My apologies for not updating this blog quite as much as Seven and Seven Eighths, but at the moment I am a little cricketed out, and can’t really get enthused about a Champions League competition in the hit and giggle form of the game. While in Cornwall I missed both semi-finals, and the final of the Champions Trophy, won by Australia thanks to two centuries in a row from Shane Watson, and thus giving the lie to the line that the Australians are finished at the top end of the game. One only has to see how Sussex were demolished by New South Wales to tell you that. They have Brett Lee, Phil Hughes and Simon Katich playing – where is Matt Prior?

I shall expand more on the Surrey season in due course. The little bit of Wisden Cricketer handed over to Chris Adams is the usual mea non culpa bullshit we’ve learned to live with over the course of the ego’s career. Merely saying that once the player’s take the field it is all up to them isn’t going to cut the mustard. He has got rid of much of the “dead wood” as he would see it, but is no nearer getting the bowling line-up to take 20 wickets than we were when we were unceremoniously bundled out of the top flight. I do have to laugh at the glee that Wisden Cricketer’s scribe couldn’t suppress in his comments “no-one bemoans the loss of the Surrey strut”. Oh for christ’s sake – Surrey have been garbage for six or seven years now, and this team is as far away from Adam Hollioake’s outfit as I am from a major part in Hollyoaks. Pack it in, moron.

There’s an interview in WC with Graeme Swann by John Stern that is as tedious as it sounds, with Swann giving off his folksy charm and supposedly being in line for a captaincy slot in A Question of Sport with former sportsman turned TV whore Matt Dawson cited as a comparable figure. Jesus. However, in this piece Stern has a barb at Matthew Hoggard for his “intellectual” status that became grating. Where did that come from? I mention it only because Yorkshire have booted out Hoggard this week because “he wanted too much money”. Surrey? You there? Need a top line bowler not likely to be called up for internationals? Surrey?

Meanwhile England have decided to dispense with Steve Harmison for this winter’s tour. The Dope with the Mope put out the usual spin about it being hard to believe he isn’t one of the top five bowlers in the country, but the fact is that we are now six winters removed from his only decent showing on the road, and we have rather more recent memories of him trundling in bowling long-hops in Hamilton, and then bleating and moaning that he was homesick. Don’t look at others Steve, look at yourself. You have the talent – by bloody hell he has – but he hasn’t made it stick. I don’t blame England one bit.

No international cricket for a little bit, so the blog may become a photo fest and a reminiscence vehicle, but I will try to stick with it as best I can. Somerset v Trindad and Tobago is on right now. Please give my regards to anyone who cares. I thought Langer had left Somerset – I guess the lure of the rupee was just too strong. After all, it cured Tres’s homesickness / depression.

I was about to write up something or other on cricket in general this afternoon, and gosh darn it, the job had to get in the way. It was to have three strands… Surrey. England v Aussie ODI Series. Freddie.

I would usually use my Surrey membership to watch the day/night Pro 40 game. Tonight, I would rather go home and have the dog bite me than go through that purgatory. I did not watch the game, but caught the highlights as I was channel surfing. 200 chased down by Warwickshire for the loss of 1 wicket. Abominable. Coming on the tails of a disgraceful performance at Northampton on Sunday and we are now bottom of that league too. I know in the scheme of things it doesn’t matter but ten years ago this was the best side in England, and by a fucking distance. Now we are bottom of the one day league, non-entities in the cup competitions and in some danger of finishing bottom of the county championship. And this is progress?

My limited readership must also be wondering why there has been no comment on the one day series, which Australia lead 5-0. It is because I, like most of the country it seems, really couldn’t give a toss. The pundits can ramble on all they like about us not taking one day cricket seriously, being clueless at it or whatever, but the fact remains that this series is after the Lord Mayor’s Show. The sole aim of the ECB and the England hierarchy, and to a large extent the supporters is the Ashes. Anything else we’ll take. It is The Ashes. A 7 game series isn’t so much flogging a dead horse as killing its siblings for sport. The worst nightmare must have been a big beating, and we’ve delivered. England’s one day team just does not have the “wow” factor. Bopara is as bad at this as he is at tests. Shah is a run out waiting to happen. Strauss tries as best he can, but gets out when we need him to go on. Prior has done naff all. Collingwood is a game trier but he isn’t an action hero like Bruce Willis. More like Wincey Willis. The bowling is unthreatening, and we dropped Broad and Rashid after they had reasonable first games. Why isn’t Jonathan Trott there? No, it is dull; I am fed up with Ian Asperger’s rantings, and I’ve had enough. Spare me two more games.

