Tuesday 21 July 2015

First-timer's view of Lord's as Australia power to victory over England

It was a superb innings for Veuve Clicquot. The flashy French bubbly flowed much easier than England's runs and ensured the chaps in the row in front of me made hay in the summer London sunshine. 

Mind you, the £70-a-bottle price tag probably stung their bank balances almost as sharply as the Australian quicks did England's batsmen. Led by a vicious and incisive Mitchell Johnson, the pace attack were the real stars of the show, shining on the hallowed turf of the Home of Cricket and backing up a dominant batting display to deliver a thumping series equaliser for the men in the Baggy Greens.


Our fantastic view from the Edrich Stand Upper

Saturday at Lord's did feel pretty special. It was an honour to be at one of world's most famous venues to soak in one of the oldest and keenly contested rivalries in sport.

Like many cricket grounds, Lord's is a odd jigsaw puzzle of interlocking stands of various sizes and ages, with the pavilion and futuristic media centre at opposite ends physically and historically.

I was surprised at how friendly it actually felt. Lord's has a reputation for being a bit stuffy. The bacon and eggs ties, formality and tradition coming to mind. But, from the moment I stepped from St John's Wood Tube - which for such occasions becomes much busier than it sizes suggests it should be - there were people offering to help in a generally jovial-but-serious atmosphere leading to the famous ground itself.

Once inside I was struck by just how much was going on. The Nursery Ground, museum, outdoor drinking areas and restaurants dotted around the outside meant you barely needed set foot in the stands. Yes some bits do ooze tradition but there was a charm with it too. I guess if you hang around too long near the posher parts of the ground you'd feel out of place but it was fun to mingle with the people sporting the garish blazers for brief novelty value.

Yet, fun as the peripheral activities seemed the cricketing action was what we'd come for and England had a game to save. Resuming on 85-4 after the Australians had posted a mammoth 566-8 declared, it was an almighty ask.

Any Test Match seems to enjoy the same atmosphere before a ball is bowled - a low hum of chatter as spectators settle and ponder the play ahead followed by rapturous response to every ball for a few overs. Lord's was no different although obviously sans fancy dress and musical instruments, the sorts of things that look fun on the telly but that, in truth, you don't necessarily want to be sitting too near on the day.

All hopes seemed to rest on record run scorer and captain Alistair Cook, the man with the patience, resolve and technique to weather the Antipodean storm about to hit him. He was to be aided and abetted by one of the nation's bright new hopes in Ben Stokes - a man who announced himself onto the international scene with a century in Australia amid a dismal whitewash defeat for England.

Mitchell Johnson about to steam in to Ben Stokes

It all went to plan at the start. Stokes showed himself to be far more than an aggressive slogger with some impressive 'proper cricket shots'. Any glimmers of trouble for the Durham man were simply shaken off with the confidence of a young star with the world at his feet. Cook meanwhile was watchful and careful - two qualities so rare these days that make innings such as these fascinating to watch. He edged along at one run per over he'd been at the middle, anchoring the innings in the 'lead by example' way in which he conducts his captaincy.

Sadly though, both batsmen perished before they reached the hundreds I felt they had deserved. First Stokes proved unable to last until lunch, dragging a skiddy Mitchell Marsh delivery onto his timbers. This sent a ripple of shock through the Lord's crowd who were just beginning to settle down to a long day at the crease for the home side.

If Stokes' dismissal was disappointing, Cook's was a hammer blow and one which provided the defining image of the whole match. Well set on 96 runs, the captain was braced for a 28th test match hundred, his first home Ashes ton, just before the arrival of tea. Most importantly of all, he was wel in ahead of the impending arrival of the second new ball. Yet Cook reached for a delivery outside off stump from Marsh - that man again - and followed Stokes' suit, crashing the ball into his leg stump off an inside edge. He instantly sunk to his knees in realisation. It may have been some time before the last rites, but this was effectively the moment England finally lost the match.

Predictably, without Cook the innings faded and, equally predictably, Australia didn't enforce the follow on. Clarke instead chose to come out and grind England down, pile on the runs and let his bowlers recharge for another burst. Warner offered a chance to Lyth but from then on played a sensible and impressive innings with Rogers, the wise old head, the perfect foil. If Cook is England's study in test match poise and patience, Rogers is Australia's. The duo both ended the day unbeaten to put the cherry on the cake.

That pair and Cook and Stokes aside this, though, was a day for the Australian quick bowlers to flex their muscles.

A happy block of Australians in standard-issue yellow caps
Having seen plenty of mid-80 mph bowlers over the years I was struck by how much quicker Johnson did actually seem in real life. It's easy to see why a batsman might struggle against a bowler who operates with an unusual action and, these days, unusually quickly. The slow pace of the pitch might have negated most of the bowlers but not Johnson, who bowled with enough venom to transcend the conditions.

