SPINT HE INDEP ENDEN T V O I C E O F CR I C K E T

WWW.SPINCRICKET.COM MAY 2011 £3.95

ALASTAIR COOK

“I CAN PLAY FOR

ENGLAND IN EVERY

FORMAT…”

PAUL NIXONROB KEY

MICHAELHOLDING ANSWERS YOUR QUESTIONS

READY, STEADY?

Is county cricket in financial crisis?

INDIA’S WORLD CUPFULL DAY-BY-DAY REVIEW

DAVID COLLIERECB BOSS GOES ON THE RECORD

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It’s always nice to come

home – of course it is – but

leaving Australia when I did felt

like leaving the ship halfway

through a journey. Sure, I’m

fresh now and the lads who

were there for the whole tour do

look very tired, but any player is

going to want to play for

England. And missing a World

Cup does hurt. Of course it

does. But life goes on. I told

them [the team management]

that I wanted to stay. They know

that. But they gave me the

reasons – reasons that will stay

private – and I respect that. I

just have to score lots of runs

for Essex and force them to pick

me.

I’ve always wanted to get

back into the ODI side. I

watched some of the World Cup

and I was desperate for the lads

to do well. They’ve played a lot of

intense cricket and they are

tired, but all that would have

been washed away if they’d

won. No-one has really nailed

down that role at the top of the

order, though, so I still feel I

could do that job.

Can I play in all three

formats for England? Well, in

Alastair Cook’s perfect world,

I’d be playing T20 for England,

yes. Whether that can happen

isn’t really for me to say. I

probably still have some work to

do in some areas, but I’ve done

pretty well in domestic T20 over

the last couple of years. I’d like to think I could do it.

Did my success in the Ashes exceed my expectations? Yes, of course it did. If someone had told me I could have scored that number of runs [766 at an average of 127, including three centuries] before the series, I’d have bitten their hand off. When did I know I was in pretty good form? Before the second Test in Adelaide [Cook had scored 67 and 235 not out in the first Test at Brisbane]. I’d had some luck early in the series and I just felt very comfortable and confident. But you don’t really dwell on feeling like that during a series. It wasn’t really until after Sydney Test that any of us sat back and thought ‘Yes, we’ve done pretty well there.’

There’s been a lot talked about my technique, but most of it is rubbish. After the Ashes in 2009, I did change things a bit, but I went back to my old technique before The Oval Test against Pakistan last summer. Why? Well, things hadn’t been going very well and I thought I should go back to something I felt comfortable with and that I felt could cope better when things weren’t going well. I know people saw me struggling with a new technique in a couple of televised one-day games [for Essex]. Of course it looked a bit uncomfortable and a bit unnatural. It was.

9Ashes-winning opener on his stellar winter and his ODI prospects

THINGS ALASTAIR COOK TOLD SPIN THIS MONTH

MAY 2011 SPIN 15

nine things

I’ve always felt I had the support of the England team management. But, if you score 30 runs in six innings [actually 106 in eight Test innings], your place is going to be under threat, isn’t it? So, going into the Oval Test last summer [where Cook scored a century against Pakistan], I was definitely playing for my place. For the first time in my career, I was officially playing for my place. I’ll be honest: I wasn’t just batting for the team; I was batting for me; for my future. Hopefully, though, it showed that I could deliver under pressure. That’s what Test cricket is all about. That was a big innings for me.

Picking a side to go to Australia and play the Ashes was always a long-term thing. Months of planning went into it. It would have been a pretty big call to throw a new opening batsman into an Ashes tour like that. So I always felt pretty confident that I’d go on the tour. But when the selectors didn’t name a spare opener, it did make me feel supported and backed. It showed they had faith in me.

When I had that run of poor form, I felt I had the support of everyone involved in the England set-up. We’re a very supportive team. We’ve been through a lot together. Especially since the two Andys took over. We all, genuinely, want our team-mates to do well.

