The former England batter and captain was a man out of sync with his times in more ways than one

David Hopps26-Aug-2021Ted Dexter, the last great amateur cricketer to play for England, has died, aged 86. An embodiment of a passing age, Dexter’s majestic batting thrilled crowds, and his aristocratic manner captivated the media as well as providing a touch of glamour for a country that was uncertain of its place in the world. Debonair, majestic against fast bowling, particularly when making full use of his tall, athletic frame to drive commandingly off the back foot, and rich enough to live life pretty much as he pleased, his career spanned a changing world.As the 1950s ended, Britain was on the cusp of change as conservatism and tradition came under challenge. In the same year that Dexter made his Test debut, 1958, attempts to end the distinction between amateur and professional failed, but shortly after he captained England for the first time, three years later, it passed into history.Dexter played 62 Tests for England between 1958 and 1968, the last two – entirely unexpectedly – coming after a three-year absence because of a serious leg injury suffered in a bizarre car accident. His average of 47.89 was exceeded, at the time of his passing, by only 12 England batters. He led England in more than half of his Tests, and Richie Benaud, an Australian adversary as captain, was just one prominent player to regard him as a “great”.But cricket was not enough to detain a man who, for all his detached air, possessed an agile mind. Dexter was too successful at his chosen sport – and possessed too many theories about its technique and its need for modernisation – to be fairly described a cricketing dilettante. But he revelled in many other pursuits, all of them rivals for his attention even with the cricket season at its height.Dexter (right) was an innovative captain, to the point that many thought that he often experimented on the field out of boredom•PA PhotosHe was a fine amateur golfer and would once have qualified for the Open Championship had a six-foot putt on the final hole of his last qualifying round dropped in. He flew a private jet and his love for gambling – for a time at least more accurately described as an addiction – led him into ownership of racehorses and greyhounds. He even stood for parliament for the Conservatives, for an unwinnable seat in Cardiff South East in 1964, finishing second to James Callaghan, who was to become a Labour prime minister. In one speech, Dexter allegedly suggested that Labour-voting households could be identified by their “grubby lace curtains and unwashed milk bottles on the doorstep”. Having sampled a very different world, he immediately announced his political retirement.To depict Dexter as a man out of his time is accurate, but not merely in the way one might assume. A throwback to an amateur age, he might increasingly have seemed, but his analysis of cricket’s place in the world was often decades ahead. Dexter had championed one-day cricket before the arrival of the Gillette Cup (initially introduced as a 65-over competition in 1963), he argued for a one-day league, for England central contracts, and his advocacy of four-day Championship cricket began more than two decades before county cricket took the plunge.Dexter was born in Milan, Italy, where his father, Ralph, had set up an underwriting agency. He was one of three brothers and had three half-sisters from a previous marriage of his mother, Elise. His education was a privileged one: three prep schools, one each in Scotland, Wales and England; Radley College, where he was head boy and where Ivor Gilliat, the cricket master, first conferred on him the nickname of “Lord Edward” in reference to a certain hauteur; and Jesus College, Cambridge, where he began two degrees but finished neither, being too consumed with sport and other leisure pursuits to give much attention to his studies. “I was to distinguish myself by failing to attend one lecture all the time I was there,” he was to observe later. There were also two years of National Service, including a posting to what was then Malaya as a second lieutenant, which he found largely boring.Ted Dexter talks to a voter in Cardiff, from where he stood for election as a Conservative candidate in 1964•PA PhotosThe most significant game in his first season at Cambridge came against Sussex when he deposited Robin Marlar, Sussex’s amateur captain, who was later to become a trenchant cricket correspondent, for a mighty straight six. Marlar arranged for him to play a few games for Sussex once term ended but Dexter pulled out – a long-term relationship had recently ended, and as he put it years later, he had become obsessed by a girl in Copenhagen. But his Cambridge batting exploits soon attracted England’s attention. They tried to pick him in 1957 but he was injured. The following season, he made a half-century on debut in an England innings win against New Zealand at Old Trafford, but shortly before he went out to bat, he had learned of his omission from the Ashes party in favour of Raman Subba Row.An injury crisis soon led to an SOS for Dexter, who was found in temporary employment in Paris, and felt obliged to announce his engagement to Susan Longfield, a fashion model, before making the journey. There began a debilitating five-day journey, affected by fog, technical trouble for a plane in Bahrain, and his own throat infection. Unsurprisingly, he began his first tour as 12th man, a job for which he was entirely unsuited; in the lunch interval, he preferred joining oyster parties rather than attending to his team-mates’ needs. He failed in both his Tests as England lost 4-0 but responded with 141 against New Zealand in Christchurch. Largely ignored by England the following summer, and with his wife’s career forging ahead, his gambling ran out of control. “I started on the road to near ruin,” he recalled in Alan Lee’s biography .His worth remained under question when he toured the West Indies in 1960, before an unbeaten 136 in the first Test in Barbados stilled the argument. But it was the next Test, in Port-of-Spain, that lives in cricket history. The grandeur of Dexter’s strokeplay in making 77 and defying the pace of Wes Hall was regarded by many as one of his finest Test innings. When Dexter ran out Charran Singh on the third afternoon, simmering racial tension erupted and tear gas was employed. He had a fine tour and was somewhat desirous of naming him a Cricketer of the Year. “No cricketer since the war has so captured the imagination,” Marlar said of his county colleague.Dexter batting for Cambridge University against the touring West Indians in 1957•PA PhotosAs Sussex captain, a role he fulfilled until 1965, Dexter was initially ambitious to put his ideas into practice, and consecutive Gillette Cup wins in the competition’s first two years had much to do with his innovative leadership. He proved himself an independent thinker and a good listener but a poor communicator, which his friends put down to shyness. He was more self-critical than they were, accepting that “aloof” might be a fair description. Team-mates often suspected he devised a theory in the field for no better reason than boredom. If there was not a theory to explore, he would often just practice his golf swing in the outfield. He was not a captain to let a game drift, and the less important the game, the more his experimentation was liable to become self-indulgent. On Derby day one year, a radio was brought out onto the field and a delayed start contributed to what went down into folklore as one of the longest tea breaks in county cricket history.Dexter played in four Test series against Australia and failed to win one, but if his manner was viewed suspiciously in that country, his talent gained considerable respect from the moment he made 180 in the first Test at Edgbaston in 1961.After the Ashes were lost and the captain, Peter May, had retired, Dexter took over the captaincy of a weakened tour party for a near five-month tour to India (where England lost a Test series for the first time), Pakistan and Sri Lanka, registering his sole Test double-hundred in Karachi late in the tour, by which time the wish to return home had permeated the entire party. He retained the captaincy role for an even longer tour in Australia in 1962-63 – proud of a victory in Melbourne, he rated his 52 as England pulled off a run chase on the final day as the finest innings of his career, a typically idiosyncratic choice. Others preferred to present his 70 from 75 balls against West Indies in the 1963 Lord’s Test as his finest moment, when he dismissed Hall and Griffith from his presence. Hall was a fast bowler at the peak of his powers, and Dexter had condemned Charlie Griffith as a chucker: it was potent stuff. A famous Test was saved with England nine down and Colin Cowdrey batting with his broken left arm in a sling.But his remoteness aggravated social tensions. “I liked the man a lot and he could bat beautifully, but he was no captain of England – he had more theories than Darwin,” Fred Trueman chuntered during the 1962-63 Ashes defeat. Predictably, they were to clash again in Dexter’s last series as captain – the 1964 Ashes series – when he refused to give Trueman the field he wanted to bounce out Peter Burge and Trueman bowled short all the same. England lost the series 1-0, and Dexter’s final Test as captain coincided with Trueman getting to the 300-Test-wicket mark.David Gower and Ted Dexter take a lap around the ground as part of the celebrations to mark Edgbaston’s 50th Test in August 2017•Getty ImagesCalamity then struck midway through the summer of 1965. Then 30, Dexter had spent the day at Newbury races, but his car ran out of petrol on a roundabout below Chiswick flyover in London. Trying to push the car off the road, he lost control and his leg was badly broken. Thanks to a boy passing on a bicycle, an ambulance was called and he underwent an operation later that night. That seemed that, but three years later he came out of retirement for Sussex and – perhaps the last throw of the dice for the amateur cricketer – England unsuccessfully recalled him for two Ashes Tests.After his retirement Dexter dabbled in public relations (lacking an ability or even desire to engage in mass communication, he hardly seemed the sort for it), as a newspaper cricket pundit, and spent 1978 on the European amateur golf circuit – the year he missed the cut for the Open by the lip of the 18th hole. That he would also serve as president of MCC was almost a given, but he showed independent thought there too, championing women’s equality.There were five years, too, in cricket administration when he became chairman of selectors with England’s fortunes at a low ebb in 1988. He often turned up to selection meetings in motorbike leathers. He again ached to modernise thinking, introducing specialist coaches, overseas tours for England A and Under-19s, and demanding that players reported two days before a game. But impatience with England’s failings was widespread, and although Dexter proved more engaging than some who had gone before, his attempts to deal with the media could seem both vague and insouciant, and as such, were doomed to failure. Whether it was explaining away a defeat by suggesting, in mock astrologer’s terminology, that “Venus was in juxtaposition to somewhere else”, announcing a study into Kolkata’s smog levels, or revealing, straight-faced, that there would be an enquiry into facial hair, his mild eccentricities were easily lampooned and did him no favours. He retired again, hurt rather than resentful, a little unfulfilled and not entirely understood.

