16/06
Three Super Overs Nepal defeat to NL
15/06
Cricket is leaving white working-class children behind
Cost of equipment and coaching are insurmountable for families living on breadline but local heroes are making a difference in Durham
Nick Hoult
James Minto is only 17 but already he is the main breadwinner at home and has overcome the barriers caused by social deprivation that make cricket an unfeasible sport for so many in this country.
The cost of kit, coaching and travel required to be a good young cricketer are often insurmountable obstacles for those growing up in the poorest parts of the UK.
The dominance of private schools has grown as the state sector has ceased to play cricket. Sport England says just 5.4 per cent of children at state schools play cricket in school hours, compared to 14 per cent for those at fee paying establishments. Private schools make up 28.2 per cent of the secondary schools in this country yet they represent 70.9 per cent of the secondary schools associated with the 18 first-class counties, according to the Independent Commission for Equity in Cricket report of 2023.
Private schools make up 28.2 per cent of the schools in this country yet they represent 70.9 per cent of the secondary schools associated with the 18 first-class counties.
Minto, who was named in England’s Under-19 squad to play India on Friday, is from Norton, a market town in Stockton-on-Tees where the cricket club are twinned with the local miner’s welfare institute. He grew up in a single-parent family with his mother Jemma and two brothers.
Last year, Minto became Durham’s youngest first-class debutant at 16. He is the youngest to take a five-wicket haul for the club and bashed 67 as a nightwatchman opening in a championship match against Nottinghamshire this season to make him the club’s youngest first-class cricketer to make a half century.
Minto is quite short but strong from teenage boxing sessions. He is a left-arm seamer already capable of speeds of 85-87mph and a left-hand bat who opens in club cricket. He offers skills much in demand across all formats. Think Sam Curran, but quicker.
But had Minto been born in a similarly deprived area in a different part of the country, it is likely he would have been lost to cricket, raising the question; how many more James Mintos is the sport missing?
This is not a piece about Minto necessarily, although he has a remarkable story tinged with tragedy to tell and he talks frankly about his mother’s recent death and the burden that now falls on him.
But wider than that, he is representative of what one county, Durham, are doing to address cricket’s class problem and work with the British, white working-class community that overwhelmingly makes up the demographic of the North East and is often the most overlooked part of society.
It has been proved recently that cricket programmes pinpointed at specific communities can have success. The Ace charity led by Ebony Rainford-Brent is working in six inner-cities, focusing on children from African and/or Caribbean backgrounds and producing some players who are graduating into county pathways.
The South Asian Cricket Academy has helped British Asians, who had otherwise been missed by the professional game, gain county contracts, but the sport has struggled to replicate this with a poor, white working-class group.
The report by the Independent Committee for Equity in Cricket, set up in the wake of the Yorkshire racism scandal, said in 2023: “Cricket must ensure that, along with their ethnically diverse counterparts, white working-class cricketers do not miss out on the opportunity to play and progress.” It added: “There is an urgent need to recognise and tackle cricket’s class problem.”
The ICEC also said cricket “will never be ‘a game for all’ at county level and above when large parts of society simply cannot afford to get their foot on the ladder and progress, no matter how talented they may be”.
The England and Wales Cricket Board has introduced All Stars and Dynamos cricket programmes for children aged between 5-11, but in most cases there is a fee of up to £50 to enrol which is beyond some parents. It also requires children and families to approach cricket clubs.
Private schools make up 28.2 per cent of the schools in this country yet they represent 70.9 per cent of the secondary schools associated with the 18 first-class counties.
Minto, who was named in England’s Under-19 squad to play India on Friday, is from Norton, a market town in Stockton-on-Tees where the cricket club are twinned with the local miner’s welfare institute. He grew up in a single-parent family with his mother Jemma and two brothers.
Last year, Minto became Durham’s youngest first-class debutant at 16. He is the youngest to take a five-wicket haul for the club and bashed 67 as a nightwatchman opening in a championship match against Nottinghamshire this season to make him the club’s youngest first-class cricketer to make a half century.
Minto is quite short but strong from teenage boxing sessions. He is a left-arm seamer already capable of speeds of 85-87mph and a left-hand bat who opens in club cricket. He offers skills much in demand across all formats. Think Sam Curran, but quicker.
But had Minto been born in a similarly deprived area in a different part of the country, it is likely he would have been lost to cricket, raising the question; how many more James Mintos is the sport missing?
This is not a piece about Minto necessarily, although he has a remarkable story tinged with tragedy to tell and he talks frankly about his mother’s recent death and the burden that now falls on him.
But wider than that, he is representative of what one county, Durham, are doing to address cricket’s class problem and work with the British, white working-class community that overwhelmingly makes up the demographic of the North East and is often the most overlooked part of society.
It has been proved recently that cricket programmes pinpointed at specific communities can have success. The Ace charity led by Ebony Rainford-Brent is working in six inner-cities, focusing on children from African and/or Caribbean backgrounds and producing some players who are graduating into county pathways.
The South Asian Cricket Academy has helped British Asians, who had otherwise been missed by the professional game, gain county contracts, but the sport has struggled to replicate this with a poor, white working-class group.
The report by the Independent Committee for Equity in Cricket, set up in the wake of the Yorkshire racism scandal, said in 2023: “Cricket must ensure that, along with their ethnically diverse counterparts, white working-class cricketers do not miss out on the opportunity to play and progress.” It added: “There is an urgent need to recognise and tackle cricket’s class problem.”
The ICEC also said cricket “will never be ‘a game for all’ at county level and above when large parts of society simply cannot afford to get their foot on the ladder and progress, no matter how talented they may be”.
The England and Wales Cricket Board has introduced All Stars and Dynamos cricket programmes for children aged between 5-11, but in most cases there is a fee of up to £50 to enrol which is beyond some parents. It also requires children and families to approach cricket clubs.
Durham’s clubs are county’s ‘super-strength’
During a day spent in Durham, firstly at the Riverside with club officials and then talking to Minto, I also visit South Shields Cricket Club, who have a pioneering programme that offers a blueprint for how the game can reach deprived communities. One of the schools they work with is Dunn Street Primary in Jarrow. There the headteacher in one of the poorest communities in Britain tells us how the pupils are benefiting from free cricket PE lessons and a cricket after-school club provided by South Shields CC.
Durham County Cricket Club have long provided free coaching in their player pathway programmes, working in step with their communities. Tim Bostock, the chief executive, describes the local clubs as “our super-strength”. John Windows, the club’s academy director, sees the benefit first-hand. “Every mining village, town has got a cricket club. I don’t know how they have kept going but they have. Now they are all full of juniors. That is the strength of cricket in the North East. For every 9,000 people in Durham there is a cricket club. But picture that in a big city like Birmingham and there will be a club for every 100,000 people, so it is going to be elitist there.”
The wider game is reaping the rewards because Durham produce good players for England – Ben Stokes, Mark Wood, Matthew Potts, Graham Onions, Mark Stoneman, Liam Plunkett, Scott Borthwick and Phil Mustard to name the most recent few – and done without the backing of the rich public schools that play such a big role in the south. It is early days, but Minto is on a promising trajectory, and may join that group one day soon.
During a day spent in Durham, firstly at the Riverside with club officials and then talking to Minto, I also visit South Shields Cricket Club, who have a pioneering programme that offers a blueprint for how the game can reach deprived communities. One of the schools they work with is Dunn Street Primary in Jarrow. There the headteacher in one of the poorest communities in Britain tells us how the pupils are benefiting from free cricket PE lessons and a cricket after-school club provided by South Shields CC.
Durham County Cricket Club have long provided free coaching in their player pathway programmes, working in step with their communities. Tim Bostock, the chief executive, describes the local clubs as “our super-strength”. John Windows, the club’s academy director, sees the benefit first-hand. “Every mining village, town has got a cricket club. I don’t know how they have kept going but they have. Now they are all full of juniors. That is the strength of cricket in the North East. For every 9,000 people in Durham there is a cricket club. But picture that in a big city like Birmingham and there will be a club for every 100,000 people, so it is going to be elitist there.”
The wider game is reaping the rewards because Durham produce good players for England – Ben Stokes, Mark Wood, Matthew Potts, Graham Onions, Mark Stoneman, Liam Plunkett, Scott Borthwick and Phil Mustard to name the most recent few – and done without the backing of the rich public schools that play such a big role in the south. It is early days, but Minto is on a promising trajectory, and may join that group one day soon.
Minto went away as a boy and came back a man
Jemma Minto died suddenly in April aged 50 after a short illness. James was on pre-season tour of Zimbabwe with Durham when he was told her condition had deteriorated. “It was a tough flight home. I had a five-night stay with her in the hospital. I was lucky I got that time with her, that’s how I think,” he says, flanked for support by Marcus North, Durham’s director of cricket.
Minto signed his first professional contract, about £25,000, in May this year and along with an older brother, who is 19, he is looking after youngest sibling Teddy, a 16-year-old left-arm spinner, who is also in the Durham academy. The club are keeping an eye on the boys and there is a care package in place, but Minto has had to grow up fast, ensuring Teddy gets to school and running the household along with his oldest brother, while all three deal with their grief.
“Graham Onions [Durham bowling coach] said I went away [in the winter] as a boy and came back as a man,” he says. “I just want to look after my brothers and the rest of my family. It’s a lot of responsibility, but it can only make us better in the future. And wherever Mum is watching, I want to put a smile on her face. There is no certain way to deal with it. It is awful. Sometimes I get home and cry, but then sometimes like today I feel weird, I don’t feel anything. But I’m always thinking about her, my brothers are as well.”
Club and community are pulling together for the Minto boys – Norton have put a plaque on the bench where she used to sit and watch her sons play club cricket – and that reflects the North East, where the local cricket club are still at the heart of the community.
The ICEC report suggested that all player county pathways should be free of charge. It estimated the cost of junior kit alone to be just under £500. Then there are charges for coaching, trials, attending festivals, travel and club memberships.
At Durham this has all been free of charge for several years, pre-dating the ICEC report. “There were parts of the review that I didn’t recognise from a North-East perspective and that our challenges don’t get enough focus,” says Bostock.
Minto did not have to pay a penny. When he turned up one day with a pair of shoes not suitable for cricket, North went to the local high street to buy new ones.
“Free clothing, playing kit, and not having to buy it all really helped,” says Minto. “Mum did her best but cricket can be expensive. My little brother has played for Durham for a few years in the academy, it has helped him and many of my mates as well.”
Jemma Minto died suddenly in April aged 50 after a short illness. James was on pre-season tour of Zimbabwe with Durham when he was told her condition had deteriorated. “It was a tough flight home. I had a five-night stay with her in the hospital. I was lucky I got that time with her, that’s how I think,” he says, flanked for support by Marcus North, Durham’s director of cricket.
