Russell Jackson
A Derbyshire fan in Melbourne
How books, magazines and live scorecard updates allowed an Australian teenager to keep track of county cricket in the 1990s
Russell Jackson
20-Jun-2014
Of all of the ridiculous sub-genres of cricket appreciation - and there's more than a few of them - following domestic cricket from foreign shores must be among the more esoteric. In this case I'm not talking about supranational T20 leagues, either. I'm talking about the pure concentrate: the County Championship.
A Derbyshire fan from Melbourne, you say? How could that be? Well, long ago and in a distant land where internet streams and ESPNcricinfo were not even within the realms of an imagination as fertile as mine - we'll call it the early '90s - the only way to stoke an interest in overseas domestic cricket was using the pages of outdated books and magazines. And if you weren't afraid of puzzled stares, asking questions of people with even the faintest hint of British accents.
The flame was lit upon picking up the 1965 Playfair Cricket Annual, edited by Gordon Ross, the one with Ken Barrington playing a cut shot in front of a bold and quite artificial green background. The information in that tiny book's pages intrigued me. Players referred to as "staff"? Some of them don't get caps? What do they do if the sun is shining? Hang on, Ian Buxton played soccer for Derby County as well as playing cricket? I paid what I had to for the book and resolved to learn more about these faraway teams. To start with, Gloucestershire and Leicestershire necessitated enquiries to parents on the matter of pronunciation.
Full postThe other rebels
Not many remember the International Wanderers teams who visited apartheid South Africa to play cricket
Russell Jackson
07-Jun-2014
One of the great things about cricket history is that the more you learn, the less you realise you know. I've always been fascinated by the "rebel tours" to apartheid-era South Africa, an understandably touchy subject in the annals of cricketing lore but one that has probably been under-explored in the decades that have elapsed since.
As is so often the case, it was while searching for something else this week that I came across an article discussing the International Wanderers tour of South Africa in 1976. Beyond a vague knowledge that it had occurred, I never really spent any time looking into it or the other unsanctioned tours of the apartheid years, but I soon found myself searching all over for more material, of which there's some but probably not enough, given its historical significance to both South Africa and to cricket.
Somewhat lazily and also as a result of the neglect in telling these uncomfortable stories, it's usually the 1980s Australian, English and West Indian "rebel" tours that we think of most readily when considering cricket in apartheid-era South Africa.
Full postThe slap we knew would come
The news of widespread fixing in T20 cricket feels like a slap in the face even for those of us who had secretly thought that such days were in the offing
Russell Jackson
22-May-2014
For many of us it's possible to trace the feeling of no longer being a child and even losing a certain sense of innocence back to the first time a sportsperson we loved let us down. For me it was when the great Australian Rules footballer Tony Lockett up and left my team, St Kilda, for the more glamorous and lucrative life in Sydney's colours. It brought me to tears.
The hours of pasting newspaper clippings into scrapbooks, waiting outside the ground in the vain hope of catching a glimpse of him and maybe, just maybe, securing an elusive autograph had been rendered foolish and juvenile. I'd loved him and because I loved him, I loved his team. Then he just walked away and an 11-year-old discovered that his hero didn't love him back, no matter how many posters he stuck on the wall.
In a cricket sense that same jolt of misery came with added stabs to the heart during the fall from grace of South Africa's seemingly dependable leader Hansie Cronje. In a lesser sense I later rued the heartbreaking personal failings of English allrounder Chris Lewis, another childhood favourite who had once seemed so perfect. In his prime, Lewis had everything - looks, talent to burn, and the kind of swagger that had that same 11-year-old scurrying around the boundary line in search of an autograph. Like a lot of cricket fans, I now only mention his name as the punchline of jokes, and that actually stings you a little bit when you think about it harder.
Full postAustralia's wicketkeeper dilemma
Who's to fill Haddin's shoes when the time comes? There's no easy answer
Russell Jackson
09-May-2014
Far more so than we sometimes admit, wicketkeepers are the barometers of Test sides. England's recent dip in fortunes coincided entirely with the demotion of Matt Prior from English Test player of the year to Ashes non-starter. His and England's form was so bad that they threw in a guy who wasn't really a keeper in attempt to get out of their rut.
