Cricket

This is not a love-song (to 2025).

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

It may be the fabbest day of the year – it’s certainly the last. Blazing sunshine. Cows getting frisky coz of that distant, overdue tractor. Hard, hard frost. Crows.

Up earlyish to take son to the train. Scoot round Lidls sharpish, before the Party Animals pile in to charge their trolleys with fruity beer and cheesy wotsits. Home to stack my own medium-frugal stash and sweep out the fire. Then quiet. And time.

The things in my head are clamouring to get away from the front of the queue. Some are too angry and obvious; some too sporty and technical. Nobody will read so this may assuage the selection of material but also maybe not? You guys *really are irrelevant* to The Flow. I’m ‘standing outside’. Outside in some weird, lush, white-but-verdant farmyard where the beat don’t stop. With the pheasant, the finches, the cows. Only I can hear them – not you.

Sure I have to think a bit about the turning of the year and what I’ll do tonight but: have food; have a little booze; have every confidence I could go to three different places or none. The choice, as always, is drink or drive – or would be if I wasn’t driving. And daughter; daughter is a factor.

So the usual, genuinely serene contentment and the option for off-screen social interaction. (Remember that?) For now, stare at the screen and let the thoughts come.

Recent and brutal and hard-to-avoid, for any kindof writer, for any kind of human. Timelines that are relentlessly Gaza and Trump and the kind of impossible evils that should drive our righteous furies. Genocides – one flaunted, one gone missing – that a staggering and shameful number of our alleged leaders either conciliate or contribute towards. Why aren’t we (The West? The East, The North, The South?) doing stuff?!? Why no tanks circling Netanfuckingyahu? Never mind the boycotts and the diplomatic niceties, why aren’t we threatening the machinery of the Israeli state with the kind of evisceration they’ve inflicted on the Palestinians? Plainly it would be righteous!*

*Yeh yeh, I know. It couldn’t happen with Trump in the White House and Starmer in the kennel. But however irresponsible my anger on this, I have a point, yes? The Provocation is not without meaning. And it’s This Year’s Story – again. Gaza is a genocide in plain sight. Trump’s part in it is vile and inhuman – driven by both prejudice and bottomless greed. Netanyahu should be in jail, at best. Starmer is an accomplice. If there were decent and progressive administrations in place in Washington and London, even mighty Israel could have been forced to withdraw, or face meaningful consequences. Instead, the fact and the idea of International Law is crushed.*

This ‘backdrop’ is inescapable, or should be. But because I’m as feeble as you are, I retreat into sport and books and walks. And the fucking internet.

Last night, MU again. And rinse and repeat. Amorim kinda worthy but still lost in that programme of over-coaching and unconvincing ‘changes’. Previous game: the team is woeful but ahead; make defensive changes. Last night – against a historically abject Wolves – make more ‘proactive’ decisions to bring creativity and shore-up the side. (Wolves were palpably the better footballing side, for much of the game). Everything fails. Manchester United look less of a unit, less purposeful, less convincing, after the Bright Young Things (making debuts or injecting The Fearlessness Of Youth) look as shot of confidence and ideas as those who started.

Yes this team has somehow climbed the table. And yes Mount (again briefly) and Fernandes had looked like potential Manchester United players and partners… but who else? Dorgu is so utterly mediocre it’s almost funny. Dalot has disappeared. Zirkzee is probs a Div 1 player. Casemiro is ‘seasoned’ but should be nowhere near the line-up. Amad is majoring in that flatter-to-deceive malarkey, producing almost nothing. Mbeumo *has something* but has been poor of late. Cunha could play in a legit side but was awful last night. Mainoo ‘didn’t fit the system’ and/or his face didn’t fit, when he plainly should have been a banker.

Week after week, month after month, performances are garbage – even whilst stumbling up the league. The fans understandably jeered the team off, after last night’s further embarrassment. The black hole is still calling, sucking the lads in, whilst eight coaches frantically wave their ipads.

