SPIN

JONATHANTROTT

APRIL 2010 £3.95WWW.SPINCRICKET.COM

‘REALLY GOOD BUT BIZARRE: MY FIRST ! MONTHS WITH ENGLAND’

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OWAISSHAHThe real story of his on-o! England career

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REVEALEDWhy Bradman

was not the greatest

T HE I NDEP ENDEN T V O I C E O F CR I C K E T

50th

CHRISTREMLETT‘What Vaughan said about me was rubbish’

ISSUE

SPECIAL

+ RORY HAMILTON-BROWN AFGHANI CRICKET

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LEADING EDGE

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Saffer pace giant on sibling rivalry, South Africa’s new coach and falling at the last hurdle in Kolkata

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When you went out to bat at No 11 in the second Test at Kolkata with two hours’ play left, it seemed very unlikely that South Africa could save the Test. How was it to get so close and then getting out with only enough time left for a couple of overs?It’s all a blur to me. I had a viral infection and was very ill so I was so dosed up with anti-biotics and injections and I don’t remember the first 15 overs of my innings. I just know that I was there caring for my life, fighting for it.

Then I suddenly realised it was quarter past four and we were really getting close to saving it. That’s when everything kicked in. It was one of my most disappointing games, coming so far and not finishing the job [India took the game to level the two-game series 1-1 and stay top of the ICC team table].

I have been on the wrong end of this three times in a row. Twice we needed just one wicket and England saved a draw and I was involved by bowling in the last few overs. And then this. So hopefully things will turn for me when it matters next.

It was a fantastic effort though – keeping out 60 balls against Harbhajan et al and seven men around the bat. How much did working with Duncan Fletcher helped your batting?Duncan helped me a lot when he was part of the squad and Kepler Wessels has been great since he joined us recently.

Kepler was also a left-hander and he has been awesome for me. Just hopefully I can grow from here.

Mickey Arthur recently resigned as coach and Corrie van Zyl has replaced him. You guys were all very close for Mickey. Will it take time for Corrie and the players to develop a good relationship?It was sad what happened with Mickey – it all happened so suddenly. The great thing on this tour is that we are all professionals and we all understand that our efforts for our country are bigger than just who is coaching us. Putting the green and gold over our heads is far more important than worrying about the coach.

But Corrie has fitted in beautifully. His work ethic and discipline has been awesome and the guys are really enjoying him. It was good to win the first Test under him, that settled the butterflies in his stomach and his mindset.

The tour got tougher after that but I’m happy that Corrie’s contract has been extended till after the World Cup. He is a fantastic mentor in the bowling department and I enjoy working with him. I think I can only grow as a cricketer under him.

What is your first significant cricket memory?I was 12 and bowling for my school under-13 side. The opposition needed four runs off the last over and they had three wickets standing. I

started the over with two dot balls and then took a hat-trick. I told the guys that story in the changing room the other day and I’ll never forget it. I think it made me really get into cricket.

When did you get bigger and stronger than him your older brother, Albie?My first two years after school, I joined up with Easterns and worked under Ray Jennings, who put me through my paces in terms of fitness. But after joining the Titans and from working with the Proteas fitness trainer, Rob Walter, I realised that I wanted to become the best in the world. To reach that goal I needed to become stronger and fitter so I stayed at home one winter, skipped the county season, and worked hard at my game and fitness.

Were the two of you very competitive as children?The three-year age gap meant that he would make provincial colours at a certain age group and then it was my goal to also achieve that when I reached that age. But after all that, when we started playing on a professional level together, I think we played more to

support each other than to be competitive. You are going to have bad days at provincial or international level and to have someone as close as your brother next to you, then it is fantastic to have that comfort.

You had a stress fracture in the 2007/08 season. How does a six foot five fast bowler stay fit with such a gruelling schedule?This series against India has been a tough one and so was the one against England before it but body-wise I’m feeling very good. You will always have small niggles when you wake up in the morning but that’s part of the job that we do. You play so much cricket these days that you can’t blame your body for breaking down sometimes. It’s just a matter of looking after the niggles properly, doing your rehab and making sure that you are fit to play for your country.

So after back-to-back tours, it’s six weeks of IPL, then straight to the ICC World Twenty20 and on to a full tour of the West Indies. That must be draining mentally as well as physically? I definitely miss my family and the things I do back home but we signed up for this hard job, it is what we do and what we love. It’s awesome to be on tour with the boys and we are very lucky to be together, seeing the world and to experience all different things. So I can’t complain. The day that I start complaining and moaning will be the day that I should probably pack it all up.

