Lost overs

I am out; and down. I eye my cricket bag. Facing homelessness, the bag seems as promising a shelter as any. I have speculated away my life: family, job and very soon, home.

Months ago, I was sitting at Lord’s, watching the Test with my son. After tea, he asked, “What happens to the overs that won’t be bowled today?”

“Nothing, they’re just lost.”

I was wrong. I was the one that lost.

A few days later, an email arrived, with a most curious offer: to buy surplus international cricket overs. Intrigued, I followed the link. There, on the dark web, was a market. A novel gift for my Father’s birthday I reasoned, making my first purchase. Instead, a week later, I bought him a Cardus – first edition – with the proceeds of my initial trades.

The market was picking up. The supply-side, with players failing to complete 90 overs per day, was burgeoning, but never quite able to keep up with demand, as new Twenty 20 leagues proliferated. I found the options market particularly lucrative: anticipating which days would leave spectators sold short and me buying long. I even dabbled in the world of fixers, offering players incentives to go slow. Nothing matches the exhilaration of seeing a Test match opening bowler crouch at my bidding to tie his shoelaces. But that was a vanity investment: Test cricketers needed no bungs to create a daily diet of orphaned overs.

I had a strategy. Prices spiked whenever the ICC met to discuss a World Test Championship. I was stock-piling overs, ready to soak up the demand of a five-day extravaganza. More and more of my income was invested. My family, neglected, moved out. Work was a charade that I played out to fund my habit. The closer I felt to owning cricket, the further away from it I drifted. I stopped playing, reading match reports and paying my SkySports subscription. But I held a Test match-worth of lost over assets. ‘Be patient, wait for the opportunity,’ I said, although I had nobody left close to me to listen.

The first shock came when the ICC announced its meagre plan for a Test Championship of mostly two-Test series. The market, like an erroneous umpiring decision, suffered a correction. Then another stinger as South Africa’s Global League evaporated. I clung on, determined to ride out the rough patch. Finally, the announcement that shattered my defences: the Hundred. The ECB shaved three and a bit overs and with it any margin. Prices no longer fell. The market just seized up.

With no trading to distract me, I can take stock: I’m left rich in overs, but impoverished, contemplating sleeping in a cricket bag. I’ve paid the price for trying to own the game that belongs to no one. Cricket as a moral enterprise has found me wanting.

But there is hope. If my deficiency has been ethical, then I can be rehabilitated. I may be able to sit beside my son again, watching a match.

There is an alternative, more prosaic, harder to stomach, less meriting a son’s forgiveness: gullibility. Was I conned?

Short pitch: a first run

I’m being shouted at; by the grown-ups watching the game, by the people playing the game and now by my team – one of them is waving a bat. They want me to bat now. It’s my turn.

Someone’s Daddy helps me put my hands into gloves. My fingers don’t reach the ends and they feel sticky inside. I walk out to the middle of the field with the boy I’m batting with. He’s bigger than me. He has a loud voice. I don’t want him to shout at me. He points at one of the wickets and says ‘that’s your end’.

I stand in front of the wicket. The umpire moves me to the side. I think it will be hard to hit the ball and stop it bowling me from there. He says it’s not my turn to bat. So I watch.

The bowler runs from behind me and bowls. The ball reaches the boy I’m batting with, who swings his bat, but misses it. That happens again and again. I turn to ask the umpire when it will be my go and then hear the bat hit the ball. I wasn’t expecting that. Then the boy I’m batting with shouts and runs towards me. He stops and I remember I should do some running. He shouts ‘stop, go back’. I do, but I don’t like him shouting at me. I don’t know where the ball is, but suddenly the bowler has it again and he’s running in again.

Then everyone is moving around and there’s an umpire standing at the other wickets facing me. “Are you ready?” he asks me. I nod. He tells me to move – it’s back to where I stood when I first came out, until the other umpire moved me. That umpire is now behind me. He’s also telling me where to stand – closer to the bowler. He wants the white line to go between my feet. I do it, but would feel happier standing close to the wicket.

A different bowler bowls, everything has moved around. He bowls it past me. I can’t reach it, so I let it go. When I look around, there are the other players all around me. They don’t look friendly, apart from the boy laughing at the seagull, which is funny. The umpire shouts, ‘Are you ready?’ and another ball goes past me. I can’t hit it unless he bowls it at me.

One ball comes closer. I push at it, but don’t like the way it bounces up at me. It misses and everyone goes ‘ooh, nearly’. Do they mean I nearly hit it? Now it’s time to switch around again.

