'I always tried to think about being a leader, no matter where I was at'

Ricky Ponting talks about imposing himself on the bowler, batting to win, and turns the spot on his strengths and weaknesses

Interview by Daniel Brettig

October 25, 2013

 

	"A strength of mine was a will to win a contest and not ever let a bowler get the best of me" © Getty Images  Enlarge
Related Links News : Play best batsman at No. 3 - Ponting Players/Officials: Ricky Ponting | Kim Hughes | David Boon |Harbhajan Singh | Mohammad Azharuddin | Rod Marsh | Greg Chappell | Ian Chappell Teams: Australia

Something you've revealed in the opening pages of the book is your batting checklist. From the outside, batting always seemed the most natural thing for you, yet this shows how much effort was required to make it feel commonplace and normal.
That was a big part of my preparation. I was never really one concerned with what I did in the nets. Everything about net practice in our game is so false and fake to what you actually come across in a game that it doesn't have much impact, I believe, on what you take out into the middle. So a good way for me to get prepared was mentally, and make sure I had that checklist all ticked off the night before. The checklist started as a pre-season thing, where if I had a long break and was trying to get back into cricket I needed to get the basic things right so I could start building my game back up again.

Then I started using it in games and having some success and it just became something I felt I had to do before I batted. It's pretty simple stuff, but keeping your mind nice and clear is always one of the biggest challenges, and keeping what you need to in there, which for me was always to watch the ball. I kept the premeditation out of there - about if this one's pitched up I'm going to drive it or if it's short I'm going to pull it. When you have those thoughts in your mind when the ball's about to be released, you generally get out.

Watching the ball is a simple idea to follow, but were there times when you were thinking less about the ball than fighting it out with the bowler who delivered it?
Probably a lot of the time. There was one other thing I used to put into that checklist - if there was an opposition bowler who I knew I could sometimes get a bit fired up against, then I used to have "Don't get involved in any one-on-one battles." Then it was trying to take the bowler or the character out of it and focus on what he was delivering.

Sometimes that could get me going a bit as well. I was always someone who tried to counter-attack and be pretty positive with the way I played and tried to put pressure back on the bowler. But there were other occasions where I went too far, got too fired up and carried away, tried to impose myself too much, and then you're out. Finding that balance between imposing yourself and putting the bowler under pressure without going outside what works for you.

Can you remember times when the one-on-one battle did work for you and others when it didn't?
We as a team had certain bowlers who we felt we could put pressure on and get the better of, and that was always the top three's job to do that.

A guy like James Anderson, early in his career, we were able to keep down for long periods of time. It's not so much targeting guys, but they were younger players coming into international cricket and we knew if we could do that we might get the better of them. But there were others like Darren Gough, who got me out a lot in Ashes cricket, and I always used to impose myself on him. We had some pretty good battles, I made a few hundreds against him but he got me out a few times. And there were occasions where I went a bit hard at balls I shouldn't have that made me think I can't keep playing that way against the bowler, need to focus on the ball.

Kim Hughes was a hero of yours starting out. What most grabbed your attention and made you want to emulate him?
Just the way he played. The flair. The down-on-one-knee cover drives and the fearless hooking and pulling of the West Indians. If you wanted to watch an attractive batsman you'd walk a long way to see anyone play the game in a more attractive manner than Kim Hughes did. I think it was just that.

We all loved the style of Greg Chappell, but it was that Kim seemed to have something a bit more special about him with the way he played. He didn't end up having the record Greg had, but he was fun to watch.

Then Boonie came along after that and played quite differently but became an idol of mine for the fact we both grew up in Launceston and played in the same grade competition and state cricket, and he gave me a path to follow. Those were the two guys I idolised as a youngster.

	"It's about finding that balance between imposing yourself and putting the bowler under pressure without going outside what works for you"

Something what is apparent even from your earliest days is that playing pace came naturally but playing spin was difficult. When we look at your career as a whole it was Harbhajan Singhwho gave you most trouble, but Tim May, Greg Matthews and offspin were a struggle right from the start.
It was, and I actually went back to the academy to work on that more than anything. What was difficult about working on playing spin in Australia in the off season, particularly in Adelaide, was, we were doing it all in the indoor nets and it was so false. You could run down the wicket without any fear at all of getting stumped or one spinning past the outside edge. You just had the freedom to hit the ball wherever you wanted to. In the nets there I was a pretty good player of spin, but when you got out into the middle on Adelaide Oval or the SCG, where it used to spin a lot, against two of the country's best spinners it was a different game altogether. It was right-arm offspin out of anything that troubled me the most.

You found reading length against a good spinner the most challenging task?
On the truer wickets it was okay because you could get away with it, but the one thing I learned about playing spin in India… the first couple of tours were horrible, but the last few tours I had there where I actually understood what I was trying to do a bit better, I actually had some success.

It was all about not getting trapped to good-length balls. Not trying to predict where the ball was going to spin to. It was about trying to hit it before it spun or [well] after it spun, and that's what the good Indian players always did.

That's a concept that Australian batters don't have to think about because the ball doesn't spin very much in domestic cricket here. Even our current blokes, if you look at the struggles they had against Swann in the last Ashes series, it was because you're just not brought up seeing and playing quality spin, and more importantly playing it in conditions that actually favour the bowler. Even with our practice facilities in Australia you don't get that very often.

Mohammad Azharuddin was the source of a lot of that advice about playing in India. How did you get talking?
He and I actually got on pretty well. I think he saw similarities in the way I played and the way he played as a younger guy. He played all the shots when he first came on the scene, so we struck up a bit of a relationship early doors. It probably was my first Test tour to India in 1998, and if you watched the way he played, he was always out in front, flicking his wrists, and for us that was so foreign.

Dhoni does it really well as well. He's not actually a great player of spin bowling but he's got the technique there where they work the ball around and never get caught at bat-pad or done on length. When we go there we always get caught at bat-pad because we're predicting where the ball is going to go.

But yeah, I first heard it from [Azharuddin], he talked about getting to it on the half-volley before it has the chance to spin or get back in your crease and wait for it fully spin and play it from there. It sounds pretty easy but it's difficult to do in the heat of battle against good quality spin bowling. But the technique makes a lot of sense.

Against fast bowling, from an early age you'd been used to big guys trying to knock your block off, so it didn't feel too uncomfortable when you entered Test cricket. But was there anything you did in particular that made you relish that?
I think it was just the fact I did it. I was sort of forced to do it as an 11- or 12-year-old on hard, bouncy synthetic wickets. The indoor centre where I did most of my training as a kid was all hard-wicket stuff. And most of the time I'd be in there with no helmet on and trying to find a way to survive. That's the flip side of spin.

