DOES MIKING UP PLAYERS TURN CRICKET INTO A CIRCUS?

The latest blog for ESPNcricinfo (given a much snappier title than I've managed) was supposed to be a general look at the way broadcasters are encroaching on the game, particularly T20, asking whether, in the main, this was a good or bad thing, and in what ways.

Then something happened. I was watching the 1st Australia vs India T20I at Adelaide when a quite extraordinary 2 minutes 20 seconds of live international cricket broadcasting happened, involving the current Australian Test captain (though not skipper on this occasion) Steven Smith talking live while batting to the three Channel 9 commentators, Mark Nicholas, Mike Hussey and Ian Healy. It lasted one Ravindra Jadeja over. It ended in Smith's dismissal and a rather animated send-off from Virat Kohli.

So I wrote about that incident, and the wider implications of having players wired up and conversing with commentators. 

When Entertainment becomes Intrusion

It was a real struggle to whittle this down to 1200. I could easily have gone through the exchange sentence by sentence, riffing on the various issues it raised. 

Here's the exchange as it played out in real time: 

Australia are 82 for 1 off 8, chasing 189. They have taken 19 from the previous over. Steve Smith is 20 off 12 balls.

Nicholas: Steve Smith’s miked up. Steve, you’ve got ahead of the rate.

Smith: What’s that, sorry?

Nicholas: You’ve got ahead of the rate now.
Smith: Yeah, we’re going alright.

Ridiculously over-the-top laugh from Nicholas.

Smith: Hopefully we can keep getting a few boundaries away here and there. We’ve got plenty of power, so… It’s a pretty nice wicket out there. It’s coming on pretty well so all good at the minute.

He finishes just as Jadeja leaps to bowl. Aaron Finch cuts to point. No run.

Hussey: Steve Smith, what’s the plan against Jadeja? Where are you going to try and hit him?

Smith: Wherever he bowls it. Just watch the ball and see what happens.

Again, Jadeja is entering his delivery stride when Smith finishes. Finch lifts the ball over extra cover. It will skip away for four.

Smith: That’s a nice shot!

Nicholas: You commentate for us, mate. You’ve got it covered. You’ve got the bird’s-eye view.

Smith: What’s that, sorry?  

Nicholas: You’ve got the best view. You call it for us.

Smith: That was nice, that. I’ll see what I can do for ya…

Jadeja is running in again…

Smith: Might have to run hard here. Pretty long boundary straight. We’ll see how we go.

Finch drives to deep cover. Smith calls “yep” and scurries to get on strike.

Nicholas: Now, are you pre-meditating or not?

Smith: When do I premeditate?!

Nicholas (laughing): Yeah, yeah.

Jadeja in. Smith works the ball from outside off to deep mid-wicket.

Smith (to Finch): Yeah, push, c’mon!

They settle for one.

Hussey: That’s really interesting, Steve: no premeditation at this stage. You’re just seeing the ball and looking to react to it?
Smith: Oh yeah, you never know what’s going through our minds.

Jadeja is already running into bowl. Finch drives out into the covers.

Smith (to Finch): Just the one, mate.
Smith (to Hussey): You never know mate. You’ve just got to watch the ball and see what happens.

Smith is on strike for the final ball of the over.

Healy: He’s darting them in, angled in to the right-handers. 103kph.

It’s unclear whether this is commentary or advice. Smith tries to work a ball from outside off stump through the completely open midwicket region. He gets a leading edge to extra-cover, where Virat Kohli takes the catch and proceeds to give Smith a send-off.   

Nicholas: Steve Smith is out, and he’s unable to talk us through that. Understandably. What a disappointment: 21 to Steve Smith.

