Best of SPIN: Behind the Scenes with Surrey

First published in the August 2008 issue of SPIN

Since Surrey last won a trophy in 2003, 12 other counties have won domestic silverware. While Surrey were getting relegated and promoted, Sussex were dominating the county championship. But that hasn’t stopped Surrey being English cricket’s biggest club. They sell more tickets, have more supporters, make more money and have bigger plans than anyone. They pay their players more, too, with a reported average salary of £60,000. 

The current team has a lot to live up to. In the 1950s, Surrey won the county championship seven years in a row. More recently, they dominated English cricket in the late ’80s and early ’90s, taking three championship titles in four years, and, in Alec Stewart, Mark Butcher and Graham Thorpe, provided the backbone of the England batting. When Twenty20 started in 2003, Surrey, led by Adam Hollioake, stormed the first competition.

Off the field, the club has big ambitions too: they redeveloped the Vauxhall End of the ground with the £25 million new OCS Stand in time for the 2005 Ashes clincher. As the summer of 2008 started, the club was locked in a battle of wits with planning authorities to get permission to extend the ground’s capacity further, to 25,000 – and build a hotel, just behind the pavilion.

As the gaffer of a club whose ambition already resembles that of an IPL franchise rather than one of the smaller counties, Surrey chief executive Paul Sheldon was keen to make his voice heard as the ECB threw the whole future of the English game into the melting pot. He’d even been quoted as saying that a Twenty20 franchise system might be a worth looking at; a system where the Brit Oval was no longer the home to Surrey but to Vodafone London, or near offer. 

In a way, Surrey are the least typical of the counties. Then again, in June 2008, they face exactly the same issues as everyone else: they need to know how they will fit into the post-IPL world; they need to get bums on seats and keep them coming back; and they need to get their team in shape quick-smart if they want a share of that £2.5m Champions League pot.   

Two Surrey players – Mark Ramprakash and Ali Brown – turned down offers from the IPL earlier this summer, but the feeling is that next year more players will be invited to dip their toe into the Indian money pool. Which makes the Twenty20 Cup just like one big Pop Idol. Western Australia’s Shaun Marsh, uncapped, became an IPL star for the King’s XI Punjab. Why not Surrey’s James Benning? The bookies have him as favourite to hit the fastest fifty in the tournament. “If the IPL came up, I would go there in a heartbeat,” he tells SPIN, grinning after a net session, two days before the tournament kicks off. “By the looks of things it’s become a bit more available with the scheduling. It seems to have changed a lot of guys’ lives even in a short space of time.”

But not everyone’s got an eye on India. Take Usman Afzaal: not only has he hit three championship tons since his move from Nottingham in the winter; not only is he turning himself into an all-rounder by working on his spin bowling;
but he’s also dating a Bollywood actress and is some kind of face on the sub-continent. 

Yet Afzaal is keener to talk up his England chances than his IPL or Champions League chances. “I don’t know whether I’m dumb,” he says. “I don’t even know what’s happening with the Champions League and all that – I just go and play my cricket. I know the boys here just concentrate on doing well for Surrey.”

In truth, no-one knows exactly what the Champions League means for the counties. Since 15 of them – including Surrey –  feature ‘rebel’ ICL players, they face being banned from it even if they do qualify by reaching the final of the Twenty20 Cup. But with Stanford and the IPL around too, what’s clear as a general concept is that the teams and individuals who do well in the Twenty20 Cup could make some serious money as a result.  

Because of the prize available, Twenty20 is all about winning, says coach Alan Butcher. It’s not a place to bring on youngsters. The No 1 aim – the only aim – is to win the trophy and keep moving towards that possible £2.5m. Hence Chris Lewis.  

“In the normal domestic competition, I’d prefer to promote some of our younger players,” says Butcher. “I keep hearing that sides who sign Kolpak players are helping to develop their young players – but it’s difficult to see how a young player in the second team 150 miles away from where the Kolpak player is will be helped greatly by that. But Twenty20 is slightly different.”

The ex-Surrey and England all-rounder Lewis, who is 40, had not played a professional game for eight years before Butcher signed him specifically for T20 at the start of the season. A maverick signing, no? 

“Well, yes it is,” laughs Butcher at the first T20 practice session. “But it’s a maverick competition, isn’t it? We’d lost a couple of all-rounders that we hadn’t been able to replace for one reason or another. I’ve already counted the cost of Azhar Mahmood leaving because he’s twice been man of the match for Kent when they’ve beaten us… So it was a question of trying to find the right type of cricketer to play Twenty20. We know its a gamble, but he’s really up for it; he bowled very well this morning.”

In 2003, Surrey won the first-ever Twenty20 Cup, but it’s been reverse-gear all the way since. Last year, they failed to make it out of the group. “The thing we’ve fallen down on in one-day cricket over the last two or three years is getting into a good position where we can qualify for quarter-finals,” says Butcher. “It does appear to be about pressure situations. We haven’t come to terms with how to finish games off.

“Over the time I’ve been in the game, there’s been lots of sides on the edge of winning things and then, when they break through, they just keep on winning. You almost have to learn how to do it. In the ’70s, Essex  were always there or thereabouts, then when they finally won something, it happened again and again. Then mid-’90s Warwickshire and late-’90s Surrey and, more recently, Sussex. Obviously, this side gets compared with that ’90s side a lot but people forget that side was together a long time before everything gelled into a trophy-winning side. It didn’t happen overnight.”

The big frustration for Butcher must be that, in fact, the core of that last generation of Surrey champions is still around: five of the current squad were in the team that won the first T20 Cup, in 2003; two more played in the final in 2004. From Mark Ramprakash and Ali Brown at the top to Jimmy Ormond and Saqlain Mushtaq and wicket-keeper Jonathan Batty, the side certainly doesn’t lack experience. But how exactly does a core of high-profile, proven winners build a new XI around themselves? 

People say Surrey are the Manchester United of cricket but for coach Alan Butcher, the template would seem to be less Sir Alex Ferguson and more Harry Redknapp. His new signings for 2008 have included Saqlain Mushtaq (31), Chris Lewis (40) and Usman Afzaal (30), which makes Surrey one of the oldest sides around, certainly in Twenty20.

“Well, it depends on what XI we put out,” says Butcher. “But we can have a side that’s a little bit older than you might like – although some of the older players are not bad fielders by any means. But there is definitely a need to get some younger players in, and we have done that: Chris Jordan has come in. Matt Spriegel. Jade Dernbach has just got a career-best six-for and has bowled well all season. So there are people who are starting to force their way in to the side.”