And so to Freddie. I am so so sorry, but the man is an arse. I read the articles trying to cover his backside as to why he is doing what he is doing. Choosing his time to play for England, and when he should rest. His manager today has said he has opted out so he could do some TV show in which he could bungee jump. Well that’s just peachy. A man who may “never play again” and is desperate to play at the top level of one day cricket fancies a bit of nutty behaviour and so has opted out of his England contract. So it isn’t to say naff off to a tour of Bangladesh then, or to avoid a one day series that might clash with the IPL. Course not. I’ll bet come World Cup time, or Australia ODIs he’ll be making himself available, but this man who has given up tests to play 20/20 around the world – in South Africa, India, Australia and England if we ever put another worthwhile tournament together – has opted out so he can make a TV show in which he’ll bungee jump? Pull the other one….

Come the mundane games – oh, he’ll turn up of there’s no other money making opportunity no doubt. Harsh? Let me see where we are in two years time and review it then, eh?

Overall, reading the coverage, I had one main thought. For years the press have been hinting that the first player to opt out of a contract would be Kevin Pietersen. The ground was laid, as it was for Tony Greig in the Packer era, to have KP as the bete noire of English cricket. The man who sold his international future to the highest bidder because he sees himself as indispensable. The fucking South African who doesn’t give a shit except about money. And now it is Flintoff, genial old Freddie, the journos are all over the place, being sympathetic, hardly calling him out at all. It reminds me of when Alan Shearer announced Euro 2000 would be his last tournament. He loved it when the press kept asking him to come out of retirement after that. Watch this charade take place around next August when the 2010/11 Ashes squad is selected. With no massive 20/20 tournament on at that time, what’s stopping Freddie doing it again for Queen and country? Watch it. Set your watch by it. Watch his management leak stories out about he would love to do it, but [pitiful excuse]. The fact is that the journo’s goose is cooked should KP follow Freddie’s lead. Their poster child has done it first. You can’t pin all the blame on KP when their genial old boy has fucked off first. Yes, I am livid. No, I won’t apologise about the language. If I were the ECB, I’d want my money back for the operation and any rehab this winter. If, as is rumoured, the ECB are paying the physio Dave Roberts to get him fit again, I’d stop that forthwith. Pay it out of your IPL contract. You value that more than an England one. Or come up with a better excuse than fucking bungee jumping.

Meanwhile Andrew Caddick is retiring. No fanfare for a man who had to bowl through a poor era for England. A victim on more than one occasion of eccentric selection policies, Caddick finished his test career with 234 wickets at 29.91. He faced the best batting line-up in recent memory (Australia) and was able (Sydney 1999, The Oval 1997) to win us test matches. There is no fanfare for a great county bowler, no real tributes, no real recognition. He took 10 more 5 wicket hauls than you-know-who, in a dozen or so less test matches. I always quite liked him. He could have been a great third bowler in a great test side. Instead he and Gough had to carry passengers and we were never quite good enough. But not for the want of trying… Packed off to pasture too early, he was condemned as a man from an era of failure. We can be such muppets…

Has that satisfied you Sir Peter?

Can Surrey finish bottom of the County Championship?

YES WE CAN!

Change we can believe in as Newman, Brown, Clarke, Hamilton-Brown ply their trade in the top flight, the brave Surrey troops are going down with the ship as another inadequate first innings score has been passed by a Kolpak-laden outfit who have moved with the times. At lunch on day three Surrey are 90 runs down, and Northants have three wickets remaining. My money is on Monty’s maiden 50.

Herath has been inspirational. A breathless Surrey e-mail pronounced we’d signed three international cricketers – Davies and Batty are inspiring another relegation season for Worcester, and Mr Herath, from Sri Lanka. Current figures at lunch on day three? 38 overs, 1-135. Magic.

Yesterday Sir Peter e-mailed me – his message (not sure it reads right) – A deadly spearheaded attack

Bowling at the time? Alex Tudor and Chris Schofield. Chris Adams has this game licked.

Now if Middlesex could only pull themselves together that little bit more, then we’d be bottom of the pile, having done nothing in any of the one day competitions. What a step forward from Chris Adams and Gus MacKay. What a sure fire success we are going to be.

What a debacle.

Surrey commenced the day’s proceedings at 96/1 and advanced their score past 100 with no further loss. Imagine my incredulity to see them at 160/9 at lunch.

