New recruits to Middlesex four decades ago: SH (middle left) and Kevan James (centre back) with seasoned pro Roland Butcher (centre)

April 2nd 1980

D-Day. I’ve had it ringed in my diary since January. My first twenty-four hours as a real, proper, professional cricketer; the day when my dream becomes reality. In ten long years of devotion to the sport, there have always been these vital questions swirling about in my mind: Where do you bowl to Viv Richards? If Michael Holding sends one down flat out, can you see it? Will I ever be on A Question of Sport? Now I am about to find out. It’s all very well clean bowling spindly teenagers and demolishing ropy club sides, but the County Championship is the real foundation of the game, each team rich in local talent and welded together by some of the greatest cricketers on earth. Somerset have Richards and Botham, Leicester David Gower, Lancashire Clive Lloyd, Gloucester Zaheer Abbas and Mike Procter, Hampshire Gordon Greenidge. Imran is at Sussex, though I’ve heard he is lately spending more time in Sloane Square. The prospect of squaring up to all these fabulous players is simultaneously exciting and terrifying. That just about sums up what I felt today – exhilaration and apprehension bound together like hot beaches and cold sea. Experienced at once they give a pleasant sensation.

Both states would have been heightened if the first day had been spent in practice nets on the Lord’s Nursery in front of a gallery of eagle-eyed committeemen. However, we’re at Barclays Bank Indoor Leisure Centre, Ealing – not the most auspicious place to begin a famous sporting career. It’s an anonymous sprawl of 1960s buildings, five minutes up the road from my parents’ house, resembling a secondary modern school in Telford. I turned up early for once, despite Dad insisting I shaved before leaving ‘See if you can look at least vaguely presentable,’ he said, wearing his tatty old gardening sweater.

There was little sign of life when I arrived with an M&S bag full of training gear, only a decrepit old cleaner polishing the floor. After twenty minutes I was starting to get agitated. Had I got the date wrong, or the time or the place? I detected voices above me and a faint echo of four-letter words. Upstairs, sitting at formica tables in the canteen, were a collection of casually dressed men dunking custard creams into cups of tea. Several were smoking, and one was addressing the others in strident tones. From the pudding-basin haircut and pointy nose I recognised him at once: the England spin bowler John Emburey. ‘… I tell you, it was fackin’ pongo,’ he was saying. He was describing the previous winter’s Test match against India in Bombay, which Ian Botham had won almost singlehandedly, scoring a century and taking 12 wickets. ‘The Indians kept calling him “Iron Bottom” but he wasn’t – not after all that fackin’ curry,’ Emburey continued, not noticing me.

Not seeing anyone I knew, I leaned my plastic kit bag against a pillar. It toppled over, spewing out its contents, just as Mike Gatting came over. ‘Always chaos when you quick bowlers are around,’ he said, smirking. ‘Howdoyoudo, old chap. I’m Gatt.’ ‘God,’ I blurted out, gasping from the vice-like grip of his handshake, ‘you look much bigger on TV.’ ‘Oh, cheeky as well. You’ll do for us, then,’ he said. ‘Come and meet the Ripper.’

They seemed to use a different language from the one club cricketers speak, but I guessed this was rhyming slang for skipper. Sure enough, Gatt took me over to meet the éminence grise, Mike Brearley. His handshake was much limper, his beard slightly unkempt and his beige corduroys a couple of inches too short. But he was very polite and introduced me to the other players before suggesting everyone got changed.

The atmosphere was pregnant with reluctance. We meandered downstairs to three rather cramped changing rooms. The group subdivided itself according to seniority. Most important players and coach in the first room, rank and file in the second, new boys in the third. I was quite relieved to be temporarily surrounded by people I knew. The other first-timers in our room were all team-mates from the Middlesex Young Cricketers: Richard Ellis, a dashing young batsman from Haileybury, wiry left-handed all-rounder Kevan James, and Kenyan-born spinner Rajesh Maru.

Already we had nicknames, the newcomer’s rite of entry into any exclusive group of sportsmen. You aren’t allowed in without one. Some are imaginative (‘Creepy’ Crawley, ‘Legga’ Lamb), some traditional (‘Dusty’ Miller, ‘Smudger’ Smith); others come from a middle name (John ‘Ernie’ Emburey, Phillipe ‘Henri’ Edmonds) or highlight a personal characteristic – ‘Bluey’ Bairstow (red hair) or ‘Paddles’ Hadlee (flat feet). Those with no distinguishing feature simply get ‘y’ or ‘o’ tagged on to their surname. I was Hughesy, and James was Jamesy. Ellis, a cavalier sort with three initials, who already smoked and drank profusely, we all called Nepo because his dad was cricket and rackets pro at the school.

All of us were on one-year contracts and desperately anxious to impress. Today we were lumped together for training routines and sprint relays. Warm-ups came first. We jogged continuously round the rather scruffy gym doing stretching exercises, hopping, jumping up to head an imaginary ball, running while doing a sort of bell-pulling motion or touching the floor in mid-stride. There was no sign of the masochistic routines I’d seen rugby players performing: one-handed press-ups, 800-metre piggy-back races.

Most of the squad looked tanned and healthy, and some wore England touring sweaters and bright shorts. Left-handed batsman Graham Barlow, a qualified PE teacher, was in charge, wearing a smart blue tracksuit. Plenty of banter. ‘Come on, Ern, don’t lag,’ he cautioned Emburey. ‘Oi, Gladys, we’re cricketers, not fackin’ greyhounds,’ Emburey grumbled. ‘Greyhound? You move like a pregnant camel!’ Barlow retorted. ‘Right, stop, find a space. Ten burpees and ten squat thrusts, please.’ Complaints all round. Edmonds, the England left arm spinner, said “Are these exercises really necessary? I am an outstanding bowler you know.”