Wolves were themselves repeatedly shocking in front of goal; otherwise the home keeper (who has done okay, to be fair) might easily have conceded five. Gary Neville waxed lyrical about Heaven, three or four days ago but neither he nor Yoro convince me. And out wide they have been unforgivably weak at closing down crosses: just one mind-blowing flaw amongst many, meaning United *really do* always look like they will concede.

It’s true that injuries are hurting the club at the moment. A central defensive three of De Ligt, Maguire and Martinez might sort some of those frailties. Perhaps with Dalot and Shaw on the flanks. But almost endlessly there is the feeling that *on the pitch* Amorim has diabolical players and no answers – even when making his now characteristic and theoretically dynamic changes. Astonishingly, Manchester United appear to need another mass clearout. Whether ditching Amorim will be part of that next upheaval, who knows? But his face and his pressers indicate that this gaffer is honest enough to know that he’s made no real improvements.

The Cricket. Some of you may know that I have worked in cricket for many years and that I have kinda specialised in women’s cricket (I say that ver-r-y loosely) for about a decade and have therefore written comparatively little, in recent times, about England men. This is partly because I could be in bother if I wrote widely and fully.

McCullum allegedly hates the term Bazball but as the universe turns against him it feels fair enough to use it. Perhaps we should describe it; what it means, what its implications are, as we understand them?

There are some good things – some profoundly good things – perhaps especially this notion that performers should be liberated. That maybe this should be a right, as well as an essential component of the development towards excellence. Players *really should* ‘go out there and express themselves’. That’s an undeniable truth, surely?

Well no. It’s a simplification that has a lot of truth in it. The job of the coach is multi-faceted but maybe it starts with this thing ‘environment’. Build an environment which is actually kinda lovely: supportive; inspiring, hopefully; challenging-but-fun. Probably don’t over-complicate it but do make it clear that there are disciplines and even responsibilities in play as well as fabulous freedoms. Games are complex even when we reduce them to simple notions or aspirations. We need game intelligence.

But hang on, for factoidal counter-thrust.

Many of us have likely underestimated both McCullum and Stokes in terms of their intelligence. It may be the case that despite the obvious laddishness around the England camp, and the entirely reasonable assumption that this has *informed*, even directed the playing approach, more measured conversations than we imagine may have taken place. The machismo that we believe to have been at the centre of the running towards danger *may* have been tempered by notes on the particular demands of Test cricket. Or not.

For what it’s worth, I think largely not – or not enough. I suspect (and I may be wrong) that Brook has been encouraged to ‘play his natural game’ right to the end. Probably by McCullum himself. Bazza probably believes in no compromise. Believes that positivity can’t really work unless it’s utterly unweighted. And in any case this is only a game. There is an imperative to entertain.

Hard to argue with that. Other than to again fall back into those complexities. Test cricket being a test over time; batting collapses being of their essence a theoretical nonsense – one wicket should have no bearing on the next – and yet they happen, as a function of wonderfully unknowable stuff, including psychological as well as technical processes. (So mitigate or re-gather against falling in a heap: that, after all, is one of the challenges. Respect the opposition and the format).

The signal failure of Bazball is of course the resources, timespan and the realignment of the wider game around these Ashes. Shocking, soulless ill-judgement and wastefulness. For many of us that feels like a con-job and yet not a surprise. Embarrassing, dumb and disrespectful. Like seeing Brook charge to play tennis or baseball shots at the great bowlers of the age. All very 2025.

Field of Dreams.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

A challenge, this: to wrangle with the conflictions around Flintoff and somehow appreciate fairly the reality-docu-dip that was his “Field of Dreams”.

Let’s blast away at the opening concerns, and indeed the opening credits. Crap intro which ladles on the Freddie-lurv and traduces the state of the game as it stands. (Of bloody course cricket is dogged by elitism – I spend half my life trying to oppose or render it obsolete – but it’s not THE most privileged sport in Britain. Let’s not start with a shameless dollop of clickbait and a slack falsehood: that debate is important).