Minto signed his first professional contract, about £25,000, in May this year and along with an older brother, who is 19, he is looking after youngest sibling Teddy, a 16-year-old left-arm spinner, who is also in the Durham academy. The club are keeping an eye on the boys and there is a care package in place, but Minto has had to grow up fast, ensuring Teddy gets to school and running the household along with his oldest brother, while all three deal with their grief.
“Graham Onions [Durham bowling coach] said I went away [in the winter] as a boy and came back as a man,” he says. “I just want to look after my brothers and the rest of my family. It’s a lot of responsibility, but it can only make us better in the future. And wherever Mum is watching, I want to put a smile on her face. There is no certain way to deal with it. It is awful. Sometimes I get home and cry, but then sometimes like today I feel weird, I don’t feel anything. But I’m always thinking about her, my brothers are as well.”
Club and community are pulling together for the Minto boys – Norton have put a plaque on the bench where she used to sit and watch her sons play club cricket – and that reflects the North East, where the local cricket club are still at the heart of the community.
The ICEC report suggested that all player county pathways should be free of charge. It estimated the cost of junior kit alone to be just under £500. Then there are charges for coaching, trials, attending festivals, travel and club memberships.
At Durham this has all been free of charge for several years, pre-dating the ICEC report. “There were parts of the review that I didn’t recognise from a North-East perspective and that our challenges don’t get enough focus,” says Bostock.
Minto did not have to pay a penny. When he turned up one day with a pair of shoes not suitable for cricket, North went to the local high street to buy new ones.
“Free clothing, playing kit, and not having to buy it all really helped,” says Minto. “Mum did her best but cricket can be expensive. My little brother has played for Durham for a few years in the academy, it has helped him and many of my mates as well.”
Every county age-group boy and girl now gets free kit
It costs Durham £50,000 a year to cover the expenses and is funded through their two backers – local businessmen Harry Banks and John Elliott – who insist the money is used on juniors. “Our indoor facility costs £90,000 a year to rent from the council so there would be a charge for each parent to use it, but we removed that. Every county age-group boy and girl gets free kit and the idea is everyone gets on the pitch for free, summer and winter,” says North.
Bostock adds: “We have to do it. If we don’t, we are not going to get any kids to play because they haven’t got the money. The demographic here is white British kids, often from single-parent families and often from long-term unemployment.”
Durham also face certain social problems with underage drinking that may be less relevant elsewhere and the strength of community brings great positives, but also can stunt personal development.
“There are different challenges here with relationships with alcohol and exposure at young ages,” says North. “Look at some of the players who come into the professional system. They stay at home longer so that brings challenges. We find we have to be a bit more patient. Private school offers more structure, discipline, which may influence the way they develop. I find we have to wait a couple of years longer to get up to standards [compared with other counties].”
Patrick William-Powlett is waiting patiently outside Bostock’s office in Chester-le-Street to take us to South Shields Cricket Club. It is a 20-minute drive, a chance to see the community work in action.
In the North East, 31.2 per cent of children are on free school meals, the highest percentage in the country. One in five are living in absolute poverty, which means they are taking up the offers from Durham council of food and fuel vouchers, council tax reductions and access to warm spaces.
The journalist Joel Budd, in his recent book Underdogs, a study of the white working class, says the North East of England, Yorkshire and the Humber are poorer than Alabama and Mississippi, and Brandenburg in the east of Germany. “The scale of the problem is enormous,” he writes.
The night we go to South Shields, the singer Sam Fender, who is from North Shields, is playing the first of two sold-out nights at Newcastle United’s St James’ Park. Fender’s lyrics are often about his working-class background and the struggles of the community.
“We are very good at talking about privileges – white, male or straight privilege. We rarely talk about class, though,” Fender said in an interview recently. “And that’s a lot of the reason that all the young lads are seduced by demagogues and psychos like Andrew Tate. People preach to some kid in a pit town in Durham, who’s got f--- all, and tell him he’s privileged?”
In Durham, those in work claiming Universal Credit doubled from 9,500 in 2020 to 19,900 in 2023. It is estimated that 28.8 per cent of people of all ages live in a household classed as “workless”, higher than the average across England. Full-time wages are 10 per cent lower than the rest of the country.
William-Powlett is a retired secondary school teacher and chairman of South Shields CC. He is one of those dedicated volunteers without whom cricket would cease to exist. He is tireless in running the club’s junior community programme, and persistent too, scrapping for every bit of funding he can find and apply for. The Government’s Holiday Activities and Food Programme, The Peter Harrison Foundation, Boost Charitable Trust and Sport England have pledged most of the £40,000 a year it takes to run his programme.
He slows down as we drive past the Laygate Flats in South Shields. “Out of the 33,000 postcodes on the Index of Multiple Deprivation, this is ranked 305th in the whole country. There are kids with four living in one upstairs flat with no lift. This is the type of area our kids are coming from, but they’re great kids. We have got some from there who could be very good, very talented one day. They are tough as well, committed. They just want to practise and play cricket.”
The South Shields ground is a bit rundown, and William-Powlett apologises for the state of the pavilion. The clubhouse had its roof damaged a few years ago and there is no money to repair it. The ground is shared with the local rugby union club and has been home to South Shields since 1877. In that time they have produced only two first-class cricketers; their role being to provide cricket for the community and not just be a pipeline. One of those pro-cricketers was Gordon Muchall, the Durham batsman, and his father is the volunteer groundsman, marking out the boundary as we speak.
But they are still giving everything to the community. South Shields work with nine schools and also provide 37 days of summer holiday camps with a capacity for 48 children. At the camps, children are given a fruit salad when they arrive, hot lunch and more fruit before going home. For some, this would be the only meal they receive. “Some come every day because we know those kids need something to do, they need some food otherwise they will just be stuck on their estate,” says William-Powlett.
School nurses talk to the children about healthy eating and the local oral health team drop in. Some of them had never seen a dentist before. Twice a week the children help make lunch, learning how to prepare food from scratch and taking home what is left over.
And of course, they play cricket, with qualified level two coaches, while Zimbabwe women’s vice-captain Josephine Nkomo is paid to run the girls section. A major part of the work is with schools. The schools they partner with are chosen on need. For a term, they receive two hours of cricket PE and a cricket after-school club.
We drive to Dunn Street Primary, through the streets of Jarrow, a name synonymous with poverty but also a fierce pride in its identity. Whereas other schools receive help from South Shields for a term, they have been working with Dunn Street continuously since January 2024, providing two hours of PE lessons a week and an after-school club.
The school dinner hall is smaller than the new multi-million pound home dressing room at the Oval, but large enough for South Shields to get kids playing cricket. For headteacher Michelle Trotter, the benefits have been obvious. The area is in the bottom one per cent of the country based on the Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index. It is one of the schools that receives funding from the Forgotten 40 foundation, set up by Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Ineos, and named Forgotten 40 because it refers to the percentage of children in poverty.
Dunn Street has a roll of 137, and 70 per cent are on pupil premium (free school meals). Thirty-three per cent have special educational needs. “There are a lot of challenges for the children and a lot of family challenges. We are a tight-knit community but that has taken a long time to build trust in us,” says Trotter.
Cricket has helped. “It is great to see the children grow in confidence and being excited about something new and different and to be taught by experts. Having that expertise in our school and offering a different role model for our children is great.”
It takes a different approach for cricket to crack areas with so many problems. “I can go into a posh school with a flyer about what we do and the kids will turn up,” says William-Powlett. “But with the kids we are working with you have to build personal trust with them so the first thing we do is the 290 hours of free coaching with the schools, then a good number of them trust us and come to our summer camps.”
For South Shields, the long-term benefit is to unearth talent and expand their membership, hoping some of the summer camp children will become first-team players. Last year, 113 attended the school summer camps, 40 per cent were girls and 57 per cent were on free school meals. There were confidential bursaries available to help parents. “I know we have a lot of kids who would not be able to access cricket without our bursaries. They just would not have the resources,” says William-Powlett.
Cricket and its reliance on public schools is a complex issue. It is not as straightforward as counting the number of public school pupils in the England men’s and women’s teams and drawing the conclusion they are all privileged. Most went to those schools on 100 per cent scholarships because they were super-talented at cricket, not because their parents had deep pockets.
Cricket cannot rely on a small number of private schools, mainly based in the Midlands, south and west, to keep feeding the sport. Initiatives such as Chance to Shine, SACA and the Ace Programme do great work in promoting cricket and reaching communities otherwise disengaged with the game. The ECB has also provided extra funding for those projects and plans to train secondary school teachers to coach the sport as part of a £3.5 million investment.
But cracking the state school problem can only be done with government support and last year’s announcement by Rishi Sunak of £35 million to fund state school and grass-roots cricket has not materialised under the Labour Government. It would have paid for inner-city cricket hubs but has disappeared into a spending review black hole.
So in places like the North East it is down to counties, clubs and volunteers such as William-Powlett to help cricket find the next James Minto, a talented kid who just needs that bit of help.
“I’m just going to keep going and make Mum proud,” says Minto, shifting in his seat as the chat turns to his mother. “And that is by me getting my head down, and doing what I’m doing now.
“I don’t know how my mum did it. She was an amazing mum. She did absolutely everything for us. She would drive us everywhere, sort stuff out and organise everything. She would always be messaging and telling me how proud she was.”
Minto, Durham, his mother, South Shields and Dunn Street Primary are all interconnected, if not directly, then by a spirit that threads through cricket in the North East. All of the 18 first-class counties are different and have challenges. Some are doing great work, too, but Durham are setting the standard. Minto might one day be walking, talking, wicket-taking, run-scoring proof of it for England.
It costs Durham £50,000 a year to cover the expenses and is funded through their two backers – local businessmen Harry Banks and John Elliott – who insist the money is used on juniors. “Our indoor facility costs £90,000 a year to rent from the council so there would be a charge for each parent to use it, but we removed that. Every county age-group boy and girl gets free kit and the idea is everyone gets on the pitch for free, summer and winter,” says North.
Bostock adds: “We have to do it. If we don’t, we are not going to get any kids to play because they haven’t got the money. The demographic here is white British kids, often from single-parent families and often from long-term unemployment.”
Durham also face certain social problems with underage drinking that may be less relevant elsewhere and the strength of community brings great positives, but also can stunt personal development.
“There are different challenges here with relationships with alcohol and exposure at young ages,” says North. “Look at some of the players who come into the professional system. They stay at home longer so that brings challenges. We find we have to be a bit more patient. Private school offers more structure, discipline, which may influence the way they develop. I find we have to wait a couple of years longer to get up to standards [compared with other counties].”