The coach, Don Bennett, forty-six and trim and sturdy as befitted an ex-footballer, was as vigorous as anyone, but two of the senior players hardly moved a muscle unless he was looking their way. There was much more enthusiasm when Barlow called out, ‘Stump hole!’ Everyone adopted the press-up position and lowered their pelvises to the floor, grunting like Neanderthals. Grunts reverted to groans when Barlow shouted, ‘Shuttles! Get in your groups.’ These were relay races that became progressively harder. We striplings were hampered by the presence of thirty-nine-year-old opening batsman Mike Smith, who wasn’t very quick.

Afterwards we played five-a-side football. In my keenness I managed to trip up the coach, who banged his knee hard against the wall bars. Jamesy helped him up. I expected to find a special high-fibre lunch, the kind of thing Alan Knott apparently eats, but the only choice was stodgy steak and kidney. My mother, vegetarian and passionate about nutrition, would have been shocked – especially when I wolfed down a large helping and tucked into various people’s leftovers, following that with two bowls of trifle.

I was aware of being stared at by the older players, but reassured by the sight of Gatting ordering extra chips and smothering them in brown sauce. Later I found a large plastic bucket placed by my hook in the changing room. I noticed Nepo grinning smugly. The rest of our two-hour meal break was aimless, though useful for stodge digestion. When we eventually returned to the gym, our numbers were depleted. Emburey had an ‘appointment’ and Phil Edmonds a ‘business engagement’. We followed the same routine as in the morning, only shorter and slightly sharper. Began to feel slightly bilious after the thirtieth squat thrust, but managed to suppress the churning feeling in my stomach.

This is an extract from my Sports Book of the Year (1997) A Lot Of Hard Yakka available here…

GOOD LUCK TO ALL PRO CRICKETERS FOR THE COUNTY SEASON. HOPE YOU’LL FOLLOW THIS REGULAR CRICVERSE BLOG

The advent of another IPL seems to bring out the inner-luddite in many people. “Can’t believe these scholars of the game – Simon Hughes and Simon Mann – are selling out to this crap!” was one comment on The Analyst YouTube channel after our IPL preview podcast (certainly the first time I have been garlanded with the description of ‘scholar’ in any context.) “Me too bro,” said another, “it is an irrelevant game that only excites Indians who now have a bit of money and can afford to go see live sport for the first time in their lives.” Ouch. Don’t be deceived by the use of the term ‘bro.’ These are probably people who also believe that children should be seen and not heard and still think spam is something you eat for lunch.

The racist overtones that tend to emerge from such digital conversations only illuminate a latent jealousy from cricket traditionalists that India has effectively ‘run off’ with a sport they ‘invented’ and contorted it into a garish circus. Yes there are aspects of the IPL that are unpalatable to diehards’ ears and eyes – it is an assault on the senses, both live and even on TV (partly because of the cringeable commentary) – but that doesn’t mean it should be categorised as ‘crap’ or ‘irrelevant.’ It is neither, and such accusations just bring out smug retorts from the host nation that “the English and Australians will continue to find it difficult to understand how and why Indians have taken a sport and elevated it to a culture with a reverence…” Harsh but probably true.

The fact is it’s a brilliantly successful product enabling thousands (players, coaches, analysts, PR people, marketeers, content creators) to make a decent living out of the game. Only 20 years ago, when Monty Panesar made his Test debut (in India, as it happens), he was only earning £12,000 from his life as a professional cricketer. In my era we earnt so little from the game we often tried to save our £7.50 daily meal allowance by going down the chippy for their 99p special.

The IPL was an opportunist’s (Lalit Modi’s) dream. It has of course created many conflicts in the game and undermined Test cricket’s diversity while at the same time improving its entertainment value and skill levels. It is the fault of cricket’s governing bodies for allowing the prosperity and viability of the domestic and international game to lapse, allowing the entrepreneurs in. The same thing happened 30 years before with Kerry Packer’s World Series Cricket. The governing bodies don’t learn, do they?!

The same correspondent who calls the IPL ‘irrelevant’ also does however have a valid point about the over-dominance of bat on ball. “I know I sound like an old fuddy duddy,” he admits, “but I find swinging through the line on motorways, with boundary ropes brought in so much .... well, I just find it so boring.” With the first two IPL matches of the 2026 edition featuring 4 scores in excess of 200 – to add to the 52 instances last season – there is an issue here. In the early stages of most IPLs while the pitches are decent and the players not exhausted by the schedule, the bowlers are just whipping boys been flogged mercilessly. The introduction of the impact player – usually a bowler substituted for another power hitter - has just made this worse.

You can’t make the grounds bigger or the bats or players less powerful, the balls heavier or the pitch shorter. But here’s one idea to redress the balance in T20 – add a fourth stump. The uninitiated might not realise that early cricket was played with just two low, thin stumps and a crossbar. The ball frequently went between the two stumps, and some batsmen – notably a John Small of Hambledon – couldn’t be dismissed, sometimes for several days. So a third stump was added in 1775, and became permanent (except when certain self-aggrandizing dukes elected to do without it when it was their turn for a bat).

Adding a fourth stump would cause a minimum of fuss, might just redress the balance between bat and ball (in the IPL) and also offers the opportunity for another camera angle to augment the 28 already in use. Bowlers are always talking about bowling ‘fourth stump’ anyway. Now they could potentially get some actual reward for it. Worth a try? Whaddyathink? Or don’t you care that one day all T20 bowlers will be replaced by AI-operated machines?

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We will continue to cover the IPL on the Analyst YouTube channel by the way as it IS proper cricket and the players take it seriously and it won’t ‘suddenly die when the billionaires lose interest.’ Infact two teams have just been sold for between $1.6 and $1.8billion, 20 times what they were originally bought for.

