Almost County News: England Squads for Jan and Feb

 

22/12

England Squads - shocked that there's no place for the King of Asia as the games are in India!

I hope they've got Rehan Ahmed's visa application in already, after what happened last time.

18/12

Ravi Ashwin Retires

17/12

"King of Asia" to quote Pravda...

What a joke! In his latest road trip, to Kathmandu, Tom Moores playing as a specialist "batter" in the third tier competition scored at an average of 23 runs over his 7 innings as his side Lambrini Lumbini Lions finished bottom of the league - a familiar position for the Moores family these days, unfortunately.

14/12

Imad and Amir Retire from Internationals again

09/12

I've just checked-up on how young Thomas is doing in Kathmandu (using the link below):

His side have lost each of their four games so far. Tom isn't keeping wicket but has scored 30, 45, 7 and 31 at a healthy scoring rate

07/12

Dane Paterson Test 5-fer

26/11

Nepal Premier league

25/11

Double forfeit cup final

Ivory Coast supping seven-up

24/11

Cricket's First Responders.

Gideon Haigh.

Cricket ET Al.

Sunday, 24 November 2024.

PTG 4684-22516.

Nobody could name them today - which, in their telling, is just fine.  The best match officials, it’s said, efface themselves so completely that you’re hardly aware of their existence. By that measure they did their jobs.  But that, a decade on, has rendered theirs the untold story of perhaps Australian cricket’s most dreadful moment.  When Philip Hughes sustained his mortal blow ten years ago on Monday, umpires Ash Barrow and Michael Graham-Smith, with referee David Talalla, became the game’s first responders.  They’ll message one another tomorrow.  Nothing weighty - just checking in.  But like everyone else, they’ve been changed by the shared experience.

I’m chatting to Ash Barrow in a cafe near my home.  It’s the week before round one of the 2024-25 season, but he’s taken a break from the pitches he now tends in Casey.  He’s funny, salty, and a natural raconteur.  He played a ton of cricket at Endeavour Hills, Doveton, Fountaingate and eventually Fitzroy-Doncaster - a keeper who stood up to the pace bowlers, a cricketer who did not stand back from a confrontation.  And why would he?  ‘I’ve had knives pulled on me, guns pulled on me,’ he says, then adds with a laugh: ‘I’m a Doveton boy.’

He started umpiring in his mid-30s and stood in more than a hundred Premier matches before promotion to the first-class panel; his wife left him the day he came home with his contract.  "You’re on your way up”, she said. "And I’m on my way out”.  These days they are on good terms, and last year even went travelling together.  Barrow umpired because he liked it: it cost him money to take time off from business activities that included communications cabling, body corporate maintenance and apiary.  He was also good at it, and popular: players called him ‘Wheels’, because where possible he would ride his Harley-Davidson to games.  The knockabout air concealed a lot of tradecraft.  

When he arrived in Sydney on Wednesday 24 November 2014, for example, the first thing he did was stock the fridge of his apartment at the Meriton Suites Zetland with drinks and nibbles: after a long day on field, the last thing you wanted was to be doing was foraging for food in the evening.  The second was to head for the Sydney Cricket Ground (SCG) for a routine inspection with Graham-Smith and Talalla.  With his curatorial background, he sensed that the motley grass cover and bare patches on pitch number seven, nearest the Members, heralded deterioration.  The conditions would need watching.

I’m chatting to Michael Graham-Smith on Zoom. He hails from Burnie in Tasmania. He played a ton of cricket too, including twenty years of first-grade for University Cricket Club in Hobart, with twelve years on the committee and seven as president.  He had just slipped down to second-grade when Cricket Tasmania’s umpires coordinator Richard Widows approached him at a lunch break. "Ever thought about umpiring?”, said Widows.  "‘I think you’d be good at it”.  Graham-Smith tried and "got the bug”.  

A teacher of arithmetic at Hobart’s Elizabeth College, he liked the maths and physics problems it served up.  He was six years standing first-grade and second-grade before his first interstate gig in 2013; New South Wales v South Australia would be his first game at the SCG.  When he looked up and down the New South Wales team, too, it could almost have been a Test match. The home attack he was about to umpire featured internationals Mitchell Starc, Nathan Lyon, Doug Bollinger, Shane Watson, Steve O’Keefe with the promising Sean Abbott. 

 

The step up to the top level is steep. As a fifteen-year-old, Graham-Smith walked into the nets at Les Clark Oval in Burnie one evening, and found himself facing West Indian Winston Davis, who had taken 7/51 against Australia in the 1983 World Cup.  In the dim light, all he could see of Davis was his smile; he certainly sensed nothing of the ball before hearing its reverberating impact against the back of the net; he next heard the voice of his uncle, the former state player Trevor Docking: "Come out of there now, Michael….”.  He tells the story now with feeling: he has never needed reminding that cricket can be a dangerous game.

I’m having lunch with David Talalla, with whom I’ve been friends for some years. He has a background that can only be considered unique.  Born in Malaysia, resident in Australia since the age of six, he represented the former for five years, making an international hundred against Gibraltar, and appearing in the 1998 Commonwealth Games.  Having followed his father into the law, he followed his own instincts into sports management, including acting as a Cricket Australia (CA) match referee between 2013 and 2020.

Talalla’s CV is daunting.  He has trained Australian Football League (AFL) umpires.  He has mentored tennis players.  He has been involved in gymnastics high performance.  Today he is on the ethics and governance committee of Hockey Australia.  But cricket, for which he is a Level 3 coach, is his first love.  Ten years ago he was coaching at Northcote United Juniors, and thinks often about an exchange he’d had with a parent the weekend before flying to Sydney.  He was squatting next to a boy called Xavier with a dozen tennis balls, flicking them up at his (helmeted) head.  

"Why are you doing that?" Xavier’s dad Mick asked.  "When I grew up, there were no helmets and you learned to watch the ball”, Talalla explained.  "Nowadays players turn their heads, even at elite level.  But it’s very difficult to get hurt if you’re watching it.  Take a look at YouTube one day.  You never see a batter hit between the eyes”, Not a big lesson, Talalla thought, but an important one.

Thinking back further, Talalla recollects the morning of 25 November as… odd.  The officials went looking for a cafe for breakfast, but could find nowhere open; they tried to book a cab, but nobody would accept their fare for a ten-minute journey to the SCG.  Eventually they fibbed that they were going to the airport in order to get a ride.  The umpire’s room at the SCG is upstairs, out of the way, and has no vantage of the ground; the referee camps next door.  A further layer of the unusual was added when Talalla learned that Australian captain Michael Clarke, out of the game with a long-term hamstring injury, might be holding a press conference at teatime to foreshadow his withdrawal from the forthcoming Adelaide Test.  

For a Sheffield Shield match, in fact, this New South Wales v South Australia match felt disarmingly significant.  The games elsewhere - Victoria v Western Australia at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, Queensland v Tasmania at Allan Border Field in Brisbane - were attracting little attention.  At the SCG there were reporters in the media centre, photographers at the perimeter.  Talalla was present for the toss, which South Australia’s Johan Botha won from NSW’s Brad Haddin, electing to bat.  That set the stage for Clarke’s likely replacement, Philip Hughes, returning to his old home ground for the first time since transferring his allegiance to South Australia.

As Starc prepared to bowl the match’s first ball at Hughes from the Paddington End, Michael Graham-Smith took up his stance and said: “Play”.  He and Barrow had earlier tossed a bail - the convention was that the taller umpire, who was Graham-Smith, went to the end indicated by the longer spigot.  Graham-Smith had umpired Hughes in the previous Sheffield Shield round, Barrow had umpired him the previous season, and Talalla had refereed him during Australia A’s series against India A in Darwin in July.  

During those games, one of the Indian pace bowlers had loudly called umpire Paul Wilson a “cheat".  Hughes, who seldom had anything to say on the field, unusually came to Wilson’s defence.  “Hey!" he said. "You can’t call an umpire that!”  As match referee, Talalla was limited to making a complaint to the Indian management rather than laying a formal charge: it was smilingly ignored.  But he made a point of thanking Hughes. "Good on you for saying that”,’ he said.  Hughes smiled. It went to the general view of the twenty-five-year-old as a solid citizen, who never needed telling right from wrong.

