Best of SPIN: The making of Andy Flower

First published in the May 2009 issue of SPIN magazine

Interviews with Grant Flower (brother), Henry Olonga (Zimbabwe team-mate), Ronnie Irani (Essex skipper) and Roger Newman (mid-90s Oxford University director of cricket who gave Flower his first job in coaching) by George Dobell

Grant Flower We started out together in the back garden. I’m two-and-a-half years younger and spent a fair amount of those years bowling at him. There was never much coaching, so we had to fend for ourselves. Our dad was a big influence, though. He instilled the idea that we had to work hard, though it pretty much only extended to the sports field. We were always much more orientated towards sports than school work.

Roger Newman I got to know him when he played for West Bromwich Dartmouth in the Birmingham League in the mid-’90s. He was overseas player and I was chairman of cricket. There was an incident that struck me very early on. After getting himself out for about 70 to a poor shot, he went into the dressing room, looked into the mirror for some time and then spat into it. He was so disgusted with himself.

GF Andy was training to be an accountant. It wasn’t until he after he had spent a year playing in the Birmingham League that he considered taking up cricket professionally. It was a very important time. There’s a bit of pressure on you if you’re the overseas pro; you’re expected to bat through and win games. I think it helped him mature and realise what a good player he could be. He also realised how much he enjoyed playing cricket and how many opportunities there are for professionals here.

Henry Olonga As a player, he led by example. I made my Test debut under Andy’s captaincy [in 1995]. I was only 18 and, no thanks to me, the game saw Zimbabwe win their first-ever Test, against Pakistan. Andy scored 150 in that game, as well as keeping wicket and captaining.

GF Our stand (of 239) against Pakistan – a record stand for brothers in Test cricket – is certainly the highlight of my career and I know it’s special to Andy as well. But there were times when we really struggled as a side. There was a Test against South Africa [in 2001] where Andy scored a hundred in each innings [142 and an unbeaten 199] but we still lost by nine wickets. It really doesn’t say much for the rest of us, does it?

HO His method? Hard work. There’s no magic. He’s not the most talented player in the world, but he had unbelievable levels of concentration, he was very fit and he worked harder than anyone.

Ronnie Irani I first came across Andy on England’s tour to Zimbabwe in 1996. That was the ‘we bloody murdered them’ tour. He was by far their best player and we were punished for underestimating them. We didn’t give him, or their team, enough respect and he proved us wrong.

GF England were a bit patronising towards us; particularly [coach] David Lloyd. But it did us a favour, really. We were spurred on as a group of players. It suited us to be the underdogs. Andy used that to inspire him.

RI He’s a thinking cricketer. Remember that last Test, when we should have won, but they kept bowling wide and the scores ended level? I bet that was his idea. It wasn’t against the rules at the time and it saved them the game.

RN I was director of cricket at Oxford University and asked Andy to be the coach. He was 28 by then. He had been playing Test cricket for four years but no county had come in with the offer of a contract. Andy was going to come over and play as a league pro again. But we gave him the opportunity at Oxford. Why did I pick him? Well, I thought he would know what it was like to be the underdogs. He was used to being in a team that had to punch above its weight.

GF His best innings? He scored a double-century against India in Nagpur [in 2000] when the ball was turning square. He attacked them and reversed the pressure. It was a top innings and saved the Test. As a batsman he was up there with the very best.

HO To become the No 1 rated batsman in the world is an extraordinary achievement for a guy playing in a struggling team. Those two hundreds in a Test came against a really fiery South African attack. And we still lost heavily. He was outstanding in India, too. He dominated against their spinners, on their pitches, and made himself into a superb player of spin bowling.

GF I don’t think all those hours of facing my bowling in the garden helped much. Let’s face it, it’s not as if I turn it. He just did a lot of extra work. He used to get guys to bowl at him on dry parts of the outfield so he could practise against the turning ball.

RI We – England – had no answer to his batting. He could play every sweep possible and there was nothing we could do to stop him. He was technically fantastic and an absolute rock in terms of concentration. 

RN We didn’t have the strongest Oxford side. Only Mark Wagh and James Averis went on to enjoy careers in the game. But, thanks to a good team spirit, we beat Duncan Fletcher’s Glamorgan the year that they won the championship. We were set about 275 in 57 overs and people assumed we wouldn’t go for it. But Andy said, ‘We’re going for them and we’re going to get them.’ And we did. We won by five wickets. He had such authority that everyone believed him when he spoke like that.

HO As a player he just kept improving. I remember when we used to train as a team and net sessions would end and we’d all go. But he and Grant would just keep going. He set the benchmark for professionalism.

GF He was always stubborn. Incredibly stubborn. I’m sure that helped him become such a determined batsman.

RI It was Graham Gooch’s idea to bring him to Essex [in 2002] and it was an absolute inspiration. He’s as a good an overseas player as the club has ever had – up there with Allan Border, Mark Waugh and Ken McEwan. Gooch knew that Andy was a fighter and he knew he was a winner. We saw him as an all-rounder who could bat at three or four and keep wicket while James Foster was away at university.

GF He was a very tidy ’keeper. Obviously there were times when the work load of batting, captaining and keeping wicket became hard, but it was the way he liked it. He became No 1 in the world when he was doing all three. He loved to be involved in the game and he felt that watching the ball out of the bowler’s hand helped him keep his eye in. He really missed it when Tatenda Taibu took over.

RI He’s underestimated as a wicketkeeper. He was top class. Really, he was as good as anyone I played with or against, including Jack Russell. Ask Gooch; he’d agree with me: Standing back he could catch pigeons and his work standing up to my bowling was the reason I was called back into the England team [in 2002]. Without him, I’d never have got back into international cricket.

HO With England, he’ll be particularly strong on fitness and mental toughness. As those are areas that England have been quite weak, you might see quite rapid improvement. He’ll give one or two of those England players a bit of a wake-up call.

RI Lots of overseas players work very hard on their own games. Andy probably took that to a new level, but the real difference with Andy was what he did off the pitch at Essex. He was the perfect team man, always thinking about other people and helping them with their games. He threw himself into club life and his team ethic was second to none. There was no talk of him coaching before he joined us, but he went to work with the youngsters straight away. Undoubtedly the likes of Ravi Bopara, Ali Cook, James Foster owe him a hell of a lot. 

RN He worked incredibly hard and hated losing. Once at Oxford, after we had been easily beaten by Nottinghamshire, someone suggested a game of football between the sides. We lost again, about 4-0, and then all went to have a shower with the thought of heading home. But Andy had other ideas: he sat everyone down to dissect the game of football. He was unhappy about the lack of effort from some of the guys. ‘It’s only a game,’ one of them said. ‘You don’t get it,’ Andy said. ‘It’s about winning. You must never, never accept losing.’ That was the mentality he took to his cricket.