Young wicketkeeper-batter thrust into spotlight via ECB’s talent-spotting pipeline

Andrew Miller15-Jun-2021Had James Bracey been pinned in the stocks in Birmingham city centre and pelted with rotten fruit all week long, he could hardly have cut a more pitiful figure than he proved to be throughout England’s humiliating second Test at Edgbaston.If that sounds a harsh assessment, then imagine being in Bracey’s boots for the past two matches – initially proud as punch to be representing England, only to be increasingly overwhelmed by the enormity of the circumstances. In a failing team, in an unfamiliar role, in a gaze of public scrutiny diametrically removed from the near-laboratory conditions in which he has been operating since the start of the 2020 summer.Instead of fruit, Bracey was pelted with cricket balls – many of them delivered by James Anderson and Stuart Broad, two of the greatest bowlers ever to have played Test cricket for England, and whose internal monologues he cannot help but have second-guessed as he flinched and clanged his way through one of the scruffiest wicketkeeping displays ever seen at the highest level.None of this is intended as an ad hominem attack. As Mike Atherton noted in the Times, Bracey did actually cling on to most of the balls that flew his way (many of them, admittedly, to his own astonishment). That tally included all bar one of the moments that truly mattered – a reprieve for Tom Blundell on 0 – although it also discounted a bump-ball off Broad that a more confident gloveman would surely have been better placed to gather.Either way, the optics of his performance were unmitigated and awful. Like Ollie Robinson, for vastly differing reasons at Lord’s, the proudest weeks of Bracey’s professional career quickly dissolved into a living nightmare. And by the end of it all, he simply looked lost, and not a little traumatised.Related