The surface was as bad as the umpires had anticipated: dry, lifeless, two-paced.  When Bollinger finally managed to get a bouncer head high, Barrow called it "first for the over”.  "Awww come on, Ash”, Bollinger complained.  "The pitch is shit”.  "First for the over, Dougie”, Barrow reiterated.  Otherwise he found the game as mild as the conditions.  His practice at square leg was to stand a pitch length away, so that his eyes were always operating the same range.  

He would only stand nearer if he sensed some spite in the game; he felt no need.  The competition was willing, the temper well within bounds - he was bemused later by claims of blood-curdling sledging.  The score at the first break was one for 74, with Hughes on 32.  Players, umpires and referee dined, as routinely, in the carvery.  But it was clear afterwards that the NSW leadership, captain Haddin and coach Trevor Bayliss, had used lunch to review their plans.  The bowling afterwards was shorter, tighter, designed to cramp and limit.  Barrow called it "a first-class length", reaching the batter mainly between waist and neck.  

"Everyone knew Phil didn’t like the ball at his body”, says Graham-Smith. "But he was a Test batter, an opening batter. That kind of bowling goes with it”.  Scoring slowed: Hughes made 24 in the first ten overs after the break, but only seven in the next nine.  As Abbott commenced the forty-ninth over from the Paddington End, South Australia was 2/134, with Tom Cooper 5 and Hughes 61.  Hughes tugged the second ball to backward square leg for 2; the next was shorter, slanting across until it was heading over off stump.

Since then, none of Barrow, Graham-Smith or Talalla has watched again what happened next; such is the seeming clarity of their recollection, they feel no need. Barrow at square leg saw Hughes pirouette through the shot before the ball arrived, and thinks he heard the batter, just before the impact on the left hand side of his unprotected neck near the base of his skull, say: “Shit!"  Graham-Smith believed that the ball had hit the helmet and in the instant thought: "We’ll need to get someone out here to look at that”.  Then he saw Hughes stagger to the off side, bend forward as if stunned, and seem to look searchingly at the bowler.  

Talalla was watching the event through his field glasses.  The way Hughes’s armoured figure toppled forward reminded him of a wounded Roman gladiator crumpling in some blood-and-sandals movie.   And then, as they all remember, with the clock showing 2.23 pm, everything went crazy.  Memory exists for our benefit.  Its role is to furnish needs for our survival. Each individual’s needs differ.  Michael Graham-Smith recalls only fragments of the rest of the day: he suspects that this has been part of his body’s coping mechanisms.  Ash Barrow is the opposite. 

 In accidents and confrontations, he has always kept his composure.  He was once filling up at a servo and saw an altercation in which a man was felled.  When the police arrived, he gave them the offender’s number plate.  How could he be so sure, the police wondered?  Barrow had had the presence of mind to write the rego with his finger in the dust on his truck.  Now he sprinted in from square leg, was among the first to reach Hughes’s prone body, and almost certainly first to apprehend the seriousness of the blow.  

As players gathered round and removed Hughes’s helmet, Barrow noted blood around the batter’s nose and mouth, probably from his face-forward fall; he saw no mark or swelling on the neck where the ball had struck; he intuited somehow that death, if not already present, was coming to the cricket field.  Players were signalling frantically to the dressing rooms for medical assistance.  He heard their cries of: "Ambulance!  Ambulance!”.  But Barrow’s instinct was that only a miracle could now save Hughes. "I knew he was gone”, he says.  "Phil never drew breath on the ground. He exhaled a couple of times, but there was nothing going in”.

Still, he tried.  Seeing medicos and support staff gathering at the boundary, Barrow called Talalla on his walkie-talkie. "I’m letting them on”, he said, and began to beckon.  Eventually four qualified personnel would be involved in the resuscitation efforts: team doctor Dr John Orchard and physiotherapist Murray Ryan from New South Wales, South Australian physiotherapist Jon Porter, and a specialist in emergency and intensive care, Dr Tim Stanley, who happened to be attending the game with his sons.  It was Ryan asked NSW room attendant Doug Williams to arrange for a medicab; it was SCG event coordinator Scott Henderson who called an ambulance.  

But everything else fell to the match officials.  About 2.30pm, Barrow got on his walkie-talkie to Talalla again. "‘He’s not breathing, David”, he said.  He then turned his mind to what was expedient and appropriate.  He had the spider cam wires retracted in case an air ambulance needed to land; he requested that the livestream be turned off; he asked that the photographers disperse.  He recognised Hughes’s mother Virginia and sister Megan, and Abbott’s mother, in the Ladies Stand.  The last thing they needed was for this to become a voyeur’s frenzy.

Talalla rang his immediate boss, match officials manager Sean Easey, at CA.  Easey said that, yes, he’d been watching the game in his office at Jolimont; he had seen Hughes go down. "Well, it’s six minutes, Sean”,  said Talalla urgently.  "And he’s not breathing”.  He heard the tone in Easey’s voice change.  "Someone higher up than me will call you”, he replied before ringing off, and when Talalla’s phone rang again it was Sean Cary, CA’s head of operations.  Talalla asked what he should do about the game.  "It’s your call, David”, said Carey.  "Whatever decision you make we will back you”. 

So Talalla headed down to the field himself. People were wandering in aimless circles.  Abbott was being escorted from the field.  Doug Bollinger was bawling. “Dougie”, said Talalla, "you need to get back to the rooms”.  Curator Tom Parker was likewise in tears.  "Is it the pitch?”, he kept asking.  "‘Is it the pitch?"  Worst affected seemed to be South Australian coach Darren Berry, who had been watching from the upper deck of the Members, and for whom this triggered dreadful decade-old memories.  "This is just like when Hookesy died,’ he was repeating, in a lost voice; he, Jon Porter and assistant coach Rob Cassell had all been out with Hookes the night he died.   

Graham-Smith approached Talalla.  "Bayliss has lost the plot”, he said.  "He keeps telling us we have to call the game off.  I keep telling him we don’t have the power”.  Talalla approached theNSW coach. "Trevor, I’m the referee”, he said. "I’m the only person with the power to abandon this match.  I’m happy to call today’s play off now.  But once Phil leaves, we’ll get the captains and coaches together to discuss what we do next, OK?" Bayliss nodded.  Talalla was less sure of what followed. 

As he turned towards the Ladies Stand, he saw Virginia and Megan Hughes, Phil’s mother and sister.  His mind at once began racing: "Do I invite them on? What if they want to be with Phil?  Do I say no? What if I say yes?”  He decided to let the medical personnel do their work, which, like Barrow, he had an uneasy sense was hopeless.  "Phil’s eyes were dark and rolled back in his head”, Talalla says.  "They were only keeping him alive artificially”. 

When Hughes was loaded into the road rather than the air ambulance, which arrived almost simultaneously, Barrow assumed the worst also. But when Talalla spoke a few months later to an uncle who had worked in Formula One, he sensed a rationale for the effort. "You know”, Talalla ventured tentatively, "I think Phil was dead already when he left the SCG”.  Talalla’s uncle nodded."In Formula One, no driver dies at the track”, he said. "’It’s bad for business.  They keep them alive long enough that they can say they 'died in hospital’”.

*

What do you do, under these circumstances?  With the players back in their changing rooms, Tallala sent room attendants to fetch Botha, Berry, Haddin and Bayliss.  They convened around a long table in the umpire’s room with Barrow and Graham-Smith; Talalla could see the shock in their faces.  He opened the floor.  "David, we can’t play”, began Haddin. "We can’t face bowling at 140 Kmh in this frame of mind…"  His voice trailed off.  

The referee looked around.  Nobody elaborated but no-one dissented.  “OK”, he said.  "Decision made.  Match abandoned”. The meeting had taken two minutes, and Talalla advised Cary of the consensus. The next meeting, however, was more awkward.  Somehow, the police had been summoned: an older male and a younger woman.  The latter accosted Barrow demanding the ball, bat and helmet as “evidence”.  Barrow was resisting.  "They’re not for you to take”, he insisted.  