And if you go and watch junior cricket now, they're all playing on synthetic and the ball's bouncing up towards head height, so you can see why kids play cross-bat shots at an early age rather than straight-bat shots.

Also my pre-movements - with the way I pick the bat up and get on the front foot, I'm actually in a really good position to play the short ball anyway without having to move too much. If you broke down my technique and looked at Mark or Steve Waugh's technique, guys who weren't natural hookers and pullers, it's pretty easy to work out why. My hands were up and my bat was up, which means I just had to drop the bat on the ball. They - and Damien Martyn was another - their hands were low and their bat was low, which meant to play a pull shot they had to lift their bat up and get it down again. So they didn't have the time I had to do it. But the guys with low hands were beautiful on-side players, because they didn't have to move the bat too far.

Later in your career when the pull shot and the short ball were causing you some trouble, you said it would have been like cutting a limb off to not play it.
It probably was my most instinctive shot. Straight-driving or on-driving was probably my favourite shot, but if you want to demoralise fast bowlers, if they give you all they've got and you can manage to put it away in front of square hard off the middle of the bat, they're not going to bowl too many more there. And that was what I always tried to do.

	"I was more worried about getting out at the end than scoring runs. That was my downfall. I was more worried about survival than hitting the first ball I saw for four" © PA Photos  Enlarge

As things went on and I got out a lot playing that shot… it's like anything, if you play a lot of cover drives and get out nicking them a few times, it's hard to put the shot away when you score so many runs from it. And that's how I looked at it. I just had to play it better like I was earlier in my career. It was so instinctive and as I mentioned with the way I moved, I was already in that position, so to try to get out of that position is pretty tough.

You mentioned Ian Young, Rod Marsh and Greg Shipperd were your three major mentors. How important do you think it is to get the best possible coaching at that early stage, rather than later, when you're already in international cricket?
That's what's missing from Australian cricket. I don't think we've got the calibre of people hanging around club cricket even that we used to. The older guys aren't playing club cricket anymore or 2nd XI cricket for their states anymore, so what you end up having is a huge group of young blokes all trying to learn from themselves, and it just takes so much longer than it would if you had the older guys hanging around.

Ideally you'd like to have guys like me and Mike Hussey hang around and play state cricket for another couple of years, and have the chance to bat with Alex Doolan or Cameron Bancroft or Sam Whiteman and those young blokes in WA. Dan Marsh [the Tasmania coach] brought it up this year. Alex Doolan, he was a guy who averaged high 20s in first-class cricket, but the times I batted with him last year he got a hundred every time. It's just that stuff that can't be replaced and that's not happening down through the system.

Because there's no money in coaching back down the system we're just losing the people we want around. They've got to go and find something else to do because they can't afford to be involved in cricket. Even at the highest level, a state assistant coach doesn't get a lot. If there's one thing that needs to be addressed, it is to have the right people, and more ex-international players, involved in coaching in our country. Until we get to a stage where the coaches are being paid a lot closer to what the players are being paid then we're just not going to be attracting the people we want to keep around the game.

If you look at the England set-up, they've got Andy Flower, an ex-No. 1 Test batsman in the world, Graham Gooch their highest Test run scorer, Graham Thorpe, who is probably their best-ever batsman technically - he's looking after their one-day batters. No disrespect to any of our guys but we haven't got that calibre of player involved around the Australian team.

For a while you had that, with Justin Langer looking after the batsmen and Craig McDermott the bowlers, and with yourself and Michael Hussey still in the team. There seemed to be a good environment of learning.
But even then, why does JL go back to coach a state team? It's easier, you're not on the road as much, you're probably getting paid more, and you're probably running your own programme. It shouldn't be that way. If you're a coach of the national team in any way, shape or form, that's got to be more lucrative than any of the other stuff, and then trickling back down.

We've got to find a way of getting some money back into club cricket as well. Facilities and things like that.

The Centre of Excellence as well, for a long time it hasn't been the ultra-dynamic, best coaching facility it should be. The people they've had there haven't been that. When I was in Adelaide you had Rod, Greg and Ian Chappell, Terry Jenner, the best available people at that time. If you look now, the coaches they've had there were guys who were battling first-class cricketers. You can understand why young kids might not be that excited about getting up and going to training every day. When I was there I couldn't wait to get up and hear what Greg Chappell was going to say about batting, but it's not been that way for ten years. The facility is unbelievable - no secret why Queensland so often start so well - but the states have been reluctant to send young blokes there because they've probably had better structures and coaches in their states.

It's got to go back the other way and be the best training facility not only in Australia but in the world. England looked at our set-up and made theirs better, their academy better, their coaching structure better. Even having somebody like Rod there - he wouldn't have come cheaply. If there was a job he'd have least liked doing, it would have been chairman of selectors for England and running their academy!

	"My view on selection is, you only ever make a change if it's going to make the team better. A lot of the changes we made didn't make the team better, and I don't care what anybody says"

But I asked for this stuff ten years ago, we all asked for this stuff ten years ago and it was always knocked on the head. No, you don't need a batting coach - that was the attitude they had.

When Steve Waugh became Test captain in 1999 and there was a bit of shuffling going on in the batting order, you reckoned he should have been at three at that time. You've always advocated that the best player in a team should be at three.
I still have the same thoughts now. The best batsman should be at three. I said it during the last Ashes series as well. The times where we were 3 or 4 for 30, if your best batsman had been in earlier then maybe we'd have been only 1 or 2 for 30 or 40. You're the best batsman in the team because you've got the most skill. You've got more skill and can handle situations better than others.

Michael [Clarke] has clearly been the best batsman in Australian cricket for probably the last three years, but he was almost coming in too late, when the damage had already been done. I just think it sends a great statement as well: I'm coming in now. It puts pressure back on the bowlers, and just the way I feel it should be. That's why I said it about Steve, he was clearly the best batsman in our team and ranked the best batsman in the world. I don't think you can ask less skilled or less experienced guys to handle the hardest positions. It should always be up to you.

Many will wonder what you consider your greatest strength as a batsman. But to ask the question two ways: what was a strength you always had and what was another you had to work hard to bring to your game?
A strength of mine was a will to win a contest and not ever let a bowler get the best of me or my partnership when I was at the crease. And I'd like to think that's what others said of me as well. When it was my turn, I did what I did to give my team the best chance of winning.

Something I had to work on was my communication skills around the team when I took over the captaincy. I set good examples and always did the right thing, but once I became a captain I had to find different ways to inspire others and learn about others and work out people's personalities. That was something I was constantly working on through my time as captain. I knew if I didn't do that, I couldn't get the best out of the players.