He had control to go with his ferocity as part of a bowling unit that was impressive as a whole - the fast and full Starc, naggingly accurate Hazlewood, skiddy Marsh and wily Lyon.

Credit, too, must go to Clarke for the way he shuffled his pack. No batsmen was allowed to settle - not even Cook and Stokes - as he rotated his quick bowlers in short spells to ensure his men never burned out. The combination of different angles and speeds make for a tough test of a batsmen's ability to adapt.



It was clear by the time we left the ground that it was only a case of when and not if England succumbed to a defeat. The manner of the loss the next day was worrying though - with batsmen unable to put up much of a fight against Johnson and co. Defeat was one thing but the manner of it was something else, giving blood for the Aussies to scent come Edgbaston next week.





Still, cricket is a sport I am able to enjoy in spite of the performance of 'my team'. Yes, I wanted England to win but it was a pleasure to see the Aussie attack in the flesh and, above all else, finally make the pilgrimage to Lord's. 

It'd be interesting to go back for a county game to explore the surrounds fully - away from the crowds of a test match day - but equally it was special to be there for the Ashes. England may not have performed but the weather did and the venue lived up to the occasion. 

Trent Bridge will always be my cricketing home but Lord's, like the ever-flowing Veuve Clicquot, was the sort of classy-but-expensive pleasure well worth sampling for a treat (although I stuck to the £4.80 beer and benefitted from the skills of a friend to get in).


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Tuesday 14 July 2015

Ten talking points as the Ashes heads to HQ

The Lord's test begins on Thursday, with England heading to the Home of Cricket in good shape after a superb 169-run win over Australia in Cardiff.

Here's ten thoughts looking back on that victory, and forward to the next game (everyone loves a listicle right?)...

1. Siddle on the slope
It's refreshing to be able to go into the second test with no selection debates for England. Australia, meanwhile, might be weighing up a change or two. Personally, if I were the Australians I'd turn to Peter Siddle. He's aggressive, consistent and experienced and should drive the likes of Johnson, Starc or Hazlewood on. The aggression would be help the visitors go toe to toe with the likes of Stokes while his consistency and experience could be vital given the lack of the recently retired Ryan Harris. I also fancy he'd do well on the infamous Lord's slope.

2. Haddin Out
He may be one of the more combative members of the touring party, but every cricket fan must surely wish Brad Haddin well. He has withdrawn due to family reasons and you only have to hope all is well. He leaves big shoes to fill - and 29-year-old Peter Nevill will be faced with that daunting task.

3. Pitch perfect?
There was a lot of crowing about the pitch in Cardiff and it seemed unfair. Plenty of runs were scored at a good pace, while bowlers were able to chip in with wickets when they put the ball in the right areas. The pitch delivered a good match and a result, what more do people want? Graeme Swann made a good point when he alluded to the fact that new drainage systems have dried out many pitches in this country and made them a little slower. 

4. Ali again
At some point people are going to have to accept that Moeen Ali is a worthy first choice spinner for England, especially in home conditions. If 19 wickets against India last summer weren't enough, he took big wickets at important times in the first test to remind a few of the critics what he can do. I enjoyed Ed Smith's piece in the Sunday Times on Moeen, he has, oddly, become the ideal number eight.

5. Lyon king
While we're on spin, Nathan Lyon deserves a mention. Little is said about the Aussie spinner but he was probably the most potent part of the attack in Cardiff. England should underestimate him at their peril, he'll take plenty of wickets this summer if he continues in the same vein.

6. Captain Cook
Hats off to Alistair Cook. While the skipper didn't deliver the best of tallies with the bat, he more than made up for it with good catching and excellent captaincy. In typically understated fashion he rotated his attack to good effect and they all responded with excellent execution of their skills. This should form the blueprint for success going forward.

7. Leave Root alone
Man of the match Joe Root was magnificent again and a real joy to watch. Let's leave him exactly where he is in the order - and not weigh him down with the captaincy any time soon - and hope his form can continue for as long as possible. 

8. Complacency
It's not only Lyon that England would do well be mindful of. Some pundits - probably the same ones who wrote England off entirely - have virtually written the Aussies off and that's dangerous. The experience and talent in the Aussie squad is such that nothing should be taken for granted. Darren Lehmann is hardly going to let his men roll over either.

9. Any draws?
One thing that struck me about the way both teams played their cricket is how neither side seems suited to toughing out a draw. Both sides are filled with naturally attacking batsmen with just a couple of characters who look as though they could drop anchor and see out time. Rain or circumstances may prove me wrong, but the manner in which both teams play suggests there could be plenty of results and maybe not too many fifth days.

