The Barmy Army: An Explanation or Expletive

Posted on March 15, 2013 by rightoffthebatbook

Many of our earnest baseball fans will be under the impression that cricket is a stately game watched by sedate elderly gentlemen and ladies wearing hats, sipping tea and eating cucumber sandwiches, and occasionally muttering “good shot” under their breath as they tap their begloved hands together in response to an elegant cover drive.

Well, without further commentary, I present to you a video of an English—very English—fan group called “The Barmy Army,” which tours the world following the England cricket team, and supports them through good times and bad with a beer-enhanced fervor and mantra-like chanting that buoys the players enormously and must drive opposition teams and their supporters, well, barmy. Here, baseball fans, is the modern face of cricket-watching. You will notice a distinct lack of gloves—if not hats.

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Matt Prior—Unsung Hero

Posted on March 15, 2013 by rightoffthebatbook
Matt Prior

Matt Prior: Who you looking at, eh?

Like his teammate Jonathan Trott, England’s Matt Prior is not a sexy cricketer—not least because their stocky, balding frames makes them character-actors rather than leading-man material on the cricketing stage. True, Prior’s not as dour and workmanlike as Trott; but he lacks Kevin Pieterson’s panache, Ian Bell’s silken touch, or even Alastair Cook’s dominating solidity. But, to this correspondent (Martin) at least, Prior might just be the most valuable player in the England set-up. Prior is a naturally attacking batsman, willing and able to take the game by the scruff of the neck, pin it to the wall, and tell it to shape up or experience a beating the like of which it had never undergone, before commanding it to scarper PDQ. He’s not only one of the best wicketkeepers in the game at the moment, but, coming in at number seven, he’s able to work with the lower-order batsmen to get England out of a hole or turn a mildly advantageous position into a dominating one in a matter of an hour or so.

Simply put—and leaving aside the titanic presence of Kumar Sangakkara, who no longer keeps on a regular basis for Sri Lanka—Matt Prior is with M. S. Dhoni, the finest wicketkeeper-batsman in English cricket. Like Dhoni, Prior often has to sacrifice his own record to get his team out of trouble or cement an advantage. Like Dhoni, Prior is fearless but not particularly graceful, and neither has a lot of flash. Unlike Dhoni, Prior is chatty and aggressive; but they’re both equally effective at intimidating the opposition through their strokeplay, which has such power that fielders are often left standing like statues as the ball whistles past them. All teams need people like Prior—bullish, busy, happy-to-be-second-fiddle professionals who quietly and with no-nonsense briskness go about compiling records that, only on reflection, reveal themselves to have “excellence” written all over them.

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All-Day Games

Posted on March 15, 2013 by rightoffthebatbook

Time was—say, fifteen or twenty years ago—that you had to wait until Summer to watch a game of cricket. Sure, you might be able to listen on the radio to a crackling broadcast of a game on the other side of the world, but these often took place in the middle of the night. Well, these games still take place in the middle of the night, but there are now so many more of them, and (because of the Internet) so many ways to watch them, that you can basically catch a game of cricket at any time of day or night.

A case in point is today. If you live on the Eastern seaboard of the United States, as your faithful correspondents at Right Off the Bat do, from about 8 a.m. to 5 p.m. you can enjoy live coverage of South Africa taking on Pakistan in a one-day international in South Africa. Immediately following that you can then thrill to the excitement of England playing New Zealand on the third day of the Second Test match in New Zealand—a feast that ends at around 11 p.m. At which point you can then settle in for the night to relish Australia’s struggles against India in India, or (alternatively) Sri Lanka battling it out with Bangladesh in Sri Lanka, both of which matches will take you to dawn. By my reckoning, that gives you twenty-two hours of continuous cricket, spanning the world. Yesterday, before the Zimbabweans were soundly thrashed by the West Indies, those of us on the East Coast of the U.S. would have been able to see a game in our own timezone!

Of course, those of us hoping to have more than “He Watched Cricket” etched on our tombstones look at these developments with something less than unalloyed joy. The days when we could do other things with our life because cricket was either not being played or simply wasn’t easily accessible may have been less pleasurable by not being filled with the noble game, but they were certainly more productive. But I (Martin) should bring this post to a close: New Zealand versus England begins in 35 minutes, and the South Africa/Pakistan game is heading to a thrilling finish!