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“He’s had a tough experience, there is no doubt about that,” Graham Thorpe, England’s assistant coach, said. “But you have to absorb all the experiences, both good and bad.”I’m sure that is what James will do, he will take on board everything that has happened, and maybe reflect that he has built it up so much, and actually it is about staying at a level mentally, knowing that it is still a game of cricket that you love and enjoy playing and keep your mind relaxed about it.”The trouble for Bracey, however, is that – through no fault of his own – he has been more than just a stand-in wicketkeeper in England’s ranks. He is an unwitting poster boy for the ECB’s attempts to grow their Test talent like forced rhubarb: hidden from the light, nurtured in a hot-house far removed from cricket’s natural environments, then unleashed on the market as the sweetest, most definitive product.Of course, the need for the ECB to react to the pandemic has been a big part of Bracey’s journey to Test status. This time last year, most of England’s fans knew of him only as a name in a 55-man training squad – a berth he earned through his role (in the 10th of his 17 previous first-class appearances as a wicketkeeper) in England Lions’ notable victory over Australia A in Melbourne last year.His exploits for Gloucestershire, in the second division of the County Championship, had been diligent and, as it happens, promotion-winning in 2019. But they hadn’t exactly propelled him to national consciousness. Nor, with the exception of three matches, each exactly two months removed from the other, had they involved him taking the gloves.James Bracey may have to wait for another chance with England•PA Images via Getty ImagesBut by degrees in the past 12 months – after clearly looking the business in countless nets sessions in Southampton, Manchester, Galle, Chennai and Ahmedabad – Bracey has been quietly built up as a Test No.3 in waiting, a batter with one of the best defensive techniques in the country. So quite why England felt it was appropriate to anoint him as Ben Foakes’ replacement at No. 7 is anyone’s guess – although seeing as they did much the same to Ollie Pope in New Zealand two winters ago, there’s clearly no desire to learn from past mistakes.And in such straitened circumstances, any hope that Bracey might have had of proving his Test readiness died a hideous and protracted death. It took him 11 days as a Test cricketer to record his first run, having faced nine balls across two matches and three innings, until a fleeting moment of catharsis as he nudged Neil Wagner through mid-on at Edgbaston to break his duck at last.The crowd roared its acclaim – part sympathy, part irony, but all of it as genuine as you could hope – but 17 balls later, Bracey was on his way again, bowled round his legs by Ajaz Patel for 8, to vacate the stage with a Test average of 2.67 that he has next to no hope of improving any time soon.He is self-evidently a better player that the account he gave of himself this month – in the early weeks of the county season, Bracey was Gloucestershire’s stand-out batter in their march to the top of the Group Two standings, including 201 runs in their victory against Somerset. He made a further match-winning 75 in a low-scoring tussle with Middlesex at Lord’s – after which he spoke tellingly about the stir-crazy nature of being an England bio-bubble reserve, a life spent “getting into a groove of netting and practising, and finding things to work on even when there isn’t [anything].”Perhaps it’s little wonder he was a bit over-wrought when it came to his moment to shine. As Thorpe acknowledged, Test cricket is a “brutal” sport that can strip players naked in any number of different ways, but under-performing wicketkeepers – trapped in the viewer’s eyeline for hours at a time – tend to endure a particularly public form of torture.And the trouble is, his card is now marked. With the return of Jos Buttler, and probably Jonny Bairstow, for the India series, and with Foakes still the connoisseur’s choice, as and when he recovers from his torn hamstring, it’s hard to believe that Bracey can ever again be called upon to keep wicket for England.

“We chat to the players about how to cope with things at the highest level, both on and off the field, and it is very rare that everything just goes smoothly from start to finish”Graham Thorpe