10. Ticket holder
Thanks to a friend - a VERY good friend - I shall be heading to Lord's for the first time to see day three of the upcoming test. Last time the Aussies were here I had tickets to the fourth day at Trent Bridge and it's amazing how this affects your view of the play. In 2013 I endured a highly nervy third day, desperately hoping the game would slow down and things would stop 'happening'. It's an odd thing as a fan, you want your side to do well, but not too well until you see your slice of the action.
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Tuesday 7 July 2015

Stage set for Ashes thrills and spills

48 days, 22 players, 5 tests, 2 nations and one 11cm tall urn. The Ashes begins tomorrow as England and Australia battle it out to try to win the tiny trophy that is surely the hardest in the whole of sport to hold aloft in celebration. Still, it's an endearing quirk of this most enduring of sporting rivalries.


The Ashes may have been played a little too often in recent years due to a schedule that is harder to decipher than the Duckworth Lewis method, but that hasn't dampened the spirits ahead of this clash. In fact, a combination of a big change in personnel for England and a stunning test and one-day series with Australia's Antipodean neighbours, means this series feels surprisingly fresh.


In many respects the tables have turned completely from 2013. Then England were the older and more settled side, buoyed by a series victory in Australia and a widely feared bowling lineup. Australia were regrouping under a new coach and were attempting to integrate newer players who had plied their trade in the more aggressive confines of the shorter form of the game.

Now, fast forward two years and England go into this series led by a new coach - an Aussie no less to add yet another subplot - and are trying to harness a new spirit from players with one-day experience. Australia's pace attack has established a fearful reputation and that, coupled with buckets of experience in the batting ranks, makes them clear favourites. It probably says a lot about the respective nations that Aussies have been queuing up to make bold predictions of a whitewash while Ian Bell, a veteran of six series, is happy to accept the role of underdog for the home team (which, it's worth noting, hasn't lost an Ashes in England since 2001).

Despite the fact that the Baggy Greens have the world's number one batsman in their ranks in Steve Smith, you do feel that the series rests on the way England's batsmen cope with the Australian attack.

The visitors arrive from Down Under with the most fearful pair of Mitchells since Grant and Phil from Eastenders in the shape of bowling duo Starc and Johnson. Johnson blew the batsmen away with sheer pace on his home soil in 2013/14 and will be hoping that his sheer reputation sends ripples of fear through the home dressing room. Even more worrying for England is the fact that Starc is possibly even better.

The aggression of Ben Stokes and Jos Buttler could meet their fire with a counter-attacking fire, but England will need to accept that there will be failures in taking such an approach. All concerned must hold their nerve and back such players to come good. The players themselves need to find the right tone, remembering that they are in a test and not a T20.

Before these champing-at-the-bit youngsters arrive at the crease though it's up to Captain Cook to steer his side through the early exchanges. He has shown promising signs so far in 2015 of a return to form and it's hard to imagine an England win without a significant contribution from the nation's record test run scorer.

While Cook needs to draw on all of his powers of concentration to set the tone with the bat, his fellow record breaker Jimmy Anderson will need to shine with the ball. Much is made of the 'English conditions' being tough to cope with. Anderson - in tandem with Stuart Broad - is vital to making this home advantage pay.

In a way that's the key to success for England. The old timers - Cook, Bell, Anderson and Broad - must set a solid platform from which the younger players can shine. Cook needs to let that message filter into his captaincy too. He's often accused of being poor tactically but essentially he doesn't need a grand plan - he just need to be a calm head to get the best from Stokes, Wood, Buttler and Lyth.

In Joe Root England have a player with the class to aspire to Steve Smith's batting crown - and the potential to be star man. He will be targeted like never before and - thanks to David Warner - already has a bit of spice on his Ashes menu.



In Gary Ballance and Moeen Ali, England do have two question marks. Both, however, have earned the chance to prove their critics wrong. Last summer's performances from this pair were superb, Ballance with a formidable batting average and Moeen taking wickets applenty against the supposed spin specialists of India.

It's certainly set for an intriguing contest. Confident, experienced and formidable favourites against a talented, developing side with home advantage. Australia probably should shade it but the signs are there that it could be a good contest.

It's also one of those all-too-rare occasions where test match cricket takes centre stage and a series is played out over five matches. Here's hoping for a cricketing feast that's even tastier than the Kiwi clashes that have whetted the appetite so nicely.
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Monday 6 July 2015

Beware a policy dressed up as 'common sense'

We're being spoiled aren't we? Not content with the actual budget just a few weeks ago (it probably seems like longer) - George Osborne is giving his red box another outing for an emergency budget. The emergency being that he's not had chance to have his own way in the coalition, presumably.

