It was the pause. The ball had passed; it was already behind his head. He still waited. Eventually he just dabbed, deflecting its flight path well over Matthew Wade and away to the boundary. He was Cheteshwar Pujara orchestrating India's final run-chase of a triumphant series.
He must have played many more significant and less eye-catching strokes through the series but that upper-glance off Mitchell Johnson betrayed a batsman in complete, devastating control.
Pujara is emerging out of the haze surrounding Sachin Tendulkar's future as one of names that will loom over the next decade. Growing up through the 1990s, Lara, Tendulkar and Steve Waugh were the triumvirate that towered over the cricketing landscape. A benchmark that others (Dravid, Kallis, Ponting later) were checked off against. The batsmen whose dismissal opposition fans would celebrate desperately, but whose runs they would later cherish the most.
Over the next 10 years Pujara looks likely to join that rank. Already his numbers are frightening. After 13 Tests, Tendulkar had 666 runs and Lara 1108. Pujara has 1180. But it is the things the statistics don't reveal that is so magnetic.
The elevated calm, classical execution and understated charisma. The fact that ever since his debut, when his 89-ball 72 top-scored in a successful runchase against Ricky Ponting's Australia, he has flourished under Test-match pressure.
Set alongside his nationality and batting position, the Dravid comparison is obvious. But Pujara is very much a man of his time. His mentality and technique forming in an era where Twenty20 dominates means he has greater resources than Dravid to draw from.
Pujara's two (already!?) Test double-hundreds both began cautiously before shifting stealthily through the gears as opposition bowlers fatigued. When he feels the moment appropriate, he has all the shots of a short-form specialist. In fourth innings chases, with matches to be seized, he averages 93.00.
As a product of post-Ganguly India there is no trace of deference in the way Pujara carries himself. After his methodical dismembering of England in Ahmedabad he crowed: “The way they were batting it looked like they were a fragile batting line-up for sure. It's going to be a challenging task for them”. He has Kohli's aggression with (almost) Sangakkara's elan.
An enormous tasks awaits him in South Africa. They possess the world's most incisive pace attack and have the pitches to match. In three innings there – his only Tests outside of India - he did not pass 19. But there is nothing in Pujara's makeup to suggest he'll struggle.
He is neither front nor backfoot dominant and doesn't rely on a freakish eye in the way Virender Sehwag did. At no point has he appeared overawed with the duty of carrying India's top-order into the next generation. It suggests a temperament cool enough to ride out the dotball storms Philander and co will create.
There is something especially thrilling about watching youthful talent in its first throes. Kids coming to the game now will scrawl Pujara's name on their notebooks for years to come, fantasise about bowling to him, and try, over and again, to copy that pause before unfurling their strokes.
Sunday, 31 March 2013
Monday, 11 March 2013
Office space Australians
There is a great scene in Mike Judge's 1999-film Office Space where protagonist Peter Gibbons is reprimanded by his boss for failing to include a cover sheet on the report he filed. His six managers mean he gets the same reprimand over and again. Each time his argument that he 'forgot, the report is done, and it won't take long to sort a new cover sheet' is ignored. Eventually, he just stops caring.
It came to mind when news broke that Australia are dropping their best bowler, vice-captain and two leading reserves for failing to submit to management three points on how they and the team could improve.
Despite the lavish salaries and lifestyles cricketers enjoy these days, it's managerial and not player power that defines the era. It is clear in this case like it was with the KP fiasco last summer.
Perhaps these management tasks matter. It's possible Mitchell Johnson had crucial insights on the technical failings of his team's top-order but he's more likely to have made a difference with his left-arm slingers. On the field James Pattinson looks one of the world's brightest fast-bowling prospects; he's certainly Australia's best bowler. Is that not enough?
Iain O'Brien put it best when he Tweeted: “What if those 4 Aust players were training/netting/gyming – making themselves better personally - & didn't have time to “form fill”?”
In a managerial era such commitment doesn't count unless it's demonstrable through means acceptable, and accountable to those up top. In Britain this means NHS nurses are told they don't care unless they fill out the appropriate forms “proving” they've paid attention. In the Australian cricket team this means players must 'take responsibility' and be 'more professional' only by completing the tasks set by managers reading the latest in business leadership. It's less a case of empowering people than it is about infantilising them.
Drop Shane Watson for his failings as a batsman, not as an administrator. Else, treat him as a child and he might just stomp off home.
