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One of England's best
With memorable understatement and a conspicuous lack of fuss, Andrew Strauss resigned the England captaincy and retired from professional cricket.
A lifetime of ambition and achievement, a good living well made - gone,
finito. "You just know" he said, and you do. It washes over you. The
sheer pleasure of release, an orgasm of self-appraisal and realisation.
Then suddenly, the bearable lightness of being.
Typical Strauss. No glorification. No quivering lip, not even the blink
of an eye. Just the facts. There was no
emotion. "I know where I'm at"
he said. Best to go when they ask why, not when. Apparently the energy
levels to get his batting sorted are somewhere in the ether, somewhere
lost in time. He is 35 years old. It is easy to forget that he started
quite late.
Remember the Lord's hundred
on debut
and the second-innings 83 before Nasser Hussain ran him out? Only 2004.
Remember the white gauze and plaster on his ear lobe while celebrating
another hundred against Australia at Old Trafford in 2005? Remember the thrilling, horizontal left-handed catch at Trent Bridge the same summer? The counter-attack in Brisbane? The Ashes secured in Melbourne? The lifting of the urn in Sydney? The World Cup hundred for a tie in Bangaloure
? All Strauss. All memories now.
Alistair Cook sat alongside him in the boardroom at the offices of the ECB. Unusual
that, the handing of the baton so immediate and public. Let Strauss have
his moment you thought before realising he was not looking for "a
moment". He was here because it was the next thing on the road. Like
Cook if you think about, the next thing on a road much travelled by
cricket's caravan.
These South Africans are consistent. Hussain, Michael Vaughan and now
"Straussy", as "Cookie" kept calling him. All three, victims of the
South Africans and a four-year cycle that ends with The Death of a
Captain. Graeme Smith has seen them all off. No wonder they call him
Biff.
So why did this intelligent and loyal man chose to move on? Not, he
insists, because of Kevin. There may be plenty about Kev that occupies
the Strauss mind but not enough to obscure his judgement. Quite likely,
the Pietersen issue made him consider staying in the job a little longer
- after all, it is unfinished business and there is nothing else about
Strauss that is unfinished. He is a man of symmetry: begin and end at
Lord's; play a hundred Tests, captain 50 of them. Twenty-one hundreds,
just like Pietersen; 27 fifties, just like Pietersen.
Even the recession of his hair is divided equally from the forehead's
remaining centre of growth. Oh no, KP was good reason to crack on -
another challenge, as sports folk like to say. But he didn't fall for
it. ("You just know.") So Kevin is Alastair's problem now. Big problem.
"Look, there is a process to go through" said Alastair, when asked if he
wanted Pietersen in his team. By which he meant, we need a punch up and
from it there is the chance of a kiss and make-up. He better hope it
comes off. The cupboard inherited is not so flush with batsmen. Stop for
a minute and think about replacements for Strauss at the top of the
order. There you go, it's not obvious.
Strauss retired because he had enough. Lucky him, no regrets. His
batting has slipped from a former height; his captaincy has lost
something of the midas touch; his team have lost six in 11 Tests; three
key bowlers have lost a bit of zip; catches are being dropped; the kids
at home are growing up fast; and so on.
Vaughan had a bad knee injury to decipher. Hussain had a lot of defeats
to ponder. Strauss, an exceptional cricketer marginally on the wrong
side of the hill, just wanted out. Unconditional, uncomplicated out. He
had been thinking about it all summer. He didn't like speculation about
his form and therefore his place in the team - remember the witch-hunt
last spring, yes, only last spring.
"I went down where the vultures feed / I would've got deeper but
there wasn't any need / I heard the tongues of angels and the tongues of
men / And it wasn't any difference to me"
Bob Dylan from his song "Dignity". That's Strauss for you, his own man: a
man of dig
nity. Honest, loyal and as good a captain of England as he
could have been, one of the best. His team that became No. 1 in the
world was also one of England's best. He made more than 7000 runs and
held more catches in an England shirt than any man. When asked how he
would like to be remembered, he said he hated the question, but added,
"Remember me for who I am."
