The Googly

Meet the Writer: The Tooting Trumpet

Spending my days writing balls-achingly dull stuff for my employer is tempered by the people with whom I am fortunate enough to work and the students (of whom I see less and less - but that just makes it sweeter and sweeter when you see the fruits of their labours). Fooling myself that I was really doing industry-research (and better still, fooling the management) I would follow the GU OBO coverage, occasionally venturing an e-mail - okay, a bit more than occasionally, but I can handle it - yeah, I can handle it.

I started a little late night GU SportsBlogging with the Aussies during the Ashes and found that I enjoyed that more than watching Harmy bowl or Flintoff bat - much more. Then I wrote a bit for the mighty Pseudscorner, under its noble leader Lord Ebren, sometimes in cahoots with The Googly's very own Mimitig! Now I write the Performance of the Day post here and occasional musings  - I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoy writing them.

Favourite cricketer: KP - there... I've said it now.

Best cricket moment: Running in to bowl at Bootle with my Dad watching. He had first watched cricket at Wadham Road in the late Forties and he never thought his boy would play on that ground, just 15 minutes walk from Goodison Park.

Worst cricket moment: Realising that it was actually going to happen in Adelaide. Australia's bowlers were going to take just 14 wickets in the match, but England were still going to lose the Test and the Ashes. To have 551-6 on the scoreboard in the first innings of a Test and get beaten is an all-time sporting calamity. Better stop, the blood pressure's on the climb again just thinking about it.

[The Tooting Trumpet]

Performance of the Day

There is probably no more explosive issue in domestic English cricket than the role of the sub-Test standard "Kolpak" draining club finances and keeping young England-qualified players out of teams. The Trumpet has never bought that and prefers to believe that a rising tide raises all boats. The PotD today goes to Martin van Jaarsveld (right, Getty Images), the epitome of the good (or bad) Kolpak player.

van Jaarsveld scored 127 not out for Kent against Surrey today. Nothing unusual in that - he's a 1000 runs a season man with 32 first class tons and, at 32 years of age, power to add. What caught the Trumpet's eye was the man at the other end during a partnership of 161 - 21 year-old Joe Denly. One hopes that he was looking and learning. If so, that's a Kolpak doing plenty for Kent and for England.

[The Tooting Trumpet]

The View from behind the Stumps

Matt Prior may have answered the decidedly difficult selection question for England - at least for now. To come into a rather troubled, injury-ridden side, and on debut, impress is pretty cool. A Test ton in the first and second matches of this phase of his career shows ability, grit and character. Performing well with the bat seems a bonus, but what got this fan's pulse racing was his attitude and skill behind the stumps.

Calm, collected, and stunning athleticism. He worked incredibly hard off the bowling (if you can call it that) of Steve Harmison to spare the Durham man yet more shame in extras.

Prior has done all that has been asked of him. Whether it has been a help or hindrance in his wicket-keeping skills that he has been forced to share his place in the Sussex side with Tim Ambrose is probably not yet for us to know. It will certainly have kept his mind focussed, and as a player who has gone through the Academy and England A selection process before being called into the Test side, there is one thing of which we can be sure.

He's a toughie and we need them. It will be fascinating to see what comes next week.

[Image: Getty] [mimitig]

Cricket Look-a-likes: Larry Gomes

Larry Gomes was the conservative, technically correct glue at No 3 that held together the liberal, artistic clobberers that surrounded him in the great Windies side of the early and mid-1980s.  As a result he is never spoken about with the same reverence as his willow wielding contemporaries.

Not a problem for his doppelganger though: Smokey Robinson is a genius.  End of.

Matthew Hoggard allowed to play club cricket to aid his rehab

Peter Moores has already shown a departure from the Fletcher model by last week picking a 29-year-old county stalwart for a Test match (had Dunc still been in charge you just know that Saj Mahmood would have been playing a game of "widest ball" with Harmison last weekend). But it appears his appetite for change is not yet satiated.

He has this week allowed Matthew Hoggard to play for local club Baildon on Saturday, as the swing bowler battles to be fit for the Third Test at Old Trafford a week on Thursday.  In his column for the times, Hoggard has gone as far as to say "Peter Moores is perfectly happy for me to be playing club cricket". 