Patrick William-Powlett is waiting patiently outside Bostock’s office in Chester-le-Street to take us to South Shields Cricket Club. It is a 20-minute drive, a chance to see the community work in action.
In the North East, 31.2 per cent of children are on free school meals, the highest percentage in the country. One in five are living in absolute poverty, which means they are taking up the offers from Durham council of food and fuel vouchers, council tax reductions and access to warm spaces.
The journalist Joel Budd, in his recent book Underdogs, a study of the white working class, says the North East of England, Yorkshire and the Humber are poorer than Alabama and Mississippi, and Brandenburg in the east of Germany. “The scale of the problem is enormous,” he writes.
The night we go to South Shields, the singer Sam Fender, who is from North Shields, is playing the first of two sold-out nights at Newcastle United’s St James’ Park. Fender’s lyrics are often about his working-class background and the struggles of the community.
“We are very good at talking about privileges – white, male or straight privilege. We rarely talk about class, though,” Fender said in an interview recently. “And that’s a lot of the reason that all the young lads are seduced by demagogues and psychos like Andrew Tate. People preach to some kid in a pit town in Durham, who’s got f--- all, and tell him he’s privileged?”
In Durham, those in work claiming Universal Credit doubled from 9,500 in 2020 to 19,900 in 2023. It is estimated that 28.8 per cent of people of all ages live in a household classed as “workless”, higher than the average across England. Full-time wages are 10 per cent lower than the rest of the country.
William-Powlett is a retired secondary school teacher and chairman of South Shields CC. He is one of those dedicated volunteers without whom cricket would cease to exist. He is tireless in running the club’s junior community programme, and persistent too, scrapping for every bit of funding he can find and apply for. The Government’s Holiday Activities and Food Programme, The Peter Harrison Foundation, Boost Charitable Trust and Sport England have pledged most of the £40,000 a year it takes to run his programme.
He slows down as we drive past the Laygate Flats in South Shields. “Out of the 33,000 postcodes on the Index of Multiple Deprivation, this is ranked 305th in the whole country. There are kids with four living in one upstairs flat with no lift. This is the type of area our kids are coming from, but they’re great kids. We have got some from there who could be very good, very talented one day. They are tough as well, committed. They just want to practise and play cricket.”
The South Shields ground is a bit rundown, and William-Powlett apologises for the state of the pavilion. The clubhouse had its roof damaged a few years ago and there is no money to repair it. The ground is shared with the local rugby union club and has been home to South Shields since 1877. In that time they have produced only two first-class cricketers; their role being to provide cricket for the community and not just be a pipeline. One of those pro-cricketers was Gordon Muchall, the Durham batsman, and his father is the volunteer groundsman, marking out the boundary as we speak.
But they are still giving everything to the community. South Shields work with nine schools and also provide 37 days of summer holiday camps with a capacity for 48 children. At the camps, children are given a fruit salad when they arrive, hot lunch and more fruit before going home. For some, this would be the only meal they receive. “Some come every day because we know those kids need something to do, they need some food otherwise they will just be stuck on their estate,” says William-Powlett.
School nurses talk to the children about healthy eating and the local oral health team drop in. Some of them had never seen a dentist before. Twice a week the children help make lunch, learning how to prepare food from scratch and taking home what is left over.
And of course, they play cricket, with qualified level two coaches, while Zimbabwe women’s vice-captain Josephine Nkomo is paid to run the girls section. A major part of the work is with schools. The schools they partner with are chosen on need. For a term, they receive two hours of cricket PE and a cricket after-school club.
We drive to Dunn Street Primary, through the streets of Jarrow, a name synonymous with poverty but also a fierce pride in its identity. Whereas other schools receive help from South Shields for a term, they have been working with Dunn Street continuously since January 2024, providing two hours of PE lessons a week and an after-school club.
The school dinner hall is smaller than the new multi-million pound home dressing room at the Oval, but large enough for South Shields to get kids playing cricket. For headteacher Michelle Trotter, the benefits have been obvious. The area is in the bottom one per cent of the country based on the Income Deprivation Affecting Children Index. It is one of the schools that receives funding from the Forgotten 40 foundation, set up by Sir Jim Ratcliffe and Ineos, and named Forgotten 40 because it refers to the percentage of children in poverty.
Dunn Street has a roll of 137, and 70 per cent are on pupil premium (free school meals). Thirty-three per cent have special educational needs. “There are a lot of challenges for the children and a lot of family challenges. We are a tight-knit community but that has taken a long time to build trust in us,” says Trotter.
Cricket has helped. “It is great to see the children grow in confidence and being excited about something new and different and to be taught by experts. Having that expertise in our school and offering a different role model for our children is great.”
It takes a different approach for cricket to crack areas with so many problems. “I can go into a posh school with a flyer about what we do and the kids will turn up,” says William-Powlett. “But with the kids we are working with you have to build personal trust with them so the first thing we do is the 290 hours of free coaching with the schools, then a good number of them trust us and come to our summer camps.”
For South Shields, the long-term benefit is to unearth talent and expand their membership, hoping some of the summer camp children will become first-team players. Last year, 113 attended the school summer camps, 40 per cent were girls and 57 per cent were on free school meals. There were confidential bursaries available to help parents. “I know we have a lot of kids who would not be able to access cricket without our bursaries. They just would not have the resources,” says William-Powlett.
Cricket and its reliance on public schools is a complex issue. It is not as straightforward as counting the number of public school pupils in the England men’s and women’s teams and drawing the conclusion they are all privileged. Most went to those schools on 100 per cent scholarships because they were super-talented at cricket, not because their parents had deep pockets.
Cricket cannot rely on a small number of private schools, mainly based in the Midlands, south and west, to keep feeding the sport. Initiatives such as Chance to Shine, SACA and the Ace Programme do great work in promoting cricket and reaching communities otherwise disengaged with the game. The ECB has also provided extra funding for those projects and plans to train secondary school teachers to coach the sport as part of a £3.5 million investment.
But cracking the state school problem can only be done with government support and last year’s announcement by Rishi Sunak of £35 million to fund state school and grass-roots cricket has not materialised under the Labour Government. It would have paid for inner-city cricket hubs but has disappeared into a spending review black hole.
So in places like the North East it is down to counties, clubs and volunteers such as William-Powlett to help cricket find the next James Minto, a talented kid who just needs that bit of help.
“I’m just going to keep going and make Mum proud,” says Minto, shifting in his seat as the chat turns to his mother. “And that is by me getting my head down, and doing what I’m doing now.
“I don’t know how my mum did it. She was an amazing mum. She did absolutely everything for us. She would drive us everywhere, sort stuff out and organise everything. She would always be messaging and telling me how proud she was.”
Minto, Durham, his mother, South Shields and Dunn Street Primary are all interconnected, if not directly, then by a spirit that threads through cricket in the North East. All of the 18 first-class counties are different and have challenges. Some are doing great work, too, but Durham are setting the standard. Minto might one day be walking, talking, wicket-taking, run-scoring proof of it for England.
13/06
suspended.
Three cricket clubs suspended after person ‘hit by ball in car park’
Danbury, Oaklands and Tuskers face uncertain future after being barred from Essex home, where game has been played for more than 200 years
Tim Wigmore
Three Essex cricket teams fear they could fold after they were suspended from playing at their home venue by the parish council when a person was allegedly hit by a ball in a nearby car park.
Last month, Danbury Parish Council suspended all cricket from being played at Dawson Memorial Field, a venue used by Danbury Cricket Club, Oaklands Cricket Club and Tuskers Cricket Club, pending a hearing a week on Monday following a complaint from a member of the public.
The controversy erupted on May 28 after a member of the public was hit by a cricket ball on the back of the leg while in the car park. The individual was on their way to use the leisure centre, which is attached to the cricket clubhouse, and the incident was subsequently reported to Danbury Parish Council.
Rory Carlton, the honorary secretary of Danbury Cricket Club, said that none of those playing for or against Danbury that day had any recollection of a member of the public being hit. According to the accident log, the incident occurred at 1pm, 10 minutes before Danbury’s match began that day.
The parish council claims that it had not realised individuals risked being hit because of the proximity of the car park, and that a full review would be required before the suspension could be lifted.
“Neither Danbury CC or their opposition – Burnham and South Woodham CC – witnessed any member of the public being struck by a ball during or before the match,” Carlton said. “Following the alleged incident I was informed by Danbury Parish Council that it ‘didn’t realise somebody could be struck by a cricket ball and thus the risk profile had changed’, which I and any reasonable person would surely find incredulous.”
Cricket has been played in Danbury since 1799. But if Dawson Memorial Field is permanently barred from hosting games in the future both Danbury and Oaklands fear they will be in danger of collapsing.
“We won’t be able to play in the league anymore,” Stuart Ayris, the club captain, secretary and treasurer at Oaklands Cricket Club, told Telegraph Sport. “And if we can’t play in the league, the chances are we will then fold as clubs.”
Since the suspension, the clubs have only been able to play away fixtures.
The council meeting that will decide the future of the clubs will be held by Danbury Parish Council on June 23. Unless the council allows the venue to be used, both Danbury Cricket Club and Oaklands Cricket Club will be thrown out of their leagues. Both clubs play in the T Rippon Mid Essex League.
A petition calling for cricket to resume on Dawson Memorial Field has received more than 900 signatures.
‘Incredibly worrying precedent’
Danbury Parish Council is planning to hold a public meeting on June 19, when residents can share their feelings on the issue.
“I got a call about two weeks ago to say that the top field is going to be closed because of an incident which is right next to the cricket pitch,” Ayris added. “We got a call out of the blue to say cricket’s been suspended until a meeting at the end of June because it’s too dangerous.
“We believe this sets an incredibly worrying precedent for any team that play their matches in a public space. Cricket was suspended without any consultation with the three teams who play there and without any effort to investigate the allegation.”
Oaklands Cricket Club have made a formal complaint to Danbury Parish Council.
Ayris also said that Oaklands Cricket Club had posted a link to their petition on the Danbury Village community page on Facebook, which was deleted within hours.
‘We haven’t cancelled cricket’
Michelle Harper, parish clerk at Danbury Parish Council, told Telegraph Sport that the suspension of cricket was only temporary.
“At the moment, the council has suspended cricket while it carries out a further health and safety review,” Parish said. “We decided to close the top car park where the cricket is played – hopefully as a short-term measure.
“It’s suspended until June 23, when the council will have a formal council meeting to decide on the mitigation that it needs to put in place so that cricket can continue.
“It’s really important that people understand that we haven’t cancelled cricket. All we’ve done is suspend cricket while we are carrying out both investigations and looking at mitigation for the health and safety of everybody who uses the field. We haven’t cancelled cricket, which I think is a lot of people’s fear.”
