven.

Carter, now 37 and still hoping for a final fling with Scotland, had come painfully close to signing off as a hero. And yet, a few balls into the match, he was looking dangerously like a sympathy pick, as his gentle swingers were swatted away by batsmen eager to advance on a slow track. Warwickshire’s two spinners stemmed the flow, inadvertently helped by McKenzie who, after a fortnight back home in South Africa, dawdled for 36 balls over 19. Ervine and Katich cut loose in the closing overs, but Warwickshire, conspicuously ragged in the field, were content to chase 245.

The match, as so often when graced by a player of such obvious supremacy, appeared to rest with Bell. He did not open – as he had been doing so successfully for England’s one-day team – but instead appeared at 53 for one. By the 26th over, Bell had advanced that to 137 for two, and the options for Adams – who had earlier held Hampshire together – were dwindling fast. His first-choice spinner, Danny Briggs, was away at the World Twenty20, and Dawson was already bowled out. Wood pleaded with his captain to return to the attack, and with his second ball unleashed a rising leg-cutter which was top-edged by Ambrose, playing the day after he went public with his battle against depression; Bates, by now standing up to everyone bar Griffiths, clung on.

When Clarke was bowled by Wood to make it 193 for five, Bell knew it really was up to him. Reading the length masterfully, he converted four of his next six deliveries into boundaries. But when Griffiths served up a full toss on his pads, this most feline of players caressed when he should have clobbered – and the ball flew to Carberry, the best fielder in English cricket, waiting in the shade beneath the Mound Stand. Warwickshire still needed 27. And without Bell, that was one too many.

Man of the Match: J. H. K. Adams. Attendance: 17,808.

Carter 8–0–63–1; Woakes 8–0–59–1; Blackwell 8–0–42–1; Wright 3–0–14–1; Patel 8–0–32–0; Maddy 5–0–31–1.

Dawson 8–0–39–1; Kabir Ali 8–0–50–1; Wood 8–0–39–3; Ervine 6–0–46–1; Griffiths 8–0–43–1; Katich 2–0–20–0.

Umpires: R. K. Illingworth and N. A. Mallender. Third umpire: J. H. Evans.

WOMEN’S CRICKET, 2012

Proof of the subtle, but palpable, transformation in the standing of women’s cricket came when England’s Sarah Taylor walked out to face Stafanie Taylor of West Indies in the penultimate Twenty20 international of the summer at Hove. Sarah made a typically inventive 43 before Stafanie stopped her in her tracks but, as they were sparring out on the field, an email dropped, announcing the two Taylors had cleaned up the women’s one-day and Twenty20 Player of the Year prizes at the ICC awards in Colombo – the first time women had been recognised in both limited-overs formats. Stafanie, who collected the 50-over award, had also been the sole woman among nine longlisted for the ICC Cricketer of the Year.

But no one was disputing it was Sarah’s summer. Still only 23, she dominated the English international season, scoring 510 runs at 36; her Twenty20 strike-rate was a phenomenal 127. Taylor’s almost unique ability was to waltz down and loft the ball over mid-off, or inside out through extra cover; if a female batsman has an aggressive go-to shot, it tends to be over mid-on or across the line. The one area she really needed to work on was the sweep.

“Hopefully in a few years we won’t need to say this about women players, but Sarah bats like a man,” said Clare Connor, the ECB head of women’s cricket, who had watched Taylor’s development from a teenager at Brighton College. It was this uncommon power and placement that encouraged Mark Lane, the England head coach, to explore the idea of Taylor trying her hand at men’s Second Eleven cricket with Sussex in 2013. The news, via an in-depth interview with The Guardian ahead of the Women’s World Cup, caused a minor media frenzy, though it was not immediately obvious which format she might be best suited to.

In November 2011, the ECB had introduced incentivised appearance fees for the women – which rewarded the players three times as much for every match won. By a cute coincidence, England went through the 2011-12 winter unbeaten, then won 12 of 15 matches over the summer. Remarkably, given the bad weather around, all their international fixtures were played to a result.

India were the senior touring side, and gave England a real fright in the one-day series. Since playing the last of their Tests in 2006, India have preferred 50-over cricket, even if their tactics seemed to revolve around letting Mithali Raj bat for long enough to make up for lazy running and errors in the field. Raj, a classically trained Bharatanatyam dancer, had rarely shown the same twinkle-toed nimbleness at the crease, but her powers of occupation were undiminished in her 14th year of international cricket. She was needed more than ever, after Anjum Chopra, the previous captain, was dropped following two series defeats in the West Indies. India’s women could be forgiven for feeling the IPL riches had yet to trickle down to them. In March, the BCCI made one-off payments, totalling $13m, to 16 former men’s players as retrospective reward for staying loyal in the poor old days of Indian cricket; Raj implored them to extend the generosity to women too.

Raj’s unbeaten 94 led India to a first win at Lord’s, in the last over; but the flipside of the strategy was seen at Taunton, where she ground out an unbeaten 92 from 138 balls, and India made an inadequate 173 for five. She scored 58 at Truro, where England came close to surrendering the series, but Jenny Gunn rescued them, and they went on to win the decider at Wormsley.

Pakistan arrived in September – from Dublin, where they had beaten Bangladesh and Ireland in two triangular tournaments – for several Twenty20 matches at the ECB Academy, including their first bilateral series against England. Lane was pleasantly surprised by the physical and technical improvements they had made since the Pakistan Cricket Board introduced central contracts in 2011. But they were still no match for England.

For the first time since their 1979 tour, West Indies were awarded a lengthy international series against England, as preparation for the World Twenty20 later in September. Under their coach, the former Test opener Sherwin Campbell, West Indies had penetrated the top bracket of women’s teams, but their overreliance on a few players was exposed by England’s all-round professionalism. Stafanie Taylor’s arrival from Jamaica was delayed as she completed forensic science exams, and the hard-hitting Deandra Dottin came off only in the last game, when she exploded with a barrage of 80-metre sixes at Arundel to end England’s 19-match winning streak (excluding one no-result and one abandonment) in Twenty20 internationals.

CRICKET IN IRELAND, 2012

Rain on their parade

IAN CALLENDER

It was ultimately a year of frustration for Ireland, who confirmed their status as the leading Associate team but made no impression on the Full Member countries. In a bid to change that, Cricket Ireland produced a new Strategic Plan, with the aim of becoming a Test nation by 2020.

As part of the preparation, the inter-provincial championship returns in 2013 after eight years, and a first-class structure – a requirement of Full Membership – is projected for 2015. The ICC’s new Targeted Assistance and Performance Programme, which assigned Ireland an extra $1.5m until then, should help. Ireland, Scotland and Netherlands also began discussions about a European 50-over and Twenty20 League – which may also include Denmark and the Channel Islands.

Across all formats Ireland played 33 matches in 2012 – a further five did not get started – and two-thirds of them were 20-over games. A ten-match winning streak in the World Twenty20 Qualifier took Ireland to their fifth successive global event. In Sri Lanka in September, they lost to Australia, then went out when their second group game, against eventual champions West Indies, was rained off at the halfway stage.

The weather was a constant spoilsport, with the game against Australia at Stormont abandoned after 10.4 overs. The other supposed highlight, a tour by South Africa A, was so badly affected that they went home a week early. Ireland lost 3–0 in a home Twenty20 series against Bangladesh, but beat them in the warm-ups for the World Twenty20 in Colombo, where they also upset Zimbabwe.

Qualification hopes for the 50-over World Cup in 2015 remained high, despite a shock defeat to Kenya. With 13 points out of a possible 16, and six matches remaining Ireland expected to confirm their place in Australasia without the need of the qualification tournament early in 2014.

But they can no longer call on seam bowler Boyd Rankin who, under pressure from Warwickshire coach Ashley Giles (also an England selector), announced he would no longer be available for Ireland after the World Twenty20. At the age of 28, and following 82 matches and 112 wickets for his country, he will be a big loss. There is no sign of an immediate replacement, despite recalls for Peter Connell and Andrew Britton, and a debut for Max Sorensen, a 26-year-old South African who plays for The Hills in Dublin.

Sorensen, who took 31 wickets, was one of five debutants in 2012. The others were John Anderson, an Australian-born batsman who also bowls leg-spin; Stuart Thompson, 20, an all-rounder from Limavady who followed his father Nigel into the Ireland side; Belfast batsman James Shannon; and Tim Murtagh, the Middlesex seamer who qualified through Irish grandparents.

Ireland’s year started in Mombasa, where they beat Kenya inside two days in a supposedly four-day Intercontinental Cup match. Only ten runs separated the teams after a match aggregate of just 444; spinners Albert van der Merwe and George Dockrell took all the Kenyan wickets. Ireland struggled in the first of two 50-over World Cricket League games, which Kenya won comfortably, but revenge was swift: Ed Joyce scored 88, and Kenya were rolled for 120. Ireland won all three Twenty20 matches (the last by two runs as they defended 107) to send them to Dubai for the qualifying tournament in good heart.

Niall O’Brien missed the Kenya trip to play in the Bangladesh Premier League, in breach of his national contract. His punishment was to be left out of the Dubai trip, where Ireland made their customary slow start, losing to surprise packages Namibia. But an emphatic ten-wicket victory over Kenya put them back on track, and their only scare en route to the final was against Italy when, chasing 100, they lost eight wickets before scraping home with two balls to spare. The final highlighted everything good about Associate cricket. Afghanistan made 152 for seven but, despite losing captain William Porterfield first ball, Ireland got home by five wickets thanks to Paul Stirling’s 79 from 55 deliveries.

It was three months before they returned to action, with the one-off game against Australia at Stormont. It was to the credit of groundsman Philip McCormick that there was any play at all after persistent rain the previous day: Ireland were 36 for three, something of a recovery after losing two wickets in the first three balls, before it returned.

Rain ruined the first of two WCL games against Afghanistan, but Ireland won the second by 59 runs. The first seven sessions of their Intercontinental Cup match were then washed out, although Ireland’s first-innings advantage meant they collected 13 points. After four rounds, their lead of 21 meant they could afford to lose one of their last three matches and still progress to the five-day final at the end of 2013.

The first game in the Twenty20 series against Bangladesh was Ireland’s 800th in all, but celebrations were muted after a heavy defeat. They performed better in the other two, but lost one by one run, and the other by two wickets off the last ball. The truncated South Africa A tour started with two four-day matches, both ruined by rain, but the tourists easily won two one-dayers before the weather (and a terrible forecast) sent them home early.

For the first time in a calendar year since 2005, no Ireland batsman scored a century. Porterfield endured a miserable season, falling first ball five times and averaging 17. Dockrell, the slow left-armer, was the leading wicket-taker with 37, and picked up the ICC Player of the Year award, as well as the Irish one. Domestically, it was a year of firsts: The Hills lifted the Irish Cup, and CIYMS the NCU Premier League title for the first time, while Donemana became the first club to win the North West double since Limavady in 2000.

CRICKET IN SCOTLAND, 2012

Wet weekends

WILLIAM DICK

An air of negativity hung over Scottish cricket through much of 2012 as the national side failed to reach the levels of performance demanded by coach Peter Steindl. The cancellation of the one-day international against England was a major blow, although at least they were given plenty of notice that they would not be required in Edinburgh: the storm and flood damage to the Grange was so severe that the fixture, scheduled for August 12, was called off three weeks in advance. Efforts to find a suitable replacement venue on either side of the border met with no success. England will not return until 2014 at the earliest, so Scotland must hope for better weather when Pakistan and Australia pitch up in 2013. In all, five of Scotland’s games had to be moved to Uddingston and Ayr, because of bad weather in Edinburgh and the continuing after-effects of vandalism to the pitch at Aberdeen’s Mannofield Park.

For all these complications, Scotland finished the year handily placed in the one-day and four-day tournaments that formed the bread and butter of their international competition. In the 50-over World Cricket League Championship, they bounced back from two defeats in the UAE in March to beat Canada at home in the one match that survived the weather, enough to occupy second place overall behind Ireland. When the competition ends in October 2013, the top two will qualify for the 2015 World Cup; the rest will attend a standalone World Cup qualifier event, which Scotland were long expected to host, but eventually ceded to New Zealand as part of an ICC boardroom compromise.

All four days of the home Intercontinental Cup match against Canada at Uddingston’s Bothwell Castle Policies ground were lost to the weather. But a seven-wicket win in the UAE, inspired by 25-year-old Richie Berrington, who scored 110 and 42 not out, helped Scotland finish the year second in that competition too. They still had plenty of work to do to reach their third final in six tournaments, including away matches against Afghanistan and Ireland.

The highlight, though, came in Twenty20 cricket – traditionally Scotland’s weakest suit. Sure enough, they lost to Namibia, Ireland, USA and the Netherlands at the 2012 World Twenty20 qualifying tournament. (The qualification process for the next competition should give them a better chance: at the time of writing, six spots were open to non-Full Members.) But in July, Scotland beat Bangladesh in the Netherlands, their first win over a Test-playing nation. Berrington became the first Associate cricketer to score a century in an official Twenty20 international, from 57 balls. The result did not persuade any Bangladesh Premier League franchises to pick up Scottish players for their 2013 event.

The CB40, by contrast, was relentlessly miserable. There was one slightly fortuitous victory over Nottinghamshire, helped by rain, and Scotland’s other points came from no-results. Mention of the tournament cannot pass without noting the ECB’s decision to exclude Scotland (and the Netherlands) from their new 50-over competition in 2014 – meaning 2013 will be Scotland’s last season in county cricket after 34 years. The announcement was accepted with diplomatic resignation – at least publicly – by Cricket Scotland; a less-guarded response might have been that the ECB missed a golden opportunity to continue assisting Associate cricket. It is difficult to see how Scotland can adequately replace 12 fixtures against quality opposition, but they promised they would try. A European league featuring regional sides from Scotland, Ireland, the Netherlands and elsewhere came under discussion, but would surely help bridge the gap between club and Associate cricket only. More useful would be a fuller programme of matches against the Test nations and their A-teams.

Scotland did, however, benefit from ICC largesse. They and Ireland were the first two Associates to receive $500,000 of funding from the new Targeted Assistance and Performance Programme, and were delighted when the ICC eased their eligibility rules following sustained lobbying from Cricket Scotland. They had watched with envy at Dutch and Irish passports being acquired by talented cricketers bearing tenuous links with those countries, but now British passport holders with Scottish parentage will be eligible to pull on the Saltire. Four English-born county players – Richard Coughtrie, Matt Machan, David Murphy and Rob Taylor – represented a Scotland XI on an autumn tour of South Africa; and they will soon be followed by Iain Wardlaw and Neil Carter, the veteran South African all-rounder who left Warwickshire at the end of the summer.

Cricket Scotland were delighted at this perceived levelling of the playing field, but stressed their commitment to producing home-grown talent. There were signs that one or two youngsters may be ready to graduate from the Under-19 team, who finished 11th at the 2012 World Cup in Australia. Ross McLean scored half-centuries against Afghanistan and Pakistan, while Freddie Coleman made 65 against New Zealand, having achieved his maiden first-class hundred for Oxford MCCU against Worcestershire in April.

Given just how badly the weather ruined the domestic game, the jury remained out on the new regional Cricket Scotland League, which replaced the old National League. Dumfries, promoted in 2011, won the Western Premier Division at their first attempt, but lost the new Grand Final against Eastern champions Watsonians. The former international seamer John Blain was the leading wicket-taker, for West of Scotland, months after being removed from his coaching role at Yorkshire.

CRICKET IN THE NETHERLANDS, 2012

Out of the cage

DAVID HARDY

It felt like a watershed year in Dutch cricket, one in which the game finally began to take on a wider appeal. A major new initiative, the Youth Plan, was launched by the Netherlands Cricket Board (KNCB) at the beginning of 2012, with the aim of doubling player numbers in four years. There is an imperative to spread cricket beyond the densely populated cities in the west: only 18 clubs exist elsewhere in the Netherlands; and only two of them have youth sections.

More and more schools offer a dual Dutch–English curriculum – and what could be a better example of English-language culture than cricket? Around 1,000 children in 28 schools – roughly the same number of juniors that currently play the game – were introduced to it for the first time in a Bilingual Schools Cricket Challenge, culminating with a finals day in Deventer.

A second breakthrough came with an exhibition of Cage Cricket – the brainchild of former Hampshire batsman Lawrence Prittipaul – to primary school pupils in Nijmegen, in October. All over inner-city neighbourhoods, where many immigrant communities live, there are Cruyff Courts, sponsored by the legendary footballer Johan Cruyff to encourage youngsters to play street soccer. These cages are ready-made for street cricket too.

The Netherlands Under-15 team retained the European Championship, and the Under-17s beat Ireland twice. Like the senior team, they reaped the benefit of a few imports, notably Daniel Doram, a two-metre-tall, 14-year-old left-arm spinner, and Shaquille O’Neal Martina, 16, an off-spinning all-rounder – both resident in the Dutch Caribbean territory of Sint Maarten.

The standard of domestic youth cricket was boosted by the creation of a new regional league at Under-19 level, but there is still some way to go before indigenous Dutch cricketers can make a meaningful impact on the senior team again. It was only ten years ago that the overwhelming majority of players were Dutch. Ten years later, it is mainly cricketers who have learned the game elsewhere.

Sydney-born seamer Timm van der Gugten was the latest player to be plucked from Australasia, while South African Stephan Myburgh and Pakistani Shahbaz Bashir, both 29, qualified by residency. Bashir became the first Netherlands player to make a century on first-class debut, in the Intercontinental Cup against the United Arab Emirates; Myburgh was the leading Dutch run-scorer at both the World Twenty20 Qualifier and the Clydesdale Bank 40. He made 77, 74 not out and 66 in consecutive innings, to add to his 55 in the last CB40 match of 2011.

Halfway through the CB40 campaign there were dreams of a home semi-final. The Netherlands stood proudly on top of Group A, with five wins, including a memorable double over Lancashire and Essex on Whitsun weekend in Schiedam. The foundation of the early success was the top-order batting of Myburgh and Australians Michael Swart, Tom Cooper and Cameron Borgas, and the lower-order hitting of Mudassar Bukhari. In a bizarre week in June, the Netherlands posted their highest 40-over total (304 for three v Leicestershire) and their lowest (57 v Worcestershire). Another highlight was Sky Sports’ first live broadcast from the Netherlands, for Gloucestershire’s visit to Amstelveen in July.

From then on, it was all downhill; perhaps the intensive schedule took its toll. At one stage in July, the national team were in action for nine days out of 12 in four different formats. But in the penultimate match, the second of two Twenty20s against Bangladesh, they managed their third win over a Test country, off the last ball.

In October, the ECB announced 2013 would be the Netherlands’ last season in its one-day competition. It was all the more reason for the KNCB to redouble their efforts to play more against Test nations and establish a European regional limited-overs competition.

The Netherlands’ last-over defeat by Afghanistan in the group stage of the World Twenty20 Qualifier proved crucial. In the prolonged qualifying tournament for the 2015 World Cup, they ended 2012 in third place, after two home wins against the UAE, but still out of the qualifying spots.

Six young uncapped players – including Doram – were named in a party to tour the UAE and India in November and December, which included intensive coaching at the ICC Global Cricket Academy in Dubai and fixtures against the UAE Academy, Mumbai Academy and the England Performance Programme. Alexei Kervezee was the architect of a surprise 2–1 triumph over the EPP, scoring 96 and 80 in the two victories.

Excelsior 20 Schiedam lifted their ninth national championship in 22 seasons, winning all three play-off matches after finishing fourth in the league. Daan van Bunge, the captain, was in prime form; only Wesley Barresi and New Zealand professional Greg Todd scored more runs in the season. It was the ninth title for veterans Luuk van Troost and Marcel Schewe, the only men to play more than 400 matches in the Topklasse (Premier League) over the past 25 years. In a local derby against Excelsior, Todd made 120 and took five for 19 (including a hat-trick) for Hermes DVS.

