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Wednesday 6 August 2014

Cricket - The fear of the ringer

 

Jonathan Wilson in Cricinfo
Slow straight bowling can become infused with mystery and terror when you think you're facing a ringer  © PA Photos
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Cricket, probably more than any other sport, encourages the ringer. Everybody who has ever played at any kind of amateur level knows that Sunday morning feeling, either calling round mates and mates of mates to see if anybody fancies making up the numbers, or getting an unexpected phone call from somebody you last saw in a bar at university ten years earlier seeing if you fancy a game.
It happens in other sports as well, of course, but cricket, as an individual sport dressed in a team game's clothing, seems more conducive to the ringer. A footballer or a hockey player suddenly introduced to an unfamiliar team will stand out a mile, the holistic nature of those sports meaning he won't be making a run he needs to, or he'll be providing cover where none is needed. In cricket, though, you pick up the ball and bowl, or pick up the bat and bat, and - apart from knowing the idiosyncrasies of how other batsmen run or the vagaries of who fields best where, essentially you can just get on with it. 
Even better, because of the self-regulatory element of cricket, the way a batsman can retire, or a bowler can be taken off if he's bowling so well he threatens to unbalance the game, it doesn't really matter if there's one player who's far better than everybody else. It doesn't really matter if there's one player who's far worse: even good players score ducks, so the weak link doesn't stand out as he would in another sport.
The best ringer I ever played with was the West Indies offspinner Omari Banks who, aged 16 or 17, for reasons I can't recall, joined our college team for a tour. He was an up-and-coming star, we were told, a bowler who was expected to play Test cricket sooner rather than later.
A first glance was confusing. He belted the ball miles and clearly had a superb eye, but his frequently short offbreaks were remarkably unthreatening. He must be a quick taking it easy on us, we thought; five years later, he was taking three wickets (for lots) and scoring 47 not out as West Indies chased down 418 to beat Australia in Antigua. There was something rather comforting in that: he'd seemed far more like a batsman than a bowler to us.
Clean though his hitting had been, the truth is Banks had been a little bit of a disappointment to us. Hearing we were getting a West Indies bowler, we'd assumed we could play along and then chuck him the ball as soon as a partnership began to get annoying, effectively guaranteeing wins.
Absurdly, the following year, I found myself cast unwittingly in the Banks role - in relative terms; nobody would ever have pretended I was on the verge of a Test debut. I'd just finished my Masters and was temping at a data entry centre in Sunderland. A mate was working at the City of Newcastle Development Agency and called me one day to see if I fancied playing against British Airways the following day. By starting work early and taking only 15 minutes for lunch, I was able to get up to Ponteland, to a bleak field near the airport, in time to play.
"What do you do?" the captain asked. The honest answer would have been, "Nothing very well," but I grunted, "Bits and pieces."
He nodded and, having won the toss and opted to bat, asked me to open. I had occasionally opened for my college Second XI as an undergrad, so it didn't seem that odd, although at Durham I'd tended to bat at seven or eight for the Graduate Society. On a horrible, sticky pitch, I ground my way to 27 at which, having heard the grumbles from the boundary, I slashed at a wide one and was caught at deep cover. My slow start having forced others to play overly aggressively, I ended up top-scoring as we made 90-odd in 20 overs.
That, I assumed, was that. I fielded at backward point and took a catch, but the game seemed to be drifting slowly away from us when the captain suddenly asked me to bowl the 13th over. This seemed very strange, but I wasn't going to say no. The batsman was set, had scored 30 or so, and looked far better than anybody else in the game.
My first ball, a pushed through offbreak, was blocked. The second he clubbed through midwicket for four, although it had turned a little and it had come slightly off the inside edge. The third ball I tossed up, it didn't turn, he played for spin that wasn't there and chipped it to cover. "Thinking cricket," said the captain, apparently in the belief there'd been some element of skill of planning in what had just happened.
What happened next was mystifying. The new batsman blocked out the over. They blocked out the 15th over as well. Ludicrously I had figures of 2-1-4-1. Suddenly they needed over a run a ball. The third over, the batsman, having to force the pace, came down the track, yorked himself and was stumped. Two balls later the new batsman did the same thing. We ended up winning by 12 runs and, without really knowing how, I'd taken 3 for 14.
It later turned out my mate had rather oversold me, or rather, our captain had assumed the level of college cricket at my university was rather higher than it was. After I'd batted so sluggishly, he'd assumed I must be a bowler and so had decided to give me four overs at the death. He'd even let on to the opposing captain that I was a ringer, with a suitably inflated suggestion of my abilities. When I'd then fortuitously dismissed their best player, it confirmed their fears, which explained the nine successive balls nobody had tried to hit. Slow straight bowling had become infused with mystery and terror.
None of it was real, of course. The wickets had been conjured by fear of the ringer. It was a valuable lesson: pretend you know what you're doing, and opponents might just destroy themselves by believing you.