When Talalla intervened, the officer further demanded Abbott be produced for interview.  "You’re not going anywhere near him”,  said Talalla.  When she remonstrated, Tallala turned to her male colleague. "This isn’t a murder scene”, he said.  "‘It’s a game of first-class cricket.  There’s footage if you want to watch it.  But there’s no way you’re getting anywhere near Abbott.  Who’s in charge of the ground?  You as inspector or me as match referee?"  Talalla wasn’t actually quite sure of the legalities, and was relieved when law backed off.  "You’re in charge”, the policeman agreed.  The police settled for taking the equipment; the players and coaches were able to leave more or less straight away.  

The officials stayed.  There was paperwork to conclude, arrangements to be made.  Their phones were blowing up, but they answered few calls.  The International Cricket Council checked in.  So did CA’s cricket services manager Cate Ryan, who asked them what they preferred to do about travelling home.  All decided to leave the following morning.  Talalla heard that Berry was in a bad state, had barricaded himself in a toilet and was refusing to leave.  He started calling him, over and over again; there was no answer.  At last, he was told, the deadlock had been broken, and South Australia’s coach had emerged.

Otherwise, the trio remained in the umpires’ room, saying little. Stillness descended over the emptying ground. Beers materialised.  Looks were exchanged.  At last, around 5 pm, Barrow piped up.  "I can’t stand this”, he said.  "Let’s go for a walk. I need some fresh air”.  So the officials descended to ground level, and started performing quiet laps.  They were interrupted only by a security guard, who asserted that alcohol was not permitted on the arena.  "Oh come on”, said Barrow.  "‘Have some compassion”.  The guard wasn’t having it.  "No beers on the ground”, he repeated.  So the umpires set their beers aside and continued walking. 

"I don’t know how many laps we did”,’ says Talalla.  "We just seemed to keep walking.’  The sun had fallen behind the stands by the time they packed up.  As they sat in their cab bound for Zetland, Talalla mused aloud.  "It’s 6.27pm!”,  he said. "Where’s the time gone?"  Four hours seemed to have passed in a blink. "We need a drink”, said Barrow.  Evening found the officials at the Bat and Ball Hotel on Cleveland Street. 

The news about Hughes was featuring on the pub’s television screens, but the officials went unrecognised.  Barrow and Graham-Smith drained their pints mechanically; Talalla, teetotal for three years, was tempted but stuck to water.  Nobody discussed Hughes directly.  As Graham-Smith remained mostly silent, Barrow and Talalla went over their response to the incident - the incident itself felt too large to process as yet.  It helped, they think.  Later they adjourned to Barrow’s room, where his fridge was stocked.  But nobody could sleep.  

When Talalla turned in just after midnight, he lay awake staring at the ceiling, going obsessively over the question of whether he had done the right thing by Virginia and Megan Hughes.  Should he have called them over to see Philip? "I didn’t know”, he says.  "I still don’t”.  At Kingsford Smith Airport the next morning, the trio bumped into the South Australians.  Berry thanked Talalla for his phone calls.  It was all, you know, so hard.  "It felt weird flying back from a match that hadn’t been completed”, recalls Graham-Smith.  "You don’t expect to go to your workplace and have someone die”.

The ten days after Hughes was pronounced dead on 27 November, when cricket was suspended all over Australia and the Border-Gavaskar Trophy was delayed, were unearthly.  Nobody could think of anything else.  Everything seemed heightened.  Barrow was anxious to umpire again as soon as he could.  "I need to get back on the horse”, he explained to CA.  "You need to give me another game.  I need to start, count to six, and call over”.  Graham-Smith was content, for the time being, to put out his bats. Talalla remembers a text from Xavier’s father Mick, after their exchange about the practice session.  "You must have had a premonition”, said Mick.  

It felt almost unreal when the trio reunited Melbourne on 2 December to connect with flights to Coffs Harbor, in order to attend the Hughes funeral in Macksville.  Suddenly they were standing, in faint awe, amid many of the greatest names in global cricket: Shane Warne, Brian Lara, Dean Jones, Brian Lara, Adam Gilchrist.  Graham-Smith remembers how Gilchrist recognised and sought them out.  "I know today’s going to be tough for you guys”, he said. "I hope it goes OK for you”.  

As they stood among the thousand faces in the hall of Macksville High School, the baking heat intensified the emotions.  Coats were shed, ties loosened.  Talalla noted how the Indian contingent did not join in: Virat Kohli, Rohit Sharma, Ravi Shastri and assistant manager Arshad Ayub maintained sartorial standards.  "I’m impressed you kept your jackets and ties on”, he said to Kohli.  "It was a mark of respect”, said Kohli.  "We respected Phil”.  Gilchrist, Jones and Warne then went to a bottle shop to provide slabs for the bus journey back to the airport.  How strange, the officials think, that, a decade on, only Gilchrist of that trio survives.  

Normality would be harder to retrieve than by a funeral, however solemn.  A week later, even as the Border-Gavaskar Trophy got unsteadily underway at Adelaide Oval, Barrow umpired and Talalla refereed South Australia again at Bellerive Oval in Hobart. Botha’s men folded for 45 in the second innings.  It was hard to escape the feeling that they were still playing their previous match.  At lunch one day, Tom Cooper, who had been the non-striker at the SCG when Hughes was hit, approached Talalla; they arranged to meet afterwards. "‘How are you coping?”, Talalla asked.

"I’m not going well, David”, said Cooper. "I can’t get it out of my head. That last groan.  I can’t stop thinking about it”. Cooper looked close to years. "You know he [Hughes] was staying with me?" he asked.  “No”, said Talalla. "I didn’t”.  "Yeah, he was sleeping on my couch”, Cooper replied.  "The day after I got back, the mattress he’d ordered turned up.  My partner started crying. I started crying”.  "Who’s packing up his kit?”, asked Talalla. "I am”, Cooper answered. "I’m hoping it will give me closure”.   Closure: you couldn’t just hope for it.  Talalla sought Berry out after the game.  "I talked to Tom”, he said.  "You’ve got to get that guy to see someone”.  But what about himself?

CA offered all the match officials counselling services.  All accepted.  Barrow was best able to rationalise events. "I knew Phil Hughes”, he told the counsellor. "I didn’t know Phil Hughes”, Said the counsellor:  "I wish some of the players could take that on board”.  When Graham-Smith tried that, however, it didn’t quite work.  He next umpired the Sheffield Shield in February 2015; when he next umpired at the SCG in November, the game again was left incomplete, being abandoned after 34.2 overs because of the sorry state of the outfield.  

"It was starting to seem like I was destined never to get through a game there”, he recalls, and confesses he struggled to admit the impact of Hughes’s death.  "Part of me felt that it wasn’t my place to be burdened by it”, he recalls. "Because that’s not the match officials’ role; we’re simply to make sure that the game is facilitated. So it was a heavy presence on me, and I was reluctant to acknowledge it.  I had to process it in my own way, and that took probably four to five years”.

Graham-Smith remembers the instant it felt like the past began receding.  Four years after Hughes’s death, he was again umpiring NSW and South Australia at the SCG.  He was again standing at the Paddington End.  Sean Abbott was again bowling the forty-ninth over of the match. Tom Cooper was again non-striker.  A left-hander, Jake Lehmann, was facing.  He looked around.  Did anyone else realise the significance of the third ball of the over?  Nobody seemed to - Lehmann smashed it through cover for four. "That was the moment I think I started moving on”, Graham-Smith says.

David Talalla had the most complex reaction.  "I come from an emotional family”, he explains. "We see life as precious”. His father Richard, as a judge of Malaysia’s High Court, was forced to enact that country’s punitive drug trafficking laws.  When he was stricken with bowel cancer in his 60s, he worried about the influence of the souls he had condemned to death, and asked to be excused from further such cases.  

Talalla brooded on Hughes’s death, especially on his dealing, or not dealing, with the Hughes family.  Had he failed?  Had he got it wrong?  At length, his wife said: "You need help. You’re traumatised”.  Though he was reluctant to visit a psychiatrist, CA’s Cate Ryan arranged for him to meet a counsellor, a former homicide detective Alicia Corbett, at Jolimont where CA’s Headquarters in Melbourne is located.  "That was OK”, he says. "It was my home ground”.  Still, what was wrong with him?  