The leading wicket-taker was a Dutchman, HCC left-arm seamer Reinier Bijloos, with 29. But the story of the year was that of Dosti, the newly promoted Amsterdam club formed in 1978. This team, made up almost entirely of cricketers from a non-Dutch background, made good use of the rule permitting three professionals. It was introduced a couple of seasons ago following more than 30 years of only one official professional player-coach, after Dosti themselves were found guilty of fielding unregistered players. Now they boasted a powerful trio: former Pakistan Test batsman Mohammad Wasim, IPL all-rounder Amit Uniyal, and David Wiese from South African franchise Titans. Dosti finished top after the initial round, then made it to the play-off final, where they lost to Excelsior.

VOC of Rotterdam were relegated after 42 years in the Topklasse. This meant that, in 2013, three of the six clubs with grass squares (VOC, Voorburg and Kampong) will be playing in the Hoofdklasse (Second Division), leaving only two in the top flight. VRA won the Twenty20 Cup for the third season running; 18-year-old left-arm spinner Victor Lubbers’s four for 11 earned him the match award in the final. ACC, their Amstelveen neighbours, regularly featured a father/triplet combination: former Dutch international Ahmed Zulfiqar and his three 15-year-old sons.

KNCB signed the most lucrative sponsorship deal in their history, with the Dutch bank ABN AMRO, who are keen to expand their horizons in the Indian subcontinent. The four-year arrangement involves the Netherlands making more trips to Asia, which began with the first invitation in 16 years to the Hong Kong Sixes (where a strong Netherlands team beat England).

An award of $1.5m over three years from the ICC’s new Targeted Assistance Performance Programme is intended to provide more tournaments, expand development initiatives, and support the national side as they build towards the 2015 World Cup. Unfortunately, there was no mention of women’s and girls’ cricket, an area of great concern in the Netherlands. The national team finished seventh in the 2011 World Cup Qualifier in Bangladesh – losing their one-day international status – and were relegated to Division Three of the ECB’s County Championship after losing a play-off to Ireland A.

WORLD CRICKET IN 2012

Superb South Africa

SIMON WILDE

South Africa were indisputably the team of the year. Unbeaten in every bilateral series across all three formats, they were the only team not to lose a single Test. It was testimony to their talent, tenacity and organisation, and only another poor performance at a major tournament – they lost all their Super Eight games at the World Twenty20 in Sri Lanka – removed any gloss.

The South Africans found most satisfaction in the Test arena, under the leadership of the evergreen Graeme Smith, winning five and drawing five. It was the more impressive for playing only one game at home, beating Sri Lanka in January to clinch a series that had begun in late 2011. On the road for much of the time thereafter, they claimed victories in New Zealand (1–0), England (2–0) and Australia (1–0). By winning in England, they displaced their opponents as the No. 1 Test team, finally regaining a position they had held for four months in 2009; by winning in Australia, they avoided the defeat that would have ceded the top ranking to their hosts. In short, Smith’s team had won two away series which doubled up as showdowns for the world Test title.

To succeed in England and Australia within the space of a few months was a rare feat. The South Africans themselves had managed it four years earlier, and so had the great West Indies sides of 1984 and 1988. Yet their deeds could be placed in a more immediate context, too: the only other teams to win Test series away from home in 2012 were Australia, in the West Indies; West Indies themselves, in Bangladesh; and – unexpectedly – England in India, a result that ended a 28-year drought. Few doubted that South Africa merited the No. 1 position: by the end of 2012, they had extended their record to one series defeat out of 21, dating back to 2006. To crown a memorable year, Smith recorded two notable personal milestones, scoring a century in his 100th Test, and beating Allan Border’s record of 93 Tests as captain.

South Africa did have to dig themselves out of a couple of holes. At Brisbane in November, they allowed Australia to recover from 40 for three to make 565 for five. Then, at Adelaide, the Australians tore their bowling to shreds to reach a stratospheric 482 for five at stumps on the first day. Left more than four sessions to score 430, or bat out time, South Africa looked beaten at 77 for four going into the final day, but the debutant Faf du Plessis played one of the great match-saving innings, finishing unbeaten on 110 after almost eight hours. Well supported by A. B. de Villiers (33 in four hours) and Jacques Kallis (46 in two and a half), du Plessis was instrumental in his side losing only three wickets on the final day. (This was one of only two Tests in 2012 which were drawn without interference from the weather; the other came at Nagpur between India and England, on a pitch more devoid of life than the average corpse.) South Africa took the deciding Test in Perth by 309 runs to clinch the series, although even there the final margin masked the trouble they had been in on the first day, at 75 for six.

South Africa’s series with England also produced some dramatic cricket, though there was no doubt which was the stronger team. It was just a shame that neither series was longer than three matches. Even so, both served as excellent adverts for Test cricket.

The key to South Africa’s on-field success was the settled nature of the team (off it, however, Gerald Majola, the chief executive of Cricket South Africa, was sacked after being found guilty of misconduct). They called on only 17 players in Tests, of whom six played in all ten matches, and another three missed only one. Smith, Kallis and – either side of the England tour – de Villiers all scored heavily, while Hashim Amla, already acknowledged as a batsman of class and culture, took his game to another level, making almost 2,000 runs in all formats, including a national Test record 311 not out at The Oval. Of these, a record 1,712 came away from home.

The pace attack – led by Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel and Vernon Philander – was the most potent in the world, and leg-spinner Imran Tahir had his moments, before failing spectacularly in Australia and losing his place. A measure of their bowling was that South Africa dismissed Sri Lanka for 43 in a one-day international at Paarl and, in the New Year Test at Cape Town in 2013, bundled New Zealand out for 45.

The only disruptive blow was the loss of veteran wicketkeeper-batsman Mark Boucher to a freak injury at the start of the England tour. De Villiers was pressed into service as a replacement and, although he performed capably, his batting suffered. To lessen the strain, he handed the Twenty20 captaincy to du Plessis for a series against New Zealand in December; de Villiers later withdrew as a player, citing exhaustion.

Managing the workloads of the top players became something of a fad. Australia’s anxiety over the inability of their seamers to stay fit led them to pull Mitchell Starc out of the Melbourne Test, only days after he had bowled them to victory over Sri Lanka at Hobart. This ultra-cautious approach – itself a function, perhaps, of a well-stocked fast-bowling cupboard – did not extend to batsmen: Michael Clarke, the captain, played at Melbourne with a hamstring strain, and scored another century to crown a sublime 12 months during which he, like Amla, had never played better.

Clarke became the first to score four Test double-centuries in a year, the first of which he had converted into an unbeaten 329, against India on his home ground at Sydney. And, at Melbourne, he claimed an Australian record for runs in a calendar year (the previous holder, Ricky Ponting, had retired three weeks earlier). Of Clarke’s tally of 1,595, he made 1,407 in Australia, a record for one country in one year. Despite the juggling of bowling personnel, Australia won seven Tests in 2012, more than any other side.

The most radical response to the fixture list was adopted by England, who in November announced they were embarking on a “step-change” in the schedules of players and coaches. Andy Flower was to remain overall team director, but the day-to-day running of the 50-over and Twenty20 teams would be handled by Ashley Giles, who had coached Warwickshire to the 2012 Championship and was already an England selector. The move, mainly aimed at keeping Flower fresh, motivated, and in the job, was also a response to a troubled year, in which England had failed to build on their rise to the top of the Test rankings in 2011, and followed the retirement of Andrew Strauss, one of England’s most successful Test captains, after the defeat by South Africa. Sport can be unsentimental, and there was no time – and little need – to mourn Strauss’s departure, as the team rallied under Alastair Cook to record their first series win in India since 1984-85. Soon after, South Africa announced they were also dividing up the coaching duties, with Russell Domingo, Gary Kirsten’s assistant, taking over the Twenty20 side.

England’s bowling attack remained strong, but the batting, which had touched rare heights in 2011, was often unconvincing. Strauss’s decline was one issue; another was the turmoil generated by Kevin Pietersen, whose gripes with the management included scheduling and time off to play in the IPL. His temporary exile hurt England’s defence of the World Twenty20 title but, even though he didn’t appear in the one-day side after February, they won 12 of their 14 completed matches, and remained No. 1 in the rankings until the end of the year. Pietersen was less consistent than Amla or Clarke, but scored three breathtaking Test hundreds, in Colombo, Leeds and Mumbai.

Others also suffered disruption from internal disputes, none more so than New Zealand. Ross Taylor quit as captain after being invited to stay on only as head of the Test side; Mike Hesson, appointed coach in succession to John Wright – who himself had resigned, citing differences with director of cricket John Buchanan – had proposed the one-day and Twenty20 teams be passed over to Brendon McCullum. Results had been poor for much of the year, but the timing of the suggested change was odd: Taylor had just masterminded a series-squaring Test victory over Sri Lanka in Colombo, where his double of 142 and 74 was among the finest by a New Zealand captain. The board later apologised to Taylor for his treatment, but he opted out of the end-of-year tour of South Africa. To make matters worse, Jesse Ryder didn’t play at all after February, for personal and disciplinary reasons.

Mahela Jayawardene ended his second spell as Sri Lanka’s captain after his country’s tour of Australia in January 2013, keeping a promise that he would stay only for 12 months. Then, within days, he said he had lost all confidence in Sri Lanka Cricket, after a confidential request – that the players’ guarantee fee from the World Twenty20 staged in Sri Lanka be shared with the support staff and groundsmen – was made public. SLC, whose financial husbandry has often infuriated their players, would not accede to the proposal.

India also experienced turbulence in the wake of whitewashes in England and Australia. Mohinder Amarnath revealed that the selection panel of which he had formerly been a member had recommended the removal of M. S. Dhoni as captain during the tour of Australia, only for the proposal to be blocked by the Indian board president, N. Srinivasan – who is also owner of the Chennai IPL franchise, which is captained by Dhoni. Amarnath renewed calls for Dhoni to step down during the home defeat by England. There was no halting the transition in the ranks, though: Rahul Dravid and V. V. S. Laxman both retired, and Sachin Tendulkar quit one-day internationals. Virat Kohli carried the flag for the next generation, scoring eight international centuries, more than anyone.

In the West Indies, Ramnaresh Sarwan successfully sued the board over comments about his fitness, and was awarded $US161,000 in damages, though he was picked for the one-day tour of Australia early in 2013. There was a more conciliatory resolution to Chris Gayle’s long-running dispute. Gayle, who had earned fortunes playing in the IPL and other domestic Twenty20 tournaments, returned to West Indies colours for the first time in more than a year after a peace brokered at prime-ministerial level. Crowds flocked to witness his first international appearances in the Caribbean for two years and, on his Test return, he scored 150 and 64 not out against New Zealand in the first Test played at the Sir Vivian Richards Stadium in Antigua since the embarrassing 2008-09 abandonment against England.

Gayle’s comeback helped provide his team with the self-belief to win the World Twenty20 in September, secured in fairytale fashion after they had come within one run of elimination during the Super Eights against New Zealand. Gayle was Man of the Match in the semi-final against Australia, but the triumph was a fine collective effort under Darren Sammy. Gayle did little in a final against Sri Lanka that ebbed and flowed in a way many thought impossible of a 20-over game. Instead, the hero was the hugely improved Marlon Samuels, who hit half his 78 from 56 balls in just 11 deliveries from Lasith Malinga, a notoriously difficult bowler to face. It was Sri Lanka’s fourth defeat in a major final since their World Cup triumph of 1996.

Pakistan began the year strongly, with a 3–0 whitewash of England in the United Arab Emirates, but there was little chance to build on that outstanding result: because of the security situation at home, they played only one more Test series in 2012, losing 1–0 in Sri Lanka. Plans for Bangladesh to visit were twice scrapped, amid suspicions the tour had only ever been mooted as a quid pro quo for Pakistan backing the nomination of Mustafa Kamal, president of the Bangladesh Cricket Board, for the role of ICC vice-president. But, much to Pakistan’s delight, an International XI travelled to Karachi in October to play two Twenty20 games. As a second home, the UAE was not ideal for Australia’s visit in August: the 50-over matches started at 6pm to avoid the worst of the heat – and even then, the thermometer hovered around 36°C. Pakistan also resumed bilateral relations with India after a four-year hiatus, tying a Twenty20 series that started on Christmas Day, before winning the 50-over matches 2–1.

For the second year running, Pakistan’s Saeed Ajmal finished as the leading wicket-taker in all internationals, claiming 95, after picking up 89 in 2011. Next, with 84, came another off-spinner, Graeme Swann of England, who had topped the list in 2010. But one of the features of the year was the rise of orthodox left-arm spin. Rangana Herath of Sri Lanka was the leading Test bowler, with 60 wickets (one more than Swann), including seven five-fors, three more than the next best, fellow slow-left armer Monty Panesar of England. Two others of the breed, Pakistan’s Abdur Rehman and India’s Pragyan Ojha, also had good years. In all, left-arm spinners claimed 172 Test wickets at a combined average of 27, seven fewer than any other type of bowling; their haul of 15% of available wickets was their highest for 25 years. Spin held less sway in one-day internationals, where the use of two balls per innings may have had an effect, but it remained a potent weapon in the Twenty20 format.

Bangladesh and Zimbabwe both felt the impact of the ICC’s decision to revise the frequency with which they met the major teams. Across all formats, Zimbabwe featured in just eight matches (and lost the lot), and Bangladesh in 20 – tallies as low as in any year since Zimbabwe entered the Test ranks in 1992, and Bangladesh in 2000. It was also revealed that the Zimbabwean board had debts of $US18m. Bangladesh at least showed spirit at home to West Indies: after conceding 527 in the First Test at Dhaka, they lost by only 77 runs; and in the Second, the debutant Abul Hasan made the highest score (113) by a Test No. 10 for 128 years. One of the West Indies bowlers, Tino Best, had himself set an unlikely record five months earlier, with an exuberant 95 – the highest by a Test No. 11 – against England at Edgbaston. Bangladesh’s other consolation was to take the one-day series against West Indies 3–2 to move above New Zealand in the rankings.

It was not necessary to be a close follower of the careers of Gayle and Pietersen to grasp that the shadow cast by the 20-over format was growing. Although no window was formally declared for the IPL, most international teams preferred to clear their diaries rather than risk upsetting – or even losing – their talent. During the eight weeks of the tournament, six Tests were staged in Sri Lanka, the West Indies and England, but the one-day and Twenty20 international formats went into total shutdown. Bangladesh and Sri Lanka both launched new domestic Twenty20 events, and Pakistan unveiled plans to follow suit in March 2013, only to postpone them. International cricket’s primacy was being paid lip-service only.

ICC WORLD TWENTY20, 2012-13

REVIEW BY DAVID HOPPS

1. West Indies 2. Sri Lanka 3= Australia and Pakistan

When the World Twenty20 drew to a close in Colombo, with the monsoon rains kindly delaying their arrival, even those most resistant to the charms of cricket’s shortest format struggled to deny it had done the game a huge service. For around 20 years, West Indies cricket had seemed in permanent decline. Yet here they were, triumphant in maroon and gold, dancing on the outfield at the Premadasa Stadium, winners once more.

Tipped by many from the outset as potential victors, they had revealed their credentials only in fits and starts. Indeed, had Australia taken three more balls to chase down Ireland’s total in the group stages, West Indies would have fallen at the first hurdle on net run-rate. And, during an extraordinary final, they needed to recover a game against the hosts Sri Lanka that had seemed beyond them – a result forged largely by one man, Marlon Samuels, his career at last flowering.

West Indies’ uncertainty made their achievement all the more appealing, while the unfailing decency and optimism of their captain, Darren Sammy, were all the more striking for rising above his own limitations. Sammy, a St Lucian, personified their slogan of “One Team, One People, One Goal”, and his unbeaten 26 off 15 balls in the final – to follow Samuels’s 78 off 56 – dragged West Indies out of inertia and towards what proved a match-winning total of 137 for six.

As they confirmed their status as many neutrals’ favourite, there came persuasive evidence that Twenty20 was a game that a new wave of cricketers and fans could embrace throughout the Caribbean. This encouraged the belief that their victory was not just a brief interlude in a story of decline, but the start of a genuine renaissance. In the London Olympics back in August, the medal-winning sprinters Usain Bolt and Yohan Blake had proclaimed themselves Jamaicans, but were quick to stress they were also representatives of the wider West Indian community. Having reasserted a Caribbean identity, whose existence many in cricket had grown to doubt, Bolt and Blake also revealed themselves as lovers of the game. Publicity as good as that does not come along often.

Two months later, Chris Gayle – another high-profile Jamaican – frolicked round the outfield with Sammy and the World Twenty20 trophy, and offered up one last rendition of the Gangnam Style dance that, in cricket circles at least, he had made his own. He, too, could now claim to represent not just Jamaica but also a region that sport had again insisted was more connected than politicians and activists would have you believe. There was even a Blake to Gayle’s Bolt, another Jamaican understudy in the form of Samuels – a player of stature in 2012, first in the Test matches of a miserable English spring, now in the tropical heat and Twenty20 of Sri Lanka.

These West Indians were far removed from their illustrious predecessors, for they had none of their fearsome fast bowling. In fact, with the exception of Ravi Rampaul – chugging along skilfully at around 80mph – they had no fast bowler of impact at all. But they did have batsmen who could slug the ball hard and long: Gayle hit 16 sixes, more than anyone, and Samuels 15. And, in Sunil Narine, they possessed a spinner of genuine mystique.

As the excellent early-tournament pitches, at Pallekele in particular, gave way to tired, powdery surfaces, their lack of pace suited West Indies perfectly. They pummelled the ball over the boundary ropes in a manner few could match, and fiddled through their overs as best they could. It was odd to see a West Indian bowling attack succeed that way. But it worked.

Somewhere, looking on in the Caribbean, there must have been young athletes yearning to grab a share of the adulation. Is it too much to hope we have heard the last of the basketball generation; the conclusion that other sports, more favoured in the United States and beamed in on satellite television, have taken hold; and that West Indies’ decline is not cyclical, but an irreversible malaise? The rejection of colonialism which had first identified itself in their determination to dominate the cricketing world had been replaced by a rejection of cricket itself. And the issue was even broader than that: not merely that Caribbean youth was enthralled by American sport, as much as the fact that their interest in all sport was not quite what it was.

Perhaps the impact of the competition went even wider. But as the World Twenty20 gained a hold on the consciousness, international cricket had an instant format with which it could fight back, so much so that even in the States there was ambitious talk of a professional league. Those who claimed there was no place for Twenty20 beyond the lucrative domestic tournaments were left re-examining their conviction.

So appealing was the story of this competition that it was hard for anybody to contend that it did not matter, that it was an inferior game unworthy of attention, that it demanded no intellect, created no tension, bared no souls. Like its three predecessors, it was a rare thing: a well-run, condensed tournament that, once it got over the preliminary stage, maintained interest.

Sri Lanka Cricket, which had blundered into financial trouble by building two new stadiums and upgrading another for the 2011 World Cup, now staged a slick event. The smart new venue at Pallekele was particularly impressive, with a welcoming feel and a beautiful mountain backdrop. Its pitches were true and, initially at least, possessed surprising pace. It promised to enhance Sri Lankan cricket for years to come.

The early overs in the final, as Gayle of all people made just three in 16 balls, possessed Test-match tension, and there can be no finer accolade than that. If it is not a worthy addition to the game, how then to explain the despair felt by Mahela Jayawardene and Kumar Sangakkara, two players who have offered Sri Lanka wise counsel and stirring deeds for the past decade, but who had failed yet again to win a major one-day trophy? Or the hurt of Lasith Malinga, who bowled four overs for 54, then turned off his mobile phone for a couple of days as he faced up to the most painful moment of his career? Sri Lanka had surely never entered a tournament with more vigour since their breakthrough win in the 50-over World Cup 16 years earlier. Yet, for the fourth time in a row, all they had to show was a losing final.