Get that this is ‘popular TV’ but not sure that means we need to launch with Sun readership-level positioning of the central issue; that faaar too many kids are either denied the game entirely, or are rendered ‘irrelevant’ by lack of facilities/coaching/dosh. Wonderful that Frederico is (belatedly?) struck by the need to do something… but c’mon, let’s have a wee look at the thinking or motivation behind that. Then we can un-pick the socio-economic/class-based problems and hopefully look with clarity at the pitiful, possibly unsustainable failures of leadership.

Do I doubt the quality of Fred’s feeling for the game, or his impulse to pitch in and use his profile to put something back? Absolutely not. Would I have preferred it if he hadn’t made a documentary series off the back of that concern – i.e. if he had quietly but maybe more magnificently done all of this stuff off-camera? (Yes).

On the one hand Flintoff’s generosity shines through, here but it’s also the case that the former cricket-god has form for being relentlessly attention-seeking: in short Fred’s made more appalling telly that almost any man alive, and much of this seemed to be driven by a deepish neediness which may spring from his own, heavily-reported issues. (Issues I am absolutely not under-estimating. I’m just speaking plainly). Flintoff, like many great sportsfolks, has both an ego and some not insignificant baggage.

Flintoff also authentically has that Northern Way of being good and being honest. He is genuinely concerned for and genuinely proud of the mixed bag of dysfunctional ‘nutters’, borderline depressives and fabulous ‘under-achievers’ that make up his group. There are legitimately poignant (and even important) stories intertwined with the inevitable gather towards comradeship/achievement/growth.

Speaking as a Northern Lad (originally), brought up with sport in the blood and hugely conscious of the role it can play, it struck familiar chords. I didn’t grow up with or encounter Afghani immigrants who had cut their way out of lorries not knowing where the hell they were. I did, however, grow up (in the fullest sense) with lads who were allegedly ‘a waste of space’ everywhere but the sports field. I have coached a million hours in Community Settings and am proud to know people who spend their lives doing what Flintoff did – offering that way in. I know cricket can be a platform, a shelter, a right bloody laugh.

So I welled up, listening to lads who are nearly lost; imagining my kids on the streets; seeing Sean’s clandestine brilliance so dismembered by circumstance.

Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams” is enjoyable and compelling but flawed – of course it is. Fred’s that way himself (and so say all of us). Cricket is neck-deep in privilege and therefore dysfunction but this join-the-dots shuftie at ‘estates’, idylls and elite private schools, may not have added much to the urgently necessary discussions around administrative change and resolving inequality. (To be fair, that probably wasn’t The Brief).

Fred, and the essential team of (community) coaches who (though largely absent from our screens) clearly effected much of the cricket development, did some great stuff. I love and honour both them and the game, for that. The obligatory former SAS hunk threw in a team-building exercise that might have taken gold at the Blokey Back-slapping Olympics and Our Lovable Rogues *really did* make progress, not just as cricketers but as citizens.

Fred got some scallywags got off the streets, off their arses and (yes) inspired them to *do something positive*. Some fell in love with the game. Some made much-needed mates. Perhaps most importantly, about half of them joined the local club after the TV Caper was done. Flintoff used his clout, some of his personal wedge and an infectious lump of encouragement to make a difference. To paraphrase him, late-on; it may even be that the listening, the offering, the life-changing malarkey was waaay more important than any win over a bunch of toffs could be. This was bigger than cricket.

Pic courtesy BBC TV.

Where were you?

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

Where did that reference to The Mekons come from? Oh yeh. Twitter. Those profound, weedy, ridicu-lyrics: somebody posted. As did I, ’bout lunchtime, Sat’dee.

Meanwhile it was sleepless sleep, in the howling, battering gale and watchful half-skewed relentless triptych-vision. Daft, undulating, golden, white resort-sports for the White Stuff Generation on the one screen, footie and/or cricket on the other. Maybe radio too.

The rugby, you have to watch. Even if you absolutely do, now, fall into the category of Six Nations Dilettante. (Yup. Sadly. Having previously followed club action/the wider game, I now find myself unable, somehow, to grab a hold. Too busy; too much else). But this, despite mixed or even lowish standards, is a good tournament. Never more so than when the green/red/navy danders are up, the tribalism off the scale and the gales a-blowing.