RI He could adapt to any situation. If you wanted to someone to grind out a hundred to save a game, then he was your man. But if you needed someone to smash 100 in 70 balls, he could do that, too.

GF People will know where they stand with Andy. He was brought up to be honest and he’s not afraid of speaking his mind.

RN He had a game against the MCC coming up and wanted some extra practise. There was no-one else around so I bowled to him. After a while he asked me to bowl from 18 yards. Then 15. And then 10. He wanted to replicate the pace of professional bowlers. After an hour or so, I was exhausted. ‘How much more?’ I asked him. ‘Just another hour,’ he said. What other people thought of as hard work, he thought of as a warm-up.

RI He will insist the players are very fit, and quite rightly. But I don’t think he is as fanatical about that as some are suggesting. It’s winners he’ll want most, so he’ll be looking for guys with the right skills; not just guys who can run marathons or the 100 metres in 11 seconds.

GF We were always very keen to be the fittest we could be. We figured that, if we were fitter than the guys we played against, we’d have an advantage. And, later on, we thought we should set an example to our team-mates. We always tried to work a bit harder than the rest. He won’t take any excuses over poor fitness. How can there be any? There have all the time and all the support, in terms of physios and trainers, that anyone could need.

RI He’s old school. He lives, breathes and talks cricket. He was always happy to talk to the opposition at the end of a game and offer them any advice he could. The England boys will learn a lot just by talking to him.

HO The way he stood up to Robert Mugabe should demand the instant respect of every England cricketer. But then there’s his record as a player. That should demand instant respect from all England players, too. And he’s a nice guy. He’s the whole package. They’re lucky to have him.

RI He doesn’t suffer fools. He puts the mileage in and he expects others to do the same. The England squad will soon find out that he will not tolerate any slacking.

HO He wasn’t a naturally political person. He was drawn into the black armband protest [against President Mugabe, at the 2003 World Cup] by a combination of frustration and patriotism. If you’d asked him about politics only a few years previously, he would have said, ‘I’m a sportsman; all I want to do is play cricket.’ But it hurt him to see our country falling apart and our to see the demise of our sport. He watched the farm invasions and the economy collapsing and he felt he had to do something. He’s a true patriot.

GF It was a huge decision to stop playing for Zimbabwe and leave the country that we love. We talked about it a lot, but it was probably harder for him as he had a young family. Life isn’t ideal, though, and we were very lucky to be able to play county cricket.

RI He’s a streetwise coach, very good at identifying talent. He won’t just judge on playing ability; he’s a big believer in character. He’ll look them in the eye and decide whether they’re up to it under pressure.

HO Andy approached me with the idea for the black armband protest, because I was the senior black player.

GF I wanted to join in the black armband protest. I spoke to Andy and Henry about it, but they felt it would be more powerful if it was one white guy and one black guy. There were several white guys prepared to do it, but only one black guy. It took a lot of guts.

HO We informed the rest of the team on the morning of the game. Andy called a team meeting about an hour before the start. We had released a statement to a friend of ours in the media, Geoff Dean of The Times, so there was no going back. Vince Hogg, the chief executive of the Zimbabwe cricket board, implored us not to go ahead with it. He warned us that we were putting ourselves in danger. But we knew the risks. We knew we could be in danger and Andy knew it was the end of his international career.

GF He comes from an environment where you are brought up to speak your mind and keep things simple. His mental strength is one of his strongest characteristics. You can see it in the way he has pursued his career.

HO Maybe I was a bit naive. I knew there’d be some reaction, but the anger did take me a bit by surprise. I received some nasty emails and then was tipped off that the police were gunning for me. I left the country and I haven’t been back. It will be interesting if Andy has to go back to Zimbabwe as coach of England. He’s a British citizen now, so I presume he’ll be safe. But there’s radical element out there that is still mad at us.

RI He’ll know which coaches he wants. I’ve no idea who he plans in bring in, but he worked well with Darren Gough at Essex and I’d love to see them together again.

HO Ten years on, I’d like to think that all our team-mates would say ‘Good on you.’ They weren’t all supportive at the time – one has been very derogatory – but I think most of them would reflect on everything that has happened and at least understand why we did it. Our intentions were good.

GF I’m proud of him and I know he’ll give the job his best shot. But if it doesn’t work out, he’ll dust himself down and move on. He’s very strong mentally.

RN Andy is a loyal person and he was right behind Peter Moores. I imagine he thought a great deal about walking away from England, as he didn’t want to be seen from benefiting from Moores’ departure.

RI I just hope they allow him to make the important decisions. There are quite a lot of people involved with the management of the England team and I’m not sure what they all do. They’ve picked the right man in Andy; now they need to back him.

HO He has changed. He’s matured gracefully and he’s become a much more rounded man. He’s experienced a bit more than cricket and it’s made him wiser. I just hope they give him time. England have lost a lot of their best players in quite a short space of time and they need to rebuild. They couldn’t quite finish off the West Indies in a couple of games, but at least they got in a position to win. Andy will take them the extra mile to win those games.

GF I am slightly concerned about the press in England. They are relentless and there’s a bit of the tall poppy syndrome. But Andy can look after himself. He’ll be honest and most people respect that. He was a bit unsure whether he wanted the job ahead of the West Indies tour, but he enjoyed it very much and was very keen afterwards. I think he’d always have had some regret if he hadn’t accepted the job now.

RI He’s the right man for the job. If he had been allowed to have both hands on the reins over the winter, I’m sure England would have done much better. He’ll still only be as good as the cards he’s dealt, but I believe that, under Andy Flower, England can win the Ashes.

RN He has his work cut out as England coach. I hope he is given the authority to go with the responsibility. All I can say is that, when things are tough and everything looks hopeless in cricket, there’s no-one I’d want beside me more than Andy Flower.

HO Kevin Pietersen can look up to Andy as a coach. I’m not sure you could say that about Peter Moores, could you? You  can imagine Pietersen asking Andy to show him how to play the sweep; he wouldn’t have done that with Moores, would he? Andy is a nice guy, a decorated cricketer and a qualified coach; what more do you want? England have got themselves a good man.

18 Questions for James Tredwell

You took 8/66 to wrap up Kent’s Championship win v Glamorgan in May. Did you feel unstoppable?

I did a bit, actually. Once they started rolling, it was quite nice. I was quite lucky I had some foot-holds to bowl into and I thought, ‘If I keep landing them there, I’ll cause some trouble…’ I had five or six round the bat. It was like days of old, like the pictures you see of Derek Underwood and stuff…

Have you ever had a proper job?

I did removals for a couple of winters for a friend who ran a removal company on Romney Marsh. Lugging wardrobes around. Packing stuff up in boxes. Quite good fun. 

What’s the biggest hammering you’ve taken in Twenty20?

I suppose in the T20 final last year. Owais Shah smacked a few off me. Three sixes on the trot. Which being in the final was not ideal. What did I do? Just tried and get it as close to his toes as possible so he couldn’t get under it to hit another one, really.

