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Oxford felt thousands of miles from the centre of cricket’s universe on Saturday – 4,212 miles, to be precise.
The sun was out at the Parks, but there was a nip in the air when the wind got up, and Warwickshire’s fielders were all sheltering under Bear-branded beanies. Hands sought sanctuary in pockets. And the batsmen of Oxford MCCU left the ball well alone outside off stump whenever they could.
Spectators were dotted around the boundary, which consisted of nothing more than a thin white rope. At least two men were scoring the game, presumably for their own pleasure. One group looked like friends or relatives of a player.
Warwickshire’s back-room staff did a lap of the ground, pausing to lean on the sightscreen opposite the lovely pavilion, listed as a Grade II building in the early 1970s and still emitting a self-consciously donnish modesty.
Pre-season: Oxford players come on to the field from the pavilion before their match against Warwickshire More from Lawrence Booth... THE TOP SPIN: It was a thrilling win but England can't bat away concerns over plodding top order 20/05/13 THE TOP SPIN: Prior's award is a deserved reward for being England's Mr Selfless 14/05/13 THE TOP SPIN: Australia will want to summon up the spirit of '89 but England should leave it well alone 30/04/13 The Top Spin: Weather warning for England's spinners - Is this a golden era for Swann and Panesar? 23/04/13 THE TOP SPIN: Compton goes back to the future to show that cricket's past and present can form a solid partnership 16/04/13 THE TOP SPIN: Hunted England wear haunted look as eyes of the world see them struggle in New Zealand 25/03/13 The Top Spin: It's the end of an era as throwback Blackwell calls it a day (and ensures he will be a permanent one-cap wonder) 19/03/13 The Top Spin: England slow out of the blocks again... but second innings shows they've nipped it in the bud 12/03/13 VIEW FULL ARCHIVEYou’re probably thinking: here we go, another start-of-season column extolling the timeless virtues of the English pastoral idyll, and yearning for Housman’s ‘land of lost content’ and ‘the happy highways where I went/ And cannot come again’.
Fear not. The scene just appealed. That’s all.
But you may also guess what’s coming next. Over in Delhi, at around the same time as Oxford’s Uttar Pradesh-born opener Sam Agarwal was holding his side’s innings together, Brad Hodge of Rajasthan Royals was turning the fourth match of the 2013 IPL on its head by running out the Daredevils’ David Warner.
Rajasthan stole a noisy thriller by five runs, in front of a crowd of 40,000. You would have had to have lost your senses somewhere among Housman’s blue remembered hills not to have enjoyed it.
In the Parks, to a smattering of applause from a gathering of at least 40, Agarwal reached a half-century. An Eastern European couple walked past on the midwicket boundary, deep in conversation, though possibly not about Warwickshire’s lack of a third man. Keble College looked on in the distance, as it has done since 1870. Hell, it was peaceful.
So, a question: in what other sport could two such disparate vignettes play out simultaneously, yet still belong to the same species?
Convention has quickly dictated that this should be a cause for concern, and this column has fretted often enough about cricket’s changing complexion. But, as a new season starts in England, it seems wrong not to acknowledge – and, yes, celebrate – its diversity.
What the administrators do to cricket is another matter. The sport’s most legitimate worry remains its commercialisation – and it’s not naïve or old-fashioned or even English to point out that cricket was a sport before it became a business. None of us fell in love with cricket because of its business model.
Twenty20 has its place, and this year’s IPL has got off to a riproaring start. But too much Twenty20 will take us too far from sport and too close to business. Too many Test nations are already in its financial thrall.
That, though, is for the suits to think about; no doubt the thought crosses their minds once or twice a year.
This is England: The first ball is bowled of the Oxford against Warwickshire matchTHE TOP SPIN ON TWITTER
For more cricket-related snippets, feel free to go to twitter.com/the_topspin
In the meantime, let’s hear it for la différence. When the IPL got going last week, the Twitter banter was predictable: English fans yawned and pretended to look forward to freezing their fingers off at Sussex v Loughborough in Hove; Indian fans wondered how anyone in their right mind could turn their noses up at a tournament in which one of the opening pairings was Sachin Tendulkar and Ricky Ponting.
Personally, I found neither particularly appealing. I’ve never liked frostbite, and I preferred to watch Tendulkar and Ponting at their peak, not reduced to trying to get a 20-over innings off to a lively start. These experiences may be at opposite ends of cricket’s spectrum, but they need not exist in opposition if we take enough care to nurture both.
