Cricket is losing the popularity contest

George Dobell in Cricinfo


The absence of any cricketers from the BBC's annual awards bash is another stark warning of the invisibility of the sport in the British mainstream


Stuart Broad and Joe Root played key roles in the Ashes win, but neither man made the BBC Sports Personality shortlist © Getty Images



There are some things - good teeth, a parachute, a car that starts in wet weather - that you appreciate more in their absence.

So it was when the contenders were announced for the BBC's Sports Personality of the Year award. In a year when England have won the Ashes, when Joe Root has been rated - albeit briefly - the best Test batsman in the world and when Stuart Broad has bowled out Australia in a session, there was no room for a cricketer in the 12-strong list.

That is not to denigrate the merits of each contender or accept the somewhat self-congratulatory worth of the award. But there was a time when Ashes success warranted open-top bus rides through Trafalgar Square and MBEs all round. There was a time when cricket seemed to matter more.

But that was when cricket was broadcast on free-to-air television. And, whatever the many merits of Sky's coverage of England cricket over the last decade or so, it is hard to avoid the conclusion that the game, starved of the oxygen of publicity in the UK, is diminishing in relevance by the year.

The broadcast deal is not cricket's only issue. Many school playing fields are long gone and cricket, with its demand for time and facilities, cannot reasonably be expected to fit into many teachers' timetables. The world has changed and a game that lasts either a full afternoon or five days may have lost its appeal to a quicker, more impatient world.

When Warwickshire first won the County Championship, a huge crowd greeted their return to New Street Station; if they win it next year, the local paper will pick up a short report paid for by the ECB and find a column inside the paper for it. The warning signs are everywhere.

Which is why T20 cricket - and televised free-to-air T20 cricket - is so vital. It is the vehicle by which the game can reconnect and inspire another generation of players and supporters. The hugely encouraging spectator numbers in 2015, spectator numbers that owe a great deal to the marketing nous of some counties, shows there is hope and potential. It remains a great game. We just need to expose more people to it.

It seems the penny has dropped. While nothing is yet resolved, it does seem that some key figures at the ECB have accepted the counties' argument that free-to-air coverage - either on television or on-line - has a part to play in the next television deal.

They had hoped that a new, city-based T20 league would enable them to squeeze enough money out of the next broadcast deal to make the problem go away for a while. But the counties saw, to their credit, that this would have been a short-term solution. They saw that all the redeveloped stadiums in the land and a bank account boasting reserves of £80m or more (as the ECB have) was no use if those stadiums were rarely full.

They saw, unlike the previous regime at the ECB, that money does not make everything alright. That not everything of value can be packaged and sold. That they exist to nurture and develop the sport and the money they make is a valuable tool to that end, not the end in itself.

Cricket Australia have already journeyed that way. They took a hit on the Big Bash broadcasting deal, realising that it was more important for the sport to reach a mass audience on free-to-air TV rather than earn short-term riches on a subscription panel. They have pointed the way for the ECB.

It currently seems likely (it could change) that, between 2017 and 2019 at least, the English domestic T20 tournament will be played in two divisions with broadcasters focussing almost exclusively on the top division. Many of the counties hope that format will remain long after the new broadcast deals begin in 2020; some at Lord's hope it will be a Trojan horse for an eight- or nine-team event. If that latter argument wins in an era of subscription-only coverage, the game will become invisible across vast tracts of the country. It will retract yet further.

That would be a missed opportunity. For there is, right now, much to like about English cricket. While football - with its spoilt-brat millionaire heroes - has lost touch with the man in the street, cricketers have re-engaged. They play with a smile, they stop for autographs and photos. They remind us that it is perfectly possible to be hugely talented, successful and likeable.

The national team play exciting, joyful cricket. They have, in Jos Buttler, a man who can produce the sort of innings we used to see only when the finest Caribbean cricketers played the county game. They have, in Ben Stokes, an allrounder to make football-loving kids want to pick up a bat and ball; a man in Joe Root who might be the finest batsman in the world; a leader in Charlotte Edwards who has remained at the top of her sport throughout her career and done a great deal to further her sport. And, at a time when a few shrill voices would have us believe that communities of different faiths and cultures cannot coexist, a man in Moeen Aliwho gently shows us otherwise. There is much to celebrate in cricket.

But who will know unless they have a cricket-loving parent, they attend a private school or they come from an Asian community where the game remains relevant? How will the sport reach a new audience? How, in the long-term, will the value of the broadcast deals be maintained if the market diminishes? Cricket in England has become a niche and the absence of a cricketer in the Sports Personality of the Year list is another sign.

The money earned over the last few years has enabled the ECB to do many admirable things. They have led the way in the funding of disability cricket, the development of women's cricket and the improvement of facilities from the grassroots to the international game. All of this would have been desperately difficult without Sky's investment.

Nor is the past is not quite as marvellous as is remembered. Channel 4's coverage of two Ashes series - now talked about as if it were a golden age - was interrupted, in all, by 33 hours' worth of horse racing. Channel 4 also persuaded the ECB to start Tests at 10.30am one summer in order not to disrupt the evening scheduling of The Simpsons and Hollyoaks.

Equally, the BBC coverage of "Botham's Ashes" of 1981 was interrupted by programmes such as Playschool, Chock-a-block and The Skill of Lip-Reading while, for several years, their Sunday League coverage consisted of a single camera. Still, for many of us, it was our gateway drug to this great game. And yes, it seems to fair to reflect whether the BBC, for all the excellence of its radio coverage, for all its good intentions and the fine things it stands for, is currently keeping its side of the bargain when it comes to broadcasting sport.

Since 2006, Sky, with their multiple cameras, has taken cricket coverage to a new level. By broadcasting all England games home and away - something of which we could not dream 25 years ago - guaranteeing weeks of county coverage each season, and their willingness (a willingness we often take for granted in the UK but which is rare elsewhere) to ask the hard questions in interviews and commentary, they probably offer the best service cricket lovers have ever had.

Or at least those who can afford it. And there is the rub, because whatever the virtue of the Sky deal for the ECB's finances and whatever the virtues of their coverage, the fact is that vast sections of the country have no access to live cricket on television. In a nation where an uncomfortable number have the need of foodbanks, it is grotesque to think most could afford subscription TV if they only cared enough.