Sri Lanka’s Dushmantha Chameera swings one past New Zealand’s Glenn Phillips flailing bat

Swing bowling. A phenomenon as baffling to explain as it is to negotiate. Which balls swing the most, when, and most importantly, why? Swing is not the most obvious topic after three weeks of the T20 World Cup, unless we are talking the bat ‘swing’ of some of the most extraordinary ball-strikers the game has ever seen. But at last night’s gathering of the Norfolk Cricket Society someone asked me to explain how swing and reverse swing work. Several years ago I spent a day testing balls in a wind tunnel at Bath University’s aerodynamics department with a scientist who has conducted many experiments on the topic. Here’s what I discovered.

There are many myths and fallacies about swing. The wind tunnel immediately dispelled a principal one: that moist, humid air will encourage swing. It was bone dry inside the machine, yet some balls swung prodigiously. Humidity is largely irrelevant, but cloud cover is a big influence. Swing, as every bowler knows, is a very fragile art conditional on various factors.

One is the stability of the air directly above the pitch (to a height of say 3 metres). The sun shining on the surface generates heat and convection currents rise disrupting that stability. That is why the ball swings considerably less on a sunny day. Cloud cover blocks the sun, preventing the ground from heating up, there is no convection and therefore the stable air is likely to be more conducive to swing.

The wind tunnel at Bath University

Professor Gary Lock, the head of mechanical engineering at Bath, gives lectures on the aerodynamics of a cricket ball, and under his guidance we experimented with a variety of balls of different colours in varying states. Each ball was inserted onto a thin metal arm in the wind tunnel which was connected to a number of sensors measuring the deviations of the ball as the wind was blown towards it (simulating a ball being bowled fast through the air.) The speed was regularly cranked up to 100mph.

One of the keys to swing is the slight tilting of the seam in the direction of intended movement. The ridge on the seam ‘trips’ the air coming towards it creating turbulence in a thin layer around the ball on the rougher side. That causes drag and the ball is ‘pulled’ off its straight line path. Keeping the other side smooth and shiny enhances this effect as the air slips past that side (known as laminar flow.)

I sucked a mint and added sugary saliva to the shiny side of a Dukes ball about 40 overs old. After polishing it swung more consistently and at higher speeds. Bowlers had been doing this for years, of course, though since Covid, putting any kind of saliva on the ball, sugary or not, is banned.

Tilting the seam in the direction of intended swing helps the process

It was noticeable that the white (and pink) Kookaburra balls swung far less than the red Dukes. This is born out by the experience of all short format batters around the globe who flay the white ball about with alacrity, much to the chagrin of their red-ball counterparts who have to handle frequent and prodigious deviation. The reason for this is explained by Dilip Jajodia, the owner of Dukes since 1987.

‘Our Dukes balls are hand stitched in Pakistan,’ he says, ‘and the stitching is done forwards and backwards so that the seam is thicker and prouder compared to Kookaburra balls which are machine-stitched in one direction only. [The seam creates a rudder on the ball which controls swing.] Also we add grease to the leather for red English balls to make them more water-resistant so you can achieve a better polish than on an Australian-made Kookaburra which doesn’t have the grease added.’ Kookaburra balls are still used for all ICC tournaments (which is why every country plays with the white Kookaburra in their domestic competitions) but interestingly Australia have changed to the red Dukes for the Sheffield Shield (their first class competition.) Pink Dukes will be used for the day-night matches in England this summer.

Now we come to the complex phenomenon of reverse swing. This happens when a ball becomes scuffed and cut on a dry, cracked pitch. In such conditions teams are good at (legally) allowing the rough side of the ball to become badly damaged while still looking after the shiny side. At some point, usually at about 40 overs, the ball held for a conventional outswinger (seam tilted to the left, shiny side on the right (as in above grpahic) starts curving the opposite way if it is bowled at high pace.

Essentially this is due to the air around the (very) rough side becoming so turbulent that it forces the movement (swing) in the other direction (see the diagram below.) We watched this happen in the wind tunnel. An older ball scuffed up on one side swung in a conventional direction until the speed was around 75mph and then it began to reverse swing. (A tennis ball with shiny tape stuck to one side does this at almost any speed.)

Professor Lock illustrated that this could happen even to a relatively new ball with a bit of appropriate doctoring (applying a few scrapes of sandpaper to one side - famously attempted by certain Australians) although again the pace has to be above 80mph. Players of the past had (illegally) experimented with sandpaper attached to the inside of their shirt cuffs for this purpose. The Australians’ attempts were much less subtle.

So to sum up, Dukes balls generally swing more because of the prouder seam and more-polishable leather, but the seam should be tilted to 15 degrees for best results (and maintained in that position as the ball flies towards the batsman – a wobbling seam will nullify swing, hence the evolution of the wobble seam delivery which is delivered to move unpredictably off the pitch rather than through the air.) Both types of ball will reverse swing with the right sort of abrasions and if bowled at high speed.

An old ragged ball damaged on both sides that had been at the bottom of my bag for years moved not a jot in the wind tunnel even at 100mph. This was reassuring as I remember how consistently it had flown straight onto (and off) the middle of a succession of top players’ bats when I was bowling. Perhaps I should have retired earlier and gone into aerodynamics. For those who want more detail on this, I attach Professor Lock’s scientific paper on swing that I slightly contributed to.

Practical Perspective Cricket Ball Swing

4.49MB ∙ PDF file

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Abishek Sharma is clean bowled by Netherland’s Aryan Dutt

India’s Abishek Sharma, the no1 ranked T20 batsman in the world – a man who has hit 88 sixes in his fledgling international career - has yet to make a run in the T20 World Cup. Opening the batting he has been dismissed for three consecutive ducks. And that against Pakistan and two ‘associate’ cricketing nations – USA and Netherlands. Inevitably, as he plays for a cricket-obsessed nation, numerous experts are all having their say, and there is a media furore asking what’s ‘wrong’ with him.