Sick of this market-driven world? You should be


The self-serving con of neoliberalism is that it has eroded the human values the market was supposed to emancipate
Aerial views of London, Britain - 05 Mar 2013
‘The workplace has been overwhelmed by a mad, Kafkaesque infrastructure ... whose purpose is to reward the winners and punish the losers.’ Photograph: REX/High Level

To be at peace with a troubled world: this is not a reasonable aim. It can be achieved only through a disavowal of what surrounds you. To be at peace with yourself within a troubled world: that, by contrast, is an honourable aspiration. This column is for those who feel at odds with life. It calls on you not to be ashamed.
I was prompted to write it by a remarkable book, just published in English, by a Belgian professor of psychoanalysis, Paul Verhaeghe. What About Me? The Struggle for Identity in a Market-Based Society is one of those books that, by making connections between apparently distinct phenomena, permits sudden new insights into what is happening to us and why.
We are social animals, Verhaeghe argues, and our identities are shaped by the norms and values we absorb from other people. Every society defines and shapes its own normality – and its own abnormality – according to dominant narratives, and seeks either to make people comply or to exclude them if they don’t.
Today the dominant narrative is that of market fundamentalism, widely known in Europe as neoliberalism. The story it tells is that the market can resolve almost all social, economic and political problems. The less the state regulates and taxes us, the better off we will be. Public services should be privatised, public spending should be cut, and business should be freed from social control. In countries such as the UK and the US, this story has shaped our norms and values for around 35 years: since Thatcher and Reagan came to power. It is rapidly colonising the rest of the world.
Verhaeghe points out that neoliberalism draws on the ancient Greek idea that our ethics are innate (and governed by a state of nature it calls the market) and on the Christian idea that humankind is inherently selfish and acquisitive. Rather than seeking to suppress these characteristics, neoliberalism celebrates them: it claims that unrestricted competition, driven by self-interest, leads to innovation and economic growth, enhancing the welfare of all.
At the heart of this story is the notion of merit. Untrammelled competition rewards people who have talent, work hard, and innovate. It breaks down hierarchies and creates a world of opportunity and mobility.
The reality is rather different. Even at the beginning of the process, when markets are first deregulated, we do not start with equal opportunities. Some people are a long way down the track before the starting gun is fired. This is how the Russian oligarchs managed to acquire such wealth when the Soviet Union broke up. They weren’t, on the whole, the most talented, hardworking or innovative people, but those with the fewest scruples, the most thugs, and the best contacts – often in the KGB.
Even when outcomes are based on talent and hard work, they don’t stay that way for long. Once the first generation of liberated entrepreneurs has made its money, the initial meritocracy is replaced by a new elite, which insulates its children from competition by inheritance and the best education money can buy. Where market fundamentalism has been most fiercely applied – in countries like the US and UK – social mobility has greatly declined.
If neoliberalism was anything other than a self-serving con, whose gurus and thinktanks were financed from the beginning by some of the world’s richest people (the US multimillionaires Coors, Olin, Scaife, Pew and others), its apostles would have demanded, as a precondition for a society based on merit, that no one should start life with the unfair advantage of inherited wealth or economically determined education. But they never believed in their own doctrine. Enterprise, as a result, quickly gave way to rent.
All this is ignored, and success or failure in the market economy are ascribed solely to the efforts of the individual. The rich are the new righteous; the poor are the new deviants, who have failed both economically and morally and are now classified as social parasites.
The market was meant to emancipate us, offering autonomy and freedom. Instead it has delivered atomisation and loneliness.
The workplace has been overwhelmed by a mad, Kafkaesque infrastructure of assessments, monitoring, measuring, surveillance and audits, centrally directed and rigidly planned, whose purpose is to reward the winners and punish the losers. It destroys autonomy, enterprise, innovation and loyalty, and breeds frustration, envy and fear. Through a magnificent paradox, it has led to the revival of a grand old Soviet tradition known in Russian as tufta. It means falsification of statistics to meet the diktats of unaccountable power.
The same forces afflict those who can’t find work. They must now contend, alongside the other humiliations of unemployment, with a whole new level of snooping and monitoring. All this, Verhaeghe points out, is fundamental to the neoliberal model, which everywhere insists on comparison, evaluation and quantification. We find ourselves technically free but powerless. Whether in work or out of work, we must live by the same rules or perish. All the major political parties promote them, so we have no political power either. In the name of autonomy and freedom we have ended up controlled by a grinding, faceless bureaucracy.
These shifts have been accompanied, Verhaeghe writes, by a spectacular rise in certain psychiatric conditions: self-harm, eating disorders, depression and personality disorders.
Of the personality disorders, the most common are performance anxiety and social phobia: both of which reflect a fear of other people, who are perceived as both evaluators and competitors – the only roles for society that market fundamentalism admits. Depression and loneliness plague us.
The infantilising diktats of the workplace destroy our self-respect. Those who end up at the bottom of the pile are assailed by guilt and shame. The self-attribution fallacy cuts both ways: just as we congratulate ourselves for our success, we blame ourselves for our failure, even if we have little to do with it.
So, if you don’t fit in, if you feel at odds with the world, if your identity is troubled and frayed, if you feel lost and ashamed – it could be because you have retained the human values you were supposed to have discarded. You are a deviant. Be proud.