England slaughtered Scotland for an hour, without turning dominance into points. Then Smith – the Hoddle, the Poster-boy, the Soft Centre – was withdrawn, as the stats (probably) or the GPS (possibly) said he was 0.023 down on something. Despite having just raced thrillingly across the try-line, thereby raising the flag for poetry and instinct in a way only probably he and his opposite number could even contemplate, Marcus was pulled: Jones and his 1400 sub-coaches looked to Ford to ‘manage the thing from here’.

That moment of soul-crushing pragmatism prompted the ancient-but-righteous gods of joy, IRN-BRU and twinkling perversity to gather immediately around and hoist their kilts. The hitherto impregnable Cowan-Dickie wilted in the maelstrom, pansy-patting the ball forward and out of play, to deny a possible score for the foaming, lurking Graham. It was both a robbery and a moment of grace: the penalty try being awarded, apparently, as punishment for the deliberate, if barely-controlled slap at the ball, without consideration for whether the attacking player would have gathered in cleanly and touched down. In that sense, controversial. Morally, a win for the resurgent jocks and all of us.

Meanwhile, before, Ireland stunned Wales. *All the ingredients were there*, as they were in Edinburgh. Febrile ether; gale; beery breath. Plus a marginally more complex ‘national relationship’ between the protagonists. (They tend to be Celts together after proceedings. During, there is *feeling*). Ireland launched and never came back down – or hardly – the intensity of the thing being simply too much for a mediocre Welsh side, who could not, despite keeping the score respectable for 40 minutes and more, compete meaningfully across the park.

It was a series of impressively purposeful, urgent flurries by the hosts that wore Biggar’s side down. The new Welsh skipper has a mighty, doughty spirit to go with his management skills. Even he was found shaking his head in disbelief and disappointment, late in the game.

Zoom out; remember. (Christ it was only yesterday!)

Pacing the energy-use was key, eh? And re-fuelling with care. Early alcohol was deeply unwise – it generally is – but throw a healthy pile of nosh and a tactical kip in there and you find yourself upright for The Cricket, later. (Upright in bed, anyways). Aus have won the toss and are asking Heather Knight to carry her team through another onslaught. She can’t. Nor can Sciver, the other Significant Hope.

England bat, understandably but also illogically – the series has gone! – with caution. Winfield-Hill is both dreamy-good, with her expansive drives but also unable, with her early partners, to garner more than three an over. When her coach Keightley and her 178 sub-coaches know that Healy will coast nearer to six, from the off. So it’s reasonable madness, from England. They splutter to a chillingly disappointing 120-odd all out: Winfield-Hill gets her customary 30. It’s never-in-a-million-years a competitive total.

But I slid towards fitful slumber at about the twenty over mark. When England were still below 80, from memory. Rafters clanging. Sea rumbling. Had to lie side-on and perch a pillow over my head to blot out – just a little – the sound. Felt both bit like smothering yourself and retreating into childhood and adventure. Oh, and final phone check – just to turn off, really. But yeh, twitter…

When I was waiting in the bar, where were you?
When I was buying you a drink, where were you?
When I was crying home in bed, where were you?

When I watched you from a distance, did you see me?
You were standing in a queue, did you see me?
You had yellow hair, did you see me?

Mekons.

Mady Villiers – in the flow.

~ bowlingatvincent ~ Leave a comment

So, Mady Villiers then. Even in defeat. Electrifying and watchable, ‘stoked’ and stoking the energy of the crowd with her youthful, skillful, thrillingly-coordinated contribution.

Most folks coming away from Sussex County Cricket Club on Saturday night will have been smiling and re-living the genuinely multiple moments of brilliance from the England player – even some of the few visiting or Brighton-resident Kiwis, you suspect. (The White Ferns won the match – deservedly – through better and more consistent work, but even their Player of the Match Sophie Devine brought less extravagant pazzazz and performance to the event). Villiers, meanwhile utterly shone.