The answer, of course, is ‘nothing.’ The nature of T20 in particular – and short format cricket in general – is that preparation, calculation and reputation count for very little. It evens up the odds. It enables the associate nations to compete (as they have done in this tournament.) What makes T20 the most superficially exciting version of the game is its sheer unpredictability. The highest ranked batsmen can be dismissed first ball, the lowest ranked can hit two sixes as Afghanistan’s Noor Ahmad (T20 batting average 6.25) did to almost pull off a remarkable win against South Africa last week.

In a version of the game where six hitting is not only preferable but compulsory, luck is the most precious asset. You swing vigorously at an 85mph delivery. You have 0.4 sec to execute the shot. Some days the ball bounces ideally onto the middle of the bat, your bat-swing and transfer of weight are perfectly in sync with the arrival of the ball and it disappears 80 metres into the crowd. Other days the ball doesn’t behave as you expect and you miss it or miscue it into the hands of a fielder.

Six-hitting is actually a lottery. Watching Ben Stokes – Test cricket’s leading six-hitter - trying to whack balls fed by a bowling machine onto distant targets floating in a lake in a recent Red Bull promotion reiterated that. (There were many more mishits than clean strikes.) Obviously some are more consistent than others, but luck still plays a huge role.

The key to regular success in T20 is to remember that. T20 actually flips the famous Gary Player quote “the harder I practice the luckier I get.” At a certain level it’s not so much about physical practice (though of course that is important) but mental fortitude. To continue to believe in your method and approach, even after several failures. Trusting that today it will be ‘your day.’ Or as Zubin Bharucha, T20 batting guru and coach to stars like Yashasvi Jaiswal, Sanju Samson and the teenage prodigy Vaibhav Sooryvanshi, says, “Players must grow comfortable with the oscillation between failure and cashing in. For Abhishek Sharma, it would be far more productive not to equate success by bashing ball after ball in his net sessions, but instead to focus on walking out with the same fearless, almost incredulous mindset that has brought him recent success.”

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Watching the absurdly dramatic T20 World Cup match between South Africa and Afghanistan briefly reminded me of one of the lowest points in my career. Afghanistan, nine down, required 13 from the final over bowled by Kagiso Rabada to steal a vital victory in the group of death (as New Zealand are in it too.) Two tailenders had little chance of achieving their objective against the fast bowler with one of the finest strike rates in Test history.

But first ball Rabada oversteps. Now in most cricket no-balls are an unforced error, an unavoidable mistake (been there done that, too many times.) In white ball cricket where overstepping incurs a free hit, they are a criminal offence. It is arguable whether this is a fair penalty against the poor, beleaguered bowlers – it is bad enough in this game of intimidatory batting knowing that a (no) ball can’t take a wicket and has to be bowled again, without knowing that your follow up delivery affords a batter a free swing of the willow.

Rabada oversteps in the final over versus Afghanistan

But the bowlers know the rules. So the question is, why do some – like Rabada - push the line so hard that they risk overstepping? He has always been one of those bowlers who usually only has a heel behind the line. A fractional over stride in his run-up or a slightly increased delivery jump and he goes over the line. The possible increase in pace from releasing the ball 2cm closer to the batter is so negligible it makes no difference. The adrenaline of a tight finish is more likely to make you overstep. Why take such a risk when you have so much to lose? It doesn’t make sense.

Not only did Rabada no-ball once but twice in that final over – and frustrated as he obviously was – he only has himself to blame. Surely a player of his immense experience and intelligence could train himself to land further back and give himself a safety margin?

After years of suffering from a no-ball habit myself, I know what the problem is. You have grooved your run-up and action for years. It’s embedded in your DNA. Where you take off and land at the crease is cemented in your subconscious, in practice and in matches. It’s extremely hard to make even minor adjustments. Landing a few inches further back on the crease feels like yards. Its disorientating. Almost an out of body experience. The batter seems suddenly so far away.

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It was no disgrace for England U/19s to lose their World Cup final to India by 100 runs. They were confronted not just by a left-handed prodigy but a sporting phenomenon. Vaibhav Sooryavanshi added a brutal 175 – from just 80 balls and including 15 sixes – to his remarkable list of achievements in his 14 years and 315 days on this planet. Not only is he the youngest-ever signing in the IPL (aged just 13 when he was bought by Rajasthan Royals) but he then hit the first ball he received in the tournament – from Test bowler Shardul Thakar – for six in a debut innings of 34 from 20 balls. Not long afterwards he became the youngest-ever IPL centurion (aged 14 years 32 days), getting to three figures in just 35 balls, the second fastest hundred in IPL history. And he hasn’t even started shaving.

Has any teenage athlete ever exploded onto the scene with such dramatic impact? Well, Pele was 17 when he scored twice in the 1958 World Cup final. Serena Williams was also 17 when she won the US Open. But at 14? The only comparable example is 14 year old Russian gymnast Nadia Comaneci scoring the first perfect 10 in Olympic history in the 1976 Olympics. That performance required precision, balance and artistry but not necessarily strength. The remarkable aspects about Sooryavanshi’s batting are its colossal power and unerring eye. He doesn’t just clear the boundary when he hits a six, but often the spectators as well. It wasn’t just man against boys in the U/19 World Cup final, it was a young giant in the land of Lilliput.

One of Sooryavanshi’s 15 sixes v England U/19. Note the full follow-through.