Alastair Cook was talking on

Essex’s pre-season tour of

Barbados. For

the best deals on holidays or

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I’m hoping to play about six championship games for Essex at the start of the season. Obviously gaining promotion is the aim. It’s been good to come out to Barbados on the pre-season tour and I’ve felt I’m getting into really good rhythm with my batting. The pitches are good and I’m desperate to play again and score some runs. People are always talking about the good young players at Essex. That’s testament to the good work that our academy guys do. But what they need to do is take the step up to the next level.

May 20 sees the UK cinema release of the hotly anticipated ‘Fire in Babylon’, a film charting the glorious

supremacy of the West Indies cricket team of the 1970s and 1980s. At a time of civil unrest in the Caribbean, the West Indian cricketers were invincible: they won the World Cups of 1975 and 1979 and were unbeaten in Test series between 1980 and 1995. The film sees the story of that side told by the men who were a part of it.

Michael Holding is one of the key interviewees. Holding was the spearhead of the formidable all-pace attack that ripped through opposition batsmen. His long, graceful run-up generated high pace

that brought him almost 400 international wickets. As well as his native Jamaica, Holding played county cricket for both Derbyshire and Lancashire. Regarded as one of the most intimidating bowlers of all time, Holding cuts a rather more congenial figure off the field and is now ensconced in the Sky gantry, an eloquent and forthright commentator on the modern game.

Holding says he got a call early in 2010 about being involved in the film “I agreed straightaway,” he says. “I was happy to hear that someone who was not West Indian would be doing a documentary about West Indies cricket, because if a West Indian did it they could easily be seen as biased.”

HOLDINGMICHAEL

26 SPIN MAY 2011

As a new film celebrating the invincible ’70s and ’80s West Indians reaches cinemas, one of the game’s legends answers your questions on his career, the documentary… and all matters arising. Interview: Gemma Wright

YOUR QUESTIONS FOR

Michael Holding (right) with fellow Invincibles Andy Roberts and Viv Richards.

“We got a lot of racism! My first tour here to England, ’76, we received a lot of letters through the post, from big strong people who would pretend they were kids.”

READERS QUESTIONS MICHAEL HOLDING

MAY 2011 SPIN 27

Why do you think it took so long for somebody to make a film about your great West Indies side?James Pritchard I think perhaps the people that are involved in this film are people who really love West Indian cricket and are disappointed to see the direction which it has gone; the low ebb that it’s reached. Perhaps they are trying to stir some emotions among the West Indian cricketers and the kids in the Caribbean. Sure it’s a commercial project but I think that’s part of it as well.

(SPIN: Do you think it can have an effect?) Yes definitely, I have seen it. A lot of youngsters in the Caribbean have lost the purpose of cricket and what it means to Caribbean people. Cricket is the only thing we do together in the Caribbean. Every island has its own team for football, netball, basketball, and athletics. The only thing we do together is play cricket. Some islands have never produced an international cricketer, but they still say “we” and “us” about the West Indies team. I don’t think a lot of cricketers in the Caribbean today appreciate what it means to so many people, especially people who are from the Caribbean but don’t live there.

They want to be associated with greatness, with success, and be able to walk around and say; “yes I am from the West Indies, look how good our team is”. I think youngsters from the Caribbean need to understand that that is important.

(SPIN: Will the film have an effect on the current team?) I don’t think so, no. You have to start with youngsters. You can’t bend an old tree, you have to start with the saplings!

At the time that you were playing did you all feel that you were making history?Shaun MitchellSpeaking for myself, I can’t say that as a youngster playing for the West Indies I thought about the political impact we were having. I was out there enjoying myself,

playing cricket, trying to do the best for myself and of course for the West Indies team. Later on in life, when I started to travel a bit more and I got to meet West Indians living away from the Caribbean. Then it came home to me exactly what it meant to those people.

Do you resent the idea that your team had natural talent and didn’t need to work hard for success?Frankie CampbellAnyone who said that needs to understand that hard training and hard work started with that West Indian team. We were the first team that worked as a unit, doing the sort of training and exercise that you see teams currently doing.