Ayris told Telegraph Sport that Danbury Parish Council has persistently complained about the cost of cricket.
“Every time we have a meeting before the season and post-season, they say that cricket is a financial burden on the parish council and that we have to give them reasons to carry on,” he said.
However, Harper said that “the council has always supported cricket in the time I’ve been here”.
Essex County Cricket Club have also been contacted for comment.
04/06
Deaths mar IPL celebrations
28/05
MCC launches ‘cricket’s got talent’
Graeme Swann is helping revive initiative that gives young cricketers a second chance of making it as a professional
Will Macpherson
“I love how old school this is, it’s cut-throat,” says Graeme Swann, the great England off-spinner, with his trademark enthusiasm. “In two days’ time, a few of these lads will be cut. But that pressure helps you in professional cricket: make sure you’re not one of the guys who misses out.”
Swann is in Lord’s Pavilion on what feels like the first rainy day in months. He is not long back from India, where he was on commentary duty, and is relishing his first role as head coach, with the reformed Marylebone Cricket Club Young Cricketers.
Swann is overseeing a sort of cricketing talent show. On Tuesday, he was joined by 22 young cricketers who have either been released by a first-class county, or are yet to be discovered by them. On Thursday, after two days’ training at Wormsley, the beautiful Getty ground in Buckinghamshire, eight players will be cut from the squad.
The remaining 14 will spend the next three weeks under Swann, playing red and white-ball cricket against a mixture of outfits: county second teams, Jersey, and the South Asian Cricket Academy, the brilliant intervention scheme that has already helped more than a dozen talented players find professional contracts.
When the fixtures conclude, one player will have a county contract for the duration of the MetroBank One-Day Cup in August funded by MCC. Another two will be selected for MCC’s tour of Zimbabwe this winter. Gray-Nicolls is also offering one player a bat sponsorship. All the players are paid a day rate through the month, too.
‘There’s a lot of untapped talent out there’
“They’re a bit nervous this morning,” Swann says, smiling. “But I understand that. The stakes are high and it can be overawing here.”
Swann is from the modern school of coaching, focusing on providing inspiration and tactical insight, rather than smothering players in technique. He has worked with Trent Rockets and the England Lions and Under-19s. The South Asian Cricket Academy has already proved that talent is slipping through county pathways, and he is determined to help find it.
“There’s a lot of untapped talent out there,” he says. “I was a late developer. Look at Gus Atkinson, who suddenly put on pace, or Joe Root, who could barely lift his bat at 18. I hope to bring it out of these boys. I couldn’t believe that Jack Carney, who I knew from England Under-19s, was here, and didn’t have a pro contract. He’s a brilliant player and if he’s the benchmark, then I’m very excited.
“Not everyone fits into the traditional system. At the end of the day a county pathway is a coach’s judgment. If they don’t see someone in somebody, they slip the net. This is a brilliant opportunity, a shop window.”
It is a treat of a day for the players. They are given an induction, which includes a talk from MCC chairman Mark Nicholas in the Long Room, then from Rob Key, England’s managing director, and the legendary New Zealander Kane Williamson, whose stint with Middlesex starts this week, in the home dressing room. After lunch they net with Swann, have a gym session (not with Swann), and are given virtual reality concussion testing and education. The players, who are mostly in their early twenties, are keen to impress; some have first-class experience, but most do not.
Key recommended Swann to Rob Lynch, MCC’s director of cricket, who was determined to revive a scheme that fizzled out for financial reasons during the pandemic, despite almost 100 years of history; Denis Compton, Lord Botham and Phil Tufnell are all former MCC YCs, as are Ross Taylor, Daren Sammy and Travis Head.
There is an “irony” for Lynch that worthy work he did in his previous role at the Professional Cricketers’ Association has contributed to the need for this scheme. He battled for a minimum salary in domestic cricket (currently £28,000 a year), but that meant difficult decisions for cash-strapped counties over who to retain. “It means some players aren’t being afforded the opportunities they might have been a few years ago,” he says.
Lynch also knew first-hand the value of such a scheme. In 2000, he came to England as a wide-eyed 17-year-old Kiwi (he was Brendon McCullum’s rival as a keeper-bat for New Zealand Under-19s) to be a YC alongside the likes of Rikki Clarke and Alex Gidman, later stalwarts of the county game.
“If I could relive seven months of my life, it would be those seven months,” he says. “It was hugely educational, just a great opportunity to learn about cricket, life and myself while a long way from home.”
Lynch and his colleagues would train at Lord’s, and work with the ground staff, while juggling playing commitments in a mix of matches, from county second teams to the Army or Navy. He remembers finding a trip to the Oval to face Alex Tudor “quite scary”.
‘Breeding ground for Hundred’
The YCs lived at the Hyelm hostel in Hampstead. Each Friday, Lynch would be paid £204.50 for the week in cash. First stop was the hostel, where he would pay £75 for a week’s accommodation, including breakfast and dinner. “Most of the remaining £130 would be gone by Saturday morning,” he says, laughing.
A quarter of a century on, we live in a different world. The main barrier to such a scheme would be the sheer cost of accommodation anywhere near Lord’s, but MCC appears determined to offer an avenue into the game.
“I’m convinced this pilot can work,” Lynch says. “The vision for next year would be to extend the concept across the season, effectively creating a rambling side playing around the country, then returning to club cricket at the weekend. That could run from April to July, so counties could then pick up players for the back end of the season, when squads become stretched.
“MCC is a cricket club. We need to invest in cricket initiatives. Who knows where we can take this? Could it also be linked to the new world we are entering by taking on a Hundred team? We are the only one of the eight without a development pathway through the host county. Could this become the breeding ground for 18-year-olds to get in the team? For now, we just want to help some talented lads work their way into the professional game.”
21/05
20/05
Cricket’s most alluring skill is dying out
Growing popularity of wobble-seam delivery is putting swing bowling under threat as English Test summer begins
Tim Wigmore
The ball homes in towards Virat Kohli. As he attempts to play a shot, the ball curves away late. By the time Kohli has realised as much, he has already committed to a shot: hitting the ball towards midwicket. It is a fatal mistake. Kohli edges to the slips and then looks back aghast.
To Chris Woakes this wicket at Lord’s in 2018 is among the most treasured of his 12-year Test career, and not only because of the batsman he dismissed. It is also because the ball encapsulates the art of swing.
“I got it to move quite late and Virat went to turn it through the leg side and got an edge to second slip,” Woakes recalls. “That’s up there with my favourite wickets.
“When the ball is really bending, that’s the most fun time to bowl. You can really show off your skills. And there’s a bit of an artistic side to it. Getting wickets is really rewarding, but there’s something a bit sadistic about making batters look silly. Swing can do that.
“It’s not just the look of it. It’s the feel of it as well. You know when you’ve got it right as soon as you let it go: you just know automatically that it’s going to work. You get this real nice feel off the fingers and feel in ultimate control.
“Starting it off on the right line, seeing the ball move, then seeing the batsman try to adjust.”
This is the method that has made swing perhaps Test cricket’s most aesthetically pleasing skill of all. Through the angle of their fingers, the strength of their wrist and keeping the ball in pristine condition, bowlers can make a cricket ball move wickedly through the air.
Yet when England return to Trent Bridge this week, traditionally regarded as the country’s home of swing, they will do so with a pace attack that is not renowned for that skill.
James Anderson has retired and Woakes is injured, although he should return to face India next month. Sam Cook, England’s likely debutant, relies less on swing than relentless accuracy and seam movement. Gus Atkinson, Matthew Potts and Josh Tongue, the other quicks in the squad, all largely use wobble seam instead.
Wobble seam is a delivery that deviates off the pitch, rather than moving in the air like swing, with no tell of which direction the ball will move. And because of it, like the single-handed backhand in tennis, classical swing bowling is now an endangered art.
From being exclusively a swing bowler when he made his Test debut, in 2013, Woakes now estimates that he bowls the wobble seam about one in every three deliveries. Many of his team-mates scarcely bowl swing at all.
“I don’t want to say that swing has completely gone out of the game. But wobble is used a hell of a lot more than it ever has been.”
Wobble seam comes to England’s attention
The 2010 summer was English cricket’s bleakest home season this century: three Pakistani players were implicated in a spot-fixing sting to deliberately bowl no balls to order in a Test at Lord’s. But, for English cricket, the summer also had another legacy: it led the national team to embrace the wobble seam.
Mohammad Asif ended the summer in disgrace; he would never play Test cricket again. But, until that ignominious end, Asif had bewitched England’s batsmen with his trademark: the wobble seam. This is bowled with the fingers wide of the seam and held loosely. This delivery wobbles in the air, then moves in either direction after pitching. While the swinging ball starts to move before it pitches, wobble seam deviates after pitching, giving batsmen less time to adjust.
'Wobble' seam deliveries are bowled with the fingers spread further apart on the seam than in a conventional upright position. The seam does not travel straight through the air, but 'wobbles' slightly on its way down - the natural variation in movement presents a different problem to the batsman.
Kevin Pietersen would later call Asif the hardest bowler that he ever faced in Test cricket. “You had no idea which way it was going to go. It also felt like it accelerated off the wicket.”
While his team-mates floundered, Anderson sought to learn the trick himself. He enlisted David Saker, England’s bowling coach, to study Asif.
England were about to embark on an Ashes tour; the Kookaburra ball used Down Under is notoriously unconducive to swing.
Anderson “learnt how to wobble the ball, so I could nip it off the seam rather than just rely on swing”. The wobble seam ensured that he remained threatening throughout the innings; Anderson took 24 wickets in England’s 3-1 win.
Back in England, Anderson then educated his team. The wobble seam became central to England’s fast bowlers at home as well as abroad. After he broke into Test cricket, Woakes realised: “You’re going to need something in conditions that aren’t conducive to swing.”
While Asif was the catalyst for England’s focus on wobble seam, he was not the ball’s creator. In the 1990s, Curtly Ambrose and Courtney Walsh bowled what would now be known as the wobble seam. Allan Donald first learnt about the delivery when talking to Ambrose about how to bowl to Sachin Tendulkar. But, with video footage relatively unsophisticated, the delivery was the preserve of a select few.
“You see things now that you couldn’t see before,” says Angus Fraser, who took 177 Test wickets for England from 1989-98. “It is completely different now, with a TV, with the quality of cameras. You have a better idea about what perfection looks like.”
Fraser used the traditional method of seam bowling. This entails holding the ball upright and bowling with a vertical seam, releasing the ball at “12 o’clock” with the wrist straight behind the ball – a contrast to wobble seam, in which the fingers are wider of the seam.
The bowler’s action would deliberately dictate a “dominant” seam direction – for Fraser, he tried to move the ball away from a right-hander based on which side of the seam they hit more regularly.