And whatever the benefits of sending coaches into primary schools - and Sky's money has helped fund Chance to Shine - it is hard to believe that 1,000 hours of helping kids hit tennis balls off cones will ever replace one hour of inspiration provided by watching the likes of Ian Botham, Andrew Flintoff or Ben Stokes lead England to the Ashes. Nothing can replace the oxygen of publicity. The benefits of the Sky money have long since been counteracted by the negatives in the reduced audience.

The water has been rising round our feet for some time. We have seen reports of falling participation numbers, we have seen England teams disproportionately reliant upon cricketers who learned the game either abroad or in public schools, and we have seen newspapers that used to take pride in their county cricket coverage abandon it almost completely. We have seen poorly attended international games - only the Ashes seems to be immune from the decline -  The absence of a cricketer from the Sport's Personality of the Year list - whatever the imperfections of that contest - is the latest symbol of the decline. We're fools to ignore it.

This is not meant to sound pessimistic. Were there a fire in the building, one could remain optimistic of escape while still sounding the alarm. We have a great game to offer. But, as Bob Dylan put it, let us not talk falsely now, for the hour is getting late.

'Yasir Shah is the best bowler in the world, he's ranked no. 2 in the ICC rankings'.

by Girish Menon

There is no better friend than an England Test match when you are lying in bed unable to get out of it physically but mentally still alive. The recently concluded test match was such a friend as I recovered from an ailment. But this piece is about cricket and not my ailments and here are some of the things that I noticed in the radio commentary:

1. Ramiz Raja is the family's favourite commentator. He was critical of Shoaib Malik and his use of a leg slip, "Why is Shoaib using a leg slip, he should attack more on the onside, maybe he should bring a silly mid-off".

He also said the following in the same breath, 'Yasir Shah is the best bowler in the world, he's ranked no. 2 in the ICC rankings'.

2. They were extra harsh on the English spinners viz. Ali, Rashid and Patel while similar harshness was visited on English batsmen who collapsed for the 18th time in 25. Joe Root's failure to deliver was never mentioned.

3. The name of KP was not discussed.

4. The statistician Andrew Sampson was awesome with his brilliant comparisons, especially the possibility that Hafeez might break Bannerman's record of the highest contribution by a player to the team total.

5. Tuffers was awesome with his take on National Cliche day. That's when I realised that all language is cliche and Britons seem to revel in it.

England's Ashes Win - Despite, not Because

Maxie Allen in The Full Toss

England would not have won the Ashes had Kevin Pietersen not been sacked without explanation. Alastair Cook is the greatest captain in test history. Paul Downton is a national hero of rare prescience and foresight.

I need exaggerate only a little to make the point. History is being re-written. Scores are being settled. A sickly river of errant and retaliatory bilge is slithering its way through the media crickosphere.

Why does it matter? At the risk of coming over all Ed Smith, allow me to quote George Orwell:

He who controls the past controls the future. He who controls the present controls the past.

Newspapers write contemporary history. They set the agenda and become the accepted version of events. The press influence people whose opinions affect cricket followers – from the wider public, to politicians, sponsors, and sports administrators.

Who is the head of UK Sport more likely to read? Mike Selvey, or Being Outside Cricket?

The hacks have power, but some of them are distorting reality to serve a bizarre agenda.

Let’s get one thing straight. England did not win the Ashes because a masterplan came gloriously to fruition. England’s triumph over Australia did not reveal the decision-making of February 2014 to be an act of visionary, methodical genius.

England won despite what happened, not because of it.

Let’s remember the precise sequence of events. First, Peter Moores was hired with a mandate to re-build the England side. He was chosen even though he was the only candidate who’d already failed in the role, and to almost universal opposition. He promised more of the same micro-managing, data-driven, strait-jacket approach which by then had already been discredited under Andy Flower.

How did he get on? Moores took England backwards, not forwards: losing to Sri Lanka, crashing out of the World Cup at the group stage, and drawing with West Indies, a record only offset by the series win over a woeful India.

It was meant to have been Peter Moores who masterminded England’s Ashes campaign. At the last minute the ECB had no choice but bow to the inevitable, prompting a panicked sacking and replacement process. In dismissing Moores, Andrew Strauss managed to avoid doing the really stupid thing – not sacking him – but it was hardly act of remarkably prescient cricketing genius.

And what of the new materials around whom the side was re fabricated? Sam Robson and Gary Ballance have both since been dropped, as have Chris Jordan and Liam Plunkett. Chris Woakes, for reasons both of form and injury, has also fallen off the radar. Jos Buttler has yet to make a century and has scored only 79 runs at 13 in this Ashes series.

The ECB’s stated plan, eighteen months ago, was to build the New England around Alastair Cook. Since then he has scored two centuries in seventeen tests, the output of a supporting actor, not the lead. In the 2015 Ashes so far, Cook has made 223 runs in seven innings, at 31.85. In terms of England averages for the series, he stands sixth.

Has Cook’s captaincy improved England’s form? He’s now more prepared to try quirky tactics – if England are on top. He will declare, nine down, shortly before lunch – if England are already leading by more than 300. As Unhappy Hippy remarked on Twitter, “Cook’s captaincy capably managed matches we should win”.

If Cook has changed his approach, he waited until at least a year after the tour of Australia to do it. If Cook is made of the right stuff, why has he progressed at barely a glacial pace? In nearly three years at the helm, Cook has now led England captain in 37 tests. Only five men have ever captained England on more occasions.

Would England not have beaten Australia without Cook’s captaincy? What did he do in this series which turned sessions in England’s favour? Was this a case of his intrinsic virtues carrying the day, as they were inevitably destined to? Or an extension of the Collingwood Principle – that if anyone captains long enough, refusing to resign, they will eventually enjoy a series when things go their way?

The jury remains out on the most important dimension of Cook’s captaincy. He has always been prepared to rotate the bowlers – any idiot can do that – and try an offbeat field placing. Cook’s real weakness is his impotence in the face of adversity. When the batsmen are on top – as Australia’s were at Lord’s, or when England lose control in the field – as they did last year against Sri Lanka at Headingley and India – Cook retreats into his shell instead of taking the game by the scruff of the neck. These situations are the true test of a captain’s mettle, and Cook invariably fails – shrugging his shoulders at slip and ceding control to Anderson and Broad.

By retaining Cook as captain, were the ECB sagacious and far-sighted, or did they just get lucky? When they reaffirmed him, time and again, after each disappointing result, what were the qualities they saw in him which have now become evident this summer? And how did they influence the result?

