The Shorter Wisden 2013 (27 page)

The attention was not on my batting, but on my captaincy and character. I had been forced to sit through two torturous televised press conferences, and to listen to a range of critics, from the
comedian Jimmy Tarbuck to the chairman of the Headmasters’ Conference, who sought my resignation. It was an uncomfortable time, and before I walked out to bat, I had not given a
moment’s thought to the innings. I scratched around for a couple of hours before lunch, and forced myself into some kind of rhythm by dint of nothing more than pure bloody-mindedness. But
what I had managed to do, between walking to the middle and facing the first ball, was to put the events of the previous fortnight to the back of my mind. I am certain that, in the same
circumstances, not many of my contemporaries could have played that innings, that day.

The ability to shut out the noise and the clamour is something I see now – to a far greater degree – in Alastair Cook. It is not an aptitude that stands out, is easily recognised, or
regarded as exceptional. Hidden from view it may be but, set against the requirements for success at international level, with all its pressures, it is a talent as important as the ability to play
a good-looking cover-drive. It is only now, after over 7,000 Test runs and more hundreds than any other England player, that observers (I have been more guilty than most) are starting to think of
him as gifted.

Barring injury, illness or misfortune, Cook – who is only just entering his prime – will probably become the greatest batsman England have ever produced; greatest, that is, in terms
of run-scoring, record-breaking and hundred-making. The adjectives that accompany most of his innings are hard-working, focused, driven, effective, pragmatic – as if these attributes, and
Cook’s supreme thirst for self-improvement, are not identifiable talents in themselves.

They are submerged beneath a game that sometimes stands out only for its ordinariness. Yet Andy Flower has commented upon his world-class facility to score through the leg side and off his hip,
a gift those at Essex quickly recognised; his ability to shut out extraneous detail, and his concentration levels, speak of a particular talent too. The way he out-thought and outmanoeuvred
India’s spinners during consecutive hundreds in Ahmedabad, Mumbai and Kolkata over the winter revealed a cricketing intelligence not shared by many of his team-mates. His hundred in Mumbai
was certainly less spectacular than Kevin Pietersen’s, but can we really say Cook is less talented? He simply possesses different strengths.

Talent may or may not be innate but, in all its facets, it certainly exists to be developed, honed and crafted. The more humdrum aspects of the game – the ability to work hard, stay
focused, adapt to circumstance, bring your best game to the crease time and again, despite all the distractions – are all gifts, just as much as sweet ball-striking.

One of the sweetest strikers in the English game right now is Bopara. The consensus is that he is more naturally gifted than Cook but, as he sat at home over the winter, watching him compile
hundred after hundred, how Bopara must have wished for some of his talents – the ability, for example, to put a run of bad scores behind him, or to compile the kind of ugly runs that would
keep him in the team from one game to the next until form returns, as Cook did memorably against Pakistan at The Oval in 2010.

In one of his more poetic moments, Friedrich Nietzsche said: “All great artists and thinkers are great workers, indefatigable not only in inventing but also in rejecting, sifting,
transforming and ordering.” Cook is indefatigable in ordering his gifts, but no doubt it will be his Essex team-mates, Shah and Bopara, who are remembered as the more talented.

Being tagged as supremely talented also diminishes Ramprakash’s achievements, because the implication is that the game came easily to him. If it looked that way, it was on the back of
unstinting hard work. Having played with him for over a decade, I would not disagree with anybody who called Ramprakash the most dedicated batsman of his generation. As for the most talented? Well,
that depends on your definition.

Mike Atherton is cricket correspondent of
The Times
. He played 115 Tests for England, and captained them in 54.

CRICKET BOOKS, 2012

J
OHN
C
RACE

Cricket may be some way off the dodgy expenses claims and cosy kitchen suppers with powerful members of the media that have been enjoyed by politicians in recent years, but it
can hardly lay claim to utter transparency in all its affairs. To many outsiders, the sport’s governing bodies still look suspiciously like old boys’ clubs, and their decision-making
processes often have all the openness of a group of cardinals at a papal conclave. So, as a gesture of candour, I propose to break with tradition, name my cricket book of the year up front, and
declare an interest, for my choice is published by Bloomsbury, the owners of
Wisden
. You will have to take my word for it that no money has changed hands; but then any of you who have had
business dealings with Bloomsbury shouldn’t find that too hard to believe.

Hundreds of millions of pounds were definitely changing hands in other areas of the game, and this was the subject of
Bookie Gambler Fixer Spy
by Ed Hawkins. This wasn’t
the best-written book of the year – after a while, the breathless present tense becomes rather too, well, breathless – but it was far and away the most important, because it tried to
get to the heart of the betting scandals that continue to dog the game.

Listen to the ICC and cricket’s anti-corruption units, and you might imagine skulduggery was largely a thing of the past. Journalist and betting expert Ed Hawkins thought so too, until he
started hearing rumours from Indian bookmakers that it was alive and kicking. One game in particular was brought to his attention: the 2011 World Cup semi-final between India and Pakistan at
Mohali. According to his sources, “India would score more than 260... then pak will cruise to 100, then lose 2 quick wickets, at 150 they will be 5 down and crumble and lose by a margin of
over 20 runs.” As Hawkins and an old friend, Cherenne, sat down to watch the match on television, they grew progressively quieter. It’s true that India made exactly 260 rather than
more, but Pakistan reached 100 for two, slipped to 106 for four, lost their fifth wicket at 142, and were all out one ball before the end of the final over for 231. “You’ve stolen
Christmas from me,” Cherenne said as she left. “I’m never watching a game with you again.”