Butcher is Surrey through and through. He first came to the Oval for a trial in April 1970 and has spent the bulk of the last four decades here. He took over the first team in 2006, after eight years as second-team coach. He calls his son, Mark, ‘The captain’ when he talks about him. He says they talk about tactics and selection but, ultimately, it’s Mark who has the final say. Butcher jnr is the one who, usually, has to take the side on the pitch, although a knee injury makes him a doubt for the T20. The first ten spots of any Surrey side are easily picked, says Butcher snr. Any debate is usually over the 11th.

Among those competing for the last place in the T20 side is Stuart Meaker. The fastest bowler in England, measured at 96mph at the ECB Academy, has yet to bowl in a competitive game for Surrey. Butcher tells SPIN that Meaker is unlikely to play in the tournament. “He’s played very little one-day cricket,” he says. “We had him in the XI for the last Friends Provident game – a dead game – and we thought we’d have a look at him but it was washed out and he didn’t get a chance to bowl. 

“My opinion is that he’s perhaps had a bit too much coverage coming back from the England set-up. We’re trying to play it all down and help him progress at his natural pace. But he has potential, there’s no doubt about that.”

Surrey have a roster of 18 and
19-year-olds on the fringe of the team but only one who is certain to be in the starting XI: Chris Jordan.
“I haven’t played Twenty20 for Surrey, but I’ve played it for my school,” says the 19-year-old fast-bowling all-rounder, who learned his cricket in Barbados before coming to Dulwich College as a 17-year-old.  

“I find it exciting to be playing with lots of experienced players. I like to come and know that as a youngster, I’m playing with past Test players such as Ramprakash, Butcher – even Usman Afzaal has played Test cricket. I’m just honoured to play with players like them, being the youngest player. I pick their brains.”

The team have three practice sessions in the week between their final championship game and the start of the T20. They start with an open-wicket session on the Friday: the top of the nets are open so players can hit the ball out of the ground. The bowlers practice yorkers and slower balls. In the indoor school, there are three bowling machines: as each ball is fired, the batsman is told which part of the ground he must hit it to. “It’s about thinking quickly and getting your feet in the right position,” says Butcher snr.

On Saturday, they’ll come back and concentrate on fielding, with a final session on Monday ahead of the game on Wednesday.

 

Playing like millionaires

11.06.08 Essex, Brit Oval

For all the preamble and talk of tactics and nuance, when it comes to it, Twenty20 games can be over in a blink. Surrey’s collapse to 10/3 takes ten minutes; Chris Lewis’s first innings back takes six minutes; Essex, fired by five sixes from captain Mark Pettini, take just an hour to chase down Surrey’s meagre 126.

Little goes right for the home side. Batters play head-in-the-air do-or-die shots early in their innings; and while Surrey omit Saqlain Mushtaq, Danish Kaneria (3/22) is the pick of the visitors’ bowlers. Essex skipper Mark Pettini sends Lewis’s first ball out of the ground. The 40-year-old goes for 29 off his two overs. 

There are just three high points: 1) Afzaal’s hitting that threatens to put them back into the game after a dreadful start; 2) a brilliant direct hit from Jordan from the boundary and, just possibly, 3) part-time spinner Matt Spriegel sending down three tidy overs for nine runs when the game is all but over.

Or maybe four: tonight’s crowd is over 17,000. Which, for the first of five home games in little over a fortnight, suggests that the public appetite for T20 remains undimmed.

Afterwards, the players have a long chat in the dressing room. Alan Butcher and stand-in skip Mark Ramprakash talk first before others pitch in. The team is disappointed – they feel they prepared well and the performance let them down – but it’s talking not shouting. “Standing up and shouting and screaming doesn’t get you anywhere,” says Alan Butcher later. “It’s all about talking it through.”

Discussions concluded, Spriegel gets the tube to King’s Cross and catches the train to Loughborough. He is midway through his final exams and is commuting between Loughborough and Kennington. He has an exam at nine tomorrow morning, after which he will travel straight back down to prepare for Friday’s game with Kent.

 

“it doesn’t concern me.
 it excites me.”

13.06.08 Kent, Brit Oval

The day after the Essex game Surrey unveil Abdul Razzaq as their new overseas signing. He flies in to Heathrow in the afternoon and Alan Butcher picks him up at the airport. Now banned from playing for Pakistan, Razzaq is a gun for hire. He opened both the batting and bowling for ICL champions Hyderabad Heroes. On his day he is a lethal performer; two years ago he blasted 36 from the last two overs against England’s Saj Mahmood and Jon Lewis. Though seemingly another veteran recruit – he has played 231 ODIs – Razzaq is still only 28. Butcher talks of his “dynamism”. 

Razzaq’s signing seems like an instant response to Wednesday’s limp showing but it has been in the pipeline for a while. Though some supporters are disappointed that Aussie all-rounder Matt Nicholson will have to make way for Razzaq, the plan was always to rest him during this fortnight. Now, he’s gone off to the west country, looking for a beach. 

Contact with Razzaq was made via the agent that he shares with Saqlain Mushtaq. Initially, Shahid Afridi was also in the mix when a T20 signing was discussed – his leg-spin might have been a useful replacement for the injured Chris Schofield – but Pakistan commitments would have delayed Afridi’s arrival.  

The man who sorted out the arrival of Surrey’s newest recruit is one of the club’s stalwarts: back in the 1980s, Steve Howes and his brother became kind of famous throughout cricket. They were the fastest scoreboard operators in the game. Now, in his 28th year with the club, Howes might be the most important man at the club. They
call him the director of cricket operations. He makes sure Surrey
get 11 men on the park.

“The Razzaq signing has been in the works for about three weeks,” he says. “It seems like a long time but when you need a work permit and a visa… it takes longer dealing with Pakistan rather than, say, Australia. I was on the verge of flying to Lahore myself, thinking that was the only sure way of getting him here on time. We did our best, but he’s still missed the first game, which was a shame.”

Were Surrey concerned that Razzaq’s ICL links would disqualify the team from competing in the Champions League? “Not really,” says Alan Butcher. “We’ve already got Saqlain, who we’re ready to play if it’s right – we just want to concentrate on doing as well as we can in the tournament and then see what the legal people sort out after that. I think it’s the same for all bar the three clubs that don’t have any ICL players.”