I said to Alicia: "Why am I so affected by this?  Phil wasn’t a friend. Much as I admired him, I wasn’t going to invite him to my kid’s christening party”.  She said: "David, in my previous life I was a police officer. I worked with the homicide squad.  I saw many terrible things.  But I always had time to get ready for murder scene, to see something awful.  You didn’t.  Nobody expected someone to die at a cricket match”.

Talalla was scheduled to referee a Big Bash League game at the SCG just after Christmas.  He admitted to Corbett he was reluctant to go.  She, kindly, admonished him: "You’re lucky.  You get a chance to say goodbye. Not everyone gets that opportunity”.  So well before the gates opened at SCG for the Sixers v Scorchers game on 29 December 2014, Talalla walked to the middle, stood just off pitch seven, and said under his breath: "Thanks for the memories Philip. You were an exceptional player.  It was a privilege to watch you.  I hope wherever you are you’re OK”.  

It seemed to help.  Next May, he went to the SCG to watch his AFL team Carlton take on the Sydney Swans. "I could see the footy players running over where Phil died”, he recalls.  "But I thought: 'No, I’m good here’”.  There is good and good, of course.  The year Hughes died was also published Bessel van der Kolk’s controversial 'The Body Keeps the Score', exploring the neuroscience of trauma, and the way the body carries its somatic signature.  Barrow, Graham-Smith and Talalla are encouraging advertisements for the survivability of the most harrowing experiences.  But that does not mean they are unmarked, or, indeed, that they were not, at times, let down.

A case in point was the inquest into Hughes’s death held over four days in October 2016 at the NSW Coroners’ Court in Glebe.  Both umpires were called as witnesses, and found themselves awaiting their turn among players in various degrees of emotional distress: Graham-Smith recalls entering the hearing room as Tom Cooper left, slumping in tears after testifying.  Barrow and Graham-Smith had been promised assistance by CA.  None appeared.  

Barrow had asked if he could be excused from umpiring a Matador Cup match the following day. CA insisted he do the game, which happened to involve NSW and South Australia.  On the match morning at Drummoyne Oval, Barrow joined Cooper, Abbott and Bollinger in a group hug.  But CA’s refusal of the only request he had made felt churlish.  A month later, Talalla refereed and Graham-Smith umpired a Sheffield Shield match at the WACA between WA and Tasmania where Adam Voges and Alex Doolan suffered head blows and were ruled out of further involvement in the match. 

"I remember Adam limping off”, says Talalla.  "He was like a heavyweight boxer out on his feet.  His mother was there and met him at the fence”.  Barrow saw this too - he was watching the livestream - and was furious about it.  He rang CA to ask why the cameras had not been turned off as he had insisted on the day of Hughes’s death.  "Haven’t we learned anything?” he asked. He senses that his card was marked accordingly, that CA preferred umpires to be automata, distant from the players, punctilious about their paperwork. His contract was not renewed the following year, on grounds of age.

The three feel content now, reconciled.  They were serious in my conversations with them, not earnest.  They make no big deal about their experiences.  They have no plan to reunite on the anniversary, though they will be in touch.  From time to time, says Graham-Smith, the subject of Hughes will come up in conversation with others, and he will identify himself as an eyewitness. "People will go: 'You mean, you were the umpire in that game?’”, he says. "‘Most people have no idea”.  

To be sure, the experience lurks.  It is, in some respects, embodied.  To this day, Talalla encourages young players to look at YouTube footage of how batters get into trouble taking their eye off the ball. Except that not so long ago he was perusing footage himself, and glimpsed a replay of Hughes being struck - he slammed the laptop shut, turned it off and walked away.  And Ash Barrow, at the end of a long, wide-ranging conversation full of good cricket stories from here and there, surprised me by rolling up his sleeve to reveal a tattoo of Hughes’s vital statistics.

There on the inside top of his left arm is the number 707.  That’s 707 (Hughes's NSW playing number), 612 (Hughes’s SA playing number), 408 (his Test number), and, of course, 63 not out. "My way of saying goodbye”, he said simply.

23/11

Masood in play for Hampshire in the Global Super League. What was the qualification to play this? Did I read Joe Clarke was playing for Victoria in this? All for $1M.

10/11

Joseph Banned for two games

25/10

One heck of a collapse by Western Australia

23/10

New World Record Fastest List A Double Century

21/10

Michael Pepper has had a late call-up to join Phil Salt in England ODI squad that tours the West Indies next month.

There's much anticipation for the headline writers...

15/10

Jacob Duffy gets a Test call-up

14/10

I've just noticed a new tab on the BBC's cricket ribbon

08/10

Duckett gets a thumbs up

26/09

Norfolk's Olly Stone to wed between  Pakistan Tests, in Norfolk

23/09

Most Expensive Place to Watch Cricket - by Broken Cricket Dreams

20/09

Sri Lanka v NZ Test with rest day

13/09

Test Abandoned without a ball bowled

P-word Probe

08/9

Moeen Ali International Retirement

06/09

TheTown that Banned Cricket and it has nothing to do with the ECB

02/09

Bazballopoly - duel role for Baz McCullum

Lord’s ticket struggles another sign Test cricket outside ‘big three’ under threat.
Nick Hoult.
London Daily Telegraph.
Thursday, 29 August 2024.
PTG 4609-22212.

This was always going to be the UK summer when the state of Test cricket outside the so-called “Big Three” hit home for English audiences.  Only around 7,000 tickets are sold for Sunday’s day four of the second Test against Sri Lanka at Lord’s and there are seats at almost all price points from £UK115 ($A 220) on days two and three with Lord’s advertising availability on social media on Wednesday.  Lord’s is sold out for next month’s One Day International against Australia, so it is not as if audiences have had enough of cricket.

The Marylebone Cricket Club is satisfied with its sale for the first three days of the current Test, which proves the point about the difficulty of attracting supporters to matches not involving India and Australia. The days of expecting sell-outs are over when the ‘Big Three' are not playing, even at Lord’s, despite the fact England are good to watch and Sri Lanka showed last week they will compete, making a good contest likely.

The reliance on India and Australia is why the England and Wales Cricket Board’s (ECB) program features one of them every summer of the five seasons from 2022-26 in one form of cricket or another. When they are not playing Tests against each other, the other two ‘Big Three’ members come to England to play white-ball games to make up the shortfall.

Until now, England have been isolated from the declining state of Test cricket around the world because crowds remain healthy in this country, but this summer has thrown up some uncomfortable truths.  With the West Indies Tests earlier in the season the issues were on the field; ticket sales were actually pretty good because grounds enjoyed a post-Ashes bump last year when tickets went on sale before Christmas. But the West Indies were just not good enough to compete, a one-sided series ensued (the Lord’s Test lasting just three days), blamed mainly on the gross inequalities between the haves and have-nots in world cricket.

News that the International Cricket Council is to establish a Test match fund to pay players a minimum of $US10,000 ($A14,705, £UK7,595) per game, a move aimed at the poorer boards who struggle to retain talent in welcome (PTG 4602-22184, 23 August 2024). Several of the West Indies’ best players did not appear in the Test series in June but played in the ECB’s Hundred instead.   However, Cricket West Indies already pays its players $US10,000 per Test, therefore upping match fees in their case will make little difference, whereas a more equal share of the ICC’s $US230 million ($A338m, £UK175m) annual handout would be a game changer (PTG 4190-20530, 11 May 2023).

The ECB is reliant on international bilateral series to pay the bills; around 75 percent of its £UK310m ($A600m) annual income derives from broadcast rights and ticket sales generated by international matches.  The unpredictable future for Test cricket is why the ECB has invested in its own competition, the Hundred, to reduce the reliance on bilateral series that might not exist in ten years’ time.  The problems require a collective will for change that does not exist.  The 'Big Three' love playing each other, keeping the money within a tighter circle. India go to Australia for five Tests later this year. England were in India for five in March. India play in England next northern summer for another five before a full five-Test Ashes series in December. 

For India's tour to the UK in 2025 the cracks will be papered over again, but in 2026 it will be New Zealand and Pakistan who are the visitors and that is a different matter.