Have England been better off without Kevin Pietersen? His replacements – in this series, Ballance and Bairstow (it is telling that a change was needed) – have scored 177 runs in six innings. Would Pietersen have scored fewer?

It is impossible to say with any confidence whether his absence helped foster a better team spirit, and if so, whether this atmosphere contributed significantly to England’s Ashes victory. Any assertion on this front is pure guesswork.

But no evidence has ever been presented that, when he played for England, Pietersen’s involvement proved detrimental to the team’s output. He was a member of England sides which won four Ashes series, beat India away, became world number one, and won the World T20. There is also ample testimony from younger players about Pietersen’s provision to them of support, advice, and help in the nets.

So if you return to England’s 2014 masterplan, and trace the narrative threads through to their victory at Trent Bridge, what do you end up with?

And why regard this Ashes series as the ‘end of history’? It is an arbitrary choice, which insults England’s other opponents. Why not draw the line at the West Indies tour in April, and take final conclusions from that result? Or extend the story to include the upcoming visits to UAE and South Africa. If England fare badly overseas this winter, where does that leave the narrative?

In beating Australia, England bowled extremely well, and batted well enough. Joe Root’s runs and Stuart Broad’s wickets were by far the most important individual contributions. Of the other players who materially affected the outcome, only Moeen Ali was an addition to the team since the Difficult Winter. You could add Mark Wood, at a push. Steve Finn, Ben Stokes, and Jonny Bairstow, all pre-date Paul Downton’s Brave New World.

England benefited greatly both from Australia’s appalling batting, and home advantage. All but one of the last eight Ashes series have been won by the hosts.

Another factor was England’s fresher and more liberated approach – their cricketers seemingly encouraged to play their natural games, on instinct, without hindrance from laptops and hypotheses. This cultural change is probably attributable to the influence of Paul Farbrace, acting coach during the New Zealand series, and Trevor Bayliss. Yet it had not been the advance plan for either man to take charge of the team. Had Peter Moores remained in post, as the ECB had intended, what would have happened?

None of this devalues the performance of the England players who scored the runs and took the wickets which beat Australia. Quite the opposite. They defied expectations. They outplayed their rivals. They won the Ashes. To those players – and to a minor extent their new coaches – is the credit due. To lay it at anyone else’s door is to denigrate their achievement.

Try telling that to what Mike Selvey might call the “vocal minority” of professional cricket writers hellbent on distorting reality to settle scores. Some are motivated by the redemption of their friends. What was regarded ‘below the line’ as the legitimate holding to account of people in power, they saw as the vulgar abuse of “good men”.

More acutely, for some, this their opportunity for revenge on what Ed Smith calls ‘the mob’. We had the temerity to challenge their judgment. We had the impudence to suggest that people who had neither played three test matches, nor once sat next to Kevin Pietersen on a plane, but had spent their whole lives following England, might still be able to form a valid opinion on cricket.

In both cases, we neglected to respect our elders and betters. And this is payback time. In yet another journalistic first for the English cricket media, this is a cue for an attack on their own readers.

If some in the press are exploiting the Ashes result to vindicate their actions, this is small fry compared to what the ECB will do, and what their supporters will say. In theory, everything the board has done, and everything the board will go on to do, can be justified by what happened this summer. The reclamation of the urn proves the soundness of their rationale, the goodness of their governance, and the righteousness of their moral code.

As Dave Ticker put it, on Twitter: "Giles Clarke selling out to Stanford doesn't look so silly now England have won the Ashes, does it."

Persecute, bully and betray England’s highest ever run-scorer? We won the Ashes. Extort spectators and test-hosting counties? We won the Ashes. Lock cricket behind a TV paywall? We won the Ashes. Hand the Sky windfall to the counties and bill Sport England for the grass-roots funding? We won the Ashes. Ruin the World Cup? We won the Ashes. Turn international cricket into a protection racket for the Big Three? We won the Ashes.

Dare not question our judgement. We know what’s best for you. Please move along.

Peter Moores: 'The portrayal of me as a coach is wrong'

George Dobell - Cricinfo

"Frustration" is a word that crops up often in Peter Moores' sentences at present.

He is "frustrated" that he cannot finish the job he started in rebuilding the England team. He is frustrated that he will never lead England through an Ashes series. He is "frustrated" that history appears to have repeated itself. And he is, in his words, "doubly frustrated" that his portrayal in the media differs so markedly from reality.

That portrayal stems, in part, from a radio interview conducted by the BBC moments after England's World Cup exit. In it, Moores was alleged to have said that England would need to check the "data" before coming to any conclusions about the reasons for their failure.

It came to be a defining moment in his downfall. It has been used to illustrate his perceived faults: an obsession with stats and a propensity to overanalyse. England's talented young players, it was said, were stifled by such a policy.

But it never happened. As was reported by ESPNcricinfo, Moores actually said "later" in that BBC interview. But his words were misheard - an honest and understandable mistake as there was a minor microphone malfunction during the interview - and while the BBC subsequently apologised to him (at first verbally and then in writing), the error was public and the apology was private. The damage, in terms of public perception, was done.

The image of Moores as stats-driven has little basis in reality. So frustrated was Nathan Leamon, England's analyst at the World Cup, by the lack of use of his statistics that it was briefly feared he may go home. Meanwhile Paul Farbrace, Moores' faithful deputy and the man who has recently been portrayed as a liberator of the England team, has said repeatedly that the Sri Lanka team he coached to success in the 2014 World T20 used such data far more.



"I don't have regrets. I look back with quite a lot of pride" © Getty Images





While it is true Moores used the word "data" during an excellent eight-minute interview on Sky (he said "we'll have to analyse the data") it was in response to several detailed questions and after an initial answer that started: "Now is not the time to be analysing."

It is Moores' frustration - that word again - at such a characterisation that has prompted him to talk now. While he remained silent the first time he was sacked as England coach, declining lucrative invitations to give his side of the story, this time he has decided to speak in an attempt to correct at least a few of the misconceptions about his period as coach. He was not paid and the only item he would not discuss is how he was sacked.

While Moores will not be drawn on it - he is simply not the sort to be dragged into mudslinging - ESPNcricinfo understands that he learned of his fate after his wife read about it on Twitter and phoned him. Whatever you think of him or Paul Downton (who learned of his fate a similar way), they deserved better than that. The ECB, to its credit, apologised in private and public.

