In case it has escaped your notice, our little block of flats has acquired Sky after years of trying. I have taken the basic package (yummee lots of House and NCIS, good intellectual stuff), with Sky Arts (operas and concerts though one does have to avoid Andre Reiu who seems to be on every night) and an extra £20 a month for Sky Sports. Thought twice about this as it is expensive but to my delight I have found that Sky have discounted this package for me for £5 a month. Not sure why or how long it will last, but am making the most of it. In the last few weeks have been lapping up hours of tennis from Miami and great to see the earlier rounds of tournaments that I normally only read about in the sports pages. Coming up soon is Golf, the US Open and as I had my eyes opened to the pleasures of this sport by spending a day watching with my brother in law who explained the mysteries of birdies, eagles et al, I now find myself fascinated by it. Its ebb and flow and tactics and timing are, in some ways, akin to cricket which I adore.
Ah the cricket I hear you cry. Get on with the Rant.
After the appallingly dire and dreadful series against Pakistan I was rather hoping we would do a little better against Sri Lanka. We won all the one day matches against Pakistan, which was unexpected, and was thinking that might have boosted the team's confidence a tad. Wrong. England are playing a good, solid test team in Sri Lanka. They are not exactly threatening, their bowlers are not much like Thomson, Lillee, Holding et al but workmanlike and consistent. The problem is there is rather a lot of spin bowling and this is where the England team come a cropper. Why I hear you cry? I, along with half the nation and the sports writers, have no idea. Along comes a spin bowler and the England batsmen freeze like rabbits in the headlights of an oncoming car and sit and await their fate.
Out they come and after a few minutes of hopping about and looking nervous a collective madness seems to descend on the entire team. 'Oh don't like this much, let's try and slog them all over the park' and they do and it works – for about five minutes or five balls which ever is quicker and are caught out attempting a slog over the heads of the fielders or a sweep stroke which I am seriously considering requesting be banned for EVER from cricket. There seems to be a total lack of patience. In Sri Lanka's first innings Jayawardene, the captain, came out and batted patiently not taking any risks until he had got his eye in and was feeling comfortable. He waited for each ball to come to him and if he could not hit it, he blocked it or left it alone. After a while this gets bowlers twitchy so they decide to jazz things up a bit and will hurl down a short and/or loose ball and the batsman then pounces and tonks it. Bowler thinks Oh better not do that again and he goes back to playing patiently until the next time he gets fed up and sends down a loose shot and so on and so on. They key to this is to protect your wicket and only take and hit the balls you are able to deal with. Jayawardene went on to get 162.
Love this photo – the England slip catchers. Thank goodness Panesar was not one of them – he did enough damage dropping Jayawardene twice in one over out on the boundary
In order to win the Test England had to score 340 runs – unheard of but as Grahame Swann boastfully said ' We are here to make history'. Well, once an English cricket player comes out with cobblers like that you know you are Doomed to Fail. Only at one stage it looked like we might, just might do it. Pietersen and Trott were in and Trott was doing what Jayawardene had done and scratched and nurdled and itched and fidgeted his way to a 100 with KP at the other end. They had got up to over 200, the deficit was down to less than a hundred when KP suffered one of those blood rushes that afflict him on a regular basis. The words ' Pietersen is dancing down the pitch' came out of the mouths of the commentator, I leapt to my feet shrieking DON'T DO IT KEV and, naturally, he did and, naturally, he slogged and was out. Stormed off in a temper, nothing compared to mine as I stood in the middle of my living room shrieking you Stupid Prick at him as he strode back to the Pavilion. I can only imagine what Boycott was saying up in his commentary box about this, he was probably apoplectic with fury. I don't want Kev to 'dance down the wicket'. I want him to bloody well stay where he is in front of his stumps and not do his See How Wonderful I am Act. Then Prior came to the wicket, doing nicely, once again hopes were raised (by now I was in my usual place when watching live Test cricket – behind the sofa) and he was going well when he attempted the SWEEP shot and was out. I then switched the TV off as I knew what was coming – The Batting Collapse at which the English are past masters. So it transpired and so it happened.
Wonderful to have live cricket back but in the wilderness years when I had to rely on highlights and online texting from the Telegraph, I had forgotten just how nerve wracking it is. And I know that to some the words 'nerve wracking' and 'cricket' don't belong in the same sentence but oh they do, they do. When we won the Ashes back in 2005 and every Test went to the wire, there were several occasions when I had to turn off the TV and go out for a walk because I could not bear to watch. I had forgotten all this but it came back pretty quick I can tell you.
Rest of my rant is about the Sky commentators, most of whom are brilliant and interesting though not a patch on Test Match Special which I had on for some of the time and had the sound down on the TV, but oh dear me, when did Sir Ian Botham morph into Fred Truman? Fred used to spend most of his time on Test Match Special moaning and complaining about the batting, the bowling, the field placings, the tactics etc etc. If you tuned in you could always guarantee that within five mins or so Fred would be saying 'Eh by 'eck I don't know what they think they are doin' out there' and complaining that a SIlly Long Leg Mid Wicket had been brought up when he and we all knew that the sensible thing to do was to post a Short Stump Silly Mid on Third Man (ok I made that up but you get my drift..).
Sir Ian has now donned this mantle and has turned into a moaning minny along with Bob Willis back in the studio. Now, if you are a lover of cricket you will remember Botham's Ashes back in the 1980s – the series against Australia never to be forgotten. Watched every moment of it, as did my girls then very tiny, and will never forget Botham's heroics or the sight of Bob Willis steaming in, wild hair flying in the wind, manic look on his face as he hurled down another ball designed to scare the shit out of the poor batsman on the receiving end.
Now Sir Ian wears a Panama Hat, a la Geoffrey Boycott and winges, and Bob sits in the studio showing a lot of leg with sock and BROWN shiny shoes and drones on. And when I say drone I mean it – he has the slowest most lugubrious voice I have ever heard. Botham is not much better and it occurred to me after falling asleep half way through Bob Willis' take on the day, that put the two of them in a room together and you have an instance cure for insomnia. Mogodon Men, both of them.
Thus endeth today's rant and, just in case you think I am not enjoying my cricket, I hasten to add that though it drives me crazy, reduces me to a gibbering wreck hurling insults at the screen, there is simply Nothing Like It and I love every minute of it.
Second test this week – now, I wonder how we will do….
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