Even those who continued to argue that Twenty20 demanded more luck than skill had to concede that the right four sides contested the semi-finals: West Indies, Sri Lanka and Pakistan had played the best cricket (Pakistan, needless to say, intermittently); and Australia deserved to be there because of a heroic tournament from Shane Watson, an all-rounder who combines dominance and vulnerability in equal measure. At least Achilles only had to worry about his heel. Watson is a collection of opposites: tough yet soft, untouchable yet fragile, egotistical yet rueful. Any moment he might bully a ball out of the ground, demolish the stumps – or crumple into a heap.

As he continually stoked Australia’s challenge – top-scoring with 249 runs, launching 15 sixes, and taking 11 wickets, second only to Ajantha Mendis – Watson revealed a greater truth about Twenty20: that it is not, as many ex-professionals insist, so much influenced by fortune as potentially settled by a single outstanding performance. That was certainly true in the final, when Samuels secured the match virtually by himself. In an age where individual achievement is so often valued above communal good, that is not about to hold the format back.

England had their own star name – except that Kevin Pietersen, ostracised over the texting saga, was not there (or rather, he was, but as a pundit in a TV studio). Their title defence suffered as a result. Paul Collingwood, who had captained them to a surprise win in the Caribbean in 2010, hailed Stuart Broad’s vintage as a more skilful bunch than his own but, with a 19-run defeat by Sri Lanka, England’s involvement predictably petered out in the Super Eights.

There may have been an England side that could have reached the semi-finals, but it was not the one which lost three matches out of five. Their nadir came against India’s second-string spinners in Colombo, where they careered to 80 all out and a 90-run defeat, and convinced the Indians that slow bowling would be the way to overcome them in the Test series at home that followed soon after (well, it made sense at the time).

Statistical studies informed England’s strategy of preserving top-order wickets when batting, and taking them when bowling. Luke Wright, his standing already bolstered by experience of domestic Twenty20 in five countries, responded gamely to the challenge. He averaged 48, with a strike-rate of 169 – the highest of any of the 24 batsmen who topped 100 runs – and hit 13 sixes. His most bitter-sweet episode came with an unbeaten 99 against a capricious Afghanistan side in Colombo, while his best innings was a 43-ball 76 against New Zealand in Pallekele.

Alex Hales had his moments, but the feeling grew that Craig Kieswetter was unsuited to a top-order role, especially if preserving wickets was the mantra. He attacked, failed, blocked, failed once more – and was finally dropped for the game against Sri Lanka, in which Malinga took three wickets in four balls, as good as ending England’s pursuit of 170 before it had begun.

An alternative team might have included Ian Bell alongside Hales and Wright at the top; married Pietersen and Eoin Morgan in the middle order (allowing Pietersen to make spectators’ hair stand on end, rather than gelling his own to the same effect for the benefit of TV viewers); and recognised Samit Patel’s ability against spin, a skill that was belatedly underlined with a 48-ball 67 against Sri Lanka. Kieswetter and Jonny Bairstow could then have contested the keeping position at No. 7. Jos Buttler, exciting and innovative, but naive and far from battle-hardened, would have been a standby batsman able to observe his trade.

The side England actually selected, young and untutored in Asian conditions, put excessive onus on setting up the game for Morgan. Yet there were weaknesses with the ball, too. Danny Briggs, whose graceful left-arm spin had been a key component in Hampshire’s domestic success, played only one match, opening against New Zealand, and was a less appealing selection under lights, when the ball was more likely to zip around. Steven Finn led the attack with pace and purpose, but Tim Bresnan had a mediocre tournament, and Jade Dernbach’s variations did not prevent him from being England’s most expensive bowler. Any ambitions for Ravi Bopara’s fiddly medium-pace on pitches which grew slower had to be abandoned because his batting was in such parlous shape. His last-gasp inclusion for the Sri Lanka match smacked of desperation; he made one from six balls.

There was criticism of the qualifying stage, which never sparked into life. But it lasted only eight days, and any ennui was as much the fault of the quality of the sides contesting it. Ireland’s long-serving seamer, Trent Johnston, railed against the habitual description of his team as “minnows”, and demanded they be judged by the standards of a Full Member one-day nation – in which case it is fair to observe that they remain light on quality and will struggle as long as England pilfer their best cricketers.

Bangladesh’s fielding was at times abysmal, and Zimbabwe were knocked out before five teams had even started their first match. Among the lesser sides, Afghanistan alone performed above expectations, playing with flair and aggression, even if it seemed Ten10 might be more their game. India beat them only after considerable discomfort, a reminder in these high-tech days that raw talent cannot be entirely discounted.

The same message came from Akila Dananjaya, a young off-spinner – with lots of variations – who was fast-tracked into the Sri Lanka side after being spotted in the nets by Jayawardene. He suffered a fractured cheekbone missing a fierce return catch on debut against New Zealand, but performed admirably when he had the chance.

There were grumbles that all four preliminary group winners ended up in the same pool, but an element of pre-seeding had logic on its side. A large number of travelling supporters cannot book accommodation in a couple of days, and it was entirely sensible to plan for a scenario in which, say, as long as Afghanistan were eliminated, England would play in Pallekele and India in Colombo in the next stage, whatever their final group positions. To determine Super Eight venues by group results would have risked reducing the number of overseas supporters.

In the Super Eights, India (on net run-rate), New Zealand and South Africa – a disappointment once more at a major tournament – succumbed along with England. India had the most romantic story – the return of Yuvraj Singh after treatment in the USA for cancer. Yuvraj had a solid tournament, although there were times when his inclusion appeared to add to the confusion of India’s selections. Only Virat Kohli, looking ever more likely to succeed Sachin Tendulkar as his country’s cricket idol, possessed authority with the bat. With Zaheer Khan on the wane, their pace attack rarely looked competitive.

Quite what it all said about the IPL was hard to judge, for India actually won four games out of five, only to do their run-rate irreparable damage when they were thrashed by Australia in the match that mattered most. It is one thing having the most successful domestic Twenty20 tournament in the world; quite another for that to lead to a successful national side. There was little evidence Indian players were benefiting any more from the IPL than the assortment of international players who descend annually upon their shores. This is no surprise in England, where the glitz and glamour of football’s Premier League, awash with foreign players, has not translated into international glory.

New Zealand had an extraordinary tournament. They were involved in two eliminator-over deciders in the Super Eights, against Sri Lanka and West Indies – and lost both, leaving their captain Ross Taylor struggling for words. Their new coach, Mike Hesson, understandably questioned the rationale of using these one-over tie-breakers in group matches, when it ought to have been perfectly possible for the teams to share the spoils. That would not have saved New Zealand from elimination, but Hesson had a case. An American-style aversion to tied matches seems to have crept into cricket without much debate.

Pakistan’s semi-final qualification ahead of India owed much to a remarkable recovery against South Africa, when Umar Gul and Umar Akmal put on 49 in 27 balls for the eighth wicket to pull off an unexpected win. But Pakistan’s interest ended when, on a crumbling pitch at the Premadasa, Jayawardene produced a delicate gem of an innings to guide Sri Lanka into the final.

West Indies saw off Australia in the other semi as the mighty Watson failed to deliver; Australia were lucky to keep the margin down to 74 runs as their batting line-up, at last exposed, plunged to 43 for six. Nevertheless, a team that had briefly been ranked tenth, just below Ireland, a few weeks before the tournament, had at least silenced the sniggers.

A team of the tournament might have gone something like this: Shane Watson, Chris Gayle, Mahela Jayawardene (captain), Virat Kohli, Marlon Samuels, Eoin Morgan, M. S. Dhoni (wicketkeeper), Mitchell Starc, Sunil Narine, Saeed Ajmal and Dale Steyn. Here were 11 players who had performed excellently in a short, sharp, engrossing tournament. If only the ICC would apply the lesson elsewhere.

FINAL

SRI LANKA v WEST INDIES

VIC MARKS

At Colombo (RPS), October 7, 2012. West Indies won by 36 runs. Toss: West Indies.

West Indies won the World Twenty20 for the first time, sparking more cricketing optimism in the Caribbean than it has known for a decade or more. The margin of victory seemed mammoth for a Twenty20 game, yet there were moments when West Indies seemed doomed to failure – a situation familiar to Darren Sammy’s side on their route to the final.

Earlier in the tournament they had looked destined for an early return home. They managed to qualify for the Super Eights without actually winning either of their group games, like previous champions England in 2010. Then, six days before the final, they looked certain to lose to New Zealand, but fought back to tie, against the odds, before prevailing in the super over by smashing the 18 runs required. These scrapes seemed to forge a wonderful, joyous spirit within the West Indian camp, as well as the belief that this would be their trophy.

Even in the final, a West Indies victory seemed out of the question after the first ten overs, at which point they were an unfathomable 32 for two. Their champion, Gayle, had been dismissed for three, and Jayawardene was controlling affairs like a master puppeteer. But Samuels played an astonishing innings. After a cagey start he cracked 78 from 56 balls, smashing six sixes along the way.

His assault on Malinga was breathtaking. While Mathews and Ajantha Mendis bowled their eight overs for 23 runs and five wickets, Malinga – probably the most experienced, and feared, fast bowler in the world in this format – was carted for 54, including five of those sixes. Somehow Samuels differentiated between the slower and quicker balls before depositing them over the leg-side boundary. This was an enthralling display of brutal, calculated hitting. Bravo and Sammy offered handy assistance, and the total advanced to 137 – far more than expected, and enough to generate hope.

Sri Lanka’s chase was badly hindered when Dilshan was bowled by Rampaul’s first delivery. Then the wise old men, Jayawardene and Sangakkara, set about knocking off the target as sensibly as possible – but they could not score quickly enough on a pitch that offered increasing encouragement to the spinners. Sangakkara was well caught by Pollard at deep midwicket, Jayawardene felt compelled to reverse-sweep and lobbed a catch to point, then panic set in. There were run-outs, as West Indies displayed an athleticism in the outfield that few international sides can match, and the unorthodox spinner Narine, a potential Caribbean star for the next decade, tormented everyone.

There was a little scare when Rampaul conceded 22 in the 16th over, as Kulasekara regularly found the boundary. But soon the game was up, and the cricketers of the Caribbean, as united as they have ever been since the golden days, began to celebrate as only they know how.

It was a proud moment for Sammy. “Today we were down and out, but our never-say-die attitude came out,” he said. No one had a smile broader than Gayle, until recently a so-called mercenary, but now the heartbeat of the side.

Man of the Match: M. N. Samuels. Man of the Tournament: S. R. Watson.

Umpires: Aleem Dar and S. J. A. Taufel. Third umpire: R. J. Tucker.

Referee: J. J. Crowe.

ICC WOMEN’S WORLD TWENTY20, 2012-13

ALISON MITCHELL

1. Australia 2. England 3= New Zealand and West Indies

The third Women’s World Twenty20 ended with the thriller the tournament was crying out for, as Australia beat England by four runs in Colombo to become the first team – male or female – to retain the title.

England were heavily fancied to repeat their triumph of 2009, in the first tournament, having only recently been halted on a run of 19 Twenty20 international victories (excluding abandonments). They picked the same XI throughout the competition, including four spin bowlers – Holly Colvin, Danielle Hazell, Laura Marsh and Danielle Wyatt. Australia’s openers came out firing, however, and they clinched victory off the last ball of a tense final. “I’m disappointed we lost,” said England captain Charlotte Edwards. “But I’d rather play in a final which was a great spectacle for the women’s game. I’m very proud of that.”

For the third time, the women’s event ran parallel to the men’s. The group games were hosted in Galle, where crowds were small, despite the efforts of ICC marketeers to raise enthusiasm by erecting life-size cardboard cut-outs of the leading players next to their male counterparts on roundabouts across the city and in Colombo. The semi-finals and final were staged as double-headers at Colombo’s Premadasa Stadium before the equivalent men’s matches, and broadcast worldwide by ESPN STAR Sports.

The semi-finals were a perfect illustration of why the pace of the pitch is so important to women’s cricket, which is determined more by canny deflections and careful placement than brute force. A painfully slow turner led to a turgid game between England and New Zealand, but a truer surface the next day made for far more engaging cricket, even though Australia’s win over West Indies was similarly one-sided.

England had swept through Group A unbeaten, with their batsmen rarely tested. Against India, Edwards became the first woman to pass 1,500 runs in Twenty20 internationals, and she finished as the tournament’s leading scorer, with 172 at 43.

India, long regarded as one of the big four of the women’s game, lost every group match, prompting concerns that Australia and England were pulling away from the rest of the world – a theory strengthened by the ease of England’s semi-final win over two-time runners-up New Zealand, the other member of the quartet. India’s nadir was confirmed when, in an unattractive, low-scoring game, they were unable to chase down 99 in a dead rubber against Pakistan.

It was their first defeat by their arch-rivals, and the first time since 1988, when they did not even send a team, that they had failed to reach the last four of a global tournament. Their captain, the experienced and respected Mithali Raj, said the loss ought to be a jolt for the women’s game in her country. Meanwhile, Pakistan captain Sana Mir renewed her call for more fixtures against the top countries in order for them to improve.

Group B was thrown wide open by the inconsistency of West Indies and New Zealand. West Indies imploded in a rain-affected game against the hosts Sri Lanka, but bounced back with their first win over New Zealand in a competitive match. The quartet eliminated at the group stage went into play-off matches to qualify for the 2014 tournament in Bangladesh. India beat Sri Lanka to avoid the ignominy of having to go to Ireland for the qualifying competition; South Africa also secured their place, with victory over Pakistan off the penultimate ball.

Before the tournament, a media furore had erupted when the scale of the pay gap between the genders became apparent. The ICC granted women players a daily allowance of $60, compared to $100 for the men; the women had flown economy class, the men in business; most glaringly of all, prize money of $60,000 for the victorious Australian women was dwarfed by the $1m picked up by Darren Sammy’s West Indians. Despite all that, and a smaller overall budget for the women’s game, an ICC spokesman said it was aiming for “equal everything”.

Women’s cricket falls under the development arm of the ICC, so staging international events is not a profit-making venture, and it may never reach economic parity with the men’s game. But the ICC must ensure the cricket remains attractive. The standards displayed by Australia and England need to be more frequently matched by the countries behind them. Quicker pitches would help too.

FINAL

AUSTRALIA v ENGLAND

At Colombo (RPS), October 7, 2012. Australia won by four runs. Toss: England.

Australia’s women defended their World Twenty20 title. Although England took the match down to the last ball, they were always playing catch-up after their successful formula – bowl first, suffocate the batsmen with spin – was thrown off course by Australia’s aggressive openers, Meg Lanning and Alyssa Healy. They harnessed the pace of the ball, and any deviation from the required line and length by Katherine Brunt seemed to result in a boundary. Jess Cameron rattled up 45 off 34 deliveries, including a six over midwicket off Anya Shrubsole in an over that cost 17 as she insisted on bowling full. After that, Charlotte Edwards wisely kept her spinners on until the end. Australia bowled with greater discipline, and England immediately fell behind the rate. But Australian nerves began to fray: four catches went down in the second half of the innings, and Jenny Gunn diluted the equation to 16 from the last over. When Erin Osborne delivered a beamer second ball, England had a sniff. Danielle Hazell needed to hit Osborne’s last ball for six, but she mistimed it to midwicket, and Australian celebrations began.

Player of the Match: J. E. Cameron. Player of the Tournament: C. M. Edwards.

Umpires: B. F. Bowden and M. Erasmus. Third umpire: A. L. Hill.

Referee: G. F. Labrooy.

AUSTRALIAN CRICKET, 2012

Clarke… then the rest

DANIEL BRETTIG

Michael Clarke and James Pattinson, captain and fast bowler. Their fortunes during the Sydney Test against India in the first week of January 2012 were at once contrasting and for Australia, defining. Clarke epitomised all that was strong about his side, erecting a monumental unbeaten 329 and going on to deliver the most prolific year of all by an Australian batsman. He also led his men with intelligence and aggression, guiding them to three Test series victories out of four. But Pattinson personified all that was uncertain: the transition and tribulation of a team that wrestled with the husbanding of resources and the loss of Ricky Ponting and Mike Hussey. Though he removed four of India’s top five on the first day, Pattinson ended the match with a foot stress fracture, having been selected against the advice of medical staff who held data suggesting his workload had entered a zone of high risk. The rest of his year was a tale of recovery, inconsistency, further injury, frustration and back-room battles over his availability, as Cricket Australia tried to implement a rotation and management policy that had yet to produce the hoped-for fruit.

If 2011 had been the year of introspection, recrimination and change, 2012 was a time for Australian cricket to bed down, and possibly mark time. The Argus Review was largely reinforced but occasionally undermined, while the conclusions of a governance review pushed the CA board into a new structure that was both slimmer and better rounded. The AGM witnessed the appointment of the first three independent directors, including the first woman, Jacquie Hey. Elsewhere, the team-performance and commercial arms of CA haggled over players who were expected to build towards sustained success in the international game on the one hand, and act as billboards for the Big Bash League on the other. It was not an easy balance to strike.

Overall, a sense pervaded that much of the sparring on and off the field was a primer for the confrontations of 2013 – from the Test team’s tilt at returning the Ashes, to the board’s pursuit of a better broadcast-rights deal, which for the first time since World Series Cricket was genuinely open to offers beyond those of Channel Nine. CA had been reinforced for this task, but the team was weakened by retirements. Ponting’s exit was hastened by the pained concession he could no longer bat the way he and the team desired; Hussey’s departure arrived at a moment when he was arguably more valuable than ever. The selectors were thus forced into a hurried reassessment of the modest batting at their disposal, and players into a rapid assumption of greater seniority.

Such uncertainty seemed distant when India were being coshed every which way, but there were hints of difficulty when the team ventured to the Caribbean in March. Clarke did not go with the limited-overs party as he recovered from a hamstring strain, and in his absence Shane Watson found the going difficult, as West Indies shared both the one-day and Twenty20 series on pitches that were often slow and low. Sunil Narine’s variations were a source of puzzlement, and there was as much relief at his exit to the IPL as there was at Clarke’s arrival for the Tests.

West Indies were beaten by performances more artisan than artful, though the conclusion to the Barbados Test was genuinely rousing. The most telling contribution of the series belonged to Matthew Wade, who replaced Brad Haddin as wicketkeeper after Haddin had rushed home to be with his 17-month-old daughter Mia, who was gravely ill with cancer. Wade showed a compelling ability to learn from early tremors during the one-day internationals, and punched Australia’s only century of the series, in Dominica, to ensure they took the series 2–0. It meant Australia retained the Frank Worrell Trophy they had held since 1994-95.

Less comfortable was a visit to the British Isles for one-day cricket. A rained-off fixture at Edgbaston was the only thing that separated Australia from a 5–0 defeat by England. Hussey absented himself from the trip for family reasons and, as rainy days and injuries to Watson, Pat Cummins and Brett Lee compounded the sting of results, others were forgiven for wishing they had joined him. Lee retired from international cricket after the tour, and only Clint McKay and George Bailey improved their reputations. The coach Mickey Arthur surmised after a hiding at Chester-le-Street: “We’ve allowed ourselves to be bullied, and we’re better than that.”

Unified by a training camp in Darwin, a more cohesive team performed creditably in the UAE against Pakistan, winning the one-day series and losing the Twenty20s narrowly. In a Twenty20 against India in February, Bailey had made history as Australia’s first captain since the very first Test in 1876-77 to be appointed without having played an international match; later in the year he led Australia to the semi-finals of the World Twenty20, when Chris Gayle, Kieron Pollard and Ravi Rampaul ended the campaign. Shortly before the tournament, Australia had been ranked tenth in the Twenty20 world rankings – below Bangladesh and Ireland – but that was more a reflection of the ICC’s criteria than any slump. Another long separation from his family during the competition had Hussey resolving privately to quit at the end of the summer.