He does not comment, though. He hardly ever does. When he was sacked as England coach at the start of 2009, he said nothing. When England went to No. 1 in the Test rankings in 2011, largely with players he had selected, he said nothing. When Kevin Pietersen's book came out, he said nothing. And each day he woke up and read another column from an ex-player - usually an ex-player he had dropped during his first spell as England coach - rubbishing his methods and caricaturing his personality, he said nothing.

"I have to accept my time as England coach has gone," Moores says. "It's pretty hard to accept. But it's done. The umpire's finger is up. I have to look at where I go next.

"But I am frustrated. The portrayal of me as a coach in the media is just wrong. If people said 'I don't rate you as a coach' then fine. But when it's not what you are, it's really frustrating.

"I don't know how to change that. I've not spent my life trying to be really good with the media; I've spent it trying to make players better. I still passionately want to do that.

"I have an official letter from the BBC. It's a tough one, I didn't say it. I know what I am as a coach. I've done it for a long time. I've been in the game for 33 years and I've coached for 17. I know the game. And what I've learned is, my job is to simplify the game for players and free them up to go and play.

"We moved away from stats and data. Coaching doesn't work like that at all. You watch a lot to say a little. It's not a numbers game. We kept it simple. We tried to give the players responsibility to lead themselves.

"There is a big support staff with England. And they're all valuable. You need the security staff, the physio and the doctor. But there are times when you just want the 11 players and two coaches to watch the game and talk about it together. We were creating that environment. We were getting there."

The "we were getting there" phrase is another recurring theme. Moores felt his England side were on the right track. While he accepts the World Cup was wretched, there was evidence in Test cricket, that they were making progress. At the time he was sacked, England - a side containing half-a-dozen young or inexperienced players - had won four and lost one of their last six Tests.

Against relatively modest opposition that is perhaps decent rather than exceptional. But Moores did inherit an England side that had just been beaten 5-0 in the Ashes and was clearly in a transitional phase. It was always going to take time.

"In Test terms, we felt we had turned a corner," Moores says. "We were getting there. Would I have been sacked had we won in Barbados? You'll have to ask the people who made the decision. I was aware that things were building but I wasn't expecting it.

"The frustration is not being able to carry something through. When I took the job, I knew we would go through this period of trial. And transition is difficult. You will lose sometimes.

"The evolution, of a team, of a player, is that you're going to be inconsistent. You're going to lose. But in Tests we were moving and moving quite fast. You could see it happening. Young players were developing fast. And you know there is a timeframe for that.

"I'm also confident in my ability to evolve teams to become very good teams. And, given time, I've always gone on to be successful. And you're not trying to be successful for a short time, but for a long time.

"So to not have time to finish the job with England... I thought we were getting there. I was genuinely excited when we got back from the Caribbean."

Moores denies any mixed emotions at watching England's improved showing against New Zealand. But it has not gone unnoticed that, just as he built the side that Andy Flower went on to lead to such success (Flower, it should be noted, was always the first to praise Moores' contribution), he will spend the next few years seeing some of those he selected this time flourish in international cricket.

It was, after all, Moores that replaced the new-ball pair of Steve Harmison and Matthew Hoggard with James Anderson and Stuart Broad. He installed Graeme Swann as first-choice spinner and Matt Prior as wicketkeeper. He laid many of the foundations on which Flower built.

This time, his commitment to Jos Buttler, Moeen Ali, Gary Ballance (originally selected by Flower), Joe Root (who had been dropped by the time Moores took over) and others could have similar long-term benefits.



Moores brought new faces into the England side during both spells in charge © AFP





"I didn't go into the job to get the credit," he says. "But yes, history probably has repeated itself a bit. I'd love it if England won the Ashes. I'm an England fan.

"I've probably debuted more players than most England coaches. You hope when you introduce players that they'll carry on in the long term. I think we picked some good players who will become good England players over time. They'll go through ups and down.

"I know I left a united group of people - players and coaches - with a clear vision of where we were going and working towards it. I don't have regrets. I look back with quite a lot of pride."

It seems he was rated in his second spell as England coach, in part, by the mistakes he made in his first. Famously described as "the woodpecker" by Kevin Pietersen - an image that suggests a man forever tapping away at players and, as a result, preventing them from relaxing - Moores admits he made some mistakes the first time around.

"I don't think there was any truth in the woodpecker thing, no," he says now. "But I do think the version of me as a coach now to the version that first coached England is a better version.

"I evolved quite a lot as a coach, as a player would. It's no different. This time I knew what I was going into. You understand the real challenges for players, as you've been there before.

"I've reflected on that first time. We needed to change. And I look back and think, yes, in my enthusiasm, I pushed too hard. You should allow that to happen. I wanted them to be fitter and, yes, you can push too hard.

"So I knew when I came in this time, there had been mistakes made. I wanted to allow captains to evolve themselves and create a place where the players felt supported.

"Part of the skill of a coach is to disappear. You're in the room but it's as if you aren't. You're not making anyone nervous. Because if you need 40 to win in four overs, nobody wants a coach who is twitchy.

"Look, I've made loads of mistakes as a coach. But you make fewer as you learn. That side of my coaching, I know, I've got better."

England's performance - or lack of it - at the World Cup does not reflect well on anyone, though. While they went into the event talking an aggressive game, they played pretty timid cricket, with Moores' selections - Ian Bell as opener and Gary Ballance at No. 3 - contrasting starkly with the approach in the recent ODI series against New Zealand.

So does he accept that either the selections were flawed or he was unable to coax the best out of the players?

"In terms of selection, we got to the final of the tri-series with Ian Bell playing very well. I think he made two centuries and we made 300 against Australia. And Moeen was playing with freedom.

"We moved James Taylor down the order as we felt he was a good finisher and brought Gary in as he has a very good record in limited-overs cricket. He's a very good player. Ravi Bopara was struggling a bit and not really getting a bowl. It all felt natural at the time and we tried to stay consistent in selection.

"As to getting it out of them... great players don't always play great cricket. It didn't happen for them. Senior players didn't grab the game by the scruff of neck. But you learn from failure and the reaction of those players who went through it is encouraging.

"But yes, I felt hollow at the end of the tournament."