Do you get heckled by the crowd in Twenty20?

Yes. I think everyone does, don’t they? The best one was a few years ago – before I lost a bit of weight – walking backwards to the boundary at Chelmsford after walking in for the previous ball, the crowd started making the HGV-reversing beep-beep-beep noise. That was quite funny. It’s pretty tough at Chelmsford, actually. It’s when you get the little eight or nine-year-olds just peering over the advertising boards and having a go at you that makes it… an experience. 

Which spinners do you look up to?

Shane Warne, Muttiah Muralitharan, Saqlain Mushtaq and when I was growing up, John Emburey. 

What’s your favourite film?

Saving Private Ryan. I’ve seen that a fair few times. Why? I find the whole war thing very interesting, the second World War more than the first probably. And Saving Private Ryan really gives you a sense of what it was like to be there, I think. I’ve just really got into watching Band of Brothers, too. About 12 hour-long episodes about a paratroop company, based on true stories. Very interesting.

Shane Warne and all that chatting to the umpire: cheating? 

Not really. I think it’s fair game play, really. He’s trying to make the most of it. It suits him he’s that sort of character, but it’s not something I’d find easy to do. Talking to the umpires and players got him a few more wickets. 

Why do spinners get better as they get older? 

You start to understand your own game more and start to work out ways of bowling and game plans. As a junior pro you tend to just run up and bowl and rely on your natural talent. When you get older, you’ve seen the batters before, so you can work them out and set up game-plans for them. So your improvement isn’t necessarily in terms of your talent rather than how you use it.

Do you appear in any cricket computer games?

A couple of my mates have said they’ve played games as me. I’m not into games so I haven’t seen myself but I’ve heard that I feature. I don’t know if they’ve got my hairstyle right, though.

Kent’s 2008 Twenty20 campaign: success or failure?

Well, it was a success because we got to the final, I guess. But to get that close and then lose can make it worse. If you lose by 100 runs, you know you deserved it – to go to the last ball feels worse. From that point on we lost our way a bit in the season. We’ve got quite a small squad so even without injuries people were getting a little bit jaded towards the end and it took its toll. I’m not saying it was just the T20 and Friends Provident finals defeats that did it, but they probably had a part to play.

What was your first car?

A Ford Fiesta B reg when I was 17. No radio, no headrests, very basic. Just a shambles. I got it for free from a family friend. Which was fine for a first car. Now I have a Ford Fusion, a ridiculously practical car. Economical. I’ve been doing a lot of work on the garden and you can flatten the seats down and make it half-truck, half-Ford Fiesta.

What was the first cricket game you went to see?

Probably my old man playing for Folkestone. I was taken to every game as soon as I was born. I never really went to watch professional sport - I was more into playing, so the first big game I saw was probably a Kent one-dayer just when I was getting involved at youth level.

If you could play for an international team apart from England, who would it be?

Australia. Because, for one thing, they’re looking for a spinner and also because they play the game in the right way: very aggressively on the field and, from my experience playing club cricket over there, they enjoy it away from the game as well.

Is Graeme Swann really a better bowler than Monty Panesar?

In my opinion… he’s a very good bowler. Monty’s not quite at the top of his game at the moment and Swanny is - so at the moment he’s probably bowling better than Monty.

You’ve opened the batting and gone in at No 9 and all points in between. What’s best?

I enjoy opening. The challenge of the new ball. But it’s also quite nice coming in at 7 or 8 and knocking the old ball around…

You were captain of England at under-19 level. Will you be captain of England again?

Well, who knows? It’d be nice wouldn’t it? I’ve done captaincy throughout my life, really, from under-11s, under-12s and I like to think I have a decent cricket brain, so who knows maybe it’s something I’ll go into at a later date.

Did you learn anything from playing with Murali at Kent?

In terms of technique he’s one of a kind, so to learn anything from his action that you can use is difficult. But talking to him about game plans and field placings was useful.

What do you remember about your Kent debut?

It was against Leicestershire at Grace Road, in 2001. I was due to be playing for England under-19s at Hove but Min Patel woke up with a stiff neck so they called me up. I had to get on a train from Brighton to London and then onto Leicester. I got there just before tea and I was allowed to bowl straight away. 

Shortly after tea, Aftab Habib, who had 150 tried to smack me out of the ground and I bowled him. In the second innings, Shahid Afridi hit me for two massive sixes then hit one so high in the air that if it had been as long as it was high would have gone out of Leicester. But luckily Andrew Symonds was under it…

• This interview first appeared in Kent Cricket, produced for Kent CCC by SPIN magazine. For details of Kent memberships and fixtures, see www.kentccc.com

Joe Denly speaks exclusively to SPIN

First game for Kent It was quite memorable, actually. It was against Oxford Univerisity. I opened with Michael Carberry and got a golden duck and two overs later they came off for rain and we never went out for three more days. Not a great start…

First 100 I was 12. It was for my school in a 20-over game, which was all we used to play. I think I got 125 not out. My dad bought me a book to record every 100 I got from there on in. Have I still got the book? It’s at home somewhere. Obviously, I haven’t kept it right up to date. I got bored of it after I got to 17 or 18 hundreds about four or five years ago.

I went to Chaucer Technology School, a local school, nothing posh. Cricket wasn’t the big thing and not a lot of people played it. So, yes, I might have been the best player but that wasn’t saying all that much because we played on a council field with an artificial mat. But I always played down at my local club Whitstable.

First club game I started out as aa seam bowler who came in at six or seven. I started in the third team when I was about 13 and made my way into the first team when I was about 15.

First first class wicket Mark Ramprakash. did I bamboozle him with my leg-spin? Not really, no: they needed about 20 to win with not long left and was trying to get on with it he ran down the wicket at me and I managed to turn one and got him stumped. I’ve got Stuart Law out as well. Why don’t I bowl more often? Ask Keysy! I’m constantly asking him if I can bowl. I bowl in the nets quite a bit. I’m waiting for my opportunity. If I keep working at it and get some opportunities, I think I could definitely put myself in that all-rounders’ bracket.

First overseas player you played with at Kent Andrew Symonds, in my first Kent T20 game. Interesting. I got on quite well with him, actually. I was very young and pretty shy, just coming into the side. My first game was a T20 game against Middlesex at Maidstone and he got stuck into me as the Australians do. He was a good laugh and great to play in the same side as him and see how he goes about his stuff. I didn’t get a chance to bat with him in that game, but he hit 120 – in a Twenty20 game – so it was pretty extraordinary.

Last Kent overseas player played with Wayne Parnell. Extraordinarily, he’s only 20… he’s full of life, good to have in the changing room and everyone’s tipping him to have a bright future. People are already comparing him to Wasim Akram.