At the same time Australia's renaissance was inarguably strengthened by the steady hands (well, pretty much) and level head of Brad Haddin, who scored the counter-attacking runs often needed when Australia were five down for nothing very substantial. Haddin was so good he allowed the Aussies to carry an underperforming batsman (George Bailey) for the entire summer.
This might just be a personal view of mine, and maybe flavoured by the fact that I grew to love the game in the stable, successful eras with Ian Healy and Adam Gilchrist behind the stumps, but no player other than the captain embodies the strengths or weaknesses of Australian cricket as much as the national wicketkeeper does. When Australia have been skittish and unreliable, so too has been their custodian. It's most certainly a more important position to fill than the vice-captaincy, and in fact, often keepers have been presented as the most glaringly obvious men for that role too.
Full postThe high-wire act of modern coaching
While the media and fans are quick to blame the coach when everything is going wrong, there is little or no credit attributed to him when success does come
Russell Jackson
25-Apr-2014
Sometimes the harder you look at something, the more confusing it seems. Thirty years ago we didn't even have national cricket coaches. Now their appointments, successes, struggles and everything in between are endlessly dissected and considered every bit as newsworthy as the comings and goings of players themselves.
At times we're overly critical of them and at times we probably don't look clearly enough or with sufficient perspective when we shower them with praise. England's recent appointment of Peter Moores is interesting from a number of perspectives and probably encompasses everything that is good and bad about the way we discuss modern cricket coaching.
Here you have a guy who is widely acknowledged as an excellent technical coach, who in his previous attempt at the top job made the mistake of spectacularly failing to manage his relationship with his captain and star player. This kind of personality clash can be inevitable in the workplace but it's poison for coaches, especially when the other guilty party is a once-in-a-generation talent. The buck always stops with the coach, so much so that it almost makes you wistful for the days before they even existed to be blamed by players, fans and media.
Full postMimicking our heroes
Batting stance, bowling run-up, shuffling, adjusting equipment - there's something about cricketers' idiosyncrasies that makes us want to copy them
Russell Jackson
11-Apr-2014
This week I found myself laughing at a YouTube video in which a hyped-up club player charges out to bat, face-plants and then gets bowled for a golden duck. I watched it more than a couple of times, if I'm honest, and it got me wondering about the ways in which I myself had been influenced over the years by the rituals and idiosyncratic routines of international players.
It starts from a young age. Even on an overcast day in the backyard, one of my brothers would often plaster his face with zinc in a pattern influenced by Australian fast bowler Craig McDermott. We'd bat around the wrong way and try to mimic Allan Border's distinct bobbing at the crease, or run in to bowl from an angle in the style of Merv Hughes. Aping the bowling actions of Peter Taylor, Greg Matthews and Waqar Younis, sometimes in the space of a couple of deliveries, eventually came to us subconsciously.
It wasn't just us, either. We've all been there. In a club game in the late '90s I remember hearing howls of laughter from the field as I walked back to my bowling marker because an opposition player had attempted to mark his guard in the style of Shivnarine Chanderpaul: removing one bail and hammering it into the turf in the distinctive style of the West Indies batsman. I wasn't above bowling with a small white towel hanging from my pants to shine the ball, so I was hardly in a position to judge.
Full postMissing Pakistan
How has the team fallen off the sporting map so dramatically in a cricket-literate country like Australia?
Russell Jackson
28-Mar-2014
As ridiculous as it might sound in an era in which cricket is beamed around the world via satellite on an endless loop, I had the nagging feeling of being short-changed this last week. It hit me while I was watching Pakistan's World T20 clash against Australia. Quite absurdly, it was the first time the two sides had played each other in the format in the past two years. In that time it feels like Australia have played more internationals against England than they did in the preceding decade, though I realise my arithmetic might be out slightly.