As for weaknesses, you'd say spin bowling was the one you started with based on nurture?
Yeah, I started with that, but it's interesting, it was only a couple of series around playing spin as well. My record in Australia against spin would be pretty good because I knew how to play on those pitches. It was only on a couple of visits to India where I really struggled. I had some good series in Sri Lanka against Murali on some spinning wickets and found a way to play him. I think it was actually the shape he bowled. Harbhajan troubled me more because when he started he got the ball to drift out, and when the ball drifts out, it lures you into playing. Murali's angle, because he was wide of the crease and coming over the ball, he was almost drifting in and spinning in further. Harbhajan got me a lot early from balls that drifted out, committed me to play, caught a footmark and got caught in close. Murali was always coming that way [towards the leg side], so I could work him around.

Once Harbhajan got me a few times then it was harder to go out and start against him and face him, because he had the wood on me. But I got hold of him in some of the big moments, like the World Cup final and things like that. It was just one of those battles that started the first ODI I played against him in Sharjah [in 1998], and continued on right to the end.

And was there something you never worried about to begin with but crept up on you later on?
I was more worried about getting out at the end than scoring runs. That was my downfall. I was more worried about survival than hitting the first ball I saw for four. When I was batting at my best it didn't matter when it arrived, if it was a half-volley or a short one then I was going to hit it for four. Towards the end it was more getting myself in through the initial period, building an innings, that sort of thing. No matter how hard I tried I couldn't release the handbrake the way I needed to. So the pressure of it got me as much as anything, and I don't mind saying that. I went back to state cricket and played the way I did, then England and played the way I did, I was able to release the pressure I couldn't at the end of my international career. That was one thing that changed.

	"If fast bowlers give you all they've got and you can manage to put it away in front of square hard off the middle of the bat, they're not going to bowl too many more there" © Getty Images  Enlarge

You couldn't fathom the decision to dump Simon Katich from the list of contracted players. Did you feel that among the selectors, media and public there were a lot of calls for you, Hussey and Katich to go without an understanding that there wasn't the talent underneath to replace you?
My view on selection is, you only ever make a change if it's going to make the team better. A lot of the changes we made didn't make the team better, and I don't care what anybody says. The coach [Tim Nielsen] going when he did didn't make the team better. I think a lot of the stuff that happened with the Argus review was premeditated stuff that was already in the pipeline, and they put this panel together to justify it. You can't tell me that didn't happen with Mickey Arthur, the fact he was in WA coaching. And Tim going when he did - we'd just won a series in Sri Lanka.

My meeting around the Argus review lasted less than an hour. I was dressed in a suit, prepared, notes. I thought I was going to be there all day, thrash everything out for six hours, get my opinions and views on everything. But they asked me a few questions, asked me who was accountable, and I was out. I said to James [Sutherland], "I need to have a chat to you outside." We did and it was like they didn't really want to hear it. They knew what they had to do, some of it had already started, and they didn't want to hear any more. That was disappointing.

Something else that was very important to your attitude was that you batted to win matches, to the exclusion of all else, certainly any personal ambition. There is a story of David Boon declaring on you on 94 not out in a Shield match and it really not mattering at all.
Absolutely, and back when I started playing for Tassie we didn't win too many games. We just had to try to set up a game.

I had only just found out we might be going to declare. David Saker was bowling with the second new ball and a ball or two before we declared, I ran down the wicket and hit him back over his head for six and thought, "I've got another over here to get a hundred", and Boonie's got his hand out the window waving me in. But I just ran off, got changed and ran back out.

Haydos with his 380 is an exception, but the reason we Australians didn't hold a lot of those individual records, especially during those glory days, was, we were trying to win the game. It didn't matter how many I got or Haydos or Lang got if we could get them quick and try to get 20 wickets to win the game.

Even really early at the academy, Rod sat us all down and said, "If you guys can't score 300 runs in a day, you may as well pick your bag up and jump on a plane and go home." That was the way I was brought up, scoring quick, playing with aggression and giving your team the best chance to win. I played 168 Tests and won well over 100 of them because we were able to play that way for most of the time.

As a player you were an outstanding batsman but also an outstanding batsman of and for your time. When Australian cricket was becoming dominant, the way you played suited that mindset and that time. The strength of the players around you gave you licence to play the way you did.
That reflects all of us. Gilly's the same. He was able to play the way he did down [at seven] on the back of what had happened. Even someone like Justin turned himself into the player he did with the confidence of the guys around him. He was looked at as a nicker and a nudger and someone who didn't have much talent, but if you look at how he played his last half-dozen years, he was brilliant. He'd score quicker than Haydos. That sort of confidence and trust in your mates around you is what we need to be able to build again now in this current team.

That's happened around the South African team now and was really evident in my last Test, the way they played after lunch on the second day, when Amla and Smith got 180 in a session, that's a team with total confidence in the rest of their mates. If you're ever worried about exposing someone, you can't play that way. They trusted each other that they could impose themselves on us and they did it. That's what we used to do.

	"That team we had, Gilly could've captained, I could've captained, they say Warney could have captained but I'm not sure. Haydos couldn't have been captain, Langer couldn't have been, Marto couldn't have been"

One of the fascinating things about the book is how you reflect on your earlier years. There were momentous things going on around you in Australian cricket but a lot of it passed you by as a young player making your way. There are a lot more guys like that now, and not as much leadership to take them through it.
I've been asked why we haven't got any leaders around Australian cricket at the moment, and to be honest I'm not sure we ever have. I just think there aren't a lot of leaders in the world or in sporting teams. There are a lot of guys who aren't meant to be that. If you went around to a lot of the rugby league or Aussie Rules teams, there wouldn't be a lot of guys in those sides who you'd think could lead.

That team we had, Gilly could've captained, I could've captained, they say Warney could have captained but I'm not sure he could have with all the other stuff off the field. On the field he might have seen the game really well, but I don't think he could have been captain. Haydos couldn't have been, Langer couldn't have been, Marto couldn't have been. So maybe there's not those leaders we always thought there were.

I always just tried to think about being a leader, no matter where I was at. If I was a young bloke in a team I thought I could be a leader just with energy, the way I train and trying to make myself a better fielder and player. Because I thought if someone else saw me doing that, they'd want to do it no matter how old they were. So when I came in the side and Mark Waugh was the best fielder, I was going to train harder every day to make sure I was better than him, and if I got better than him maybe he'd want to chase me. There's not a lot of leadership types around our team at the moment but I think that will grow. Steve Smith's grown, he's maturing well and has led NSW, he might be someone down the track who has got what it takes.

The qualities you need to have to lead have to be evident pretty early, don't they?
You can't manufacture it either, you've either got what it takes or you haven't. I'm a massive believer that leaders are born, not made or created. It's within you to worry about others first rather than yourself.

Paxman vs Brand

I love Russel Brand!