Monday 4 August 2014

Saqlain Mushtaq explains the doosra

Shirin Sadikot for BCCI

The Pakistani legend presents a deep and insightful technical analysis of the delivery

The biggest inventions and discoveries are a direct result of man’s curiosity. Add persistence and skill to the mix and voila! A Eureka moment is born.

Often talking to inventors about their invention is like talking to a mother about her new-born baby. They are possessive, proud and overly protective.

We, at 
BCCI.TV, spoke to one an inventor. We got Saqlain Mushtaq to talk about the doosra. And to our delight, he spoke about his patent delivery in a manner that was more erudite than motherly.

The legendary Pakistani off-spinner explained the tricks of his most famous trade with a deep insight and dwelt into the technicalities of the delivery that brought him and Pakistan many a jubilant moments on the cricket field.

How and when did you develop the doosra?

Sport was in my family – my grandfather played kabaddi, my father played hockey and my brother was into cricket. The place where I was born didn’t have any parks or grounds to play on and the streets were too narrow. So, as a kid I played cricket with my brother on the terrace of our house. The surface was extremely flat and I used to play with table tennis ball. I watched the likes of Imran Khan, Sarfaraz Nawaz and Abdul Qadir and listened to the radio commentary intently. The names of great batsmen, fast bowlers and spinners went into my ears and when I heard of their exploits I told myself, ‘even I want to do something special’. My family was very spiritual and religious. They asked me to pray to god, and I did, whenever I could. I knew how to bowl leg-spin, off-spin, flipper, arm-ball, etc. But I was in search for something new. I was determined to have something that nobody had. I kept trying different things and that’s how the doosra was developed. It began with the table tennis ball, then tennis ball and cricket ball.

What is the key to bowling the doosra without any change in the action?
My grip was so good that all I had to do was change the pressure I put with a particular finger. When I pressed the index and middle fingers on the ball, it was off-spin and for doosra the pressure was applied by the index and ring fingers. There were other things like locking the wrist and the use of shoulder. The use of glute and calf muscles and the foot position had to be right too. For an off-spinner there are various methods – first is to roll the finger over the ball, second is to roll and then hit the wrist and then to roll the finger, hit the wrist as well as the shoulder. For doosra, you don’t roll the fingers on the ball; just press against it, lock the wrist and apply your shoulder. All these subtle conscious changes in using different parts of the body in different ways is the key in ensuring there is no visible change in the action.

How difficult is it? Not many have been able to do it.
It needs a lot of practice and the right kind of practice. You need to train your mind in such a way that you are aware of the smallest movement of every muscle in your body. They key is to concentrate on exactly the muscle you want to move. In the gym the trainer always says that when you’re working on your biceps, look at them so you know you are concentrating on those muscles. I tell the same to the kids who come to my academy – be conscious of all the parts of your body you are using and how you are using them.

Spinners have to have a very good understanding with the wicketkeeper. How big a role did Moin Khan play in your success as a spinner?
If a bowler doesn’t have good understanding with the keeper and captain, he will miss out on a lot. When their minds are synced with yours, they will know exactly when you are thinking and planning to do next, and will help you with subtle changes in the field that are key for you to trap the batsman. However, I am of a strong belief that if the keeper and batsman watch the ball perfectly from the hand of the bowler, they can easily make out what ball is about to be bowled. Sometimes the batsman takes his eyes off the ball for a moment or blinks at the crucial time. As bowlers, we play on the mind of the batsman; we try to create doubt and fear in his mind because they act as the dark clouds that keep us from seeing the moon. When the batsman is in doubt about something or is scared of the bowler, he will not watch the ball properly. That’s when we strike. It’s all about how you watch the ball. All the great batsmen watch the ball in a completely different way. When I bowled at one of them, I knew he knows exactly what I was going to bowl. But then I told myself, ‘he is a batsman and he will make a mistake at some point’. With that belief I continued to back myself.

Did you both use any sign or code word to let him know the next ball is the doosra?
We used to divide responsibilities. I would tell Moin bhai, ‘keep an eye on his (the batsman’s) feet and tell me whether he is moving away sideways, taking a long stride forward or goes deep into the crease’. Depending on that I would change my line and length. There is a story behind how the doosra became so famous. Sometimes, I used to bowl the delivery at the wrong time and wrong place. So, Moin bhai used to tell me, ‘sometimes, when I signal you to not bowl it, don’t, and when bowl when I ask you to, because with my experience I can tell what the batsman is thinking and that might help you’. There are so many wickets that I got because of him. So, he often screamed, ‘doosra abhi karna hai (bowl the other one now)’ or ‘doosra abhi nahi karna hai (don’t bowl the other one)’. The commentators picked it up from the stump mic and that’s how it got its name.

Did you use the doosra more as a wicket taking ball or to set the batsman up for the following ball?
It depended on the situation, pitch and the batsman. Sometimes I used it as a wicket-taking ball and at others I would bowl one doosra and then bowl a series of off-spinners, making the batsman wait for the other one. In the nets I ensured that I practiced the doosra like a stock ball, an attacking option and as a surprise weapon. The same went for the off-spinner and the arm-ball. At times, you go in with the plan of bowling off-spin but the batsman is playing in a different way and you have to change your strategy at the last moment. You never know in what way you have to use which delivery and so I was prepared to use every ball in every situation.