First proper job I used to work on a Saturday evening at my local fish and chip shop in Whitstable, washing up in the kitchens. Not brilliant. I was just stuck right at the back where the freezer was, so it was absolutely freezing. I did a paper round when I was very young then I did two or three weeks working in the offices for customs, basically splitting bits of paper and sorting out files. I wouldn’t have a clue what I’d do if I didn’t have cricket.

First game in England colours England under-19s v Bangladesh in 2004, when I was about 17. I opened with Alastair Cook. I missed out on all the under-15s and under-16s. Ravi Bopara was in there, James Hildreth, all these guys who had really dominated age-group cricket and were really thought of very highly. They were tipped to he up there even from a very young age so I was pretty nervous going in. I don’t think I scored a run in the whole series - my top score was a 50 in one of the last one-day games.

First CD bought The Backstreet Boyz. Or possibly Mark Morrison.

Last CD bought Kings of Leon

Last celebrity met Tom Chaplin, the lead singer from Keane. He’s on my phone. Him and his brother are linking up business wise with Dave Fulton, who is my agent. So I suppose Keane are my agents, in a way. So that could be quite good.

This interview appeared originally in Kent Cricket, the official programme of Kent CCC, produced by SPIN magazine

West Indies knock England out of ICC World Twenty20

England are out of the ICC World Twenty20 after losing to West Indies by five wickets in a game shortened by rain.

England hit 161/6 off their 20 overs, with Ravi Bopara top-scoring with 55 from 47 balls.

But after an hour had been lost to rain, West Indies were set a target revised by Duckworth-Lewis to just 80 from nine overs.

Though England took regular wickets and had the Windies at 45/5, Shiv Chanderpaul (17*) and Ronnie Sarwan (19*), surely the most experienced sixth-wicket partnership going, saw them home.

England, omitting Dimi Mascarenhas and again refusing to include Graham Napier, again laid a solid foundation but lacked any firepower in the final overs of their innings. Remarkably, they did not hit a boundary between the 11th and the 20th overs. Stuart Broad came in at No 8 for the last two balls of the innings and hit a four and a six, but it was much too little much too late.

At the top Luke Wright (6) fell again top edging a hook from a ball that got large on him. Today, it came from Kieron Pollard.

KP hit 31, before top-edging a sweep from medium pacer Simmons. After that Shah (18), Collingwood (11) and Foster (13) all managed to score at a run a ball but there was no sense of the innings taking flight, despite a massive hooked six from Shah.

In fact, it was after that Shah six in the 11th over - he fell in the next over to a brilliant catch from Fletcher on the square leg rope – that the boundary drought began, lasting until the penultimate ball of the innings.

The first rain break, midway through the 17th over, came at a bad time for England, as they were already struggling to rebuild momentum after the dismissal of Bopara. England failed to hit a single boundary between the 11th and 20th overs and, though the Duckworth-Lewis calculations appeared to favour the chasing side, it was this lack of adventure that ultimately cost them the game.

Defending the meagre, rain-adjusted total, England bowled well and fielded tenaciously. Ryan Sidebottom yorked Chris Gayle in the second over and James Foster pulled off another brilliant stumping, of Bravo off Swann, leaving the West Indies 45/5.

With Windies needing 30 off 18 balls, a James Anderson over went for 13, thanks to some clever batting from Sarwan that brought him two successive fours - the first saw him sweeping a ball from wide of off-stump for four .

After that, the Windies were in the box seat, and soon they were though to the semi-finals. Ryan Sidebottom came to the last over trying to defend three runs; England spent an age shuffling their fielders around but it was all too late; Sarwan smashed him for a four over extra cover and England were out.

Eoin Morgan World Twenty20 blog: Netherlands & Pakistan

Subscribe to Spin magazine for 10 issues and get a free Cricketers Who’s Who 2009 worth £18.99. The latest issue features Stuart Broad, Eoin Morgan, Lalit Modi, Kevin Pietersen and a full Hawkeye-powered team-by-team guide to the T20 World Cup.

As it turned out, I think losing to Holland did England a lot of favours. The extra pressure put on us in the 48 hours before the game with Pakistan allowed us to go out and throw caution to the wind and play fearlessly. It was almost ideal. T20 cricket should be played instinctively; you should express yourself and that’s how we were against Pakistan. The crowd at the Oval was unbelievable. It was the best atmosphere I’ve been a part of. Ridiculous. The support was magnificent. The fact that we’ve bounced back so well and so quickly will give us a lot of confidence going into the Super8s.

Losing to Holland was a massive shock. I’ve been playing against them for years and I’d never seen them play like that before. It certainly came as a surprise to me. Because I’d had so much experience against the Dutch, I had been giving the guys the low-down on the Dutch batters and bowlers in the build-up to the game. Or what I thought was the low-down! But nothing prepared us for what they threw at us. They played so well. We’d been in high spirits, we felt we’d hit the ground running with the ODIs and our T20 warm-up games. So it was a massive shock for us.

I certainly didn’t have any idea that Tom de Grooth could play like that. I’ve played with and against Tom for years. We spent three months together at an ICC High Performance camp in South Africa and I’d certainly never seen him strike the ball like that. Every time we looked to peg them back, they found a boundary - either by smashing it or by getting an inside edge. It just seemed to be their day.

It’s true that there’s probably less video footage of the Associate nations, so in some ways the bigger teams are less well equipped to prepare for games against them. But, really, it’s not down to the video footage or laptop work: it’s more down to whether you’ve faced certain players before. So Associate nations do have a small advantage in that way.

It’s difficult to pin point where we went wrong. Obviously we could have done better in the field; we missed those run outs. But I don’t think we played that badly. We just needed another 10 or 15 runs.

At the time - even though we hadn’t got any partnerships going after Luke and Ravi had set things up – we were pretty happy with the total we’d set. It wasn’t a case of underestimating Holland and saying, ‘Oh, 160 is enough’, it was more backing our bowlers. The only real mistakes we made were the run out chances: we must have had the chance to hit the stumps five or six times and if we’d taken those the result might have been different.

Our ground fielding and catching was pretty good considering the conditions: it was raining for the best part of the last eight or nine overs and the ball was pretty slippy.

It was quiet in the dressing room afterwards. Everyone devastated. Shell shocked, more than anything. Really down. We spoke about it and picking ourselves up. The belief was that we could beat Pakistan.

Between games, we didn’t really talk about the prospect of going out of the tournament. We were focused on what we had to do positively: we had to beat Pakistan, we had to bring our ‘A’ game and play fearless cricket. If you’re tentative, you’re lost. It’s all about momentum, taking everything to the opposition. The whole experience geed us up. We went out on Sunday with a point to prove.