Economics students aim to tear up free-market syllabus

Undergraduates at Manchester University propose overhaul of orthodox teachings to embrace alternative theories

• Phillip Inman, economics correspondent
• The Guardian, Thursday 24 October 2013 19.17 BST

The Post-Crash Economics Society at Manchester University. Photograph: Jon Super for the Guardian

Few mainstream economists predicted the global financial crash of 2008 and academics have been accused of acting as cheerleaders for the often labyrinthine financial models behind the crisis. Now a growing band of university students are plotting a quiet revolution against orthodox free-market teaching, arguing that alternative ways of thinking have been pushed to the margins.

Economics undergraduates at the University of Manchester have formed the Post-Crash Economics Society, which they hope will be copied by universities across the country. The organisers criticise university courses for doing little to explain why economists failed to warn about the global financial crisis and for having too heavy a focus on training students for City jobs.

A growing number of top economists, such as Ha-Joon Chang, who teaches economics at Cambridge University, are backing the students.

Next month the society plans to publish a manifesto proposing sweeping reforms to the University of Manchester's curriculum, with the hope that other institutions will follow suit.

Joe Earle, a spokesman for the Post-Crash Economics Society and a final-year undergraduate, said academic departments were "ignoring the crisis" and that, by neglecting global developments and critics of the free market such as Keynes and Marx, the study of economics was "in danger of losing its broader relevance".

Chang, who is a reader in the political economy of development at Cambridge, said he agreed with the society's premise. The teaching of economics was increasingly confined to arcane mathematical models, he said. "Students are not even prepared for the commercial world. Few [students] know what is going on in China and how it influences the global economic situation. Even worse, I've met American students who have never heard of Keynes."

In June a network of young economics students, thinkers and writers set up Rethinking Economics, a campaign group to challenge what they say is the predominant narrative in the subject.

Earle said students across Britain were being taught neoclassical economics "as if it was the only theory".

He said: "It is given such a dominant position in our modules that many students aren't even aware that there are other distinct theories out there that question the assumptions, methodologies and conclusions of the economics we are taught."

Multiple-choice and maths questions dominate the first two years of economics degrees, which Earle said meant most students stayed away from modules that required reading and essay-writing, such as history of economic thought. "They think they just don't have the skills required for those sorts of modules and they don't want to jeopardise their degree," he said. "As a consequence, economics students never develop the faculties necessary to critically question, evaluate and compare economic theories, and enter the working world with a false belief about what economics is and a knowledge base limited to neoclassical theory."

In the decade before the 2008 crash, many economists dismissed warnings that property and stock markets were overvalued. They argued that markets were correctly pricing shares, property and exotic derivatives in line with economic models of behaviour. It was only when the US sub-prime mortgage market unravelled that banks realised a collective failure to spot the bubble had wrecked their finances.

In his 2010 documentary Inside Job, Charles Ferguson highlighted how US academics had produced hundreds of reports in support of the types of high-risk trading and debt-fuelled consumption that triggered the crash.

Some leading economists have criticised university economics teaching, among them Paul Krugman, a Nobel prize winner and professor at Princeton university who has attacked the complacency of economics education in the US.

In an article for the New York Times in 2009, Krugman wrote: "As I see it, the economics profession went astray because economists, as a group, mistook beauty, clad in impressive-looking mathematics, for truth."

Adam Posen, head of the Washington-based thinktank the Peterson Institute, said universities ignore empirical evidence that contradicts mainstream theories in favour of "overly technical nonsense".

City economists attacked Joseph Stiglitz, the former World Bank chief economist, and Olivier Blanchard, the current International Monetary Fund chief economist, when they criticised western governments for cutting investment in the wake of the crash.

A Manchester University spokeman said that, as at other university courses around the world, economics teaching at Manchester "focuses on mainstream approaches, reflecting the current state of the discipline". He added: "It is also important for students' career prospects that they have an effective grounding in the core elements of the subject.

"Many students at Manchester study economics in an interdisciplinary context alongside other social sciences, especially philosophy, politics and sociology. Such students gain knowledge of different kinds of approaches to examining social phenomena … many modules taught by the department centre on the use of quantitative techniques. These could just as easily be deployed in mainstream or non-mainstream contexts."

Cricket - Moving past a howler

 

 Nicholas Hogg

Shane Warne drops Kevin Pietersen, and the 2005 Ashes  © Getty Images

Enlarge

Last season I was bowling at a former England player - not a common occurrence, I can assure you - when he snicked a late outswinger to first slip. A photographer freeze-famed the moment: hands cupped, the ball about to be grasped. The photographer didn't catch the ricochet off his palms, the head-in-hands aftermath from bowler and fielder. No slip catch is easy, and I felt more sympathy than anger towards my team-mate. I knew that the drop would haunt us both, two amateurs missing a rare chance to bag an ex-international.

Momentary yet lasting, the howler is a lapse of batting, bowling or fielding - and we must add but discuss no further in fear of this article turning into a thesis, the umpire howler - a singular fail that can flush an entire game, or even a series, down the drain. But no one is perfect, and no player wins every battle. Here, NFL coaching icon Vince Lombardi encouragingly reminds us, "It's not whether you get knocked down but whether you get up." 

Or, if you're a gifted spin bowler, win the next series.

Just before lunch on the final day at The Oval in 2005, Kevin Pietersen edged Brett Lee to first slip. Pietersen was on 15. The catch, a ball that would be snapped up in practice, is shelled by no other than Shane Warne. Pietersen marched on to a grand total of 158 and claimed the Ashes, that mythical little urn that, along with the cricket ball, had just passed through Warne's hands.

And he was hardly the first to fail so spectacularly. In 1902, the moustachioed offspinner Fred Tate made his England debut at Old Trafford, a game that England had to win to keep the Ashes alive. When Joe Darling skied one to deep square leg, it was poor Fred who stuck out his hand and helped it to the ground. Darling's 20 more runs proved vital in a low-scoring game, a second innings in which Tate went in at No. 11 with England needing 8 to win.

Tate scored 4. He sobbed in the changing room and sobbed at the train station. Although his son Maurice would achieve England glory, his father ended his days a broken man, a publican who harangued his few customers with the tale of his infamous drop.

It may not have been a series-losing moment, but when Kings XI Punjab beat Royal Challengers Bangalore in Mohali this year, they had two players to thank: David Miller and his 38-ball century, and Virat Kohli for the top-edged skier he spilled. Victory burst through his hands, hit him in the mouth, and landed on the turf. Kohli deflected the press from his howler by saying, "It was one of the best innings that has ever been seen in the IPL." And if it helped him move on from the horror drop, then let him praise - it's better than crying all the way home, opening a pub, and then dying a pauper.