Hawkins was halfway through a one-man, heart-of-darkness voyage in investigative gonzo journalism to see what else he could uncover. And it hadn’t taken him long to make considerable
progress after heading to India and meeting a host of spivs, runners, fixers and Mr Bigs, whose real names remain unclear. The evidence he discovered was damning on a circumstantial level, if not
conclusive proof. But that was neither here nor there, for the advantage Hawkins has over other writers who have tried to get to the bottom of match-fixing is that he understands the mathematical
nuances of betting.

The big scams, such as the Cronje affair and, allegedly, the 2011 World Cup semi-final, may be the easiest for the lay person to grasp. But what Hawkins shows is that, because of the phenomenal
amount of money wagered at any one time on even the most insignificant televised match, a very small amount of information can nudge the odds firmly in the bookmakers’ favour. It’s all
about probability. A bookie with the right algorithms can make a fortune in marginal, high-volume bets from knowing something as simple as who will bat first. Throw in the knowledge of a bent,
bought player, and it’s a licence to print money.

In the process, Hawkins also exposes the 2010 Pakistan spot-fixing scandal – for which the cricket authorities were quick to claim the moral high ground – as something of a show
trial. The whole purpose of the no-ball scam was not to influence the betting, but merely to prove that Salman Butt, Mohammad Aamer and Mohammad Asif could be got at. Bookmakers follow betting
patterns on a second-by-second basis: if anyone tried to place a bet on something as specific as a no-ball, it would be rejected as abnormal. Whatever else bookies may be, as Hawkins points out,
they are not stupid. But others appear to be. The real importance of this book lies in its existence. Over the past 15 years, the cricket authorities have spent millions of pounds on various
match-fixing investigations and have uncovered very little. Armed with what was almost certainly an extremely modest advance, Hawkins on his own has uncovered substantially more, in less time.

I can’t remember Gideon Haigh ever constructing a duff sentence, and
On Warne
more than maintains his reputation as the most literary of the current breed of Australian
cricket writers. There have been countless biographies – not to mention autobiographies – of “the greatest spin bowler who ever lived”™, and Haigh sensibly eschews
this route, despite having spent more time with Warne over the years than many of his predecessors. Instead, as the title suggests, he has opted for something rather bolder: a philosophical
treatise on the meaning of being Shane Warne; a deconstruction of genius.

If some of the material feels relatively familiar – the betting scandals, the weight-loss drugs, the infighting in the Australian dressing-room – Haigh’s approach casts them in
a new light. While never less than forensic in his analysis, he makes us reconsider the sheer physical exertion and contortion in imparting so many revolutions on a ball, hour after hour, year
after year; the burden of being every captain’s go-to bowler; the expectation of being asked consistently to win the unwinnable; and the sheer absurdity of finding a unique talent in someone
who would be just as happy sitting on a beach, drinking beer with his mates.

My only small reservation is that Haigh perhaps loves his subject just a bit too much. Plenty have queued up to knock Warne for his off-field behaviour and, as an author, Haigh is within his
rights not to join in. But, while never avoiding the difficult issues, he does tend to give Warne the benefit of the doubt. Take the incident in which Warne and Mark Waugh were found to have
accepted money from an Indian bookmaker on the 1994-95 tour of Sri Lanka in exchange for information about pitch conditions and team selection. Haigh’s view is that it was an act of naivety
on a very demanding tour, no real harm was intended or done and, however badly Warne and Waugh might have acted, they looked like saints in comparison with the Australian board’s handling of
the situation.

All of which may, or may not, be true, but it rather misses the central point that Warne and Waugh
did
take the money on offer, and should have known better; deep down, they probably
did. But why did no one else in the Australian team do the same? Why did they not even think to ask their team-mates whether they thought it was a good idea? Haigh is equally lenient in regard to
Warne’s diet, drinking, gambling and womanising, his attitude being that countless other cricketers have done the same or worse; that Warne’s behaviour away from cricket is a personal
matter; and that he gets more flak simply because of his celebrity. These are valid points, but they close down the argument rather than open it up. The aim is not to pass moral judgment on Warne
– as far as I’m concerned, he can do pretty much what he likes – but to understand him. Why is he so self-destructive? Is there a relationship between his personality flaws and
his bowling genius? I’m fairly sure there might be, if you looked carefully enough.

With its subtitle of “Manliness, Yorkshire Cricket and the Century that Changed Everything”, Max Davidson’s wonderfully entertaining
We’ll Get ’Em In
Sequins
nails its quirkiness to the mast from the off. Which immediately requires a second disclaimer for mentioning another Bloomsbury title so soon. I haven’t been got at. Honest.
Nor is it a coincidence. Rather it’s a matter of common sense. Cricket has become far more of a niche market in recent years, as book sales have declined substantially and mainstream
publishers have become cautious about commissioning anything at all. So when a publisher does commission a talented writer with a proven backlist, it shouldn’t come as a total surprise if the
book turns out to be a good one.

When Davidson saw Darren Gough competing in tight-fitting spandex and sequins under strobe lighting on BBC TV’s
Strictly Come Dancing
, he realised that the long-established link
between Yorkshire cricket and testosterone-heavy displays of manliness had just been smashed in front of his eyes. “Was that thunder in the distance?” he writes. “No, it was
generations of Yorkshire fast bowlers turning in their graves. What had gone wrong? Or – depending whether you were Old Yorkshire or New Yorkshire – what had gone right? Wasn’t
there something rather exhilarating in a 90mph fast bowler and lusty tail-end batsman who could also do a nifty foxtrot in an outfit that glittered like a Christmas tree?”