Rampshire indeed. The main man is out for the season, the batting folds like wet cardboard. Chris Adams brings us progress.

Sometimes you need to go backwards to go forwards.

Maybe Dernbach and Linley will bowl them out cheaply. Maybe I’ll get on the TV to sing Boys of Summer!

Score 400 plus in your first knock and still lose. In a four day game? Easy. Surrey have done this now in two successive games – against Essex and Kent. The season is now over and Surrey face another season in the basement with a bowling attack that would have a hard time bowling out Suffolk, let alone Sussex, and with a batting line-up that doesn’t so much as need Mark Ramprakash as depend on him like a crack addict relies on a dealer.

People I know, who love the club more than I; who invest their time and money more than I do; who want Surrey to do well are in despair. The bowling is appalling. The batting is anaemic. The future needs more than a promising keeper like Stephen Davies. It needs a couple of batsman who consistently score, and a bowling attack with some threat.

Adams is finding out. No Mushtaq Ahmed taking 100 wickets means you don’t look so good. I despair. I won’t be renewing my membership in January.

Some pictures from the Surrey v Derbyshire match a couple of weeks back…

A Wider Look...

A Century For Wayne Madsen

With apologies to all Australian openers out there…

Part 1 – Matters Surrey. And More….

Part 2 – Longevity At The Crease

If you doubt the credentials, here is the man in action

And Again…

Wise words, wise deeds.

Bonus Master Shot…

SHOTTTTTTTTT!

A number of very talented bloggers across the “blogosphere” make an art form of the trade of “fisking”. Wikipedia has this definition of “fisking”

“A point-by-point refutation of a blog entry or (especially) news story. A really stylish fisking is witty, logical, sarcastic and ruthlessly factual; flaming or handwaving is considered poor form. Named after Robert Fisk, a British journalist who was a frequent (and deserving) early target of such treatment.”

I, therefore, point you in the direction of some of the most ridiculous twaddle written by Peter Roebuck and carried on the cricinfo site. I could give it a thorough fisking, but don’t really have the time. From the wonderful assertion that four of England’s top six were brought up and raised in the South African cricket culture, to comments on black footballers, interspersed with scant knowledge of county cricket, this article is magnificent. I’d take the first plane back to Sydney, old son….

First of all to the South African question and that four of the top six learned their trade there. First up, that top six has never actually played together (Trott and KP – the two “bona fide” South Africans certainly did not, as we all know). Second Strauss’s parents left South Africa when he was six, and indeed could be said that the England captain would  have got more of an education in his time in Australia than South Africa. Thirdly, Matt Prior left South Africa when he was 11, so obviously his primary school knowledge has seen him through, and the English experience an irrelevance… it is arrant nonsense.

Then there is his pop at Surrey for employing lots of foreign born players. Excuse me? We played Derbyshire a couple of weeks back, and the foreigners, as Roebuck puts it, were Andre Nel (Kolpak) and Stewart Walters (Aussie born, but plying his trade at the Oval for many years). He could also add Jade Dernbach (South African) but he’s been raised up through the Surrey system and is qualified for England I believe (as has Walters), so is hardly a hired hand. Surely he isn’t counting former England international Usman Afzaal on his foreigner list, nor Mark Ramprakash for having a foreign name? Why not pick on Derbyshire, who in that game had 9 players born outside England (I know, I know, Steffan Jones is Welsh, but I’m having him – but look at their top order – Rogers (Aussie), Madsen (Saf), Park (Saf), Smith (Saf), Hinds (WI) before you got to Redfern (Shropshire, I believe)). Surrey don’t really have an overseas player – so why use his ill informed brain to pick on us. This is even more ironic, or should it be moronic, when you consider he lauds Durham, who last time out had Chanderpaul as their overseas player, Thorp and Claydon (Aussies) in their bowling attack, DiVenuto (Aussie) opening the batting and Benkenstein (South Africa) anchoring their middle order. That’s your County Champions right there….

The cheap point, and the usual dog whistle when someone treads, however cautiously on ethnic origin, is that Roebuck is being racist. Lauding England for producing Asian cricketers, and then bemoaning the lack of “Anglo-Saxon” development comes perilously close to pushing the buttons of the righteous indignant who seem to inhabit our green and pleasant land. With Roebuck, I honestly thought we were stumbling on Major Bufton Tufton of Tunbridge Wells in the Telegraph territory, but he’s being a relic, not a racist. Like your grandad dancing to the latest choons at your family function, he’s trying to be ever so hip and Guardianista, and is flopping for trying too hard. Hence he’s a racist. Welcome to that world, Roebuck!