Can you name three batsman who picked it the best?
It won’t be fair to pick only three batsmen and leave the others out who played it equally well. So, I’ll mention 2-3 names from each country.

From India, Sachin, Dravid, Ganguly, Laxman and Azharuddin played it the best. I always felt that they knew everything that I was trying to do and bowl at them. From Sri Lanka it was Aravinda de Silva and Ranatunga. I didn’t play much against Sangakkara and Mahela but I got the impression that they too played it well. From West Indies, Brian Lara and Carl Hooper were good. Steve Waugh, Mark Waugh, Gilchrist and Darren Lehmann were the Aussies who picked it well. Jacques Kallis was really good and so was England’s Graeme Ford. During the domestic matches in Pakistan, Inzamam, Salim Malik, Mohammad Yusuf and Younis Khan were good.

Is there any wicket in particular you took with the doosra that you cherish or remember vividly?
The doosra has brought me many wickets but the importance of the wicket in the context of the game is what makes it special. In that regards, I will never forget Sachin’s wicket in the 1999 Chennai Test. There were a lot of emotions attached to that scalp and it practically changed the game in our favour. I will cherish that wicket till my last breath. Then there is Damien Martin’s wicket in a Natwest ODI at Trent Bridge in 2001-02. The ball spun like a leg-spinner and he was caught at first slip. I got Gilchrist in the same match when he was in a murderous mood.
  
What is your opinion on the 15 degree rule?
If the ICC has deemed someone’s action clean, there should not be any further questions raised about him. There was under-arm bowling, eight-ball over and various other rules that have now been changed. The game keeps evolving and rules are changed accordingly. So, if someone is playing within the boundaries of the current rules, he is fine. 

After you, have you seen any bowler who has perfect the art of bowling doosra without a change in action?
Muralitharan was very good at it and so was Harbhajan Singh. Shoaib Malik bowled it too in the beginning. Currently I think Saeed Ajmal is the best at bowling the doosra.

What is your take on R Ashwin?
I first watched him really closely during this year’s World Twenty20 when I was a coach with West Indies. Before that, there was this Asia Cup match between India and Pakistan where Shahid Afridi hit him for two sixes in the last over and won the game. People crucified Ashwin for that over but it was pure luck. Afridi was lucky and he won a lottery in that he didn’t even time one of them properly and still got six runs for it. Also, all the pressure was on Ashwin. Afridi had nothing to lose; he had come in with a do or die mindset. Ashwin copped the negativities despite no fault of his. And after that, the way he came back and bowled in the World Twenty20, showed the strength of his character. Yes, to be able to spin the ball is an important skill. But according to me it is only 10-15 percent of the bowler’s worth. The real game comes from within the person, his mind and heart. And the way he bowled right through that tournament, Ashwin showed he is the real deal. I think he is a wonderful bowler.

For Scotland, the independence debate is about more than the economy, stupid

Salmond and Darling will batter viewers with data in Tuesday’s TV debate, but in the end the heart will outweigh the wallet

