The ECB is an easy target but skewing the domestic game to produce more spinners and favour limited-overs cricket looks to have backfiredA stock of explanations and excuses is a valuable bit of any cricketer’s kit and should be kept ready, stashed by bat, box and pads. “The sun was in my eyes. I couldn’t pick it up in this light. My foot slipped. Somebody was moving behind the sightscreen.”England, who, after all, have had no shortage of practice at this, have used some particularly ripe examples over the years. Ian Botham blamed the rain that ruined their chances in a group match against Pakistan at the 1992 World Cup on the team chaplain, Andrew Wingfield Digby “You’re useless, you...
The former England captain joined Durham before their inaugural County Championship season in 1992 but will need to work his magic again if the heavily penalised county are to prosper in the season aheadThe first time Ian Botham came to Durham, he arrived on Good Friday. For the press, the comparison was irresistible. “Durham’s own Messiah”, as the Guardian called him, arrived just in time, two days before their very first competitive fixture as a first-class county. The rest of the squad had been together for a while already, doing their winter training in a warehouse, playing warm-ups against Essex and Oxford University. The weather had been “bloody freezing”, and the club’s chief executive, Mike Gear, was hoping that “the...
A moment of impossible fortune sparked a stunning Super Bowl revival, and reminded us why fightback wins are the most cherished of allIn Fever Pitch, his peerless football fan’s memoir, Nick Hornby describes a cathartic moment in his life. He is watching Arsenal – naturally – and they’re playing in the semi-final of the 1987 Littlewoods Cup. It was hardly the Champions League, but it was an intense affair that mattered a lot at that time, not least because Arsenal’s opponents were their hated neighbours Tottenham Hotspur.It was the third match of the tie, the first two legs ending in a draw, and Spurs were winning with the game drawing to a close. At that time Arsenal were going through...
Riverside old boy keen to provide the jolt that helps keep his final county, the three-times champions, in the public consciousnessDurham issued a statement of gratitude on Tuesday afternoon for a landslide of support from the wider cricketing family following their relegation to Division Two in exchange for a £3.8m bailout, describing the response over the previous 24 hours as “beyond comprehension”.The news that the County Championship’s most northerly club will, for reasons beyond their on-field performance, start the 2017 season at the bottom of the pile with a 48‑point deficit certainly shocked all who heard it on Monday. Football, the north-east’s first love, is well used to such scenarios. But cricket? The summer sport has never before witnessed such a...