A player's conscience, whether he forgets or regrets, must affect recovery from grave mistakes. I wonder if Geoff Boycott spent sleepless nights ruing his dreadful run out of Nottingham favourite Derek Randall at Trent Bridge in 1977. As Randall trudges off the turf, Boycott covers his face with his gloves. In mock shame to appease the crowd or genuine grief, one must take his word. "I have never felt so completely wretched on a cricket field," he later wrote. And he did go on to make a ton, "the finest I have ever played", which in Boycott's world equals success, regardless of the result or run-out victim.

In a universe of infinite possibilities, Mark Ramprakash has tucked his bat under his arm, and we're leaping for joy

So, can we fully recover from a howler - without being a sociopath?

US comedian Larry David featured baseball player Bill Buckner in an episode of his hit series Curb Your Enthusiasm. Larry, after losing a baseball game by letting the ball through his legs, befriends Buckner at a memorabilia signing - where Buckner, still reviled for a similar fielding error that cost the Boston Red Sox the 1986 World Series, is sitting alone. Larry and Buckner walk the New York streets as passers-by heckle and boo Buckner, mirroring the abuse and death threats he received in life after his costly fluff. But this is TV, and David has written a heroic part for Buckner - he catches a baby thrown from a burning building before the cheering crowd hoist him onto their shoulders.

This may be fiction, yet Buckner also found peace with his howler in reality. In 1990 he returned to a standing ovation from Red Sox fans, and has since formed a double act with Mookie Wilson, the player whose hit he missed.

These examples must be a lesson for those of us who fail. And what player at whatever level can boast never-ending success? Although I have an error-strewn CV of my own - shouldering arms to a ball that took out my middle stump whilst batting to save a match must be top of the table - it's back to the drop of my team-mate that inspired this article.

My coping strategy isn't winning the following series, opening a pub, praising the opposition or moving on with a near-psychopathic ambition, but cosmic philosophy.

In a universe of infinite possibilities, on a planet where sport has conspired to pit the amateur against the professional, my team-mate holds aloft a red sphere, Mark Ramprakash has tucked his bat under his arm, and we're leaping for joy.

Mike Brearley's Bradman Oration 2013 - What is the point of Sport?

	Mike Brearley: "For many people otherwise inclined to be inhibited or self-conscious, sport offers a unique opportunity for self-expression and spontaneity" © Getty Images  Enlarge

Thank you very much for these remarks; and above all for the great honour you do me in inviting me to give the Bradman Oration as No. 11 in the distinguished line-up of speakers. There are those who'd say that this is the most appropriate position for me in the batting order, though I reckon I might get in ahead of Tim Rice.

It is an honour: but an intimidating honour. Following Rahul Dravid, for one thing. And he himself said it made him more anxious than going in to bat at No. 3 for India at the MCG. For another thing, it's not a talk you invite me for, or a mere lecture, or even a speech, but an Oration, no less. An imposing word and an imposing task. And not only an Oration, but what about the other word in the title: Bradman! The greatest batsman the game has known, a tireless administrator, and a man whose words are shrewd and moving.

It is just possible that the names Bradman and Brearley are not indissolubly linked together in the minds of cricket lovers, except perhaps for those who study the alphabetical order of England-Australia Test players, in which list we are separated solely by Len Braund, who played in 23 Tests for England in the first decade of the 20th century. A heckler in Sydney did once link Bradman and me during the fourth Test of 1978-79: "Breely," he shouted, "you make Denness look like Bradman."

However, I have one Test batting statistic that makes me superior to Don Bradman. I daresay many of you don't know this fact, one that is hard to believe, but of his 80 Test innings no fewer than ten ended in ducks: once in eight times he went to the crease in Test cricket, Bradman was out for nought. A remarkable fact. Whereas in my Test career, of 66 innings only six were ducks, one in 11.

I met Sir Donald a few times on my tours of Australia. Doug Insole, Ken Barrington, Bob Willis and I had lunch with him in Adelaide in 1978. I liked him - he was spry, quick, trenchant and modest. He had a twinkle in his eye. I remember best the discussion about fast bowlers. He reckoned that, for about 18 months, Frank Tyson was the fastest he'd seen; and that Harold Larwood was quicker than the bowlers of that day (who included Michael Holding, Andy Roberts, Dennis Lillee and Jeff Thomson - no slouches you'll agree). He acknowledged that Rodney Hogg was, as he put it, "a bit slippery". I thought he was too.

I come to Australia at a good time for English cricket, and at a key moment, I suspect, for Australian cricket. We are between two Ashes series, unusually close together. As you may have noticed, England have won four of the last five series, though I hesitate, as you'd appreciate, to rub it in. Australians, I gather, are baffled and confused by this scenario, one matched by parallel declines in other sports. It must be a time of soul-searching. I look forward very much to the upcoming series.

So - what to talk to you about, what to orate on? There are so many possible current topics - Test cricket and the threat of T20 domestic leagues, Umpire Review Systems, including the hot spot of Hot Spot, how to fight corruption in sport and in particular in cricket; and so on. But I imagine you might be a little tired of these issues (some of which will no doubt come up in the Panel), and I'm not sure I have anything original to say on them. So I've decided to talk to you now about something that borders on the work I've been doing as a psychoanalyst for the last 30-plus years since stopping playing cricket. I should like to consider the question: what is the point of sport, and in particular of cricket? And how does this link with the Ashes?

So: what is the point of it? Here are two quotes:

"Nothing in cricket has the slightest importance when set against a single death from violence in Northern Ireland."

And, second: ''Some people believe football is a matter of life and death. I am very disappointed with that attitude. I can assure you it is much, much more important than that."

The first quote was from John Arlott, the second, Bill Shankly, the charismatic manager of Liverpool Football Club. What are we to make of this apparent conflict?

	"If human beings were not combative no one would have invented sport. But if human beings were not also cooperative neither team nor individual games would have come into existence"

The roots of sport

For those to whom sport doesn't appeal, it seems futile, pointless. They remember hours of misery at compulsory school games on cold (or indeed hot) sporting fields. They were perhaps physically awkward, and picked last; one can understand what a torment all this must have been for many.

Yet every small child, before self-doubt, and comparison with other children, gets a grip, takes pleasure in his or her bodily capacities and adroitness. Gradually the child achieves a measure of physical coordination and mastery. Walking, jumping, dancing, catching, kicking, climbing, splashing, using an implement as a bat or racquet - all these offer a sense of achievement and satisfaction. Sport grows out of the pleasure in such activities.

Moreover, this development in coordination is part of the development of a more unified self. Instead of being subject, as babies, to more or less random, stimulus-response movements of our limbs, we learn to act in the world according to central intentions or trajectories. We begin to know what we are doing and what we are about. The small child gradually finds a degree of rhythm and control through and in its movements. And there is the pleasure of improving.

So far, dance and sport are barely distinguishable. Sport proper starts to emerge when competition with others plays a more central role alongside the simpler delight in physicality. "I can run faster than you, climb higher, wrestle you to the floor." Aggression enters in more obviously, to combine with the flamboyance that is already in place.