“I would have perfected wobble seam, but not deliberately – just because of the way that the ball came out,” he says with a chuckle. “I used to try to hit the seam every ball, but I didn’t.
“If I’m hitting a good hard length, if it hits one side of the seam, it goes in. If it’s another side, it might go away. It doesn’t matter, as long as I’m bowling a good length.
“You see Jimmy Anderson letting go of a cricket ball. Sky did a video session with him. The skills were bewildering: the way that the seam was bolt upright and using his first finger, second finger, middle finger to get the ball to move slightly one way or the other. You thought, ‘b----- hell, I just walloped it down there ignorantly’.”
Why wobble seam is harder to face
On the fourth evening at Old Trafford in the 2019 Ashes, with England battling to salvage a draw, Joe Root walked out at No 3.
To his first ball, from Pat Cummins, Root played a forward defensive, which appeared to meet the line of the delivery. But the ball jagged off the seam, beat Root’s groping bat and kissed the top of his off stump. This was Cummins’s defining delivery and a crucial moment in Australia retaining the urn. It also encapsulated the potency of the wobble seam.
“If I get the seam going like that, it normally means that it leaves the batter just a little bit and bounces,” Cummins explained. “I’m always looking for nip and, particularly in Australia, trying to get some bounce.”
While Cummins made his debut as an outswing bowler, he now uses wobble seam “basically 100 per cent of the time”. The method has underpinned Cummins’s record of 294 wickets at 22.43. He considers the wobble seam “not as sexy” but more effective than swing.
Cummins is right. Since 2017, balls that swing more than 1.5 degrees in Test cricket average 23. Balls that seam more than 0.75 degrees average just 17. Half as much seam, then, is more dangerous than twice as much swing.
Simple physics explain why seam, even if it lacks the allure of swing, tends to be more effective. Facing 90mph bowling, a batsman has 0.4 seconds between the ball being bowled and reaching them.
By the time that the ball has pitched on a full length, it is only 0.15 seconds away from reaching the batsman.
David Mann, an associate professor at the University of Amsterdam, has conducted extensive research with Australian Test batsmen. He found that players must commit to their shot 0.15 seconds before the ball reaches them.
If the ball moves after that – as it did when Cummins bowled his wobble seam delivery to Root – the batsman is effectively blind. They have no time to adjust their shot. Like Root in Manchester that evening, all they can do is look back at their stumps in disbelief.
Swing going out of fashion
To bowl swing is to accept risk. An enticing full length can bring glory, as in Woakes’s triumph over Kohli. But by overpitching, Woakes reflects, a bowler can be “cannon fodder”.
Fraser puts it in different terms. “Swing bowlers are more gamblers – pitching the ball a bit further up, trying to encourage the drive. Seam bowlers tend to be more miserly.”
Fraser built his career upon simple maths. He thought he could take a Test wicket every 60 balls, concede 2.5 runs per over and so average 25. Fraser was not far off: he took one every 61 balls, conceded 2.7 an over and averaged 27.3. Darren Gough, England’s premier swing bowler in the 1990s, took a wicket every 51 balls but conceded 3.3 an over and averaged 28.4. Their contrasting on-field personalities – Fraser the sullen introvert, Gough the gregarious extrovert – reflected the contrast in their approaches.
It is not only because seam is more frugal that it is kinder to bowlers. Essentially, any ball, at any time, can wobble seam if it is delivered in the right way. The skill does not demand precision. While bowlers like Cummins say they can generally make the ball seam in a certain direction, natural variation – the ball can veer in either direction, or go straight on – is integral to the wobble seam’s effectiveness.
Unlike with swing, batsmen cannot look at a bowler’s wrist position for clues about which way the ball will move. This uncertainty compels them to play at more deliveries to protect their stumps.
“The main bonus of wobble to swing is that it’s a little bit unpredictable: no one really knows whether it’s going to nip or not, and which way it’s going to nip,” Woakes reflects. “If you don’t know, the batter doesn’t.”
Swing is a much more fickle friend. It depends not just on bowlers maintaining a pristine wrist position, but also atmospheric conditions and the ball.
When Woakes broke into the professional game in the late 2000s, “the ball swung around corners”. No longer. “It feels like the conditions have got to be more firmly in your favour, compared to what they used to be. I think that’s down to the balls changing.”
Matthew Hoggard, whose outswing bowling was crucial in the 2005 Ashes, agrees. “The balls aren’t really swinging as much now – they don’t swing as long,” he says.
Theories for why include the size and quality of logos printed on the balls: any defects or inconsistencies can generate roughness that hinders conventional swing.
Perfection is less essential when bowling the wobble seam than swing, Hoggard believes.
“It doesn’t matter which side of the seam you’re hitting. You want the seam to go down wobbly, and you don’t really know which way it’s seaming. Whereas if you’re bowling swing, if you don’t get the seam going down perfectly, it isn’t going to swing. So there is a greater margin of error with wobble seam.”
Wobble seam is also more adaptable. As the skill relies less on the state of the ball, it can be used throughout the innings, as the ball gets older. Swing bowling entails the ball hitting the seam when it pitches. The wobble seam does not always land on the seam in the same way so the seam will not deteriorate as quickly as in either swing or traditional seam.
Wobble also depends little on the type of ball, rendering it particularly attractive with the Kookaburra, which is used in most countries outside England. Scott Boland, who bowls the wobble seam almost every delivery, was player of the series for Australia against India last winter.
Even Anderson bowled less swing as his career advanced. In 2007, the first English summer that recorded his amount of swing, Anderson generated an average of 1.84 degrees of swing – yet averaged 35.6. He never generated as much swing again.
Anderson could always swing the ball in the right conditions, but moved away from using the delivery as his stock. As Anderson’s reliance on swing lessened, his economy rate went down. So did his average.
“Jimmy sometimes didn’t even look to swing the new ball,” Woakes explains. “He knew they weren’t able to swing much, and he utilised his wobble seam.”
The shift was part of a broader trend. In 2007, the average swing for English pace bowlers at home was 1.78 degrees; last summer, it was 0.97. With less swing, bowlers have become more effective. In 2007, the summer with the most swing, English quicks averaged 30.2; in 2020, the summer with the least swing, they averaged 21.7.
’Sandpapergate’ partly to blame for swing’s demise
The curious tale of the demise of swing also features two other villains.
The first was “sandpapergate” in 2018. The saga led teams – and not only Australia – to become far more cautious in what substances they applied to the ball. In 2016, South Africa’s Faf du Plessis was fined his full match fee for allegedly using a sweet to help shine the ball. By doing so, his saliva could induce reverse swing: when the ball moves in the opposite way to conventional swing, which occurs when there is a contrast between the two sides of the ball.
The new vigilance against suspected tampering since sandpapergate has undermined bowlers who seek swing or reverse swing. But seam bowlers, who do not rely upon shining the ball, have scarcely been affected.
The second villain was Covid-19. The pandemic led the International Cricket Council to ban teams from applying saliva to the ball. For hygiene reasons, the ICC has since made the ban on saliva permanent; the Indian Premier League relaxed the ban in this season’s competition, contributing to an increase in both conventional and reverse swing.
The ICC says that scientific tests have found that saliva does not impact swing: a judgment that few bowlers would agree with. “[The ban on spit] makes it harder especially when it isn’t that warm and you aren’t that sweaty,” says Woakes.
Aaron Briggs has spent more time investigating swing than perhaps anyone else: he completed a PhD in swing bowling, funded by the England and Wales Cricket Board. Briggs agrees with Woakes about the importance of saliva in generating swing on cooler days. “If you don’t have any sweat, saliva is really important as you need some moisture to dissolve the grease in the ball to shine it up.”
But Briggs says that, even in England, the days when Test players are not sweating enough to create moisture on the ball are rare. “As long as you can dissolve the grease in the ball to get a shine on one side, either saliva or sweat should work. I can’t see a scientific reason why natural saliva would be much better than sweat.”
In a sense, how much saliva affects swing is irrelevant. When it comes to swing, “perception becomes reality”, as Briggs likes to say.
If bowlers think that conditions are not receptive to swing, they will pull their lengths back and not seek to swing the ball as much. The perception that the ball will not swing means that the ball really will not swing.
While there is uncertainty about how the saliva ban affects swing, another factor is clearer: new methods from batsmen. In recent years, a series of players – including Root and several England team-mates, and New Zealand’s Daryl Mitchell – have frequently taken an extra stride or two forward down the pitch against fast bowlers.
The method nullifies swing, and turns full-length deliveries into overpitched balls. Against batsmen adopting such an approach, bowling back of a length, and relying upon wobble seam, is less risky.
Swing a skill to be savoured
Swing will still be a feature of Test cricket this summer. Yet it will be a far rarer sight than a generation ago. Rather than a staple of any Test day in England, high-class swing bowling has now been reduced to an occasional treat to be savoured.
While many bowlers now prioritise wobble seam over swing, the best bowlers deploy both. At Old Trafford last summer, Woakes greeted Angelo Mathews with several hooping away swingers, dragging the batsman across his stumps. Then, experimenting with wobble seam, Woakes got the ball to move back and trapped Mathews lbw. Swing made his wobble seam more effective.
When conditions favour swing, Woakes is adamant that it remains a fast bowler’s most lethal weapon. And there is always a chance that a new batch of balls will be more amenable to swing, too.
But, even when Woakes bowls, swing is no longer the default. In New Zealand last winter, Woakes says he “bowled more wobbles than ever”, reflecting England’s reliance on the delivery overseas.
It worked, too, with Woakes twice dismissing Kane Williamson. “Both of them were wobbles,” Woakes recalls. “The first one was from wide of the crease and nipped back a fraction on him. Then the second was a wobble seam which nibbled away.”
Woakes cherished both wickets. Yet, given the choice between dismissing a batsman with swing or seam, Woakes does not hesitate.
“In a perfect world, you want the away swinger that catches the edge and goes through to the keeper, or he plays at one through midwicket and loses his off stump. That’s the perfect delivery.”
It is a perfection that fewer fast bowlers now seek.
17/05
England axe analysts as Brendon McCullum reduces reliance on data
Exclusive: Players urged to take more responsibility for their preparation and performance as Nathan Leamon and Freddie Wilde leave set-up
Tim Wigmore 17/05
Two of England’s senior cricket analysts, Nathan Leamon and Freddie Wilde, are leaving the set-up in a move that suggests the national side will place less emphasis on data moving forward.
England’s use of data to inform match strategies has already lessened in the years since Brendon McCullum took over as coach, first of the Test team in 2022 and then the white-ball sides from earlier this year, with analysis understood to be used more sparingly.