One-Test prodigy ‘forced to retire’ at 26 over medical issues.
Fox Cricket.
Friday, 30 August 2024.
PTG 4609-22210.

Australian Will Pucovski’s career has reportedly come to an unfortunate early end due to a recommendation from an independent panel of medical experts and all that’s left is for Cricket Victoria to formalise that contractually.  Pucovski, 26, has suffered a series of head injuries with the latest concussion he suffered in March apparently proving the final straw (PTG 4453-21602, 5 March 2024).  In 2022 a previous medical panel found some of his head injuries were “not true concussions”, and more likely related to stress or trauma responses.

Pucovski played his one and only Test against India at the Sydney Cricket Ground at the age of 22, scoring 62 and 10 as an opener, but suffered a shoulder injury during the match which cost him some six months.  Hope remained that he would be able to string together a long, concussion-free run of form as Australia eyed him as  a long-term replacement at the top or the order, but it was not to be

28/08

Home Office / ECB Audit Crackdown

Dawid Malan has announced his retirement from International cricket

25/08

0 Not Out off 137 balls

0 N O goes Global

20/08

New T20I Record 39 from one over

19/08

Review into broken cricket structure by WCA

World players’ union to review 'broken and unsustainable' schedule.
Cricinfo.
Tuesday, 20 August 2024.
PTG 4597-22162.

The World Cricketers' Association (WCA) has begun a comprehensive review of the game's global structure which the players' body hopes will provide solutions to the increasingly disjointed and cramped cricket calendar (PTG 4566-22027, 22 July 2024).  The WCA represents players from 16 different members, including associations from Australia, England, New Zealand, and South Africa. The only major Full Members without representation at WCA are India and Pakistan, neither of which has a player association for active players.

The review, Mills said, was the result of players wanting to have a say about the future of the game and wanting solutions to be put forward. One of those solutions, which WCA says 84 percent of the players they have spoken to are in favour of, is ring-fenced windows to ensure international cricket and domestic T20 leagues can co-exist.  A six-member group, led by former Australian Cricketers' Association chief Paul Marsh and including former Pakistan captain Sana Mir, former world union chief Tony Irish, former England and Wales Cricket Board chief executive Tom Harrison as well as Sanjog Gupta (Head of Sports, Disney Star), will lead the review. 

The group will consult various stakeholders, including players, current and former administrators, and franchise owners before producing a set of recommendations to present first to the WCA board, and then to the game beyond, including the International Cricket Council. It is aiming to produce recommendations before the end of the year, though that is not believed to be a hard deadline.  WCA said the group would look at three fundamental issues affecting the game globally. The scheduling model, which it said was "broken and unsustainable" and "confusing and chaotic" and which was forcing players to choose between "representing their country and optimising their careers”.  

It will also examine the growing economic disparity between members, forcing a "reliance on just a few to fund the entire game”, and leaving the smaller members constantly forced to make "short-term decisions”.  Finally, it will also look at player employment and contracts, where it argues that the lack of a clear global calendar "makes it impossible for the game to regulate itself transnationally in a fair and balanced way”.  

WCA said in a statement: "Change is badly needed to create ongoing clarity, and value, for players, Boards and fans alike".  Mills said:  “To date, the game's leadership has collectively failed to come together to establish a clear and coherent global structure in which they can co-exist. We have virtually given up hope of it doing so.  The players deserve a say on the future of the game and want us to start putting forward some solutions to known issues. The process we have put in place, guided by independent expertise, will be focussed on making recommendations to our Board on optimising the game's global structure, ensuring sustainable value, and providing more clarity, consistency, and less confusion for players, fans and commercial partners alike”.

In case you missed it, and with all the wall to wall coverage of the H*ndred, I had; the Scottish T10 competition due to be played during this month in Aberdeen involving Alex Hales and Rachid Khan, has been cancelled owing to lack of support from the ICC, BBC Scotland reports (I don't know how I missed it, dated 1st August).

The Max60 tournament started yesterday in The Cayman Islands, this features a number of Scottish players at first glance.

"An unforgettable fusion of cricket, music & food in a sporting festive celebration."

18/08

MCG to Host 150th Anniversary Test

England One Day Coach Candidates?

14/08

Irish National Cricket Stadium Gets Approval

With scores tied, game abandoned because it was 'too sunny'.
Wisden.
Tuesday, 13 August 2024.
PTG 4591-22134.

A match in the Pontefract and District Cricket League (PDCL) in Yorkshire between Nostell St Oswald and West Bretton, is reported to have been abandoned with the scores level on Saturday after the official umpire is said to have deemed the sun to be too low in the evening sky to guarantee player safety and allow the winning runs to be scored.  When play stopped there were still five overs left in what was a 45-over game, and with Nostell St Oswald, with three wickets in hand, having levelled the scores on 235.

West Bretton outlined the situation as they saw it on X (formerly Twitter), but as yet neither Nostell St Oswald, nor the PDCL, have commentated on the issue.  PDCL Playing Conditions state, as per the Laws: "The umpire(s) shall, at all times, be responsible for the decision as to whether to start, suspend, or restart after a stoppage in play, whenever 'light', weather conditions or fitness of the ground to play are called into question”.

Between the devil and the DRS: 250 years of the LBW Law.
Rob Smyth.
Wisden Almanack.
Monday, 12 August 2024.
PTG 4591-22136.

The acknowledgments at the start of 'Postcards from the Beach', Phil Tufnell’s diary of England’s West Indian tour in 1997-98, are brief and to the point. He thanked his family, his ghostwriter, his team-mates, the England scorer Malcolm Ashton – and the Australian umpire Darrell Hair, “for giving out a left-handed batsman offering no stroke to me bowling over the wicket”. It’s hard to imagine a footballer using a diary to thank an assistant referee for an off-side decision, or a second-row forward applauding a referee’s interpretation of the scrum. But then the LBW Law has always had the capacity to make itself at home in a cricketer’s subconscious, especially one already housing a sense of injustice.  

Ever since its introduction 250 years ago this year, LBW has been a Law of unforeseeable consequences, never mind unintended. Pick any recurring theme of cricket history – morality, prejudice, technophobia, Nasser Hussain’s predilection for comedy dismissals – and there will be an LBW story to tell. “This law”, wrote the late umpire Don Oslear (PTG 3910-19213, 21 June 2022), in 'The Wisden Book of Cricket Laws', “causes more doubt, disagreement, debate and discussion than the other 41 put together”.

Leg before wicket was added to the Laws on Friday, 25 February 1774, at the 'Star and Garter' on Pall Mall, where the London Cricket Club, a forerunner of Marylebone Cricket Club (MCC), regularly met to put the game to rights. Cricket lore teaches us that LBW was introduced to counter the cynical opportunism of two leading batters, “Joey” Ring and Tommy Taylor. Ring’s team-mate Billy Beldham later said he was “shabby enough to get his leg in the way and take advantage of the bowlers”. 

Since Ring was born in 1758, it seems likelier his tactics were one of the reasons for a revision to the Law – removing any ambiguity over the batter’s intentions – in 1788.  The Law was ultimately a consequence of the switch from curved to straight bats, which changed the natural stance of a batter. Before that, they could stand in front of the stumps and swing with impunity. Taylor reportedly averaged five across the two seasons after the revision. But, in that time, he didn’t once fall LBW. Perhaps nobody did. 

The first such dismissal was not officially recorded until 1795, though this is possibly because the scorers drew no distinction between LBW and bowled. Even after that, LBW was an unusual dismissal for much of the 19th century – possibly because the shame was such that batters did everything to avoid it. In the 1888 edition of ‘Wisden', the “well-known umpire”  Bob Thoms wrote: “This very unsightly play cannot be termed batting, ’tis simply scientific legging; and, as the popular verdict now seems dead against such play, it ought to be stopped”.

A whiff of morality and judgment has never gone away. Batters have always been more likely to be given out offering no stroke, a legacy of an era when shouldering arms was almost as vulgar as scoring on the leg side. Not that playing a shot will necessarily save you. During England’s tour of India in 1992-93, Dermot Reeve was given LBW after missing a sweep. He queried the decision, and received robust feedback. “Bad cricket”, said the umpire. “Sweep shot not good. Play straight”.