Razzaq will meet his team-mates for the first time in the dressing room ahead of the game with T20 champions Kent. Chris Lewis is there but declares himself unfit with a groin strain. He won’t be seen in the tournament again. Meanwhile Jimmy Ormond, whose dad is seriously ill, is given compassionate leave to be with him. With his bounce and surprising pace, Ormond has consistently been one of Twenty 20’s best bowlers. Now Surrey must do without him.

The game is a sell-out, with
21,000 tickets sold well in advance, netting the club £215,000 (the club’s members fill up the other 2000 seats). There are only 500 tickets left for the Middlesex game in a fortnight’s time and soon Surrey will announce that T20 sales have passed the £1m mark for the year. When Ashes tickets go on sale in October, the ticket office just inside the Hobbs Gate expects to do £6m worth of business within a week. These are figures that smaller counties can only dream about.

Whether the fans who flock to
T20 are here for the long run or whether they will move on once new opportunities for drinking in sight of grass open up is something that nobody knows. The Surrey hardcore is bigger than any other county – their 10,000-strong membership is bettered only by the MCC – but many of the T20 crowd are not the cricket hardcore. Walk round the ground. Take a straw poll. Ask Martin, lining up for another beer: “I’ll occasionally watch the Test highlights on TV but I wouldn’t come to a championship game. I come to a couple of Twenty20 games a year: it makes for a good night out after work on a Friday.”

Or Steve, smoking round the back of the OCS Stand:  “I don’t support Surrey or Kent – I’m just here for the beer and the fun. This is my first live game and I like it so far. Security has been a bit strict though, stopping beer snakes, which is a bit of a shame.”

Then again, there’s Andrew: “I’m a massive cricket fan – I follow it religiously. I’m keeping up to date with England-New Zealand on my phone. I’m a Surrey fan and always have been… ”

SPIN asks Sheldon whether it concerns him that Twenty20 fills the ground with a possibly fickle new audience, who aren’t necessarily massive cricket fans. Sheldon rejects the suggestion almost violently. “Does it concern me? No – it excites me. I think it’s a whole new opportunity. New people coming to the Brit Oval once might then come to other things here. They might come to a conference or most importantly they might bring their families and get them into cricket, get them involved with Surrey: it’s very like football. They become Surrey fans and Oval people forever. And that’s terribly important.”

The club’s ambition has built a £6m conferencing and hospitality business from virtually nothing in the three years since the OCS Stand was opened. The fact that you can see the City of London from the stand is no hindrance. The City’s financial institutions are key takers for the half-ton of hospitality curry served up during T20. But the real twist is in getting 600 conference delegates through the door on November days when the players are off getting some winter sun. That’s worth £3m of turnover in itself to Surrey; Derbyshire’s total turnover from all activities last year was £2.7m. 

But for all the talk of franchise cricket and lucrative conference facilities, this is still a club; even, at only a slight stretch, a family. Although the operation has grown around them, many Surrey staff have been here for decades: Daphne, who sells scorecards from the booth just inside the Hobbs Gate, started 22 years ago. (She says it’s the best job in the world for a cricket fan, even though she is facing away from the play most of the time.) Brian, now the PA announcer, started out operating the scoreboard 27 years ago; Steve Howes started on the groundstaff in 1980; Keith Booth, the scorer, started in the job 13 years ago. Bowling coach Geoff Arnold played his first second XI game for the club here in August 1961. And, for all the big plans, Surrey is a members club, with the chief executive reporting to a committee, elected by the members. The profits are ploughed back into the cricket. 

Somewhere in between the notion of the club as family and the trappings of a multi-million pound business lies Surrey’s education and community work. The OCS stand, as well as being, in the lingo, a profit centre, also has a classroom and learning centre. Surrey send coaches into half of Lambeth’s primary schools and every school in the borough is invited to have an open day at the Brit Oval – funded by club sponsors Brit Insurance – with some local children coming on ten-week courses that mix cricket coaching with education.

“We pick guys who aren’t doing so well at school,” says George Foster, Surrey’s Community Manager. “It’s not the high achievers: it’s the ones who aren’t that well motivated and we get 20 hours with them. In a high-impact kind of environment we hope that gets them back to learning better. We’ve been running it now for about 18 months. Every Premiership football club does it and something like 12 of the county cricket clubs.”

Beyond the Brit Oval, there is only one cricket ground in the whole borough and the club is currently looking to develop after-school clubs to provide more opportunities.

The Prince of Wales is at the Surrey-Kent game today – he tosses the coin to get things started, after meeting the players. He is the club’s landlord and the Prince’s Trust – his charity – funds another community scheme at the club. “It’s for the unemployed, ex-offenders, ex-drug users,” says Foster. “The idea is to get them on a course or into a job or at least to have an idea of what they want to do.”

Out on the park, against the reigning T20 champions, Surrey once again look off the pace. Kent openers Joe Denly (on his way to three successive fifties) and Rob Key race to 80/0. When Matt Spriegel is trusted to come on as a front-line spinner in the eighth over, Denly pastes him for a brutal flat-bat six, harvesting 16 off the first four balls. Despite Scott Newman’s 48, Surrey are never in the hunt. The 13-run margin of defeat flatters them. 

If anyone is watching in Hyderabad or Mumbai, the only name they will be adding to their list from tonight’s game is Joe Denly.

 

‘the mind plays a big part’

15.06.08 Sussex, Brit Oval

16.06.08 Middlesex, Lord’s

Surrey are finding their T20 XI by default. Skipper Mark Butcher is still out with his knee injury. The way he is hobbling around behind-the-scenes suggests he may be out for a while. Lewis is now off the radar. Schofield – the country’s leading wicket-taker in last year’s tournament – had the pin taken out of his thumb a week ago, but Butcher snr does not want to risk him before he is absolutely ready. The surprise selection Spriegel’s 2/16 off four against Sussex, meanwhile, could hardly have been bettered by Saqlain; his pacy sweeping out on the boundary – running 40 yards to his left, then 40 yards to his right, diving and saving runs – certainly could not have been. 

Then there’s Abdul Razzaq. The Sunday afternoon crowd fills the Brit Oval two-thirds full for a game that is neck-and-neck until Razzaq almost casually takes 28 off one over from Robin Martin-Jenkins. Tension over. Game over. As it turns out, this is to be Surrey’s high point in the tournament.

The next morning, Mark Butcher has an operation on his knee. He is likely to be out for at least a month. 