The one thing Moores will not ever do is blame the players. Never, in public or private, does he seek to do so. In fact, it is notable that, on or off the record, he does not criticise anyone. Not Andrew Strauss, not Kevin Pietersen (about whom he says, "he's a funny mix. There are things I admire") and not Colin Graves, who was in Barbados at the time of Moores' last Test but didn't find the time to tell his coach he was about to be sacked. His only gripe, really, is with his public image as a stats-driven, robotic coach and the interview that may have cemented that reputation.

It is notable, too, that several of the players have made their support of Moores public. Joe Root, who called him "brilliant" and praised him as knowing "how to get the best out of me", crediting Moores for his "drastic improvement", was the most vocal but also far from atypical. Whoever Strauss consulted before making his decision, it certainly was not the England Test squad. Many of them remain in touch with him. "Once your coach, always your coach," Moores says with a smile. "They know they can call me.

"Joe's words were appreciated. It was brave of him to say that at that time."

And yet, after two sackings and some treatment that can only be described as shoddy, Moores says he would still work for the ECB again. While he has not yet been approached for a role at Loughborough - an organisation that is about to have a radical overhaul - it remains highly probable that he will be. His eye for young talent, his record as a developer of that talent, and his ability to impart knowledge to other coaches, remain assets.

"Yes, I'd work for the ECB again," he says. "A role at Loughborough would be exciting. I love coaching and that would be working with the best players and coaches. Yes, it appeals.

"Professional sport can be cruel. Or maybe ruthless is a better word. You know that when you go into it. You are immersed in it."

His fault, as much as it is one, was his inability to play the media or political game. His failure to understand that style is as important as substance when it comes to selling yourself to the public. His failure to understand the dark side of the organisation that had employed him.

While a perception that he was closely aligned to an unattractive ECB regime - the regime of Downton and Giles Clarke that talked of people being "outside cricket" - no doubt hurt him, his main fault may well have been simply being a decent man in an increasingly indecent world. A man who thought that, if he worked hard, planned for the future and forged a strong relationship, it would be enough.

And that's the lasting impression of Moores. For whatever you think of his coaching - his international record is modest; his county and development record excellent - as a man, he has a dignity that is rare in professional sport.

A sense of perspective, too. After England lost to India at Lord's last summer, Moores was asked if he was at "rock bottom". His reply - "who knows what rock bottom is, but it isn't losing a cricket match" - sums him up better than anything else he said in his period at the helm. Even after his second sacking, he found a positive. "If feels as if I've got my wife and kids back," he said.

Following this interview, he went to see his son, Tom, a hard-hitting wicketkeeper-batsman, play for Nottinghamshire seconds against Warwickshire. The sacking has hurt, but he will cope. "A glass of wine helps," he says.

"I don't put this on," he says as the interview draws to a close. "I don't know if it's from my mum or what. But I am a calm person who can see the value of looking at people in their best light. It was such a slanging match last time. There were so many opinions. And so much of it was wrong. I didn't want to get involved. It's all so easy to do that. I'm not going down that route.

"I've been offered book deals, but it's not who I am. And if I did one, I would want it to be things I've learned and stories to help people get the best out of themselves and others. I have to be true to what I am. There's not a lot of mileage in negativity, you know.

"Of course it's been tough. This is the first summer for 33 years I've not been involved in the game in a professional way. But I'm a coach. It's what I do. I love England and I love cricket. The game doesn't owe me anything. It's been great fun working in it. And the hunger... it's just starting to come back."

On the English Cricket Board and insider journalists

What the papers say

by Maxie Allen  in The Full Toss • June 19, 2015

Over at our friends Being Outside Cricket, there have been some interesting discussions about the nature of the mainstream cricket press, its relationship with the cricketing public and its attitude to those of us ‘below the line’. You can read the pieces here and here.

At the risk of committing plagiarism, I thought I’d take the liberty of penning a few thoughts of my own. What follows is inspired by, not a response to, the thoughts of Lord Canis Lupus and The Leg Glance. I thank them for that inspiration, not to mention their wisdom and insight.

The misadventures of the cricket media are hardly new territory in our tier of the crickosphere. Many of the key points may already be very familiar to you, echoing hundreds of your own comments on both blogs during the last eighteen months. But we’ve not touched on the theme here on TFT for some time, and it’s worth updating our perspectives in the context of the here-and-now – the new mood of optimism and concord subtly washing over English cricket.

I believe there are three misconceptions about the nature of the cricket press. Firstly, I doubt all the principal correspondents have total editorial control over their copy. The editor is in charge of the paper, and beneath him or her is the sports editor. It’s they whom the correspondent is trying to satisfy, not only the reader. The bosses may ask for a particular editorial line, or at least a tone – upbeat, angry, patriotic, kick them while they’re down.

The space allocated for their reports will fluctuate according to the news agenda, with copy truncated by the sub-editors overnight if need be. If Jose Mourinho gets sacked by Chelsea, there will be less room for nuances about the third ODI. The words below the correspondent’s name will not always entirely be written by them.

That said, the more senior the hack, the more sovereignty they have. Mikes Selvey and Atherton, or Scyld Berry, are less likely to have their copy reworked than a junior reporter.

Secondly, the mainstream press do not write specifically for people like us, who read and write cricket blogs and follow the minutiae of every story. They aim at readers with a passing-to-serious interest in cricket, who have little spare time and probably read only a single paper. A city trader on the Tube. A van driver on his lunch-break.

This means complex stories get simplified – as happens in all branches of news. It also explains why journalists often put a postive spin on events, to the disgust of bloggerati sceptics. In their eyes, punters follow cricket for fun, as an escape from the drudgery of work. So hacks write about good news, and feats of derring-do, with an appeal to patriotism. They suspect too few readers are interested in the Byzantine plot-twists of ECB politics.

Thirdly, newspapers and websites (but not the BBC) are under no obligations to anyone. They are private publications, unsubject to statutory regulation which mandates fairness, balance, and specific editorial standards. If you don’t like a newspaper, so the logic goes, you don’t have to read it.

And we can’t always regard the cricket press as a uniform entity. Its exponents occupy a fairly broad spectrum, possessing a range of attitudes and approaches. Some have been more sympathetic than others to the laments of those below-the-line. A few have listened to, absorbed, and reflected our (often disparate) views.

All of this may sound like excuse-making. But there are a multitude of hefty ‘but’s. On the whole, the response of the established cricket media to the turmoil triggered on 4th February 2014 has fallen so far short of adequacy that no caveats amount to exoneration.

