Liam Cromar
The small-scale pleasures of Oxbridge matches
Traditionally the season openers, the university matches are now in danger of being cut from a schedule that favours T20 glitz
Liam Cromar
03-May-2017
Three-thirty pm. The schedule is tight, but a few minutes can be squeezed in. Take the John Radcliffe exit off the Oxford bypass; dodge the ambulance heading down Headley Way; swing off the Marston Road and look for the free parking bay scouted out earlier on Google Maps. Park, alight, and retrieve coat: it is still April, after all.
The best part of a mile remains to the destination. Off, then, down the cycleway, leaving behind the low-slung housing estate, and plunging into the green expanse that quietly nestles so close to the centre of Oxford. Across the first bridge and over the cattle grid; through the meadow; up and over the second, and more signs of civilisation are swinging into view.
Leave the main path that continues westward past Linacre College towards St Cross Road, and to strike out northwards into the University Parks. A kissing gate in the iron railings provides the opportunity; past the rising traffic-control bollard, round the School of Pathology, and it is now not far.
Full postHow do you feel about artificial pitches?
Unless they can exhibit the variety that turf pitches have, they risk devaluing the game by stripping away subtlety
Liam Cromar
20-Mar-2017
When it comes to describing pitches to a fellow club cricketer, few terms induce the grimace that "artificial" does.
Non-turf strips have something of a bad reputation. Bowlers feel they are on a hiding to nothing, while batsmen feel they have no excuse to not score heavily. To an extent, this perception is unfair, since these pitches are not always the batsman's paradise they are assumed to be.
While their pace and carry may be limited, they can permit a degree of movement. Five-wicket hauls are far from unknown. The advantage of increased playability should also not be undervalued.
Full postMurder on the square
Cricket was the backdrop for two recent murder mysteries on television, but why weren't the motives related to the game?
Liam Cromar
19-Feb-2017
"One brings two," as every club batsman will have heard on his approach to the wicket, as the close fielders endeavour to exploit their long-delayed breakthrough. "One brings two, lads. One brings two."
Nevertheless, it seems likely to have been coincidence, rather than design, that resulted in two detective dramas on UK television in quick succession airing episodes centred around suspicious cricket-club deaths. First to the wicket was ITV's Midsomer Murders, featuring the discovery of a star batsman killed by a bowling machine cranked up to maximum. A few weeks later, the BBC got in on the act - probably the closest they get to showing cricket these days - with Death in Paradise's Humphrey Goodman (Kris Marshall) investigating an on-field shooting on the fictional Caribbean island of Saint-Marie.
Notwithstanding the difference in location, both programmes start in a similar, moderately predictable way. A match is in progress. The soon-to-be-dispatched player is at the wicket. He can win the game with a boundary. Will he? He does! General jubilation. But what is this? As he returns to the pavilion, a team-mate makes a suspiciously threatening remark. Barely before the credits have finished rolling, his lifeless corpse will be discovered. Foul play - or should that be "not cricket"? Let the clichés commence.
Full postSeven reasons why the English summer will be special
A date with Ireland, a day-night Test, and a Women's World Cup are among the mouth-watering fixtures in a packed season of cricket
Liam Cromar
27-Jan-2017
One swallow might not a summer make, but seven Tests, three bilateral ODI series, and four T20Is should be enough to make anyone gulp. Crowbar in an ICC tournament, in the form of the Champions Trophy, and it's easy to see how the upcoming home season will be England's longest yet.
As easy as it is to be sceptical about the hardships of playing cricket for a living, the fact remains that England's home international season is alarmingly full. While the schedule risks burning out the players, it also risks overloading spectators: with so many days of international cricket on offer, it's easy to be swamped by the choice.
By and large it may be an exciting, seething mass of possibilities, yet once-familiar signposts, such as the May Lord's Test, have been uprooted and transplanted. Therefore, as an aid to planning one's viewing, and for no other reason than that seven is in accordance with what Peter Cook termed the mystic rules of life ("seven days of the week, seven deadly sins, seven seas, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers"), here are seven bright points of the 2017 English season.
Full postHow's that, Jennings?
No, not that one. It is time to tip our hats to a much-loved schoolboy series of books
Liam Cromar
30-Dec-2016
Jennings was at Lord's, where he had just scored a century against the Australians in the most exciting Test match that had been seen for years.
Jennings was at the Wankhede, where he had just scored a century against the Indians in his first Test match, a feat that had not been seen for years.
One is a fictional schoolboy's dream, the other a one-time schoolboy's dream come true.
Full postThe joys of (not) watching cricket
Few other games lend themselves to taking your eyes off the action as much as ours does
Liam Cromar
03-Dec-2016
Cricket is a great sport to not watch.
That sounds suspiciously like an insult but is far from it. Cricket is, of course, the greatest sport in the world to watch. In several ways, though, it is a sport that well suits the non-watching spectator - an oxymoronic rather than moronic term.