And that leaves his batting, ostensibly his strongest suit, but one in which he currently boasts the second-lowest average of any England top-seven cricketer with more than one cap to his name.The only man who averages less, in fact, is another wicketkeeper-batter whose two-match tenure was similarly short and traumatic. Richard Blakey’s England career began with an MCC revolt, during the tour of India in 1992-93, after he and Neil Fairbrother were preferred to the purists’ choices, Jack Russell and David Gower. It ended with an average of 1.75, and a highest score of 6 in four innings, as Anil Kumble in particular shredded his composure at Madras and Bombay.And like Bracey, Blakey’s opportunity arose through another’s misfortune – when England’s captain, Graham Gooch, succumbed to his infamous “dodgy prawns” on the morning of the second Test, causing the incumbent keeper, Alec Stewart, to vacate his role in order to captain the side.”An hour before the scheduled start I found out I was going to play,” Blakey related in the recent Sky Sports documentary, Spinwash. “My heart started pounding, but it’s what you set out to do. As a young player you’ve dreamed of this moment, and suddenly it’s there.”But all too suddenly it can be gone too, as another young keeper of yesteryear can attest. Chris Read was four years younger than Bracey when he debuted against New Zealand as a 20-year-old in 1999, but his Test career never truly recovered from one gross aberration in his second appearance at Lord’s, when he lost sight of a Chris Cairns slower ball, and ducked it for a duck.Read was a vastly superior gloveman to Bracey – according to the statistician Charles Davis, he missed just three out of 46 chances in the final 12 Tests of his career, a ratio three times better than either of the men who succeeded him, Geraint Jones and Matt Prior – and would ultimately prove himself to be a great of county cricket in his 19-year Nottinghamshire career.Chris Read never escaped the stigma of ducking a slower ball from Chris Cairns in his second Test•PA PhotosBut at England level, he was never able to escape the baby-faced stigma of that awkward first foray. Duncan Fletcher certainly never liked the cut of his gib, despite recalling him in 2003 in the wake of Alec Stewart’s retirement, and Jones – a dodgier keeper, if a more imposing batter at that still-early stage of Read’s development – would soon be preferred as England’s Ashes gloveman.The stigma, you see, sticks – no matter how nurturing the team environment professes to be, and no matter how much room for growth may exist in a player, lest we forget, who only turned 24 last month.”We chat to the players about how to cope with things at the highest level, both on and off the field, and it is very rare that everything just goes smoothly from start to finish,” Thorpe added of Bracey’s ordeal. “Like all our players, we hope he goes back and reflects on it, and it fires his desire to want to be back in that arena.”But how soon, in all honesty, can England dare to believe that Bracey will be ready to make that second coming? It took the mighty Graham Gooch three years to earn a third Test cap after making a pair on debut in 1975, and arguably a decade longer than that to truly make his mark at the highest level.But as an ECB-pipelined product – taught to wear a version of the three lions at every conceivable representative level, and to value environment replication every bit as highly as technique – times could not be more different now.To retain Bracey in the team environment after an experience this harrowing would be an act of cruelty; to dispatch him back to county cricket, and a sum total of two Championship fixtures between now and the third India Test, would be an admission of failure. For now his bubble has burst. It’s not obvious quite how to go about reinflating it.

2021 featured lots of early starts, memorable conversations, a new cricket format – and a fair bit of golf

Mark Nicholas03-Jan-2022London, England
5am, January 15, 2021
The kettle boils and Joe Root sweeps. The tea brews and Joe Root cuts. The toaster pops and Joe Root drives. The England captain is on his way to 228 in Galle, a place that may as well have been on another planet from the dank winter morning at home in London. I tuck in and so does Root. Jonny Bairstow plays nicely for 47, Dan Lawrence – strong through the leg side and cock-of-the-walk – puts together 73. Sri Lanka aren’t very good. England end up winning by seven wickets.Around about this time, India beat Australia in Brisbane – unheard of – and win the series. Blimey. Without Virat Kohli, Jasprit Bumrah and others who are household names and commercial giants back home. It’s the Shubman Gills, Washington Sundars and Mohammed Sirajs who pull off this heist. What a coup. One of the great series wins in history and a valuable promo for the Test match game.5am, January 24
These early mornings are tough. Root is run out for 186. I move the dial on the underfloor heating to 22 degrees. England win by six wickets. Root says the Sri Lankans are a good side and difficult to beat at home. Really? Whatever – his batting is sublime. Work done during the days of lockdown to eradicate the faults that creep into a busy man’s game has paid off handsomely.Related