 

On the drive to Lord’s for the team’s second game in 24 hours, coach Alan Butcher is pondering playing three spinners, after the success of Afzaal and Spriegel yesterday. “It’s certainly a possibility. It’s a televised game,” he says, apparently obliquely. “So the wicket will be fairly central, which should mean a big playing area.”

The coach says that he couldn’t have hoped for more from the bowlers or the fielding in the early games. He’s not alarmed by the
way the team’s batted, but he is disappointed. The problem has been shot selection, going for cross-batted glory shots instead of building an innings. In Twenty20 the ‘V’ is wider, he says – between extra cover and straight mid-wicket – but playing straight early in your innings is still the best option. Surely his top order, one of the most experienced in the game know that already? “Well, yes,” he concedes. “But sometimes the mind plays a big part. It’s about having the confidence to bat through overs eight to 14, knowing that you need to keep the score going but that you also need to still be there, going into the last six overs. Knowing you can cash in later.”

In the game, James Benning shows that he must have been listening in those dressing-room chats, though possibly not to the bit about cashing in. The pre-tournament favourite to hit the fastest 50, instead completes one of the slowest 50s yet seen in Twenty20, as he carries his bat through the innings: 50 not out, from 53 balls, including just two boundaries. This out-of-character knock will be his last of the tournament. He’s in pain when he comes off and the two discs bulging from his back will put him out for the foreseeable future. On Friday, he will see  a specialist in London. After that, he will have an epidural injection to help numb the pain. He may be out for the rest of the season.

With Benning batting through, Surrey do not suffer a top-order collapse at Lord’s. Partly this is because Jordan is promoted from No 9 to No 3. The 19-year-old plays a brilliant innings of aggressive but proper shots, flat-batting international bowlers past their ears, then stepping back to cut spinners for four. When he is out Surrey are 61/2 off 51 balls. An almost ideal start.But rather than collapsing early, Surrey manage to collapse in the middle. The last six overs bring 46. Both Brown and Ramprakash hole out on the boundary. Interestingly, Jordan is not given the chance to reprise his innings in the rest of the tournament, as he is demoted back to No 9.

As it happens, Saqlain is kept in reserve again tonight but his absence is possibly academic. Surrey’s total of 141 is actually close to par for Twenty20 on the big Lord’s outfield. But it’s not enough tonight.

 

“We’re trying our guts out”

18.06.08 Hampshire, Brit Oval

20.06.08 Essex, Chelmsford

Mark Ramprakash is the first player to arrive at the Brit Oval on a match day. If it’s a championship game – 11am start – he’ll be there from 8.30. For a Twenty20 – kick off: 5.30 – he’ll be in the dressing room from 2pm. He gets ready slowly, getting his kit prepared, adjusting his bat, his grips, his boots. At 3.30 he goes out onto the field to start his personal warm-ups. He likes 20 minutes of throw-downs. Players arrive at different times. Food is laid out in the players’ dining room at 3pm. Most like to eat then and take time getting ready – but 4.15 is the deadline for everyone to be ‘on deck’ for the team warm-up. 

   Against Hampshire, another top-scoring blast from Razzaq (65 off 34 balls) and, in his first game, Saqlain’s 3/23 is not enough to stave off a fourth defeat. Now, Surrey need to beat Essex to stay in the competition. But first they need to get to Chelmsford.

Surrey don’t have a team bus. Not many counties – beyond Essex, Kent and Durham – do. “The guys live all over the place,” says Steve Howes. “It would be a logistical nightmare. We’ve done it a couple of times but it was a nightmare and the players don’t like it. There was an occasion when [then-coach] Steve Rixon thought it was a good idea for team bonding. But telling a few of the players they were going by coach got him quite an ear bashing. 

“There will come a time when we have to look at the number of miles they drive, the safety aspect of it. One time they were playing a county game at Chelmsford, interrupted by  a one-day game in Hereford, about 180 miles away. They finished that at 7:30, then come all the way back to play the second day of the three day game. How do people not get killed?  The coach would be a safer option but the logistics would be very difficult, given our location.”

With the M25 clogged, Surrey only have ten players on deck by the time the official team warm-up starts. Matt Spriegel is one of them. He’s come down on the train after his last exam. Good news: he got one of his pet questions in his last exam this morning: “Passion in Sport.” Bad news: he’s not selected for tonight’s game. Ramprakash likes the control three spinners gives him, but Chelmsford is so much smaller than the Brit Oval that the risk/reward balance is tipped. 

Surrey are bowled out for 94 in front of a hostile crowd. The fifth defeat in six games effectively puts them out of the tournament. “It
was quite a sombre feeling in the dressing room,” says keeper Jonathan Batty later. “We’d done so much talking beforehand. So we were just saying, ‘We know we’re all trying our guts out, possibly trying a bit too hard still, not relaxing enough’. But we gave it a red hot go. The batsmen got out playing their shots. It’s not like we choked. We had Essex four or five down quite early but then we let them off the hook by not hitting our straps with the ball. We could have bowled them out for a lot less.”

Playing at Chelmsford brings out the new football-style atmosphere of T20. The sell-out crowds create a great atmosphere but, says Batty, when you’re out in the middle it sometimes feels as if it’s all on the verge of boiling over. “One of our boys was on the boundary at Chelmsford being abused by a group of 20 blokes, screaming at him. There’s a steward standing next to him not doing anything. It’s getting like football – except in football, the players are moving around. In cricket, you might be in the same place for 40 minutes or an hour. At some point it’s going to get to you. I can see a point where a player will be over the boards and into the crowd, swinging punches. Nothing’s happened this year but it’s getting closer. 

“We played Kent at Beckenham last year: to get back to the pavilion you had to push your way through the Kent spectators: you’ve got boys there with their pints of beer, they’re not getting out your way. They don’t like you because you play for Surrey. Fair enough. But you’re gonna knock someone’s beer over, someone’s going to react and it could all kick off. It’s getting closer all the time.”

 

The sussex  team song

22.06.08 Sussex, Hove.

23.06.08 Hampshire, Rose Bowl

At the end of a tournament that features eight defeats, Matthew Spriegel will look back on the aftermath of the game against Sussex as the campaign’s nadir. “We were having our team talk afterwards and we got interrupted by their team song. That was quite a lowpoint, having to listen to that. The silence in our dressing room after that game, well, it just spoke volumes about how everyone was feeling.”  

Surrey are officially out, yet all their remaining opponents – Hampshire, Kent, Middlesex – are still in with a chance of the £2.5m jackpot. 