A report from the Scottish government suggested Scots would be £1,000 a year better with independenc
A report from the Scottish government suggested Scots would be £1,000 a year better with independence, but a UK Treasury report suggested the opposite. Photograph: Ken Jack/Demotix/Corbis
In Scotland, if you doubted the stakes, wait for Tuesday’s ­televised independence debate between Alistair Darling and Alex ­Salmond. The race remains close, and is likely to get closer. This weekend’s Survation poll put “no” ahead by just 6%. That is uncannily close to the polls six weeks before the Quebec referendum in 1995, which the Canadian federalists won by a nail-biting 1.2%.
The downside of these two TV champions for their cause is that they are both so economic: the former UK chancellor of the exchequer against the former Royal Bank of Scotland oil economist (and a good one). The danger, as a non-economist Treasury minister once said after a mandarin’s briefing, is that the viewers will be just as confused at the end – but at a higher level.
I have been reading the Scotsman – an excellent paper – and the Glasgow Herald day after day, which has given me a sympathy for Scottish voters who must be punch-drunk from rival, largely economic claims about the future. The two campaigns recently excelled themselves by producing on the same day apparently authoritative assessments that diametrically contradicted each other.
For the unionists, a UK Treasury-sponsored report suggested that each Scot would be £1,400 a year better off in the union. For the nationalists, another report from the Scottish government suggested that Scots would be £1,000 a year better off outside it. This is bemusing enough for anyone with a background in ­economics, let alone anyone without one. It is also largely irrelevant. Both sides are deploying spurious precision for economic issues that are largely unknowable in the current state of economics.
In one of my past lives, I used to assess the strength and risks of different economies for potential international investors. “Sovereign risk”, as it is called, is an art, not a science. Politics matters as much as economics, and big or small size has both advantages and disadvantages. Scotland’s population, at 5.5 million, is similar to the 5.6 million in Denmark – a perfectly respectably sized nation that has proved to be a rich success for years. The upside of being the size of Denmark, as opposed to the size of the UK or France, is that you can be nimble in reaction to global economic shocks and opportunities. The state can help businesses adjust and respond. All the key players can meet up and reach consensus in a reasonably sized room.
This helps. Of the 10 most prosperous nations on Earth, measured in the most effective manner by the World Bank’s national income per head allowing for purchasing power, only the US is big. The next biggest countries are Sweden (9.5 million people), Switzerland (8 million), Denmark and Norway (5 million). Germany comes in at 13th, France 18th and the UK 21st.
If we take culturally similar countries that share a language, small usually trumps big. Irish income per head is now 0.5% higher than the UK’s, even after profits have been paid to foreign investors. Austria is 0.3% ahead of Germany, and Belgium is 8.7% ahead of France. One exception is that Canada is slightly poorer than the big US.
The major disadvantage of small size is that you can be buffeted by global shocks if you specialise in particular industries. Finland was hit by the collapse of the Soviet Union, because it exported so much there. Iceland and ­Ireland were particularly badly hit by the banking crisis. Big countries are naturally more diversified, and therefore less vulnerable to shocks.
If the Scots vote for independence, there may be some transitional costs where there are economies of scale with the UK – embassies and so forth. I cannot see how the Bank of England could be lender of last resort to Scottish banks after independence, so there may be losses as financial services companies prefer a London regulator and backer. This was the experience with Quebec, where the fear of independence drove Montreal-based insurers to Toronto. But the big picture suggests that these will be small and short-term effects.
Natural resources such as oil and gas matter much less than both Salmond and Darling will pretend. The truth is that rich countries do well because of their human skills and ingenuity, not their resource windfalls. Look at Switzerland. On education, Scotland’s performance in the OECD international tests of student achievement is a little better than England for reading and maths, and a little worse for science.
If Scotland goes, it will be in everyone’s interest to have a “velvet divorce”, as the separation of the Czech Republic and Slovakia was described. A nasty and messy separation would damage both sides. London will want early certainty, and for Scotland to be an EU member alongside the rest of the UK. The result on 18 September may rewrite history, but not geography. We will all still share the same island. Their mess will be ours, both sides of the border. So we will all have an interest not to make a mess.
If Scotland stays, as I hope it will, the UK will never be the same again. More fiscal powers – including the power to borrow – will provide a new impetus to decentralisation, not just to Edinburgh but to Cardiff, Manchester, Leeds and Newcastle. We will need a new constitutional settlement, and new ways, as all federal states enjoy, of legally settling differences between levels of government. These are challenges already met and mastered in Canada, Australia and elsewhere.
The main motive, if Scots opt for independence, will be their desire to shake off the incubus of English conservatism. The natural centre of gravity of Scottish politics will be more leftwing than that of the UK. Scotland could be a successful, liberal-minded and social democratic nation on the Scandinavian model. Nothing wrong with that, except for English progressives who will have to contend with a centre of gravity that has moved to the right. For England and Wales, politics will adjust. The Labour party would become more rightwing to ensure a competitive system.
In the end, it seems to me offensive on the part of both sides in the debate to concentrate so slavishly on the economics, when realistically the economic outlook cannot and should not be decisive. It is as if they have both leased their campaigns, in the old adage, to people who know the price of everything and the value of nothing. It is the heart that will decide the future of our island, not the pocketbook. That is surely right.

Cronyism British Style - A depressingly British tale of friends in high places


From Ofsted and the BBC to the Lords, there’s a strong whiff of cronyism. When will we have the courage to challenge it?
Krauze
Illustration by Andrzej Krauze