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Oh, to have been in Galle among the Sangakkaras and the Jayawardenes; to have wandered the narrow, bustling lanes, lingered at the markets, and had the senses heightened by exotic spices and brightly coloured frangipani.I ring Ted Dexter, who wrote to Joe about the downturn in his technique and gave it to him pretty straight. Joe was a bit put out by the tone but since has brightly acknowledged the immense help that email gave him. Ted is thrilled watching now and particularly marvels at the range of sweep shots. This call prompts a fortnightly Zoom meet with Ted, who was my sporting hero. He’s not so well physically but full of chat and opinion.2.30am, February 5
The sound of the alarm truly shocks me. Shower, shave, dress and go. A car whisks me to the Times building, which is situated between Borough Market and the Shard. The night is bitterly cold. Bang on 3.30am London time, Root wins Kohli’s toss of the coin, announces that England will bat and is soon walking to the wicket where he makes another double-hundred. So this is what Australians felt like when Bradman carried all before him. In Chennai, with the stadium empty, Root plays an innings of such complexity, such mastery, that it seems almost transformational. Indeed, England go on to win by 227 runs – a barely believable margin against a team as good as India.The green, green grass of Galle: the author in Sri Lanka in less turbulent timesAt the Talksport studio in Borough, we call this on radio, ball-by-all, as if it is a mirage. The pictures come down the line from the local broadcaster on huge monitors and we eulogise them from our little Covid-secure Perspex cubicles. Coffee and bacon rolls are devoured before the sun comes up. One morning we send out for sushi, another for curry: both were later deemed failed experiments. Outside, snow falls on the rooftops and the market beneath us.Darren Gough, ever the enthusiast and as good a pro as I’ve worked with in 26 years of covering the game, suggests that India fell foul of complacency and the empty stadium.At the same field but on a very different pitch, the Indians are a very different team a few days later. One Test match apiece then in Chennai. Followed by England scores of 112, 81, 205 and 135 across the next two Tests in Ahmedabad. In short, England are spun to disaster and lose the series 3-1. Even Root runs out of puff.What next? The IPL, of course.April 2
British Airways flight 54 to Chennai, where the Covid cases are rising fast. I check in at the Taj Coromandel and am taken to my nice room and told that the front desk will keep the key. This, then, is one week of quarantine proper. Good fun too. Lots of music – Springsteen and Dylan, yes, the Beatles, of course, and a raft of contemporary stuff introduced to me by my 15-year-old daughter whose crush on Harry Styles does not prevent her from exploring other avenues. Olivia Rodrigo, Paolo Nutini and Lana Del Rey are very good. All by my lonely self I’ve discovered a band called Wolf Alice, for whom I have developed my own crush. Two mates email me the task of picking 70 favourite songs to join hands with theirs and become a playlist for anyone interested. So I go to work. In breaks between guitar solos, I read by Ben Macintyre and by John Boyne – both compelling and rather brilliant – and set up a circuit-gym thing, which I stick to for an hour each day.Honestly, don’t know how to fit it all in. Then a man comes back with the key. That was quick, and off I go for a swim in the thick Chennai air.Another day, another swab up your nose•Getty ImagesBubble life is a bore because it revolves around a list of restrictions that are applied as if we are schoolchildren. Outside the ground-floor lift there is a roped-off walkway to the breakfast room. This doesn’t stop anyone walking past us, but it does stop a heavyweight walking into you. In short, we can’t do this and we can’t do that. For example, we can use the pool and/or gym during two given two-hour session times, the second of which is the early evening, when we are invariably working on a match. But the tournament wouldn’t go ahead without the various bubbles, so there you have it – you want in or you want out? In? Put up or shut up.April 21
Less than three weeks later I have left the country. As the number Covid cases went through the roof, India was placed on the UK’s “red list” for incoming travel. That, and a personal issue that needed urgent assistance, saw me home few days before the tournament was suspended indefinitely. In the rush to beat the red-list deadline, I leave my phone in a Chennai cab. That’s the phone with flight details, e-tickets, essential Covid documents, etc. Don’t ask. I make it home 22 hours before the UK’s ten-day-airport-hotel quarantine isolation rules kick in.6pm, May 8
Another Zoom call with Dexter, who is looking less well at an alarming rate. For the first time he sounds croaky too and is reluctant to have his usual large whisky. I don’t give up my gin. He changes his mind on the scotch. We have introduced mystery guests to these fortnightly frolics, among whom have been the Michaels Atherton and Vaughan (Ted says Vaughan is his favourite England captain ever) and Sir Tim Rice. On one of these calls Ted doubts that county cricket can survive as is and that the damage done to batting techniques by the attention given to the short formats of the game will, soon enough, cost England dear. Not bad for an 86-year-old, huh.We come up with the idea of eight first-class teams travelling the country for clearly defined periods of the summer each year, ideally when the England players are available. Less is more, he says, and from fewer teams will come a higher standard of cricket and larger crowds. He thinks that a strong 50-over competition and the T20 Blast could sustain the counties but that everything else will have to be paid for by private investment. We agree on that too. He likes the Hundred, as do I.June 19
Hampshire have given me two tickets for the second day of the World Test Championship final and I zip down to the Ageas Bowl in great excitement to be a spectator at a Test match for the first time in 35 years. The last occasion was on England’s 1986-87 tour of Australia, when I watched the whole of the fifth Test from the Brewongle Stand at the Sydney Cricket Ground. Now I’m in temporary seats behind the bowler at the Hilton-Hotel end of the Ageas. It’s bloody cold but me and a mate have the best time. Rohit, Shubman, Kohli, Southee, Boult et al, plus a beef sandwich and a pale ale. Wonderful.In a tight, low-scoring match, New Zealand become worthy and popular champions, having previously won English hearts with their reaction to defeat “by the barest of margins” in the 2019 World Cup final. What’s not to like about Kane Williamson?Finals day at the Hundred: Jax Jones performs ahead of the women’s and men’s title matches•Getty ImagesJuly 23
The Hundred begins and I’m chairman of Southern Brave. We lose the first two games. In the third, the first at home, James Vince makes 60 from 38 balls – thereby outwitting Liam Livingstone’s 68 from 44 – and we beat Birmingham Phoenix with three balls to spare. Then we sneak a win from nowhere at Lord’s and proceed to remain unbeaten to the end, when Vince lifts the trophy to the delight of surprisingly engaged fans.I have done very little except to appoint the coaches and suggest directions of travel. Mahela and Charlotte Edwards were the real deal, and Charlotte deserved more than to see her terrific team lose only their second game in the final. What a double that would have been!Mahela is hugely impressed with Vince’s captaincy and remains quite taken aback that England cannot see him as a batter of the highest class in all formats. In a world of sliding doors, perhaps Vince would be England captain, Root his second lieutenant, and the two most elegant batters in the land would be making life easier for supporters of English cricket. I know Vincey had his chances, but believe me, he’s different gravy when encouraged to be exactly that.We are also surprised by sales of merchandise. At the home games every cap and shirt is sold out within 15 minutes of the break between innings. The more stock we order, the more we sell. And we were thrilled by the support given to the women – some 6000 people at the last two home games, who much enjoyed their exciting brand of cricket.I thought the whole thing a triumph. Obviously it overcrowds the calendar, but in the right hands, it could become a game-changer for the quality, structure and balance sheet of first-class cricket in England. This is a view that leaves further explanation and illustration for another day but this onlooker is convinced. One thing to add: the players loved it.August 15
