Table of contents for March - April 2016 in Inside Cricket

Twenty20 cricket is a theme of this issue, for good reason. It’s a phenomenon. It’s fantastic entertainment. It generates excitement. It creates new heroes. It’s bringing crowds. It’s bringing more female players. We’ve been a supporter since its inception, but 2015-16 will be remembered as BBL’s breakout. You’ll notice another underlying theme in this edition: Chris Rogers and Matt Cleary both question Test cricket’s future. Last issue, Justin Langer said good Test-match technique would see a cricketer through any format, whereas a good T20 technique is only good for T20. People are hitting the right questions. But it’s getting late in the day. In the end, it won’t matter whether T20 technique is good for Test cricket, because the gap is widening enough for each to have its own specialists.…

ONE BEATS XI In the December 2015 Hobart Test, Adam Voges (269 not out) outscored the West Indies (223 all out) in the first innings. His batting partner in Australia’s only innings, Shaun Marsh (182), beat the Windies total of 148 in the second. The fourth-wicket stand of 449 runs between Voges and Marsh was 78 more than the Windies total 371 in both innings. A week earlier in Delhi, India’s Ajinkya Rahane (127 runs) outscored South Africa (121) in the first innings. In the January 2012 Sydney Test, Michael Clarke (329 not out) defeated India (191) off his own bat. In the 2004 Perth Test Justin Langer became the first batsman to outscore an opposition in either innings. He scored 191 and 97 runs. Pakistan was all out for…

AUSTRALIA’S recent cricketing history glitters with famous droughtbreaking moments. Mark Taylor’s 1995 Test series win in the West Indies; 2004’s Indian “final frontier”, to name a few. The Aussies’ quest to take home the only major international cricket trophy that has eluded them may not be on the same scale as the aforementioned celebrated moments, but in the ever-changing landscape of the international game, it is no less important. Upon viewing Cricket Australia’s ever-growing trophy cabinet that features four of the past five ICC World Cups, two Champions Trophies, the past three Women’s Twenty20 championships, plus numerous makeshift Ashes urns and Test world number-one mantles, the Men’s World Twenty20 is the one obvious missing piece of silverware. Outside of the format’s biggest prize, Australia has been a major force in…

LYNN’S FIVE IN FIVE Brisbane Heat v Melbourne Stars, MCG, January 14, 2016 He’s been known to provide the odd crazy highlight, has Chris Lynn, but in BBL05, he created reels of them. None were more memorable than his five consecutive sixes against the Melbourne Stars, from the bowling of Ben Hilfenhaus. Having slapped Dan Worrall around, Lynn took to Hilfenhaus with a stunning series of shots to all parts of the stands. Hilfy is no mug with a ball in his hand, and this moment of “Lynnsanity” left him at a complete loss. Bemused, he tried everything, but Lynn was in some kind of mood. He brought up his 50 from 19 balls. …AND BADREE’S FIVE OFF 16 Brisbane Heat v Melbourne Stars, MCG, January 14, 2016 Stop the…

It ’s hard for those brought up on instant results to imagine the draw is a result at a l l – somet imes a thr i l l ing result. However, the First Test between England and Pakistan in Abu Dhabi last October, which began as a boring run-fest and ended, a f ter a sudden Pakistani col lapse, in a desperate chase which just fai led, proved that a match can i n fact explode into a draw! Af ter the protracted Perth Test , the very idea of the drawn game has come under close scrut iny. Just in Langer is one who bel ieves it ’s time to dispense with it . But the draw can be an exhi larat ing result; not a scoreboard win…

Change was in the air. The arrival of Richie Benaud’s Australians for the 1961 Ashes tour was a fresh gale of the stuff. Benaud and his devoted band made their way to the fusty stronghold of cricket conservatism with a view to changing all that with their breezy, perpetual-motion game, regardless of results. This tour had an evangelical feel. Benaud promised his team would continue the reformation begun the previous Australian summer against the West Indies. He knew his words would be taken to heart. He’d made Test cricket romantic and relevant again, and even inside the oaken panels of the MCC boardroom, they loved that about him. Cricket history had offered no better man at a more opportune time. He was an intelligent cricketer and captain, occasionally stung by…

Jackson Bird’s progress has been meteoric, and his performances rewarded and awarded, yet he has the late-bloomer’s habit of being ignored. Bird, a fast-bowler who was recently considered for the recent Australia-West Indies series before he was inexplicably overlooked for the largely-inactive Nathan Coulter-Nile, only began his first-class career when he was almost 25, in season 2011-12. But he made an immediate impact. In order to be noticed, Bird, a tall, accurate fast bowler with an impressive array of tricks, moved to Tasmania that very season. By season’s end, he was Sheffield Shield Player of the Year. The decision was a no-brainer. He’d claimed 53 wickets in his debut season, averaging 16. Included in that performance was a hat trick against Western Warriors, and match figures of 11-95. In fact,…