Newspapers and mainstream websites, along with broadcasters, enjoy many privileges. The ECB award them the status of ‘accredited’ media. This means their correspondents are appointed as the public’s eyes and ears, and receive seats in the press box, as well as interview access to players and staff, and off-the-record conversations with officials. Neither bloggers not readers are afforded such accreditation.

With privileges come responsibilities – chiefly, the duty to hold authority to account. You can’t have one without the other, especially when many papers regard themselves as ‘newspapers of record’. The inky press generally exudes a sense of entitlement and officialdom. “Because we’re the Daily X, we should be able to do y and find out z”. Once again, that right brings a responsibility.

With the Pietersen affair, the cricket media signally failed to hold the ECB to account. The ECB lied, and covered up their lies. It was as clear a case as you could imagine of misconduct and moral corruption by a public body. Yet this was barely explored and never properly investigated. Even material in the public domain was poorly studied. The ‘due diligence’ dossier passed by largely unremarked. Pietersen’s book was skim-read for lurid slurs while his serious accusations of ECB bullying and hypocrisy were ignored.

When vocal members of the public complained about this dereliction of duty, some pressmen replied by saying, ‘well we asked them, but they wouldn’t say’. This was a ridiculous excuse. In other spheres of news, the silence of authorities during a scandal becomes a story in itself. Front pages scream for answers. Newspapers ratchet up the pressure by cajoling third parties to provoke a response.

There were plenty of options available to the cricket press, had they been more tenacious and inquisitive. They could  have highlighted the blatant contradictions in the ECB’s own testimony. They might have striven for a whistle-blower. They should have piled pressure on the DCMS, Sport England (who give the ECB funding), and England sponsors Waitrose and Investec, to demand answers.

Unless I’ve missed something, none of this happened. Some journalists tried. A few tried hard. But no one tried hard enough. Too many approached the saga with all the forensic analysis of the lazy-thinking, cliche-reliant golf club bar-bore. They couldn’t see past Pietersen’s bad-egginess to the real story, and misconceived the saga as a debate about Pietersen the man, instead of what it was, a powder-keg of ECB malpractice and mendacity.

The recent explosion of the FIFA scandal provides an instructive parallel. While there is no suggestion the ECB or its officials have engaged in financial corruption or bribery, the misconduct of each organisation has common strands.

Both the Pietersen affair, and the awarding of the 2022 World Cup to Qatar, gave off an overpowering miasma of fishiness. In each case a bizarre decision was taken but never convincingly explained. Attempts at scrutiny were met with bluster, evasion, and arrogance. What had actually happened was not what was officially presented.

The British press, rightly sensing the truth, refused to let FIFA off the hook. Uncowed by Sepp Blatter’s snarls, they plugged away tenaciously, month after month, even after the original story faded from the agenda. The Sunday Times led the charge, their detective work uncovering a web of brown envelopes emanating from Qatari-FA linked magnates. The hacks kept up the pressure, and eventually the levee broke. Look where we are now.

When Blatter appeared at press conferences and argued black was white, the hacks tore him to pieces. By contrast, what happened in cricket? In April 2014, when Paul Downton emerged from hiding at the Moores press conference, and met questions about Pietersen with a risible stew of lies and obfuscation, the cricket correspondent of The Independent famously gave us this. 

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Stephen Brenkley @stephenbrenkley

It took 10 minutes for Pietersen issue to be raised at Moores' press conference. Downton handled it with aplomb, as did Moores.

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If the likes of Brenkley or Mike Selvey had covered the FIFA story, we’d have probably read something like this:

It is time to cease asking such impertinent questions of Mr Blatter, a good man who has suffered much unwarranted personal abuse.

The FIFA scandal demonstrates more than simply what can be achieved by tireless journalistic inquisitiveness. It proves that tales about corrupt sports administrators can be major box office and appeal to passing readers. And it shows the merit of pressmen fighting for their stories. There must have been times during the FIFA investigation when editors lost confidence and threatened to pull the plug and save resources.

But back to Pietersen. Not all journalists failed to ‘get it’. But too many did. And no one closed the deal. Why?

It wasn’t because readerships lost interest in Pietersen, judging by the sheer quantity of copy written about him. In some instances, editorial diktats, from above, could provide partial explanation. But surely no editor would have turned down a juicy story about skulduggery in the corridors of Lord’s if offered up a scoop on a plate.

The real reasons are several and over-lapping. Some pressmen were lazy, others too gormless to realise what all the fuss was about. A few were deterred by fear of losing access to the inner circle. But many were simply out of their depth. It’s one thing to write about batting technique or line and length. It’s quite another to cut through a dense thicket of political intrigue and obfuscation. A previous career as a professional cricketer does not in itself an investigative journalist make.

A number of hacks were guilty of blatant bias, which took various forms. They had a personal dislike of Pietersen. They were friends or former team-mates of Paul Downton, Andy Flower, Graham Gooch or James Whitaker. Correspondents were often reporting on the conduct of people they’d known personally for years. Within this incestuous bubble, objectivity was impossible. Broadcast interviews were suffused with matiness. It was the equivalent of Alastair Campbell hosting Newsnight.

Just as influential was a subtler and less conscious form of bias. Many former players now inhabiting the press box are cut from the same cultural cloth as the ex-pros who became administrators: workmanlike county stalwarts who never amounted to much at international level. Even if they didn’t realise it, those correspondents were always likely to empathise with the likes of Downton and Whitaker, see things from their point of view, and fail to probe.

By the same token, they were unlikely to view the story either from the readers’ perspective, or Kevin Pietersen’s. Pietersen, with his vast success, huge wealth, brazen ambition, and buccaneering flamboyance, became everything they never were. Unable to relate to him, the ex-pros naturally viewed the ECB’s position as plausible, inhibiting their curiosity. And it wasn’t only about empathy. It’s easy to sense in their copy their feelings of distaste for Pietersen’s brash and unclubbable angularity. But it went further. They resented him for his success – a success which held up a light to their own mediocrity. It’s not going too far to suggest that in several cases their journalism was corrupted by envy.

In the main, the press allied to the establishment, a total inversion of their proper role. They sympathised with authority instead of putting it under the microscope. This response stemmed from an inherent emotional alignment, between media and ECB administrators, for reasons more profound than the limited emotional imaginations of ex-professionals.