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Do Your Homework

Posted on March 15, 2013 by rightoffthebatbook
Shane Watson

Shane Watson: Who’s a naughty boy, then?

The longest and most deeply held rivalry in the history of cricket is that between England and Australia—a contest known as “The Ashes.” Since 1877, these teams have been duking it out: barring two world wars, when the countries were otherwise engaged, Australia would visit England during the English summer and then, two years later, England would visit Australia during the Australian summer. This year, however, in an unprecedented move to accommodate the teams’ preparation for the 2015 Cricket World Cup, England and Australia will play back-to-back Ashes matches—five in England this Summer and five in Australia over December 2013/January 2014.

Unusually, given Australia’s general ascendancy over the last 135 years, England are currently firm favorites. England beat Australia 2-1 at home in 2009, and then won again (3–1) in Australia in 2011/2012. A core group of seasoned professionals has accommodated new players easily, and the squad will be relatively unchanged. Australia, by contrast, are in turmoil. Not only have they lost their grizzled old pros Ricky Ponting and Michael Hussey to retirement, but their players and management have collectively lost their marbles. Whereas England are making up for a dreadful start to their tour of New Zealand with the kind of solid, professional performance that their fans are now used to, Australia’s management has just sent four—that’s right, four—of their party home from India because they failed to complete their homework!

Apparently, management had asked each player to write down three things that he needed to improve on, following the team’s disastrous performance in the First Test match in Hyderabad. Four didn’t complete the assignment, and were told that their services were no longer required. It was a drastic measure to assert discipline and has left one player—Shane Watson—considering leaving the international game altogether. Admittedly, Watson has underperformed with the bat for quite some time now, but he offers Australia options they don’t otherwise have, since he’s a more-than-useful bowler, and a fine one-day player. Whatever the merits of the strong message sent by Cricket Australia, the governing body, to the players, it’s the opposite of a morale booster for the contest to come.

Which is a shame, since this Ashes contest promises to be a clash if not of titans, then definitely of captains: England’s Alastair Cook and Australia’s Michael Clarke. Both have had an extraordinarily productive—indeed, record-breaking—brace of years, and they’ve taken to leadership like the proverbial ducks confronted with the proverbial water. This battle would be a chance to see who’s the boss. And, while England won’t mind the turmoil in the Australian camp one bit, spectators will want a genuine contest come the summer.

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Mariano Rivera Retires

Posted on March 9, 2013 by rightoffthebatbook

Mariano. Nobody outside the Yankees clubhouse ever wanted to see him in a game.

Mariano. No player or coach outside the Yankees clubhouse ever wanted to see “The Sandman” enter a game.

Number 42 will be retired forever throughout Major League Baseball at the end of this season. It is the uniform number that Jackie Robinson wore: now on but one, with his own legacy. Mariano Rivera, who will be forty-four on November 29, my (Evander’s) wedding anniversary, is playing his last season. Mark a second date: March 9, 2013. At an emotional but upbeat press conference at the Yankees Tampa spring-training facility that morning, a rare Saturday event in late winter (following New York-snowstorm “Saturn” the day before), surrounded by family, teammates, team brass, and the press, Rivera made it official. He will move on.

I have been fortunate to watch two ballplayers who are the best at what they do. The first is lead-off specialist and base-stealer extraordinary, Rickey Henderson. Rivera, probably the greatest relief pitcher, certainly the greatest “closer,” is the second. Two more different personalities could not be imagined. Henderson has rarely if ever been described as “a team player.” But baseball is an odd mix of teamwork and the individual talent. Rivera has always been team first. Mo is also a Panamanian gentleman of deep humility. Rickey…well, Rickey is Rickey.