Clarke prepared for the home Test season by captaining New South Wales in the earliest start to a domestic season, shoved into September by the dual disruptions of the World Twenty20 and the Champions League. Sydney Sixers added that tournament to their inaugural Big Bash title, but at some cost: Watson lacked a first-class prelude to the Test summer, and promptly suffered another calf strain, while Cummins complained of back soreness, which was later revealed to be a stress fracture, to the horror of the CA team-performance manager Pat Howard and the selectors. Later, Howard noted ruefully that “no one owns the players now”.

The arrival of South Africa coincided with a quirk in the ICC’s Test rankings: by vanquishing England in their previous series, Graeme Smith’s team offered Clarke’s the chance to pinch No. 1 with a win. Led by another duo of landmark innings by Clarke, double-centuries in Brisbane and Adelaide, Australia came within two wickets of taking the lead. Injury and fatigue were to bite at the most pivotal moments, however. Debutant Faf du Plessis defied Australia’s bowlers in the Second Test, helped by the loss of Pattinson to a side injury in the first innings.

South Africa’s final-day exertions meant neither Peter Siddle nor Ben Hilfenhaus could be considered for the last Test, at Perth. The selectors’ response was to pick a bowling attack hopeful on paper but unbalanced in practice, leaving Smith and Hashim Amla to carry off the match and the series with two hours of breathless batting after Clarke, for once, failed to make a significant score.

Amid rumblings his place was no longer secure, Ponting made the Third Test his last, moving Clarke to tears before the match. South Africa afforded Ponting a guard of honour for his final innings that befitted a king. The reality was less regal: he was pouched at slip off Robin Peterson after an insubstantial stay. It was definitely time to go.

Chastened by their only Test defeat of the year, albeit in the match more pivotal than any other, they collected a 3–0 sweep of Sri Lanka in the showpiece weeks of the season, which had been spurned by South Africa due to their board’s preference for a home Twenty20 on Boxing Day. Overlooked when Australia’s attack was at their thinnest at Perth, Jackson Bird was called up for the Second Test against Sri Lanka when Hilfenhaus fell injured, and showed himself to be an accomplished seamer in the mould of Stuart Clark. Phillip Hughes returned in Ponting’s stead, and David Warner played with a consistency that could make his brazen batting a genuine threat.

Clarke shrugged off a hamstring strain to make his fifth century of the year, but his deputy Watson hobbled to 83, then informed Arthur he no longer wished to be considered an all-rounder. As he processed that revelation, Arthur was doubly shocked to be tapped on the shoulder by Hussey, who told him and Clarke he would be saying goodbye to Test cricket at Sydney. Another XI somewhat odd in composition slogged their way to victory in a manner far less comprehensive than against India 12 months before. Hussey was in the middle when the winning runs were scored, a fitting conclusion to a career that was truly selfless until, perhaps, the moment he chose to end it.

Hussey was deemed surplus to the one-day series that followed the Tests, and found himself donning a Perth Scorchers shirt as the second edition of the BBL limped to Christmas, then found better returns in January. A leaked CA report revealed that $A10m was expected to be lost over the first two seasons in an effort to make the BBL look attractive for broadcasters as well as spectators. That kind of money was also being distributed among the players under a new Memorandum of Understanding that contained performance-based weighting as per the dictates of Argus. Given the battles ahead on the pitch and in the negotiation-room, remuneration may yet fluctuate wildly.

BANGLADESH CRICKET, 2012

Tearful Tigers

UTPAL SHUVRO

During his time as the No. 1-ranked all-rounder in Test cricket, Shakib Al Hasan would smile ruefully: “I don’t know how long I will be there. When I watch Test matches featuring other countries on TV, the thought often comes to my mind, when will I get the chance to play in whites again?” The man Shakib had dethroned, Jacques Kallis, emphatically regained the position in November. Shakib could not mount a fresh challenge, but that was not his fault. Bangladesh played only two Tests in 2012, the fewest in a year since they were handed Test status in 2000, and just nine one-day internationals, the fewest since 2001. Only Zimbabwe played less often.

When Bangladesh took the field against West Indies at Mirpur in November, it was nearly 11 months since they had last played a Test – and Chris Gayle duly hit the first ball for six. Bangladesh did well to take a first-innings lead, with their highest Test score, 556, but they failed to chase 245 in almost two and a half sessions, then barely put up a fight in the Second Test at Khulna.

In 50-over cricket, though, Bangladesh enjoyed one of their most successful years, winning five out of nine matches (all at home). They actually had a better strike-rate in 2009, when they won 14 of 19, but there was a difference this time: all Bangladesh’s victories came against top-class opposition.

In between the Asia Cup in March and a one-day series against West Indies, Bangladesh played a plethora of Twenty20 games, visiting Zimbabwe, Trinidad, Ireland and the Netherlands (where they lost to both the home side and Scotland) in order to prepare for the World Twenty20 in Sri Lanka. It all came to nothing when they exited in the first round, battered to bits by New Zealand’s Brendon McCullum and Imran Nazir of Pakistan.

Bangladesh had hosted the Asia Cup for the third time, and it turned out to be a tournament to savour. On the nine previous occasions they had taken part, they failed to beat any of their mightier neighbours. Now they surprised everyone, including themselves, by chasing down targets against India and Sri Lanka to qualify for their first final in the competition. It was only their second appearance in a one-day final of any kind, after a triangular tournament in 2008-09. But the nation was heartbroken when Shahadat Hossain failed to hit the last ball for four, and Bangladesh lost to Pakistan by an agonising two runs. Shakib and Mushfiqur Rahim cried in public, which only endeared them further to their fans. Shakib was named Man of the Tournament.

Emotionally, the Asia Cup had no parallel. But, in the cold light of day, the high point of Bangladesh’s 2012 had to be the one-day series victory over West Indies, who had arrived with a raft of imposing big-hitters. Bangladesh were without Shakib, but won the first two games, including a 160-run mauling in the second, their biggest win in one-day internationals: never had they looked so dominant against a Test-playing nation. West Indies brought it back to 2–2, but the Bangladeshis sneaked the last match by two wickets, igniting a street party outside the National Stadium.

The find of the year was 21-year-old off-spinner Sohag Gazi, who came in useful against a West Indies side with their share of left-handers. Gazi took the first over on Test debut, and recovered from being hit for six by Gayle off his first and fourth balls to get him out two overs later. It was the first of 12 wickets in the two Tests; he added nine in the one-day series. Mushfiqur was considered by many to be a passionate and intelligent young captain – and revealed another string to his bow when he completed a master’s degree in history from Jahangirnagar University.

Franchise-based Twenty20 arrived in February 2012, with the Bangladesh Premier League. Although Indian players were unavailable, there were several other international stars. However, the event was marred by controversies, from confusion over the tie-breakers to decide the semi-finalists, to non-payment of players months after the event, and match-fixing.

Before the tournament began, Mashrafe bin Mortaza reported a spot-fixing approach from a 36-year-old player, Shariful Haque, who was banned indefinitely from cricket by the Bangladesh Cricket Board in September. Both the ECB and the Federation of International Cricketers’ Associations remained concerned about the payment structure and policing of corruption in the BPL. Mushfiqur slammed the league as “disorganised” – and it had clearly been hurried through to fit a gap in the international schedule. The Pakistan Cricket Board threatened to prevent their players from appearing in the 2013 edition, in retaliation for Bangladesh postponing a tour to their country for the second time because of the security situation. Meanwhile, the BCB extended the franchise model to a new four-day competition, which began in December.

Bangladesh finished the year without a head coach, after two resigned from the post for similar reasons. Stuart Law completed nine months in the role just after the Asia Cup, and left expressing a desire to spend more time with his family; he took up a position with Cricket Australia.

Family was also an issue for Richard Pybus, but his stint ended more acrimoniously. When Prothom Alo, Bangladesh’s leading daily newspaper, broke the story that he was working without having signed a contract, Pybus resigned, accusing the BCB of “breaching privacy and confidentiality” through leaking. Pybus claimed an agreement had been struck by both parties that he could spend time at home in South Africa between tours, but it was not written into the contract presented to him – so he did not sign it. He also complained about a clunky administrative process. “I couldn’t even get the board to sign off on providing healthy sandwiches for the players after training,” he said. “Players were going down with food poisoning during camps, so I wanted to offer them something better than a fried egg sandwich. I was told I couldn’t, because that was all the budget could afford.” The episode showed how amateurishly cricket is run by the BCB. Shane Jurgensen, a former Australian first-class cricketer, stood in as interim coach for the West Indies series.

In line with the ICC’s rotating presidency, A. H. M. Mustafa Kamal was nominated as ICC vice-president, and had to resign from his position at the BCB. Nazmul Hasan, like Kamal an MP with the ruling Awami League, replaced him as BCB president in October.

INDIAN CRICKET, 2012

Transition and denial

ANAND VASU

Thirteen is no lucky number. But, for India, 2013 could not come quickly enough after a year that held precious little joy. If 2011 was saccharine-saturated – India began it No. 1 in the Test standings and lifted the World Cup – 2012 was marked by strife and disappointment.

The year began with a 4–0 Test blanking in Australia, a few months after England had administered the same medicine. The problem was, India refused to swallow it. They believed life would return to normal at home. A predictably flaky New Zealand side reinforced that complacency when they were bundled out for 159 and 164, to go down by an innings and 115 runs at Hyderabad, before losing at Bangalore. India appeared to be in possession of a new star:

Ravichandran Ashwin, the off-spinner with a penchant for bowling doosras, carrom balls and much else besides, took 18 wickets in the two Tests.

New Zealand may have been well beaten, but for India life was far from rosy. The BCCI were confronted with a major challenge over the future of Duncan Fletcher, who could not claim one notable result in his 18 months as coach by the end of the England Test series in December. In fairness, he had presided over a period of transition. On March 9, Rahul Dravid announced his retirement; then, in August, V. V. S. Laxman said he’d had enough too. They did not plan it that way, but Dravid and Laxman had both ended their international careers in the Adelaide Test. “The game is lucky to have you and I have been lucky to play before you,” Dravid told fans at the Chinnaswamy Stadium in Bangalore. “My approach to cricket has been reasonably simple: it was about giving everything to the team, playing with dignity and upholding the spirit of the game.” It even drew an emotional speech from the usually stony-faced BCCI president N. Srinivasan.

When Laxman signed off, accused by some of holding up the inevitable progress of an as yet unidentified young Indian batsman, it was no less seminal a move. “I’ve always kept the country’s success and need ahead of my personal aspirations,” he said. “While I’d love to contribute to the team, especially against England and Australia later in the season, I think it’s the right time to give the opportunity to a youngster in home conditions before tough overseas tours next year.” That he was still good enough to play – and did so for Hyderabad in the Ranji Trophy – was not in doubt. Neither did he deserve the insinuations and barbs that hastened his departure.

Sachin Tendulkar, for the first time in his career, was exposed to well-founded mutterings too. By the end of the year, Tendulkar, now 39, had gone 17 Tests in almost two years without a century. Against New Zealand, his habit of playing across his front pad, without the assurance of old, left him looking extremely mortal. It prompted deep, but usually sympathetic, debate about his place through England’s tour late in the year. Even when scoring 76 at Kolkata, he was battling against the fading of the light. Tendulkar made the move to call time on his one-day international career (which, in truth, had been intermittent for a number of years), in the hope of prolonging his Test life.

With Dravid and Laxman gone, a whole new world opened up for Virat Kohli and Cheteshwar Pujara. While Kohli, ordained for greater things, found the going tough in the second half of 2012, Pujara enhanced his reputation as a doer rather than a talker. His reputation as a greedy run-scorer was confirmed in the First Test against England at Ahmedabad, when he made an unbeaten 206 in seven and a half hours, then 41 not out to see India over the finishing line. It looked as though England might never get him out. His 15 first-class centuries leading into the game were all numbers to be reckoned with – including ten scores between 145 and 302 – but it was not until Ahmedabad that he was accepted as a worthy successor to Dravid at No. 3.

England came back fiercely to win a Test series in India for the first time since 1984-85. Kevin Pietersen’s masterful 186 on a Mumbai turner showed India up in conditions that should have suited them best. India were forced to drop the ineffectual Zaheer Khan for the final Test, and played four spinners – to no avail. As the series turned England’s way, it became sullied by a debate about pitches: namely to what extent M. S. Dhoni and Srinivasan could reasonably expect to dictate how they were prepared.

England returned home for Christmas between the Twenty20 and one-day matches, presenting a free window, which was filled by Pakistan, as the countries met for their first bilateral series in five years. But India were overwhelmed by Pakistan’s youthful bowlers, and lost the one-day series with a match to spare. A narrow victory over England did at least return India to No. 1 in the ICC one-day rankings. This was the format in which Dhoni was most valuable, but observers were beginning to ask whether he should redefine his role in one or more of the sides to stem the flow of defeats.

Back in March, Kohli had scored superb centuries to beat Sri Lanka and Pakistan, but India were predictably distracted by the spectre of Tendulkar’s 100th international hundred and lost the game in which he finally ticked it off, to Bangladesh, costing them a place in the final. India were beaten only once, by Australia, at the World Twenty20, but were so torn apart by Shane Watson in the Super Eights that it left their net run-rate irreparably damaged.

The IPL ran into its share of problems too. Once again, it was left to a media house rather than the authorities to dig up the dirt. From the testimony of several cricketers who bragged about receiving under-the-table cash payments in contravention of the salary caps in place, India TV exposed a culture of lying and a widespread disregard for the rules. The BCCI came down hard on the five players in question – banning T. P. Sudhindra for life for “receiving a consideration to spot-fix in a domestic game” – but they did not censure the franchises allegedly making the illegal payments.

The BCCI maintained their unyielding stance on the Decision Review System, to the frustration of the rest of the cricketing world. The ICC executive board met in Kuala Lumpur in June with a view to enforce the universal application of the DRS. But the BCCI refused to budge. Outgoing ICC president Sharad Pawar chaired the meeting and, without his calling for a vote on the issue, there was no chance of moving forward.

NEW ZEALAND CRICKET, 2012

Breakdown in relations

ANDREW ALDERSON

New Zealand are no strangers to cricketing drama, but Hollywood’s finest scriptwriters would have marvelled at the turmoil packed into 2012. Fluctuating performances, leadership conflicts and vehement protests from fans and former players made for a compelling but destructive soap opera.

The year was bookended with Test victories over Zimbabwe – by a national-record innings and 301 runs at Napier – and Sri Lanka, a 167-run triumph in Colombo born in adversity. But precious little came in between, with six defeats in eight other Tests. Adding to the malaise were ten losses in 14 completed one-day internationals, and eight in 16 Twenty20 matches (plus two eliminator-over failures at the World Twenty20).

Worse, the goodwill engendered from New Zealand’s first Test win in Sri Lanka for more than 14 years evaporated immediately, when – at the instigation of coach Mike Hesson – Ross Taylor was removed from all forms of captaincy, and replaced by Brendon McCullum. A public-relations shambles ensued.

“I knew [working with Hesson] would be tough from the outset,” said Taylor. “I gave him as much support as I could, but it wasn’t reciprocated.” Taylor had batted New Zealand to a series-levelling victory in Colombo with 142 and 74, knowing Hesson would recommend his demotion as captain regardless. Hesson maintained that his intention, articulated in hotel-room meetings the day after the 50-over series defeat earlier on the tour, was to push for a split leadership, in which Taylor would keep the Test captaincy but pass on limited-overs duties to McCullum. Taylor claimed this plan was not made clear at the time, and interpreted it as a move to get rid of him altogether. In his last match in charge, he saved his side from the ignominy of equalling New Zealand’s worst losing streak of six Tests, set in the dark days of the mid-1950s. But it did not stop him pulling out of the end-of-year visit to South Africa, saying: “I don’t believe I can give 100% to the game at this time.”

Some good did emerge from the mess, as anecdotal evidence of apathy towards cricket in New Zealand proved exaggerated. Taylor’s treatment unleashed rare passion from fans and past players, who claimed he had not received the traditional Kiwi fair go. It prompted Martin Crowe, arguably the country’s greatest batsman and a long-time mentor of Taylor, to tweet that he had burned his New Zealand blazer in protest. He later insisted the burning had been “metaphorical”, and would be giving the blazer to charity “very soon”. Meanwhile, Hesson’s supporters believed he had been forced to make a brave decision in the interests of a dispirited team ranked eighth in Tests and Twenty20s, and ninth in one-day internationals, below Bangladesh.

Hesson’s predecessor, John Wright, had completed a 19-month spell at the end of the West Indies tour in August, having signalled his intention to leave in May after struggling to gain the autonomy he wanted from director of cricket John Buchanan. New Zealand lost all but one of in nine internationals in the Caribbean, but the tour was spared in-depth probing by the media because of the concurrent success for the Olympic team in London.

Wright’s exit left New Zealand cricket in a melancholic state. A respected former opener, he had helped orchestrate their first Test win over Australia since 1992-93, and their first appearance in the semi-finals of a subcontinental World Cup, and made some bold selections based on form (Mark Gillespie and Dean Brownlie) and potential (Doug Bracewell and, as wicketkeeper, B-J. Watling).

The 38-year-old Hesson, a former Otago coach apparently rated highly by New Zealand Cricket for his man-management skills, succeeded Wright for the India tour in August after curtailing his contract with Kenya in May citing security concerns. New Zealand produced a credible performance under him at the World Twenty20, tying with eventual finalists West Indies and Sri Lanka in the Super Eights, but they lacked killer instinct.

Individual highlights were thin on the ground. Martin Guptill excelled in the Tests against West Indies, and the limited-overs matches against Zimbabwe, and reached a 69-ball century off the last delivery to topple South Africa in a Twenty20 match in East London. He completed a sequence of five consecutive international half-centuries against Zimbabwe and South Africa – a feat previously achieved for New Zealand only by Andrew Jones – but appeared to have developed a mental block converting fifties into hundreds.

Taylor’s batting flourished as captain, with three Test centuries, and Kane Williamson’s unbeaten 102 to draw the Wellington Test against South Africa was among the gutsiest innings played by a New Zealander, let alone a 21-year-old. The troubled Jesse Ryder opted out of international cricket after an altercation with a member of the public at a Napier hotel in February – the latest in a long line of indiscretions.

Tim Southee showed glimpses of becoming the attack’s spearhead, with 25 wickets at 22 in six Tests after struggling to hold his place earlier in the year; the highlight was seven for 64 at Bangalore, New Zealand’s best in India. Trent Boult, still only 23, emerged as Southee’s new-ball partner and, by the end of the year, his Test record stood at 26 wickets from eight matches.

Bowling coach Damien Wright resigned for family reasons during the India tour, but the pace prospects looked good. Bracewell performed excellently on occasion; Gillespie took two five-fors against South Africa on his Test comeback; Pretoria-born Neil Wagner, the leading Plunket Shield wicket-taker, qualified for New Zealand through residency; and fellow left-armer Mitchell McClenaghan showed zest in December’s Twenty20 series defeat by South Africa. At 38, Chris Martin’s international days look numbered, despite passing Chris Cairns as the country’s third-highest Test wicket-taker.

The man just above him in the list, Daniel Vettori, was hampered by injury, and played only five Tests in 2012. He returned at the World Twenty20, before hobbling away for surgery on his hernia and Achilles tendon. A long-term spin-bowling successor in Test cricket is yet to be found.

The sport’s administration had an undulating year. Former Test opener David White became NZC chief executive in December 2011, and relocated the support services (including commercial and marketing) from Christchurch to Auckland. In November, the board reported a better-than-budgeted deficit of $NZ1.87m, thanks mainly to an eight-year deal with Pitch International to sell overseas media rights for home matches.