For the game at the Rose Bowl, Saqlain is rested. “There’s a lot of cricket at the back end of the season and we didn’t want to risk him getting injured in a game that didn’t really mean that much to us,” says Mark Butcher, who is in the TV gantry for the evening, but has not, apparently, read Sky’s guidelines on hyperbole.

During the Surrey innings, captain Ramprakash blows up at a Sky cameraman who he believes is invading his space. Butcher snr has to come and restrain him. When Surrey field, Ramprakash has terse words for umpire Peter Hartley after Surrey are no-balled for not having enough close catchers during a Powerplay over. Ramprakash had the same problem last week against Middlesex at Lord’s.

Later, Ramprakash still seems put out that Hartley has “applied the letter of the law”. Speaking to his old team-mate Ian Ward on Sky, he  also suggests that the younger batters down the order have to go through a learning process in T20. That the experienced batters have again left the team five- or six-down coming into the final overs is a subject not broached by Ward, possibly wisely.

Hampshire, full of Kolpaks and fired by Ian Harvey, win with 11 balls to spare. Razzaq is dismissed by a fantastic catch by Michael Carberry on the boundary, leaping to turn a six into a wicket. When Hampshire bat, Surrey’s Scott Newman is offered a similar chance on the rope by Harvey but contrives to jump inside the ball and fall flat on his backside as the ball goes for four.

Tuesday is a free day. With ten games in 16 days, Surrey don’t have any formal training or net sessions during the T20 but, despite the apparent fixture congestion, fitness coach Matt Church sees this as a good time for players to get their fitness right for the remainder of
the county season. When the championship starts again, players are on the park for five or six days straight, with the days off used for pure rest. Twenty20 fortnight is a good period to do strength and conditioning work. On match-days, Church organises workouts for players not involved in games; on the days between games, players go into the Brit Oval for massages or gym work. A white-board on the gym wall traces players’ best efforts in 3k runs, 1.5k rows and bench-pressing.

 

Emotions running high

25.06.08 Kent, Canterbury

Wednesday and the Brit Oval is packed again, for the NatWest Series game between England and New Zealand: 23,000 in the ground, 800 temporary catering staff, 80,000 pints of beer sold. While Paul Sheldon may be concerned that Surrey’s on-field slip-ups might eventually affect the crowds, England’s lamentable ODI  record certainly does not seem to stop the punters coming back.

Sheldon would like to have even more in the ground, but the proposed ground redevelopment – 2,000 extra seats, luxury hotel – has been turned down at the planning stage: the Health and Safety Executive are concerned that the iconic gasometers that overlook the ground present a safety issue (the three local schools and the existing 23,000 seats notwithstanding). Surrey are appealing. “We’re confused and disappointed and we now face an enquiry that could cost us £500,000 in legal fees,” says Sheldon. “Our developer faces building inflation. It’s a blow.”

The appeal will be heard in October but the original plan – to open the new-look ground for the 2009 Ashes – is scuppered.

Surrey, meanwhile, register their second win of the tournament. With Ramprakash dropping himself down to No 8, Razzaq again top scores. But 166/7 looks below par, especially when Azhar Mahmood gets going in the chase. Edged out of Surrey mid-season last year, Azhar still has good friends in the Surrey team. But as the game reaches boiling point, he and young fast bowler Jade Dernbach square up after a ball that Mahmood perceives as a beamer.

“Emotions were running high,” says Spriegel later. “But they shook hands at the end of the game. They’re fine now. It shows that it means a lot to us. Even though we’re out of the competition we don’t just want to turn up and accept defeat. We want to go and win games and that showed in the performance we gave.”

Kent need 32 off three overs when Spriegel returns to bowl to Azhar. Razzaq comes over and advises the youngster on how to bowl to his erstwhile Pakistan team-mate. The over only goes for seven. Surrey are in the driving seat. With 14 needed off the last over, Razzaq himself tempts Mahmood into one big shot too many and he holes out on the boundary, a running catch above his head by Chris Murtagh, who has been brought in partly to bolster the team’s fielding. Four balls later, 17-year-old substitute Jason Roy settles it with another brilliant catch to remove Ryan McLaren.

With a slightly younger line-up, Surrey’s fielding is suddenly inspirational and match-winning. “It’s a young man’s game,” says keeper Jonathan Batty. “Young guys tend to be more dynamic in the field, throw themselves around more. Every run you save can make a massive difference, more so than in four-day cricket where you’ve got longer to catch up. We’ve looked a better fielding side later on when some of the youngsters have played but still some of our better fielders have been the older players. But fielding probably hasn’t been one of our stronger points.”

 

ALICE IN WONDERLAND 

27.06.08 Middlesex, Brit Oval.

Surrey are already out and Middlesex are through to the quarter-finals. There’s nothing on the game but there’s local rivalry and another sell-out crowd and a Surrey team trying to get used to winning again.

Abdul Razzaq turns up at 4pm, 90 minutes before kick-off, family in tow. His children are dressed as Alice in Wonderland and Spiderman. Ali Brown turns up at the same time, on his own. As it turns out, he will be ‘rested’ tonight. On a one-year contract, it might just mean that the most destructive English one-day player of his generation has played his last T20. In England, at least.

The music during the match is controlled by John Taylor, leaning over a mixing desk in a gazebo at the Pavilion End. He has 26 tunes on the 26 letter keys on the keyboard. Some for fours, some for sixes, some for wickets and one for the umpires.

Yet again, Taylor doesn’t have to press his fours and sixes buttons too often during the Surrey innings. There are just twelve fours and three sixes as the Brown Caps make it to 139/8. If Jonathan Batty and Chris Schofield hadn’t pummelled the 17th over for 27,  everyone would have been going home a lot earlier. Middlesex get the runs with nine balls to spare.

The fielding of the younger Surrey team again produces some champagne moments. Right in front of the pavilion, Chris Murtagh takes a stunning, running catch to remove Tyron Henderson. With the youngsters Murtagh, Spriegel and Roy patrolling the boundaries, Surrey look a different team. The 17-year-old Roy – making his debut – becomes an instant hit with the crowd at the Vauxhall End and ends up getting cheered to the rafters every time he touches the ball. Roy looks bemused. Spriegel starts trying to whip up the crowd on his side.

Surrey have used 20 players over the last 18 days and have never really got their first XI on the field. Any talk of Indian leagues and Champions Leagues was concluded a week ago at Chelmsford. Where did it turn against them? The team know they let themselves down with their batting. Everyone SPIN talks to mentions small but important turning-points: Kent’s Darren Stevens surviving a plumb lbw shout and going on to make 31 off 18 at the Brit Oval in the second game is a particular favourite. 