Roebuck dresses up his prose, makes it look nice, but it nothing of substance. It is a bizarre ramble about a country he left behind and seems not to understand. No-one in England is pretending that this team is a bunch of world-beaters – we are just very pleased to have beaten our most cherished rival – yet Roebuck wants to take a point further and despite trying to write cleverly, ends up looking a bit of a dolt. Or as people around my way might have said “All Fur Coat and No Knickers”.

This was wonderful though…

“Thirty years ago there was only one black player in English soccer.”

Proof positive that this bloke knows nothing about the subject he strayed on. Even my team, the WindyBricks, as “racist” as it has been portrayed in the past, had two black players in the 1970s to my knowledge. It took until 1979 for a black player to make his debut, but Cunningham and Anderson had played by the end of 1979, with Regis, Blissett, Chamberlain, Ricky Hill and others followed along soon after.

Do read the article. Roebuck really is struggling these days.

See the Seven and Seven Eighths blog for the update on the medical front. Thank you all for your lack of concern. This isn’t Liverpool and you’ve all stepped up to the mark in terms of calling me a “tart”, accusing me of malingering and for all other spite and invective. It is what I have come to expect. Thanks.

I shall be going more deeply into the Ashes. Of course. It is decidedly odd to know someone else is using your ticket, but thankfully the shoulder was better by the time of the denouement (how convenient I hear the cynics cry) even if the cramped accommodations and the Occidental Cured Pork arsehole in front of me made Sunday a test of endurance as well as a moment of sheer pleasure.

Meanwhile Rampshire fell apart against the Shotguns so it will be second division cricket again next season. No doubt Sheldon, Stewart, McKay and Adams will be telling us it is all part of an ambitious rebuilding programme that will reap future benefits, but like most Surrey fans I talk to, we aren’t buying it.

Photos, interviews (no army ones though) and comments on the brilliant victory to follow soon enough. I am sure you are all pleased to see me again….

B@stards.

Tom Fordyce, on his BBC Blog, pooh poohs the idea that England should pick Trescothick and Ramprakash for the last test. He points out Ramprakash’s poor average as a reason not to pick him for the next test. He mentions that we are 1-1 and not 4-0 down, so there is no reason to panic. He denigrates county cricket as a flat-track paradise. This is symptomatic of those who believe in consistency of selection…..

http://www.bbc.co.uk/blogs/tomfordyce/2009/08/ponting_left_laughing_as_engla.html

No-one is advocating a return to the dark old days of the revolving door, the one test match batsman at the Oval who you never see again – Alan Wells, Paul Parker, John Stephenson and Alan Butcher to name but four – but those who don’t learn from the mistakes of the past are destined to repeat them, and selecting that middle order again is asking for trouble. If Cook or Strauss get a belter early on, and you expose Bopara to the new ball, are you seriously expecting him to succeed? When he has failed seven times out of seven so far (being harsh – he has had a couple of 30s)? Past history has told you, no. He has scored runs only against the West Indies, and that isn’t a gauge of future success. Not really.

There is a school of thought going around, and not without its merits, that England should not over-react to this defeat. I think that is a sound, fair comment, and yet what does the evidence point to when it comes to our batting. Strauss has a 161, Cook has a 96 and no-one else has got past 74. In the whole series. That is not batting designed to win test matches. We are off to an Oval surface which in the last game yielded 1200 runs for 9 wickets over four run-soaked days. Surrey are hamstrung by a pitch that batsmen can make hay on. The Surrey authorities have a hotel to pay for and are going to coin it in as much as possible by ensuring this test lasts five days. We need to bat well, and as I have said over the years, England are never going to be a team that can make consistently big scores. So far we have got past 400 on two occasions, and nearly lost one of those tests. At The Oval, 400 might not be enough.

So do you stick with the failures or pick a different line-up? You know my thoughts already. To keep the same team falls into the trap of comfortable stagnation as I mentioned in my old blog last year. That post mentions trying out Bopara, but we chose to look at the evidence of cosy runs against cosy opposition rather than test him earlier. For one test only, I’d see if the old codgers could come back, and if they choose not to do that, throw in one debutant (Trott, Denly, Carberry whoever) for Bopara and someone with test experience for Bell (which probably means Key as he is not seen as past it).

Australia are laughing of course, but they did some key changes too – bringing in Stuart Clark who bowled so well in the first innings, and dropping Phil Hughes for Shane Watson. They adapted their gameplan before it was too late. England haven’t.