Could Sooryavanshi be greater than The Little Master – Sachin Tendulkar – who first played Test cricket aged 16? Way too early to say. Sooriyavanshi hasn’t even yet appeared for the senior India team in any format. His balls have barely dropped. But at this point the one crucial thing the two have in common – apart from precocious ability - is a self-confident certainty about their batting. They know they have a special ability to hit the ball more or less where they please – based on a hundred thousand repetitions – and they know the bowlers know.

I played against the 19 year old Tendulkar for Durham when he was Yorkshire’s first overseas pro in 1992. Even though I somehow dismissed him for 21 in the first innings (with probably the best delivery I had ever bowled!) my overriding memory of that experience was the inevitability of his run-making. His impregnable defence, his meticulous footwork, his precise reading of length and line, his balance and beautiful flow and seemingly effortless power of stroke all combined to produce an immaculate and chanceless hundred on a tricky pitch when he came in a second time. It was a privilege to be on the wrong end of it.

Sooryavanshi is a completely different player. Where Tendulkar’s role model was Sunil Gavaskar – a relatively conventional, orthodox batsman – Sooryavanshi’s idols are Brian Lara and Yuvraj Singh (both of whom had virtually retired by the time he was born – the power of digital..) You can see elements of both of them in his play. Lara’s extravagant backlift and follow-through, and Yuvraj’s immense power and range.

For a real lowdown on what makes Sooryavanshi so special, it’s best to talk to his regular coach, former first class player and long term IPL batting guru, Zubin Bharucha. “The key to his batting is Time and Space,” Bharucha, the man mainly responsible for the development of India’s other special batting star, Yashasvi Jaiswal, says. “He has basically played day in day out since he was about 9 and hit thousands of balls. Following Brian Lara as his idol from an early age he somehow intuitively followed his bat swing. This is his absolute kryptonite. His head falls naturally into the ball as it did for greats like Viv, Sachin and Sunny.

“Also the bat always remains outside the line of the ball (what I call the Space) - defined as how far away from the body the elbows work [see images above and below.] Again this was something that Sachin did, especially early in his career, as well as players like AB De Villiers, Viv, Sunny and Steve Smith.”

“’Time’” is a function created from a long and high back-lift à la Lara. But that also means he needs to hit thousands of balls because the timing and rhythm can often go awry (more things need syncing with the rest of the body given how deep and long it is). He often talks about losing this rhythm and feels like he can’t hit a ball. This is normal for batters with that long bat swing.

“There is also a hunger to do something special in the game, the ability to work long hours at solving his issues (he doesn’t need any pushing), the diligence to call before every match and ask how he can adapt. Last night was no different where the plan was to continue to be positive but knowing they will be bowling yorkers and bouncers mainly (to slow him down), and hence, to try and use the space behind the keeper more than just trying to pull every ball.”

“He still has a long way to go in eliminating errors and knowing where to score runs, we have been working hard on square on the offside. The difference between him and say Sachin at this stage would be that Sachin had a fantastic defensive technique to go with his attacking game. Vaibhav is still learning this defensive bit.”

When you can score a hundred off 35 balls, who needs a defence?!

I’m being facetious of course. Much sterner challenges await. He is enjoying the glorious advantage of being a left hander playing (mainly) white ball cricket. The white ball doesn’t swing meaning a player like Sooryavanshi can hit through the line with abandon against predominantly right arm bowlers angling the ball across him (so the ball is either pitching outside leg or missing off.) Many of the most currently successful T20 players are left handed.

Sooryavanshi has limited red ball experience (8 first class matches) though he did make 93 for Bihar in the Ranji Trophy in November, and also hammered a 58-ball hundred in a four day game against Australia U/19. You sense that whatever format he plays, he’s not going to hang about.

The England U/19’s looked utterly shell-shocked after their Sooryavanshi battering. They aren’t the first team to suffer and they certainly won’t be the last. They can hold their heads up high after beating Australia and getting to the final and in Thomas Rew, Ben Mayes and Caleb Falconer they have three batting stars of the future. What they won’t have is an army of throwdown specialists who can feed them a thousand balls a day.

Zubin Bharucha who works closely with Jaiswal (above) and Sooryavanshi

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There are rumoured to be more embarrassing details to emerge about the England players night out before an ODI in New Zealand this winter. Regardless of whether these stories are true, the professional game needs to get a grip. It is time to transform the ‘culture’ of English cricket. Specifically, alcohol should not be consumed by any players while on England duty. This may sound harsh, but England’s recent performances in all formats (with a few exceptions) do a major disservice to the largest professional cricketing network in the world, and its generous backers and sponsors. If major changes are not implemented, those backers will be increasingly thin on the ground.

Moeen Ali was right when he stated last week that “If you’re trying to perform at the highest level, drinking is a big issue. Why would you drink alcohol before a big game?” He went on to mention that footballers are mostly teetotal these days – a fact underlined by this excellent piece in The Times by Jonathan Norcroft - as are most serious athletes. I wrote about this two weeks ago when the revelations of Harry Brook’s behaviour before that ODI first surfaced. I mentioned in that piece - Pissing the Ashes up the Wall (which incidentally is the most read and liked article on this blog) - experiencing the total abstinence practised by the England 2003 World Cup winning rugby team and the 2000 Olympics Gold medal winning rowers. In reality an alcohol-free zone should be a given for all top-class sports (with the exception perhaps of darts.) After their 2025 Euro semi-final victory over Italy, England’s lionesses celebrated by spraying each other with water rather than champagne.

Cricket has fallen seriously behind in this area. Of course drinking and cricket have almost always been synonymous. I played in many professional games where players were hungover, or sleep-deprived (including me sometimes, I’m ashamed to add) and a few where players were actually still drunk on duty after a night on the tiles - you only had to be downwind in the warm-ups to smell the alcoholic fumes coming out of their mouth. We laughed it off (guiltily), but it was a different era, when players were paid a pittance, drink companies sponsored teams and spectators and broadcasters did not cough up literally millions to watch or cover the game.