I am a guest of the MCC chairman for the second England-India Test. The chairman’s hospitality box at Lord’s is alongside the president’s. The president is, of course, Kumar Sangakkara, whose ground-breaking appointment was met with tremendous excitement. We have a jolly day and it’s interesting to watch from side-on rather than down the barrel from on high in the commentary box. The game appears faster, harder, slicker, and the players leaner, quicker, stronger. Later that week I have dinner with Kumar. He likes the eight-team, four-day cricket idea too.Ted Dexter was among those cricket lost in 2021•Ben Radford/Getty ImagesWe are asked back for the next day: the potentially tense final day. England are in the box seat but blow it. I stay only till lunch, whereupon I hurry to the Ageas Bowl on the South Coast to see the Southern Brave women and men win in style. I’m loving being back “on the other side” and interacting with the players and coaches. It is a privilege.At Lord’s I left Mike Brearley, Mike Gatting and Ed Smith debating Root’s tactics as the Indian tail wagged ferociously. Smith was removed from his position as national selector at the start of the summer, a mistake in my view. Chris Silverwood was given a supremo’s responsibilities. Another mistake, I feared. I can’t fathom coach and national selector being the same person, not in cricket.The morning’s favourites are slam-dunked by Siraj and company: either side of tea England are dismissed for 120 in 51 overs and five balls to lose by 151 runs.August 25
Ted Dexter has died. You had to have seen this guy to understand how good he was and how charismatic. At least he didn’t suffer for too long. My heart goes out to his wife, Susan, who asks me to speak at the funeral. It is a polymath of a sort that I talk about, for Ted greeted Wes Hall’s bouncers with the same sense of adventure that he applied to his love of racing – cars, bikes, dogs and horses – golf, flying, music and marriage. I miss him already.September 20
Atherton calls me to say that, in the name of Covid security, England have just cancelled their two-match T20 tour to Pakistan. This is shameful, especially because Pakistan supported England with a six-week visit in the first, horror, year of Covid. Ramiz Raja, the newly appointed CEO of the Pakistan board, fires every bullet in his gun and is greeted with wild applause. England were wrong to have pulled out of South Africa late in 2020 too. Who is behind this stuff? In the , Athers, the paper’s cricket correspondent, goes flying in, every bit as critical as Ramiz. Soon after, the chairman of the ECB, Ian Watmore, resigns.September 30
The Alfred Dunhill Links Championship in Scotland, an annual golf extravaganza for which an invitation is the moment of the year. Phew, I’ve got one. Each amateur plays with a European tour professional golfer for three days and the top 20 teams of two make the cut and play on the final day. My pro is a splendid Salford lad, Marcus Armitage, and a damn good player. He makes the cut in the pro event; he and I miss it in the amateur event. (Who could possibly be to blame for that?) On the first day at St Andrews we play in a four-ball group with Ian Botham – that’s Lord Botham of Ravensworth, trade envoy to Australia. Next day at Carnoustie with Vaughan, and then on the third day with Shane Warne at Kingsbarns. It is such fun.The World Championship final: good news for New Zealand at last•Adam Davy/PA Photos/Getty ImagesWarney plays great and makes the cut on the mark with Ryan Fox, the big-hitting Kiwi. Next day he plays even better, better than ever before in his life, and comes within a single shot of winning the whole damn thing. His score of two under par gross – off nine handicap, by the way – is utterly brilliant, and with Fox making plenty of birdies, their better ball score is 16 under par. Oh, how they deserved to win after that! He’s a fine putter is that Shane Warne and a mighty competitor, just in case you hadn’t noticed.October 15
EK 006 to Dubai for the ICC T20 World Cup, which begins with another week of quarantine, but this time I’ve got a balcony, yay! Same rhythm – music, books, gym circuit – that includes an outside lap, of sorts. The Radisson is not the Taj, however, and its position alongside the freeway and a next-door building site makes for a thick layer of dust every day. Mind you, it’s too hot to be outside for long, and anyway, that chap is suddenly back with the key and we are out, and in… to the bubble. Grr.Salvation comes in the form of a move by everyone in the commentary team to the Al Habtoor polo resort, which gives acres of green grass and a pool. Will do nicely! How lucky we are.Long breakfasts with Sunny Gavaskar and others are matched by a memorable dinner on the terrace – special dispensation granted – with Jeff Crowe, who is staying elsewhere, and Danny Morrison. We talk a lot about Martin – the talent, the demons, the long, slow burn of cancer that got him so young. Each of us loved him in our different ways.Australia stole up to win the Cup, having looked like beginners at the format in their group match against England. In fairness, I should point out that before the toss in their first game, the captain, Aaron Finch, told me that they had the best all-round team and would win. Good on him. Pakistan were the best team. India looked knackered. England missed a beat in the semi and it cost them dear.December 2
Raging Omicron threatens India’s tour of South Africa, where I work for Supersport. BT call about the Ashes, which begins in six days, as they are planning to broadcast the first two Tests from the studio in London – off tube, as it’s known – rather than take the Fox feed from Australia because Michael Vaughan is in it. They would like me on board. I can do the first Test but they don’t call back. Then I hear the idea has been binned.After which, India agree to go to South Africa but delay the first Test till Boxing Day. This means Christmas away from home for yours truly.To the slaughter, once more: Haseeb Hameed and Jos Buttler lead England out in Melbourne•Quinn Rooney/Getty Images5am, December 8 onwards
There is a dreadful symmetry between now and the start of the year. In a cosy dressing gown, I’m on the early tea-and-toast run in order to watch England get hammered. It’s bad enough in daylight but in pitch black, with sleet hitting the windows, it’s appalling. Root is again holding the fort, this time alongside a gutsy Dawid Malan, who wasn’t in India. Warne is trying to appraise England’s mediocrity with a balanced eye but otherwise it’s all in down under.December 25
Well, here we go again. Have checked into the Hyde Park Southern Sun in Johannesburg and had a quiet Christmas dinner with Sunny G and Mike Haysman. Since South Africa’s readmission to international cricket in late 1991, India has been faithfully at their side (England, note). Tomorrow Kohli will call from Dean Elgar’s toss of the coin. In Calcutta 30 years ago, Clive Rice and Mohammad Azharuddin shook hands at the toss – neither of tomorrow’s captains had reached their fifth birthday – and India went on to win a low scoring one-day international by three wickets.After more than 20 years in isolation, and never having played against India before anyway, the otherwise hard-nosed Rice summed up the incredible emotion of the moment perfectly: “I now know how Neil Armstrong felt when he stood on the moon.”December 31
England have lost the Ashes in less than 12 days of completed cricket. All hell has been let loose. The front page of Sydney’s has run a full-size shot of the victorious Australian team with a strap across it that reads, “Need a rapid test? Play the Poms!” Harsh but fair.December 26
At Supersport Park in Centurion, about 35 minutes’ drive from Johannesburg, Kohli wins the toss, and the match. The pitch is tricky and the Indians that bit better. Quinton de Kock announces his retirement from the Test match arena. Such a natural player and entertainer, he will be sorely missed.Goodness knows what happens in 2022. Fewer swabs up the nose, I hope!More in our look back at 2021