Spontaneity and discipline

Sport is an area where aggression and the public demonstration of skills and of character are permitted, even encouraged. For many people otherwise inclined to be inhibited or self-conscious, sport offers a unique opportunity for self-expression and spontaneity. Within a framework of rules and acceptable behaviour, sportspeople can be whole-hearted. Such people - including me - owe sport a lot; here we begin to find ourselves, to become the selves that we have the potential to be.

In this process, the child and the adult have to learn to cope with the emotional ups and downs of victory and defeat, success and failure. They - we - gradually manage to keep going against the odds, to struggle back to form, to recognise the risks of complacency. We have to learn to deal with inner voices telling us we are no good, and with voices telling us we're wonderful. In sport the tendencies to triumph when we do well, and to become angry or depressed at doing badly, are often strong; we have to find our own ways of coping with them. Arrogance and humiliation have to be struggled against, whilst determination and proper pride and good sportsmanship are struggled towards.

Spectators identify not only with the skills of sportsmen but also with their characters, their characteristic ways of facing those twin impostors success and failure. These scenarios are central dramas of sport.

Sport calls too for a subtle balancing of planning and spontaneity, of calculation and letting go, of discipline and freedom. Greg Chappell wrote in an email to me: "premeditation is the graveyard of batting". And though this is importantly true, it needs qualification or expansion; for two reasons. One is that we need to set ourselves in certain ways. A batsman playing in a T20 match has a totally different orientation to the task from a player in a Test match. In one context he or she is looking to score off every ball; he is aware of the pressure of time, and of the urgent need to evaluate quickly where his side should be in two overs, say, or five. And second the advice may be in some cases a counsel of perfection, aimed at a highly skilled player, and geared to a scenario in which there is infinite time. All batsmen have to do some premeditation, if only in ruling out certain options. Even that mercurial genius Denis Compton looked to be on the back foot when facing quick bowlers. Most players pre-decide whether to go for the hook or alternatively to defend or evade the short-pitched ball; they adopt a policy; they premeditate. In shorter games, all batsmen pre-determine, or at least have a range of possibilities in their minds.

Also one has to train oneself in the sporting skills, form a reliable technique, and work at it. But - and this I think is Greg's point - having disciplined ourselves, having set ourselves according to the situation of the game, we then have to let ourselves go, trusting to our craftsmanship, skill and intuitive responsiveness, without further interference from the conscious mind. Occasionally this leads to that sublime balance between elements that constitutes being in the zone, or being on form. At the peak of performance one is simultaneously alert to possible lines of attack by individual and collective opponents, and able to respond with more or less uncluttered minds to the next play or assault. Like parents with children, we have a complicated job to do in enabling our own selves to find the right balance between self-discipline and free rein. The moments when body and mind are at one, when we are completely concentrated and completely relaxed, aware of every relevant detail of the surroundings but not obsessed or hyper-sensitive to any set of them, confident without being over-confident, aware of dangers without being over-cautious - such rare states of mind are akin to being in love. They involve a marriage between the conscious control mentioned above with the allowing of a more unconscious creativity through the body's knowledge. In such states the role of the conscious mind is, as Greg says, to stand back and quietly watch.

Teams

Sport divides into team and individual sports. One of the aims of team sport is for a group of individuals to be transfigured from a collection into a team, from a group functioning either like a homogenous flock or as a bunch of disparate individualists into a team with a range of different roles, with room for individual expression that is to be kept subservient to the cohesion of the whole team. Team sport calls for the balancing of self-interest and group interest. The members of the team have at times to constrain themselves in the interests of the team; they also have the benefit of the team's support especially when things are hard for them individually.

Cricket is unusual. Like baseball, but unlike golf or football, it is a matter of individual contests and dramas within a team context. When Chris Rogers opens the batting against Jimmy Anderson at Brisbane in a month's time, he will be well aware that what happens next is up to him (and Anderson). But their battle will also at some more subliminal level be influenced by the morale of the two sides.

	Greg Chappell once said "premeditation is the graveyard of batting" Adrian Murrell / © Getty Images  Enlarge

As Bradman said about the Invincibles (the 1948 side touring England): "Nothing can alter the figures which will appear in black and white in the record books, but they cannot record the spirit which permeated the side, the courage and fighting qualities of the players, for these things cannot be measured. They were on a very high plane."

Unlike baseball, cricket's contests between bat and ball can last for very long time periods - days, even - and go through many ups and downs. A weather-vane in the shape of Father Time surveys Lord's, the "home of cricket" - symbolising both the fact that time brings everything to an end and, perhaps, the timelessness of the experience of watching and playing cricket. Cricket is unique in its potential for drawn-out struggles between two people, each with his or her powerful narcissistic wishes for admiration and fears of humiliation, all within this team context. And for the cricket batsman failure means a symbolic death; he or she has to leave the arena, a king deposed.

Team games give people a sense of belonging and a proper pride. And this can happen not on the small scale of a single team, but on a national scale. Sport may be the one place where a country can come together with good feelings about itself. This has happened through cricket in Afghanistan, whose national team have worked their way up from Division 5 in the World Cricket League in 2008, to winning through as qualifiers for the next World Cup in 2015. Imagine what this means to a country devastated by wars, corruption and poverty.

Co-operation and competition

If human beings were not combative no one would have invented sport. But if human beings were not also cooperative neither team nor individual games would have come into existence. For reasons I will come to, rivalry can - and indeed should - be taken close to the limit. But alongside this, cricket also involves the recognition of the unspoken realities of the spirit, respect and generosity of the game. This is not merely a matter of obedience to the laws; it also involves ordinary civilities that oil the wheels of relationships and collegial activities, recognition of limits, consideration and respect, and give and take through a kind of dialogic interplay on the field.

The Latin etymology of both "rival" and "compete" reflect this fact: rivalis meant "sharing the same stream or river bank", competens meant "striving together with", "agreeing together", as in "competent."

Rivalry does not entail lack of respect for one's opponent, whatever the outcome. Test cricket is, like many other forms of sport, rightly a tough business. But there is another side of these tough contests which can too easily be forgotten, and that is the fair-mindedness and sportsmanship between hard, high-powered competitors. One occurred in the last innings of the Centenary Test in 1977, when Derek Randall made his fantastic 174 and Dennis Lillee took 11 wickets in the match (the result of which was precisely the same as the result of the original match, 100 years before, a 45-runs win for Australia). Randall was well past a century at this point, England were something like 250 for 2, Lillee was tired, and there was a serious chance of us winning against all odds. Greg, the captain, was bowling, and a ball squeezed between Randall's bat and pad. Rod Marsh dived forward to take the ball, and the batsman was given out. Picking himself up, Rod indicated to Greg that the ball hadn't carried, and Randall was called back. (Rod says it was also a fact that Randall hadn't even hit it, but that was another matter!)