The dismissal has been a constant arm-wrestle between bat and ball, pragmatism and idealism, good practice and bad. At different points in time, an identical shot to an identical ball might be plumb leg-before or palpably not out. The Law giveth and the Law taketh away – sometimes in the same month. “When I went back to county cricket, I’d bowl the same ball that was plumb LBW in a Test match, and some umpires – usually the senior ones – would just bark ‘not out’”, says Graeme Swann, whose 255 Test wickets for England included 70 LBWs. “I felt like saying: ‘No, seriously mate, trust me, that’s out. Did you not watch the Test match?’”

There was a one-stride-fits-all approach: if a batsman was well forward, he earned instant immunity. The stock response from umpires was that they would be “guessing”. Tufnell had heard this once too often in Trinidad in 1998 when he hit Shivnarine Chanderpaul’s magnetic front pad yet again. He turned round to appeal, only to find the umpire looking straight down at his ball counter. “Aren’t you even going to look?” “No, I’d be guessing”. “Yeah, but at least you might guess right…”

There had been hundreds of declined opportunities for guesswork at Edgbaston in 1957, when Peter May and Colin Cowdrey thwarted West Indies’ mystery spinner Sonny Ramadhin in more ways than one, kicking him away for a day and a half in a match-saving partnership of 411. The contest entered folklore, and is told almost as a pantomime, yet there was a human cost. The tactic was copied widely, and Ramadhin was never the same bowler. “They ruined my career”, he said.

Another West Indian found a novel solution. Michael Holding started life as an off-spinner, but soon realised it was a futile endeavour. As a teenager, he played a Jamaican variation of the game, ‘Catchy Shubby': no LBW and, if a batter was caught, next in was the fielder. That meant Holding’s best hope of a bat was to hit the wicket – a sheet of corrugated iron. Exasperated with batters blocking him, he made it his mission to bowl so fast that nobody of sound mind would want to put their shin bones in the way. There was a flavour of ‘Catchy Shubby' in Holding’s greatest performance: 12 of the 14 English wickets he took at The Oval in 1976 were bowled or LBW.  The LBW Law, or lack thereof, gave Holding a new identity. 

It gave yet another West Indian a new name. Jimmy Adams did more than anyone to preserve his side’s long unbeaten record during a 1–1 draw in India in 1994-95, averaging 173, and 403 balls, per dismissal. Yet an epic performance was reduced to a sneering portmanteau: Jimmy Padams. Against a three-man spin attack, he redefined the forward defensive by thrusting his front pad at hundreds of deliveries. But his pad didn’t score any of his 520 runs. “I can’t remember when I first heard the name Jimmy Padams, but it never bothered me”, he said. “Those pitches ragged from day one. If I couldn’t reach the pitch and smother it, or sweep, I wasn’t prepared to hang my bat and hope for the best”.  That, after all, would be guessing.

Three years later, he was given out LBW in both innings against England in Guyana, to Tufnell and Robert Croft. On both occasions Adams was defending behind his pad, well outside off stump, but umpire Hair gave an LBW decision from the future – earning his mention in Tufnell’s diary. Adams was immediately dropped. His dismissals feel like a symbolic moment in the battle between ball and pad.

The reality was more complex, not least because the first umpire to give Adams out that way had been the West Indian Steve Bucknor, against Australia three years earlier. Besides, Adams didn’t have a problem with Hair. “I always found Darrell approachable”, he says. “I thought he was a decent umpire. I didn’t feel aggrieved after Guyana – I was more upset with myself. My attitude was always: what could I have done differently to get a different outcome?” Adams adapted his game to great effect. CricViz data shows that, after Guyana, his Test average against spin topped 70.

Most players are LBW candidates at some point, perhaps when their head is falling over, or their mind scrambled. The department of run-making, as Graham Gooch once described his craft, was abruptly closed in 1989 when he asked to miss the Fifth Ashes Test after repeatedly getting trapped in front, mainly by Terry Alderman. Graffiti was apparently spotted on a toilet wall: “Thatcher Out!” And below it: “LBW b Alderman”.

Not that Gooch was alone. That summer, Alderman won 19 LBW shouts (20 if you include Thatcher); nobody else has taken more than 14 in a series. Some stick in the memory more than others. Take this quiz question: which Test batter has been LBW most often to the same bowler? Even Allan Lamb probably doesn’t know he’s the answer, having fallen seven times to Malcolm Marshall. All seven were in England – which was also where Lamb scored four of his six hundreds against West Indies. The LBW were decorative, not definitive.

At least Gooch only had to put up with apocryphal graffiti. Shane Watson suffered a spate of LBWs during the birth of social media, accounting for 58 percent of his Ashes dismissals in England; in all other Tests, including against England at home, the figure dropped to 21 percent. At times, as Watson found himself caught between the devil and the Decision Review System (DRS), solemnly contemplating whether to review the bleedin’ obvious, he could have been inhabiting a play by Samuel Beckett (who once won an LBW shout for Dublin University against Queen’s University, Belfast, at Ballynafeigh in 1924).

“True batsmen never believe they’re out”, says Swann. “Shane’s a great bloke, bless him, and he laughs about it now. Some of the LBWs were so plumb. He’d always walk down the wicket with a quizzical expression, and you could see the bloke at the other end thinking: ‘Oh, for God’s sake’. But if they were a junior player, they’d be reluctant to give him the bad news. We’d all be in a huddle, saying: ‘Go on, do it!’ When he went upstairs, we’d cheer along with the Barmy Army”.

Those periods can break even the toughest. England captain Charlotte Edwards went into a double white-ball series against India in 2012 in spectacular form, only to fall LBW to swing bowler Niranjana Nagarajan in four of her first five innings. The run started with a poor umpiring decision – inside edge, outside the line, no DRS – but took on a life of its own. England won both series, but Edwards totalled 44 in seven innings.

“I remember it vividly”, she says. “I had a stinker, and it was so tough mentally. Tours were very short back then, so if you were out of form it often lasted a whole series. LBW can get in your head – you end up tinkering and thinking too much, which usually makes things worse.

An LBW candidacy can mess with a batter’s sense of time, never mind their timing. In fact, the India series was short, with all seven innings  played in 16 days of intensive soul-searching, but for Edwards it “felt like a year”. She adds: “My personal pride ate away at me. I tried to deal with it myself during that India series. I was really worried, but I don’t think I would have told anyone that”.

Three months later, Edwards was 'Player of the Tournament' at the T20 World Cup: “That says it all, doesn’t it”. And, that winter, she made a brilliant match-winning hundred against India at the 50-over World Cup, when she got on top of Nagarajan the bowler – only to be run out by Nagarajan the fielder. She never again struggled as she had in 2012. “I think that bad spell was good for me in the long run”, she says, “as a player and a coach”.

Every batter has known how Edwards and Watson have felt. Well, almost every batter. The Australian seamer Michael Hogan, who retired last year, batted 318 times in his professional career, and was never LBW. That feat was beyond even WG Grace, the great self-umpiring pioneer. Such statistical wonders are easily verifiable. In the 20th century, that wasn’t always the case, and myths grew easily, such as the claim that Javed Miandad was never LBW in a Test in Pakistan. In fact, he was – 11 percent of the time, even if the first came nine years into his career, and the figure rose to 26 percent away from home. 

But he was hardly alone: among contemporaries, Arjuna Ranatunga’s home and away percentages were five and 21, Desmond Haynes’s six and 21, David Gower’s 13 and 27. Earlier, Bill Lawry had 54 Test innings at home, and was never LBW.

But at least Javed had fun with it, often telling bowlers, with a mischievous smile, that he had got lucky. In 1988-89, on the first morning in Karachi, a fresh-faced Steve Waugh appealed unsuccessfully for LBW. Soon after, with Javed at the non-striker’s end, he offered Waugh some advice, just out of the umpire’s earshot. “What are you doing?” he said. “Don’t waste your time. This is my turf.”