It came to mind when news broke that Australia are dropping their best bowler, vice-captain and two leading reserves for failing to submit to management three points on how they and the team could improve.
Despite the lavish salaries and lifestyles cricketers enjoy these days, it's managerial and not player power that defines the era. It is clear in this case like it was with the KP fiasco last summer.
Perhaps these management tasks matter. It's possible Mitchell Johnson had crucial insights on the technical failings of his team's top-order but he's more likely to have made a difference with his left-arm slingers. On the field James Pattinson looks one of the world's brightest fast-bowling prospects; he's certainly Australia's best bowler. Is that not enough?
Iain O'Brien put it best when he Tweeted: “What if those 4 Aust players were training/netting/gyming – making themselves better personally - & didn't have time to “form fill”?”
In a managerial era such commitment doesn't count unless it's demonstrable through means acceptable, and accountable to those up top. In Britain this means NHS nurses are told they don't care unless they fill out the appropriate forms “proving” they've paid attention. In the Australian cricket team this means players must 'take responsibility' and be 'more professional' only by completing the tasks set by managers reading the latest in business leadership. It's less a case of empowering people than it is about infantilising them.
Drop Shane Watson for his failings as a batsman, not as an administrator. Else, treat him as a child and he might just stomp off home.
Wednesday, 30 January 2013
Warne's manifesto and the managerial dream
If you ignore the grammar, 90s nostalgia and traffic-driving promotion in the Shane Warne manifesto, there is actually some wisdom in what he writes. Over the last 20 years cricket's drive for “professionalism” has merged consultants of the business world with coaches from the sporting world, and left a game dominated by the ideals of management.
Australia may have been Warne's target but all countries are caught up in the trend. Dressing rooms now strive to be “businesslike” which seems to entail employing an army of technocrats to help control and prepare players. Alongside the head coach, there are specialists for each cricket skill, statistical analysts, fitness bods and self-help gurus.
Undoubtedly some coaches provide essential help. Matt Prior, for example, readily credits his improved wicketkeeping to the work he's done with Bruce French. But the infiltration of corporate ideals into the running of cricket teams has also had more questionable effects.
South Africa, for example, employ Paddy Upton as a "performance director". In his own words, Upton's brief is to help cricketers move “out of the shadows of the ego and into the light of awareness.” It isn't just the appointments that seem spurious. Business lexicon has also infected the way people discuss the game. “Informed player management” is an especially jarring example, but obfuscating corporate speak is a staple of most press conferences.
It is difficult to question the abundance of managers without sounding like a Boycottian luddite. The professionalism of Kerry Packer and World Series Cricket forced a focus among some players who had previously lacked it. Now, with the financial stakes raised further still, perhaps it is inevitable that teams should seek other avenues of improvement.
Yet it is debatable whether the management drive has really achieved success. In the corporate world, the only industry that management consultants have really transformed is their own. Similarly in men's cricket at least, it is difficult to claim that anything other than fielding has really revolutionised.
Injuries, especially among pacemen, seem as frequent as ever, and for all the praise Nathan Leamon gets, statistical wizardry has not dramatically altered team strategy. Instead, professionalism's most telling effect has been to deepen the layers of management into the game.
Cricketers can expect their food, drink, sleep, hobbies, and public interactions to be carefully surveyed and controlled. In England, cricketers are hauled out of adolescence and brought into "the setup" so that they too can familiarise themselves with what is expected of a "professional".
In some senses this is a good thing. Joe Root is a perfect ECB specimen having played age-group cricket with England since Under-16s and been part of their Lions and Academy setups. At 22 he has had experience of conditions from all around the world which has left him well prepared to join the international fold.
These cricketing skills are the first level of management input. The second is the moneyball-style numbers analysis. The final is the kind of personality management Upton deals in. Though covering different areas, these are all part of management science's broad aim: shifting focus from outcome to process with the underlying belief that success is a simple matter of the correct planning.
Jeremy Snape, once an England limited-over offspinner, is now a consultant business and sport psychologist. He writes that “to deliver our goals of wickets or runs we will need to have divisional goals for fitness, concentration and technical skills. These become our daily focus, not the gold medal.” Who could argue with that? It is not without reason you have cliches about playing each ball on its merits and take each day as it comes.
But the obsession with planning has created an entire industry to support the idea. Statisticians devise metrics that hold cricketers accountable to process, and sports psychologists design formulas to help them “stay in the moment”.