However, building a market share in the United States through a proposed Twenty20 league (NZC were a shareholder in Cricket Holdings America) remained problematic. Potential franchisees claimed the market justified little more than 10% of the $US40m per franchise put forward by NZC.

PAKISTAN CRICKET, 2012

The placebo effect

OSMAN SAMIUDDIN

No death. No corruption scandal. No players banned. No players jailed. No ball-tampering uproar. No terror attack. No captaincy palaver. No bust-ups with the ICC. No major player disputes. No major administrative overhaul. No major catfight with another board. No Ijaz Butt. Could this really have been a year belonging to Pakistan?

For the first time since 2005, their cricket seemed to be at peace with itself. The year wasn’t without issues, but it sure felt as if it had emerged from a long, dark tunnel in which Pakistan had seemed content just to be, to play, to survive, to move on. In short, it felt cathartic.

Unsurprisingly for those who see a correlation between stable administration and on-field results – nearly everyone else, in other words – Pakistan began the year with their most significant victory since 2005-06. Then, they had beaten an England side fresh from victory in one of the great modern Test series. In 2012, they beat England as Test cricket’s top-ranked nation. In fact, they whitewashed them, at their surrogate home in the UAE, though in typically Pakistani fashion: a series won 3–0 could conceivably have been lost 2–1.

But it was fully deserved, a wondrous, fantastical performance and fitting reward for captain Misbah-ul-Haq in particular. Too bland, dull and colourless for many Pakistani tastes, he had calmly moulded players of a similar outlook and made them into a robust team. Saeed Ajmal was confirmed as the best spinner in world cricket, and Azhar Ali – who twice scored 157 – was a class act at first drop.

It was all the more reason to lament what followed. At the time, there were two ways of looking at the win against England: as the last, unexpected hurrah of a fine side; or as the beginning of a new and promising age. It soon became clear it was more likely to be the former. A crucial administrative gaffe had been made over previous years when, in negotiating Future Tours Programme commitments, the Pakistan Cricket Board came up with a 2012 schedule almost devoid of Tests.

After England, Pakistan played only one more Test series, in Sri Lanka – and that, too, nearly five months later. They lost. And then there was nothing, until a series in South Africa in February 2013. Other than 2008, when they famously played no Tests at all, their tally of six Tests was their fewest in a year since 2001. This was an old side at their core, and their tightness was bound to unwind through time and inactivity.

Predictably, they managed many more limited-overs contests, though results were far sketchier. Pakistan lost each of the three bilateral one-day series played entirely in 2012, though they won memorably in India, in a series that spilled into 2013, and lifted the Asia Cup for the first time in four attempts. And they were impressive at the World Twenty20, losing in the last four to hosts Sri Lanka. It was their sixth successive ICC tournament semi-final, a handy statistic, but not far from choking territory: they had won only one of those six tournaments. By this point, Misbah – who turned 38 in May – had already ceded Twenty20 leadership duties to Mohammad Hafeez; it was assumed he would do the same in 50-over cricket some time in 2013.

Off the field, it was tempting to see an Ijaz Butt-free year as a triumph. But in reality, any assessment of Zaka Ashraf, his successor as PCB chairman, required greater nuance. A battle-scarred former board official struck the right mood in likening Ashraf to homeopathic medicine: “You’re not sure whether he’s done any good or bad, or anything at all. He’s like a placebo.”

Prime among his gains would appear to be the partial resumption of ties with India. When Pakistan toured there at the end of the year to play two Twenty20s and three one-day internationals, it was the first bilateral engagement between the two in five cold years scarred by the Mumbai terror attacks. It was a real breakthrough, too, given the financial benefits of playing India. But how much was it Ashraf’s doing, and how much simply part of a broader thaw between the two countries, compelled by politicians upon the BCCI in particular?

The much-discussed return of international cricket to Pakistan produced fewer results, though again there was little Ashraf could do. He got close with Bangladesh, only to be burned twice. The fault lay with the duplicitous approach of Bangladesh officials, not with the final decision or Ashraf’s intent.

But when an international XI of retired, cast-off and Associate cricketers travelled to Karachi for two Twenty20s in October, it seemed like a minor triumph – except that the matches were the work of Dr Mohammad Ali Shah, a cricket-mad surgeon, patron and provincial sports minister. The PCB refused to sanction them. But they did allow use of the National Stadium and, once the matches passed by without incident and with huge, throbbing crowds, they pretended they’d been involved. That tour was preceded by six months by the visit of a British Universities side to Lahore (featuring several players of Pakistani descent), but they came without the blessing of either the ECB or MCC.

Soon the financial crunch of no home games (and no full India series in five years) will begin to bite. A senior PCB official believes a new broadcast deal in 2013, and revenues from the 2011 World Cup (which Pakistan didn’t host, but for which they received a hosting-rights fee) are enough for two more years. Against this backdrop, the announcement of a fortnight-long Pakistan Super League (scheduled to start on March 26, 2013) took on greater significance. But in February, the PCB postponed the tournament, ostensibly to allow investors more time to buy the five franchises. The Federation of International Cricketers Associations, however, maintained that the PSL would pose “an unmanageable” security risk. The postponement struck a rare note of disruption in a year of relative sanity.

For the time being, at least, craziness has been loaned out to New Zealand Cricket.

SOUTH AFRICAN CRICKET, 2012

All bases covered

COLIN BRYDEN

South Africa ignored boardroom uncertainty to put together arguably their best year in Test cricket. Unbeaten in ten matches, they won all four series – three away from home – to finish 2012 as the undisputed No. 1 team in the world. Victories at home against Sri Lanka, followed by wins in New Zealand, England – the team they deposed at the top of the rankings – and Australia vindicated the unorthodox approach of their coach, Gary Kirsten, who placed the emphasis on mental freshness rather than physical preparation. Although most of the team had not played first-class cricket for more than three months, South Africa had only one two-day match and one first-class three-day fixture before their Test series against England. The main event of their build-up had been a team-building exercise in Switzerland with the Johannesburg-born mountaineer and adventurer Mike Horn, who had worked with Kirsten before, during his stint as coach of India. The Alpine adventure evidently had the desired effect of energising and motivating the players.

Despite struggling in the field on the first day at The Oval, South Africa then came as close to the perfect Test match against credible opposition as possible, winning by an innings while losing only two wickets, and celebrating Hashim Amla’s epic unbeaten 311, the first Test triple-century by a South African. When a hard-earned victory in the Third Test at Lord’s settled the series, England handed over the ICC mace.

As in 2008, triumph in England was followed by a tour of Australia – and, once again, South Africa were able to complete a remarkable double. On this occasion, though, there were legitimate grounds to wonder if they had gone into the three-match series with sufficient physical preparation. After a less than convincing warm-up game against Australia A, their bowlers took a pummelling in the First Test at Brisbane, although defeat was never likely after the second day was washed out.

Australia then dominated the Second Test, at Adelaide, with Michael Clarke making his second successive double-century, and seemed set for victory when South Africa, set an improbable 430, ended the fourth day on 77 for four. But Francois du Plessis – “Faf” to almost everyone – led a remarkable rearguard action on Test debut to steer South Africa to safety with two wickets to spare. On the only pitch which gave their fast bowlers any assistance, they then gained a huge win in the decisive Test, at Perth.

Impressively solid batting and a potent fast-bowling attack had been the foundation of their success. A top five of Graeme Smith, Alviro Petersen, Amla, Jacques Kallis and A. B. de Villiers made 4,463 runs between them at an average of nearly 58. Amla headed the list, with 1,064 runs at 70, including four centuries – two each against England and Australia – and Kallis was not far behind, with 944 at 67. Petersen underlined his value as Smith’s opening partner, and it was a measure of South Africa’s success that his 815 runs at almost 48 made him the least successful of the quintet. Kallis missed one Test because of injury, but the other four played in all ten.

A horrific eye injury which ended the career of long-serving wicketkeeper Mark Boucher had the unintended consequence of strengthening the batting, as de Villiers took the gloves and South Africa were able to field seven batsmen. J-P. Duminy took advantage of his opportunities, first when Kallis was injured in New Zealand, then as the extra batsman in England, and averaged 90 before he ruptured an Achilles tendon while warming down after the opening day of the Test series in Australia. But that simply opened the door for du Plessis. The performances at No. 6 of Jacques Rudolph (435 runs at 39) were relatively modest.

The pace trio of Dale Steyn, Morne Morkel and Vernon Philander took 120 of the 160 wickets claimed by South African bowlers during the year, despite operating mainly on unhelpful pitches. But Imran Tahir’s leg-spin proved less effective, and he was dropped for Perth, where slow left-armer Robin Peterson, a perennial tourist but seldom a Test cricketer, made an impressive comeback.

There was concern about the bowling depth, with Marchant de Lange – who had made a sensational debut in the last Test of 2011 – not playing at all after pulling out of the England tour with a stress fracture. Rory Kleinveldt played in two Tests in Australia with mixed success.

Under the new leadership of de Villiers, South Africa won eight one-day internationals and lost four, winning series against Sri Lanka and New Zealand, and sharing the honours in England. Amla top-scored in the last two matches in New Zealand, and in all four innings in England, to set a world record. But an ongoing problem was the lack of an effective bowling combination at the death.

The biggest disappointment came at the World Twenty20 in Sri Lanka. After winning both their group matches, including a rain-shortened encounter against the hosts, South Africa lost all three in the Super Eights, against Pakistan, Australia and India. Poor starts with the bat, and equally poor bowling towards the end of innings, were largely to blame.

The cricket took place against a backdrop of legal wrangling over the dismissal of chief executive Gerald Majola, and controversy over the implementation of a new system of administration. Cricket South Africa’s annual general meeting, normally held in August, was postponed twice, the second time until February 2013, by which time the presidency and the chief executive’s role had been in the hands of acting-officials for almost a year.

In what should have been an end to a saga that started when South Africa hosted the IPL in 2009, Judge Chris Nicholson’s findings after a ministerial enquiry were damning of Majola. He recommended a criminal investigation and disciplinary action by CSA following Majola’s pocketing of undeclared bonuses. Majola refused to take part in the hearing, which recommended he be sacked, choosing instead to take the matter to the Labour Court in Johannesburg.

Nicholson recommended an overhaul of the system of governance, with a majority of independent directors. CSA initially opted for an even split, but it was not a universally popular decision. When the annual meeting was finally held on February 2, 2013, a split of seven non-independent and five independent directors was approved. Chris Nenzani, a relative newcomer to administration who had been president of the Border Cricket Board since 2010, was elected president.

Norman Arendse, a former president of CSA, was elected lead independent director. A nomination panel had initially recommended him, but this was vetoed by CSA on the grounds that he had recently been involved in cricket. He challenged the ruling and was eventually accepted as a director. Arendse’s tenure as CSA president between 2007 and 2008 was notable for acrimony and alleged interference in selection.

Jacques Faul, the acting-chief executive, made no secret of his frustration with the ongoing wrangling, and announced he would not be available for a full-time role at national level. Instead he was named chief executive of the Northerns Union.

Yet another cloud on the horizon was a row over the non-selection of Thami Tsolekile for the Test series against New Zealand in January 2013. Tsolekile had been told he would probably take over behind the stumps after the Australia series, only for de Villiers to decide he wanted to keep wicket on a long-term basis. With no black African players in the squad, the controversy became a racial issue. Makhaya Ntini, the only black African to have made a major impact in international cricket, claimed Tsolekile would have been picked if he had been white.

In South Africa, cricket is seldom a matter of simply playing the game.

SRI LANKA CRICKET, 2012

Taking Haroon’s medicine

SA’ADI THAWFEEQ

Sri Lanka moved into 2013 hoping that the lion’s share of the independent report submitted by former ICC chief executive Haroon Lorgat would be implemented to streamline administration and make the board more financially viable. Sri Lanka Cricket had hired the services of Lorgat, an accountant, in July in the face of mounting debts and heavy overstaffing. He was given three months to talk to stakeholders, and had access to financial accounts.

His report, delivered in November, was welcomed by sports minister Mahindananda Aluthgamage, who wanted several of the recommendations to be pushed through – chief among them to make cricket exempt from the Sports Law that governs every sporting body in Sri Lanka (which requires the sports minister to approve major selectorial decisions).

All in all, 2012 turned out to be an uncomfortable year, beginning as it did with the sacking of head coach Geoff Marsh, and ending with a dismal innings defeat in the Boxing Day Test at Melbourne. But the most serious blow came in between, when Sri Lanka failed to win the World Twenty20 in home conditions. Defeat by West Indies in Colombo was the fourth time in five years they had lost a major tournament final.

Like Marsh, who unsuccessfully sought legal redress for his removal, Tillekeratne Dilshan paid with his position as captain after the South Africa tour of 2011-12, having presided over four straight series defeats in both Tests and one-day internationals. Mahela Jayawardene agreed to come back in his place for one year, until the end of the tour of Australia in January 2013. Angelo Mathews took over, with Dinesh Chandimal becoming captain of the Twenty20 team. Changes also came in the selection committee, with Ashantha de Mel returning as chairman in place of Duleep Mendis. Marsh’s replacement, the South African Graham Ford, had become the fourth man to coach Sri Lanka since the 2011 World Cup. He fitted in well, and helped turn the players into a more professional unit.

Under the new structure, Sri Lanka were able at least to arrest their run of Test defeats. At home, they drew 1–1 with England, beat Pakistan, then drew – disappointingly, perhaps – with New Zealand. For this, they were indebted to the flourishing of left-arm spinner Rangana Herath at the age of 34. Though a slightly ungainly, round-arm bowler, he took five six-wicket hauls in the home Tests, not always with the help of the DRS. He finished with more Test wickets in the year (60) than anyone, and at a strike-rate of 53, two better than Muttiah Muralitharan’s career figure. The rest of Sri Lanka’s bowlers took only 79 wickets between them, with Suraj Randiv the next-highest on 22. He could have done with help from elsewhere, but only Kumar Sangakkara and Mathews averaged above 40 with the bat.

After seven years of government-appointed interim committees, SLC finally held an annual general meeting in January 2012. The change of attitude followed an ICC resolution that all member boards should be free of political interference. But amid allegations of voter intimidation, Upali Dharmadasa – SLC president from 1996–98, and interim committee chairman before it was dissolved – won uncontested when his chief rival for the presidency, Thilanga Sumathipala, withdrew. In fact, all the opposition candidates withdrew in protest, and all the main office bearers were elected uncontested, in a process presided over by the sports ministry.

The first task of this new committee was to clear a deficit approaching $70m, mostly a result of constructing new venues at Hambantota and Pallekele, and renovating Colombo’s Premadasa Stadium for the 2011 World Cup. “It will be a struggle for about five years,” predicted Dharmadasa, whose request for financial assistance from the government was turned down.

SLC had not had enough money to pay the salaries of their employees and 100 contracted cricketers since the World Cup. However, Aluthgamage negotiated with the state-owned Bank of Ceylon to release SLRs600m ($5.07m) to SLC. This, coupled with the 42% of World Cup participation fees which the ICC paid directly to the players’ accounts in December 2011, allowed the outstanding dues to be settled. By cutting down on administrative overheads and contracted players, as well as receiving revenues from hosting a one-day tour by India and the World Twenty20, SLC managed to clear some of their deficit.

The inaugural Sri Lankan Premier League was supposed to rake in more money, although it had been in danger of not getting off the ground when SLC ran into a contractual issue with their international players. Somerset Entertainment Ventures, a sporting business company based in Singapore, secured SLPL rights for the next seven years, guaranteeing SLC $4m each year. The timing of the tournament, two months before the World Twenty20 in Sri Lanka, failed to entice the spectators, although several international cricketers – especially Pakistanis ostracised from the IPL – appeared for the seven teams involved. Sri Lanka managed to unearth two new players: opener Dilshan Munaweera and spinner Akila Dananjaya both featured in the World Twenty20.

SLC sacrificed two Tests in the Caribbean and a three-Test home series against South Africa scheduled for 2013 in order to accommodate the IPL and a triangular one-day series. Sri Lanka’s Test calendar was looking empty. SLC came in for severe criticism from past players and administrators for undermining Test cricket. The debacle at Melbourne, where Sri Lanka lost inside three days, was cited as evidence that they needed to play more Tests to be rated among the top nations. That was a battle the Dharmadasa administration had to wage against a sagging bank balance.

WEST INDIES CRICKET, 2012

Peace brings prizes

TONY COZIER

For West Indies Cricket Board president Julian Hunte it was “a watershed year” for the sport in the Caribbean. The region was, he declared in his annual review, “better positioned for the rest of the decade on many fronts”. And there certainly was a climate of rare optimism. Hunte’s confidence was predicated on victory at the World Twenty20 in Sri Lanka, as well as a lucrative agreement with Taj TV for global rights for the next seven years which, he said, would ensure West Indies’ financial viability. Another potentially profitable deal was done with Verus International, a merchant bank based in New York and Barbados, for a license to operate a private, professional Twenty20 league of six city-based franchise teams, to replace the WICB’s existing tournament from October 2013.

Ajmal Khan, the chief executive of Verus, proclaimed his intention to make the Caribbean Premier League “one of the most enviable franchises anywhere in the world”, and said he would invest “whatever it takes, in the hundreds of millions” to ensure its success. These were phrases that might have come straight from Allen Stanford’s handbook of hyperbole but, following their blessing of Stanford 20/20, which had embarrassingly crashed three years earlier after the fraudulent Texan’s arrest and 110-year sentence, the WICB emphasised they had thoroughly verified Verus’s credentials.

West Indies cricket, though, was still riddled with weaknesses. The game at regional level remained substandard, hampered by poor pitches and unreliable umpiring. The WICB, meanwhile, were mired in the past: for the second time, they rejected the main proposals of a report commissioned by Hunte himself, which called upon the board to modernise their structure and governance. The successive resignations of the constantly quarrelling chief executives – Dinanath Ramnarine of the West Indies Players’ Association, and the WICB’s Ernest Hilaire – at least brought a welcome period of détente between the union and the board, but WIPA’s two lawsuits against the WICB, one seeking $20m for restraint of trade, carried over into 2013.

More than a year after the Guyanese government had replaced the WICB’s affiliate board with an interim management committee, no settlement of the dispute was in sight; the upshot was a moratorium on all regional and international matches in Guyana, a country that had staged their inaugural first-class match in 1865, and the first of their 32 Tests in 1930.

The widespread euphoria at the Twenty20 title was reflected in an editorial in the Trinidad Express, which declared it had “lifted the spirit of the entire region as one”. The reaction was much the same after West Indies’ victory in the 2004 Champions Trophy; but that had quickly dissipated into the distress of disputes and defeat. This time, the victory was straddled by a pair of 2–0 Test wins, over New Zealand and Bangladesh. And a 2–1 home success for West Indies A in unofficial Tests against India A added a little more substance to the excitement. However, a 3–2 one-day loss in Bangladesh brought the year to an unsatisfactory end.

In the more difficult Test assignments, West Indies lost 2–0 both to Australia at home and England away. Still, they took all but one of the six games in those two series to the fifth day – a detail that, in the context of recent history, was confirmation West Indies had grown increasingly competitive; Australia’s coach Mickey Arthur said they had “gone toe-to-toe with us”. And that was without three key players – Chris Gayle (reinstated midway through the England tour through the intervention of two prime ministers after a lengthy standoff with the WICB), Marlon Samuels and Sunil Narine (both engaged in the IPL, Narine triumphantly so).

Four wins in ten Tests exactly doubled the 2011 ratio, while 14 hundreds were spread among seven different batsmen; only three had scored centuries the previous year. Samuels was the star. His renaissance after a two-year suspension for suspected dealings with an Indian bookmaker was a tribute to his determination, and an example to others. The overdue fulfilment of his dormant class brought an awesome striking power to an uncertain middle order. He amassed 866 runs in seven Tests, including a double-hundred and two singles; his pièce de résistance was the breathtaking 78 off 56 balls that stunned Sri Lanka in the World Twenty20 final. But a fracas with Shane Warne in the 2012-13 Big Bash in Australia showed he could still be needled by the opposition.