I was left out of the 11 against Pakistan. We were playing on a wicket that had been used three times already and we’d seen it turn in the first game of the day – South Africa against Scotland – so we decided to play two spinners. The balance of the side worked brilliantly. Graeme came in and bowled fantastically. Adil just nailed it, too. The Dutch game was his first, but he’s a very fast learner and always very keen to learn. He spends a lot of time with Mushtaq Ahmed. Adil’s a very skilful bowler in the way that he can change his game straight away.

We set our stall out unbelievably well, with Kev and Luke and Owais, which put a bit of a downer on the Pakistani guys. In Twenty20 runs are so valuable; so when you see catches go down or misfields, you get that feeling that the opposition aren’t quite as up for it or haven’t worked quite as hard as you have. It gives you a little mental advantage.

Luke is doing fantastically - he seems to have recaptured the same form he had a couple of years ago in county cricket. It’s great to see him doing it in international cricket now - he’s such a great talent and a lovely fella as well.

I ended up playing a decent role in the win. Owais came off after six overs of the Pakistan innings - a hamstring twinge - and I was on the field for the rest of the innings. The ball seemed to follow me around, and I picked up two catches. I’m sure Owais will be fine for Thursday.

I was just really pleased to get to play a part. I do a lot of work with the fielding coach, Richard Halsall. Because I don’t bowl, 30 to 40 per cent of my training time is spent on fielding. I work on it quite hard. I played other sports as a kid - rugby, football, gaelic football, pretty much every sport - so I’m quite well co-ordinated and it comes naturally to me.

Monday I was back at home. Chilling out. Watching the cricket on TV. Going out for dinner with friends. We’re not ‘in-camp’ at this stage. We trained pretty hard ahead of the tournament but we all went our separate ways after Sunday. Of course I watched the Ireland win over Bangladesh. Fantastic. It’s great to see them doing so well. The O’Brien brothers thrive on playing in the big competitions and the spotlight being put on them. It was the first time I’d watched Ireland in a major competition - I was playing for them until April - and it’s brilliant to see them do so well. Playing with Ireland in the [2007] World Cup was the best time in my life. But for me, it was always the dream to play for England. Everyone in Ireland knew that and they’ve all been pleased for me. I haven’t heard one begrudging word.

England are meeting up again in Nottingham on Tuesday evening for a game of football. Playing not watching. I love it. I play upfront in the mould of, say, Robbie Keane. Playing for Spurs or Ireland, that is. We’ll practice together – cricket – on Wednesday, before the game against South Africa on Thursday. We’ve a good bunch of lads; as a newcomer, you feel at home very quickly. Everybody’s been really welcoming and easy to get along with. It’s been so easy coming into the changing room, especially as we’ve (mainly) been winning.

Subscribe to Spin magazine for 10 issues and get a free Cricketers Who’s Who 2009 worth £18.99. The latest issue features Stuart Broad, Eoin Morgan, Lalit Modi, Kevin Pietersen and a full Hawkeye-powered team-by-team guide to the T20 World Cup.

Luke Wright: who wants to be a T20 millionaire?

This interview originally appeared in the September 2008 issue of SPIN. Subscribe to Spin magazine for 10 issues and get a free Cricketers Who’s Who 2009 worth £18.99. 

Luke Wright is in the right place at the right time: a player built for Twenty20 who has moved into the England team just as the game’s shortest form takes over the world. He bowls 85mph, swinging deliveries and is especially effective bowling at the death; he hits the ball out of the ground effortlessly; he dives around the field like Jonty Rhodes. He’s young, dynamic, blond, spiky-haired and highly marketable: in short, he’s everything that Twenty20 cricket is about right now. 
Wright, discarded by Leicestershire as a teenager, seems sure to be one of the cricketers most likely to profit in a big way from the revolution. The 23-year-old alerted the England selectors last year with a 45-ball century in the Twenty20 Cup and also celebrated his England call-up with a 73-ball 125 against Gloucestershire in the Pro40. He biffed a superb 38-ball half-century on ODI debut, against India at the Oval last year, and has since been promoted up the order to take on the vital role of pinch-hitter in both ODIs and T20s.

He goes into the series with South Africa with a batting strike-rate of 95.89 from 10 ODIs and 127.27 from eight Twenty20 internationals. He tells SPIN of his love for Twenty20 and also how he rejected a lucrative offer to play in the IPL – despite a personal invitation from Sachin Tendulkar.

You’ve gone from being a Sussex squad player to an England T20 regular over the last 12 months. How does that feel?

It’s been pretty unbelievable, really. In the domestic Twenty20 last year I was just hoping to secure my place as an opener when Matty Prior was in the England team. From there everything just seemed to go so well and I managed to play well on TV a few times. Then, when Rav [Bopara] got injured I got my opportunity.

In fact I remember saying to my Dad after Rav’s injury, ‘I just might get a chance here, mate’. My Dad said, ‘Don’t be silly son, you’ve got some work to do yet’. Then when I got my chance the whole experience was fantastic and I’m still loving every minute of it. I just want it to continue for as long as possible.

Is the T20 format especially exciting to you?
I love everything about it: the batting, the bowling and I love diving around in the field as well. I love how quick it is and how intense it is. The people in the crowd really get into it and it inspires you as players when you see how much the fans get into it. You see the families there, the kids and just seeing the smiles and enjoyment on their faces does make it a very satisfying experience, to know that you are playing some part in entertaining them and sending them home feeling happy and that they have received their money’s worth.

I love the way the players are encouraged to be innovative in Twenty20, and I’m sure we will see more reverse sweeps, switch-hitting, yorkers, slow bouncers: anything to get an advantage.

So is four-day cricket effectively off the radar for a player like you?
Not at all, I love four-day cricket as well but it is the Twenty20 that is bringing in the finances for the counties and the players. But ask any young cricketer what their dream is and I would still like to think that it is about playing Test cricket for England. That is what people remember more than anything and that is the format that has the greatest history. So four-day cricket is the best way to develop your game for that arena.
I suppose Twenty20 and one-day internationals are my own favourite forms but I am working very hard at improving in first-class cricket. But ultimately, yes, I do love the fast tempo of the shorter formats.

Is T20 and all the associated rewards the talk of the dressing-room at the moment?
Yes, I would say it is. Everyone at county level this season was desperate to do well because it was a chance to go to the Stanford event in Antigua and there was also the lure of the Champions League and obviously possible IPL deals or ICL deals. As I found out myself, everyone knows it is a chance to put yourself on the map. Just look at what happened to Graham Napier this year. It can be a massive stepping stone in your career. Everyone’s watching Twenty20: the selectors, the spectators, media all over the world – and obviously the IPL teams, as Napes discovered when he apparently had offers to go to India.

But you rejected the chance to go to the 
IPL yourself earlier this year. What happened there?
I got offered the chance to go out there for three or four weeks early in our season and was then offered another chance to go out for the semi-final stage. Ravi Bopara was in the same boat. We didn’t discuss our offers together at the time: we both wanted to focus on trying to get into the England team instead and that meant we needed to get our heads down for our counties. Remember, this season we didn’t quite know how the ECB were going to react to anybody going out to play IPL, so me and Ravi both took the safe option and stayed in England. 