Management science began in army barracks before expanding to factories and boardrooms. It is, at base, less about performance than it is about control. You needn't have watched The Wire to recognise the feeling that sometimes work seems more about following the right protocol than doing the right job.
The belief that there exists a process to control every outcome implies that egotists like Kevin Pietersen or worriers like Morne Morkel can be coached into perfect sporting drones; that injury-prone quicks can be conditioned into unbreakable cyborgs. The practice is more tricky. No amount of self-help psychology has solved a riddle like Ravi Bopara, for example.
Cricketers and cricket teams aren't machines. Some will succeed at the highest level and most will not. This human unpredictability may make cricket fascinating but it is at odds with the managerial dream.
Australia may have been Warne's target but all countries are caught up in the trend. Dressing rooms now strive to be “businesslike” which seems to entail employing an army of technocrats to help control and prepare players. Alongside the head coach, there are specialists for each cricket skill, statistical analysts, fitness bods and self-help gurus.
Undoubtedly some coaches provide essential help. Matt Prior, for example, readily credits his improved wicketkeeping to the work he's done with Bruce French. But the infiltration of corporate ideals into the running of cricket teams has also had more questionable effects.
South Africa, for example, employ Paddy Upton as a "performance director". In his own words, Upton's brief is to help cricketers move “out of the shadows of the ego and into the light of awareness.” It isn't just the appointments that seem spurious. Business lexicon has also infected the way people discuss the game. “Informed player management” is an especially jarring example, but obfuscating corporate speak is a staple of most press conferences.
It is difficult to question the abundance of managers without sounding like a Boycottian luddite. The professionalism of Kerry Packer and World Series Cricket forced a focus among some players who had previously lacked it. Now, with the financial stakes raised further still, perhaps it is inevitable that teams should seek other avenues of improvement.
Yet it is debatable whether the management drive has really achieved success. In the corporate world, the only industry that management consultants have really transformed is their own. Similarly in men's cricket at least, it is difficult to claim that anything other than fielding has really revolutionised.
Injuries, especially among pacemen, seem as frequent as ever, and for all the praise Nathan Leamon gets, statistical wizardry has not dramatically altered team strategy. Instead, professionalism's most telling effect has been to deepen the layers of management into the game.
Cricketers can expect their food, drink, sleep, hobbies, and public interactions to be carefully surveyed and controlled. In England, cricketers are hauled out of adolescence and brought into "the setup" so that they too can familiarise themselves with what is expected of a "professional".
In some senses this is a good thing. Joe Root is a perfect ECB specimen having played age-group cricket with England since Under-16s and been part of their Lions and Academy setups. At 22 he has had experience of conditions from all around the world which has left him well prepared to join the international fold.
These cricketing skills are the first level of management input. The second is the moneyball-style numbers analysis. The final is the kind of personality management Upton deals in. Though covering different areas, these are all part of management science's broad aim: shifting focus from outcome to process with the underlying belief that success is a simple matter of the correct planning.
Jeremy Snape, once an England limited-over offspinner, is now a consultant business and sport psychologist. He writes that “to deliver our goals of wickets or runs we will need to have divisional goals for fitness, concentration and technical skills. These become our daily focus, not the gold medal.” Who could argue with that? It is not without reason you have cliches about playing each ball on its merits and take each day as it comes.
But the obsession with planning has created an entire industry to support the idea. Statisticians devise metrics that hold cricketers accountable to process, and sports psychologists design formulas to help them “stay in the moment”.
Management science began in army barracks before expanding to factories and boardrooms. It is, at base, less about performance than it is about control. You needn't have watched The Wire to recognise the feeling that sometimes work seems more about following the right protocol than doing the right job.
The belief that there exists a process to control every outcome implies that egotists like Kevin Pietersen or worriers like Morne Morkel can be coached into perfect sporting drones; that injury-prone quicks can be conditioned into unbreakable cyborgs. The practice is more tricky. No amount of self-help psychology has solved a riddle like Ravi Bopara, for example.
Cricketers and cricket teams aren't machines. Some will succeed at the highest level and most will not. This human unpredictability may make cricket fascinating but it is at odds with the managerial dream.
Thursday, 1 November 2012
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
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
Wednesday, 15 August 2012
KP and the moneyball effect
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.
Tuesday, 24 July 2012
After The Oval - All that is solid melts into air
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.
Monday, 18 June 2012
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.
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.
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