It started when we were playing World Series cricket with Packer. He assigned a fella called Dennis Waight to the West Indies team. He was from a rugby background, and you got to be fit to play rugby. He went to Clive Lloyd and said: “Skipper, for professional cricketers, professional sportsmen, I think you are crap! You’re not anywhere near as fit as you should be.” And Lloydy of course gave him permission to do whatever he thought was necessary. And that is where the training started. Kerry Packer saw us train, getting fit, beating the World Series Australian team, then demanded that they started training and doing what we were doing.

We had always had individuals who would do their own stuff to be fit, but as a team, it was the West Indies who started doing all that training.

READERS QUESTIONS MICHAEL HOLDING

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SPIN: You played to a very good standard, didn’t you? How close did you come to playing first-class cricket? David Collier: I had played a few county 2nd XI matches and represented England Universities, but in truth I was never quite good enough to play first-class cricket .

There were two highlights of which I have happy memories. One was taking six wickets – and four in five balls – including John Wright and Geoff Miller when I was playing for Loughborough University against Derbyshire’s 1st XI. Another is taking 170 wickets in a season for my local club side in Leicestershire. Perhaps my greatest

disappointment was losing in the semi-final of the club knock out for Colchester at Gosport and therefore missing out on the Lord’s Final.

In those days of second XI cricket, overseas players were required to play a qualification period and at that time players such as Michael Holding , Paddy Clift and Wayne Daniel were regularly playing second XI cricket. You knew then there was a big gap to bridge to become a professional cricketer!

Why did you chose a career in cricket administration? Playing second XI cricket and club cricket in

David

Leicestershire during Mike Turner’s long and highly successful period in office at Grace Road taught me a great deal about the fact that, aside from a playing career, there were great opportunities in cricket management. Having been a student on the first Sports Science and Recreation Management undergraduate course at Loughborough, our group had the opportunity to mix with high quality athletes and future administrators in a range of sports. That course provided a wonderful background and the inspiration to make a career out of sports administration .

INTERVIEW DAVID COLLIER

STORY: GEORGE DOBELL

Collier17Questions for

Is there too much Twenty20? Will there still be 18 counties in ten years’ time? What went wrong with Stanford? The ECB’s chief executive gives a rare, full-length interview on the state of the English and world game, exclusively to SPIN.

MAY 2011 SPIN 35

When you add to that a life long love of cricket from very early days attending the Scarborough Festival and being a regular attendee at county matches, then cricket administration was the dream job.

You’ve worked at Test Match hosting counties and non-Test hosting counties. Presumably this has given you an appreciation of the differing challenges facing both types? It certainly helps in my current role to understand the different pressures on those counties. For a Test match-hosting county one of the key challenges is to

INTERVIEW DAVID COLLIER

David Collier had worked for Essex, Gloucestershire, Leicestershire and Nottinghamshire before becoming ECB chief exec in 2004.

2011 PREVIEW ROUND TABLE

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State of the nation

SPIN: Is there a big gap between the divisions? What are the differences?

ALAN RICHARDSON I think increasingly there is a big gap between the top of division one and the bottom half of division two. The difference really manifests itself in the depth and strength of the bowling – not so much the batting (a tail is a tail) but division one sides tend to have five quality bowlers who can bury the opposition within a session or two. In division two you can grind out more results.ROB KEY I think there is a massive difference between the top of division one and the bottom of division two; it’s quite marked. Much of it is to do with the depth of the squads. The best sides will have four or five match-winning bowlers they can call upon and the weaker sides will only have two

Is there too much cricket? Who are the youngsters to watch? And who will take silverware in 2011? As the season begins, SPIN asks five senior professionals to reflect on the county game.

and if they are taken out on international duties, the side won’t have the depth to fill those gaps. The quality has really been pushed to around 11 or 12 teams and then there’s the “also-rans”. This is the nature of the beast but it does mean that there’s a very noticeable difference.