He also said that he had gone at a good time, that he was proud of the
performance at Lord's when the team fought as one and, in the face of a
major disruption, made South Africa go the distance. Typical of Strauss
to see the upside. "What next?" said the long established cricket
correspondent of the Sun newspaper. "Hmmm. I think I'll have crack at being cricket correspondent of the Sun."
And that was pretty much that, upon which the press applauded him - a
most surprising occurrence on a most surprising day. Good night captain,
and good luck.
An increasingly threatening partnership
R Ashwin and Pragyan Ojha have now taken 60 wickets between them in the four Tests they have played together. How much ever you try to temper it down, it is still a remarkable stat. Yes, all the four Tests were at home. Yes, all the four Tests were against West Indies and New Zealand batsmen who are uncomfortable against spin. Yes, Ashwin-and-Ojha are not remotely Anil Kumble-and-Harbhajan Singh yet. But an average return of 15 wickets per Test is no joke. Had they been a pair of young fast bowlers who had demolished batsmen for four successive home Tests, you can imagine the kind of hype they would have generated.
All the talk in recent days has been about the need for India's young batsmen to get exposure against New Zealand before England and Australia arrive. VVS Laxman gave the same reason for announcing his international retirement days before this Test started, despite being selected for the series. But as big a positive for India is the kind of partnership Ashwin and Ojha have started to develop. For all their overseas troubles, India still have an outstanding home record, and Ashwin-and-Ojha will be critical to their chances against England and Australia.
They may have bowled together in only four games at the Test level, but Ashwin said they go back a long way. "Ojha is someone who I have played with since I was 16 and we have always enjoyed each other's company," Ashwin said. "I was a batsman then when Ojha was a prime bowler but I still used to bowl in one-day games. We always used to bowl well together because we used to build pressure very well."
That pressure was applied from both ends against New Zealand as well. Both Ashwin and Ojha have excellent control over their stock deliveries, and don't bowl a lot of hit-me balls. Both rely a lot on bounce, not so much on turn; there was plenty of the former on this pitch. Ashwin used his height to get it, Ojha his pivot. Both are young and inexperienced, though, which means a few short ones every now and then. Both should learn with time.
What helps is that both are quite different bowlers. Ashwin, in the longer form, is not unlike Harbhajan, in that he seems to want a wicket with almost every delivery he bowls, and starts showing signs of impatience when it doesn't come. He will bang it hard into the pitch and increase the pace, hoping to get more bite, especially on flatter pitches. But, not unlike the Harbhajan of old, he seems to come up with the wicket-taking deliveries regularly, and seemingly out of nowhere.
Ojha has the more containing role in the team, and is quite good at it. Once he hits a restrictive line, he hardly deviates from it. He might bowl the odd short ball, but his line is usually very consistent. Unlike Ashwin, he does not go out of his way to try and pick up wickets, and that works well for both. Not that Ojha has a very defensive mindset - he flights the ball so much - but for him, as he says, a wicket is the outcome of tying batsmen down first.
Ashwin acknowledged Ojha's contribution in the game. "Due credit needs to be given to him. When one spinner starts to take wickets, the other spinner can get carried away and doesn't really bog the batsman down."
A look at the scorecard might tell you it was all too easy for the India spinners but this morning, New Zealand went through an entire session without losing a wicket, with Brendon McCullum and Kane Williamson batting safely. The session would have been another lesson in patience for Ashwin and Ojha.
"We have seen many such cases in first-class cricket," Ashwin said. "When two batsmen are going good, even on dustbowls, it is very tough for a bowler to dislodge them. You have to prise them out, be very patient and once one or two wickets fall quickly, it becomes that much easier because the new batsman has to move his feet around, get his technique in place. So you can be attacking him all the time. We knew it was a matter of time, a matter of patience to play on the batsman."
With his haul of 12 for 85, Ashwin went past the 12 for 152 by his fellow Tamil Nadu offspinner and former India captain S Venkataraghavan in 1965 as the best by an India bowler against New Zealand. "I took a glance at it during the presentation and I told Badri [S Badrinath, also from Tamil Nadu], 'Look who is in second place'," Ashwin said. India will want that given responsive surfaces, Ashwin and Ojha would have similar things to say against England and Australia as well.