This time the boy I’m batting with does hit the ball. It goes past the seagull, which flies away. I’m watching to see how far it goes, when the boy who hit it runs up to me. ‘Run,’ he shouts, right in front of me. My teammates are shouting, too. I drop my bat to run faster and run all the way to the other wicket, making sure I stop just in front of it in case I knock it down and am out.

The umpire picks up my bat and brings it to me. ‘Remember what we practiced last week?’ I don’t know what he means by ‘last week’.

‘Remember how to grip the bat.’

‘It’s an axe,’ I say which makes me laugh and he laughs too. Then he says something about ‘V’s’ which I don’t understand, but I like pretending it’s an axe. I’m going to chop the ball.

The next ball isn’t at me, but I try to chop it, but I can’t reach. It’s still my turn to bat and another ball comes. It’s right in front of me and I chop it and it rolls quickly to one of their players who looks unfriendly. The boy I’m batting with shouts and starts running, but I like this wicket so I stay and he has to run back to his wicket. The umpire makes a thumbs up sign and is smiling.

There’s two more balls I can’t reach. Then there’s one that bounces up and could hit me on the tummy, but I chop it hard. The ball rolls between two of the unfriendly boys. Actually one might be a girl. I like watching it roll away, getting smaller, although it’s quite small to begin with. Then I notice shouting again, at me again. “Run! Run!” The boy I’m batting with is next to me, so I run to the other wicket, holding onto my axe this time.

When I get down there, the umpire holds his hand out in front of me. Have I done something wrong? He seems happy. ‘Great shot. High five,’ he’s saying. My teammates are still making noise, but they’re not shouting at me. Some are clapping. And my Mummy is standing up, so I wave at her.

——————————————–

With thanks and respect to all the youngsters I have coached and seen score their first runs.

The final delivery of the 2015 World Cup

The 2015 World Cup was being hailed as the saviour of one day international cricket by the time the quarter-final places were settled. That first month of the tournament had seen regular close finishes, control of other games swinging dramatically from one team to the other (and occasionally back again). The associates had shown themselves to be competitive, with Afghanistan snatching a victory against Sri Lanka, who bizarrely opted to rest Jayawardene on a day his calm batting could have made the difference.

There were stories of renewal: the West Indies, four months after leaving India mid-series, their players and Board in dispute, dealt their erstwhile hosts a further snubbing with one of the most comfortable victories of the group stage. For India, this was a solitary defeat of a strong opening phase.

Alastair Cook also found vindication leading England to a record five World Cup victories on the trot, as well as being leading run scorer for his country. Defeat to India in the quarter-finals left England’s performance indeterminate – not poor enough to require a clear out, nor strong enough to dispel doubts.

Amidst the drama and excitement, Australia exuded a sense of calm and purpose. Wickets taken, their batsmen reaching milestones, even victories were greeted with handshakes, slaps on the back and simple acknowledgements to the crowd. There were no extravagant celebrations or reveling in the misfortune of opponents. They approached the tournament as a campaign, conserving energy, pacing themselves and, of course, bearing the burden of the loss of Philip Hughes.

India, who had already shown unexpected toughness in the Test series in Australia that preceded the World Cup, looked Australia’s most likely adversaries. Their semi-final opponents, Pakistan, had played scrappy, wasteful cricket. Somehow they wrought disorder on India’s smooth progression and in a tight game of mini-collapses and lower order rallies, Pakistan were in their element and squeezed into the final.

The following day, in the other semi-final, Australia neutered South Africa. Michael Clarke played that match – the first time in the tournament he had appeared in consecutive Australian fixtures. His back, his hamstring and his energy levels needed to be managed. By playing alternate matches in the group stage, Clarke was kept in one piece for the knockouts.

Australia faced Pakistan in the 49th match on the 43rd day of the tournament. Pakistan batted first. A steady start was on the verge of spectacular acceleration as Misbah launched an assault reminiscent of his innings in the 2nd Test against Australia in November. Only five months ago, but feeling to Australians to belong to a different era. But it wasn’t to be a throwback as Misbah slipped, aiming for a fifth six, and buckled the stumps with his back leg to be out for a rapid 46. The innings closed on 282 – a total that Australia had exceeded four times already in the tournament, although never needing that many when chasing.

Warner and Finch opened with a partnership of intense, high-energy cricket. Seeking to score off every ball, but not with their characteristic boundary-clearing shots, they upset Pakistan’s calculations. By the 15th over, the score was 90 when Finch, finally challenging the boundary fielder, was caught off a lofted pull.