Can you tell us who the IPL offers were from?
There were two or three teams that came in for me. It’s funny because one of the offers came when I was on my way to Southampton to play for England Lions. This call came when I was in the car and it was Sachin Tendulkar. I was sure that it must have been one of the Sussex lads having a laugh. But it really was Sachin.
We spoke for about five or ten minutes. He asked me how I felt about going out there to play some IPL and the basic message I told him was that I would love to play out there another time but that I was concentrating on trying to get into the England team. Chennai and another team also contacted my agent.

I wouldn’t change the decision I made for anything: England is my main concern. It sounds as though it’s going to be different next year, though: the ECB have said as long as it doesn’t interfere with England commitments they won’t mind if we spend some time there so let’s see what happens.

Do you think you impressed Tendulkar with your 50 on debut against India last year?
I hope so but I don’t know exactly. Obviously, I did okay at that time so for someone of his stature and someone who is so widely respected around the world to be ringing me was a huge honour. It was actually a surreal moment; I thought it wasn’t actually happening, but it did and it was a massive boost for me. I was on a high for quite some time after that.

This year in the Twenty20 Cup we have seen how a few journeymen or other people who might not have been recognised all that much be catapulted to stardom…
Absolutely. The biggest example would be Graham Napier. He has gone from being seen as an average county cricketer to the star of the competition and someone who is apparently attracting IPL offers. We have a young guy at Sussex called Rory Hamilton-Brown and I believe he could do the same thing as he has a lot of ability. It only takes one big performance now and you are a star across the world with so many people watching on TV and with so many media people following Twenty20.

Have you thought much about the prospect of playing in the Stanford games and becoming an instant millionaire?
It’s great that people are talking about these kinds of events and it is obviously going to be a huge occasion. I know it sounds clichéd but I really am not thinking about buying a big house or anything like that at this time as my main focus is on doing well against South Africa.

If I do well in the T20 game and the ODI series against South Africa then I should have a great chance of being there in Antigua but I can’t allow myself to get distracted by the glamour and hype before I have actually put myself on the plane.
Have we reached the time now where players are starting to think less about Test cricket and are more focused on making their name and money from Twenty20?
I think definitely people are thinking 
like that, especially those who maybe don’t think they have much of a chance of it in Test cricket. For me, Test cricket is the ultimate goal but I wouldn’t be surprised 
if we saw a lot of new names come through in Twenty20: people who think that is 
their strength.

Are you looking forward to the Twenty20 World Cup in England next year?
Yes, because we didn’t perform that well in South Africa last year. We definitely underachieved given the players we had there, so I am positive the lads will be 
very determined to put on a better show
 in our own country, where I’m sure it will be fantastic spectacle. We showed in New Zealand this year that we are improving in that format and that we can beat good teams, so it’s up to us to kick on. Again, players might be seeing this event as 
the perfect platform with huge audiences to say, “I can go and play in the IPL, or 
ICL”. It is a great chance to impress and earn a contract.

You have the same management company as Andrew Flintoff. Do you spend much time together?
Fred has been brilliant with me actually, and I spoke to him a lot while he was doing his rehab and when he was at Lancashire. He will always help me out if I need him or need some advice. He is always there for me and I am very thankful to have a someone like him to support me if I need it.

What is it like to be compared with Freddie?
It’s always nice to be compared to people like that but I won’t be allowing myself to get carried away by those kinds of comparisons: he is a world beater and I have to work hard and perform at the highest level to get anywhere near to what he has achieved.

What’s the best advice Freddie has given you so far?
He tells me to give myself a chance when I’m batting and to be aggressive when I am bowling. The best advice I have taken on board is to keep my head when I am batting. He reminded me that I don’t have to hit every ball out of the park from the start and that I should have a look and get myself in first because I hit the ball well enough to catch up later in my innings. I thought it was good advice and I would admit that I did try to be too aggressive too early at times last year. It’s all about getting the balance right.

What’s the toughest time you have had since playing for England?
Every time I have gone out to bat or bowl it has always been tough. But I have enjoyed learning to open the batting at England level. Game by game I am learning something new but it is still enjoyable even though it has been hard cricket. I have bowled overs at the death and those experiences have been good for me getting used to pressure situations. The more you are exposed to that environment the more confident you become at that level against the top players.

People said that Twenty20 was easier on the body for players than, say, Test cricket because it is shorter. But with the volume of Twenty20 growing and the matches so intense, will players suffer physically?
Maybe. It’s hard for me to say. I can only talk from personal experience and if I go back to the matches we played in New Zealand this year, me and Broady [Stuart Broad] were buzzing into the early hours, high on the adrenaline of the games.
I would go to his room and stay there until two or three in the morning and we would just talk about the match or the atmosphere and the tension of what we had gone through. But it would all be from enjoyment rather than worrying about the strain on the body. Twenty20 is fast and furious, it is intense, but it is as much fun to play as it is to watch.

This interview originally appeared in the September 2008 issue of SPIN. Subscribe to Spin magazine for 10 issues and get a free Cricketers Who’s Who 2009 worth £18.99. 

Eoin Morgan: how (and why) I play those amazing T20 shots

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When I started at Middlesex I was a conventional player. But I began to feel I needed other options. Limited-overs cricket is pushing the game forward and scores of 300 in 50-over cricket are par now. You can’t afford to be bogged down and scoring at a run a ball is no longer acceptable. In Twenty20, especially, you have to go at eight or nine an over at least. 

I went through a period where I was getting a bit tied down and, not being the size of someone like Graeme Hick, I was looking at other scoring opportunities rather than just hitting over the top. That’s when I started to practise these sweeps. 

I don’t think I’ve ever played out a maiden in Twenty20 cricket.

I  started playing the sweep shots about three years ago. I hadn’t played much limited-overs cricket until then and Twenty20, in particular, has given players a real spur to improve. I’ve practised the shots hard – as much as I would practise the cut or a pull – and while I started out only playing them against the slow bowlers, I’ll play them against anyone now. I play them in the championship, too.
I think I played the reverse sweep twice during my last championship hundred, against Leicestershire.

You do have to premeditate the strokes, but the idea is that they feel like second nature. I don’t feel any need to play them just because people know I can. That’s the whole point of practice; it becomes instinctive. I still hit most of my sixes over mid-wicket with flicks off the seamers.

It’s great to put some pressure on the bowler; to make them change their plans; to get them wondering where they’re going to bowl next. Sometimes I’ll play the shot just to get them to change the field.

Often they’ll move mid-wicket to protect them from the reverse sweep and that opens up a gap. I like it when you can hear the fielding side becoming irritated. Bowlers hate the sweeps, too: they just don’t know where to bowl. It does make it very hard to set a field. 