India's diary-writing, dictionary-wielding captain
Unmukt Chand looks your standard 21st century teenage athlete being groomed for a future on the professional treadmill. T-shirt, shorts and fashionable flip flops; strong physique earned in the gym; rakish hair and traces of stubble. Then, while talking about captaining India's Under-19 team, he says he was never put under any real pressure because there were no "recalcitrant players" in the side. Older people with larger vocabularies might struggle to tell you what "recalcitrant" means; Chand won't because he has habits that are at odds with those of the stereotypical newbie in India's IPL and PlayStation generation.
Chand is India Under-19's premier batsman and he's been given the responsibility of leading their World Cup campaign, which begins on August 11 in Queensland. His generation of cricketers is different from previous ones, and Chand is different among them. He is two seasons old in the Ranji Trophy and has an IPL contract with Delhi Daredevils. His bat is his bedfellow, but so are a couple of books.
"I keep a diary with me. I keep a dictionary with me all the time," he says. "Whenever I come across new words, I write them in the diary, look for their meanings in the dictionary, frame a sentence and try and use them when I talk."
Chand talks of writing a book: wildly ambitious for a teenage cricketer but not so outrageous, perhaps, for a regular diarist. "In the beginning, [diary writing] was very regular, all my daily routines. But now I write about how I feel - good or bad, what I've learnt from someone. Something I think is important, I jot it down. Sometimes at 3am I'm writing diaries.
"I feel that if you put pen to paper then it is a very strong way of learning. You don't forget things easily."
The world hasn't seen Chand bat yet - he didn't make a splash in the IPL - but he is a proven age-group cricketer, having risen through Delhi's youth structure. He has led India Under-19 in three tournaments and won two (the Asia Cup was tied). In the first, in Vizag in September 2011, Chand was the second-highest run scorer, making 336 at an average of 67 and strike rate of 106. He began that competition by gunning down Australia's 163 with Manan Vohra in 12 overs - in a 50-over game.
The second tournament was in Townsville, a venue for the upcoming World Cup, and it was the first time any of these boys were playing in Australia. India lost all their league games in unfamiliar conditions but were in the semi-final because of the quadrangular format. Chand's 94 against England helped put his side in the final, where his 112 against Australia gave India the title. In the Asia Cup a few months later, he scored centuries in the semi-final, against Sri Lanka, and in the final, against Pakistan.
Chand says he takes his books along every time, to study while at the cricket. His parents are teachers, and studying has been second nature to him from his time at Delhi Public School in Noida, to Modern School, and now to St Stephen's College, an institution of high standing in India. When asked if it's hard to strike a balance between responsibilities as heavy as education and a career in cricket, Chand says it's not, because he has "grown up like this".
He gives credit to his parents and uncle for where he is today, recounting childhood routines of being ferried from home to the swimming pool to school to the cricket ground and home again. (Chand was also a national-level swimmer in the butterfly stroke when at school.)
"I'm really lucky to have very good support from my family," he says. "My uncle is my idol. He talks to me four-five times a day. We talk about everything - not just cricket, about what's happening in my life. I keep getting lessons from them. Whenever something good happens, they praise me, but they also caution me that this could have also happened. Thanks to them I've been saved from other influences."
Chand first played for Delhi in the Ranji Trophy while in Class 11, and for Daredevils the following year. He recalls with fondness the excitement and anxiety he felt in the lead-up to being named in the Delhi squad. The last two years on the domestic circuit, where he has mixed it with the professionals, have been instructive.
"It's really important not just to play cricket but to learn about it and learn about yourself... I've started knowing about myself, my game, and how I react in certain situations and certain conditions"
"Patience is the most important thing. In Ranji you need to have patience," he says of the difference between age-group and first-class cricket. "I remember in the first match I was playing, against Gujarat, I was playing well, but then they started bowling outside off stump, wide outside off stump. I left a few balls but then I got a bit impatient, went after a ball and got out. That's how I learned that you need to be patient. I can say that two years ago I was much more immature than I am today."
When asked whether the IPL is shifting the priorities of cricketers of his generation, Chand's response is that it is not, for him at least. "You can't play for India by performing only in IPL. You need to perform in Ranji Trophy," he says. "It's important for me as a cricketer to take it really seriously. It's an important tournament and a cherished one."