Interview: Nick Sadleir

QUESTIONS FOR MORNE MORKEL

The next SPIN is in the shops on April 9

APRIL 2010 SPIN 21

Morne Morkel

‘I don’t remember the start of my

innings. It’s a blur’

enough said…**figures that speak for themselves

43,125Crowd for Victoria-Tasmania

Twenty20, January

30,000Largest crowd for Australia

international ODI over the winter

8,378Attendance at Australia-Windies

game at Adelaide in Feb – the lowest-ever at the ground

60,054Attendance at Australia-Pakistan

T20 game at MCG, February 5

25,000Crowd for Australia-Windies ODI

at MCG, February 7

8English players at 2010 IPL

3 Number of those players in

England ODI squad in Bangladesh

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Jonathan Trott’s first brief taste of England duty did not end happily, the opportunity extending to two Twenty20 innings lasting a grand total of 14 balls at the start of the 2007

season. “It was over incredibly quickly and I didn’t really feel I had the best chance to succeed,” he reflected later. “Half the secret is feeling comfortable and I didn’t feel comfortable.”

Trott’s return to the colours was not swift; he had a poor season after his demotion in 2007 and it took a huge weight of runs in all forms of the game to put himself back into contention: in first-class cricket, he averaged 62 in 2008 and 73 in 2009; he also became the leading English runscorer in the history of Twenty20, before finally being drafted into the Test squad at Headingley during the Ashes last August. After a weeks’ speculation in the media about Mark Ramprakash and Rob Key, Trott made his

debut in the final Test. Looking, this time, instantly and reassuringly full of confidence, only a freak run-out cut him off for 41 in the first innings; his painstaking four-hour 119 in the second innings helped clinch the Ashes and to cement his place for the foreseeable future. He looked at home.

A slightly mixed tour of South Africa followed. While Trott did not meet with the same hostility as his fellow Saffer-returnee Kevin Pietersen, he did manage to get under the skin of the South Africans with his methodical between-ball preparations. Trott’s scores declined after the one-day series and a half-century in the first Test at the start of the tour. Averaging just 27 and against possibly the best attack in the world, there was a sense by the end that Trott’s Ashes imperiousness had given way to a more restless demeanour.

The Bangladesh tour will doubtless provide an opportunity for England’s newest Test star to re-assert himself.

SPIN: How has life changed for you since your Test debut?Trott: It’s changed a lot. And in most ways it’s been really good. In some ways it’s been a bit hard to get used to it. After The Oval Test, we played in Ireland and my phone just never stopped. It was bizarre. Most people are fine, but there is some intrusion and that’s hard to get used to it. One of the guys who called was Allan Lamb. I’d never spoken to him before – I don’t even know how he got my number – but he was talking away as if we’d known each other for years: ‘Hey Trotty, how’s it going.’ He was very nice, but it was kind of strange.

The hardest thing is getting used to people talking about you. Some of the guys in the media talk as if they know me and they don’t know me from Adam. They have an image of what they think I’m like. But they don’t know. That’s weird. I guess they’re paid to talk and they have to say something. But often it’s rubbish.

I’ve made a point of talking to some of

A year ago, Jonathan Trott was still knocking on the England door. Now, he’s a key man in all three forms. He reflects on 12 months that changed his life with SPIN’s George Dobell

‘ This is just the start’

INTERVIEW JONATHAN TROTT

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INTERVIEW JONATHAN TROTT

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A mighty piece of new research by statistician Dave Wilson rates the world’s best players – batters, bowlers and all-rounders – in one all-time chart. And Don Bradman comes second…

Was Bradman not the greatest after all?

OLD SCHOOL COMBINED RANKINGS

The Don: less valuable than a bowler, after all?

WALTER HAMMOND

Hammond made his debut aged 17 for

Gloucestershire in 1920 and batted in the

middle-order for England for 20 years

(1927-1947), playing 85 Tests. His 7249

Test runs were a world record for 23 years

after his retirement. Perhaps his biggest

series was the 4-1 Ashes win in

Australia, in 1928/29. Hammond

averaged 113, thanks to four centuries,

including back-to-back double tons.

Only two batsmen have scored more than

Hammond’s 167 first-class centuries.

GEORGE LOHMANNLohmann played the first of his 18 Tests for England at Old Trafford in 1886. A medium-pacer, he cut and seamed the ball viciously off the pitch and soon proved himself the most destructive bowler in cricket. In 1886/87, he took 16 wickets at 8.56 as England took the Ashes 2-0 in Australia. His Test average (10.75) and strike rate (34.1) are the best in Test history. Stricken with TB, he retired from cricket at 31, and, moving to South Africa, died aged 36 in 1901.