Journalists, players, ex-players, ECB apparatchiks, and mandarins, together form the Cricketing Class. All these people have far more in common with each other than with any of the spectating public. They inhabit the same biosphere, sharing press boxes, hotel lobbies, bars and airport lounges around the world. They mutually provide each other with parameters and reference points of conduct, acceptance and vindication.

The incestuousness of the cricket circuit explains much of the Pietersen failure, but also plenty more. Many, especially the ex-players, have little experience of professional life beyond cricket. Insulated within this cosy cocoon, a tranche of the cricket press long since lost touch with the people they’re writing for – members of the public who follow cricket as a pastime.

When was the last time any of them paid their own money to attend an England match? Mike Atherton, say, probably hasn’t since he was a teenager. How many of them queue up for a soggy £7.50 burger, when they can rely on the courtesy sponsors’ lunch, while watching every ball of play from the best seats in the house, not only for free, but paid to be there.

This being the nature of their working lives, for years or decades on end, it requires conscious effort to see things from a punter’s point of view. This is no more than a journalist’s duty, but few achieve it.

So they often fail to share the public’s healthy scepticism of the motives of those in charge, exemplified by their constant talk of “good men”, “working hard”, in “difficult jobs”. They lose track of vital consumer issues central to the supporters’ experience, from ticket prices to free-to-air television coverage. Mainstream mediacrats can’t imagine a world where you must pay £80 for a ticket, or £400 a year for a TV subscription, from limited means, just to watch the game in the first place.

I suspect this also explains why virtually no-one in the press box understood, and barely discussed, the impact of the ECB’s “outside cricket” jibe. When push came to shove, the hacks also regarded themselves as “inside”, treasuring their insider status and mounting the barricades against the revolt of the great unwashed.

This explains their defensive hostility towards readers who dared complain about their misconceived analyses and flawed reporting. Rattled by the impudence of outsiders questioning their judgment, a few openly insulted their own audience, in what must be a British media first. Several of Mike Selvey’s Tweets became infamous

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mike selvey @selvecricket

Social media was a good way to pass on information. But the trolls, idiots and know-nothings make it unpleasant. So I'm out of here. Sorry.

mike selvey @selvecricket

Often hard for journos to remember they are read by many many more people online than few bilious inadequates who dominate comment section.

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Selvey’s generation had failed to grasp the reality of twenty-first century media interactivity. In return for their custom, today’s consumers expect an equity share and a seat at the discussion table. They – we – visit mainstream websites to participate as much as to read. Cricket followers trust their own knowledge and judgement. They expect to hold the work of professional correspondents – who have chosen to put their heads above the parapet – up to scrutiny. And they can publish views themselves, via blogs or Twitter. You no longer need a job on Fleet Street to enter the public domain.

Every other branch of journalism realised this years ago. In cricket, though, few accepted the new deal and most were slow to realise how radically the interface has changed. Grandees raged against the dying of the light, firing arrows from their ivory towers towards the peasants storming the drawbridge. Their rhetoric of entitlement spookily echoed the ECB’s ‘outside cricket’ press release, with its bleats of “uninformed…unwarranted and unpleasant criticism”, which “attacked without justification” their “rationale…and integrity”. These patrician correspondents expected deference by virtue of their position alone, and met irreverence or opposition with pompous sanctimony and sour self-importance.

Others, however, were happy to engage with the public in a generous, constructive and cordial manner, on terms more – but never fully – equal. There lingered a loose sense of masonic, closed-shop sniffiness, which implied a belief that a human being is elevated to the rank of Approved Commentator on Cricket only through an elite process of divine selection.

In reality, cricket punditry is not akin to medicine or law, in which only hard-won professional qualifications confer authority. You can be right about English cricket even if you don’t have a badge on your lapel. This is ordained by the internal logic of the profession itself. If cricketers with no journalistic training can waltz into Fleet Street jobs, and journalists with no professional cricket experience can write about foot movement and bowling actions, why can’t any lifelong cricket follower have something equally useful to say?

The division between writer and writee was akin to clergy and laity. The common man could not be trusted to read the Bible in English because he was too simple to understand the word of God. Emblematic of a common press attitude were responses you could characterise as follows:

If you knew what I knew you would think the same. But I’m not going to tell you what I know. Why should I? In your position, you take my word for it. I am right because of who I am. You are wrong because you are on the outside. You are ignorant and uninformed, unlike me.

Such ripostes were usually fortified by reference to “sources”. In other words, the hack trumped a rebuke by claiming an insider had imparted to him an earth-shattering revelation, without ever saying exactly what. But what if that source was, without the hapless correspondent realising, telling them a load of complete bollocks? During the Pietersen nuclear winter, plenty of “sources” with agenda had every reason to spin a yard to their advantage. Because the press identified neither the sources nor the content, nothing could be scrutinised for its true worth. In the final reduction, anonymous vagaries were passed off as empirical evidence.

This story was not just about Pietersen, by any stretch. The competency of Paul Downton. The merits of Peter Moores. The legitimacy of Alastair Cook. Free-to-air television. Time and again, the agglomerate press circled their wagons of legitimacy and insisted they were right, whatever the evidence to the contrary. They branded as rabid freaks anyone foolish enough to reject their authority and disagree.

The more they lost touch, the more stubborn they became. And when opportunities arose to prove their good judgement, they gleefully taunted their own readers with boasts of one-upmanship. Desperate straws were clutched at. While thousands of sober, thoughtful critics, on BTL boards and Twitter, were dismissed as a baying, irrelevant, mob, a few hundred paying Ageas Bowl spectators who applauded an Alastair Cook innings were seized upon as representatives of the nation’s soul.

This wave of condescension and antipathy, directed by writers, and some broadcasters, at their own audiences, is unique in the history of British media. When bums start leaving seats, every other branch of journalism and entertainment responds by updating their product and raising their game. If X Factor viewers complain or switch off, Simon Cowell replaces the judges and refreshes the format. In cricket, if you don’t like what they do, they tell you to fuck off.

During the last few weeks, everyday life has calmed down. England’s exciting ODI performances, an opiate for the masses, have soothed the sceptic-hack relationship, at least for the time being. Victories are very difficult to disagree about, and the side’s upturn in fortunes since the removal of Cook and Moores has provided an (unacknowledged) vindication for the legions of BTLers who’d argued the duo’s inadequacy all along. Test cricket is another matter, though, and should Cook fail in the Ashes, trouble will flare up again.