Declaring England cricket teams alcohol-free zones is not just to avoid the situations the players have recently found themselves in – being filmed out drinking and forced to lie about night-time ‘incidents’ - but also, surprise, surprise, based on scientific evidence. I have received a comprehensive study of the effect of alcohol on athletic performance by a former member of the ECB’s coaching staff. The findings – drawn from numerous academic research projects and scientific journals – makes pretty damning reading (see table below.)

To summarise, consumption of a certain amount of alcohol – let’s say three beers – the night before a match will have a significantly detrimental effect on reaction time, balance, strength, accuracy, sprinting speed, jumping ability and aerobic capacity. It will also affect muscle recovery, protein and sugar absorption, and accelerate dehydration leading to cramp. It also inhibits sleep, increases acute injury risk and slows connective tissue repair. And you put on weight. In short it’s a no-no.

Sorry, the excuse that players are away from home for a long time and therefore should be allowed the occasional knees up, doesn’t wash. They owe it to their loyal and faithful fans and their exasperated (or impotent) bosses to get off the sauce. Mitch Starc went teetotal during the Ashes. He was the leading wicket-taker and man of the series. It is time English cricket went dry. Save the alcohol for the after-party. It cannot afford not to. The consequences if they don’t are obvious. Apart from anything else it might help captains remember things a bit more clearly and not resort to covering up night-time shenanigans.

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Matthew Syed casts aspersions in the Times today on former footballers turned pundits sniping at their old team – in this case the beleaguered Manchester United. “Incessant criticism of present side from likes of Roy Keane, Gary Neville, Paul Scholes and Wayne Rooney is undignified” is the subhead to the piece, with the little rider “..especially considering how they fared running a club.”

The proliferation of podcasts (which all those aforementioned players present) has exacerbated the tendency for ex-players to jump on a critical bandwagon when their former team hits hard times. The sad fact is that these podcasts seem to get more traction (ie clicks and downloads) when the hosts are negative in their analysis of a team or a player. Have a look for instance at the top 10 sports podcasts from today’s charts. Several of them feature the ex-players mentioned above. Their podcast sponsors will be delighted.

We are in the era of the cynical sound-bite. I must admit to an awareness (and occasional exploitation) of this, of which I am not proud. Witness, for instance, our most listened to podcast during the disastrous Ashes - Back to the Drawing Board (50,000 downloads) and the most read piece on this blog – Pissing the Ashes up the Wall. Is it the Tall Poppy Syndrome thing? People like to hear about misfortune or failure of celebrities or stars because it makes them feel better about their lives? Of course it’s what the Daily Mail, in particular, has made its millions out of.

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Key takeaways

• Finn is optimistic about England’s chances in the upcoming Ashes series.

• The psychological pressure of playing in Australia is significant for cricketers.

• Sledging is a common part of the Ashes experience, adding to the competitive atmosphere.

• The current England team has a different mindset compared to previous tours.

• Preparation and familiarity with conditions are crucial for success in the Ashes.

• Harry Brook is seen as a key player for England in the series.

• The importance of mental resilience in cricket cannot be overstated.

• Finn’s book, ‘The Ashes Files’, offers a personal perspective on his experiences.

• The media plays a significant role in shaping the narrative around the Ashes.

• Winning a Test series is one of the most rewarding experiences for a cricketer.

We have Isabelle Mann, Simon’s 23 year old daughter, to thank for this topic. “Last weekend I was chatting over dinner about Shane Warne’” Simon said. “Isabelle said ‘is Shane Warne Australia’s greatest ever cricketer?’ I said, ‘well, he’s probably in the top two with someone called Donald Bradman.’ Then she said, ‘Ok, who is England’s greatest ever Test cricketer?’ And I said, ‘that’s a great question - I’m not actually sure who England’s greatest Test cricketer is.’ And it’s true - you could talk about who’s England’s greatest batter, who’s England’s greatest bowler, fast bowler, spin bowler etc. But who is our greatest (men’s) Test cricketer?”

Mann set Chat GPT to work. “I gave it various prompts and I did it twice. First time I entered criteria like match impact and home and away stats and the quality of the opposition. Second time I asked it to select England’s 10 greatest cricketers based on popular opinion as well. There was some divergence in the outcomes.”

Then he suggested I do my top 10, using whatever criteria I decided. So basically this article and Analyst podcast is the world’s superest duperest computer powered by gazillions of gigawatts versus little ol me and my incomplete data sets and erratic memory and contrary nature. And yet you know what? The lists are not wildly different although between us we have generated two no1s. It’s the first-time cricket has ever been compared to boxing. We need a Greatest England Test Cricketer unification bout.

So, ladies and gentlemen, the judges have cast their votes and the results are in. The three lists contain a total of 7 batters, 4 pace bowlers, 2 spinners and 2 all-rounders. One is from the 19^th century, two from the early 1900s, three from the 1920s and 30s, two from the fifties, two from the eighties and the rest from the 2000s. Four are Yorkshireman (though Jim Laker predominantly played for Surrey.) Only one (Ben Stokes) was born overseas. He is also one of only two left handed batters (the other is Jimmy Anderson who plays his best shots right handed.) Rachael Heyhoe-Flint is fairly included in the ‘popular’ list as Simon Mann forgot to specify greatest men’s cricketers.

The man who tops the list in both Chat GPT results – Jack Hobbs – is only equal fifth in mine. The reason is my criteria of what makes a ‘great cricketer.’ I argue, probably unconvincingly, that unless your skill in one discipline is so far ahead of your peers that you don’t need to provide anything else – eg Don Bradman – then other contributions are important. Hobbs weight of runs is indisputable, but he only took one Test wicket (at a cost of 165) and held just 17 catches.