The England hierarchy believe that analysis is more important in franchise cricket than the international game, where players tend to have fewer easily exploitable weaknesses.
As part of this approach, England players are encouraged to take more responsibility for their preparation and performance and there has been a reduction in the number of support staff on match days to declutter the dressing room.
McCullum’s regime entails very few team meetings, which can be a forum in which analysis is widely shared among players. While players are always free to consult the analyst themselves, the management emphasise that players should largely rely on their instincts.
Insiders who have worked across the IPL and the national team believe that franchise teams now use data far more prominently than England.
Leamon and Wilde – England’s senior data analyst and white-ball analyst respectively – are both winding down their involvement with the national team. Neither will be involved in England’s white-ball series against West Indies at the end of the month, which marks the start of Harry Brook’s reign as captain in both limited-overs formats.
While England will continue to use analysis moving forward, it is understood that Leamon and Wilde will not be directly replaced, saving the ECB money.
The role of white-ball analyst is set to be merged with red-ball analyst, with Rupert Lewis, the current Test analyst, to take on both roles.
This is part of a general trend of greater alignment between the red and white-ball coaching staff, under McCullum’s overall leadership.
England stepping away from data revolution they led
Leamon, who has worked in a variety of roles with England since 2009, is regarded as among the most significant figures in cricket’s data revolution.
He had a particularly close relationship with Eoin Morgan, who praised his work in helping England’s rebuild in limited-overs cricket, which culminated in the ODI World Cup victory in 2019 and the T20 World Cup win in 2022.
In the white-ball set-up, where data is particularly prominent, Morgan’s retirement in 2022 was significant in England reducing their reliance upon analysis.
Jos Buttler, who succeeded Morgan as captain, was regarded as less receptive to analysis. Buttler has now been replaced as white-ball captain by Brook.
Since winning the T20 World Cup in 2022, England have won just three out of 15 games against Test opposition in world events, performing abjectly in the 2023 ODI World Cup, the 2024 T20 World Cup and this year’s Champions Trophy.
Leamon is currently senior data scientist at the ECB. But his role with England has become less hands-on since stepping back from the full-time white-ball role in 2022, to allow more time for his roles as director of strategy at Kolkata Knight Riders in the Indian Premier League and Multan Sultans in the Pakistan Super League.
The growing T20 franchise circuit means that both Leamon and Wilde are now likely to do more work in overseas leagues. Wilde became full-time England white-ball analyst in 2023. He combines this role with being analyst for Royal Challengers Bengaluru, who are currently second in this year’s IPL.
Leamon and Morgan were so close that, during matches, the analyst even used coded signals to advise the captain about who data suggested was the optimal bowler to bowl the next over. While Morgan always used his instinct and intuition too, he was among the most data-informed captains in the world game.
England were widely-viewed as at the vanguard of the use of data in the white-ball game. Leamon conducted Monte Carlo simulations of matches, simulating thousands of matches to inform strategies and team selection. He emphasised how changes to the rules of 50-over cricket, after the 2015 World Cup, supported playing in a more attacking way – maximising the first 10 overs with the bat, and then continuing to score at a rapid pace during the middle overs, when only four fielders were allowed outside the 30-yard circle.
These findings aligned with the approach Morgan advocated after the 2015 World Cup, with the captain arguing that smart use of data helped to free up the side.
“Naturally, you don’t take as high a risk as you should and as data tells you to,” Morgan once said. “When you peg back, you feel safe. But you should go the other way.”
England will continue to use data in some ways, however. For instance, England use iHawk cameras in the County Championship to record the speed of bowlers. This then informs England’s selection policy by enabling them to see which bowlers are quickest and how batsmen fare against pace.
England also use data to assess wider attributes when picking their teams. Notably, the height and high release point of Shoaib Bashir and Tom Hartley were critical to their surprise selections for England’s tour of India in 2024.
15/05
SA Squad players to return on time or not
13/05
Cavs v Caythorpe
Ahmed Named In England IT20 Squad For West Indies Series
13 May 2025
Leicestershire all-rounder Rehan Ahmed has been named in England Men's squad for the upcoming IT20 series against the West Indies.
The 20-year-old, who has been an ever-present for the Foxes this season, will be in contention for three T20 matches, starting on Friday 6 June in Durham.
Ahmed has made 10 previous T20I appearances, taking 12 wickets at an average of 25, while he has 59 wickets across the shortest formats when adding in his Blast figures with Leicestershire and The Hundred returns with Southern Brave.
The Academy graduate will feature under new England white-ball captain, Harry Brook, as part of the following squad:
Harry Brook (Yorkshire) – Captain, Rehan Ahmed (Leicestershire), Tom Banton (Somerset), Jacob Bethell (Warwickshire), Jos Buttler (Lancashire), Brydon Carse (Durham), Liam Dawson (Hampshire), Ben Duckett (Nottinghamshire), Will Jacks (Surrey), Saqib Mahmood (Lancashire), Jamie Overton (Surrey), Matthew Potts (Durham), Adil Rashid (Yorkshire), Phil Salt (Lancashire), Luke Wood (Lancashire).
12/05
IPL Back on Saturday
09/05
IPL Suspended
Will there be a knock-on effect with the Indian Tour of England?
30/04
29/04
14 Year Old Centurion, yes it's only in the IPL, but 14...
22/04
Michael Slater
18/04
Kevin Pietersen interview: Best cricketers do not spend all day playing golf
Exclusive: As mentor to Delhi Capitals, former powerhouse batsman is loving working with players and doubles down on criticism of India tour
Tim Wigmore
“Life is good,” declares Kevin Pietersen. It is a verdict hard to dispute given Pietersen’s early summer plans. While a mentor for Delhi Capitals in the Indian Premier League, Pietersen is also permitted time off. When we chat, he is on holiday in the Maldives, before returning to India for another stint.
“I absolutely love it,” Pietersen declares of his first foray into coaching. “I love working with the players. I love spending time in the dressing room.”
Should England seek to use his expertise at any level, Pietersen would be eager to help. “I’ve always been available to Rob Key. He knows that.”
“I would still love to bat,” he adds. “But I absolutely love coaching and have that absolute desire and hunger to win and to try to make our players the best players they can be – mentally, technically and physically. It’s a game-changer, because it’s very easy sitting in the commentary box and watching cricket from afar and critiquing.”
It was Pietersen’s critique that caused a stir during his last stint in India. As a commentator in February, he attacked England’s attitude to training and penchant for golf. “I’m sorry, but you can’t come into the subcontinent, keep making the same mistakes, and then decide ‘I’m not going to practise’.”
Pietersen’s comments were specific to the tour of India, when England lost the T20 series 4-1 and the ODIs 3-0. “I don’t know what they do – I just saw two weeks, where I was very unimpressed,” Pietersen says. Wryly, he observes how England subsequently emphasised their training regime during the Champions Trophy campaign. “England cricket social media was abuzz with practice once me and Ravi Shastri went at them for not training.”
‘Guys don’t go and play golf every day and go and wing it’
Working with Delhi Capitals, the early leaders in this IPL season, has emphasised to Pietersen how players prepare for matches.
“Guys don’t go and play golf every day and go and wing it – absolutely not, absolutely not. These guys are so meticulous in their preparation. They’re like surgeons. They really are super impressive.
“You do not become successful without hard work. You don’t become successful without practising – you become constant. You have to make sure you have the technical ability to manage at the top level. These guys are so smart. I sit in on our batting and bowling meetings, with people like KL Rahul, Faf du Plessis and Mitchell Starc. Some stuff that comes out of these guys’ mouths makes you just think: ‘You have to have your wits about you, to be able to cope at the top level.’
“A swing and a hit and a giggle is going to be successful once in a little while. But if you want to be consistent, you’re going to have to have some wits about you, because these guys are very, very astute, very smart and hard working.”
The coaches that Pietersen most enjoyed working with during his own career – Duncan Fletcher, Graham Ford and Clive Rice – all shared a great focus on the fundamentals of batting. He mocks the notion that international players do not need to focus much on technique.
“Complete and utter rubbish. Whoever said that has got absolutely no idea and is winging it. Mitchell Starc – 35 years of age, as fit as a fiddle. He talks about his body weight, what he eats, the sessions that he does. He is the consummate professional. Axar Patel, who has destroyed England’s batting order for a very long time – the practice, the thinking, the communication, everything goes into making him successful.
“There has to be technique. You can’t go through an international career not watching your technique. You have a look at the great players that are on our side at the moment, and how they talk about cricket and how they base everything around technique and the way they think.”
He notes how Sunrisers Hyderabad, hyped for their big-hitting approach, have lost four of their first six matches.
“Sunrisers probably play very similar to England, where they’re just trying to hit a six every single ball.
“With other teams – yes, absolutely, there is that intent. But you’ve got to be smart. You have to have cricket smarts. So understanding wickets, understanding opposition, playing in a certain way, all of these things blend into an all-round team. You cannot be one-dimensional. Being one-dimensional, you’re going to lose.”
Talking to Pietersen is a reminder of how much, for all the controversy in his career, he simply relished the art of batting. His autobiography, for instance, recounts an email from Rahul Dravid that helped him to fix his issues against left-arm spin.
He was particularly relishing working with Harry Brook, who idolised Pietersen when he was growing up. But Brook’s late withdrawal from his Delhi Capitals contract, and subsequent ban from the next two years of the IPL, means that Pietersen will not get that opportunity with England’s new white-ball captain.
“We were disappointed that he didn’t turn up. But those are his decisions. He’s got a big, big job now,” says Pietersen.
“I watched him when he played for the Northern Superchargers. I saw a couple of his shots, and I immediately saw superstardom. I love watching him bat. And there is a part of me that’s gutted that he isn’t with us at Delhi Capitals.”
On England’s white-ball tour of India this year, Pietersen observed Brook’s travails against spin.
“Watching him play spin on the last tour, he clearly has some faults which can be corrected with a few technical changes,” Pietersen explains. “I absolutely love talking about batting. And so it was something I was looking forward to with Harry.
“He’s such a good player, but there are technical flaws in his playing of spin which need to be fixed. A lot of Western batsmen, a lot of guys from England, South Africa, Australia, have the same issues. There’s just a lot of technical things that can change – drills that you can do. I mean, look at Joe Root. He is probably one of the best players of spin in the world, because technically he is so sound. And that’s something that I would love to have worked with Harry Brook on.”
Brook’s specific issue against spin, Pietersen believes, is rooted in his footwork. “A lot of guys that plant their front foot and play with their hands feel rushed,” he says. “It’s about picking length.
“There’s a few drills that you can do which help you pick length, which we’ve been doing over the last couple of weeks with a couple of our batters.