When at Edgbaston in 2005 England won by two runs, England's hero Andrew Flintoff left the team huddle at the moment of victory and put his arm round his defeated opponent, Brett Lee. He was not only commiserating with the pain of defeat, a boot that could so easily have been on the other foot. He also I think was acknowledging the kinship between rivals. For at the same time as wanting to defeat our opponents, we depend on them and their skill, courage and hostility, in order to prove and improve our own skills, to earn and merit our pride. There is a unity of shared striving, as well as a duality of opposition. The 11 players on each team form bonds through their shared skills and teamwork that are sometimes hard to replicate in the less intense working relationships of everyday life. After wars, the closeness felt with fellow soldiers may make domestic ties for discharged survivors pallid by comparison. Somewhat similarly, the 22 players in a Test match go through it together, in a way that no spectator does.

Envy and jealousy play a part in, and are not always easily accommodated within, ordinary rivalry. In one county match Dickie Dodds, the Essex opening batsman, was out without scoring on a pitch that was perfect for batting. Essex went on to dominate the morning session, and by lunch had reached 150 without further loss. Having had to watch his team's success from the pavilion, Dodds camep to Doug Insole, one of the "not out" batsmen, and said, "Skipper, I hope you haven't been troubled by any bad vibes this morning?" Insole replied, "Can't say I have, Dickie, been too busy enjoying myself - why do you ask?" "Because I've been so full of bitterness I've not been wishing you well." Here is an understandable and very human envy; Dodds' frankness and regret meant there was no chance of it spoiling the relationship.

	"Competitiveness can turn into bullying, uncouthness or superiority. But it can also be perverted in the opposite direction. Some people refrain from competing wholeheartedly because they are afraid of winning, and even avoid doing so"

In 1976-77, I played five Tests in India. One of India's formidable quartet of spin bowlers was Erapalli Prasanna. He was a short, somewhat rotund offspinner, with large, expressive eyes, and a wonderful control of flight. For some reason, he and I would engage in a kind of eye-play. His look would say, "Okay, you played that one all right, but where will the next one land?" And mine would reply, "Yes, you fooled me a little, but notice I adjusted well enough." He had that peculiarly Indian, minimal, sideways waggle of the head, which suggests that the vertebrae of the subcontinental neck are more loosely linked than in our stiffer Western ones. The waggle joined with the eyes in saying: "I acknowledge your qualities, and I know you acknowledge mine."

I found it easier to enter into such an engagement with a slow bowler, who might bamboozle me and get me out, but wasn't trying to kill me. But I had something similar with some fast bowlers, especially when we were more or less equally likely to come out on top. With them I could actually enjoy their best ball, pitching on a perfect length in line with off stump and moving away. I also enjoyed the fact that it was too good to graze the edge of my bat. There was the same friendly rivalry. The spirit of cricket - or more broadly, of sport itself.

Being tested

But how much do we really desire to be tested, in life or in sport? If the opposition's best fast bowler treads on the ball before the start of a Test match (as Glenn McGrath did just before the Edgbaston match referred to above) and cannot play, is one relieved or disappointed? There is no escaping the relief. We all want an easier ride. And it would be easy to be hypocritical, falsely high-minded, and say insincerely that we regret that the opposition team is hampered. But at the same time there is also a wish - in the participants as well as among spectators - for the contest to be fought with each side at its best, not depleted, so that no one can cavil at victory or make excuses for defeat. Similarly, one might take more pleasure in scoring fifty against Lillee and Thomson than in making a big hundred against lesser bowling. Bradman made a parallel point: "There is not much personal satisfaction in making a hundred and being missed several times. Any artist must surely aim at perfection." "Perfection" includes competing with the best, and this offers the opportunity to feel most fully alive, and to find the greatest satisfaction.

Opponents challenge us. If we are up to it, they stretch us, call forth our courage, skill and resourcefulness; they force us to develop our techniques, or else to lag behind. They are co-creators of excellence and integrity. As the old Yorkshire and England batsman Maurice Leyland once said: "Fast bowling keeps you honest." And mountaineer Heinrich Harrrer, in The White Spider, "The glorious thing about mountains is that they will endure no lies." And this is why corruption - fixing of any kind - goes against the essence of sport and is the greatest threat to its integrity.

Visceral truthfulness is part of the process whereby we come to accept the urgency of our own subjectivity, whilst giving room to the subjectivity of the other. It takes courage to risk all in such competitiveness, and courage and generosity to accept the outcome without retreat or revenge. You will agree that this is pat of the appeal of the Ashes to us all.

Avoiding the contest

Competitiveness can get out of hand, turning into cheating and a nasty vindictiveness. Over-valuation of competitiveness can crush and inhibit the growing child. It can spoil relationships, and reduce love to trophy-seeking. It can result in an attitude of "devil take the hindmost".

There is I think no need for "sledging", and I encountered hardly any of it in my career as a professional cricketer, In my experience the great West Indian fast bowlers said nothing to the batsman on the field. One might say: they had no need to - first because of their superlative ability, but second because they were quite able to convey menace by eye contact and strut. It happened that, when I played my first Test match, against the West Indies, in 1976, both teams were staying at the same hotel in Nottingham and I ran into Andy Roberts at breakfast. He gave me a quizzical little look, not crudely unpleasant, but conveying, I felt, something along the lines of "Shall I be eating you for breakfast or for tea?" He gave these looks on the field too. Like the face of Helen of Troy, which launched a thousand ships, Andy's conveyed a thousand words.

	Erapalli Prasanna, says Brearley, would engage the batsmen in eye-play © PA Photos  Enlarge

There are differences that would be hard to define between appropriate shrewdness in undermining an opponent and sledging - a boorish expression of contempt. Cricket is after all not only a physical game; it includes bluff, menace, ploy and counter-ploy. Setting a field is not simply a matter of putting someone where the ball is most likely to go, (though that's not a bad idea; have modern captains forgotten about third man?) but also of making the batsman wonder what is coming next, or making clear to him that we reckon he lacks certain strokes. The aim is that he will be undone by such a "statement" either into loss of nerve or into reckless attempts to prove us wrong. Words may enter into this; a captain might say within a batsman's hearing "you don't need anyone back there for him" - and I would be inclined to see this as a fair enough nibble at the batsman's state of mind. Viv Richards' swagger at the crease and Shane Warne's slow, mesmerising nine-step walk which took up most of his so-called "run-up" were key elements in their unequivocal assertion that this was their stage, a stage their opponents had little right to share with them. Such attitudes, by captains as well as bowlers or batsmen, seem to me to be acceptable, even admirable, but they can tip over into arrogance and superiority - even into a sort of gang warfare. The line is thin.