Yet, off the field, the club is in better shape than pretty much all their county rivals. After the weekend, tickets for the Brit Oval’s ICC World T20 games will go on sale and sell out almost immediately. Next week, chief exec Paul Sheldon will present his vision of the future of English cricket – possibly involving franchises, possibly involving an extended T20 tournament – to the ECB, hoping that the new domestic calendar is not, as reports suggest, a fait accompli. 

Before all that, in 48 hours’ time, on Sunday morning, the team – and Daphne the scorecard seller, Brian the PA announcer and Steve the fixer – will be back at the Brit Oval for the LV County Championship match against Kent. There’s ten games to go and Surrey still fancy their chances.

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.

Andrew Strauss: ‘We’d be mad to be satisfied by Ashes win’

Andrew Strauss puts the Ashes win in perspective in his interview in the special 2009 Review issue of SPIN, which is in shops from Friday November 27.

SPIN: You’re very feet-on-the-ground about the Ashes win, aren’t you?  There’s no triumphalism – you feel it was the start of something rather than the end-goal…

Andrew Strauss: It has to be. Look at our world ranking and look where Australia are. Anyone who thinks that we’ve achieved our life goal would be… mad. Quite frankly.

But it is the life goal of every English cricketer to win the Ashes…

Well, it is, but…

So it would be a reasonable reaction to think ‘job done’…

Exactly. It’s so important to our country: the history, the tradition, the rivalry. But in pure cricketing terms at the moment, there are bigger challenges for us. We may not have the same euphoria if we win in South Africa, but it’s a bigger challenge. I personally think it’s sad that the England team has never been the No 1 team in the world for any extended period of time, certainly in one- day cricket. And we’re going to be taking as many steps as we can to make sure we get somewhere near that.

To England fans, the 6-1 NatWest Series defeat to Australia after the Ashes may have looked similar to the 5-0 thrashing your side took against Sri Lanka in 2006. Has there been any progress at all? Did the two series feel any different to you?

Well, some of the traits were similar. At that time [2006] we had a pretty good Test side but we were experimenting with one-day players: Tim Bresnan and a couple of other players came in for that Sri Lanka series probably when they weren’t quite ready. This time, we are maybe a bit more settled as a side. But when you’re losing like that it makes you reassess what you’re doing as a side. Myself and Andy Flower have a number of areas that we feel we have to improve upon if we want to compete with some of these teams away from home as well as at home in the future. And the Australian defeat was really a catalyst for us to start putting some of those plans into action…

Writing in SPIN, Eoin Morgan said that defeat gave England a new carefree, nothing-to-lose  approach to their batting. He used the phrase ‘hell-for-leather’…

Well, there’s a number of things we’re looking to do, some of which we haven’t spoken to the players about yet, actually. But that attacking intent is a good one, away from home in particular. To live with the likes of India and some of these teams you have to play that way. But at the same time, you can’t use that as a crutch: ‘I got out but at least I played my shots’. We need to be more consistent as a batting unit, so we need to improve our skills. If we want to be more attacking and more consistent, our skills need to improve a lot. 

Andrew Strauss’ book, Testing Times – In Pursuit of the Ashes’ is published by Hodder and is in shops now. This is an extract from an interview in the Christmas issue of SPIN, also featuring Stuart Broad, Michael Vaughan, Garry Sobers, Viv Richards and the debut of Andy Caddick as our hard-hitting star columnist – as well as our now-traditional Top 50 countdown of the year.

T20 offers way out of ECB’s TV crown jewels impasse

Children need to eat fruit, right? And they need heating. And houses. And shoes. Look, I’m no expert, but it seems to me they need masses of stuff. It would probably be cheaper to be a crack addict than a parent.

Yet the government has never insisted that Tesco give away oranges to children. Or npower give away electricity. So I’m not sure why they feel they can insist that the ECB effectively give away their most valuable assets ‘in the public interest’.

On the face of it, the decision to recommend home Ashes Tests return to free-to-air TV seems like good news. As Michael Vaughan made clear in his recent autobiography, it was the chance exposure to Test cricket on TV that inspired his love of the game. Many of us can identify with such experiences and there’s little doubt that the long-term future of cricket would be best served by allowing the greatest number of people access to it.

But life isn’t that simple. By preventing the ECB from selling TV rights to the game’s most lucrative series on the open market, the government would actually be jeopardising the game’s viability.

Sound hysterical? Well, the current TV rights deal is worth £300 million to the ECB over four years and, if ECB figures are to be taken at face value, they would expect revenues to fall by up to 50 per cent under the proposed new arrangement. Even conservative estimates suggest the figure would be in excess of 20 per cent.

What would the effect? Well, consider how the counties are funded. Or how their academies and development programmes are funded. Or where the money comes from to pay for many of cricket’s coaching initiatives and grass roots projects. It is, I’m afraid, largely earned from TV rights. Most pertinently, consider what would happen to all those counties who have just borrowed millions in order to fund ground redevelopment schemes. Any threat to their income could have catastrophic consequences. Whatever the long-term benefits of free-to-air cricket, the short-term costs make it almost impossible to bear.

Maybe the effects of free-to-air cricket are somewhat overstated, anyway. After all, the Grand National is shown free-to-view: has it ever made you saddle up a horse and point it in the direction of a hedge? Have years of exposure to the Boat Race had you building a raft and taking it round the Surrey Bend? 

Besides, I’m not convinced that some of the free-to-view channels deserve a helping hand. While Channel 4’s coverage was admirable, it’s worth remembering how they interrupted coverage to bring us horse racing and how they insisted that the start time of Tests were brought forward to accommodate Hollyoaks.

The BBC hardly deserve any favours, either. They already have the advantage of a £3 billion hand-out from license-fee payers, yet have failed to even bid for cricket packages of late. 

It would be nice to think that, if the government believe it’s so important that the nation sees cricket, then the government would pay for it. But even the most ardent cricket lover would surely have to admit that there’s no way the tax-payer should be paying for such things.

But perhaps there is another solution. Not only could a free-to-view highlights Test package be utilised better, but it’s possible that Sky could show some games free-to-view, perhaps on Sky 3.

In the long-term, however, the solution might be to forget the Ashes as the cornerstone of this debate. For the best part of 20 years, there was nothing more likely to put a youngster off cricket than watching England suffer another thrashing at the hands of Australia. Besides, selecting it as cricket’s only ‘crown jewels’ event perpetuates the myth that England-Australia is the only event that matters.