The selection panel looked into some Pakistan domestic data to see how the grounds were set to play but Australia aware they would likely be flying blind

Alex Malcolm08-Feb-2022Australia’s selectors and players openly admit they have no idea what type of conditions will be thrown their way in Pakistan but they are confident they have picked a well-rounded squad to cover anything that comes up.Chairman of selectors George Bailey announced the 18-man squad on Tuesday with no new surprise omissions from the Ashes squad and a few predictable additions. They have picked five fast bowlers, leaving only Jhye Richardson at home for workload management reasons, two fast-bowling all-rounders, and three spinners including an offspinner in Nathan Lyon, a legspinner in Mitch Swepson and a left-arm orthodox in Ashton Agar ahead of three Tests in Rawalpindi, Karachi and Lahore. Australia have not played a Test in Pakistan since 1998 and only five Tests have been played there since international cricket returned to the country.Related

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Bailey revealed the selection panel had delved into some Pakistan domestic data to see how the three grounds were set to play but admitted Australia would likely be flying blind.”We don’t know what conditions [we will get],” Bailey said. “A lot of first-class data that we’ve been looking at, and chatting to a few people that have played over there, there’s one pitch in particular we think will suit the fast bowlers. I think Karachi will take a little bit of spin and we’re not quite so sure on Lahore. That generally has been a bit of a better batting wicket.”I’m not entirely sure what to expect. But I think over the last, not necessarily touring Pakistan, but some of the subcontinent tours we’ve been on, there’s been opportunities for teams to exploit some of the gaps in our skill sets at different times.”But I certainly feel with this squad we’ve obviously got an incredibly strong, fast-bowling line-up with some all-round depth at the moment, which gives us great flexibility in what XI we want to go with.”We’ve got some great spin depth, obviously Gaz [Nathan Lyon] has been outstanding, but we’re really confident that Swepo and Ash Agar would do a good job if they got the opportunity. And also Marnus [Labuschagne] and Steve Smith and Heady [Travis Head] can also bowl some handy overs as well.”The inclusion of Agar is noteworthy given the only two spinners to have taken five-wicket hauls in Pakistan in the most recent five Tests played have been two left-arm spinners last year. Nauman Ali took five wickets on debut against South Africa in Karachi while George Linde took 5 for 64 for the visitors in Rawalpindi. Meanwhile, legspinner Yasir Shah has 14 wickets at 36.50 in four of the five-Test matches played in Pakistan since 2019. the leading wicket-taker over the five Tests has been Shaheen Shah Afridi with 20 while Hasan Ali took 10 wickets in the last Test played in Rawalpindi.Swepson, a legspinner, has long been regarded as the next spinner in line behind Lyon, or if Australia ever played two spinners, but Bailey did note the value of a left-arm spin in Asia.”Absolutely having that option in your squad is particularly important I think for some of these wickets where sometimes legspin, you can be bowling on the best part of the wicket on some of the subcontinent [pitches],” Bailey said. “I think it was a place where at times Warnie [Shane Warne] struggled as well to make an impact whereas the finger spin tends to have more of an impact at times.”Ashton Agar last played a Test in September 2017•Getty ImagesBailey was full of praise for the 28-year-old Agar who has already played four Tests, his last in September 2017 in Bangladesh as part of a three-man spin attack.”What we like about Ash is the incredible all-round skill set,” Bailey said. “I think his bowling will continue to get better. But what we’ve seen is that the way he bowls, he’s pretty adaptable to red-ball cricket. So we’re really, really happy with that.”Since his last Test in 2017, Agar has only played 15 first-class matches in four years, taking 33 wickets at 48.72 and striking at 99.02. Labuschagne’s part-time legspin, and rare mediums, has yielded 57 wickets at 46.45, with a strike rate of 75, in the same period. Australia’s only other two left-arm spin mainstays in first-class cricket, Jon Holland and Matt Kuhnemann have both averaged under 31 with the ball. But Bailey was adamant Agar was ahead of both of them in the pecking order, with his batting a key part of that. Agar averages 27.76 with the bat in first-class cricket with three centuries and a Test match 98.There were no surprises in the batting department although Marcus Harris has been included after losing his place at the top of the order for the final Ashes Test in Hobart. Usman Khawaja is set to open in Pakistan having had great success opening in the UAE against Pakistan in 2018. Harris may not play on the tour but Australia have a longer-term view with trips to Sri Lanka and India coming up in the next 12 months.”I think David Warner and Uz would most likely start as the openers in Pakistan but we also are aware that, not that age is a be-all or end-all barrier, but both Uz and Bull are reasonably old, I think they’re around 35,” Bailey said. “So we’re just conscious that that specialist opening role is really important to continue developing and that we’ve got a lot of subcontinent cricket coming up over the next 12-18 months. So it’s important to keep focusing on a bit of a succession plan there and developing Harry’s skills.”