I have also been fortunate to see the entire Rivera career unfold, as a fan, from the first-round playoff, second (the first was held on Yom Kippur, which I would not attend; I also came by a ticket on pure faith [that word again!] alone as I ordered two seats at a time in the season when the Yankees were a long shot to be playing at all thro October—a club for some fifteen years out of the playoffs picture) game in 1995, when a skinny kid, with a history of arm trouble and an unbelievable fast ball, was brought in by tyro-manager Buck Showalter to face a powerful Seattle Mariners lineup over the course of a few innings. It was long before Rivera’s ultimate role. (He had marked similarities to Ron Guidry, another lean athlete with a history of arm woes: another late bloomer with a single pitch that could not be hit.) Rivera pitched brilliantly that night. I never imagined I was watching the birth of the best.

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The Babe and the Don

Posted on March 1, 2013 by rightoffthebatbook
Bradman and Ruth

The Mirror of Greatness

It was a meeting made by Destiny: the greatest cricketer of his generation shaking hands with the greatest baseball player of his—Don Bradman and Babe Ruth. Both were transformative individuals who embodied a kind of excellence that was larger than statistics (although both players wrote and rewrote the record books many times). The photo also reminds us that folks have recognized the common heritages of cricket and baseball for decades. Hopefully, we’ll see a lot more handshakes and meeting of the two noble games in the forthcoming years. (Thanks to long-time ROTB fan Geoffrey Plumridge for sending along this photo.)

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Dhoni Takes the Helm

Posted on February 25, 2013 by rightoffthebatbook
M. S. Dhoni and Stewart Granger

M. S. Dhoni (left) and Stewart Granger. You lookin’ at me?

The Indian cricket captain Mahendra Singh (M. S.) Dhoni is a phlegmatic individual. But then you’d have to be, given that you bear the weight of 1.2 billion passionate fans’ expectations on your shoulders. Unlike many cricket captains today, Dhoni plays all three forms of the game (Twenty20, One Day Internationals, and Test matches). As the wicketkeeper, he’s engaged to the maximal level on the field; as the team’s number seven or eight batsmen, his job is to save his side from the errors and failures of the batsmen higher in the order and/or to shepherd the batsmen coming in in such a way that a competitive or winning total is posted.

It’s a tough ask for anyone, and in recent years Dhoni has found himself having to rescue a feckless side more than once. Dhoni is not without his critics. These carpers contend that he’s clearly more comfortable playing limited-overs cricket than Test matches and worry that he’s so inscrutable and taciturn that he sometimes lets the game drift when India needs to seize the initiative and drive the contest.

These may be fair observations, but M.S. has just made a few of the cavillers eat their words by posting the highest ever run total by an Indian captain, and wicketkeeper (224 runs), and in a Test match no less. And against a formidable opposition, the Australians. He did it with his customary combination of caution and explosive power, and without apparently breaking a sweat or smiling once. Only at the end of a day in which he’d scored 217 runs did he finally acknowledge the crowd’s adulation with a shake of the bat and the taking off of his helmet as he strode off the field.

Dhoni is no longer the pretty boy heartthrob from the other side of the tracks. He now has the looks, the institutional and physical solidity of someone come of age, and the derring do and maturity of the characters that Stewart Granger used to play: the adult in the expeditionary party who makes the tough decisions and takes on the big game with a minimum of fuss and maximal destructive power, but only when necessary. With any luck, this innings will make Dhoni embrace the long form of the game with the brilliance and skill he’s employed in the shorter forms. If so, then watch out world!

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Rwanda Gets a Cricket Pitch

Posted on February 25, 2013 by rightoffthebatbook

In a further sign of Rwanda’s tilt away from Francophone to Anglophone cultural norms, a cricket pitch is being built near the scene of a massacre during the devastating genocide of 1994. Naturally, the chap building the stadium and pitch is a Brit. How, you might ask, has cricket taken off in a colony with no previous history of the game and little connection to the British Empire. The answer is war. According an an article in the Guardian:

The game was introduced after thousands of Rwandans, having grown up playing cricket in exile in nearby countries such as Kenya, Uganda and Tanzania, came home to rebuild their lives after the genocide.

In 1999, a small number of former exiles founded the Rwanda Cricket Association, and in 2003 Rwanda became an affiliate member of the International Cricket Council.