Shivnarine Chanderpaul kept churning out runs, as he had for most of his 18 years as West Indies’ impenetrable wall. No longer burdened with the white-ball game, he gathered 987 runs in nine Tests, regaining his No. 1 spot in the ICC rankings, before yielding to the comet that was Michael Clarke.

Captain Darren Sammy and wicketkeeper Denesh Ramdin, both under constant public scrutiny, produced timely hundreds down the order. Sammy’s, at Nottingham, was his first in Tests, and his role as player and leader – especially at the World Twenty20 – earned him new respect. Centuries for Ramdin at Edgbaston and Mirpur settled his tenuous position for the time being.

Chanderpaul, 38 at year’s end, was the oldest contemporary Test player bar Sachin Tendulkar. Gayle was 33, Samuels 31, Sammy and Ramdin both in their late twenties. So the development of younger players was of more relevance to the future direction of West Indies cricket. Kieran Powell, a tall, stylish left-handed opener, finally realised the value of scores in three figures rather than two, and was carried along to his maiden Test hundred in the slipstream of Gayle’s 150 against New Zealand in Antigua; two matches later in Bangladesh, Powell joined the elite company of Headley, Weekes, Walcott, Sobers, Kanhai, Rowe, Greenidge and Lara as the only West Indians to score hundreds in each innings of a Test. The batting is likely to revolve around him and the equally elegant Darren Bravo, 23, for some time. Ramnaresh Sarwan – alienated under coach Ottis Gibson – was finally chosen again for the one-day series in Australia in February 2013, but not before he had successfully sued the WICB for $161,000 over comments they had made about his fitness.

As it has been from the beginning, the heart of the West Indian bowling – in Tests at least – was pace, and Kemar Roach was its spearhead. He took 39 wickets in seven Tests, before a knee injury eliminated him from the Bangladesh series; among those to take 20 wickets in 2012, only Saeed Ajmal and Vernon Philander had a lower average than Roach’s 22.

In his absence, Tino Best and Fidel Edwards were the match-winners in Bangladesh, despite the lifeless surfaces. Best, as much as Samuels, was the comeback story of the year. Aged 31, and with 28 expensive wickets in 14 erratic Tests between 2003 and 2009, he had appeared finished. Still fit and fast, however, he now applied accuracy to claim 18 more in four Tests, though his electrifying 95 at Edgbaston, a record for a Test No. 11, gave him as much satisfaction.

The WICB’s decision to replace two home Tests against Sri Lanka in May 2013 with a later triangular tournament also involving India (to accommodate the IPL) was an indication that, like others, they had been seduced by Twenty20. Sammy was among those who regarded it as a flawed philosophy. “The T20 win doesn’t mean West Indies is back on top,” he cautioned. “We have to beat Australia, England and South Africa [in Tests]. Once we start doing that consistently, the team will be heading in the right direction.” For all Hunte’s confidence, that still seemed a long way off.

ZIMBABWE CRICKET, 2012

A fork in the road

MEHLULI SIBANDA

Zimbabwe cricket was mired in stagnation. Not only did the national team play a paltry eight international matches in all formats, they lost them all too. To demonstrate how far their stock had fallen, they hosted no international fixtures in 2012, except for an unofficial triangular series featuring South Africa and Bangladesh in July, which at least ended in a surprise victory for the home side, spurred on by the batting of Hamilton Masakadza.

Zimbabwe were clearly stuck in limbo between the more powerful Full Members, who were reluctant to engage them in lengthy series, and the Associates, who would provide more frequent opposition – but at a price, both financially and in terms of the quality of cricket. Due to the cost required to set up the domestic franchise system in 2009, Zimbabwe Cricket were believed to have built up debts of around US$18m, which made the $1.5m awarded to them as part of the ICC’s Targeted Assistance and Performance Programme over the next three years look like a drop in the ocean.

In January, Zimbabwe had undertaken their first tour of New Zealand for 11 years. It was a chastening experience in often cold conditions, and they were beaten in all six internationals by a team not exactly long on confidence themselves. The solitary Test at Napier was a dismemberment: Zimbabwe were underpowered with the ball, then dismissed twice in a day to lose by an innings and 301 runs – the heaviest defeat in their Test history. More bruisings followed in the one-day series, but Zimbabwe did show some fight in the two Twenty20 games, taking the second down to the last over.

With another seven months before the World Twenty20, Zimbabwe were in desperate need of practice in the format, so their board conceived a triangular tournament in Harare, to which Bangladesh and South Africa sent young teams. Each side won two games in the group stage, but Zimbabwe sneaked past Bangladesh on net run-rate, then thumped South Africa in the final. When captain Brendan Taylor pulled the four that confirmed a rare (if unofficial) victory over their neighbours, an exuberant crowd starved of top-class cricket invaded the pitch and mobbed the players. Masakadza, who put on 118 with Taylor in the final, led the scoring charts, with 267 runs in five innings – but, sadly for him, they did not count in the Twenty20 international records.

In June, Ozias Bvute resigned as Zimbabwe Cricket’s managing director, and was replaced by his deputy, Wilfred Mukondiwa. The debate will rage on as to whether Bvute was good for the game. Bvute, who took over in 2004, will probably always be remembered as the man whose hardline stance led to the mass exodus of senior players following the sacking that year of captain Heath Streak. That sad episode led to Zimbabwe eventually withdrawing from Test cricket in 2006, after a string of disastrous results. Bvute remained connected to the commercial arm of the board in a consultancy role.

Zimbabwe were too often let down by short-sighted administrative decisions, and the six weeks they spent preparing in Sri Lanka for the World Twenty20 included only two warm-up matches against other nations. With such shoddy arrangements, it was no surprise when they were thrashed by both Sri Lanka and South Africa – bowing out of the tournament before five other teams had even taken the field.

Tatenda Taibu had long been a devout Christian – banning television from his house, and holding Bible sessions with his family – and in July he quit cricket to devote his life to the church. “When I was growing up I used to think that success meant having money, a good wife and family, but that is wrong,” he said. “I was the first black captain in the country, the youngest Test captain in the history of the sport, and also the first local player to score two centuries against South Africa, but that was not enough. I have achieved everything in life, but one thing I am trying to achieve is the salvation of my soul.”

Taibu walked away from the game at 29, usually the age when batsmen are reaching their prime. It was not the first time he had done so. In 2006, he quit Zimbabwe with the intention of qualifying for South Africa, only to return the following year. But he remained frustrated by the way cricket was being run: on the eve of Zimbabwe’s Test return in August 2011, Taibu had spoken out against the ZC leadership for their tardiness in paying players – a practice which persisted into 2012. With age on his side, there was still hope that Taibu might reconsider his decision.

In November, head coach Alan Butcher signalled he would not be seeking a renewal of his contract beyond April 2013, as his family were not prepared to relocate from England. It meant his last assignment would be Zimbabwe’s tour of the West Indies in February and March. Butcher was at pains to point out that the Bridgetown Test would be their first for more than a year. He had turned them into a competitive unit at home, but results abroad remained worrying. And though he gave his all to the role, he was often let down by the decision-makers above him.

CRICKET IN AFGHANISTAN, 2012

Step by step

SHAHID HASHMI

Slowly but surely, Afghanistan’s cricketing infrastructure began to catch up with the success of their national team – bringing Associate membership of the ICC into view. Afghanistan have won the hearts of many for their rapid rise through the World Cricket League, culminating in the grant of one-day international status in 2009, so the rubber-stamping of their application – promoted by the Asian Cricket Council – should be a formality at the ICC’s annual board meeting in June 2013.

“The most significant decision at this year’s ACC AGM was to substantiate the claim of Afghanistan to be an Associate Member of the ICC,” said ACC chief executive Ashraful Haque in September. “Afghanistan have been the strongest side among the Affiliate Members, so we are backing them for promotion.” Vanuatu were the last country to be elevated from Affiliate to Associate membership, in 2009.

It was a surprise to many that it had taken so long. Privately, the ICC expressed mild irritation over Afghanistan’s previous lack of interest, as they had been the second-strongest non-Test nation – certainly in Twenty20 – for a few years. They had been one win away from qualifying for the 2011 World Cup (a tortuous journey memorably documented in the film Out of the Ashes), and made it to the 2010 and 2012 World Twenty20 tournaments where, despite losing twice on both occasions, their lively approach suggested they could, in time, become a force with a little more discipline. Defeats by India and England in the 2012 competition betrayed their artlessness against quality spin.

A major prerequisite of Associate status, however, is the active promotion of women’s cricket – and the Afghanistan Cricket Board faced accusations of being slow to support those who play and promote the women’s game, despite risks to their safety. In January 2013, the Afghan women’s team were prevented from travelling to Thailand for what would have been their first official tournament, the ACC Women’s T20 Championship, for “political reasons”.

In 2012, Pakistan and Australia became the first Full Members to play the men’s team in one-day internationals – at Afghanistan’s surrogate home in Sharjah. Afghanistan lost both games, but beat Trinidad & Tobago and Barbados to win a quadrangular tournament (also involving a Bangladesh XI) in Port-of-Spain, which acted as practice for the World Twenty20. Afghanistan had serious ground to make up in the race for the 2015 World Cup: failure to finish in the top two of the 50-over World Cricket League Championship in 2013 would leave them having to attend a second qualifying event, in New Zealand in 2014, to try to claim one of the last two spots available.

Although the UAE remained the logical home for Afghanistan’s international fixtures, in January 2013 the ACB announced a long-term desire to base their elite training in Pakistan – a country with which they share much more than a border. The national squad underwent a four-week conditioning camp at Lahore’s National Academy ahead of matches against Scotland in the UAE in March; the ACB and the Pakistan Cricket Board also announced they had struck a “verbal agreement” over a long-term development programme. An obvious drawback, however, was the continued reluctance of other international teams to tour Pakistan.

“Sharjah gave us basic facilities, but unfortunately we didn’t find quality cricket to develop with,” said Kabir Khan, the Afghanistan coach and a former Pakistan player. “The cost of being in Sharjah is a lot more than here in Pakistan. We are in the process of building our infrastructure [in Afghanistan] and have two stadiums as well. But while we have academies, we don’t have specialised coaches. In Pakistan we can find the quality coaches and quality teams to play against.” Meanwhile, the best Afghan players found themselves picked up by franchises in the Bangladesh Premier League.

The ACB made major changes to their set-up in 2012. Shahzada Masoud, previously the board president, took over as chairman from Omar Zakhilwal in October, who was busy as finance minister in Hamid Karzai’s government (two months earlier, Zakhilwal had been forced to deny corruption charges linked to Karzai’s 2009 re-election campaign). Masoud remains an advisor to the government on tribal affairs.

The Afghan government have spent heavily to develop the two existing international-standard stadiums, in Kabul and Jalalabad, while the ACB are determined to complete three more grounds over the next two years, with plans afoot for academies too. They also hope to found a Twenty20 league, possibly in 2014.

WOMEN’S CRICKET IN AFGHANISTAN

Headscarved heroines

TIM WIGMORE

Afghanistan’s cricketers have enthralled sporting romantics for a few years now. But the country is host to more than one team: the other team play in scarves, long and baggy trousers and shirts, and yearn for the opportunities afforded to the men.

The story of Afghan women’s cricket begins with one family. The four Barakzai sisters learned cricket when they fled Taliban rule in 1999 and became refugees in Pakistan. Returning home ten years later, the sisters – led by Diana, who is now 24 – tried to encourage others to take up the sport. In October 2011, they all completed ICC coaching courses at a camp held jointly by the charity Afghan Connection and the MCC Foundation. They have become mainstays of the fledgling Afghan women’s squad. As Diana stresses, none of this would have been possible without her father and brother, “who have always been supportive to us, always teaching us about cricket”. It was her father Mohammad Naeem Barakzai’s decision to convert a plot of land at his old house near Kabul into a cricket pitch that has provided the women’s squad with somewhere safe to play.

“Playing cricket for a girl was not less than suicide, but my spirit, and the strong support of my family, encouraged me not to stop my activities,” says Diana, who bemoans “community negative attitudes and lack of fundraising resources”. As the Afghanistan Cricket Board’s first female development officer, she hopes to improve the situation. Raees Ahmadzai, the former Afghanistan captain and now head of the Afghan Youth Cricket Support Organisation, says there are “no proper venues for women’s cricket”, and “the girls will not feel happy to play in front of men”. As a result, women have used basketball courts and even the old National Stadium, scene of executions under the Taliban.

So, exactly how far has women’s cricket come? Official figures show there are almost 4,000 registered female players in Afghanistan, 700 of them disabled. In October 2012, an eight-team tournament was held between school teams. But the majority of registered cricketers have the opportunity to play for only a few days a year, and some do not even tell their families. Women’s cricket is a regular occurrence in only four of Afghanistan’s 34 provinces, invariably the more westernised areas. Many Afghans who cheered the success of the men’s side feel differently about the women.

Unsurprisingly, then, Afghanistan have yet to play an official international women’s game, despite several attempts – although they did travel to Tajikistan in July 2012 for an unofficial three-match 25-over series, and won 2–1. Most recently, in January 2013, they were on the verge of taking part in the Asian Cricket Council Women’s T20 Championship in Thailand. ACB chief executive Noor Mohammad Murad admitted “political reasons” lay behind the withdrawal, and said: “It needs long-term planning, including clear strategy to convey the message to the community that we will strictly follow up all religious rules for women cricket.”

The circumstances of these cancellations have prompted some to question the extent of the board’s commitment to women’s cricket. One prominent figure in Afghan cricket, speaking anonymously, said the board “were arranging a day or two of cricket camps for the ladies, just to show the media they are working with Afghan girls to learn cricket”. The source also claimed the ACB “wanted a women’s department just as a symbolic thing to show to the ICC”; the ICC have declined to comment. As the ACB bid for Associate status, a women’s set-up is one requirement. As more money is invested in Afghan cricket, it must be supported by deed as well as word.

There is no shortage of willing contributors. UNICEF hosted a camp for 140 in Jalalabad in 2010, and the Swedish Committee for Afghanistan – yes, really – have also helped Afghan Connection and MCC to build cricket pitches in schools.

Afghan Connection have been particularly significant. Working closely with MCC and a range of charities, including Cricket for Change, they have held camps and allowed girls the chance to play at school. In 2012 alone, they were responsible for building pitches for 16,000 children in ten schools although, given the difficulty of finding locations that can provide the necessary security for girls, these will primarily benefit boys. In recognition of her achievements, Afghan Connection founder and chief executive Sarah Fane was elected an honorary life member of MCC.

Fane emphasises the “massive progress” women’s cricket has made, and the “incredible talent” of many who play it. Yet she is also realistic about the need for camps to be conducted in “a culturally sensitive way”. She says: “We do them only in the big cities. We make sure we get parental consent, and we do them in girls’ schools behind a wall so they all feel secure.” Above all she wants to guard against repercussions. “If we suddenly did a cricket camp for girls in a conservative area, there’d be such a backlash against them and against us – so we’re moving very slowly with girls.” Nevertheless, some cricketers have been labelled prostitutes for having the temerity to play the game.

No one can be naive about the challenges facing women’s cricket in Afghanistan. But there is a commendable optimism and resolve in those who play it. Let the last word go to Diana Barakzai. “The boys’ national team had very good achievements during the last few years, and the reason is the strong support from the government, donors and all other agencies. If we also receive support, I am sure we can have a brilliant women’s cricket team in the near future.”

Tim Wigmore is a freelance journalist, and writes for ESPNcricinfo, The Independent and New Statesman. For more information about Afghan Connection, visit www.afghanconnection.org

CRICKET IN CANADA, 2012

All-star fudge

FARAZ SARWAT

Canadian cricket has developed a tendency to start the year on the wrong foot – and 2012 was no exception. In January the national team participated in the Caribbean T20 as preparation for the World Twenty20 qualifying tournament, but went down to heavy defeats in all four matches. The following month, captain Jimmy Hansra stepped down.

The official press release, which quoted Hansra as saying “I am very happy with the organisation and I believe we are definitely heading in the right direction,” had a touch of Stockholm syndrome. Rizwan Cheema, surprisingly sidestepped in favour of Hansra once Ashish Bagai had quit the team after the 2011 World Cup, was finally put in charge for the World Twenty20 qualifiers in the UAE, but results hardly picked up. Canada managed to see off lesser teams, but came unstuck against stronger opposition – losing to the Netherlands, Afghanistan, Ireland and Scotland.

Shortly after the tournament, Michael Dighton resigned as coach, only seven months into the job. Gus Logie, Canada’s coach during the 2003 World Cup, returned to the role, and David Patterson, the former head of New South Wales’ Emerging Players programme for a decade, was hired as High Performance Manager in October. With many players still adjusting to cricket at a high level, Patterson’s arrival may have been the highlight of the year.

On April 1, Cricket Canada held elections for president, with Alberta’s Ravin Moorthy taking on the incumbent, Ranjit Saini from Ontario. When the votes among delegates ended in a tie, the brains trust of Canadian cricket apparently decided to settle the matter with the toss of a coin, which Moorthy won. The toss took place on April Fool’s Day, so it was perhaps sensible that Cricket Canada did not go public with their method of deciding the presidency.

Poor showings in Namibia and Scotland meant Canada finished the year bottom of both the ICC 50-over World Cricket League Championship and the first-class Intercontinental Cup (which were both due to finish in April 2013). These were tournaments Canada once aspired to win. Some success finally came in November, when the team retained the Auty Cup against the even more dysfunctional USA. Canada’s modest 196 – against a second-string American attack – proved enough to win on first innings in Florida.

The intended centrepiece of Canada’s year, an all-star Twenty20 exhibition match in May, turned into a farce when many advertised players failed to show up – and those who did were not paid on time. The Rogers Centre (formerly the SkyDome), home of Major League Baseball’s Toronto Blue Jays, is a marvel of a building. But a drop-in artificial pitch with spring-fitted stumps made the game difficult to take seriously, even with the likes of Sanath Jayasuriya and Jacob Oram doing their best to keep everyone entertained. A crowd generously estimated at 12,000 looked sparse in a stadium that can accommodate more than four times as many.

Match organisers Kat Rose Inc had promised to include Shahid Afridi, Saeed Ajmal, Misbah-ul-Haq and Umar Akmal – among others – in the Asia XI but, with Pakistan about to tour Sri Lanka, it was always unlikely they would be released by their board. Brian Lara also pulled out of captaining the International XI. Kat Rose continued to list the players on their website on the eve of the match. The no-shows hit the promoters hard and, by October, the Federation of International Cricketers’ Associations had initiated legal proceedings against the organisers over non-payment to 16 players.

Cricket Canada chief executive Doug Hannum described the event as a “national embarrassment” on a television newscast, which irked many of his colleagues, though his assessment was not far wrong. The board insisted they had carried out due diligence in researching the unknown promotions company before sanctioning the event.

A lack of accountability and cynicism in Cricket Canada continued unabated, with office-bearers holding on to their positions come what may. And so 2012 went down as a year with no international cricket in Canada, no progress on building a national stadium, and disastrous results on the field. Those who follow the sport here had every right to feel aggrieved.

CRICKET IN KENYA, 2012

Heading in one direction

MARTIN WILLIAMSON

The restructuring forced on Cricket Kenya by their dismal performance at the 2011 World Cup continued, but there was no significant upturn on the field – despite the retention of a fully paid squad. Kenya lost their two matches in the Intercontinental Cup, the first-class tournament for the leading Associate countries, to leave them languishing second from bottom. In the one-day World Cricket League Championship, Kenya at least managed wins over Ireland and Namibia, but still finished the year in sixth. With only the top two automatically gaining places for the 2015 World Cup, Kenya will go into a ten-country qualifying tournament in New Zealand to decide the two remaining slots.