Germany launched a brand new domestic T20 competition this last European summer to concentrate talent and improve international performance. Following relegation to ICC Europe Division 3 last year for the first time in a long while, the Deutscher Cricket Bund (DCB) decided it needed to lift its game – and a T20 national tournament for the top 40 to 50 players in the country was born. Taking inspiration from the format of the Indian Premier League (IPL), the DCB Super Series comprises three teams, each with the best talent from different regions of Germany. These were the Western Eagles, representing the state of Hesse and North Rhine-Westphalia; the Alpine Tigers, representing Bavaria and Baden-Wuerttemberg; and the Northern Lights, representing Berlin and Northern Germany. The combining of regions meant that competition…

A combined East Asia Pacific (EAP) squad featuring four Japanese women players has become the first Champions of the Commonwealth Bank Australian Country Cricket Championships in Mount Gambier in January. The four Japanese women (Mai Yanagida, Etsuko Kobayashi, Kurumi Ota and Ayako Nakayama) made the XI selected for the final against South Australia as they won the game by eight wickets with Nakayama opening the bowling and Kobayashi the batting. The team, also made up of players from Samoa, Vanuatu and Papua New Guinea, came to gether just a day before the tournament began. It was a proud moment for Japanese cricket. With the Women’s EAP Trophy due to take place in Samoa in July, many of these players will be playing against each other. Events such as this certainly…

Is Yorkshire the best cricketing county in England? There are enough good players in Yorkshire to run two first-class teams. If Yorkshire did that, more youngsters would get a chance to play first-class cricket and develop into really top players. I’ve said for a long time that the England and Wales Cricket Board should take over the running of a county team, so why not Yorkshire? How would that work? How I see it is that Yorkshire would run their first team, now, as they do and ECB would run the other team, like a development squad, loaning players from around the rest of the country. They’d pick a group of talented young players, who might not get a game in their own county team, and then employ three or…

THE STARTER JAMES FAULKNER When Faulkner has played for Australia, two things have been as certain as cackleberries. 1) If he gets man-of-thematch, Australia wins. 2) If he’s given the job of ending it with bat or ball, it’s as finished as last week. Done like Chris Gayle. The work is no longer in progress. Faulkner will be Australia’s main man in India. Somebody just needs to get The Finisher started. Coming in late with the bat, he often doesn’t get out there as much as he – or we – would like, and if he does, it’s to step into his role as the man who draws the curtain. Faulkner has the knack – some say genius – of not only getting the concluding runs, but winding up not-out…

Six teenagers, young Indigenous cricketers from Victoria, were sitting in a private box at the Shaikh Zayed Stadium in Abu Dhabi when something really cool happened. They were watching some of their teammates on the field below, playing in a charity match. Kevin Pietersen and Shoaib Akhtar were on the pitch: pretty cool, but the really cool thing would happen a few minutes later. Pietersen and Shoaib set the match up. Shoaib does this every year in the United Arab Emirates – gets a few stars involved, plays himself, and then lets the local migrant construction workers, many of them Pakistani, in for free. This year, there were around 10,000 fans in the ground, singing, banging drums, and having a good time. It was Pietersen who brought the young Australian…

Last issue of Inside Cricket, I explained the doosra and mentioned a few other deliveries for an off-spinner to bowl apart from his stock ball. Again, here below is a sequence of photos of a stock off-spinner, this time taken from the front, just so you can reference them against the variations. Go to school... Our regular “How To” section is written by the best in the business, Elite Cricket. The Head Coach and Director of Elite is none other than former Australian off-spinner Jason Krejza, who also took this month’s instructional snaps. Jason applies his vast experience working with the world’s best players and coaches to his own coaching. Jason had a historymaking Test debut when his 12 wickets for the match against India in 2010 included eight wickets…

THE UNAUTHORISED BIOGRAPHY JARROD KIMBER. HARDIE GRANT. RRP $25.95 This is cricket for dummies, and that’s not a negative criticism. In idiosyncratic, declarative prose faintly redolent of Vonnegut (he’s got to be a fan), Jarrod Kimber presents the highlights and turning-points of Test cricket from its inception. Its structure is, to an extent, pre-determined by chronology. The selected highlights reflect Test cricket’s journey into its current state. The details are whimsically chosen, and sometimes fancifully hung together. Some of the happenings Kimber highlights are not necessarily the details historians would select, and this is the best thing about Test Cricket – the Unauthorised Biography. It shows an appreciation for the unappreciated.…

ED. ROB SMYTH. BLOOMSBURY. RRP 24.99 This book offers the standard Wisden fare: contemporary accounts of the entire Test career of the great Richie that were published in the “cricket bible.” That alone is great reading for the cricket lover. Because it contains more, including some of Benaud’s own work and excellent essays from a range of the best cricket writers from Fingleton to Haigh, the book really needs to break with tradition and provide something to guide the reader, like a page of contents, or an index. Still it’s great reading, and provides yet another layer to the ever-increasing corpus of homage to the man who changed cricket in so many ways. A highlight is the brief, heartfelt foreword from one of the very best fast bowlers in cricket…