Elite women’s cricket is soaring in the background but in a sexist universe it still, of course, finds itself categorised (by men of a particular sort, obviously) as Almost The Real Deal But Not Quite. Blokes who look and sound like me – ‘sporty’, ‘authentic’, ‘experienced’ – own this territory as much as if not more than they own everything.

So a) they wrongly and inadequately judge male and female cricket as some hierarchical homogeny b) they know exactly which one is ‘best’. Oh and c) many of these guys really are arseholes  –  look at social media/listen in the pub – but (even) the ones that aren’t reside in the Flawed Geezer sector of humanity. (I flit, inevitably, between both male states, hoping to keep my foothold in the Flawed-but-trying subsection).

Male cricket is allegedly ‘best’ because The Blokes bowl quicker and hit harder and throw themselves around in the field more athletically. Physiological difference makes this (ahem) an Undeniable Truth. Bullshit. It may be a convenient truth but good luck trying to de-authenticate Marizanne Kapp’s recent bowling performance (Hundred, final) or South East Stars’ openers Smith and Cranstone, batting in the weekend’s Charlotte Edwards Cup Final. And maybe take a look at Sophie Ecclestone’s left-arm slow. *Etcetera*.

The point is it’s futile, unwise, unhelpful and plain wrong to go comparing. Just watch without prejudice. Or – because I get that machismo-thing (or that baggage-thing) may get in the way of that aspiration – do your best. I’ve chosen to follow elite women’s cricket around for some years now and I find it truly compelling: there are even some plusses to the Sexual Politics side of this – the sense that despite everything, women’s cricket is manifestly, irresistibly on the up.

Back to Villiers; partly because the most legitimate criticism of the elite women’s game has arguably centred around fielding standards. (Know this is more flawed thinking – a kind of concession to that matrix of bullish negativity – but think there is *also* something of a fair cop going on, here). Skill levels and agility levels in female international cricket or women’s pro’ cricket are not always where they might be. Too many mis-timed dives over the ball, too many catches dropped.

Much of this can be simply accounted for. Lack of experience – maybe particularly under lights. The ver-ry recent advent of full-time professional contracts. Skill Development under way, rather than culturally ingrained (as per the blokes). Coaches and players in the women and girls’ pathway the world over are grafting with real integrity and purpose to get to where Mady Villiers is. Maybe they are conscious that brilliant movement will better appease the sceptics? I hope they feel more that there is something wonderfully liberating in throwing yourself around and that this in itself is the driver towards increasingly exhilarating sport.

At Hove on Saturday night, Mady Villers was prowling and diving and catching and slashing magnificent throws in to the stumps. At one stage, with the equally outstanding Danni Wyatt stationed to her right – and both, therefore, within about thirty yards of where I was scribbling – it felt fab-yoo-luss to be in the presence of such intensely-tuned athletes. If you wanted authentic, high level sport, it was patently in front of you. If you wanted frisson and raw but heightened entertainment, ditto.

I am posting a picture of Mady Villiers throwing, at the head of this blog. It’s a cheat in the sense that this pic – robbed from ECB, from memory – was not taken on the night that Mady announced herself as a presence. That was Hove, Sat-dee Sept whatever-it-was. (Go find some highlights, maybe?) Here, in this frame, Villiers is ready to go/flow/throw.

As a coach/sports-fan/bloke, I love this pic. It reeks of urgency and focus and magnificent, grooved movements. It’s bursting through stuff. Love the left foot raised as the heel is placed. Love the wide, elastic base and that sideways-on position. Love the game face and the high, throwing elbow. Love the gesture of the left hand as it flips and points and feels for the target. Love that the chest and core is clearly being flexed and opened, ready for the lashing-through of that right arm. Love that she’s gonna bloody sling this, hard.

Am aware of the dangers of extrapolating out – searching for symbols. But (quite possibly because of my flaws or guilt or certainly my *viewpoint*) it feels not irrelevant that this is a young woman. Mady Villiers. Showing the universe that she can really do this.