The Long Handle
What makes Yorkshire trolling distinctive
And what's wrong with the NatWest Blast: find out in our special two-for-one
Andrew Hughes
20-May-2015
Accomplished wind-up merchant and part-time chairman Colin Graves has made an auspicious start as Troll Laureate at the ECB. First he managed to rouse the West Indian cricket team from their mediocrity through the canny device of calling them mediocre, a sort of reverse-psychology trolling straight from Professor Vaughan's latest book: Trolling and the Subconscious Mind (already a text on the University of Sheffield's Advanced Banter course).
Then he set his sights higher, ensnaring popular Twitter celebrity and friend of Piers Morgan, Kevin Pietersen, in a troll trap that was both masterful in its construction and awe-inspiring in its execution:
@realcoling: Score some runs @KP and you can definitely play for England #trust
Full postWhat does a director of cricket do?
We welcome back another beneficiary of the ECB's personnel recycling initiative
Andrew Hughes
12-May-2015
At the same time that David Cameron was cancelling his post-election holiday plans and attempting to defuse the booby trap he left in the bidet at No. 10, another new-old face was sidling back into the public eye. The ECB - increasingly resembling a long-running soap opera so stuck for new ideas that the writers keep bringing back characters you thought had been killed off - has appointed one of the popular Andrews from the last series to be director of cricket.
It could be just the right job for him - after all, the title Director of Cricket is a bit like an Andrew Strauss sentence: vaguely meaningful, yet at the same time meaningfully vague.
Director of Cricket. What does it involve, exactly? Is it like directing traffic? Is Strauss to be an expensively educated traffic light, stopping the cricket from going too fast, or blowing his whistle ineffectually when the cricket has executed an illegal u-turn and is heading in the wrong direction?
Full postThe triumph of the mediocre
Kudos to England for pulling off a draw against the odds
Andrew Hughes
06-May-2015
Just when you think Test cricket has lost its capacity to surprise, it throws up an eyebrow-elevating series like the one in the Caribbean, in which a mediocre team, over-reliant on one fast bowler and lacking their star batsman, pull off a brave 1-1 draw against the odds. So congratulations to England for proving the pundits half-wrong. Keep this up and you've every chance of maybe not losing to New Zealand.
The home side is no doubt a bit disappointed to end up with a draw, but in the performances of Darren Bravo, Jermaine Blackwood and Jason Holder, they do have some pleasant consolation. A particular highlight was the moment Darren Bravo lofted Moeen Ali over midwicket with a sumptuous airy waft and the word "Lara" popped into the imaginations of thousands of cricket watchers at precisely the same instant.
Meanwhile, parochial delusion lingers about English cricket like a Beijing smog. When he walked off the field at Bridgetown, having scored nine runs in two innings, Jonathan Trott (33rd on the list of all-time England Test run scorers, with an average of 44.08) was given a standing ovation and a rolling eulogy feed on Twitter. I've nothing against standing ovations, or Jonathan Trott for that matter, but he was in the Caribbean to play cricket, and at the risk of coming over a little Geoffrey Boycott, he wasn't bloody good enough.
Full postThe Pakistan revolution in the offing
The post-Misbah era promises to be exciting and flamboyant
Andrew Hughes
29-Apr-2015
Having waited for eight months to be able to pick Saeed Ajmal in a Test match, Pakistan's selectors have decided that they can afford to wait a little longer.
Is this the end for him? It would be unseemly, even by PCB standards, to ditch a man who has won so many matches for his country after he has toiled so hard to win back his international career at an age when he could just as easily have given up.
But this is Saeed Ajmal. He's a main attraction, not a side show. If he's not in the team, what is he doing there? Would you invite Usain Bolt to join your athletics squad, then ask him to sit out the 100 metres? Perhaps you would if you'd discovered midway through the tour that Usain wasn't quite as fast as he used to be.
Full postAre you pro-KP or anti-KP?
A nation's future hangs on the answer. Or not
Andrew Hughes
22-Apr-2015
These are tense times in England. A nation is in turmoil as we wait to find out who will be chosen to lead us from our state of doubt and uncertainty into the sunlit uplands of prosperity, happiness and not being utterly humiliated in the Ashes.
The post of ECB managing director is probably the most important job in the country. Get this appointment wrong and English cricket could endure a miserable decade of mediocrity. Get it right and the outcome will be pretty much the same.
There are two main candidates. For the Troll Party, we have Michael Vaughan, whose manifesto includes a commitment to introduce county-specific tea to the England dressing room and a promise to spend less time annoying us all on television, radio and social media.