One crony is just a crony; it doesn’t – by my reckoning – become an “ism” until there are three. If the chairmanship of the BBC Trust hadn’t come up at the same time as the chiefdom of Ofsted, and if those two things weren’t playing out in the foreground of the peerage announcements to come this week, it might be OK, and the whole of public life wouldn’t look like it could all be such an embarrassing stitch-up. Unfortunately, the three events have come together. David Hoare is the new chief of Ofsted. Seb Coe is not the new head of the BBC Trust, but not for want of begging by the government, which changed the job requirement to make it more appealing to him. Karren Brady and Stuart Rose are reported to be lined up for ennoblement.
In fairness, appointments to the House of Lords are at least meant to be political, even if they shouldn’t, strictly speaking, be distributed on the basis of wealth. The other two posts, however, are supposed to be appointed impartially, with the emphasis on fitness for the post.
So what is David Hoare’s fitness? He is a trustee of AET academies, which is the largest chain, and also one of the worst – in the bottom quarter for results, both its disadvantaged and non-disadvantaged pupils achieving below-average GCSEs. Five schools in the chain had “unacceptable standards”, according to ministers earlier this year, though Ofsted’s verdict, due to be published last week, has been delayed. Not to worry. The other 72 schools may well have acceptable features. The Department for Education can’t see what all the fuss is about, since Hoare appears to be far less unpopular and less irrelevantly qualified than its other candidate, Carphone Warehouse founder (and Tory donor) David Ross.
For me, the main problem isn’t Ross’s relationship with the Conservative party, or even the alleged tax-avoiding practices of Ross and Hoare’s current or past business interests, though I must admit I’m not thrilled to see the highest ranks of public life wedged with people who don’t appear to understand the point of tax. No, worse than any of that is the assumption of the DfE that almost anybody will be better at running education than someone with experience of teaching.
The entry point for a significant post in the academies system is that you should never have set foot in a state classroom. God forbid that you should ever have stood at the front of one, and taught anything to anyone. In years to come, we will look back in wonder at this period, when government worshipped at the feet of industry so fervently that it thought its titans could do anything. But right now, we’re all trapped in the bowels of government delusion, and won’t see the light until Alan Sugar has been appointed chancellor of Cambridge University and Richard Branson is chief medical officer.
These are two sides of the same coin, whether you’re talking about politicians fawning over business leaders, or business leaders casting cash – or the pearls of their acumen – towards politicians. You’d think we’d be used to it, since New Labour was beset by rows such as these. Whether it looks like corruption or cronyism – is it actively bent, or does it merely stink? – depends a lot on whose side is doing the crony recruitment. But this is surely a rare point of convergence between the Morning Star and the Daily Mail: it doesn’t look very transparent or objective when politicians recruit their allies.
They give us breadheads, to run our institutions of oversight, but they also give us circuses: this is the only plausible explanation for the desperate bid to appoint Seb Coe as chair of the BBC Trust. He is a Tory and a national treasure, a man it is impossible to dislike, a recognisable face and acute businessman whose achievements are uncomplicated and demonstrable. He can run really fast, OK? In these turbulent times for the BBC, as its enemies mass on the borders of its charter (up for renewal in 2016) calling for its disintegration, that’s what we need at the helm, clearly. A man who can run incredibly fast.
In the hubbub around the job description having been rewritten to suit Coe, you may have missed the details of that rewrite: it was to reduce the time commitment that the head of the trust would have to make. This said it all about the process – first, that nobody making the appointment was really taking seriously how significant it was, and second, that Coe didn’t really want to do it. He has now come out and rejected it, as apparently have Patience Wheatcroft, Dame Marjorie Scardino, Sir Howard Stringer and Sarah Hogg.
Why candidates should be snatching their hats so energetically out of the ring is open to question. Former Labour culture secretary Tessa Jowell maintains they are put off by the high level of political meddling, but this seems to be an unlikely deterrent for those who agree with the meddlers. I can well imagine, however, that a candidate of any leaning might be put off by the sheer bungling frivolity, the sight of a government desperately grappling for a household name, a bit of borrowed popularity. Anyway, the shortlist is, for today at least, back to one: Nick Prettejohn, City grandee and former adviser to George Osborne. The circus said no, and we’re back to the breadhead.
The phrase “City grandee” cheered me up, however: remember Royal Mail, and remember that it could be worse. They didn’t have to just give these posts to their associates; they could have sold them.

Friday 1 August 2014

To fight Britain’s privatisation dogma, Labour should look to the US military, Singapore, Taiwan...


State-owned enterprises can be successful, as some unlikely global examples prove
VARIOUS
A Honeywell computer under the control of Michael Caine In the 1967 film Billion Dollar Brain. It was used to connect to the Arpanet – developed by the US military as a precursor of the internet.. Photograph: Snap/Rex Features

Since Margaret Thatcher came to power in 1979 the UK has led the world in privatisation. The Conservative government sold off state-owned enterprises throughout the 1980s and the 1990s – electricity, oil, gas, rail, airline, airports, telecommunications, water, steel, coal, you name it. In the worldwide fever for selling off state assets that gripped those decades, the rest of the world looked up to Britain as the guiding example.
Privatisation was halted under Labour. However, the belief in the superiority of the private sector was such that, when it brought the rail infrastructure back under state control in 2002 following a series of rail disasters, Labour made sure it did not take the form of re-nationalisation – at least in legal terms. Network Rail, the owner and operator of the rail infrastructure, was set up as a private company, although on a not-for-profit basis and without shareholders.
When the coalition came to power in 2010, it resumed the privatisation drive with gusto. It privatised Royal Mail – the “crown jewels” that even Thatcher balked at selling. However, in recent months the tide has started to turn, albeit slowly.
Even while planning to sell off almost every remaining state-owned enterprise, from plasma supply to helicopter search and rescue, the coalition has had to make an embarrassing climbdown over its plan to privatise student loans. More importantly, in the past few months the Royal Mail sell-off has been fiercely criticised. Moya Greene, its chief executive, has questioned the viability of its universal service obligation. Abandoning this would mean that customers who live in less accessible or sparsely populated – and thus less profitable – areas wouldn’t get their letters delivered, or would have to pay more for them: the end of the postal service as we know it.
In the meantime, the Labour party has made the lack of competition and the suspected collusion in the privatised energy industry a key issue in its promise to “fix broken markets”, and has caught voters’ attention by announcing its intention to partially reverse rail privatisation. Although its fear of being branded anti-business has prevented it from proposing outright renationalisation of the railways – despite the support for such a move from most of the electorate – it has declared that if it wins the 2015 general election it will “reverse the presumption against the public sector”, and let state operators bid for rail franchises.
However, if it is really to overturn the privatisation dogma, Labour should do more than reverse the presumption against the public sector: it should tell people that the public sector is often more efficient than the private sector.
Even while there are many examples of inefficient state enterprises from all over the world, including the UK, there have been many successful such businesses throughout the history of capitalism. In the early days of their industrialisation, 19th-century Germany and Japan set up state-run “model factories” in order to kickstart new industries such as steel and shipbuilding, which the private sector considered too risky to invest in. For half a century after the second world war, several European countries used state businesses to develop technologically advanced industries: France is the best-known example, with household names like Thomson (now Thales), Alcatel, Renault and Saint-Gobain. Austria, Finland and Norway also had technologically dynamic state-run enterprises.
The most dramatic example, however, is Singapore. The country is usually known for its free trade policy and welcoming attitude towards foreign investments, but it has the most heavily state-owned economy, except for some oil states. State-owned enterprises produce 22% of Singapore’s national output, operating in a whole range of industries – not just the “usual suspects” of airline, telecommunications and electricity, but also semiconductors, engineering and shipping; and its housing and development board supplies 85% of the country’s homes. Taiwan, another east Asian “miracle” economy, also has a very large state-run sector, accounting for 16% of national output.
Posco, the state-owned steel company in my native South Korea, was initially set up against World Bank advice but is now one of the biggest steel companies in the world. (It was privatised in 2001, but for political reasons rather than poor performance.) In Brazil, Embraer – the third largest civilian aircraft manufacturer in the world – was initially developed under state control; and the country’s state-owned oil company, Petrobras, is the world leader in deep-sea drilling.
Arguably the most successful state enterprise in human history, however, is the United States military, which has almost single-handedly established the modern information economy. The development of the computer was initially funded by the US army; the country’s navy financed the research that created the semiconductor; and the US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency developed the Arpanet, the precursor of the internet.
When people realise that the history of capitalism is full of highly successful state enterprises, the rush for ever more privatisation can be halted. If the Labour party puts forward this case, it will not only gain popularity in the run-up to next year’s general election – it would also be doing something of lasting benefit for Britain.

