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England Sketch Some 'Broad' Strokes
What a fascinating game of cricket. Cant claim to have watched all that much, but the news bits were interesting.
Though this is the Ashes series, it is in fact a series of 10 games that will test the endurance of all of the players, and one wonders whether the team makups (pariticularly Australia) will bear any relation to the ones in place now.
Australia's batsmen are way too uneven, and cant be counted on at all. The miracle of Agar must have been something to watch, though he couldn't follow it up as nightwatchman.
And then there is Broad. Fair enough he wanted to hold his ground, and no complaint about him not walking. The umpire was disinclined to give him out, and with no referrals left, that's just the way the game is.
But let's not hear any trumpery about England, and Fair Play., and moral supreiority, etc. At the end of the day, and since they first revealed their true colours in 1932/33, the England team are just like anyone; win first by any means.
Oh dear Chris, is that your shoelace undone, and only seconds to play the last over? Safety first old man; you need to stop and fix that.
Comments
To be fair, while "walking" is sometimes imagined to be part of an abiding cricket honour code stretching back to antiquity, it belongs more properly to the realm of what Eric Hobsbawm called invented tradition.
In Simon Rae's excellent history of unfair play, It's Not Cricket, he finds negligible evidence for walking before World War II, and concludes that the custom was only a vogue in English cricket for the two decades after, where he suspects it represented a last efflorescence of gentlemanly conduct as the distinction between amateur and professional narrowed to vanishing point.
Even during its heyday, Rae reports an ambivalence about the politesse, recounting an incident in a Test at Cape Town in 1964-65 when Ken Barrington walked after being given not out for a caught at the wicket, and occasioned howls of execration: "Ugly new low in sportsmanship"; "an ostentatious act which bordered on gamesmanship"; "it seems the England players are quite capable of umpiring the match themselves". He quotes the quivering judgment of former Springbok Jackie McGlew: "You must never take control of the game out of the umpire's hands."
PS It was a fantastic game. Good, hard Test cricket. Agar was great.
Australia getting some momentum in the last 10 overs, but the middle bit allowed it all to get away.
Good work from Trott, and Bell. The latter dropping anchor in fine style, and making Pattinson in particlar become ragged.
Australia need them out in the first hour to get anywhere with this one.
Australian Team Motivation Session
Clarke: You really didn't look at that homework, did you?
A popular refrain (of mine) is that the pyjama game has ruined Test match batting. But its alright because the only people who care are the English, Saffers and the Aussies.
The averages are very similar for both teams but Australia lost a handful of critical sessions. Your batting line up looks better now than at the start of the series.
For us, Root looks most promising and Bell has finally blossomed.
The highlight for me was Agar at Lord's: a fairytale debut.
Why, after Smith takes 4 wickets in one test, would you choose not to bowl him at all in the next, on a turning wicket?????