Teams like Middlesex and Surrey are very interesting because on paper, they have some really good players and should be able to compete with the best but something hasn’t quite clicked in their squads. I suspect when it does they’ll both have a real resurgence in performance.PAUL NIXON There is a gap in standard between the divisions. Which is what you would expect. Division one squads have greater strength and depth although it’s balanced out by more result wickets in division two.

JIM TROUGHTON I’m not sure there’s too much of a gap between the bottom three or four in division one and the top three or four in division two. But the gap between the top of division one and the bottom of division two is very big now. In what way? Well, there tends not to be much batting outside the top five in the weaker teams and, after you’ve seen off the opening bowlers, the support is much weaker.GARETH BATTY The difference is more mental than anything to do with ability. You do get easier sessions in division two. It’s harder-nosed cricket in division one and you do have to work harder for every wicket and every run. There are more result pitches in division two and that’s because results are very important in division two with us all pushing for promotion. Promotion is the objective of every county in division two.

INTERVIEWS LIZZY AMMON AND GEORGE DOBELL

THE PANEL

2011 PREVIEW ROUND TABLE

MAY 2011 SPIN 43

Do you play too much cricket?

AR I think the members would definitely say we don’t play too much. For me, it’s not so much that we play too much but there just isn’t sufficient preparation time if you are playing nine days out of 10 or 10 out of 11. It means that we aren’t as prepared as we could be. There may be an argument for a reduction to the number of championship games but I do think that we could play 10 T20 games in around 19 or 20 days – just go on a sort of road trip and play consecutive days. The CB40 format needs looking at too to reduce the number of meaningless group games later on in the season.RK As players, we have to be careful not to shoot ourselves in the foot. The vast majority of players want the championship to remain at 16 games but we have to remember that the

shorter formats provide the revenue. In order to be able to maintain the quality and level of the CCC we have to play in the revenue generating T20 competitions – there’s a balance to be had but we have a responsibility as players to understand both what supporters want to watch and what generates income for our counties – income that ultimately pays our wages.PN The schedule is really packed and the decision to reduce the amount of T20 is correct. It is hard for the schedulers to balance the three competitions across the summer but the schedule as it is means we are perpetually playing or travelling. It will and does have an impact on the size of crowds.JT Yes, there’s too much cricket and it needs to be addressed. We need time to prepare better. I actually have a great deal of respect for the way in which Alan Fordham [the ECB’s

Jim TroughtonFormer England batsman, now captain of Warwickshire

Alan RichardsonSeamer with Derbyshire, Warwickshire, Middlesex and now Worcestershire

Rob KeyFormer England batsman, now captain of Kent.

Paul NixonFormer England and Kent wicketkeeper, now with Leicestershire.

Gareth BattyFormer England, Worcestershire and Yorkshire all-rounder, now with Surrey

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REVIEW 2011 WORLD CUP

A RIGHT

The best and best-supported team took the trophy on home turf after a 43-day tournament that suggested the 50-over format was not quite as dead as many had previously supposed.

SPIN looks back over cricket’s 10th World Cup

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Bangladesh v India at Dhaka India 370/4 (50 ov); Bangladesh 283/9 (50 ov)India won by 87 runsA drawn out 43-day tournament gets under way with what is the first of many one-sided encounters. The UDRS (Umpire Decision Review System) is officially used for the first time in an ODI. Virender Sehwag smashes 175 while Virat Kohli manages 100* and India post 370/4 at a canter. As Bangladesh make it 283, worries about India’s attack surface.

FEBRUARY #$

Kenya v New Zealand at ChennaiKenya 69 (23.5 ov); New Zealand 72/0 (8 ov)New Zealand won by 10 wicketsSri Lanka v Canada at HambantotaSri Lanka 332/7 (50 ov); Canada 122 (36.5 ov)Sri Lanka won by 210 runs After yesterday’s run-feast it’s on to Chennai where Kenya are bowled out for 69 by New Zealand. A 10-wicket win ensues with 252 balls remaining – it is the first of several TV-advertising industry let-downs as the match lasts for just two hours.

