Proudly unprofessional

It was fitting that the latest TMS/TMS row began with an article in the Times before being fuelled by Twitter. At its base, much of the Test Match Special team's hostility to the Sofa upstarts comes from a misunderstanding of new media and the opportunities it provides.

As this and the many other blogs and podcasts are testament to, technology has merely provided a wider space than the pub for non-professionals to air their views. Often they're inane, often they're unoriginal and often they're brilliant. Always, though, they're driven by nothing beyond a love for the game and maybe a taste for the weekend-cricketer type spotlight.

It is a trite point that can't be made strong enough. Thankfully, Gideon Haigh's recent Bradman Oration was a timely manifesto for the value of amateur cricket. Amateurs are the 99% who love playing, watching, writing and talking about the game but don't get handsomely paid to do so.

Haigh's focus was on club cricketers but he could easily have extended it to media. On Twitter and on the blogs there are people discussing, enraging, engaging and informing; spreading their love of cricket because they simply can't stop themselves. The idea that they have either the desire, or capacity, to be “predators” is odd. Moreover it speaks of a strange logic where promoting the sport is a zero-sum game.

Clearly, as cricket's highest level, pushed by walls of cash hungry for returns, gets ever more commercially glamourised, it is dragging establishment media with it. One result is a trend to homogenise the voice of sport. Generally male, generally well-known and generally sanitised. For every Ian Ward or Nasser Hussain there are many more ex-pros like Danny Morrison* and Brad Hogg, hammering out clichés and hyperbole as freely as limited-over sixes.

Another is that broadcast media especially can lose its reflective instinct. Mark Taylor is both a Channel Nine commentator and employed by the ACB, while the BCCI employ Sunil Gavaskar and Ravi Shastri who uncritically peddle endless outrage and hot air. In England there was a clear rupture in how media insiders and outsiders treated the Kevin Pietersen affair, with the more nuanced and balanced accounts coming overwhelmingly from outsiders.

Yet what matters most about the professional fetish is that it distances the game from its roots among the many. Which brings us to Test Match Sofa. Beyond a core group of participants scraping a living from the Sofa's Cricketer ownership, it runs on devotion. Dark rooms, early starts, and no Tweetpics of the pressbox spread, theirs are the voices of the amateurs.

The flourishes, digressions and dependency on listener contribution (via Twitter) often makes the Sofa's commentators seem more human than the in-joking TMS team. And the plurality of ages, genders and ethnicities makes a welcome change from the standardised sound of the pros.

Yet equally there are times when the Sofa's one-speed irreverence misses the hum of Test-match tension that TMS captures so well.

There is no way that the Sofa could replace the older TMS, which makes Agnew and CMJ's outrage all the more puzzling. For a game that jostles at the margins for attention of Britain's sports-mad public, the greater coverage and variety that the Sofa provides can only enhance the ECB's product, not dilute it.

Professionals, with their insider experience and at-the-ground insight will always be a necessary part of the media landscape. It's just that now, helping and prodding them along, the rest of us can join in.

This was changed from Simon Doull after Avi Singh reminded me I'd mixed up my retired NZ quicks

KP and the moneyball effect

It is difficult to see who gains from Kevin Pietersen's ongoing expulsion from England colours, but it is clear who has won: management. By slapping down the maverick, the ECB have shown exactly where power lies in English cricket.

Call it the Moneyball effect but never – in what's actually a rather brief history – have cricket's managers been held in higher regard. This is much less an era of player power than it is one of managerial power.

The Moneyball story – of a coach who used expert skills to reconceptualise his sport and build an (almost) champion team from scant resources - is now familiar. The broad idea was that by focusing more on processes and less on outcomes – and finding the stats to help that end – coaches could devise new strategies that make all the difference. The old-wives intuition of gnarled ex-pros was outdated and for real insight into the workings of a sport a new breed of rational, coaching-course-trained technocrat was necessary.

Interestingly, the visible effects of the Moneyball generation have so far been felt much more keenly off the field than on it. There have been no especially revelatory tactics or unexpected selections. Bowling dry in a free-scoring era helped England climb the rankings but it is was hardly revolutionary. Similarly the Taylorist attention to detail saw England's fitness and fielding improve, but did not transform the game.