Kenya performed as feared at the World Twenty20 qualifiers in Dubai, beating only the real minnows – and missing out on the knockout stages by 0.007 of a run, to Scotland. More heartening were the performances of Alex Obanda, Collins Obuya and Duncan Allan, who all scored more than 250 runs. Kenya’s women, meanwhile, made next to no impression, finishing last in the ICC Africa Women’s Twenty20 qualifying tournament.

At present, Cricket Kenya are in a sound financial position. But fear is growing inside the country that they will struggle to retain their top-six Associate status at the 2014 World Cup qualifier – and thus miss out on the substantial ICC High Performance funding that goes with it. CK doggedly retained 20 players on professional contracts, but that would almost certainly end without the extra ICC money, as would the ability to attract high-quality administrators and coaches. Tom Sears left the chief executive’s post in June to move to Irish rugby union franchise Connacht, and had not been replaced by the end of the year. In May, national coach Mike Hesson returned home to New Zealand citing safety concerns for his family, and was replaced on an interim basis by Robin Brown, a former Zimbabwe player and coach (Hesson became New Zealand coach in July). Security issues in Mombasa, often blamed on the Somali Islamist militant group Al-Shabaab, led to some international matches being shelved and others relocated to Dubai. Ireland did go ahead with their tour in February after some doubts, and won all three Twenty20 internationals.

A senior international administrator privately admitted the Kenyans had squandered a decade of substantial investment. A few years ago, they had been rated the best outside the Test nations, but there are now at least half a dozen ahead of them in the pecking order; even in Africa, Namibia and Uganda are seen as better long-term prospects. At least a successful second edition of the elite domestic tournaments – broadcast on the SuperSport satellite network for the first time – gave the local game a boost.

Board elections should have been held in March 2012, but were delayed because of squabbling within the fractious Nairobi province, then a last-minute court order obtained by Tom Tikolo, the disgraced former CK chief executive. When elections finally took place in November, Jackie Janmohamed – a close associate of Sharad Ghai, the former boss of the old Kenyan Cricket Association forced from office in 2005 – was elected to succeed the internationally respected Samir Inamdar as chairperson. She was the first woman chosen to head a major cricket governing body. Even her supporters recognised Janmohamed faced a hard battle to convince the wider community she was not a throwback to the bad old days, and within weeks she was embroiled in a number of internal disputes. One involved an unofficial tournament – aptly named “Cricket Wars” – backed by Ghai and intended to take place at Nairobi Gymkhana, but CK refused to sanction the event. Janmohamed had a year to turn things round. The odds seemed stacked against her.

It emerged in May that an unnamed Kenyan player was being investigated on suspicion of spot-fixing during the 2011 World Cup game against Pakistan. “The Kenyan Ministry of Sport and Youth Affairs are aware of the allegations,” said Sears. The ICC refused to comment.

KENYA’S MAASAI CRICKETERS

Cornered lions

BARNEY DOUGLAS

It’s an awe-inspiring sight – red robes flooding through the air, the crisp chink of beads, eyes wide and homing in on the target. In years gone by, that target would have been a wild animal. Now, it merely has a bat and pads by way of self-defence.

This is the Maasai Warriors cricket team, a side that have developed over the last few years in the village of Ilpolei in Kenya’s Rift Valley. Introduced to the sport by Aliya Bauer, a South African volunteer and qualified coach, the Warriors related cricket to their traditional hunting techniques. The ball is the spear, and the bat the shield, while the footwork recalls their nimbleness and stamina built up from herding cattle across rough terrain. After witnessing the game being taught to schoolchildren as a means of communicating HIV/Aids awareness messages, the Maasai came to realise cricket could inspire them. It has brought warring clans together, educated young men, given them a common goal and spirit.

But a darker heart exists in their community, where HIV/Aids is rife, female genital mutilation still practised, and abuse of women a huge social issue. The team are aiming to encourage the Maasai to move away from such behaviour. They feel this is the only way to progress and preserve their future as a people. However, elders fear even this change will herald the end of the Maasai. It is tradition versus progress, identity versus change.

Sonyanga is the captain of the Warriors. Quiet and unassuming, he leads by example – particularly off the field. He has a hunger to learn, and a thirst for education. He is proud of his heritage, but you can see in his eyes the conflict he must over-come to break from the elders’ path. He convinced his own father to abandon female genital mutilation, saving his sister from the prospect of pain, physical and mental scarring, and considerable health risks. “Being in cricket gave me the confidence of going against the community,” he says. “You know, some of the elders won’t take it positively. But you have to tell them it’s no good. You have to gain that courage.”

The Warriors hope to play a tournament in England in 2013, believing it will energise Maasai youth and usher through changes back home. Even to fly overseas has a large bearing on their status in the community. “Without change,” says one player, “we will surely perish.” As the Maasai saying goes: “The eye that leaves the village sees further than the eye that stays.”

Barney Douglas is a director and producer. His film, Warriors, is due for release in late 2013. The England bowler James Anderson is an executive producer.

CRICKET ROUND THE WORLD

COMPILED BY JAMES COYNE AND TIMOTHY ABRAHAM

Seven countries and a French overseas territory make their debuts in this year’s Cricket Round the World.

ICC WORLD CRICKET LEAGUE

As the World Cricket League – the 50-over pyramid for non-Test nations which began in 2007 – reached the end of its second cycle, it was becoming easier to identify decline and fall. Nepal carried off the Division Four title in September, earning their highest WCL ranking yet. On slow pitches in Kuala Lumpur, their spinners were too canny: Shakti Gauchan returned 9– 4–8–1 against Singapore and 10–8–2–3 against Malaysia. A top-two finish in Division Three in May 2013 would earn Nepal a place in the 2015 World Cup qualifying tournament in New Zealand.

Nepal also won the Asian Cricket Council Elite Trophy for the first time, sharing it with the United Arab Emirates after a tie in Sharjah; they lost nine wickets to the UAE’s six, so were fortunate the tournament had no tie-breaker. UAE’s semi-final thrashing of Afghanistan – remarkably, their seventh win out of seven against them in 50-over cricket – meant they and Nepal were rewarded with inclusion in a one-day tournament against A-teams from India, Pakistan, Sri Lanka and Bangladesh, scheduled for 2013. More such arrangements are needed to avoid the leading Associates being cut adrift.

Argentina, though, were in complete free fall, and finished bottom of Division Five – suffering their fourth consecutive relegation. With Bermuda also slipping back two divisions since 2007 – the year they appeared at the World Cup in the Caribbean – it was clear the cricketing malaise in the Americas went deep. It remains to be seen whether West Indies’ World Twenty20 triumph can act as a spark in the region.

Were Argentina to be relegated again in 2013, they would face elimination from global competition, after the ICC Development Committee decided to cut back from eight WCL divisions to six for the next cycle (beginning in 2014). There was a feeling that one-day cricket was not always appropriate at the lower level: some teams struggle to bat out 50 overs, possibly because they do not play the format domestically. But it was primarily a financial decision: in Europe, it costs around £10,000–12,000 to host a WCL event. The cutback was especially bad news for the East Asia–Pacific region: Fiji, Vanuatu, Japan and Samoa, all likely to finish the cycle in Divisions Seven and Eight, will be left without global 50-over cricket.

ANDORRA

Sir Ian Botham’s next skiing holiday to the Pyrenees won’t be just about the slopes if Andorra’s emerging cricketers get their way. Botham has been a regular visitor to Hotel Montané, in the village of Arinsal, run by Fiona Dean, also Britain’s Honorary Consul in the principality. She was contacted by Dr Michel Bakker from a nomadic Dutch team called Fellowship of Fairly Odd Places Cricket Club, founded in 2005, whose aim, as their name suggests, is to enjoy a game once a year in unconventional locations – hence they were keen to play the first recorded match in Andorra. Though not a player herself, Dean enlisted a “rag tag bunch of expats”, including a Swiss national who had never played cricket before, to take on FFOPCC in September on an artificial surface at a football ground in the town of Ordino – 1,298m above sea level. Huib van Walsem scored an unbeaten 110 as the Dutch posted 187 for five from their 30 overs; in reply, the Andorra XI could manage only 105 – giving FFOPCC their first win over international opposition, after previous defeats by Iceland and Vatican City. Andorra-born teenager Daniel Carrington was the closest the home side got to a native player, although the game generated enough interest to lead the front page of Diari d’Andorra. “Sir Ian actually agreed to umpire the game, but unfortunately a clash of commitments prevented him from doing so,” said Dean. “A few of the players are planning to coax him into giving them some coaching and advice on his next holiday.” Andorra were planning home and away fixtures against teams from over the border in France for 2013.

TIMOTHY ABRAHAM

BULGARIA

Saif Rehman is the pioneering force of Bulgarian cricket, a soap star, semi-finalist in Bulgaria’s Got Talent – and now symbol of egalitarianism in his adopted country. During the Communist era, Bulgarian disabled children were often hidden from view by their families, or abandoned in state institutions. While there has been undoubted progress, some attitudes have proved hard to shake. A 2008 investigation by Europe’s highest social-rights body criticised the Bulgarian government for failing to provide disabled children with an education. Two years later, it was reported that 166 had died from neglect in care homes over the previous decade. Rehman, 39, originally from Pakistan, was deeply upset at what he saw, and vowed to bring cricket to the less fortunate. In January 2012, he introduced a group of children from Sofia to table cricket, a miniature tabletop version of the game for six players. By November, around 100 Bulgarians aged six to 17 with cerebral palsy, Down’s Syndrome or other disabilities were playing table cricket, and a national championship was held. “We’ve had great results,” said Rehman. “Doctors have told me that a 16-year-old opened his hand for the first time after he started playing, because he was getting movement in it and was so determined to play.” The widespread praise for the initiative inside Bulgaria persuaded Rehman to begin coaching a national squad of blind cricketers, whom he hopes to take on a tour to England in 2013. Germany and Spain are the only other countries in continental Europe to play any official disability cricket. “My ambition is to form a disability cricket league and encourage it in nearby countries,” Rehman declared. “This is my duty.”

TRISTAN LAVALETTE

CAMBODIA

Manish Sharma’s mission to spread the gospel was stirred by a chance meeting in a Hong Kong restaurant, when he overheard a lament by schoolboys who were desperate to play but couldn’t afford the kit. Sharma, the director of Rudrapriya Sports, a Hong Kong-based retailer, gave the boys a couple of pairs of batting gloves – and embarked on a crusade to help more would-be cricketers. But his offer to provide equipment was rebuffed by the established clubs in Hong Kong, who wanted to allocate his money themselves. Upset but undeterred, he set his sights on Cambodia, a country with next to no heritage in the sport. Sharma’s plans were ambitious: bring structure to the disparate expat cricketing culture, and immerse the local population in the game – no easy feat when children attend school from 7am to 5pm, and spend the evening in language classes. The solution was simple: start practice at 5am. Sharma woke up in time, and so did more than 3,500 Cambodian schoolchildren eager to learn – leading in 2012 to the establishment of a youth league, including eight schools, and a girls’ team. Sharma, vice-chairman of the Cricket Association of Cambodia, successfully lobbied the Cambodian Olympic Committee to include cricket on the curriculum – opening up the possibility of participation in the Asian Games; the board also won Associate status from the Asian Cricket Council. Next on Sharma’s list is Madagascar. The fact that cattle-wrestling is one of the island’s most popular spectator sports, and that its sole world champion played pe´tanque, suggests it could be his biggest challenge yet.

TIM BROOKS

CHINA

In May, Jiang Shuyao, a PE student at Shenyang Sports University, became the first cricketer from mainland China to play a league match overseas – for Cleethorpes Academy against Holton-le-Clay Fourth Eleven in the East Lindsey Cricket League. Jiang walked out, took first strike and scored an unbeaten 76 to chase down 121. Paul Hewstone, cricket chairman at Cleethorpes, said “Shu would have got into the first team on his fielding alone. He’s one of the best in the club.” But the first team already had a South African fast bowler as their registered overseas professional in the Yorkshire Premier League. Instead, Jiang found his level in the seconds, averaging 30 and helping out with the wicket at the first-class ground, where Nottinghamshire used to play the occasional game. The Asian Cricket Council paid for his flights and travel costs, and Jiang’s family – by no means members of China’s nouveau riche – forked out 50,000 yuan (£5,000) to support him for six months. Cleethorpes players put him up for the entire trip. “He’d only really played Twenty20 before,” said Hewstone. “There were a couple of times early on when he’d cream two fours, then slice one up in the air.” The student learned fast. As the season wore on, Jiang grew more cautious, and less likely to throw his bat at one on a sticky dog. Armed with a translation device on his smartphone, he gradually got to grips with the language too, with the odd understandable mishap – among them a three-hour wait in a car park in Doncaster after missing his stop on the train. Tactics were less of a problem. “He instinctively understood field positions and strategy – and started to contribute more in the field as he became more confident in English,” said Hewstone. But he did well to refrain from using either English or Mandarin in a fractious cup match at Nettleham, when Jiang was last man out for 50, five short of victory, to a questionable lbw decision; he simply put his bat under his arm and walked off. Opportunities to play at such a high standard have been rare for Chinese cricketers, who remain largely excluded from the expat-dominated leagues in Beijing and Shanghai. But in 2012, three of Jiang’s national team-mates spent time playing and training in Sydney; three other men and three women came to England as guests of the charity Capital Kids Cricket. Alas, their trip coincided with the wettest June in London in living memory, which obliterated almost all their matches.

JAMES COYNE

FRANCE

MCC marked London 2012 by crossing the Channel in June for an Olympic commemoration fixture. It was conceived as a rematch of sorts of the 1900 Paris Olympics, when Devon County Wanderers, representing Great Britain, beat the Union des Sociétés Françaises de Sports Athlétiques (France) by 158 runs in a two-innings game. This time, a Twenty20 game was played at the charming Chaˆteau de Thoiry, west of Paris. To a soundtrack of roaring lions and other exotic wildlife from the zoo in the grounds, MCC won by 34 runs. That was a far cry from the last time they were in town: in 1989, to mark the bicentenary of the French Revolution, they slipped to a seven-wicket defeat against a France team led by an Irishman, Jack Short, and containing just one Frenchman. It was a hollow victory – cricket hasn’t progressed much since, and remains largely the preserve of expats. But that may change. The France Cricket Association has invested heavily in Kwik Cricket, introducing the game into 150 schools in September. The aim is to reach 300 to 500 schools – and 40,000 children – within three years. Around 150 teachers have been trained up in the basics of the game; that figure is expected to reach 800. A full-time project co-ordinator has been hired, along with five regional development officers. The FCA have also forged an Anglo-French relationship with Kent: 18-year-old leg-spinner Zika Ali has spent time at the Academy in Canterbury, and received a leg-spin masterclass from board patron Richie Benaud at Thoiry. If the kids come through, then in 15 years perhaps MCC will be able to play a team of thoroughbred Frenchmen.

BARNEY SPENDER

GERMANY

The first summer’s cricket on the spectacular Maifeld, beside Berlin’s Olympic Stadium, was an almost unmitigated success. Cricketers had been evicted from the nearby Körnerplatz field in 2011, after fears about potential damage caused by flying cricket balls, but a new venue was eventually agreed, with the grant of two new synthetic pitches. Highlights included the emergence of a young Afghan tweaker, and the first schools match at the ground, during which children aged eight to 11 inspired hopes that cricket may yet gain a grassroots footing in the German capital. An incursion by the national polo championships in August was tolerated with good humour, although the cricketers showed less understanding when a local groundsman decided to paint a line down the centre of one pitch to demarcate the viewing area for a fireworks display. But no season in Berlin would be complete without controversy. During one league match involving DSSC Berlin, the eventual champions, the age-old question of ball-tampering raised its head. The umpires, noticing the number of abrasions on one side, confiscated the ball and sent it in for inspection; fines and suspensions ensued.

FABIAN MUIR

GUATEMALA

Guatemala, cradle of the Mayan civilisation, but new to the game of cricket, won the regional Easter Cup by whitewashing El Salvador home and away. Cricket’s early pioneers were Manuel Farfan, a PE teacher who introduced it into public schools on the advice of British friends, and Asociación Manos Amigas, a non-governmental organisation keen to reduce violence among disadvantaged children. But it took Luke Humphries, a young Christian missionary from Hampshire, to establish the first club, in 2011. It has since morphed into Guatemala City Jaguars and Santiago Sacatepéquez Knights, while the Asociación de Cricket de Guatemala has been set up to entice more Guatemalans to the game. Training takes place on football grounds, with competitive matches at the Democracia Stadium in Guatemala City. Those of us first enchanted by the game on trips overseas were honoured to represent our nation, and have done her proud.

STUARDO MONROY

LIBERIA

William Gabriel Kpoleh, a combative opposition leader and political prisoner, probably had little time for cricket. But long after his passing, the school that bears his name is keeping the game afloat. An enthusiastic headmaster, an expanding group of curious students, and the cricket-mad Indian community have created their own hub on a playground on the outskirts of Monrovia. Hop on a downtown motorbike taxi, cling on for dear life and, 45 minutes later, with occasional stops for barked instructions, you are in New Georgia. On a scorching Sunday morning, a practice match is already under way. The wicket is improvised, lovingly assembled by a Liberian devotee based on pictures downloaded from the internet. Bats are generously shared around. For now, bowlers make do with a tennis ball. There is no Liberian Alf Gover yet, but Anish Panchal has volunteered his services as a coach. He is convinced of cricket’s healing power. “Cricket has done a great deal to strengthen unity between Muslims and Hindus in India,” he says. “These are strong, fit guys. They have adapted quickly to a new sport, and understand it requires daily practice to become a good player. I regularly screen DVDs from the last World Cup, so the guys can learn about tactics, field placings, how to chase a target.” Watching from the side, with visible pride, are Michael Nyanneh, president of the Liberia National Cricket Federation, and the secretary, James Brown III. Nyanneh noticed Asians playing cricket when he was a refugee in neighbouring Ivory Coast during the civil war years. Upon his return to Liberia, he flirted with the idea of setting up a baseball association – perhaps a more logical choice in a country founded by freed African-American slaves. But the sports ministry suggested cricket instead. They were supportive, but had no money to offer, so he turned to the small but prosperous Indian community. And in February 2012, an inaugural tournament was staged at Samuel K. Doe Sports Complex, where an LNCF XI, mixing Liberians with Indians, earned a three-run victory over Monrovia Super Kings, a cash prize of $450 and an unspecified package from the sponsor. The New Republic, betraying its American influence, declared the Super Kings had been “whipped 116–113”.

CHRIS SIMPSON

MALDIVES

In 2010, the American R&B superstar Akon was due to play a concert at Ekuveni Stadium on Male´, the largest island in the Maldives, until it was shelved at the last minute following threats by Islamic groups who objected to his raunchier songs. The building knocked together to house his band’s equipment now acts as a cricket pavilion. Space is at a premium in this archipelago of 200 inhabited (and 1,000 uninhabited) islands, so cricketers share the stadium with the nation’s athletes: the pitch is contained within the running track on a sand-and-seashell surface. Another ground was built in late 2011, on the southern island of Fuvahmulah, for a tournament between Under-25 teams from the leading cricketing nations in Asia. The competition, won by Pakistan, ran parallel with a South Asian regional political summit hosted by then-president Mohamed Nasheed – famous for hosting a cabinet meeting underwater to highlight what climate change might do to his low-lying nation. Nasheed, who learned the rudiments of the game at Dauntsey’s School in Wiltshire, apparently had grand plans to install more grounds, including the country’s first turf wicket, but since he was ousted in February 2012 – at gunpoint, he claimed – funding for cricket appears to have decreased. A year of political turmoil did not prevent the Maldives taking part in the ACC Trophy Elite for the first time, after which Maldivian cricket legend Moosa Kaleem retired, aged 37.