“The grip for the reverse-reverse sweep  is the same as the grip for hurling, which is a sport I played when I was young, so I feel very comfortable with it. I read recently that the physical skills you learn between the ages of nine and 12 are hugely influential and that’s the period
I was playing hurling. I think it gave me strong and flexible wrists and an instinctive sense that the ball could be hit in different areas.”

A full T20 masterclass from Eoin, complete with sequence photography, appears in the July issue of SPIN, in shops June 5. Eoin will be blogging for Spin throughout the ICC World T20.

Subscribe to Spin magazine for 10 issues and get a free Cricketers Who’s Who 2009 worth £18.99. The latest issue features Stuart Broad, Eoin Morgan, Lalit Modi, Kevin Pietersen and a full Hawkeye-powered team-by-team guide to the T20 World Cup. 

Six things the ICC World T20 is going to tell us

Have England finally got it right?

Let’s look at the stats: England have played 15 Twenty20 internationals. They’ve won six and lost nine. They’ve used 43 different players. (Forty-three!) Including eight wicket-keepers. At the first ICC World T20 in 2007, England beat Zimbabwe and lost to everyone else. Do the stats lie? Not really. Twenty20 is yet another game that England has given to the world before stepping aside and letting them give us a
good whacking. For a major team in any major sport to be sixth favourites – as England are – for a World Cup in their own country is pretty much unprecedented. 

At least for this tournament England, belatedly, have the squad that the media and fans (and common sense) demanded. There’s four more new Twenty20 names in the squad for this tournament: Rob Key, James Foster, Graham Napier and Eoin Morgan, all of whom played at Twenty20 finals day last year. The crazy days of picking Alastair Cook and not Dimitri Mascarenhas have been quietly forgotten by the selectors. 

There is an optimism about England’s latest fresh start but the thinking behind it is not so different to taking the T20 specialists Chris Schofield, James Kirtley and Darren Maddy to South Africa in 2007: there, England were not outclassed, but the new-look side lacked the experience as a team to deliver the killer punch when required. 

Many players regard the secret of T20 as having a settled team, with each player familiar with his roles England, despite seeming to have settled, finally, on the 15 best individual players, don’t have that luxury.  Then again if Graham Napier hits 152 off 58 balls in every game, maybe they won’t need it.

Has the IPL put India miles ahead of everyone else?

Kevin Pietersen thinks so. “India have taken the game to a new level,” he said in March. “Their scores in New Zealand were ridiculous. Compare that to how we played in New Zealand last year and they are on a different plane. We have got to do something.” 

True enough: the theory is that the six-weeks-a-year of all-star T20 in the IPL has hot-housed India’s Twenty20 and one-day skills even since they took the inaugural title in 2007. India’s fielding, traditionally hopeless, has picked up; their bowling has more variety than ever, with at least four fast bowlers competing for spots alongside Harbhajan’s lethal mid-innings mystery spin. But it’s the batting that makes most opponents take a step back.  

Racing to a 3-0 lead in the one-dayers in New Zealand, India scored at a phenomenal 7.58 runs an over, making their 5-0 hammering of England last November look like a gentle slap on the wrist. At Christchurch, they racked up 393/5 off 50 overs; at Hamilton, they knocked off 201 to win inside 24 overs. 

The Hamilton win was fired by Virender Sehwag’s 125 off 74 balls. Was that innings more destructive than Yuvraj Singh’s 138 off 78 against England at Rajkot? Indian fans won’t care about the details: theirs is the team to beat in this tournament. Perhaps the most galling things for the opposition is that Tendulkar and Laxman, who would walk into anyone else’s side are again deemed surplus to requirements as MS Dhoni’s team defend their title.

Will it be as big a party as the first tournament in South Africa?

The 50-over ICC World Cup in the West Indies had gone on for seven weeks, with local supporters priced out of the stadiums and the cricket offering only sporadic peaks. Hopes of the first ICC World Twenty20 picking things up were not high: it had had a difficult birth; there was some dispute as to whether T20 should even be seen as an international format, particularly from India who had never held a domestic T20 tournament and initially declined the invitation to appear in the world event. When India did finally relent, they agreed to send what appeared to be a second-string team. 

Then the tournament kicked off. And it was brilliant: a short, sharp two weeks, it passed in a blur of full-on cricket in front of near-capacity attendances thanks to an inspired £1-a-ticket, bring-your-own-picnic policy; Zimbabwe beat Australia and made us all laugh and India’s team of youngsters and unknowns absolutely stormed it. 

The party atmosphere and the all-action cricket fed off each other and tournament director Steve Elworthy - the ex-South African fast bowler - was deemed to have saved the ICC from themselves. This was how an international tournament was meant to look and feel. The ECB snapped Elworthy up to repeat the trick in England. No pressure, then.

Why are Sri Lanka only fifth favourites?

Okay, they’re in the Group of Death: Group C – Australia, Sri Lanka and West Indies – the only one not to include a minnow. But surely Sri Lanka are the dark horses for this tournament? Lasith Malinga, fresh back from a long-term injury, was the top wicket taker at the halfway stage of the recent IPL, slinging down unplayable yorkers at 90-plus mph; and in Ajantha Mendis, the Sirils have world cricket’s next big star. Mendis’ weird, unplayable mix of medium pace off-spinners, leg spinners and his own ‘carom’ ball brought his 13 wickets at 11 runs each against India’s mighty batsmen last year and if Dhoni’s men eventually managed to half-work him out, the rest of the world has not yet had the chance. 

The Sirils are still a mighty sharp fielding unit too and there are few stronger batting line-ups than the one led by Mahela Jayawardene, Sanath Jayasuriya and Kumar Sangakkara. Oh, and then they’ve got Murali, too.

Will it be a breakthrough for women’s cricket?

For the first time, a women’s World Cup is being played at the same time as the men’s. The first week of the women’s tournament will be played in Taunton, before the semi-finals and final are played as curtain-raisers to the men’s semi-finals and final, at Trent Bridge, The Oval and Lord’s. 

While the England women’s World Cup triumph was well covered on TV in Australia – and shown on Sky in the UK - the attendance at the ground was just over 2000. Conversely, when England women played Australia as a curtain-raiser ahead of a 2008 CB Series game at the MCG, there were around 30,000 in the crowd. Months later, nine of the team were able to effectively turn professional, splitting their time between training and coaching on the Chance to shine scheme. 

Showcasing the women’s game on the highest-profile stage of the men’s game in June is another giant step for the increasingly professional and ambitious women’s game. 

Will the T20 sceptics come to the party?

The ECB’s bold new invention to revitalise cricket has taken off over the world. But Twenty20 is, even now, played against a certain background of scepticism from the self-appointed guardians of the game. (This while the MCC, the real guardians of the game, have got with the programme and are suggesting day-night floodlit Tests with pink balls). 