Instead, I’d offer domestic Twenty20 matches to a free-to-view audience. The format might offer more mass-market appeal anyway, while the brevity of games could be more appealing to broadcasters. Ideally I’d like to see an FA Cup style knock-out (incorporating the minor counties) almost given away to a free-to-view broadcaster. The long-term effects would surely counteract the relatively minor loss in income and increase support for the county game. And we wouldn’t have to wait until 2016 for it to happen.

Free 2009 Cricketers Who’s Who when you subscribe to Spin this month!

Yup - you get a free copy of the Who’s Who - worth £18.99 RRP – when you subscribe to SPIN right now.

The Cricketers Who’s Who is celebrating its 30th year of publication and features full profiles of every player likely to play first-class cricket in England in 2009.

As well as stats and career details, the 750-page tome also features player’s off-field opinions on the game as well as things like their favourite bands (generally this is Snow Patrol, though one player, oddly, chooses 80s MORists Mike and the Mechanics.)

So Chris Silverwood is a karate black belt; Liam Plunkett’s favourite band is (still) “r’n'b”; Rob Key called his daughter Aaliyah and, as a youth, played tennis for Kent; Stuart Broad played hockey for the county as a teenager and always bowls three warm-up balls before he begins a spell…

We could go on.

Suffice to say it’s full of hard fact and soft trivia and is pretty much indispensable - particularly if you’re getting it for free.

This year, it also features an intro by England skipper Andrew Strauss (4 A-levels, BA Hons (Economics), favourite band not listed but known to be friends with Keane.)

Subscribe to the next 10 issues of Spin for £30 and you get the magazine before it’s in the shops, make a massive saving on our £3.75 cover price AND get a free Who’s Who worth £18.99.

It’s obvious!

Bresnan and Onions called up to England Test squad

Yorkshire’s Tim Bresnan and Durham ’s Graham Onions have been named in the England 12 for the first npower Test match against the West Indies which starts at Lord’s on Wednesday.

Ravi Bopara, who scored an outstanding 104 against the West Indies in Bridgetown, is chosen in the batting line up ahead of Owais Shah, who batted at No 3 in the recent series in the Caribbean.

 

Bresnan, 24, has played in five One Day Internationals for England as well as a Twenty20 against Sri Lanka at Southampton in 2006 while Onions, 26, will be making his first appearance in an England Test squad. Both Bresnan and Onions have appeared for the England Lions.

Geoff Miller, National Selector, said: ‘This is very exciting for the two young fast bowlers to be included in the squad for a Lord’s Test match and sends a message to all county players that if they put in consistently good performances they will get recognised. Both have had good starts to this season and had been close to Test match selection on a number of occasions. They have earned their place in the party.

‘The selectors also felt that Ravi Bopara deserved his chance after his performance in his single Test in the Caribbean this winter. There was a lot of competition for that batting position but Bopara now has the opportunity to stake a claim. He showed in Barbados that he has the ability to play at Test level.’

England squad for the 1st npower Test Match against West Indies - Lord’s May 6-10: A Strauss (Middlesex, captain); J Anderson (Lancashire); R Bopara (Essex); T Bresnan (Yorkshire ); S Broad (Nottinghamshire); P Collingwood (Durham); A Cook (Essex); G Onions  (Durham); M Panesar (Northamptonshire); K Pietersen (Hampshire); M Prior (Sussex); G Swann (Nottinghamshire)

 

Coach Andy Flower: the secret history

The man who gave Andy Flower his first job in coaching has been speaking exclusively to spincricket.com about the new England team director.

Roger Newman was director of cricket at Oxford University in 1997 and appointed the Zimbabwean keeper-batsman as the student side’s head coach.

Under Flower, the team went on to beat Duncan Fletcher’s Glamorgan side, months before they won the county championship. 

Flower had first got involved in coaching back in 1995 – again at Newman’s behest. “Andy was playing as a pro for West Bromwich Dartmouth in the Birmingham league - he’d been recommended to the club by his Zimbabwe team-mate Dave Houghton who had been the pro the previous year,” recalls Newman.

“At that point I was coaching Warwickshire under-17s and I asked him if he’d like to come and do some part-time work for me. He struck up an instant rapport with the lads and showed immediately the sort of qualities he shows now: his ability to relate to people and he had a very good knowledge of the game. 

“Then in 1996, I was asked to be director of cricket at Oxford and I appointed Andy as our head coach for 1997. Apart from Mark Wagh, our captain, James Averis was the only other player who went on to play professional cricket. It was a very young, inexperienced team – but I think Andy’s time with Zimbabwe had showed him that if you work together as a team and have a common goal, the sum of the parts is much stronger than the individual abilities. 

“I know Andy always refers to that win over Glamorgan as one of his happiest moments in cricket.

“Andy was 28 by the time he came to Oxford. 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 and he didn’t play in 1997.

Offering clues as to how a Flower-led England side would be organised, Newman went on. “Andy realised the importance of working as a team: it was a similar situation to Zimbabwe: we were always going to be the underdogs. That was one of the reasons I chose him. He was used to being in a team that had to punch above its weight. 

“Andy stressed to everybody the importance of the whole team pulling together both on and off the pitch. The Varsity match at Lords’ was drawn - Ed Smith played for Cambridge - but that was a fantastic moment for Andy: to walk into Lord’s as head coach of Oxford University. 

“Andy insisted on a very professional attitude, even though the team were part-timers. He said to them once that they were profesisonal cricketers who happened to be students. Everybody responded to him. At least half the team scored their maiden first-class fifties that season. We played 11 first-class matches; it was the last-ever season when university cricket was taken seriously, I think. 

“After we lost to Notts, we played them at football on the outfield – and lost 4-0. Andy gave the team a good talking to after that. People were going, ‘Come on, it’s only football.’ Andy said: ‘It’s not about football, it’s about winning.’

“Against Durham, we were facing defeat and our last man, James Bull, had a broken hand. He’d told the others he couldn’t bat but Andy said to him,’Come on, you’ve got another hand’, it was different. Out of respect for Andy, James said he would go in and have a go.

“Andy’s belief was that you had to be technically sound – which comes from practice – but you also needed good cricket awareness, tactically, plus the ability to want to succeed: mental toughness, the will to work hard.