Cricket is a game that by its very structure lends itself to reductive analysis: ball by ball, over by over, innings by innings. In the same way, however, that music relies as much on the rests as on the notes themselves, the intervals between deliveries are just as much a part of the game. Steven Smith bringing up a short leg for Mitchell Starc; Joe Root giggling at second slip; Steven Finn trudging back to his mark after another dropped catch: plenty happens in the gaps.
Full postIs it worth considering dropping the toss in Test cricket?
The move has succeeded to some extent in the County Championship but extending it to the five-day game might not be the best idea
Liam Cromar
07-Nov-2016
Have non-contests ever been as hotly contested? It's fair to say that when the alterations to the playing conditions of the 2016 County Championship were announced, there were a good number of conflicting opinions, and words, flying about. Visiting captains were to be given the option of foregoing the toss if they wanted to bowl first, the idea being to negate home reliance on green seaming wickets. "Toss uncontested" duly made its appearance on scorecards from Headingley to Hove.
After one season - and one season remains a small sample size, so caution is advised - it would appear that the tweaked regulations have indeed promoted tweak, with spinners brought to the fore. It's certainly been enough of a success - or perhaps not too much of a failure - to justify continuing the experiment.
Why stop at county cricket, though? Is there any reason why it should not be extended to Test cricket? Indeed, at first glance, some variant of toss concession - whether automatic permission for the visitors to bowl first, bat first, or choose either option - might appear to redress one of the deepest on-field imbalances in the international game: home advantage.
Full postHow I stopped worrying and learned to love declaration bowling
Why the captains' arrangement in the Middlesex-Yorkshire Championship game didn't feel unsporting
Liam Cromar
20-Oct-2016
The observation that cricket is a mad game will be one that many, both inside and outside the ranks of its followers, will instantly agree with. It demands a strange love. For a few hours during the final afternoon of the County Championship, however, the game that Middlesex and Yorkshire were engaged in threatened to be not merely mad but MAD.
That is to say, had collaboration between the warring parties not been undertaken, they were heading for the cricketing version of Mutually Assured Destruction. As Middlesex batted on, unable to manoeuvre into a winning position, Yorkshire found themselves in a no more enviable situation. Had either team struck what threatened to be a decisive blow, their counterparts would likely still have been able to prevent them winning - a draw equating, in the circumstances, to complete failure, since this would have ensured the Championship title headed to the third party of Somerset.
The analogy only works partially: MAD as a strategy was designed to leave both parties in perpetual stalemate - in the circumstances, a "draw" being as good as a "win".
Full postWe need to reinterpret the wide down leg side
Why are bowlers in limited-overs cricket expected to perform the contradictory actions of preventing run-scoring and enabling it?
Liam Cromar
26-Sep-2016
A total of 350 is up, 400 is in sight. As the bowler tramps in again, the batsman, who has been taking guard on leg stump, feints a shuffle towards square leg, then steps to off and attempts a flick over the keeper's left shoulder. Yet the bowler has out-thought the batsman. He has taken the pace off the ball, so it passes fractionally outside the line of leg stump. Had the batsman stayed still, it would have stung his left thigh.
It is, in theory, a fine piece of bowling. The bowler's satisfaction at having produced the respite of a dot ball, however, is short-lived, when, to his disbelief, the umpire turns to the scorers' box and horizontally extends both arms.
Television commentators debate his decision. There is talk for a couple of overs about how the modern ODI scene is, for batsmen, figurative fair weather. Low clouds hang about the bowlers, by contrast. Someone will mention the size of bat edges; another, the use of two white balls. Within ten minutes, however, commentators and viewers alike are marvelling at - nay, revelling in - the torrent of sixes lashing down as normal service is resumed.
Full postThe particular pleasures of a 2-2 series
Aka the Desmond: always leaving you asking for more
Liam Cromar
02-Sep-2016
Haynes, Hoare, Lewis, at a stretch, Jack Nel. Er… that's it. The list of Desmonds in Test cricket is short but, with over 7500 runs between them, still rather splendid.
That can be said of another select, though rather different, list of Test Desmonds. For out of the 55 four-Test series to date, the England-Pakistan series was only the second occasion that the scoreline ended on two-all. The only other four-match 2-2, the 1999 Frank Worrell Trophy, was a famous battle for the ages, as the accelerating Australian juggernaut was held at bay by the eminence of Brian Lara.
England-Pakistan bore a number of points of similarity with that series. Off-field selection debates over a strike bowler raged, with Australia omitting Shane Warne and England leaving out James Anderson, although both bowlers protested that they were fit to play. The way the results played out also ran along similar lines: the visitors batted first and won the first Test, only to comprehensively lose the second by a huge margin, thanks to a double-century by the opposition's star. The third Test of each series saw the visitors squander a first-innings lead of over a hundred runs on their way to losing the match in the final session; however, they emphatically levelled the series in the final encounter, with their legspinner collecting five wickets.
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