“There are certain techniques that you put into your practice that help you play the ball late. I’m not a believer in telling somebody ‘play the ball late’ or ‘stop planting your front foot’. I’m a firm believer in giving them the how, not the why, just this is the how, and let’s go and spend hours and hours drilling it.”
Such enthusiasm, you sense, would equip Pietersen to continue his coaching journey. He was personally involved in advising Kiran Kumar Grandhi, the chairman of the Delhi Capitals, in his recent purchase of stakes in both Hampshire and Southern Brave. It is widely thought that Pietersen will be involved in Southern Brave’s coaching staff in 2026 – quite possibly as head coach.
“I’ll see how I go. But everything that’s happening in England with the Southern Brave and that deal – there will be opportunities.”
This English summer, Pietersen the player will become the subject of new attention. Every week will bring new 20th anniversaries from the extraordinary summer of 2005: when Pietersen made his Test debut, and then played one of England’s greatest innings in the final Test.
‘It still resonates around the world as the greatest Test series that’s ever been played’
“It doesn’t feel that long ago. That Test series still resonates around the world as the greatest Test series that’s ever been played. It was amazing being a part of that. It was a very special bunch of players on both sides.”
For Pietersen himself, the personal pressure of the contest was less than he had faced earlier in the year, when vilified by South African crowds during England’s one-day international tour. He responded with three centuries in six innings.
“I was the pantomime villain,” Pietersen recalls. “For me, a South African, that was the toughest tour that I was ever going to have. Any Ashes battle that I ever had was almost insignificant compared to what I had to face on and off the field in South Africa over that three-week period.
“All the Ashes stuff was nowhere near as difficult as what I had to endure being chucked in the deep end. That made my ride in international cricket a lot easier, having success on that tour.”
Whether slog-sweeping Shane Warne, having the audacity to use his feet to Glenn McGrath, or hooking Brett Lee incessantly after lunch on day five at The Oval, Pietersen says that his approach was the same. “See ball, hit ball. I never played the man. I played the ball. Very simple – never ever played the man. I just played the ball. What I saw, I played.”
It would be easy to view Pietersen’s elan that summer as Bazball before Bazball. Pietersen himself does not agree. Indeed, his Test career strike rate of 62 indicates a batsman who, for all the pyrotechnics, was adaptable too.
“I didn’t go out and swing and do crazy things. I was very attacking. I was very methodical. I played situations,” he says. “There were rare occasions that I was being ultra aggressive, trying to attack and just play the way that the team required me to play. But there was a lot of method in my madness. Sometimes, in this new set-up, I don’t see method. I just see madness.”
16/04
LA2028
Bangladesh Anti-Corruption Commission raids BCB's headquarters.
Mohammad Isam.
Cricinfo.
Wednesday, 16 April 2025.
PTG 4825-23080.
The Bangladesh government's Anti-Corruption Commission (ACC) raided the Bangladesh Cricket Board’s (BCB) headquarters on Tuesday to collect documents and records following allegations made against the cricket board. They include financial misappropriation of ticket sales during the Bangladesh Premier League (BPL), irregularity in expenses for cricket-related activities around a political program in 2020, and details about the rule change in Dhaka's third division qualification competition. All three allegations fall under the time when Nazmul Hassan was the BCB president from 2013-24.
ACC officials said they are looking into the financial anomaly in the BPL's ticket sales since the third edition. Ticket sales have earned the BCB around 150 million Taka ($A1.94 million, £UK932,505) from the eight seasons, but in the eleventh season alone it was 130 m Taka ($A1.68m, £UK808,350). "One of BCB's revenue streams is ticket sales. There were 150 million [Taka] over eight years, and then 13 million [Taka] in a single year. We are trying to collect documents to find out what the anomaly is”, said an ACC official.
He added that there are allegations that the 2020 political program also had some financial anomalies, including misappropriation of funds of around 170 m Taka ($A2.2 m, £UK1.12 m). "There's also some anomaly in the expenses shown in the that program. It showed expenses worth 250 m Taka, but actually it was around 170 m Taka ($A3.2 m to 2.2 m, £UK1.6 m to 1.1 m). There's allegations that they didn't show the expenses of almost 190 m Taka ($A2.5 m, £UK1.2 m). We have asked for those documents and records from the finance department”, he said.
The ACC has also spoken to the BCB about their rule change in the Dhaka Third Division Qualifying tournament, which was introduced in the late 1990s. It is the non-league tournament from where the top two teams enter the third division league, the lowest in the Dhaka league pyramid. During Nazmul's reign, the BCB hiked the team's entry fee to 500,000 Taka ($A6,480, £UK3,110) from the previous 50,000 Taka ($A650, £UK310). Since these were amateur clubs, many refrained from taking part in the competition.
However, some clubs paid the hiked fee to participate. They played out a knockout scenario to determine which clubs entered the league; sometimes only two paid the fees which meant direct entry into the Dhaka Third Division League. "Among the specific complaints is the illegal money involved in the Third Division Qualifying competition”, said the ACC official. "We found out how the teams were selected before 2023. Their competition fees used to be 50,000 Taka. Only two or three teams would apply for it, and from them the BCB would choose one or two teams.
When the fee was reduced to 10,000 Taka ($A130, £UK60), sixty clubs applied to play in the competition. "Our point is that, why did only two or three teams apply in previous years, and why did 60 teams apply this time? We have collected documents. There could be personal influence in the selection process of the Third Division Qualifying tournament. We found out that neighbourhood clubs found it hard to meet the criteria set for playing in the tournament".
13/04
I don't know when it kicked-in, I've just noticed that the BBC scorecards now record dot balls for both bowlers and "batters" in all formats of cricket, even in first class.
11/04
Test cricket is dying, this is how to save it
A chaotic fixture list and a never-ending run of mindless slogfests mean that separating cricket into two codes is the only option
Simon Heffer 10/04
Searching the internet for stories about reform of the International Cricket Council, or the structure of international cricket, discloses that for the best part of 15 years talking heads have been demanding restructuring of the game – and particularly its fixture lists.
As all cricket lovers know, in that time matters have become worse, thanks to the proliferation of T20 leagues and international fixtures. As I have noted before, professional cricketers have a limited shelf life. Nobody can blame them for seeking to make as much money as they can while they can. However, this has had far-reaching effects on the game, and profoundly threatens a vital part of it: Test cricket.
Last week the World Cricketers’ Association called for wholesale reform of the ICC. It demanded, among other things, improved distribution of revenues, strictly defined windows when international fixtures could be played, and better leadership. The last seems to imply a leadership that conforms with the wishes of the WCA, a body that India – now in financial, if not moral, terms the powerhouse of cricket – refuses to admit exists. To those who recall Britain before Mrs Thatcher, this has familiar resonances: a trade union demanding a better share-out of the loot the bosses are making. That is not to say, however, that the WCA does not have a point.
Certain Indians have become prodigiously rich because a section of that country’s 1.4 billion inhabitants cannot get enough T20 cricket. Nearly a year ago Houlihan Lokey, an American investment bank, valued the Indian Premier League at $16.4 billion (£12.7 billion). They can afford to pay handsome sums to the world’s best cricketers to play in it. Therefore, some who might make good Test cricketers do not participate in the highest form of the game, and seldom go near the domestic first-class game. Both suffer accordingly.
Last year South Africa sent effectively a second XI to play two Tests in New Zealand. Predictably, the tourists were thrashed in both, in the first by 281 runs and in the second by seven wickets. Yet, again because of bizarre international fixture lists, South Africa will meet Australia at Lord’s in June in the final of the World Test Championship. This is despite South Africa not having played either Australia or England, two of the world’s strongest sides, during the period in which results were assessed for this final. If, as one might equally expect, Australia thrash South Africa within three days, it would make a mockery of the whole competition, as well as leaving MCC short of revenues.
To avoid a repeat of such an outcome, the WCA wants a two-division Test championship. It is hard to think of a more effective way of killing Test cricket altogether, or at least just reducing it to a permanent triangular tournament between England, Australia and India. That, though, often seems like something the ICC has unwittingly been trying to do for years. That is thanks to what the WCA has called the “chaotic, inconsistent and confusing” fixtures schedule that has evolved because of the demands of T20 and the desire of governing bodies and players to trouser as much cash as possible. To enhance competitiveness, the WCA also wants divisions in 50 and 20-over cricket.
The WCA’s worries about the financial dominance of India, England and Australia is merely another way of protesting against the financial inadequacies of the other nine full members of the ICC, six of which are in the World Test Championship (Bangladesh, New Zealand, Pakistan, South Africa, Sri Lanka and West Indies). In each of these countries people have been driven away from first-class and Test cricket. Indeed, they have been driven away from first-class cricket in Australia and India too, and the turnout for County Championship matches here (the 2025 edition is starting on Friday) has been declining since the 1950s and is now largely pitiful. Yet without meaningful first-class cricket – by which I mean domestic first-class cricket that features international cricketers, both to inspire and educate younger players and pull in crowds – we cannot nurture a decent Test team. However, the Championship has withered because it is not marketed or promoted.
National boards must decide what they want. Perhaps some do not want to play Test cricket: in which case there is no point in trying to make them. But if some do, because when they visit one of the ‘big three’ nations they rake in much helpful cash, then they should be encouraged to do so, provided they take steps to be competitive. Regulating international fixture lists to allow for domestic first-class and Test cricket would certainly be helpful; but, as Kerry Packer would tell you, there is nothing to prevent new versions of the IPL springing up elsewhere (Americans are trying) and financially mesmerising yet more players.
As I have often written, this is a comprehensive argument for two codes in cricket, red-ball and white-ball, which domestically could be managed by single national governing bodies. Although a free-market ideology underpins the current problems – because no one can force hugely rich IPL magnates to shower poor relations with their money – an element of domestic cross-subsidy would be possible if individual boards use revenues from white-ball matches to subsidise red-ball matches. But I have been advancing this argument for years, and the ostrich-like pose of too many governing bodies suggests no one wants to listen.
However, the day will come when spectators will have had enough of one mindless slogfest after another and, if there is no fixture reform, players will be exhausted. Also, the vast earnings depend on sponsors, who will tail off as audiences do. It is easy to spot a golden egg, but the goose is in danger of being roasted and eaten. It should also worry head-in-the-sand English administrators that no one in the WCA is talking about The Hundred, in which various British-based plutocrats have made significant investments, and whose life may prove to be painfully short. But never mind that absurdity: Test cricket is dying, and may be already beyond salvation, unless the ICC chooses to save it.
England should not pick a spinner in the Ashes
With management group open to new ideas, this could free up more batting and bowling strength on placid pitches Down Under
Tim Wigmore 24/03
Shoaib Bashir or Jack Leach? Maybe Rehan Ahmed? Or even a candidate from outside the England set-up – Liam Dawson, at the end of his career, or Archie Vaughan, at the start of his?