Sir Donald Bradman was NOT, game for game, the most valuable player in the history of Test cricket, according to exhaustive new statistical research.

Rather than the Don, it is an English bowler, George Lohmann, who emerges as, game for game, history’s greatest player.

The research, for the first time, attempts to compare both batsmen and bowlers using the same criteria – of how great a contribution they made to their team’s performances. Though there remains no dispute that The Don, who averaged 99.94 and hit 29 centuries in his 52 Tests, was the greatest batsman of all time, there has until now been no reliable measure that compares the relative values of batsmen and bowlers. Indeed, the greater length of batsmen’s careers has tended to give them more prominence in cricket’s halls of fame than bowlers – despite the fact that it is taking 20 wickets that wins Test matches, rather than sheer accumulation of runs.

California-based ex-pat statistician Dave Wilson came up with a method to compare

the different disciplines. This month we publish the first half of Wilson’s epic research, taking in Test matches up to 1950. Next month, we will publish the second half, which will reveal the modern era’s most valuable player.

Lohmann played 18 Tests between 1886 and 1896, winning a remarkable 15 of them and taking 112 wickets at just 10.75 apiece. That average, as well as his strike rate (a wicket every 34.1 balls) and his economy rate (just 1.88 runs per over) are the best of any bowler in history.

Bradman’s 1930 tour of England in which he hit four centuries in five Tests, and a total of 974 runs, is traditionally regarded as the pinnacle of one player’s achievement in a series. Yet Lohmann routinely took wickets at less than ten apiece: in the two Ashes Test of England’s 1886/87 tour, he took 16 wickets at 8.56 each.

Even more remarkable was England’s series with South Africa in the winter of 1895/96. Here, in three Tests, Lohmann took an incredible 35 wickets at just 5.80 each – including eight wickets for seven runs in

P PLAYER CAREER PTS

1 George Lohmann (Eng 1886-1896) 1282 Don Bradman (Aus 1928-1948) 1193 Sidney Barnes (Eng 1901-1914) 1164 Jack Gregory (Aus, 1920-1928) 1125 Clarrie Grimmet (Aus 1925-1936) 1086 Bobby Peel (Eng 1884-1896) 1027 Bill Whitty (Aus 1909-1912) 988 HughTrumble (Aus 1890-1904) 979 H.Larwood (Eng 1926-1933) 97

10 A.G.Steel (Eng 1880-1888) 95

P PLAYER PTS

1 Walter Hammond 14972 Don Bradman 12353 Jack Hobbs 10294 Frank Woolley 9375 Wilfred Rhodes 859

Average points per five-match series, 1877-1950

TEST CRICKET’S MVPS

MOST VALUABLE PLAYER OVERALL

APRIL 2010 SPIN 37

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Mumbai, April 2010. The sun goes down in Mumbai. Kolkata Knight Riders are in trouble chasing 189 to win. Owais Shah walks to crease. He looks nervous; 80 runs off 45 balls later, with Shane Warne and Morne Morkel dispatched to all corners, he is still twitching around as hits the runs that win Kolkata the third Indian Premier League. Few who have seen Shah take apart world class attacks will feel the scene is fanciful. He has already done it in a Twenty20 final against an international Kent attack, smashing 75 off 35 balls.

There are many in the game who feel that Shah will never play for England again, at least not while Andy Flower and Andrew Strauss are in charge. He has not been named in England’s 30-man squad for the 20-over World Cup in the West Indies in April and May. “We know he’s a quality player,” Geoff Miller, the chairman of selectors, said. “He had a bit of a rough time. We needed to see a little bit more so left him out [recently] but we still feel he has something to offer. He’s going to the IPL, so [we hope] he can put in a few performances there.”

Shah is one of those cricketers who is regarded as a star internationally but not at home. When we visit his home in Southgate, north London, he is getting over jet lag, having some plumbing fixed and washing kit before heading back on the road. He took his family (Gemma, his wife and Maya, their

two-year-old daughter) to New Zealand for six weeks, where he played, with only some success, for the Wellington Firebirds in their domestic 20-over competition. By the time you read this, he will be in India for the IPL. Only a handful of English players are so in demand. Ravi Bopara is in the same category.

“My form has been pretty good,” Shah says. “I scored runs against the West Indies. The Australian one-dayers I chipped in but we took a hammering. I felt good in the Champions League and I liked to think I’m an established player and that I was one of the main batters that they could rely on and if a main batter is not performing in four or five one-dayers and he comes good again you think, ‘Ok, he had a glitch.’ But I’m out of the side. I guess I’ve got impress in the IPL and then when I come back to Middlesex.”