In Australia, unless you've got satellite TV or a working knowledge of the internet's burgeoning wormholes of "streams", there's a fair chance that you haven't seen a hell of a lot of Pakistan's games in the last five years, a period in which they have toured Australia just once. Though it's fair to say they didn't exactly hold up their end of the bargain in that 2009-10 summer (Pakistan lost every one of their three Tests, five ODIs and one T20 on that trip) it's an unfortunate reflection of cricket's new world order.
Never mind that an entire generation of young Australian fans have barely seen Umar Akmal and Saaed Ajmal show their wares, on a selfish level I just really miss Pakistan tours. It's a product of my own childhood - being weaned onto cricket via Pakistan's one-day international clashes with Australia.
Full postThinking pink
The jury's still out on the pros and cons of lighter-coloured balls and how they may or may not work in day-night Test cricket
Russell Jackson
14-Mar-2014
In cricket as in life, it's best to know what you're getting yourself into. In that spirit, I headed down to the MCG two Tuesdays ago to witness the arrival of pink balls in Sheffield Shield cricket, a move by Cricket Australia that aimed to assess the feasibility of seemingly well-laid plans to play night Test matches by 2015-16, most likely against New Zealand.
We've seen this before, of course, as early as the 1994-95 summer, in which Dean Jones made the first and presumably last triple-century with a yellow ball. Orange ones were tried too. The new-model pink ones were being tested in Futures League clashes back in 2010.
For Cricket Australia CEO James Sutherland, it's starting to sound like a personal mission. "Cricket needs to try and find a way to schedule the premium form of the game at a time when the most number of fans are able to attend and watch," he said.
Full postWarne v Cullinan revisited
Mind games were as much a part of Warne's armoury as the flipper in the mid-1990s, and his battle with one South African batsman captured the imagination
Russell Jackson
28-Feb-2014
If he hasn't had his day entirely, it's fair to say that the bully is not on the hot list these days. If you live your life beyond the confines of corporate boardrooms, you'd agree that professional sport is probably now his only socially acceptable outlet.
Still, sometimes you have to reconcile yourself to the fact that it is fascinating to watch someone being poked and prodded by an opponent. The appeal probably boils down to the pure human drama. In his own unique way, Shane Warne was a bully. Mind games were as much a part of his armoury as the flipper was in the mid-1990s, or the pause as he tweaked the ball from one hand to the other atop his mark.
Sometimes it was downright ugly, but there was something about the way Warne waged personal war on South African batsman Daryll Cullinan that captured the imagination, especially if, like me, you were a teenager at the time. It felt thrilling and awful and funny and fascinating; sometimes all of those things within the space of an hour. "There are no mates on a cricket field," Warne once said. Cullinan knew it all too well.
Full postThe comfort Haddin brings
A year ago if he had announced his retirement, it would have raised few eyebrows; had he done so after the latest Ashes, it would have been wrenching
Russell Jackson
12-Feb-2014
I feel bad for never loving Brad Haddin enough until now. I fell in with the crowd, I guess. Stopped thinking for myself. The complaints didn't seem entirely unreasonable - dropped catches that seemed somehow profound and symbolic of team-wide decline, the haphazard surrender of his wicket when patience and application were needed. He was so selfish, you see.
We were wrong, though, or maybe more wrong than right. We were approaching the problem, or what we thought was the problem, from the wrong angle. Our solution was actually the real problem. We underrated his glovework, by no means beyond reproach but certainly a beacon of technical proficiency once we'd got a proper eyeful of his replacement, Matthew Wade. Forget that Wade had spent his comparably short career manfully learning how to keep on the job; he just had to be picked. The time seemed right for change but what we saw was not the future but a mirage in the distance.
Haddin has always suffered by comparison, to the past and to the unknown future. He doesn't bat as well as Gilchrist, obviously. Barely any keeper who has walked the earth has. Thus Haddin's average (still higher than many more stylish and talented specialist batsmen), his output of game-changing hundreds, and his lack of Gilchrist's bowler-destroying, jug-eared charm handicapped him from the start. He wasn't lovable. Sometimes he didn't even seem likeable.
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