The bowler was Saeed Ajmal. The off-spinner was a major focus of pre-tournament conjecture. His new action had been cleared by the ICC in the weeks leading up to the tournament. His team’s own misgivings about the impact of that change were apparent when he didn’t make the eleven for Pakistan’s first two matches. But thereafter, he settled into a groove that made him the most economical bowler at the tournament. Ajmal limited himself to off-breaks and arm-balls, but batsmen, if no longer mystified by his variations, couldn’t find a method to collar him.

Finch’s dismissal derailed the innings. Over the next twenty overs, Australia lost another six wickets while runs were extracted painfully. Misbah made manifold bowling changes, seeming to disorientate the Australian batsmen. The most dizzy and out of sorts of all, was the skipper Clarke. Yet, he had enough tenacity to hold onto his wicket. If he was hoping for calmer times, harmony wasn’t to be his saviour. Instead it came in the form of a James Faulkner hurricane.

Hitherto in the tournament, Australia’s serene progress had meant Faulkner’s muscular batting was always kept in reserve. But at the Final, with his team finally knocked off its axis, he had license to let rip. Faulkner hit more boundaries in three overs than his side had in the previous 35. Ajmal was mauled with three successive slog-swept sixes. Faulkner found the freedom, which had eluded all batsmen in the tournament so far, to clobber the Pakistani spinner.

With only three wickets in hand and fifty still needed off seven overs, Clarke called for steadiness from Faulkner and took the lead role as they stepped down from the latter’s assault to a more measured and calculated approach.

Into the final over and Australia required eight runs to win. Misbah brought back Saeed Ajmal. Faulkner erupted onto the second delivery. Flat batted and batted flat it hurtled between two legside boundary fielders for a four. One of the required four runs came the next ball with an under-edge sweep to short fine leg. Michael Clarke was now on strike.

Ball four, Clarke shimmied outside leg and met the ball on the half-volley. He drilled the drive straight in the direction of the long-off boundary, but with one obstacle in its way. Ajmal’s left wrist took the blow and intercepted the ball, knocking it to the ground, where the bowler pounced and stayed down until the physio appeared next to him to apply analgesic spray.

Ball five was the inside edge mishit that wins so many matches, but not this one as Clarke’s left ankle deflected the ball bobbling past his leg stump and through to Sarfraz Ahmed.

Clarke and Faulkner met mid-pitch, perhaps hoping to drift inconspicuously to each other’s station. Pakistani players, led by Misbah converged on Ajmal, who turned his back and waved away his teammates. Misbah, arms outstretched, face contorted, begged his bowler’s attention. Ajmal was full of quiet rebellion.

Clarke returned to the crease. He marked his guard, then stepped away, looked up into the ring of night sky framed by the MCG stands, inhaled and readied himself.

Ajmal stood thirty yards away, flexing his left wrist, bruised or worse by Clarke’s drive and flicking the ball with his bowling hand. The Pakistani fielders had retreated to their positions, shifted this way and that by their captain, but ignored, thought irrelevant by Ajmal.

Umpire Llong looked over his shoulder and mouthed ‘play’ to the bowler. Ajmal shuffled to the wicket. As he entered his delivery stride, Clarke stepped lightly across his stumps and his left foot began to stretch forward. Ajmal pitched his torso back, appearing to hesitate for a moment with his right hand lost to the batsmen’s view at the base of his spine. Lithe and loose his arm rotated upward, propelling the ball towards Clarke, who had lowered his body behind his front pad. The Australian’s bat swung from the off-side to fetch the ball heading for his off-stump. As the bat swept through its arc, the ball dipped. It pitched in line with Clarke’s intended point of contact. The bat’s true swing intercepted the trajectory of the ball’s travel, but the ball deviated left from the pitch, passing through to Sarfraz who parried the ball to the ground with his right glove.

Clarke, choosing to play a shot on one knee was left bowed at the moment of defeat. Ajmal raised his arms above his head, taking his turn to gaze at the Melbourne night sky. Sarfraz stood looking at the ball on the ground, two foot outside off-stump. Faulkner gesticulated, flexing his arm at Umpire Llong, who looked across at his colleague Dharmasena, seeking an answer. Llong moved his hand to his earpiece, where off-field assistance could be found, then lowered it again and carefully lifted the bails from the stumps. Clarke and Faulkner slumped. Misbah, in an echo of his bowler’s action seconds before, hesitated as he began to run to Ajmal, then pitched forwards to acclaim his bowler and banish doubt in Pakistan’s triumph.