The players get it and the kids get it: Twenty20 is a proper game that needs a lot of nerve, clever captaincy and a particular kind of skill. Maybe two-and-a-half weeks of watching Virender Sehwag trying to lamp Mitchell Johnson out of the park will finally persuade the sceptics to join the party. 

Let’s concede one thing to the sceptics, though: the scheduling of this summer has been impossible. Then again: imagine the FA being told to stage the football World Cup during the domestic football season. There would be no clever answer. Well, that’s the task the ECB have had to take on. The West Indies series was a waste of time, but there’s simply too much event cricket to squeeze in this year: something has had to give and it would appear to be the Twenty20 Cup, the usual domestic centrepiece rushed through with little fanfare. 

The imaginative, if not practical, solution might have been to axe the Pro40 a year earlier and play the domestic T20 in the second half of the summer. But then it would have clashed with the Ashes

For the anti-climactic feel of the early T20 Cup matches to be taken as evidence that the game is up for T20, rather than merely the one-off result of unfortunate fixture congestion, seems wishful thinking on the part of T20’s opponents.

Subscribe to Spin magazine for 10 issues and get a free Cricketers Who’s Who 2009 worth £18.99. the latest issue features Stuart Broad, Eoin Morgan, Lalit Modi, Kevin Pietersen and a full Hawkeye-powered team-by-team guide to the T20 world Cup. A must for all proper cricket fans

Sir Allen Stanford and West Indies cricket - an inside story

First published in the April issue of SPIN magazine. Subscribe today and get a free copy of the Cricketers’ Who’s Who worth £18.99 (UK readers only)

A key member of the coaching team that helped the Stanford Superstars beat England in last November’s $20m challenge match has been speaking to SPIN about Sir Allen Stanford’s ill-fated involvement with West Indies cricket.

Julien Fountain, the side’s English fielding coach, believes the Stanford project had great benefits for West Indies cricket – and that the intensive training camp ahead of the 2020 for 20 challenge has had a lasting impact on the West Indies side, which went on to beat England in the recent Test series.

“The players realised what they are capable of if they do the right thing. They gained an awful lot from that environment and I think they’ve held on to some of the feelings. It was a very positive experience. 

“The West Indies had had a pretty poor run of form leading up to the series, where we’d always come out second best. I think that everybody realised that this was an opportunity that we could really put West Indian cricket on the map and say, ‘We’re not quite as bad as you think we are’.”

The Stanford side won by ten wickets, having bowled out England for 99. “We did get the impression that the whole week – the whole competition – meant a bit more to us. We’d been through so much preparation, that I think everybody in our squad really realised that ‘Now is the time’.

“I think it showed that West Indies cricket can be successful, given the right environment, back-up and organisation. 

“Afterwards, everybody was just stoked that we won the $20m game and that we didn’t just beat England, we absolutely crushed them. Winning the money didn’t register for a little while. It was just that we’d achieved what we wanted to achieve.”

The ECB’s dealings with Stanford came to an end in February after the US Securities and Exchange Commission accused the billionaire financier of “a massive fraud.”

Stanford sponsored inter-island Twenty20 tournaments in the Caribbean in 2006 and 2008 and, briefly, funded four professional island teams. His deal with the ECB was to have seen the annual $1m-a-man challenge match with England, plus an early season T20 quadrangular in England and a Stanford team in the new-look Twenty20 Cup. Stanford, who denies any wrongdoing, has now had his assets seized by the US authorities, as he stands accused of an $8bn fraud.

Fountain, now working with the Ireland team in their World Cup qualifying campaign in South Africa, could not confirm how
many of the players had re-invested their $1m prize money with Stanford organisation – but thinks that at least one player had. While some players and coaches were written cheques, others had accounts opened for them in the Stanford International Bank, with the money deposited there. 

“Sir Allen made a big thing about his financial advisers talking to us to ensure that the money was invested wisely,” says Fountain.  “They were very keen for us to keep the money in house. The advice was very plausible. And you’re sat there in this luxurious bank: huge, beautiful tables, big flat screen TVs, big glass, chrome and leather. They said, ‘Listen, the market is really volatile and you don’t really want to invest in stocks and shares now. If you want a simple, safe thing, just open these accounts, we’ll pay you the interest and it’s as safe as houses’. They were offering rates of nearly eight per cent interest in these ‘safe’ accounts, even though most other banks were offering three per cent.

“One of the younger guys said, ‘I live with my mum. I’ve got no need to touch it, I’m just going to live off the interest, thanks very much’. Interest on a million dollars would have paid him about $80-90k a year. A huge annual wage for doing nothing, so he had no reason to touch it.”

Did the players have any inkling that there was anything untoward about the Stanford organisation? “Not at all. We found out when everybody else found out.” says Fountain. “It was such a positive event, so it’s such a shame it has gone horribly wrong. If all of his rhetoric had come to fruition, it would have provided so many great opportunities for young West Indian cricketers – and been such a shot in the arm for West Indies cricket.”

The Superstars squad featured several young semi-pro players who had never played for West Indies. The Stanford project gave players from smaller islands a shop window to progress their career and it’s the affect of the scandal on this aspect that Fountain finds most disappointing.

“Some of the new and young Stanford players tried to get county contracts this winter but got absolutely no feedback. You can understand that: one game doesn’t make a career. But they played out of their socks; hopefully that would have kicked on with more games for Stanford. It may have taken 12 months or 18 months but all the kids who were no-names would have risen to the top and got opportunities. Sadly now, you’re back to the old days which is unless you get selected for the West Indies, nobody wants to know you.”

First published in the April issue of SPIN magazine. Subscribe todayand get a free copy of the Cricketers’ Who’s Who worth £18.99 (UK readers only)

Five-wicket Onions puts England on top

England have not won a Test in four years at Lord’s. Their defeat in the opening game of the 2005 Ashes has been followed by six consecutive draws, thanks to a series of high-scoring games mixed with poor weather.

But with three days to play in the first Test the West Indies are, following on, still 186 runs behind, thanks to a sensational debut from Graham Onions.

The weather forecast is gloomy - but surely not so gloomy as to stop England kicking off the Ashes summer on a high.

Graham Onions’ debut didn’t start too well: he was out first ball when England batted and his first four overs went for 22. But then it all turned round for the Durham fast bowler, as he took the last five Windies wickets in 27 balls including three in one over and four in seven balls.

Those seven balls saw the end of Lendl Simmons, Jerome Taylor, Denesh Ramdin and Sulieman Benn and took West Indies from being down (117/5) to being very nearly all out (128/9).

Earlier, Graeme Swann had picked up the key wicket of Shiv Chanderpual, caught at slip first ball.

With West Indies all out for 152 in reply’s to England’s 377 (Bopara 143, Swann 63*), they followed on 225 runs behind and soon lost Chris Gayle (0) and Ronnie Sarwan (1), both to Anderson.

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