“Provided he’s allowed to do the job the way he wants to – and I’m sure the ECB will allow him the control he wants –  I have no doubt Andy can put together a team who meet all three requirements: he has an ability to spot people who are technically good and to make them better. He has the ability to improve them tactically - how to control matches whether you’re batting or fielding - and he will only accept people who really have the will to work 100 per cent at their game at all times.

“Andy has experience, enthusiasm and expertise. This is the best appointment the ECB has made in a senior position in cricket for many years.”

Windies’ Powell and Bravo to miss England tour

Daren Powell and Ryan Hinds have been left out of the West Indies Test squad to tour England in May. The fast bowler Powell played all five Tests as the Windies ran out 1-0 winners over Andrew Strauss’ team in the Caribbean, yet has been punished for his poor return: just six wickets at 69 runs each.

Seven years into his career, his Test bowling average is an underwhelming 47.

Hinds, meanwhile, has been axed for averaging 18 in a series that, for most batters, proved to be a runfest.

Dwayne Bravo also misses out as he is recovering from an ankle injury - although he still intends to play in the IPL.

Three uncapped players are named in the 17-man squad: Grenada fast bowler Nelon Pascal, Barbados batsman Dale Richards and Jamaica medium-pacer Andrew Richardson.

Squad Chris Gayle, Denesh Ramdin, Lionel Baker, Sulieman Benn, David Bernard, Shivnarine Chanderpaul, Narsingh Deonarine, Fidel Edwards, Brendan Nash, Nelon Pascal, Dale Richards, Andrew Richardson, Darren Sammy, Ramnaresh Sarwan, Lendl Simmons, Devon Smith, Jerome Taylor.

Strauss misses Twenty20 squad

Chris Tremlett and Sajid Mahmood return to England colours in the 30-man T20 preliminary squad – while Test captain Andrew Strauss is ‘rested’.

In Strauss’ absence, the captain for the tournament will be named at a later date – though the inclusion of Strauss’ Middlesex colleague Shaun Udal, who skippered the county to the T20 Cup last year, is intriguing.

Alongside Hampshire skipper Dimitri Mascarenhas, Udal will be a prime candidate to lead the side.

At 40, Udal is the oldest member of the party – while Warwickshire seamer Chris Woakes, who only turned 20 in March, is the youngest.

Essex skipper James Foster finally returns as one of three keepers named in the party, while  Yorkshire seamer Tim Bresnan and  Worcestershire fast bowler Kabir Ali are also recalled for the first time since the disastrous ODI series with Sri Lanka in 2006.

New faces include Kent’s Joe Denly (alongside county skipper Rob Key) and Middlesex and Ireland’s Eoin Morgan (but not, as widely predicted, Dawid Malan).

Chairman of selectors Geoff Miller said: “Andrew Strauss had an outstanding tour of the West Indies during a difficult winter. Andrew and the selectors believe his game is better suited to Test and one-day international cricket and it is for that reason he has not been selected in the preliminary 30-man squad. Andrew is focused on the Test and ODI format of the game despite not being included in the 30-man Twenty20 squad.

“The selectors have decided against naming a captain for the ICC World Twenty20 at this stage because we feel it is important to comprehensively review the recent tour of the Caribbean and seek input from all relevant parties including the incoming England team director who is yet to be appointed. Once these processes have been achieved the selectors will name England’s Twenty20 captain in due course.”

Full squad Kabir Ali (Worcestershire); James Anderson (Lancashire); Gareth Batty (Worcestershire); Ian Bell (Warwickshire); Ravi Bopara (Essex); Timothy Bresnan (Yorkshire); Stuart Broad (Nottinghamshire); Paul Collingwood (Durham); Stephen Davies (Worcestershire); Joe Denly (Kent); James Foster (Essex); Andrew Flintoff (Lancashire); Stephen Harmison (Durham); Robert Key (Kent); Sajid Mahmood (Lancashire); Dimitri Mascarenhas (Hampshire); Eoin Morgan (Middlesex); Graham Napier (Essex); Samit Patel (Nottinghamshire); Kevin Pietersen (Hampshire); Liam Plunkett (Durham); Matthew Prior (Sussex); Adil Rashid (Yorkshire); Owais Shah (Middlesex); Ryan Sidebottom (Nottinghamshire); Graeme Swann (Nottinghamshire); Chris Tremlett (Hampshire); Shaun Udal (Middlesex); Chris Woakes (Warwickshire); Luke Wright (Sussex).

Test Match Special: the (rather cosy) inside story

Inside the box: My life with Test Match Special 

Peter Baxter
Quiller, £18.99

It says something for the enduring cult of Test Match Special that publishers and doubtless readers should consider giving house room to the memoirs not of one of its stars but of its longtime producer, Peter Baxter. Aficionados will recall Baxter doing bits of urbane, fill-in commentary during his 40 years behind the scenes. But you need look no further than the cover images – Brian Johnston, a young Jonathan Agnew, a piece of cake, but no sign of Baxter himself – to see the the unsung nature of the producer’s role.

There are few dramas within. The Queen gives the team a cake. Christopher Martin-Jenkins tries to make a phone call with a TV remote control. Aggers and Johnners are convulsed with laughter. Baxter warns Blofeld to go easy on the pigeons and buses and endures a tour of India with only the apparently insufferable Don Mosey – the Alderman – for company. Groups of middle-aged men have dinner together in far-flung outposts of the old Empire. The BBC’s suggestion that TMS should use a theme tune causes as much consternation in the box as the discovery of an unexploded grenade. Baxter tries to work out the best way to cover the Boat Race on the radio.

In between all this excitement, Baxter recalls his various struggles to draw up rotas and how he ‘discovered’ Foxy Fowler and Victor Marks. Outsiders will be mystified that these cosy backstage nuances  should be deemed worthy of preservation in print; long-time listeners will lap them up, even those (many) tales that are familiar.

Mild allusion is made to the FiveLive-isation of TMS that helped Baxter make his decision to bow out from the dream job he had held for so long. But there’s little bile or rancour here and no settling of scores, which many old-school fans may find disappointing. Instead, there’s something rather wistful and nostalgic about the whole affair.

You’ll have your own views on whether Messrs Selvey, Fraser, Mann and White are/were fit to sit in the seats vacated by Arlott and Johnston; and on whether Henry Blofeld is charm itself or plain unlistenable. But we’ve all grown up with Test Match Special: whatever its faults, it’s virtually family. And Baxter’s memoir of 40 years’ involvement in helping to create the soundtrack to the English summer will, read in a deckchair, form a nice, if not overly revelatory, companion to his successors’ efforts this summer.

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