Neutral officials were still a rarity in those days, and nothing fuelled suspicion quite like umpiring decisions. Mike Gatting’s spat with Shakoor Rana at Faisalabad in 1987-88 can probably be traced back to the previous Test, at Lahore, where Shakeel Khan gave him out almost before a ball from Abdul Qadir hit the pad. That it did so outside the line, while turning further away, didn’t help Anglo–Pakistan relations either. But nor did decisions such as one at Edgbaston in 1982, when Mudassar Nazar turned his back on a short ball from Ian Botham, and was given out leg-before. Never mind the knee-roll: Mudassar walked off rubbing his backside.

England’s complaints about Pakistani umpiring had an unlikely pay-off, when one of their few series wins of the era, against South Africa in 1998, was helped by Javed Akhtar giving them a raft of LBW – ranging from probably out to not in a thousand millennia – in the decider at Headingley. He was later accused of match-fixing by Ali Bacher, though a commission cleared him.

The injustice and entitlement that LBW decisions can create don’t usually offer scope for nuance. England didn’t get a single LBW when they won the Ashes in Australia in 1970-71, though Australia gained only five in the six Tests. The series took place during a short-lived experiment whereby a batsman attempting a shot could be out only if the ball pitched in line with the stumps. In those days, many umpires wore a badge with pride: they were 'not-outers'. Even a bowler with the surgical precision of Richard Hadlee struggled in his homeland. “For [Fred] Goodall to give someone out LBW”, he said, “it’s really got to be a full toss, on the toe, hitting middle”.

Some remain convinced England would have won the World Cup in both 1979 and 1992 had strong shouts been upheld in the final: Mike Hendrick to Viv Richards at Lord’s, and Derek Pringle, twice, to Javed Miandad at the Melbourne Cricket Ground, with Bucknor the umpire. “I find it mildly amusing that people still bang on about it after more than 30 years”, says Pringle. Bucknor was less amused when they ran into each other soon after. “On my first gig as a journalist, in 1994, there was a cocktail party in Kingston before the first Test. I said to him, as a bit of an ice-breaker: ‘Is Javed still not out?’ He just turned on his heels”.

The appeals by Hendrick and Pringle weren’t mentioned in contemporary reports, but their legend grew – particularly in Pringle’s case, with the two deliveries easy to find online. After the game, he went to the Pakistan dressing-room, where Miandad touched his left leg: “Bad luck, Allah smiled on me today”.  When Pringle, who had taken 3/22, moved from pitch to press box, his alternate life became a recurring joke: CBE, Brylcreem contract, married to Liz Hurley. Oh, and Player of the Match in a World Cup final.

The most LBW-allergic umpire in the modern era was probably ‘Dickie' Bird. His first autobiography, released in 1978, was proudly entitled 'Not Out'. Seven years later, he published another book: 'That’s Out!' His decision-making did not evolve quite so speedily, though for three days in April 1993 he went spectacularly off the rails. Bird was the neutral umpire for a Test between West Indies and Pakistan in Trinidad, and with Bucknor gave 17 LBWs, then a Test record. His trigger-happiness came about after a chance meeting by the lifts of the Hilton Trinidad the night before the match. 

A rum-emboldened Mike Selvey, The Guardian’s cricket correspondent and former England seamer, told him how many more wickets he would have taken in his own career had Bird not been so “anally retentive”. For the next three days, Bird went on an adventure, starting when he gave two LBWs in two balls: Carl Hooper was sent packing a millisecond after a delivery from Waqar Younis hit his pad, before Junior Murray was despatched with such vigour that Bird nearly gave himself a side strain.

The pitch was fast and low, and almost all the LBWs bear scrutiny, but it was a dramatic change of approach for an umpire who usually checked the back door was locked at least three times before leaving the house. After the game, Bird saw Selvey: “Michael, I remembered what you said. I saw the ball hit the pad, thought ‘That’s out’, and gave it. And no one grumbled at all. It were marvellous. A revelation”, But it "were also" stressful and, in the next Test, Bird gave only one LBW. The dismissal has always been as much about mindset as eyesight.

Where umpires were once split into outers and not-outers, there is now another binary distinction: right and wrong. The process began when Hawk-Eye’s ball-tracking technology, first used on television in the UK in 2001, predicted whether deliveries would have hit the stumps. The impact on the perception of umpires and viewers was not immediate, not even when DRS became the norm in the early 2010s. 

Bird called DRS “a stain on the game”, making umpiring “easy… they have nothing to do”. But eventually it gave us all new glasses, showing the stumps were bigger than we imagined – particularly for balls once deemed to be sliding down leg. YouTube rabbit holes are full of not-out decisions that don’t compute. The past is a foreign country: they give plumb LBWs not out there.

Technology also gave finger-spin the kiss of life. For several years, orthodox slow bowlers were told they needed a doosra to survive at Test level. But DRS allowed bowlers such as Swann, Nathan Lyon and Rangana Herath to become giants of the game. “My wicket-taking ball”, boasted Herath, “is the arm ball”. When Monty Panesar became the first spinner to take five LBWs in a Test innings, against West Indies in 2007, The Guardian’s David Hopps lamented that the new orthodoxy would tempt Panesar to “abandon art in favour of painting and decorating”.

Swann managed both, and estimates that painting and decorating paid about a third of the bills at Test level. He was nearly 30 when he made his debut, which meant almost all his career coincided with technology. “I could have played five Tests in my twenties and been dropped for ever”, he says. “One of the luckiest things about my career is that my second series was in the West Indies, where they had seven left-handers, they were using DRS, and none of the left-handers was called Brian Lara. We should all praise the Lord for DRS, especially spinners. Batters could get away with blue murder before that” .

DRS has taken LBW back to 1774, forcing batters to use their bat. Two of Kevin Pietersen’s most spine-tingling innings, in Colombo and Mumbai in 2012, were a result of his existential crisis against left-arm spin a couple of years earlier. It has also given players more to think about. Not even WG could have foreseen that players really would become their own umpires. In last summer’s women’s Ashes at Lord’s, Alyssa Healy walked before the umpire gave her LBW to Charlie Dean. Eleven days later, at Old Trafford, Zak Crawley was given out to Cameron Green for a painfully scratchy 20. He was confident it was missing leg, reviewed, and scorched his way to 189.

The LBW decision has moved from being an individual judgment, sometimes based on morality, to a scientific assessment. But the importance of Umpire’s Call – the final frontier in the move towards cold, computerised appraisals – means the human element remains integral. In the current system, the same delivery can be out or not out, an anomaly nobody has yet called Schrödinger’s Front Dog. Umpire’s call also safeguards one of the best things about LBW: the pregnant pause between appeal and verdict, when time stands still, and the doors start to slide. 

That moment of tension was heightened at the turn of the century by the emergence of umpires – Bucknor, Rudi Koertzen, ‘Billy' Bowden – who seemed to contemplate the meaning of life before raising the finger. They became lead characters in one of cricket’s greatest pieces of theatre.

Even in an era of technological precision, there is still doubt, mystery and a sense of injustice. Millions in Pakistan were aghast when technology gave Sachin Tendulkar 'not out' in the 2011 World Cup semi-final at Mohali. Australia, meanwhile, were in the highest dudgeon when technology showed Ben Stokes should have been LBW to Lyon, with England needing two to win at Headingley in 2019. They foamed with impotent rage, and ignored the fact there was a reason they had no reviews left. Never mind right and wrong: the LBW has always been a vehicle of righteousness, and not even technology can eradicate that.

30/07

In a results business, abject failure gets what it deserves in this case...

Mott sacked by England

Would a particular county chair have the gumption to do similar, or are we writing the whole season off?

After histrionics at a ’not out', team then wins with a non-striker 'run out’.
Wisden Cricket.
Monday, 29 July 2024.
PTG 4575-22063. 

An Essex League match between teams from the Hornchurch Athletic and Stanford-Le-Hope clubs ended in controversy on Saturday with considerable petulance shown all round.  It all came at a time when Hornchurch, with nine wickets down, needed 25 runs to win. 

Hornchurch number nine Noragal De Silva was at the crease with number eleven Louis Parr, when the fielding side celebrated thinking they had sealed the win when in their view De Silva had edged a ball from spinner Jack Carter behind to wicket keeper Matthew Page.  