The IPL, however, gave Chand an experience that the Ranji Trophy could not - an exposure to the pressure of playing in front of 30,000 spectators and being watched by millions on television. Two days after his Class 12 exams ended, in April 2011, he was told he'd be playing his first IPL match the next day - against Mumbai Indians at the Kotla. "I was very excited, very nervous," he says. "There was a puja at home. Everyone made the occasion very special. But when all these things happen, you start thinking this is not a normal game, this is something else.
"As I entered the ground, I was totally oblivious. I didn't know what to do, what was happening. I was really nervous. I could visualise myself being telecast on the TV, my parents watching. So all these things were happening."
His two-ball duck on debut is a blur of emotion. "All these things will come with any newcomer," Chand says. "It came with me, and it was a good experience. You don't get to experience these things again and again in life. This year was much better. I was more calm, not nervous."
Chand played only two matches in IPL 2012 and hasn't had a breakthrough innings yet. However, the experience - of facing the speed of Lasith Malinga and the guile of Shane Warne, of trying to focus in the midst of terrific noise, of having every on-field action scrutinised by cameras - has put the challenges of Under-19 cricket in perspective.
"It has helped me stay cool under pressure at times when others were not, because I've been in those situations and I've been in that pressure," he says. "I try to give the confidence to as many players as I can, and share as much as I can."
Chand is good friends with his Delhi team-mate Virat Kohli, who is perhaps the perfect example of how success at the Under-19 World Cup can help a fledgling career take flight. Chand says he's not as aggressive as Kohli, and that he speaks to him about overcoming challenges in the early stages of a career - of the sort that Kohli has successfully overcome to become the master of the chase in one-day cricket.
When he was struggling to convert starts into big scores in domestic one-dayers, Chand says Kohli told him to "say to myself that I'm the best and just react to the ball. That was something that really moved me."
"After he [Kohli] returned from Bangladesh [the Asia Cup], he came to the dressing room once during a Ranji Trophy match. I asked him a few questions. He told me, 'I've understood my game. It took me three years. I didn't know what was happening for the first three years. Now I plan my game and play accordingly.' He's very encouraging to me. He's a good buddy."
One of the more recent entries in Chand's diary is from a meeting with Rahul Dravid, who spoke to the Under-19 team while they were training for the World Cup at the National Cricket Academy in Bangalore. The message Chand took from the interaction was that cricket is a process of "self-discovery".
"The most important thing for us is to be self-aware," Chand said of what Dravid told them. "All the big players [Dravid] has seen in his life were aware of themselves, of their personalities, of their games. It's really important not just to play cricket but to learn about it and learn about yourself. This is how NCA's helped me really. I've started knowing about myself, my game, and how I react in certain situations and certain conditions."
The Under-19 World Cup might not make or break Unmukt Chand's career but he will be a more self-aware cricketer for the experience; and his interactions with players from 15 other cultures could leave his diary full and dictionary well-thumbed.
South Africa's new mindset brings rewards
Over the last year, South Africa have transformed from a squad that could be counted on not to lose, especially over the course of an entire series, to one that can be expected to win when it matters. A gradual build-up of results took them to the brink but it was an added push that tipped them over. Their change from solid to spectacular is what allowed them to become world No. 1.
Their triumph in England - a second, successive series win in the country - is proof that changes have taken place. Some of them are are obvious and have come in the form of personnel. The addition of a third seamer, Vernon Philander, genuinely complements the existing two, Dale Steyn and Morne Morkel, and has given the pace attack an added dynamic. Meanwhile, although the legspinner, Imran Tahir, has not performed to expectation his mere presence forces a more attacking approach.
An entirely new coaching team is also in place with Gary Kirsten transplanting some of the techniques he used with India, not from a skills perspective but from a man management one. Allan Donald has brought the added intent and Russell Domingo the knowledge of the local game and masterful strategic planning through statistics, which is his forte.
The most important change, though, is the one that does not stick out so brazenly because it has come in the mind, through careful coaxing. To ignore that South Africa stumbles in their own head space would be to think of football without mentioning Brazil. Something held them back like an invisible hand, the force that no-one could quite explain.