JAMES COYNE

MONGOLIA

On the outskirts of Ulan Bator, in the brown, barren earth, there is a patch of land that stands out. It is mainly flat and stoneless; most importantly, it is 22 yards long. And every Sunday in summer, it belongs to the only cricket club in Mongolia. Wedged between Siberia and China, and untouched by the British Empire, the country hasn’t seen much of the sport. But in 1995, Indian and British expats formed the Mongolian Cricket Club. Five years later, Lord’s gave them permission to use the initials MCC (provided there was no clash of interest). By 2005, the game was fading, but it was reborn in a restaurant on the sixth floor of the UB Hotel, run by an Indian, Babu Joseph. After a quiz night, a group of Indians and Australians decided they wanted to play regularly again. They had no real pitch, so they built their own. “It was hard work, but the mining companies helped,” said Shiva Velchuri, a 34-year-old from Andhra Pradesh who works in IT. “They have all the toys – excavators, rollers, compactors. We even got staff from the Indian Embassy to help, picking out stones.” Three-quarters of the players are Indian, the rest mostly Australian. They’ve had South Africans and Zimbabweans, and Americans and Canadians who like to practise their baseball. The club play Twenty20 matches among themselves. Mongolians have also tried their hand for the first time. “Every week, locals will walk through the field while we’re playing. One even stopped to watch standing right in the middle – can you believe it?” spluttered Velchuri. They’ve also been visited by the police a couple of times. “They were curious, I think. They asked our local players some questions, and made sure we weren’t drinking alcohol, but they let us play.” The club have tried, and failed, to find out who owns the land. But no one seems to object to their presence.

OWEN AMOS

NEW CALEDONIA

It’s 8am on a Saturday morning in September, and two games of traditional cricket are in full swing at Stade de N’Du. From the otherwise empty concrete stand there is a flurry of activity from women wearing brightly coloured, calf-length, loose dresses. Thirteen scattered fielders and four batters make up each game: two to hit, two to run. The umpires are men. There is no protective gear, and bats – flat-faced clubs, really – are one metre long. The bowlers come in off two or three paces. The shots are mostly vigorous leg-side flails. With a loud thud, some middle the heavy, fist-sized ball made from the sap of the banyan; others squirt or balloon it into the off side. If the ball slants down leg, the batter tries to connect by flipping her blade behind her legs – a tricky shot for a quick single, at best (even Eoin Morgan hasn’t tried this one). Good hand–eye co-ordination is vital: the ball tends to fall apart, causing dangerously unpredictable bounce. It hurts too. National-team player Noel Sinyeue recalls how supporters once discouraged him from attempting a catch for fear of injury. He held on, and became an instant 16-year-old hero. Cricket was imported to these perfect islands in the south-west Pacific in the mid-19th century by British Protestant missionaries, who tried to convert the naturally competitive Melanesians to the sport as a replacement for more violent pastimes. The game rapidly absorbed indigenous rituals, and the number of registered players has since spiralled to 2,600 in 72 clubs. They field several teams for men, women and youngsters, making cricket one of the most popular New Caledonian sports – popular enough to survive Napoleon III’s annexation of “Nouvelle-Calédonie” in 1853, and 160 years of enduring French jurisdiction. The game is so deeply ingrained in the culture that, some years ago, a New Caledonian brewery chose the silhouette of a female cricketer as the logo for its beer, Adele. Sadly, the beer wasn’t a success. Neither has been international cricket. Although it has been played in New Caledonia for decades, there is a hard core of only around 30 experienced cricketers. In the 2003 Pacific Games, the men’s team suffered one of the heaviest defeats in 50-over cricket, by 468 runs: Papua New Guinea 502 for nine, New Caledonia 34 all out. But the enthusiasts are hopeful that burgeoning partnerships with traditional clubs can help drive New Caledonia to ICC Affiliate status.

NEIL GODDEN

OMAN

Oman’s capital can claim the title of the driest city in the cricket-playing world, traditionally leading to rough and unsafe surfaces. So perhaps it is no surprise that the country’s best-known Arab cricketer, HH Qais bin Khalid Al Said, a cousin of the Sultan, learned the game at Millfield School rather than Muscat. But now Al Emerat, the first fully turf ground in the Sultanate, has been assiduously prepared for the new season. For the first time, fielders will be able to attack the ball, rather than edge in tentatively from the boundary trying to predict bounce and trajectory on scorched-earth ground. Batsmen and bowlers will finally get off matting wickets, and learn to deal with spin and seam. When Oman finished 15th out of 16 at the 2012 World Twenty20 Qualifying tournament, the sports ministry expressed their “deep disappointment”, and enquired why more Omani nationals had not been considered for selection. As in many Gulf states, league matches are often subcontinental corporate affairs between expat semi-professionals – with a single token Omani thrown in to satisfy league membership regulations. Yet Oman has the best record in the Middle East for producing indigenous cricketers: around 200 of the 1,100 regular players in the country are Arabs. Oman is the only country in the region to insist upon three nationals in their representative youth sides from 16 upwards. And, as coaches head into schools, more and more Arab boys and girls are discovering, to their surprise, that this peculiar game is their nation’s most successful international sport.

PAUL BIRD

POLAND

If the players of Warsaw CC are guilty of taking their eye off the ball, it might just be because there’s a nudist beach opposite their ground. Founded in 1994, the club play their matches in the plush surroundings of the Panorama Country Club, a former hangout of British Embassy staff which still oozes old-school tie. And that stiff upper lip has been required at times after the Wał Miedzeszyński beach on the banks of the river Wisła became a popular spot for naturists. The last couple of years have been significant for the growth of cricket in Poland, with the formation of a three-team national league: two clubs come from Warsaw, while Lodz CC have acquired their own ground on the outskirts of Poland’s third-largest city. Cricket has also sprung up in Lublin, and been revived in Krakow and Wroclaw, with tentative plans elsewhere too. For around a decade, there was minimal contact with the rest of European cricket. But in 2008 an XI made up of players of Polish descent, starring auctioneer Adam Franciszek Partridge from BBC antiques show Flog It!, and former Cumberland all-rounder Jimmy Wisniewski, participated in the inaugural Euro Twenty20 tournament at Carmel & District CC in Wales. Four years later, a Poland representative team drawn from the domestic league, including two natives, Szymon Rokicki and Piotr Sochaj, won the 2012 event in Sofia, beating Romania in the final. The presence of Vineet Sinha – who was once clocked at 85mph, and bowled Matt Prior while playing for a Mumbai XI during England’s tour of India in 2008-09 – helped their cause.

TIMOTHY ABRAHAM

ROMANIA

The 2007 World Cup remains, for most cricket lovers, a competition best forgotten – but it captivated one man so profoundly that the future of the game in Europe may change for ever. Gabriel Marin, 53, is a former Romania Under-19 basketball player who, three years after the fall of Nicolae Ceaus¸escu in 1989, set up his own IT company with $500 – much to his family’s despair. Twenty-one years on, Omnilogic is one of the success stories of the Romanian market economy, and its chief executive the archetypal post-Communist self-made man. Marin could afford to send his son, Radu, to Lyceum Alpinum Zuoz, an exclusive international boarding school in Switzerland, where students play cricket in winter on the frozen lake at St Moritz. One holiday in 2007, Radu returned home with tales of wonder about a peculiar English game, and persuaded his father to buy a Sky Sports subscription so he could follow the World Cup in the Caribbean. They sat up all night, watching match after match. “What drew me to cricket is the unarmed combat,” said Gabriel. “The idea that a guy can be batting for six or seven hours, facing a ball every 40 seconds, with no recourse to physical confrontation or arguing with the umpire.”

Marin embarked upon a crash-course world tour, taking in England’s 2009 Ashes win at Lord’s, the 2011 World Cup semi-final in Colombo, and a Rajasthan Royals game at the IPL, where he chinwagged with Lalit Modi: “I can’t comment on the mess he got involved with, but I thought his views on cricket development were pretty sound.” Shane Warne’s shirt from his Test farewell at the SCG hangs proudly on Marin’s office wall.

He grew so smitten that he pledged €5m for a sport that had only one club in the entire country before he became involved. When he first met with officials from Transylvania CC in late 2008, they were playing against bibulous touring sides at the national rugby stadium, on a plastic Flickx pitch hammered on top of a wooden board. Marin helped establish an official body, Cricket Romania, which has drawn together the country’s cricketing pockets into four clubs in Bucharest, three in Timişoara, and another in Cluj, with more to come in Constanta, Oradea and Iaşi. Most are heavily reliant on expats, often Indian medical students, but Timişoara Titans are entirely Romanian. In 2012, each club was obliged to field two Romanian-born players in league matches, and the board claim 300 Romanian children in 20 schools are now playing regularly – the best of them with a hard ball. Cricket Romania applied for ICC Affiliate membership in 2012, and expected a positive response by June 2013; they are targeting Associate status by 2020.

Their patron insists on a sustainable legacy. “It’s pretty obvious the ‘Stanford way’ is not the way to do it,” grinned Marin. “If the main guy disappears for whatever reason, there’s nothing left. So we’re trying to organise institutional sponsorship and embed it into the local system. I believe the game won’t survive in Romania if it’s confined to expats. We must create a local tradition.” Marin’s money and influence have allowed Romania to pursue projects unimaginable for other countries. Moara Vlaăsiei, a jaw-dropping ground 30km from Bucharest, is destined to be the envy of all non-Test-playing nations. Three years in the making, it has been lovingly curated by an experienced British groundsman, Alan Lewis, who has trained up a team of local groundstaff to cut, scarify, roll and mark eight strips. There are ambitious – and fully costed – blueprints for a cricket academy and indoor school at the site. Assuming the square survives the harsh Wallachian winter, Moara Vlaăsiei will open for play in Easter 2013 – as the only grass wicket between Denmark and Abu Dhabi.

JAMES COYNE

ST HELENA

A vast fundraising campaign on St Helena came up with the £24,000 needed to cover the costs of sending the island’s cricketers to their maiden international tournament, ICC Africa Division Three in Johannesburg – which meant a five-day voyage to Cape Town on the Royal Mail Ship St Helena. The squad filled the time by thrashing the boat’s crew in a series of matches played with a rope ball, then huddled around a TV set to watch Out of the Ashes, the documentary about the improbable rise of Afghanistan through the global pyramid. At a training session, the players hastily applied some green spraypaint to their pads to match the new one-day pyjama kits. Since they had developed a distinct cricketing philosophy on an isolated island of 4,000 people, it was impossible to know how they would get on. An emotional opening morning answered many questions, as Cameroon were bowled out for 36, with Dane Leo taking a hat-trick in his only over. The win over Gambia was a father-and-son affair: Gavin George, now aged 57, and David George, 33, each scored 48. Heartbreakingly, the team were beaten by Seychelles in a super over, and lost by a single run to Rwanda. Three more runs, and St Helena would have been promoted to Division Two.

SIMON GREEN

SPAIN

On September 4, Tariq Ali Awan – a 38-year-old Pakistani expat living in Madrid – emulated the great Sussex stylist Ranjitsinhji by scoring two centuries on the same day. Opening for Spain in the European Championship Division Two Twenty20 tournament in Corfu, Tariq took advantage of short boundaries at the Messonghi beach resort ground to blaze 150 not out from 66 balls, including 16 sixes, in a morning match against Estonia. The game dragged on longer than intended, due to the time spent retrieving balls from the neighbouring boccia and tennis courts, and from a hotel, which suffered a number of broken windows. Tariq returned in the afternoon to take on Portugal, and decided to step up the pace: this time he hit 18 of his 55 balls for six in an innings of 148. Perhaps wisely, Akbar Saiyad, Portugal’s 66-year-old captain, had chosen to sit it out.

JAMES COYNE

TAJIKISTAN

In 1997, at the end of Tajikistan’s messy five-year civil war that followed the break-up of the Soviet Union, Indian students and exiled Afghans began playing tennis-ball cricket in the capital, Dushanbe. Locals noticed the similarities with suzi musi, a traditional Tajik bat-and-ball game, and joined in. There are now eight men’s and two women’s teams affiliated to the Tajikistan Cricket Federation, and a Pakistani tape-ball community pining for entry. The hotbed is Shahrinaw, 50km west of Dushanbe, where cricket is played at municipality grounds and an orphanage. The TCF will have to hurdle several obstacles to expand cricket in Central Asia’s poorest country: internet use is rare, with access to social networking sites cut off at the whim of the government. And around a million Tajik men are drawn to Russia every year for work, in order to feed their families and prop up their country’s fragile economy. So it may be women that do the heavy lifting. Assadullah Khan, a former Afghanistan player now coaching in Tajikistan, has declared that, in two years, his all-Tajik women’s team will be the best in Asia. In July, Tajikistan played Afghanistan in a three-match series in Shahrinaw – the first women’s international games in each country’s history. The Afghan team made the journey north across the border with the sponsorship of a private NGO, as women’s sport was considered too sensitive an issue for Kabul. The Afghans, clad in headscarves, won 2–1.

JAMES COYNE

USA

Looking for controversial elections, habitual infighting, breakaway governing bodies and on-field talent that soldiers on in spite of it all? Then look no further. The USA Cricket Association general elections, postponed throughout 2011, finally took place in April, but only after 32 of 47 member leagues were denied the right to vote. USACA presidential candidate Ram Varadarajan’s 11th-hour lawsuit couldn’t reverse the board’s decision to disenfranchise leagues they considered “not of good standing”. The only non-incumbent voted on to the board was Kenwyn Williams – who pledged prior to his election to impose a gag order preventing all USACA players and employees from speaking to the media. Six months after he was elected executive secretary, Williams plunged USACA’s Facebook page into a social media meltdown. Williams was eventually suspended by USACA, before they removed him from the board altogether. Another consequence of the elections was the formation of the American Cricket Federation, a breakaway group attempting to usurp USACA as the official national governing body. The ACF staged their inaugural national championship in Los Angeles in October, with eight former USACA leagues participating. The Southern California Cricket Association won the title, and two of their players were subsequently picked to represent USA against Canada, eliminating fears that anyone playing in ACF events would be ostracised by USACA. The national team experienced mixed fortunes on the field, finishing 12th out of 16 at the ICC World Twenty20 Qualifier, but winning promotion from WCL Division Four. USA’s leading scorer in both events was stalwart Sushil Nadkarni. His hard-hitting opening partner Steven Taylor, an 18-year-old from Florida who also took part in a World XI match in Pakistan, showed signs he could become America’s first home-grown star since Bart King toured the UK at the start of the 20th century.

PETER DELLA PENNA

With special thanks to Mahendra Mapagunaratne.

Wisden always welcomes engaging tales of cricket from improbable corners of the globe. Please contact james.coyne@wisden.com

Table of Contents

Title page

eCopyright

Table of Contents

Preface

Part One – Wisden’s 150th

Ten Moments in Time

Five Cricketers of 1864-88 by Simon Wilde

What editing Wisden meant to me

The Cricket Reporting Agency by Murray Hedgcock

A production in five acts by Robert Winder

Wisden – a timeline

Engraved in the memory by Rupert Bates

Collecting Wisden by Patrick Kidd

1864 and all that by Hugh Chevallier

Part Two – Comment

Wisden Honours

Notes by the Editor

The KP summer

It’s tough being Kevin by Patrick Collins

KP and Twitter by Jarrod Kimber

Excommunication and reintegration by James Coyne

Tendulkar’s 100 hundreds by Simon Barnes

The fastest spell of all? by Christian Ryan

The hardest decision of my life by Steve Davies

150 years of Yorkshire CCC

No laughing matter by Duncan Hamilton

An old saw cuts no ice by Chris Waters

The Leading Cricketer in the World, 2012

Michael Clarke by Greg Baum

50 years of touring England (and Five Wisden Trophy moments) by Tony Cozier

Christopher Martin-Jenkins 1945–2013

Flowing conversation by Mike Selvey

A bank of happy memories by James Martin-Jenkins

Tom Maynard 1989–2012

United in grief by Steve James

Cricket and corruption: For the better – or worse? by Ed Hawkins

Wisden’s writing competition 2012

Five Cricketers of the Year

Hashim Amla by Neil Manthorp

Nick Compton by Richard Latham

Jacques Kallis by Christopher Martin-Jenkins

Marlon Samuels by Tony Cozier

Dale Steyn by Telford Vice

Farewells

Dravid and Laxman by Rahul Bhattacharya

Andrew Strauss by Scyld Berry

Ricky Ponting by Gideon Haigh

Mark Ramprakash by Barney Ronay

The one-day game: Five decades of hits and giggles by Tanya Aldred

A question of talent by Mike Atherton

Part Three – The Wisden Review

Cricket books, 2012 by John Crace

Cricket in the media, 2012 by Jonathan Liew

Cricket on Eurosport by James Coyne

Cricket and blogs, 2012 by S. A. Rennie

Retirements by Steve James

Cricketana by David Rayvern Allen

Cricket and the weather, 2012 by Philip Eden

Cricket people by Ali Martin

Cricket in the courts in 2012

Cricket and the Laws in 2012 by Fraser Stewart

Chronicle of 2012

One hundred years ago

Fifty years ago

Obituaries

Part Four – English International Cricket

England in 2012 by Stephen Brenkley

England players in 2012 by Lawrence Booth

Pakistan v England in the UAE, 2011-12

Review by John Etheridge

First Test by Derek Pringle

Second Test by George Dobell

Third Test by Paul Newman

Sri Lanka v England, 2011-12

Review by Dean Wilson

First Test by Lawrence Booth

Second Test by Vic Marks

England v West Indies, 2012

Review by Mike Selvey

First Test by Andrew Miller

Second Test by James Coyne

Third Test by Julian Guyer

Oh yeah, Tino by Alan Tyers

England v Australia, 2012

Review by Richard Hobson

England v South Africa, 2012

Review by Simon Wilde

The tough guy toppled by Telford Vice

First Test by Hugh Chevallier

Second Test by Lawrence Booth

Third Test by Steven Lynch

India v England, 2012-13

Review by George Dobell

The repeat performance by Vic Marks

Revenge – and a reality check by Anjali Doshi

First Test by Dean Wilson

Second Test by Gideon Brooks

Third Test by Suresh Menon

Fourth Test by Richard Hobson

Part Five – English Domestic Cricket

LV= County Championship, 2012

Review by Neville Scott

Friends Life T20, 2012

Review by Alan Gardner

The Final by Hugh Chevallier

Clydesdale Bank 40, 2012

Review by Jon Culley

The Final by James Coyne

Women’s cricket in 2012

European cricket in 2012

Cricket in Ireland by Ian Callender

Cricket in Scotland by William Dick

Cricket in the Netherlands by David Hardy

Part Six – Overseas Cricket

World cricket in 2012 by Simon Wilde

ICC World Twenty20, 2012-13

Review by David Hopps

The Final by Vic Marks

Women’s World Twenty20, 2012-13 by Alison Mitchell

Australia in 2012 by Daniel Brettig

Bangladesh in 2012 by Utpal Shuvro

India in 2012 by Anand Vasu

New Zealand in 2011 by Andrew Alderson

Pakistan in 2012 by Osman Samiuddin

South Africa in 2012 by Colin Bryden

Sri Lanka in 2012 by Sa’adi Thawfeeq

West Indies in 2012 by Tony Cozier

Zimbabwe in 2012 by Mehluli Sibanda

Afghanistan in 2012 by Shahid Hashmi

Women’s cricket in Afghanistan by Tim Wigmore

Canada in 2012 by Faraz Sarwat

Kenya in 2012 by Martin Williamson

Kenya’s Maasai cricketers by Barney Douglas

Cricket Round the World