Instead, as the Pietersen episode shows, it's the power granted to managers that has been the real consequence. Resources are made available for all manner of different specialists, and coaches can make demands on their national boards that were never possible even 15 years ago. Flower, as coach, is given far greater scope to shape the team than any senior player has. That may well be fair, and Flower's on and off-field history shows he is a deeply impressive man, but perhaps management in general should be treated with more caution.

Is it too simplistic to ask which of Pietersen or Flower has contributed to more England victories? Perhaps, but looking beyond cricket we see how thoroughly ingrained the cult of management is. The extraordinary reaction to Steve Jobs's death last year was emblematic of it. Rather than it being the team of researchers, designers, App developers, or indeed the fingers of suicidal Foxx-con workers that were credited for creating Apple's products it was the 'genius' of Jobs that had to be celebrated.

The belief that in the heads of coaches lies insights that nobody else can muster makes their influence enormous. Players have been emasculated to the point where they are reliant on experts for everything.

The wider effect of the subordination of players to management is making them more equal with each other. To 'buy into the approach', as managers love putting it, is to agree to relegate your own desire to that of the manager's. Why? So that everyone 'pulls in the same direction'. By extension when somebody, as Pietersen did, undermines the management structures he undermines the principle of unity-from-above.

The balance of power between different fractions of a collective – be it a cricket team or a company - is always unstable. Different environments at different moments will favour different groups but, judging by Pietersen's situation, the current consensus leaves management untouchable.

After The Oval - All that is solid melts into air

Suddenly everything feels different. The quiet certainty built up over the last three years in the minds of England supporters, media and surely to some extent the players themselves, has shattered.

It was, though, a devastating result at The Oval. Maybe a mystic few saw it all coming but the magnitude of South Africa's first-Test win must be a surprise to most. England may yet produce a monumental turnaround and salvage the series but that seems unlikely. If they don't, the damage done to England's self-perception will have deeper consequences.

It's all so different to a year ago but the No. 1 ranking is clearly toxic. India arrived last year with that lofty status but unravelled spectacularly, losing all four Tests as England grabbed the crown. At that stage it seemed right to talk about legacy building. Though incomparable to the great teams in history, England seemed to have a formula well suited to their era. They were skilful, disciplined and with their best years still to come. Moreover they had a structure in place that was the envy of set-ups around the world.

Instead, since the end of that 2011 summer, England have lost five Tests out of nine. After The Oval, the UAE results look less an aberration to be cast aside and more a stark warning of things to come.

It has left Andrew Strauss with the toughest challenge of his captaincy career. If confidence is a habit born of winning, then every defeat must etch away at the belief that separates the best teams. What's more, the stability that helps individuals flourish in their roles is now under significant strain.

Andy Flower and Strauss can't wave-away the five-bowler question by pointing to the results. The rotation policy that kept key players sidelined can no longer be defended with the crisp repetition of the rankings. Even the attritional, bowling-dry strategy that underpinned England's climb up the rankings is not so easily justifiable any more. Twice in four series England have found opponents attuned to their pace and prepared to out-leave them.

It is premature for now, but it does not take much for cast-iron certainties to dissolve. Another defeat and the management team that have had the board dish up their every passing whim will come under more scrutiny. Hell, even the national structure may soon no longer be able to call itself the nursery to the best team in the world. It didn't take many losses to start doubting Australia's once totally hallowed system.

The 'aura' that teams long to create is less a force to lord over the opposition and more a sense of comfort that binds a team together. 637 for 2 changes that.

It doesn't all crumble overnight. And it's grossly unfair to all those who have strived so hard to turn England into a top team to write-off their chances. After all, over the last two years England have won 14 of their last 25 matches compared with South Africa's six from 14. Yet before India arrived in England they had won nine and lost three as world No. 1s. During their first Test last summer, though, they felt like a team heading the wrong way and have lost every Test since.