Hear that?  "Perfectly happy".  Not fuming at something that will be happening outside of his sphere of control; Moores has obviously looked at the needs for Hoggy's recovery and let the bowler get on with it.  Vive la revolution! [image: Getty]

Snap of the Day

Continuing our recent theme of "when West Indies were good"; this photo is from the Second Test of the 1984 series at Lord's in which England had had the temerity to declare in their second innings to chase victory.  Gordon Greenidge's response?  He bludgeoned  214 not out off a mere 242 balls to ensure a Windies victory by a staggering 9 wickets, and was fully deserving of this little breather in the midst of it all. [Image: Getty]

Graham Thorpe pipes up about Vaughan

Graham Thorpe, the batsman that we all wish Ian Bell was, has come out from wherever he has been hiding since KP took his place in the side to state that he thinks Michael Vaughan should retire from ODIs.

He said, "Michael Vaughan should have retired from ODIs after the World Cup and I think he should reconsider now to prolong his Test career to the Ashes." Writing in his Teletext Sport column Thorpe, who played 100 Tests and 82 ODIs, then went on to add, "some people may find this surprising but I'd like to see Kevin Pietersen take over as one-day skipper, as I believe it could be the making of him. You need people with that hunger to play ODIs, and I think Pietersen could inspire a new-look one day team."

Of course, if Vaughan is anything like Thorpe himself, then he could retire then come back later, the retire again, then come back and average 56 in the last two years of his career.  Not a bad plan when you think about it.  What do you think to the suggestion of KP as One-day skipper? [Image: Getty]

Hired or Fired! With Sir Alan Sugar

Hello!  It's your favourite hirsute heranguer of wannabe executive imbeciles here once more to give you the lowdown on what is good and not so good in cricket this week. 

HIRED!
The Googly - These fellas around here broke the news of Percy Sonn's death before SkySports, and waxed about the potential of Joe Denly a full week before the BBC did.  You know where to come for your cricket stuff now.

Ryan Sidebottom - I'm hiring him again after his ballsy showing in this week's task

Alistair Cook - I like this boy, he is a doer not a talker and is reaping the modest rewards.  I myself am a talker and a doer, hence I have a Bentley

FIRED!
Craig McDermott - Not only have you shamed your wife, worse than that you LOST HER BLOODY MONEY!

Kapil Dev - I like straight-talking, but even I found this a bit much.

Vic Marks - I like listening to TMS in my Bentley, what I don't like is a public schoolboy wittering on then doing that stupid bloody nasal laugh at his own jokes, that aren't bloody funny anyway!

Meet the Writer: Clare Davies

There I was, innocently blogging away on GU and perhaps not so innocently making my name as Queen of the OBO, when into my in-box pinged an email. Would I like to write for The Googly? Took all of 5 minutes to say yes. After all, why not earn a groat or two from what I had been doing for free? Deadlines, what are they? I spent most of my professional life in Science and Medical publishing working to writing, design or print production deadlines. No sweat. I thought.

Didn't quite understand how it works! A beautifully crafted piece on say, just to pluck a name out of the air, Flintoff, goes down the pan because he gets injured! You pick another target, Vaughan maybe, and damn, injured again! Still all good fun.

My favourite (current) cricketer: Ian Bell - someone has to love him

Best cricketing moment: as a child watching my dad play club cricket

Worst cricketing moment: Steve Harmison, Brisbane 2006 - I'm following on TMS and OBO and on the phone to my friend in Melbourne who has the pictures. She describes the wide. I cry. 5-0.

Schofield Review: 1 - Central Contracts

The ECB commissioned Ken Schofield and his posse to look at the state of English cricket and decide why exactly the national team got so comprehensively destroyed in the Ashes. They sent their report back last week, and over the next week or so, I'm going to take a look at the recommendations of the Schofield Report and what they actually mean in practice.

First up in the report is a section which makes recommendations focusing on the individual, and top of Schofield's list is the system of central contracts.

The committee's recommendation is "to ensure the system of central contracts is maintained and developed by establishing challenging individually tailored training and preparation programmes which are closely monitored through the performance centre at Loughborough University, and reflect the ‘needs’ rather than the ‘wants’ of the players."

This is a really interesting little nugget right at the top of the list. Reading between the lines, it would be easy to conclude that this means that centrally-contracted players have been calling the shots.  If this is indeed the case, it's slightly worrying that it's taken this long to pinpoint.  Perhaps inadequate training might explain recurring injuries to various players if they're not been kept under close enough watch and made to do exactly what they should be doing. [Carrie Dunn] [Image: Getty]