Full postThe James Anderson style of excuse
No swearing, no wickets, says the fast bowler
Andrew Hughes
15-Apr-2015
We human beings enjoy coming up with theories. It is our No. 3 favourite thing to do, after war, and watching television.
Some theories, such as the Big Bang, Evolution and Relativity are quite useful. Others are little more ropey.
Take for instance, the theory that the world is really run by giant lizards from Mars who infiltrated the World Bank and the United Nations wearing tuxedos and unconvincing wigs. I'd love this to be true, but although at first glance, it appears to be watertight, there is a flaw in it. In order to hire a tuxedo to disguise the fact that he's a giant lizard, a giant lizard would already need to be wearing a tuxedo to disguise the fact that he's a giant lizard. So where did he get the first tuxedo from?
Full postAfter the party, the nap
Exhausted by the World Cup? Worry not, we have just the competition for you
Andrew Hughes
08-Apr-2015
As any responsible doctor will advise, the best way to deal with a hangover is to get drunk again as soon as possible. In the case of a World Cup hangover, this means that you should try to expose your eyeballs to more high-quality cricket without delay.
Sadly, for English cricket lovers this will not be possible. It is true that England are playing in the West Indies, an engagement which at one time would have promised a stomach-churning thrill-ride featuring broken noses, shattered fingers, tearaway fast bowling, swashbuckling batting and a bit of a thrashing.
But these days a series in the West Indies is devalued cricket currency. This year's edition promises to plumb the already well-charted depths of motion-going-through: a shambolic home side, low on confidence, against a mediocre touring side haunted by the spectre of He Who Must Not Be Named, on slow, low, slow pitches in front of an unfortunate crowd who would be well advised to stock up on crosswords and paperbacks.
Full postThe big losers at this World Cup
Step forward Mustafa Kamal and Anuskha Sharma
Andrew Hughes
01-Apr-2015
If you read the post-World Cup media, you will find widespread agreement that this latest World Cup was a very good World Cup. Admittedly there has never been a bad World Cup, because, let's face it, a World Cup is six weeks of watching cricket and six weeks of watching cricket is never going to be bad, is it?
But although the World Cup was very good, that doesn't mean that everyone at the World Cup had a very good World Cup. Even as we speak a thousand fingers are tapping at a thousand keyboards to produce the rash of post-World Cup reviews with which all but one of the world's cricket boards will attempt to justify themselves.
These reviews, like General Election manifestos, are designed primarily for waving at people when they ask you what you're going to do about something, and like General Election manifestos, will be recycled as budgerigar cage flooring and papier mache fairy castles a few weeks after publication, but they do serve a useful psychological purpose in helping certain inviduals to recover from crushing failure and disappointment.
Full postCome now, Mr Faulkner
The Australian allrounder would have us believe sledging is inevitable. Is it?
Andrew Hughes
25-Mar-2015
Benjamin Franklin once said that there are only two things certain in life: death and taxes. Well, he was wrong. For a start, if you can afford an army of accountants, you can more or less avoid the second item on the list entirely. Admittedly, death evasion is a trickier business. You can practise death avoidance, you can even freeze your dead assets cryogenically, but the immortal collector will get you in the end.
But this week we learned that Mr Franklin had overlooked another phenomenon in human existence that cannot be avoided. It seems that the only things certain in life are death, taxes and sledging when Australia play India.
Asked by bored members of the press whether he thought there would be sledging on Thursday, Mr James Faulkner gave us to understand that sledging would indeed take place on Thursday, and that, furthermore, it is inevitable. There will be sledging, of that we can be certain. The sledging is, I repeat, inevitable.
Full postDo you want to listen to umpires chat?
What's so interesting about two middle-aged men discussing how to operate a remote?
Andrew Hughes
18-Mar-2015
It cannot be doubted that technical innovation in cricket broadcasting has enhanced our viewing pleasure. To take just one example, super slow-motion replays turn cricket into ballet, vindicating once again CLR James' assertion that cricket, above all sports, has the most realistic claim to be considered art. Slow the action down enough and even a Tim Bresnan or a Jacques Kallis achieve a certain animal grace as they lumber to the wicket.
Even when the technology doesn't work, when Hawkeye gets its sums wrong, Snickometer snoozes, HotSpot has a cold and Spidercam runs low on spider power, the resulting errors bestow on us the blessing of having something else to argue about.
But not every innovation is progress. This week it was revealed that viewers of matches in the World Cup knockout stages will be able to hear conversations between the on-field and off-field umpires.
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