My choice of Derek Underwood at no10 is an outlier. I wanted to include a spinner, and considered Jim Laker, and his Test average is better. But Underwood was as miserly on a flat pitch as he was deadly on a drying one and spun the ball away from the right hander – deemed more valuable in the modern game. Plus he was an early hero of mine who I actually got to face – albeit briefly - so that swayed it. His inclusion is at the expense of Alastair Cook purely because I wanted a spinner in my top 10.

Sydney Barnes (above) was also a notable omission because I felt he was unduly flattered by playing seven Tests against an undeniably feeble South African side against whom he took 83 wickets at 9.85. He fell out with authority and played only 27 Tests after which he carried on snaring hundreds of victims at ridiculously low cost in Minor county cricket into his late middle age. I know Geoff Boycott (and the late Richie Benaud) would find this oversight unforgiveable. (Benaud told me he watched Barnes open the opposition bowling against the 1953 Australians on their first tour match. Barnes had just turned 80.)

My top 5 – Hobbs and Anderson equal fifth (because they offer little with ball and bat respectively) Root fourth (insatiable batsman but only part-time bowler and unsuccessful captain) and Grace and Botham - equal second - could all justifiably be number one using different metrics. Lies, damned lies and statistics…

Simon Hughes’s evaluation using 5 metrics - maximum 10 points for each

So my justification for making Ben Stokes no1 is – first, he is one of only three cricketers who have made 7000 Test runs and taken at least 200 Test wickets – the others are Garfield Sobers and Jacques Kallis, so elite company; second, his fielding ability is up there with anyone who has ever lived; third, his match awareness and appetite for the fight know no bounds and fourth his captaincy skills are exceptional (brilliant tactician and outstanding man-management and the highest win ratio – 59.5% - of anyone who has captained England more than 15 times.)

Stokes is not the best batter or the best bowler but he is the ultimate cricketer. He has jeopardised or damaged virtually every muscle in his body in England’s cause. The only thing you can’t break is his desire. He suffuses the team with energy and optimism, fortifying the parts other peers cannot reach. That, for me, makes him a worthy no1. The only thing he has not done is held aloft the Ashes urn as an England captain. Until now…

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Freddie Flintoff and Kyle Hogg on tour with the Field of Dreams team in India

Whether or not you’ve watched Freddie Flintoff’s Field of Dreams on the BBC, you can’t dispute the blunt truths within it, that cricket, for all its wholesome image and impressive values, is still an unaffordable – therefore unattainable - pastime for the majority of the British population. Kyle Hogg, former Lancashire quick bowler who is very much Freddie’s partner on this show, made some candid observations on the latest Analyst podcast.

“If you asked every single kid who’d never been involved in cricket what they think of it, the first thing they said was, it’s a posh sport, you need lots of money to play it. Cricket does so many amazing things, but the one thing is, it’s the cost of it. You see all these schemes, see all this money being thrown at everything, but you open a cricket bag up, it costs a thousand pounds. Who has a thousand pounds spare to kit your son or daughter out to go and play cricket?”

Hogg speaks with authority as he has been an integral part of three series of Field of Dreams where he and Freddie delve deep into largely rundown parts of north-west England to persuade a selection of neglected or wayward kids to have a go at cricket. The initial, often stubborn, resistance from most of their targets makes you wonder why they, or any of us, bother.

There are a few reasons. Of course, it makes for good TV peering into the nether regions of the UK, witnessing a couple of fat thirty-something blokes playing snooker in a Newton Heath working men’s club sounding completely stumped as to who Freddie was and what he’d done. An audience of 4 million has been tuning in to these shows. But for Flintoff and Hogg it is also about trying to give back what the game has given them.

Flintoff often mentions his formative years in a completely non-cricketing environment in Preston, and Hogg had the same experience. “I was brought up in Oldham. Our school was rugby league and if you didn’t play rugby league, you were the outcast. But luckily the school PE teacher loved cricket. They never really had a cricket team there before, but there was a few of us who liked the game and he said ok we’ll have a team.” (It was of course of some relevance that his father, Willie Hogg, played for Lancashire and that his grandfather was the legendary West Indian spinner Sonny Ramadhin who was born in a poor village in Trinidad and rose to prominence with his ability to spin the ball both ways.)

Cricket has given Hogg 30 years of experiences and friendships that no other sport could ever have done. Freddie has come back to cricket after his years in mainstream TV because he’s realised the same. It’s a vocation. You become almost evangelical about it. I could never have been to the places I’ve been, or met the people I have, if I hadn’t played cricket. We just want everyone to be part of our special world. It refreshes the parts of you that other pursuits usually cannot reach. The key thing cricket perhaps offers above other sports is time. Together.

“I’m thinking back to when we started this show and met the lads,” Hogg adds. “Some were claiming off benefits, some didn’t want to go to college, some didn’t want to go to school. Now they’re actually figuring themselves out. They’ve got jobs, they’re going to college. Josh [above], who came to India with us, who really struggled with the food, with the heat, he’s kept on a fitness regime, he’s got a girlfriend, he’s just been on holiday with her. What it really shows is that you don’t have to be cricketer. Give somebody confidence and show that you’re behind them and that helps them flourish.”

I noticed this in microcosm when I did a cricket coaching session a few years ago in Feltham Young Offenders Institute. A group of 18 year olds who had been incarcerated for a variety of offences including arson, theft, GBH and drug dealing, were totally engaged in the drills and soft-ball match we set up, supporting and encouraging each other, trying their best and accepting their errors. Afterwards many thanked us profusely for the session. Several approached me and asked if there were any jobs going in cricket for after they were released. One I heard has recently become a groundsman.