On Sledging - Anderson England's guilty pleasure

There is an uncomfortable recognition that the beauty of James Anderson's cricket comes with a professionalism that has been taken to the limits but weak umpiring has to share the blame
David Hopps in Cricinfo

As James Anderson prepares to face an ICC enquiry into his alleged misconduct during the Trent Bridge Test, it is hard to suppress a feeling of frustration about how this wonderful fast bowler has been allowed to become England's guilty pleasure.
Anderson is close to the apex of a fulfilling career, only 12 more wickets needed to draw equal with Ian Botham as England's leading Test wicket-taker. He is championed in England as a true craftsman among fast bowlers, a manipulator of a cricket ball who deserves to stand alongside the best.
And yet, this faith in his bowling purity sits uneasily with a sullied reputation; a player now well known to all but the most casual follower of the game as one of the most ingrained sledgers around and, a natural development, who allegedly has now tipped over into the pushing of Ravindra Jadeja as well. It does not take long to find an opponent, or a past opponent, who says there is nobody worse - even if they then admit it is a crowded field. It should never have come to this.
This then is England's guilty pleasure: on one side, the shy craftsman who became one of the finest fast bowlers in the world; on the other, the Burnley Lip, whose abuse of opponents has been incessant for many years. Many in the game will tell you it doesn't matter a jot. It does. Cricket has a problem - and it needs to deal with it before everybody starts to grow Luis Suarez fangs.
It is important to observe - and his captain, Alastair Cook, was shrewd enough to do so from the start - that the ICC code of conduct commissioner, Gordon Lewis, a retired Australian judge, has been appointed to judge one specific incident at Trent Bridge, about which the details remain at issue, and not to pass opinion on a verbally-strewn career.
The ICC's judgment, in the simplest terms, will determine whether Anderson is banned from his home Test at Old Trafford next week, and perhaps for the rest of the series. For many, that outcome is all that matters. It might swing a Test series towards India in the process, although the suggestion that this is India's reasoning is overly cynical.
This is not a tactic; this is a campaign. And once Lewis makes his ruling, we will wait to discover if it is the first campaign of many or if Anderson is to be its sole victim. A trophy killing for India's mantelpiece.
Anderson's fate will be determined on whether video evidence really does exist - India say so, but they might be bluffing - and on the dubious testimony of witnesses about Who Pushed Who When, Who Said What To Whom, all of which tittle-tattle should be enough to make Lewis wonder whether he should be doing better things with his life.
Cricket's fate will take longer to determine. What we may also be experiencing is the start of India agitation against persistent on-field abuse, a habit resented for its disrespect and occasionally because of its implied threat of physical violence. The reality is that only India is empowered to change the nature of the game - to say "we will not play this way". What is less unclear is whether it has the will to try to transform the way the game is played - or whether perhaps Lewis' ruling will carry wider encouragement for cricket to clean up its act.
We may know a lot more about the repercussions by Christmas. If India, and in particular their captain MS Dhoni, have taken a stand against what they regard as Anderson's excess, how will they respond when India pitch up for a Test series in Australia? They have acted independently of the umpires and match referees once. If Lewis rules in their favour, will they feel obliged to do it again?
If Mitchell Johnson snarls from underneath his vaudevillian moustache, will India be consistent and immediately lay a charge with the ICC? If David Warner yaps like a dog for much of a session, as he once stupidly did to irritate Faf du Plessis, will another charge be laid? If Shane Watson adds some sly words of his own, will three Australians be in the dock?