In Quiet, one of the year’s early bestsellers, Susan Cain investigates a world which can essentially be divided into two types: extrovert and introvert. And while the thrust of her argument is that the benefits of introversion have been overlooked for too long, she is conscious of the need for yin and yang.
If IPL is cricket’s greatest extrovert, these early-season student matches are its diametric opposite. Cain cautions: ‘Introversion – along with its cousin’s sensitivity, seriousness, and shyness – is now a second-class personality trait, somewhere between a disappointment and a pathology.
‘Introverts live under the Extrovert Ideal like women in a man’s world, discounted because of a trait that goes to the core of who they are.’
Cricket needs both. Here’s hoping it has the maturity to find its own happy medium.
THAT WAS THE WEEK THAT WASMethod in the madnessAnd they say Twenty20 is a lottery. Actually, I’ve said it myself – and perhaps the Top Spin owes the game’s shortest form an apology. For the last two years, the Indian-based ratings system Impact Index, masterminded by Jaideep Varma, has correctly predicted three of the four semi-finalists at the IPL – and were denied a clean sweep in 2011 only by Chris Gayle’s outlier fireworks for Royal Challengers Bangalore, who ended up pipping Kolkata Knight Riders to fourth in the league table.
Index linked: Eoin Morgan and the Kolkata Knight Riders are predicted to make it out of the IPL group stageImpact Index has concluded that the stronger side prevails more often in Twenty20 cricket than it does in the 50-over game. Why? Because the intensity of 20-over cricket means teams are less likely to relax mentally: the lulls of 50-over cricket do not exist.
And so what does this mean for IPL6? Impact Index have already laid their cards on the table, naming the four teams – in order! – they believe will top the group stage. Drum roll: Chennai Super Kings, Kings XI Punjab, Kolkata Knight Riders, Mumbai Indians. And if Varma and his mates get it wrong, just remember where you read it first: Twenty20 is a lottery.
Sign of the timesWhile the powerful nations continue to carve up the fixture list to suit their own bank balances, others use sticking plaster to stay together. It emerges that Pakistan may not after all tour West Indies in June and July, which means a two-Test series scheduled by the ICC’s own Future Tours Programme will be shunted elsewhere.
There are no prizes for guessing the reason. Because West Indies’ home season has been badly eaten into by the IPL, everything gets squeezed. And so a triangular one-day series also involving Sri Lanka and India – which itself replaced a proposed tour by Sri Lanka and thus two Tests – had to fit somewhere.
Windies style: The West Indies celebrate winning the World Twenty20 last year West Indies celebrateThe visit of Pakistan (a less lucrative option than the ubiquitous Indians) could be the fallguy. And there was not even the option of hosting the Pakistanis in July/August: that’s when the Caribbean hosts its own domestic Twenty20 tournament. It was stirring to see West Indies win the World Twenty20 in Sri Lanka last year. Just don’t expect them to return to even the top half of the Test tree any time soon.
Bye bye, PinkyOne of this column’s grouses about the IPL is the way in which traditions are not given the chance to bed in: witness the way in which players change franchises almost every year, each time proclaiming their undying loyalty for their new employers.
But a new low has been reached with the news that Pinky the doll has been ditched by Rajasthan Royals in a quest for what chief executive Raghu Iyer called ‘something more unique’.
Pinky, you almost certainly won’t recall, was the brainchild of former captain Shane Warne, and had to be looked after at all times by the most recent player to fall foul of the Royals’ disciplinary code. But South African Paddy Upton is the new coach, and Pinky has been deemed surplus to requirements. Truly, it can be a heartless game.
Pinky not perky: Pinky the doll, the brainchild of Shane Warne (above) has been ditched by the Rajasthan Royals Was it really cricket?Evidence arrives that some of us prefer a rout to a nail-biter. According to the Twitter feed of The Hindu, India’s 4-0 drubbing of Australia collected the highest average TV rating for a Test series in that country – and, therefore, presumably in the world. And yet at times it was more like a blood sport. Cricket fandom reveals itself in many ways.
And finally...If you find yourself at a loose end tomorrow morning, you may be spoiled for choice. Pick any one of Chester-le-Street, Trent Bridge, Edgbaston, Headingley, Chelmsford, Cardiff, the Ageas Bowl or Old Trafford, and you’ll be able to enjoy – weather permitting – one of the nation’s oldest sporting competitions. The county championship has its knockers, but it’s still alive and kicking (ish), and it will be taking place somewhere near you for the next six months. Do pop in.