Shah did not get a game in his first two years with Delhi Daredevils so both player and team were happy for the transfer to the Kolkata Knight Riders at the beginning of this year. “It was quite frustrating in South Africa for the second IPL last year. I was running drinks out and it was great to be in that environment surrounded by McGrath, Vettori, Sehwag and Dilshan but the flip side was that I believe I am good enough to be playing with them.”

“I spoke to Delhi Daredevils and I said if something comes, let me know. The guy rang me up and said, ‘I don’t think you’re going to get a game. Would you consider moving?’ And Kolkata came in.”

Shah did play for the Daredevils in the Champions League last November. He was with them when he found he had been dropped by England. Were Delhi colleagues surprised? “They were a bit baffled really,” Shah says. “But I don’t talk too much about it, because you don’t know if people just feel uneasy about saying: ‘Well I agree with the selectors actually, you’re not good enough.’

There seems to be an untold story of why Shah has been dropped. His obvious power and class, allied to this statistics, do not explain why he disappeared from England’s Test, one-day and 20-over sides in the space of the six months last year. A lack of consistency was the message to him from Flower. As soon Duncan Fletcher was deposed, Peter Moores had brought Shah into the one-day side. Parachuted into the wreckage of another disastrous 50-over World Cup in the West Indies, Moores said he was building the next campaign around a core group of players. Shah was one of them. It made sense. It seems like he has been around forever because he made his county debut at 16 in 1995 and is still only 31. He is also one of the best players of spin in England – and the next 50-over World Cup is on the Indian subcontinent next year.

SHAH PLAYED !" ODIS IN A ROW, from August 2007 to the end of the Champions Trophy in October 2009, averaging 34.19. Kevin Pietersen averaged 37.07 and the other middle order stalwart, Paul

The IPL are paying him £30k a week but to many Owais Shah is one of English cricket’s great lost talents.

What does the man himself say? Interview: Matthew Pryor

overStartingINTERVIEW OWAIS SHAH

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INTERVIEW OWAIS SHAH

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FEATURE CRICKET IN AFGHANISTAN

The boys from nowhere

APRIL 2010 SPIN 51

FEATURE CRICKET IN AFGHANISTAN

Afghanistan was only registered as an affiliate of the ICC as recently as 2001 – but in Dubai in February, the national side beat the UaE and Ireland to qualify for the ICC World Twenty20. Dates with India and South Africa await this May, for a team formed in the refugee camps over the border in Pakistan; a team playing in a country that has no cricket pitches properly worthy of the name; a team whose ‘home’ ground is in another country: Sharjah, in the UAE.

Since 2007, Canadian photographer and film-maker Leslie Knott has observed the remarkable story at close quarters, following the team with co-producers Tim Albone and Lucy Martens for a documentary, Out of the Ashes. More than that, she has worked with the team and cricket supporters to develop the game within Afghanistan, working alongside the players to bring UNICEF and the MCC, among others, to fund and stage cricket coaching camps for Afghan children.

“You can’t properly play top-level cricket in Afghanistan,” she says. “The facilities are just not good enough at the moment. Now is the time to put in facilities. To be honest, it’s a massive challenge for the Afghan cricket board. They are having to work out how to develop a cricket nation from this

Raised in refugee camps, the Afghanistan cricket team has qualified for next month’s T20 World Cup. Photographer Leslie Knott, who has been following the team since 2008, tells SPIN the story of the team’s extraordinary journey

Main pic: Kabul. “Cricket is most popular near the Pakistan border, largely among returned refugees. But people play all over the place.”

Below: “Shahzada Masood (right) is president of the cricket federation, but also tribal a!airs advisor to Presi-dent Karzai. When he came back from Jersey, where the team won the World Cricket League Division 5, in 2008, there was a big flare-up between two tribes fighting over land – so he was flown in by helicopter to do con-flict resolution.

“He’s with Raees Ahmadzai (left), one of the only players who can speak English. He’s been involved in setting up cricket camps for children – he even set up his own cricket magazine.”

66 SPIN AUGUST 2008

SPIN is five years and 50 issues old this month. In north of two-and-a-half million words, we’ve told the story of two England Ashes wins, one Ashes fiasco, the on-o! hunt for a one-day masterplan, the birth of the IPL, the rise of KP, the fall of Sir Allen Stanford, the glorious birth of the ICC World Twenty20 and much much more. We also tracked down Wayne Larkins. Over the next 12 pages, editor Duncan Steer selects some cricket and publishing highlights from SPIN’s time on the news-stands. New readers start here…

BACK SPIN SPIN’S FIRST 50 ISSUES

AUGUST 2008 SPIN 67