Superiority and arrogance may be endemic in a person or a culture. The British Empire was not exactly free of it (as you may have noticed). We British had many terms of abuse or disparagement for members of other cultures - racist stereotyping. Such automatic attitudes involved stereotyping. What was remarkable about the rise of West Indian cricket - a rise that culminated in their extraordinary period of world dominance during the 1970s and '80s - is that people who had been enslaved and then released into a world of prejudice, arrogance and power, with many of these arrangements extending into cricket, should have been so open to values that they found in this colonial game.

Self-disparagement is one consequence of racial and other kinds of trauma, yet cricketers like the Constantines (father Lebrun and son Learie), George Headley and Frank Worrell were able through their exploits and attitudes to build up the self-respect of their fellows, so that later generations could be stronger, more determined, more in touch with their proper pride. It seems to me that West Indians of earlier generations were able to be modest (in the sense of knowing they had a lot to learn) without being abject, and proud without being arrogant. They were prepared to celebrate the glass as half-full rather than rage against its being half-empty. They were willing also to wait. It was thanks to their pride and forbearance that the next generation, Roberts and Richards included, could triumph so memorably in what was able to be, by then, healthy competition between true equals.

So: competitiveness can turn into bullying, uncouthness or superiority. But it can also be perverted in the opposite direction. Some people refrain from competing wholeheartedly because they are afraid of winning, and even avoid doing so. One young boy desperately wanted to win the first board game with his father, but then equally desperately needed to lose the second, so that neither party would lose face, or have to bear too much disappointment, or have to deal with any tendency to gloat. One might think, loftily, that the mature attitude to winning in sport is not to mind. The opposite is true. Not minding often means avoiding really trying.

I am aware, of course, that recreational sport played for fun may have other aims and values. Of one social-side captain it was said that "his captaincy had twin aims: to give every player a good game and to beat the opposition as narrowly as possible". I can see the point in this. But something is also lost in such an attitude. In sport we have the opportunity, and the license, to assert ourselves as separate and authentic individuals against others who have the same license; this potential allows us to find our own unique identity, whilst respecting that of others. And this is part of a wider growth of the personality, of which one aspect would be the Quaker capacity to "tell Truth to Power". One element in telling the truth is being able to stand firm against powerful and sometimes bullying forces, without becoming a bully oneself. The more strenuous and spirited aspects of competitiveness enhance self-development, courage and sheer exhilaration. They can also be the occasion and source of the discovery and growth of new methods and techniques. Whereas being less than wholehearted is liable to be, though it may not be, a kind of evasion or cowardice.

I once was a guest player for an English professional side on a short tour involving a number of matches. During the first half of the tour, we had tried our best but lost more than we won. We had been facing talented players, in their conditions. The matches were played hard, even though they were not part of any ongoing competitive leagues or series. In the next game, against a very strong side, we were led by the newly arrived captain. This captain preferred to emphasise the entertainment element in the game, this being a supposedly "friendly" fixture; not wanting to be too serious, he took off his front-line bowlers, allowing the opposition batsmen to display their most powerful strokes. They scored an even bigger total than they would have without his (to my mind misguided) generosity, bowled flat-out against us, and we limped to a crushing defeat. This gesture of "giving" runs patronised the other team and robbed each party of the satisfaction of doing their best in striving properly to win. We did not properly lose (though we did lose face and respect). The gilt on our opponents' win was tarnished.

Such dilution of proper rivalry can also occur out of a wish to look good. One Test captain, whom I won't name, decided during the afternoon of the last day that his batsmen should play for a draw rather than take further risks in going for a win - a perfectly respectable decision. He was, however, reluctant to be criticised for being a defensive captain. This match was the first Test for a young batsman in the middle order; he had been given out (incorrectly) for a duck in the first innings, and given a hard time by the crowd, who'd wanted their local hero selected instead of him. When he went in to bat that last afternoon the captain gave him the following orders: "Play for a draw, but don't make it look as if we're playing for a draw." This was hypocritical and cowardly captaincy; the debutant was in a difficult enough place without having to act a false role. This captain was more interested in how he himself looked than in competing properly or in supporting a young player.

	"It seems to me that West Indians of earlier generations were able to be modest (in the sense of knowing they had a lot to learn) without being abject, and proud without being arrogant"

I even have some doubts about what was from one viewpoint a notable example of nobility and generosity. The great Surrey and England batsman Jack Hobbs said once that as Surrey had a lot of good batsman, and the Oval pitch was usually easy, when he and Andy Sandham had put on 150 or so for the first wicket, he'd sometimes give his wicket to "the most deserving professional bowler". (When the pitch was difficult, or Larwood and Voce were bowling, that was when he really earned his money, he went on). But in making a gift of his wicket, did Hobbs belittle the recipient of the gift, who had not by his own skill and persistence forced an error? Did he treat the bowler not man to man, but man to boy? Was there an element of the feudal in Hobbs' largesse?

When England were about to tour India in 1976, some of us took the opportunity to ask Len Hutton, a Yorkshireman noted for his dry, enigmatic comments, for advice. Len appeared characteristically guarded. He then uttered a single short sentence: "Don't take pity on them Indian bowlers."

In the great battles of sport, no quarter is given and none expected. Some of you will remember the contest between South African fast bowler Alan Donald and Michael Atherton at Trent Bridge in 1998. A great fast bowler hurled all his aggression, power and skill at a defiant, gritty batsman, a battle given an extra tinge of menace by the umpiring mistake as a result of which Atherton had just been given not out, having gloved Donald to the keeper.

These are occasions when observers tremble with awe. Highlights of Test matches in Australia were for the first time broadcast in the UK in 1974-75, after the ten o'clock news. England - this you will certainly remember - were blasted by Lillee and Thommo on bowler-friendly pitches. My Middlesex colleague, opening batsman Mike Smith, reported pouring himself a large gin and tonic and hiding behind the sofa to watch.

In that series, Tony Greig used to provoke Lillee; he believed that Dennis bowled less well the more fired up he got; and Tony himself reacted at his best when the opponent was incensed. Some of the most memorable contests are those where the aggression is raw, but contained, perhaps only just, within the bounds of respect for the opposition and for the rules and traditions of the game. One of the great things about Ashes matches is the absolute commitment of both sides.

Shankly and Arlott

So to return, briefly, to John Arlott and Bill Shankley. Arlott is clearly right about particular moments. Death or serious injury are real tragedies or disasters, compared with which a low score, even a Bradman duck, is nothing. On the other hand, the institution of sport, with its challenges and opportunities, its companionship with team-mates and opponents alike, offers a setting for activities that enrich life, that build character, and that help develop the complex balance between being an individual and being part of a group or team. Both are right.