England are a fine side and one home defeat doesn't change that, but it does change how people feel about them. Comeback and confidence will never be surer but subside as grimly in the rest of the series and nothing will be sacrosanct.

Tom Maynard

A week ago I wrote how fans develop strangely meaningful relationships with players. Tom Maynard's death, at 23 years old, brought that home horribly.

It has forced perspective on a community - sports lovers – who often lack it. For his close friends and family, losing Maynard must be a deep, personal tragedy and incomparable to what those on the outside will feel. Foremost, it is desperately sad that a man has died so young.

Yet even when confronted by cricket's ultimate worthlessness, it is still cricket that makes Maynard's death matter for many. The majority of people know Maynard only by his cricketing personality. And his was magnetic.

He had glittering talent, a spark of cockiness and a future wide open. It's sad that someone bursting with potential will never get a chance to realise it fully. It doesn't make his untimely death any more or less of a tragedy than anyone else’s, but it does make the cricketing family mourn a stolen future.

I remember watching him against Sussex a few weeks ago, trying to pull Surrey out of a first-innings muddle by nonchalantly advancing down the crease at 90mph James Anyon. It was typical of him.

Maynard was the sort of cricketer that made you want to watch the game because you could never play it as easily as he could. I'll miss him because of that.

Excitement without tension

Maybe the cliché is true and cricket does actually give a compelling window into the minds of those playing; or maybe it’s just because it takes so long, but as England's series against West Indies showed, the relationship between players and those watching them is oddly meaningful.

Neither Tino Best nor Graham Onions know who I am but their return to Test cricket was genuinely pleasing. Likewise I don’t know Marlon Samuels, but his charisma and class were bright spots in a dank month. Even Dinesh Ramdin, a fairly anonymous sort, delivered an unforgettable moment. The series proved how, even where teams are mismatched, the fortunes of individual players can create real entertainment.

As production technology allows analysis to become ever more technical it’s easy to overlook the emotional story at the heart of every contest. It’s what makes Ed Cowan’s book so refreshing. He describes the stress, embarrassment, anger and dejection that go with playing the sport. How "patches of failure leave you with an empty state of doubt.”

It’s worth reflecting on when thinking about Ramdin’s A4 scribbling. It was his first Test series in two years. Having played professional cricket since he was 18, his Test runs are the barometer by which most people, and to an extent even the man himself, will judge his life. That scrawled response to Viv Richards' barbs was testament to how important his hundred was. Not for the team performance, nor for a financial gain it may help secure, but for something more fragile, his self-worth. It cannot be easy for West Indian cricketers playing out their existence in the shadow of a gargantuan past. It makes the ICC’s fine all the more staggering. Of all things bringing the game into disrepute, a player’s desperate pride should be the least of its worries.

Samuels is another who has faced criticism. His murky history has included bookmakers, chucking and years of squandered talent. Having remembered his debut series against Australia 12 years ago, and the promise it held, it was fantastic to see him succeed this summer. His runs were enjoyable not just for their style and their match importance but also because they were his redemption. That he also spoke a dialect humans, and not PR executives, could relate to made him all the more magnificent.

Samuels’s series-long asversary, James Anderson, was rested for the final Test. It meant Onions returned to the side for the first time since his career was almost ended by a back injury. After the first day he tweeted: “Today has been a special special day, I’ve had the most unbelievable support over the last 2 years to get me to put the 3 lions on again..” It was a testament to the personal that underpins the professional. Having reached the pinnacle of his career in 2009, he suddenly faced the possibility of losing his livelihood altogether. Watching the fruition of months of rehab made a dead Test matter more.

And then there was Tino. For two years he has pined on twitter, pleading anyone who would listen (and plenty who would not) for another chance with West Indies. His jubilant, delirious comeback was something we could all celebrate.

It’s these individual stories that get contextualised through competition. While closely-fought contests are obviously the most enjoyable, sometimes it’s nourishing just to share in someone else’s personal fulfilment.

West Indies and memories of Atherton's Young Lions

Like your favourite childhood meal or that desperately meaningful teenage film, there is something about formative memories that make them the most poignant. West Indies' 1st Test defeat was hardly pulsating cricket but watching a struggling team scrapping to pick itself up off the mat did stir bittersweet recollections of England's 90s woes.