At Sri Lanka’s box-fresh new 35,000-capacity stadium at Hambantota, meanwhile, Mahela Jayawardene makes a neat 100 (81 balls) and Rizwan Cheema top scores for Canada with a quick 37 – an

Right: Virender Sehwag’s 175 off 140 balls saw India hit 370 in the tournament opener against Bangladesh.Top: Andrew Strauss’ inspirational 158 anchored England’s run-chase against India, as the game at Bangalore ended in a tie.

REVIEW 2011 WORLD CUP

MAY 2011 SPIN 65

innings that sees him later promoted to open the batting and live (but usually quite quickly die) by the sword in every subsequent innings.

FEBRUARY !" Australia v Zimbabwe at AhmedabadAustralia 262/6 (50 ov); Zimbabwe 171 (46.2 ov)Australia won by 91 runsShane Watson and Brad Haddin put on only 28 in ten overs on a pitch that apparently bears no demons. When eyebrows are raised later, Haddin says any suggestions of spot-fixing are “laughable – a joke,” Manager Steve Bernard adds: “It would make a cat laugh. It’s not a case (of spot-fixing). We just got off the mark a bit slowly.”

Weeks later, The Times of India reports that members of the match-fixing-linked D-Company gang were staying in the same hotel as the Australian team and had got to the opening batsmen. The ICC reacts strongly by demanding a retraction and apology unless proof of wrongdoing can be shown – none can and the retraction follows shortly afterwards.

More news from the game: Ricky Ponting breaks a dressing room television. “Just to clarify, the television wasn’t hit by me with my bat at all, it was hit by my box,” he says, not really clarifying things at all. The skipper is later fined.

FEBRUARY !!

England v Netherlands at Nagpur Netherlands 292/6 (50 ov); England 296/4 (48.4 ov)England won by 6 wickets England come close to repeating their opening flop at the 2009 World Twenty20 in a chaotic performance against the Dutch. In the field, England are farcical: there’s overthrows, dropped catches, a wicket denied because they don’t have sufficient fielders in the ring; Anderson goes for 72 and the Dutch rack up 104 from their last 10 overs, as a brilliant 119 from Ryan ten Doeschate helps them to a formidable 292. England get home with only eight balls to spare. Skipper Andrew Strauss top-scores and, afterwards, declares himself “shell-shocked.”

FEBRUARY !#

Kenya v Pakistan at HambantotaPakistan 317/7 (50 ov); Kenya 112 (33.1 ov)Pakistan won by 205 runs Another uninspiring mismatch, though Shahid Afridi’s 5/15 signals his (usual) intention to lead from the front. With the result never really in doubt, it still takes Pakistan 34 overs to remove the Kenyans. Not gripping cricket.

FEBRUARY !$

South Africa v West Indies at Delhi West Indies 222 (47.3 ov); South Africa 223/3 (42.5 ov)South Africa won by 7 wickets Officially this game is a sell-out but the Kotla is under one third full as Devon Smith and Darren Bravo put on a hundred partnership for the second wicket. It doesn’t last. West Indies collapse, almost inevitably,

and lose their next nine wickets for a hundred runs. Leg-spinner Imran Tahir finally makes his international debut for South Africa, having first been called up during the England series 12 months ago when he was not properly qualified. He takes four wickets on debut and an effortless hundred from AB de Villiers takes South Africa to a convincing victory.

FEBRUARY !%

Australia v New Zealand at Nagpur New Zealand 206 (45.1 ov); Australia 207/3 (34 ov)Australia won by 7 wicketsBangladesh v Ireland at Dhaka Bangladesh 205 (49.2 ov); Ireland 178 (45 ov)Bangladesh won by 27 runs Australia and New Zealand players stand shoulder to shoulder and observe a minute’s silence in Nagpur in honour of the Christchurch earthquake victims.

Above: Ryan ten Doeschate gave England fans a here-we-go-again feeling in their first game and (below) Sachin Tendulkar gave them that here-we-go-again feeling in their second…

REVIEW 2011 WORLD CUP