However, having run off without looking at umpire Neil Neelakantan thinking he had the wicket, Carter quickly returned when he realised the umpire hadn't raised his finger. The bowler and the rest of the fielders threw their arms up at the umpire, while keeper Page fell to his knees in disbelief when the decision stayed 'not out'.

Having looked behind to the keeper before standing his ground, De Silva stood unmoved with his hand on his hip at the striker's end. Carter had no choice but to come in again and bowl the next ball. Or seemingly no choice. As he neared his delivery stride, he realised non-striker Parr was about to wander out of his crease. He stopped, and before Parr could realise what was happening, whipped the bails off with him out of his crease.

This time umpire Neelakantan, the sole official managing the game, immediately raised his finger, despite the protestation of De Silva at the striker's end, who held both his arms out in apparent disgust, before swinging his bat into the turf.  The body language of the departing players was not particularly positive.

ECB’s ’touring fee’ plan for Zimbabwe one aspect of ’saving’ Test cricket moves.
Nagraj Gollapudi.
Cricinfo.
Saturday, 27 July 2024.
PTG 4572-22052. 

Zimbabwe will become the first country in the modern era to receive a "touring fee" from the host board in bilateral cricket when they travel to England next year for a one-off Test. That development was confirmed by England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB) chief executive Richard Gould on Friday, who last year suggested such an is needed to help offset the disparity in the revenues of various International Cricket Council (ICC) Full Members, and ensure the quality of Test cricket remained strong. 

Since then, one solution Gould has recommended and reiterated, including twice this week, is for the host board to pay a fee to travelling teams.  "There's a huge responsibility”, said Gould, for the ECB and other financially strong boards like the Board of Control for Cricket in India and Cricket Australia to ensure Test cricket is competitive.    

The escalating costs of keeping Test cricket healthy in smaller countries, where the value of broadcasting rights has turned negligible especially for the longest format, prompted Cricket West Indies (CWI) chief executive Johnny Grave to say the ICC's revenue-share model was completely broken. Grave was responding to criticism of West Indies sending a second-string Test squad for the two-match Test series in Australia during the last southern summer.

Grave said in January: "CWI has spent over two million US dollars sending teams to Australia in the last four months and whilst CA have received all the economic benefits from those series, we've seen zero dollars back.  Is that really fair, reasonable and sustainable?” (PTG 4418-21467, 27 January 2024)

Gould said weaker boards like CWI had his "sympathy", but remained optimistic of finding ways to keep them strong. "I had conversations with the West Indies six, nine months back before they arrived, [about] what assistance we can provide.  And it's interesting because it won't just be on the Test match cycle. For example, we played an extra two T20s before Christmas in the West Indies [in 2023] in order to help them".  

"The specific request that came from the West Indies for this particular [current] tour is: can you help us with an Under-19 tour at some point so that we can get more of our players getting access to red-ball cricket in those [England] conditions? So, it's not always about the money. There are different ways of doing it”.

Speaking at the Marylebone Cricket Club’s 'World Cricket Connects' symposium, ECB chair Richard Thompson said only four percent of his board's annual income came from ICC revenue distribution, with the majority coming from the broadcast rights for bilateral cricket (PTG 4552, 21977, 7 July 2024). 

Consequently it was important, he said, for the ECB to ensure the level of cricket for players in both the men's and women's across all formats was strong - and that the opposition is competitive. Therefore, runs his argument, the ECB has to contribute to keeping Test cricket's pyramid strong.

23/07

Neighbours’ complaints see club ban sixes.
London Daily Telegraph.
Monday, 22 July 2024.
PTG 4567-22030.

The Southwick and Shoreham Cricket Club in Sussex, which was founded in 1790, has decided to ban players from hitting sixes at its home ground after complaints from neighbours.  From now on under its local Playing Condition, no run will be awarded for the first six a batter hits at the ground, however, if they strike a second they will be given out!

The decision has been taken after complaints were made of balls hitting people, house windows, cars and sheds. "Hitting the bowler for a six out is part of the glory of the sport. How can you ban it? It's ridiculous”, said one member.  "To take that away removes the joy of it. I don't agree that the rules should be tinkered with in this fashion”.

Another batter said: "Everything is about health and safety these days and insurance companies are charging a fortune to indemnify sports clubs against accidental damage or injury to bystanders.  If you buy a house next to a cricket ground then you've got to expect a few cricket balls in your garden”.  The Green ground, which is surrounded by residential homes, has short boundaries. Even though nets have been erected to stop the ball, their height is restricted due to nearby trees.

Mary Gill, 80, whose family have lived in a cottage alongside the ground for generations, said: “It’s a very small ground and can’t accommodate the testosterone-fuelled young men who come along and just want to hit the ball as far as they can.  My parents and grandparents lived in this house before me and cricket balls were always sailing over and causing damage.  We’ve had tiles smashed off the roof, windows broken and all sorts of damage”.

Club treasurer Mark Broxup said: "We took the proactive decision to ban sixes at the ground after a few incidents in the past when cars, houses and even roofs were damaged. We don't want to have to pay costly insurance or have any legal claims against us so it seemed a sensible thing to do”.

Match abandoned due to racist, homophobic, abuse from football fans.
David Leask.
London Times.
Monday, 21 July 2024.
PTG 4567-22031.

A match between two teams in Edinburgh was abandoned on Sunday following racist and homophobic abuse from football fans on their way to a pre-season friendly between Rangers and Manchester United.  Murrayfield DAFS cricket club, which is based at the park where the game was being played, claimed two players were also assaulted during what its president called “unacceptable” behaviour by football supporters.

Police Scotland confirmed it is investigating the alleged incident, which occurred during a match between Murrayfield DAFS and Stewart’s Melville Cricket Club.  In a statement the Murrayfield club said: “The perpetrators of the abuse were fans of football clubs playing a friendly at Murrayfield.  Police were standing 50 yards away. Two sets of officers did absolutely nothing to prevent or stop any of the events from taking place — and in fact flat out refused to help when pressed by players”.  

Phil Yelland, the club president, said there had been “no indication in advance” that there would be problems. “The so-called fans at the Rangers v Manchester United game at Murrayfield behaved in a totally unacceptable way in Roseburn Park.  Players playing any sport in a public space should be able to do so without fear of violence and without homophobic and racial abuse and other antisocial behaviour”.  The club has indicated it was drafting formal complaints to the police.

The Stewart’s Melville club said in a statement: “The club was very disappointed to learn of the experience suffered by our 4th XI in their match [against] Murrayfield DAFS. We commend all players on both sides for the manner in which they dealt with an unacceptable situation. We will assist Murrayfield with anything they need with regards to issues experienced”.

Euan Davidson, a local councillor, said: “The alleged events this weekend are completely unacceptable.  I hope that we see assurances from Police Scotland and the council that these events will be investigated and taken seriously”.  Cammy Day, the head of Edinburgh council, said: “The reports and allegations are very worrying.  I’ve asked for an urgent review of these activities. Our city will not tolerate this kind of abuse”.

15/07

Australia tour the UK from 4 September.  Once upon a time the first week or so of September was when the cricket season ended.

Australia T20 squad:


Mitchell Marsh (capt), Xavier Bartlett, Cooper Connolly, Tim David, Nathan Ellis, Jake Fraser-McGurk, Cameron Green, Aaron Hardie, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Josh Inglis, Spencer Johnson, Marcus Stoinis, Adam Zampa

Australia ODI squad:


Mitch Marsh (capt), Sean Abbott, Alex Carey, Nathan Ellis, Jake Fraser-McGurk, Cameron Green, Aaron Hardie, Josh Hazlewood, Travis Head, Josh Inglis, Marnus Labuschagne, Glenn Maxwell, Matthew Short, Steve Smith, Mitchell Starc, Adam Zampa

10/07

Robin retired last year, now is the turn for Batman to retire...

Today sees the start of Jimmy Anderson's final test match. Is it his final farewell?

Lancashire believe that he still has something to contribute domestically, and after how he tormented Notts a couple of weeks ago, you can't argue with that.

06/07

Herr Kohler-Cadmore

03/07

Sir Geoffrey's cancer returns