Myopic and Anglo-centric though that is, it is an interesting thought. Back then England were the team playing under the shadow of its past; where the names of former legends weighed heavily on a group of young, inexperienced players. Cricket in 90s England felt uncared for, unfashionable and in a state of unflinching decline.

So throughout the Lord's Test, I kept asking myself just which 90s period were West Indies in? Alec Stewart's prim yes-men? Nasser Hussain's early streetfighters? Or how about the first throes of Mike Atherton's leadership?

It's difficult to place but the approach Ottis Gibson and Darren Sammy are adopting – with senior players dumped in favour of a brick-by-brick rebuilding – reminded me of the time the sides met in 1994.

“Young Lions are going to go” sung the Skysports intro music to that series (“back to the pavilion,” my brother used to add). Atherton, in his first full series in charge, was without Graham Gooch who had top-scored the previous Ashes summer but opted out of touring. Likewise, Mike Gatting and John Emburey were left out as a Atherton backed a clutch of youngsters - including Nasser Hussain, Graham Thorpe, Mark Ramprakash – to tour the world's best team.

“My vision," wrote Atherton in his autobiography, "was of a group of young, athletic and talented players with the dedication to work hard and grow together, taking a few knocks along the way but coming through on the other side.”

The 1st Test, on a Sabina Park flyer, was not unlike this one at Lord's. England mixed talent with brain-fades to slide to an under-par, though not disastrous, 234 batting first and conceded a first-innings deficit of 173. An innings defeat looked distinctly possible at 63 for 4 but England fought to 267 on the back of Hick's heartbreaking 96, leaving a small target that West Indies knocked off easily enough. Defeat, sure, but not humiliation and enough for genuine positivity about the youthful project.

Through the series England were maddeningly inconsistent with an innings defeat the next game and that horrorshow finish to lose a match they had dominated in Trinidad. The stunning victory in Barbados (“historic,” I remember Willis repeating on commentary) followed by a draw in Lara's first world-record at Antigua was enough for Atherton to recall: "I was happy with my efforts on the tour... The team was beginning to take shape in my mind. New Zealand were soon to arrive in England and I felt sure it was the perfect opportunity to achieve some long overdue success."

Yet by the following winter, England's new 'supremo' manager-selector Ray Illingworth, had lost patience with Atherton's ideal and the young lions were exchanged for old soldiers. Back for the Ashes came Gatting and Gooch, who both retired by the series' conclusion as England slumped to a 3-1 loss. It took another four years - and a plunge below Zimbabwe and New Zealand in the Test rankings - before Hussain and Fletcher finally turned England's tide.

Gibson and Sammy's stated aim is to restore pride in West Indies cricket. Their rush to do so has left some high-profile casualties. It was sad to hear Ramnaresh Sarwan talk about how managements' public criticism of his attitude had broken him. Clearly in form Sarwan would add much more than Kirk Edwards. But Gibson and Sammy's thinking – a star team over a team of stars - is right and progress is being made in a way that has not happened before.

The flashes of promise in West Indies barren recent years have been on the back of outstanding individual feats. Lara in the 2-2 draw against Australia in 1999, Jerome Taylor's freak spell to flatten England ten years later. This time, after fight against India, Australia and again at Lord's, the progress feels deeper.

The limit, though, seems to have been reached. Thanks to the impoverished and incompetent WICB, gifted players are missing, itself a significant block to improvement. Yet it's also Sammy's ability, as batsman, bowler and captain, that his holding his mission back. Atherton in 1994 was the best player in the team and if supported could have led a youthful team forward in his image. Unless Sammy can improve, his lack of class will eventually undermine both his authority and the values he and Gibson are looking to instil.

When the fall-out happens, though, West Indies would do well to avoid the tried-tested-and-failed approaches of the past. It's up to the younger players being trusted by management now to carry the fighting attitude forward.