Umpire Rod Tucker talks to the batsmen after an exchange with James Anderson, England v India, 3rd Investec Test, Ageas Bowl, 4th day, July 30, 2014
Was Ajinkya Rahane's melodramatic response at the end of day four a sign of India's zero tolerance approach to verbal abuse? © Getty Images 
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Anderson's alleged push of Jadeja is presented as the catalyst for the complaint, but it was his reputation as a serial sledger that made Dhoni so anxious to pursue it. Anderson was charged because he has form - the alleged push was just a chance to get even. And physical contact, incidentally, is not necessarily needed to win a case. There is plenty in the ICC Code of Conduct that pretends to punish verbal abuse. It is just that nobody ever presses charges.
While England is invited to regard Anderson as a guilty pleasure, international umpires and the ICC must be feeling nervous. If India is embarking upon an attempted clean up, the umpires will need to intervene in a manner they have not seen fit to do for years. If they do, it will be long overdue. What we have at the moment is a sham.
So much in cricket is disingenuous. The Spirit of Cricket has become a widely-ridiculed moral salad dressing on a game where umpires allow verbal aggression to go unchecked in the misguided belief that they are permitting the vital confrontational elements that enhance the game at the highest level. As long as the invective isn't aimed at them, as long as nobody actually makes physical contact, they are only concerned with ensuring the public does not know too much.
Most of us - at whatever level we play the game - relish a clever sledge, most of us permit a physically-straining fast bowler a display of frustration, most of us don't mind a bit of backchat, but umpires have utterly failed in their duty to check the incessant boorish behaviour that has now become regarded as just a daily reality. Where were they when Anderson indulged in his 30-metre rant at Jadeja as the players walked off for tea? Where is the dividing line? Is everything acceptable unless you actually push someone? It is time we were honestly told.
Instead, we have Anderson, the essentially gentle guy trying to play tough; the diffident figure who has been told by coaches to become more aggressive; the man who could barely spit out a sentence in press conferences at the start of his career, transformed into a venomous on-field malcontent; a natural leader of no-one proudly bowling more Test overs than anyone in the world as he forever strives to be the Leader of the Attack; a talented, likeable lad who has been gradually lulled by this failure of umpires and administrators to rule and has developed, in his immense desire to win Tests for England, into a twisted, nastier on-field personality than he really is.
Considering all the jokes about his grumpiness - his best mate, Graeme Swann, loves to joke that it takes a couple of beers to cheer him up - this role play does not seem to have made him very happy.
As England celebrated an overwhelming victory at the Ageas Bowl, Anderson's hugs with his team-mates seemed slightly troubled. A few minutes later, he was collecting another magnum of champagne, another man-of-the-match award logged. He had produced his finest all-round performance for a year, a display summoned out of adversity, adversity not just for himself, but for his captain, Alastair Cook, and indeed the entire England Test set-up.
 
 
While we cherish Anderson's skill, we prefer to be spared a truth. The abuse has become the sourness we would rather not recognise
 
It was a pleasure to see Anderson and Stuart Broad remembering once again how to play with joy - "play with the happiness of your first Test," the coach, Peter Moores had urged them as he sought to arrest England's worst run for 20 years, and England's senior players, as one, had released the yoke from their back. England kept their lips buttoned - and won by a country mile.
But on the one occasion that Anderson allowed himself some backchat - a sentence or two to Ajinkya Rahaneat the end of the fourth day - the response from Rahane was so melodramatic that India's zero tolerance policy was abundantly clear. Was this personal animosity, a tactical manoeuvre ahead of the hearing or further proof a long-term attempt to change the nature of the game?
Anderson's post-match interviews, as ever, were conducted in that vulnerable, polite, halting style. It is the Anderson that England wish to celebrate: the self-effacing, bashful sportsman who has succeeded in a physically-demanding, confrontational job. We would rather dwell on his 371 Test wickets and not wonder about his tally of C words when the game gets tough.
His newly-adopted beard looks like a defence mechanism against the uproar surrounding him. When he was asked after the match if he was confident about the outcome of the hearing, his "don't know" response sounded abashed. There was no petulant strut, no words of defiance, just a world-class player trapped in a behavioural mode that might be about to bring suspension.
While we cherish Anderson's skill, we prefer to be spared this truth. The abuse has become the sourness we would rather not recognise: the stain on the luxury, hand-woven carpet; the dodgy financial dealings that produce the beautiful marina; the uncomfortable recognition that the beauty of Anderson's cricket comes with a professionalism that has been taken to the limits. The alleged push has finally forced us to take notice.
We all know this: fans, team-mates, opponents, former players, umpires, administrators, all playing our part in this endless charade.
The ECB defends Anderson because it wants to win the series and protect its players; no thoughts here - not publicly anyway - of the wider picture. The ICC just bleats that the authority of the enquiry has been compromised because both Dhoni and Cook have passed comment on the situation, more concerned with systems and processes than the long-term health of the game.
Meanwhile, James Anderson, is hung out to dry.
And nobody is imposing, for all of us to see, the behavioural standards by which the game should be run.