Such are England’s options as they consider which spinner to pick for the Ashes. Yet perhaps debating the respective merits of these spinners is to ask the wrong question. Instead, England should be asking whether they need a specialist spinner at all.
England’s incumbent first-choice spinner, Bashir, is unwanted by Somerset for the start of the summer. Instead, he has signed on loan for Glamorgan for the first three matches: a repeat of last summer, when Bashir went on loan to Worcestershire in search of playing opportunities.
Bashir’s curious status at Taunton reflects his difficulties in the past year. Since a fine maiden tour of India, when the turning wickets complemented his bounce and drift, Bashir has struggled in conditions less conducive for spin, and averages 50.3 in his last nine Tests. Earlier this year, Bashir had an underwhelming tour of Australia with England Lions, taking four wickets at 68.5. Whether he would fare any better on a Test tour of Australia is a very legitimate question.
Any debate about England spinners Down Under quickly returns to 2010-11. In England’s lone away Ashes victory in the last 35 years, spin played a crucial role. Graeme Swann bowled 219 overs across the five Tests, more than anyone else on either side. Swann was a match-winner in Adelaide, taking seven wickets in the Test. When seam was the main threat, Swann still performed an essential containing role, conceding just 2.7 an over across the series. His control, including in the first innings, underpinned England’s balance, enabling the side to pick an attack with only four specialist bowlers.
Yet there is a simple problem with trying to emulate the 2010-11 template. England lack anyone of Swann’s control and guile – a package that was even more valuable when complemented by his outstanding slip fielding and dangerous lower-order hitting.
Even with his gifts, Swann ultimately averaged 52.6 in eight Tests in Australia.
That number has been put into new context since Swann retired. In their last 12 Tests in Australia, going back to Boxing Day 2013, England’s spinners have returned combined figures of 26 wickets for 1,682 wins – averaging 64.7 runs per wicket, and conceding 3.76 runs an over. In the same period, England’s seamers average 35.8 runs per wicket, with an economy rate of 3.02.
The travails of England’s spinners are no surprise. This century, Muthiah Muralitharan averages 61.9 in Australia, Harbhajan Singh 73.2 and Yasir Shah 89.5. Even Ravichandran Ashwin, the greatest spinner since Murali and Shane Warne, averages 42.4. All told, overseas spinners average 54.3 in Australia this century; that number reaches 59.1 when Indian spinners are omitted.
Overseas spinners ‘almost obsolete’
In recent years, spinners have become even less essential on Australian pitches. Across the five Tests against India during the recent Border-Gavaskar series, Nathan Lyon only bowled 122.4 overs, the fewest that he has ever bowled in a series comprising at least three Tests. Lyon was scarcely called upon because of a cocktail of the new batch of Kookaburra balls, which have offered sharply more seam movement, and spicier pitches.
The upshot has been to make overseas spinners almost obsolete. Since the new Kookaburra balls were used ahead of the 2021-22 Australian summer, touring spinners average 65.3, taking just 35 wickets in 20 Tests. Overseas seamers average 32 in the same period.
Traditionally, the sharp turn and bounce at Sydney demanded two spinners. Yet in this year’s Sydney Test, spinners bowled just 10 overs in the match; India’s spin twins, Ravindra Jadeja and Washington Sundar, were picked as batsmen, and bowled four overs between them. With Australia and India collapsing to 185, 181 and then 157 all out in the first three innings, spin was as redundant as swim shorts in English winter.
And so, as they finalise their plans for the winter, England should be freed from the straitjacket of thinking that they need a spinner, “just because”. Picking spinners in Australia, because it is the done thing, has contributed to England’s recent misery there. In 2021-22, Jack Leach was picked at the Gabba, and duly pummelled. Figures of 1-102 from 13 overs attested to England’s folly in selecting a spinner while omitting both James Anderson and Stuart Broad.
Rather than feel obliged to pick a specialist spinner, England have the opportunity to think creatively about how to assemble their side. Handily, their top seven might well include two useful spinners, who turn the ball in different ways: Joe Root and Jacob Bethell. Root’s off spin should be deployed freely against Alex Carey: Root has dismissed Carey four times in Tests, while conceding just 47 runs.
Freed from the obligation to pick a specialist spinner, unless conditions demand, England could instead unleash four frontline quicks. Such a structure would be a return to the formation that England used in the last three Ashes Tests in 2023.
Just as it did then, a four-pronged pace attack could get the best out of Mark Wood – liberating him to be unleashed at full throttle in spells of three or four overs, and maximising the amount of Tests that he could play. With Wood or possibly Jofra Archer in this role, Gus Atkinson, Brydon Carse and one of Chris Woakes and Matthew Potts would make up the rest of the attack.
There would be wider benefits to this balance, too. This sextet of seamers are all useful batsmen; England could conceivably line up with Carse, who has a first-class average of 30.3, at No 10.
Selecting four frontline quicks would also protect Ben Stokes. England hope that Stokes will be able to play a significant role with the ball in Australia. But an attack comprising, say, Atkinson, Carse, Wood and Bashir would risk Stokes being over-bowled – diminishing his effectiveness, and bringing a risk of injury.
Yet the greatest logic behind selecting four front-line seamers is ultimately very simple. Such a line-up enables England to get more of their best bowlers in their final XI. For an England side who have delighted in abandoning conventional wisdom, lining up without a specialist spinner could merely be the next step.
Bonus points are latest plan to boost interest in Test cricket
Exclusive: Current system offers same number of points for all wins, with no additional weighting for the manner of victory
The final of the 2023-25 championship, pitting Australia against South Africa at Lord’s, begins on June 11. England’s five-Test series against India, which marks the start of the 2025-27 championship, then begins on June 20.
There have been widespread complaints – principally in England – about the championship, with a belief that the points system is unfair. The points penalties for slow over rates, which England have repeatedly fallen foul of, have already been relaxed. Now, there are discussions about wider changes to the points system.
Bonus points for the margin of victory – similar to the model used in rugby’s Six Nations – is one idea that will be discussed at the next International Cricket Council board meeting in early April. The current points system gives the same weighting to all victories, whether they are by one run or by an innings. Under the proposed reforms, teams could earn bonus points if they register an emphatic margin of victory, such as by an innings. It is hoped that the change could ensure that interest remains in matches in which the result is already inevitable.
Two other potential changes being considered would weight victories based on the side defeated. One such idea would award more points to wins away from home. It is thought that this could lead sides to give more focus to series overseas and encourage more rigorous preparation, ultimately producing more competitive cricket.
Another concept being mooted is a seeding system, which would weight the points that a team could win based on the country that they face. In practice, this would be likely to increase England’s chances of qualifying for the final of the competition, reflecting how England meet both Australia and India in each cycle.
With these two envisaged changes, a result such as New Zealand’s spectacular 3-0 victory in India last year would receive significantly more points. Under the existing system, New Zealand earned no more for the historic result than, say, England did for their 3-0 win at home to West Indies last summer.
There has been some criticism that South Africa’s route to this year’s final was aided by the schedule. During the 2023-25 cycle, South Africa defeated Pakistan and Sri Lanka in Test series at home and Bangladesh and West Indies away, alongside a home draw with India and a defeat in New Zealand. South Africa did not play either Australia or England in the period.
But any reforms to the championship will have to reflect the continued lack of fixtures between India and Pakistan, with the Indian government refusing to sanction matches between the two rivals outside of limited-overs tournaments. There could also be concerns that the proposed changes to the points system could make the championship league table even more confusing.
The championship’s unwieldy points system reflects the inequities in the fixture list, with Australia, England and India playing almost twice as many Tests as their rivals.
Yet Australia have now qualified for consecutive finals of the championship, after winning the tournament in 2023, while India reached the final in both 2021 and 2023. England have come fourth, fourth and then fifth in the three editions of the championship – an embarrassing sequence for a nation that considers itself the home of Test cricket and has hosted all the finals so far.
The potential changes to the championship, to come into effect immediately, are separate from any discussion about the future of the competition from 2027, when the Future Tours Programme begins. Cricket Australia has proposed a new two-divisional structure, which would allow for more lucrative series involving Australia, England and India. But the England and Wales Cricket Board has not been enthusiastic about these proposals.
In February, Richard Thompson, the chairman of the ECB, told Telegraph Sport that he supported revamping the World Test Championship.
“It is fully understood that the current structure does not work in the way it should and we need to find a fairer, better competition, but at this stage no recommendations have been put forward,” Thompson said.
“The World Test Championship should be fairer and more competitive. It is going to change to ensure it always encourages the best teams to reach the final and encourages other nations that want to play Test cricket, to play Test cricket.”
Stuart MacGill: Australian cricket great found guilty of cocaine supply
The 54-year-old was cleared by the jury of a more serious charge involving the commercial supply of the drug
Former Australia test cricketer Stuart MacGill has been found guilty of taking part in the supply of cocaine by a Sydney court.
The 54-year-old was cleared by the jury of involvement in the commercial supply of the drug, on Thursday.
MacGill, who had pleaded not guilty, admitted to the use of cocaine and to introducing his partner's brother to his drug dealer, state broadcaster ABC reported.
Prosecutors allege that the pair later made a deal for A$330,000 (£160,000) worth of cocaine but MacGill maintained his involvement was limited to the introduction, at his Sydney restaurant in April 2021.
A group of men were arrested a month later in connection with the abduction of MacGill, who said he had been taken to an abandoned house where he was beaten and threatened with a gun.
Police said MacGill delayed reporting the incident to police because of “significant fear.”
Detective Acting Superintendent Anthony Holton said it would have been “a horribly traumatic experience to endure.”
“To be dragged into a car, driven to a remote location, physically assaulted, threatened with a firearm, held for a period of time then dumped, I think you’d be pretty worried about your own personal safety, the safety of your family and your friends,” Holton said.
Police said at the time MacGill sustained minor injuries but did not need medical treatment.
Australian Cricketers’ Association spokesman Todd Greenberg said at the time his group was concerned about MacGill’s state of mind.
“Stuart is a wonderful former Australian cricketer and member of the ACA. My primary concern for Stuart is his wellbeing,” Greenberg said in a statement. “We’ve reached out to him in a variety of different forms and my primary message to Stuart is we want to make sure he is OK.”
MacGill, a spin bowler who probably would have played more than 44 tests if he had not been a contemporary of Shane Warne, will return to court for sentencing in May.
You cannot save Test Cricket, if you let domestic First Class cricket wither and die. As in with no music schools, there would be orchestras.
ReplyDeleteECB and main county bosses want to stop playing all forms of first class cricket for 5 weeks in peak summer. They are far worse than the parish council.
ReplyDeleteWell put !
Delete