The radical County Championship

Sat among pensioners, loners and pigeons at The Oval, Surrey's Championship outing against Worcestershire didn't feel like a typical gathering of anti-establishment agitators. The rumbles of discontent from members sounded familiar perhaps, the polite cheers less so. Yet the spectacle we were witnessing – four-day domestic cricket – was as brazen a two-fingers up at the ruling ideas of the day as any Occupy protest.

The hackneyed view of the Championship is that it replays a lost era of pastoral England. At 122 years old, people often see it –to mangle Derek Birley – as an institutionalised anachronism. Some hail this as its virtue, dialing down the pace of life at a time when everything else seems to be speeding up. Others vilify it as irrelevant for the very same reason.

But the Championship is no relic. A glance at the first few scorecards of the season show wickets and boundary boards clattering rapidly. The rate of scoring is as unmistakeably modern as the batsmen's inability to tough it out on lively wickets. Similarly the way the game is covered – online radio, live blogs, Tweets – is more contemporary than dated technologies like television or print media. We know vast numbers follow the games online – one day perhaps they can prove as economically valuable as TV viewers.

Yet what's radical is the experience of the sport itself. A game sprawling four days is entirely antithetical to the commercial interests that rule our age. A marketeer likes few things more than an easily-digestible, quick sell. It is why Twenty20 is the era's golden goose. That does not make it bad – Twenty20 is extremely watchable – but its slavish compliance with the commercial rulebook makes it deeply conservative.

Like most big-budget blockbuster entertainment, the way Twenty20 is sold is also rather patronising. The entertainment industry – which Matthew Hayden will tell you is where cricket squarely belongs – thrives on making passive spectators of us all. Rather than trust us to participate in making our experience of the sport we love, the kings of commerce prefer to spoon feed us every step of the way. Cricket's natural cadence – where pauses outstretch action – gets disrupted by a chaotic cocktail of cheap stimulants. Crack go the fireworks, up go the cheerleaders' legs, “phew” go the money men. By preventing supporters from filling cricket's empty spaces ourselves, we become disenfranchised from the game.

The Championship, though, demands more of us. Unlike other forms, there are no commentators selling products, or dubious governments, mid game. Neither do they script our emotional reaction to every passage of play. In between deliveries, overs, sessions and innings we are instead left to muse. Sometimes about what we've seen, often not. With no visual or aural noise demanding attention when the action pauses, two people can sit a row apart and spend entirely different days at the cricket. That's a fundamental challenge to business ideals that prefer homogeneous, interchangeable experiences that market easily.

That the Championship is unique in this regard is less conspiracy and more cold calculation. Shorter cricket is ‘what the market wants’. But there is a danger of misunderstanding the market 'forces' the game cowers to. The market has no force of its own. It doesn't even exist. Instead it takes players, TV companies, administrators, sponsors and countless other groups to make it. Currently these groups shovel plenty into promoting limited-overs cricket and very little into even protecting – let alone promoting – the longer game. They have no confidence that the sport itself is strong enough to carry its own weight.

Nobody, of course, admits this. Instead administrators point to market research that becomes like an unknowable Big Brother we must obey. Yes, cricket's governing bodies need to find ways of listening to fans but surveys are a sham democracy. They are neither empowering nor always effective.

In a different sphere, Apple's overwhelming success makes them a favourite of business gurus, yet they avoided market research when developing their products. “It’s not about pop culture, and it’s not about fooling people, and it’s not about convincing people that they want something they don’t,” Steve Jobs once said. “You can’t go out and ask people, you know, what’s the next big [thing].” Similarly US TV network HBO – makers of The Sopranos and The Wire - shunned the easy route their competitors followed and instead developed unfashionable, quality programmes that they are now lauded for. There is a lesson in that.

There is much about the County game that remains entrenched in the past. It is dominated, on and off the field, by privileged white men. Though crowds grew last year they remain small and don't reflect the demographics of the country nearly fully enough. These are challenges administrators, players and minority communities themselves must take seriously. Yet cricket is entertainment and like all forms of entertainment is says something about the society it's in. Far from nostalgia, the Championship should be celebrated for its unique progressiveness.
This post also appears at Spin cricket