There are more than 2,000 regular cricketers in the country with a further 3,000 playing the game in schools, universities and orphanages. The national team plays in the third division of the International Cricket Council Africa and won the championship in 2011, defeating the Seychelles in a playoff. The year before, the U19 girls’ team beat Kenya, the regional cricketing power.

 

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Happy Second Anniversary to Us!

Posted on February 22, 2013 by rightoffthebatbook

Today Right Off the Bat celebrates its Second Anniversary. In the course of two years, we’ve managed to post 417 blogs (including this one), received 281 comments, and had 12,699 bits of spam intercepted by the good people and even better machines of WordPress. And through the wonder of the Intertubes, we’re being read in regions of this globe we never thought we’d reach. In only the last seven days, for instance, we’ve been visited by folks from the U.S. to South Africa, India to Indonesia, and Hong Kong to El Salvador, as well as one individual from that hotbed of cricket and baseball, Romania.

Being bookish sorts, we don’t get out that much, but just in case you find yourself in the New York City area in March, we’re staging two—count ’em, two—events where you can see what all, or none, of the fuss is about, and learn about these two noble games. See you there!

Wednesday, March 6, 2013, opening reception at 6:00 p.m., talk begins at 6:45: The Coffee House, 20 West 44th Street, New York, NY 10036. Come and bowl us a few googlies—or pitch a curveball or two!

Wednesday March 20, 2013, opening reception at 3:30 p.m., talk begins at 4: Saints John and Paul Church, 280 Weaver Street, Larchmont, New York 10538. (This would have been the 100th birthday of Evander’s father.) Join in the fun.

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Putting Downton Abbey to the Sward

Posted on February 12, 2013 by rightoffthebatbook
Lord Grantham (left) tells Matthew Crawley that the wicket is about to get sticky.

Lord Grantham (left) tells Matthew Crawley that the wicket is about to get sticky.

Eager fans of Downton Abbey will have noted that the most recent episode (at least in the United States) featured a cricket match, and eager fans of Right Off the Bat are no doubt waiting for this site’s expert analysis of the game between the abbey’s denizens (“the House”) and the ordinary folk who live in the village (“the Village”).

In the show, we only see half a game (the House’s turn at bat, and one ball of the Village’s innings), nonetheless we can draw a number of useful conclusions. Clearly, aside from Thomas Barrow the under-butler—who scores a rapid, undefeated century (100 runs or more in the innings) under threat of imprisonment for homosexuality (which just shows you that sometimes you have to put team members under pressure to get the best out of them)—few members of the House side distinguish themselves with the bat. Matthew Crawley, in spite of an elegant cover drive early in his knock, is plumb LBW (leg before wicket) not playing a shot to a straight ball. Molseley, the big-talking cricket aficionado is, as you might expect, a busted flush, being bowled first ball, in spite of a lunging forward-defensive stroke.

The Village side looks to contain a number of very useful bowlers, including a medium-paced left-arm-over-the-wicket bowler. This makes it all the more astonishing that the House should rack up nearly 200 runs by the end of their innings—although given that Mr. Bates, the scorer, takes his eye off the game to tell Anna all about O’Brien’s dirty deeds, then the actual total racked up by the House might be anybody’s guess.

For the House, we only see Mr. Carson, the chief butler, bowl, and his first ball is fortuitously slapped by the village doctor straight into the surprised hands of Irishman Tom Branson. That said, if Carson’s extremely gentle spinbowling is the best the House can come up with, then the Village look well-placed to continue their winning streak against the House. Of course, Tom may turn out to be a fiendish bowler, having picked up the knack of batting in the nets quite quickly earlier in the episode.

It should be noted that Tom gives his Irishness as an excuse as to why he can’t play cricket, which is itself a hint at the class and imperial identity of cricket as an English gentleman’s game. However, cricket was being played in Ireland at the time. In fact, in 1921–22, which is when this episode of Downton Abbey is set, a young Irishman was making quite a name for himself as a cricketer at Portora Royal School, near Enniskillen. His name was Samuel Beckett, and clearly writer Julian Fellowes has used him as inspiration for the bleak tragicomedy that is Downton Abbey.

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