 

S.F. BARNES ON FILM

He is, famously, the only man ever to be picked for England while not playing first-class cricket – that is, while only playing Minor Counties and league cricket. Indeed, despite an astonishing Test record – 189 wickets in 27 matches at an average of 16.43, with no fewer than 24 five-wicket hauls in the 50 innings in which he bowled (9 for 103 being his best analysis), and 7 ten-wicket matches (a best of 17 for 159), including a world-record 49 wickets in a series against South Africa (at the age of 40, despite pulling out of the fifth game due, typically, to a dispute over disbursements) – Sydney Francis Barnes played relatively little first-class cricket. Only 133 games, in fact, over a 36-year span (intermittent, of course), in which he bagged the small matter of 719 wickets at 17.09. 

The relatively scarce appearances in county cricket (just 44 games) were more the product of his own economic hard-headedness and prevailing market forces than any lack of opportunity. Warwickshire had been reluctant to offer him a contract despite impressive results in the Birmingham League as a teenager, so, in an era of dilettantish amateurism, this son of a Black Country metal-beater decided he would become a professional bowler, wherever the highest bid took him. A living had to be earned; all other rewards would come or go as they may. And for all that the alluring tug of nostalgia causes us to see the past as some sort of innocent cricketing Arcadia (where in fact there was a game run as much for the sake of gambling as the playing), so it is that Barnes was the epitome of a deeply un-romantic view of the game – just as were the likes of WG Grace and William Clarke before him, and are various T20 mercenaries today – a man with a keen sense of his own value as cricketer and commercial attraction. If you paid, he bowled. And he sure did some bowling, playing league cricket up and down the country – in his native Staffordshire (Smethwick, Porthill Park), the Bradford League (Saltaire, Keighley) and the Lancashire Leagues (Rishton, Burnley, Church, Rawtenstall, Rochdale, Castleton Moor) – while of course enjoying a long career for Staffordshire, for whom he took the small matter of 1441 wickets at 8.10 each, on the way bagging 26 of the 30 best innings analyses for the county. Sydney finally hung up his boots in 1940, aged 67, after a season spent with Stone in the North Staffordshire Wartime League.

As for the man, he was, by all accounts, a remote and cussed soul off the field and temperamental on it, where he was remorselessly and near-monomaniacally driven in the pursuit of wickets and sharp-tongued toward captains who placed unnecessary obstacles in the way. Cardus said that “a chill wind of antagonism blew from him even on the sunniest day,” and his slightly pitted eyes, prominent brow, and cheekbones like onions no doubt added to his severe, forbidding aura. Yet beyond his lack of affability and general disdain for social niceties, what was it that made him such a fearsome proposition, so good that he not only made Cricinfo’s all-time England XI* but also Richie Benaud’s Greatest XI**?

Standing an inch over six feet and with long arms, Arlott noted that his “high delivery gave him a lift off the pitch that rapped the knuckles of the unwary and forced even the best batsmen to play him at an awkward height”. In addition, his large hands and spidery fingers gave him the purchase on the ball that, in conjunction with his industrial accuracy, often made facing him a question of when, not if… Most intriguingly, his style of bowling has been described, variously, as cutters, medium-pace, fast-medium, fast spin, even leg-spin. Consensus is that it was all of this, with the leg-cutter his stock ball, mixed with fast off-breaks, in-and out-swingers and constant, subtle changes of pace. 

Want to judge for yourself? Well, if you have never seen the great man bowl then fire up your imagination and draw what you can from this short clip.

It is moot just how effective he’d have been on covered pitches; certainly, one imagines he’d have been a revelation in limited overs cricket, with batters having to attack him, like a turbo-charged hybrid of CZ Harris, Ajantha Mendis and latter-era SM Pollock. And whatever it was he bowled, exactly, there is no doubting he was a genius, a freakishly consistent wicket machine whose final balance sheet showed no fewer than 6225 wickets in all forms of cricket at the puny average of 8.31.

* Hobbs, Hutton, Hammond, Barrington, Pietersen, Botham, Knott, Truman, Barnes, Larwood, Underwood.

** Hobbs, Gavaskar, Bradman, IVA Richards, Tendulkar, Sobers, Gilchrist, Imran Khan, Lillee, Warne, Barnes.

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