In each of English cricket’s three estates – the administrators, the press, and the public – there is a decreasing appetite for conflict and strife, although this must not distract us from the vivid scrutiny the ECB’s conduct still demands. Contrary to what many journalists probably think, readers desire a positive relationship with the mainstream press. After all, we largely rely on them to provide our news from the front. They have access to people and events which we don’t. And ex-players will offer technical and experiential insights we may not spot with the naked eye.

But the relationship can only work if it’s bi-directional. In return for the vitals provided by journalists and pundits, we bring crowd-sourcing: millions of independent minds, views, and critical faculties, borne of millions of lifetimes spent watching cricket, playing cricket, and thinking about cricket. It’s a win-win. And to lay the first stone of this new Jerusalem, I suggest a little job-swap. A random punter should be granted a week in the press box, with all the trimmings. And during the same test, a Fleet Street correspondent should buy their own tickets and watch every ball from the stands, in the crowd. A change of scenery is good for the soul.

Please, FBI, investigate the 1966 World Cup – if only to shut up Greg Dyke

Marina Hyde in The Guardian


 

‘There is a huge section of fans – and, clearly, administrators – with absolutely no idea how much England is detested within world football, nor any idea as to why.’ Illustration: Andrzej Krauze

You know when World Cups started being corrupt? 1970. And anything up to and including 1962. Between those dates, there was a brief and ineffably beautiful interregnum in the chicanery, which thereafter was never allowed to happen again. Why? Well, there was a global sense, really, that the sainted custodians of both tournament and trophy during that time were simply too exquisitely mannered, too morally faultless, too humble, too generous-spirited, too brilliant at football ever to be permitted to shame the rest of the world in this manner again.

Did you enjoy that story? If so, you may be Greg Dyke, or have suffered a recent head trauma. Either way, please seek help immediately.

The Fifa scandal erupted a mere 10 days ago, and it took barely two of those for England to make it all about itself. Ooh, you’ve no idea how they treated us during the bid process. Ooh, the main thing about this is that we should be given one of the disputed World Cups. The scale of the FBI takedown of Fifa is vast. England is like a diner in one of the ground-floor restaurants of the Towering Inferno building, wondering how what’s going on upstairs is going to affect its drinks order. Odd how they underplay the fact that England’s bid team gave the wives of the executive committee – their wives! – Mulberry handbags. This isn’t being “above” bribery. It’s being unable to get out of the group stages of bribery.

Already, culture secretary John Whittingdale has announced that England is ready to host the 2022 World Cup, should Qatar be stripped of it. Newsflash, buddy: at their current rate of acquisition of English landmarks, Qatar will already own all our major stadiums and half our infrastructure by 2022, so that’ll be just the sort of pyrrhic two-fingers in which we specialise. Yes, Qatar, you’ll know we’ve really beaten you when England lose to Paraguay in the opening match of the tournament at Liverpool’s Qatar Airways stadium (when you go down the tunnel on to the pitch there’s a spine-tingling sign that reads “THIS IS DOHA”.)

I say “we”, but there is no longer a “we” as far as the Fifa exposé goes. We had a good innings, being all in it together. People who don’t even care for football were remarking how watchable footballing arrests were. The utter insufferability of Sepp Blatter was something we could all get behind, while his victory last Friday was an election result on which we could all agree, so soon after our own one, on which we couldn’t.

But the point-missing parochialism was always in the post, and its arrival marks the end of the cross-party, cross-club, cross-everything love-in that has characterised the Fifa story.

From phone-ins to frontbenches, you now cannot move for Little Englanders telescoping world football down to their concerns. At their notional helm is FA chairman Greg Dyke, who did such a bang-up job dealing with the Hutton inquiry that he’s decided to come and bring that same grasp of nuance to what he presumably imagines to be his moment on the global stage. I suppose the best you can say is that there’s less left to damage with English football than there was with the BBC. But really, there hasn’t been a managerial double whammy like it since André Villas-Boas swept from Chelsea to Tottenham.

Historically, there have been few statements less guaranteed to fill you with confidence than “this is a matter for the FA”. Unless you count something like “this is a matter for the Jockey Club”, whose two-legged overlords were traditionally intellectually outclassed by their four-legged underlings. The competition to be the worst-run British sporting body is always hard fought, but the FA has won the title more than any of the others.

And they look to have another in the bag with their reflexive prejudging of corruption allegations, ill-advised speculation about the FBI investigation, and jingoistic bleats about how unfair it all is. It’s just a marginally more self-regarding version of throwing cafeteria furniture across a city square in a Sun-issue Tommy hat. They are naturally supported by said newspaper, whose Pooterish idea that Sepp Blatter was paying attention to what was in their leader column saw it declare in 2010: “Today the Sun makes this plea to Mr Blatter and Fifa. Don’t be put off by the BBC rehashing ancient history. Despite BBC muck-raking, the Sun trusts Fifa to put football first.”

Even our football-loving prime minister is just another Englishman whose criticism of Fifa is based solely on self-interest, as opposed to principle, and whose pettiness only serves to underscore the global perception that our position on everything is based on sour grapes. Back in 2010, he too criticised the British media for daring to investigate Fifa, while the bid team called it “unpatriotic”. Cameron has spent the past week falsifying his anti-Blatter history while failing to disguise his belief that nicking the 2018 World Cup hosting rights would be the perfect money-shot to his prime ministership.

England ready to host 2022 World Cup in place of Qatar, culture secretary says



Consider these powers the perfect spiritual leaders for a tribe whose analogue is probably those Americans who genuinely hadn’t a clue they were even disliked before 9/11. There is a huge section of fans – and, clearly, administrators – with absolutely no idea how much England is detested within world football, nor any idea as to why. And no interest in getting one.

Ideally, each and every one of them would be forced to attend a six-week residential course in which a series of instructors prepared detailed presentations on the matter, which concluded with the rhetorical inquiry: “Do you now understand why everyone thinks we’re just absolutely massive arses?”

Unfortunately, I am told that given the numbers involved this is not a scaleable solution. In which case, just for the merriment, please, please let the FBI open an investigation into how hosting rights for the 1966 World Cup were won. I don’t even care about international law any more, or the increasingly bonkers mission creep which has seen the US announce additional probes into the 2010 and 2014 World Cups, as well the 2018 and 2022 vote, and which will now clearly end in this being the US’s legal equivalent of Nam. I just want someone – anyone – to bring home the realisation that we really are the Ukip of international football. And, increasingly, of international life.