“I’d like to ask Steve Smith the same question.” Mitchell Starc after the nail-biter Third Test against New Z e a land in Adelaide, when asked why he was asked to bat in h is usual position, despite a stress fracture to h is foot. “I think reputationally I’m completely scorched.” Chris Cairns on why he won’t return to cricket. Cairns was cleared of perjury and perverting the course of justice during a 2012 match-fixing trial. “I really don’t see question marks and I hope the players aren’t thinking that way either because that is negative.” West Indies team manager Richie Richardson before the first tour match. Obviously one thing West Indies cricket won’t put up with is negativity. “I wouldn’t be selecting four bowlers just because they can bowl…

The name doesn’t refer to their age or the weather – though it might be applicable to either. The Mighty Greys named themselves after a pub – Grey’s Public House – in Brighton, England, and they used to play in the Whitbread League, which is now defunct. The team was the initiative of Mike Lance, who loved to talk beer and cricket with other landlords in the Whitbread pubs in Brighton. Well-and-truly stung by jibes from the landlord of the Wellington, in Kemp Town – not to mention ten pints of ale – he answered the challenge and put together a ragtag team from the patrons of his own pub, with names like Spotty, Roger the Eggman and Smudger. Sometime in 1988, the landlords managed to talk the Brewery into…

Mike Brearley, chairman of the MCC’s World Cricket Committee, on the morning of the inaugural Day/Night Test match, described Test cricket this way: “Dying is a bit strong, but (it’s) fading a bit.” Recognised for his outstanding tactical nous as England captain in the 1970’s and '80’s, as well as his man-management skills, Brearley’s opinion should be noted. Perhaps his most telling line in that interview with ABC Grandstand was a quote from the novel The Leopard: “For things to remain the same, everything has to change.” This from a stalwart of the game who sits in the Chairman’s Room at Lord's and watches all the first-class cricket he can. No more cucumber sandwiches and cups of tea as he reads a novel at the cricket. He wants to be…

The timing for the establishment of the Women’s Big Bash League in Australia couldn’t have been better. Aussie crowds have expressed their unequivocal, unconditional love for the shortest and most dynamic member of the cricket family, and the players have responded with exciting cricket. Women’s cricket is riding that wave, but it’s also creating plenty of its own. Participation at the grassroots level is higher than ever. Channel Nine, wanting to have its slice of the T20 pie, secured the rights to the first T20 International between Southern Stars and India, with the second and third televised on Nine’s digital channel, GEM. Channel 10 had decided against televising the WBBL semi-finals until sheer weight of viewing numbers persuaded them otherwise. Our stars have mostly performed as expected in the inaugural…

A great catch can turn a cricket match on its head. Some catchers are so good, their value to a team is indispensable. There are those who take catches, and there are those who make them. These Aussies caught everything – at least, it’s hard to remember them dropping one – and occasionally, they manufactured wickets for bowlers when by all rights there shouldn’t have been one. They are some of Australia’s best. MARK WAUGH Mark Edward “Junior” Waugh was simply one of the best catchers ever to adorn a slips cordon. It was always hard to tell whether he was up to anything particularly urgent, because his razor reflexes and calm demeanour never betrayed the difficulty of his undertaking. Mainly occupying second slip, he stood alongside two others in…

Whether grouped as a race, nation, region or club, people love to be represented by supermen – bellipotent heroes of their own soil with their hammers of Thor, mighty shields, pulverising fists; whose mythical deeds show the world they are not to be messed with, they are capable of supremacy or, even in defeat, extraordinary nobility. To Australia, a pint-sized Johnny-come-lately of a nation having to prove itself to the world ever since its beginnings as a snotty urchin with authority issues, sporting achievement has always been the speediest route to acceptance. Australian sporting supermen have sometimes raised the bar so high that clearing it is still, to this day, not an option. Some ruled unchallenged throughout entire careers. History judges them victors over everyone, from every generation. Some, like…

ASHES DIARY 2015. MCMILLAN AUSTRALIA. RRP $34.99 Not only a diary but a swansong, this book charts Clarke’s state of mind from the buoyant lead-up to the series to its muted end, marked by an otiose victory – and of course, his retirement before that final Test. Clarke’s behind-the-scenes account of Haddin’s omission and his description of the calamitous Fourth Test are gripping reading, as is his revelation of the moment he decided enough was enough, with his dismissal in the second innings of that disaster. Even he can’t give us a reason for his sudden decline – he openly mulls questions as to whether it was his chronic back or a culmination of the natural, gradual process of decay that comes with age – but Clarke is always eloquent…

DAVE EDWARDS, SAM PERRY, IAN HIGGINS. MELBOURNE BOOKS. RRP $29.95 Based on the cult Twitter account of the same name, The Grade Cricketer tells the story of a mythical 30-something Grade cricketer and his club as he struggles from minor success to failure every Saturday, summer after summer. In contrast to the infamous social media account, the book delves a little deeper and thoroughly explores the insecurities of being an (almost) top-level cricketer Down Under. It follows the protagonist over a number of seasons on a journey from promising junior cricketer to Grade cricket hasbeen, while at the same time shining a light on the often-silly, comically-macho world of Aussie amateur cricket. All along, our strangely likable protagonist regularly catches himself wondering whether life may be slipping him by, as…