It was most evident at major tournaments when South Africa would reach crucial stages and simply stop. It was less apparent in the Test format but still there. The two draws they allowed England to get away with in the 2009-10 series came with Andrew Strauss' men down to their last wicket and South Africa's high quality attack was unable to dislodge it. Take nothing away from the England tail, but those were matches South Africa should have won and may have had they been mentally tougher.
To get there, they needed a different perspective. South African sport was, and in some places still is, conducted like the army in its rigidity and focus to discipline. It was not a space to be creative. It was not a space to introduce too many outrageous ideas. It was not a space to express. It was a space to do as you had been taught because that was the way that would breed success. If they failed, and there were times when they did, it was never the method that was at fault, only the way they were executing it.
While South African sportsmen may have thought that way, all South Africans did not. Unconnected to cricket, Mike Horn, the adventurer, began his first mission. He swam down the Amazon River and when he grew tired of that, decided to hike across South America, a journey that took six months. As he conquered heat, he decided to opt for the other extreme and spent two years and three months in the Arctic circle and another three months in the ice of the North Pole.
For Horn, life was not about how well or thoroughly he followed instructions but about how flexible he could make them. He always sought something more demanding and always wanted to find a new way to handle it. He did it all because he wanted to form a collage of different events, with different degrees of difficulty to be the canvas on which he painted his dreams. "If you don't have any challenges, you don't have experience and if you don't have experience you haven't lived life," Horn told South African broadcaster Craig Marais.
It was that experience of the "other," that the South African team lacked. Playing cricket was about cricket to most of them and occasionally involved a round of golf. When Kirsten took over, he wanted playing cricket to be about more than that.
Simply put, Kirsten took the schoolmaster mentality away. That type of thinking is what Horn thinks often held South Africa back because it created a false ceiling of how much they could achieve
He started by giving a team that had had their longest winter break in 14 season an inordinate amount of time off. Between the Australia one-day series, which only contained three matches, two of which were spread over five days, Kirsten allowed the squad to disperse. They had been together but a week. In New Zealand, he sent Donald home early while some of the squad went on a fishing trip. Traditional team dinners the night before a Test became a thing of the past as well and in Leeds, Jacques Rudolph was allowed out with his wife and friends and the rest were not subjected to a compulsory squad meal.
Simply put, Kirsten took the schoolmaster mentality away. That type of thinking is what Horn thinks often held South Africa back because it created a false ceiling of how much they could achieve. "We all have dreams as kids and some of the great dreams that we as South Africans have is to play rugby or cricket for the national side," he said. "Once you get to that stage where you get to play for the Proteas, their dream actually stops but that's where it should start because you can only rewrite history from there onwards."
Perhaps the legacy of South Africa's isolationist past, where international sport was not an option for many who are now parents to the children who are playing at a high level, is part of the reason for this. Perhaps it is the effect of always chasing the leaders, instead of leading themselves that has caught up with them. Horn believes the past has a lot to do with it and said his has tried to exorcise the current team of that.
"You have to get rid of all the garbage and baggage that slows you down. I can't teach batting or bowling, but teaching how to be a better team player is my contribution. I try to get the boys to think like one and play as individuals but for the better of the team."
Their camp in Switzerland provided the biggest lesson in that. Gruelling alpine tasks, such as cycling and walking at high altitude for miles, brought them close together. After that was done, Kirsten allowed them to be apart. Even practice sessions were not mandatory because as Alviro Petersen explained, "if you feel you need some time out of the game and that is going to work for you then you must do that."
By empowering his squad with freedom, Kirsten has created an environment ripe to breed accountability and responsibility. Every member of that team knows what is expected of them and knows that if they fail to produce that, and have not prepared in the right way, it will be obvious and there will be consequences. They also know that if they fail to produce but have done everything possible to succeed, it will be part of what Kirsten calls the "process," and eventually it will turn into results.
A year into Kirsten's tenure he would have most thinking he has brainwashed the side to repeat phrases like, "we are not a results-oriented team," and "we are process driven." To the average person those sound like empty phrases, made up to be deliberately obtuse about plans. What they actually are is a sign of the change in the South African mindset to one that is not afraid to fail along the way to ultimate success and that is able to reach higher than it thought was possible previously.
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