None of this, of course, solves the problem of cricket’s accessibility and cost. To that end, I like the sound of a new six-a-side format – called C6 - developed by tech whiz Raj Chityal and Paul Burnham, founder of the Barmy Army. Its USP is six specific scoring zones (delineated by posts like corner flags) worth ten. It has already been exhibited at various festivals and an indoor, soft-ball version will trialled in schools in due course. More information on this in due course. Meantime check out their website www.c6cricket.com

WATCH THE LATEST ANALYST INSIDE CRICKET PODCAST

Mervyn King, Baron King of Lothbury, to use his official title, has completed his year as president of MCC. He is unequivocably proud of it, especially for two reasons. One was to supervise the sale of 49% of the London Spirit franchise for an astonishing £147m. The other was to see two sold-out Test matches at Lord’s go to the full five days, two lively one day internationals and all the Hundred matches including the final. “Watching all of these was a tremendous privilege,” he says on the latest Analyst Inside Cricket podcast, “and it was all rounded off wonderfully when I was allowed to ring the bell before play started at the One Day International against South Africa in September.”

As the former Governor of the Bank of England, King must be the most eminent financial expert ever to take the helm at Lord’s – you feel the heft of his business knowledge as you sit in his study surrounded by biographies of World Leaders, Chancellors and Economists. English cricket is fortunate to have a man of his monetary acumen in its midst. He must have been of huge benefit to MCC as they negotiated the London Spirit sale with some of the richest, most influential entrepreneurs in the world – men like Sundar Pichai, chief executive of Google, and Satya Nadella the CEO of Microsoft.

“Well, I was one of the people they had heard of,” King admits, blushing slightly. “They’d heard of others through cricket, but I think more important was the group of people at MCC involved in this. Mark Nicholas as chairman, Rob Lawson as chief executive, Rob Lynch, director of cricket, Julian Metherell, ex-Goldman Sachs, John Varley, Chris Rogers, our treasurer, this whole group of people, all very different from each other, but they complemented each other so well. They gave reassurance to all the bidders, not just the winning bidder in the end, the Tech Titans, but all the bidders.”

“I think we’re very lucky in attracting Mo Bobat to be the director of cricket. Ed Smith will succeed me and Eoin Morgan will be the chair of the cricket committee at MCC. This is an incredibly strong group of people and I’ve been in other sports - football and tennis - and I think this is the strongest group in any organisation I’ve been involved with in any sport.”

MCC, a private members club, has never run and owned a professional cricket team before. It is having to evolve at a much faster pace than many of its members would like. “The modern player is someone who is an athlete, not just a cricketer,” King continues. “They know it might be a short career. They sensibly want to maximise their earnings. To be a successful cricket team you have to be in an organisation and a competition that is going to generate earnings for the top players.”

“There are many members of MCC I know who don’t like the 100. I say to them, ‘what do you enjoy about coming to Lords?’ They will always talk about watching the best players, the top players they’ve seen. To which my response is ‘well, if you want to see the top players, you’ve got to ensure there’s a competition at Lord’s which can offer significant financial benefits to the top players. Because if you don’t do that, they won’t be here. They’ll be somewhere else.’”

“The London Spirit franchise is the opportunity. And I think it will be run with a degree of professionalism and intensity that we haven’t associated certainly with county cricket. Everything has to start from now. We will only have access to the media and TV streaming rights from 2029 onwards. We have to monetize the London franchise by turning the Lord’s ‘brand’ into a global brand.”

“Almost no successful sporting franchise today can succeed without being global. You need a global audience. You can’t afford the payments to attract the top players based solely on money derived from ticket sales at the gate. Global audience is crucial and we can build that. And after we start from a strong position because people who play cricket around the world know about Lords and they all want to play at Lords. This is the Home of Cricket.

“But we need to build a brand so that there are lots of people all over the world who somehow identify themselves with London Spirit and want to wear their shirts and want to know what’s going on and want to watch them and will pay to watch them on television or in the future probably on the internet. And we wanted to partner with people who understood both the commercial operations of a sporting franchise and also to help us build a global digital presence.”

King is 77. He is obviously not in the demographic the Hundred is aimed at. But he loves it, and not just because of its economic potency. “I’ve been completely won over by the Hundred. One of the reasons I like it is because of the atmosphere for every single ball. The competition between the batter and the bowler. Cricket is a sport which is between two individuals at any one moment and then it’s within a team framework. So the quality of the individuals matters and you see outstanding players.

“The atmosphere is completely different from a Test match or county cricket. The audience is very much dominated by families. One thing which I saw this summer, which really impressed me, was that you saw small boys and small girls together, brothers and sisters, friends, both really excited about the atmosphere, what was going on in the stadium with a women’s match and then a men’s match and the fireworks and the music. It was really exciting.

“It’s not the same as a five-day test match but you know you can enjoy both. They’re not alternatives they are compliments and the way in which T20 and the Hundred have contributed to faster scoring rates in Test matches and more exciting fielding and more innovative bowling is quite marked. These two forms of the game feed off each other and improve each other. And that’s something which not many other sports can really aspire to. Football is 90 minutes, two halves. Rugby’s the same. There’s no variety in it. Whereas cricket can offer this variety in a way that improves the quality of both short and long form cricket.”

Cricket, infact, has survived longer than all other major sports because of its variety and adaptability. And the King of cricket has, with his stewardship of the sale of London Spirit as well as his chairmanship of Chance to Shine (now in its 20^th year having introduced the game to more than seven million children) ensured its survival – maybe even prosperity – for a good while longer.

The full Mervyn King interview is in the THE ANALYST INSIDE CRICKET PODCAST