All that means a political budget to set out the political agenda for the coming five years - with moves to come good on manifesto promises and to start to admit to where the cuts will come.



Yet amid the pre-budget excitement (if you can call it that) and the Labour leadership excitement (no, probably not) I couldn't help by getting frustrated at the fact that so many so many complex issues are reduced to overly simplistic debates under the cloak of common sense.

Take some examples of issues under debate at the moment.

On last week's BBC Question Time, health secretary Jeremy Hunt appeared open to the prospect of charging patients who miss their appointments. Fair enough, you might think. After all, these missed appointments waste valuable time that could be given to other patients.

Yet, when you think about it, it's not so simple. Which is probably why Hunt had the rug pulled from under him by 'Government sources' in the days to follow.

The problem is that, in order to charge people who missed appointments, you'd need to set up a bureaucratic system to administer the fines. You'd have to handle appeals and chase payments. You'd also have to acknowledge that some people miss appointments for very good reasons - public transport/traffic issues or ill health, for example.

Plus, I dislike the idea of putting a financial transaction at the heart of the health service. The issue here is that when, for example, the hospital writes to you to inform you that it needs to move your appointment at short notice - by which time you've already arranged cover at work, say - how long before the patient seeks financial recourse for their own inconvenience?

Just as with student tuition fees - making the debate about price transforms the patient/doctor relationship into one that, like student/tutor, becomes rooted in money and what you should expect from that money. While no-one appears to be suggesting charging for appointments yet, the value for an appointment would be clear from the level of the fines set out.

So an unwieldy system of fines that would cost money to administer, would likely 'catch out' people with legitimate excuses and would put a financial relationship into the heart of something that shouldn't be about money. Not such common sense now.

Far harder, but also more palatable, is a longer-term drive to make missing appointments socially unacceptable. Still, you worry that long term and hard work aren't as attractive.

That hits at the main problem about framing policy as a 'common sense idea'. It's a ploy to make sure that the opposition can't oppose you despite the fact that, beyond the rhetoric, your idea might not be all it's cracked up to be.

Take another example. English votes for English laws (the horribly named EVEL) is another catchy soundbite that sounds like good common sense politics. Why should the Scots have a say on English laws?

Yet, here we go again. How does this work in practice? If a backbencher proposes spending big money on quickening the pace of the establishment of academy schools, for example, that might have a cost implication on the budget as a whole and, as a result on the resources for Scotland. So, where do we draw the line on what constitutes an English-only issue? Having spent so much time and energy keeping the Scots in the union, might we be in danger of showing them the exit again?

And why stop there? Should MPs for cities in the north west of England have a say in what happens to me in Lincolnshire? Does our MP have a right to have a say on HS2, which comes nowhere near me?

It all sounds like something that is a thinly veiled excuse for one side or the other to use to reform the voting system in the favour. Especially since history from the last 15 years shows that this 'problem' has affected...well pretty much nothing. Barely any votes on laws since 2001 would have changed if Scottish MPs were taken out of the equation. Albeit, granted, that has been with a slightly less feisty bunch of MPs from north of the border but it shows that Scottish representatives have not, up until now, skewed the course of events.

Far better to solve the issue of 'nodding dog' MPs who blindly follow the party line regardless of what their constituents think. But, as with GPs, this is probably harder to achieve.

On a similar note, you often hear people talk of the need to 'means test' benefits to pensioners, namely things such as the free television licence, winter fuel payments, bus pass etc. Why, the argument goes, does a millionaire pensioner need any of the above?

That again, sounds sensible. However, as with the GP example it requires red tape to administer and, importantly like 'EVEL' it creates a wider problem.

The whole system of taxation in this country works by everyone paying in, regardless of what they 'take out' in services used. Small symbolic gestures such as these show that everyone gets something out of their relationship with the state.

If we start to question someone's worthiness of getting 'something back' then we open up the question of whether that person feels the need to chip in in the first place. We also begin to question, as a society, our wider relationship with the state. Why must I, as a non-smoker, contribute to services that assist those wishing to quit smoking? Why do my taxes need to go to pay for infrastructure projects in parts of the country that I do not visit?

The principle that everyone pays in and everyone gets something back for their contribution should not be undermined so easily.


It is, of course, easy to be cynical about politics and politicians. But the point remains that saying something that sounds like 'common sense' is not the same as carrying out a well thought-out plan. Poor legislation can be enacted for the right reasons. But it pays to be wary of anyone who offers a simple, black and white answer to any issue - be it a Labour leadership contender, a Tory celebrating their first proper budget or one of those lesser-spotted Lib Dems.


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