England’s under-fire seamer adapts to livelier pitch and reaps rewards

Alan Gardner25-Mar-2022How do you solve a problem like Chris Woakes? Not that you’d think there’s much wrong with a fine, multipurpose cricketer and all-round good guy, a man capable of scoring a Test hundred and opening the bowling in a World Cup final. If he were a vehicle, Woakes would be a high-spec, low-emission five-door saloon that comes with automatic parking assist and plenty of room in the trunk.Yet there is one element of his game where the reviews turn consistently negative: an overseas bowling average in the 50s. Contrast that with Woakes’ heroics in home conditions, where he takes his wickets at a cost of 22.63 – better than the two classic roadsters left behind for this trip, James Anderson (24.20) and Stuart Broad (25.78) – and you have the central conundrum that England’s hierarchy were hoping to address over the course of a three-Test series in the Caribbean.Come the second day in Grenada, it’s fair to assume that conclusions were already being drawn. Woakes had misfired badly with the spotlight on him in Antigua and things had not improved perceptibly since that ropey first spell. He might not have played here, had Ollie Robinson been fit, and had chipped out two wickets – Jermaine Blackwood and Kemar Roach – from two-and-a-bit Tests, that clunking away record continuing to hang around his neck like an albatross.England may have thought that entrusting Woakes with opening the bowling would increase his cutting edge, but another tepid start set the tone in the wrong way. Kraigg Braithwaite and John Campbell calmly compiled their third 50-plus stand of the series, aided by a new-ball spell from Woakes and Craig Overton that carried all the menace of an offer of flowers and a foot massage. Half of the 30 deliveries Woakes bowled were left alone, and figures of 5-2-11-0 took his combined returns from initial spells across five innings in Antigua, Barbados and Grenada to 21-6-70-0.Related

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All this on the spiciest pitch of the tour, one which had enabled West Indies’ seamers to fill their boots in reducing England to 114 for 9 on day one. Perhaps conditions had eased – as they clearly did while Jack Leach and Saqib Mahmood were putting on their last-wicket salvage operation – but the comparison was not flattering. Jayden Seales, Roach and Co. had required a bit of time to get things right, England’s openers surviving into the 13th over before wickets began to tumble – but up to that point, according to ESPNcricinfo’s ball-by-ball logs, the West Indies fast bowlers had induced 21 not-in-control responses; across the same number of deliveries, England managed just nine.”I think in the first hour we probably could have bowled a little bit fuller,” Woakes told BT Sport after play. “We were probably a little bit short, could have made the batsmen play a little bit more. But at the same time, I actually thought when we got the ball in the right areas, the ball didn’t seem to offer a lot of what we saw yesterday. Maybe the roller wore off after an hour and then once we got the ball in those areas more consistently, we saw it was more difficult to bat.”Reasonably put but once again there was a sense that, no matter how many admirable skills he does possess, Woakes was lacking for something. Nasser Hussain wrote in his autobiography about how Duncan Fletcher, England’s coach during his captaincy, rated Darren Gough for a quality he referred to as the “dogf*ck” – translated by Hussain as “the ability not to get fazed and to know what to do”. Woakes, to put it mildly, doesn’t come across as a prime “dogf*ck” candidate.But one player in the England XI does undoubtedly have those Gough-like qualities of indefatigability and resourcefulness. If Woakes has been the de facto attack leader, in the absence of Anderson and Broad, then Ben Stokes was once again the ring leader as the tourists set about turning things around after a fruitless first hour.Stokes crowbarred an opening by hitting the pitch hard, getting one to scuttle through and pin Brathwaite lbw; Saqib Mahmood found similar success against Shamarh Brooks, and when Overton dug one in short to produce a glove down the leg side from Campbell, England had their template for success on a surface that remained tricky to bat on if no longer the green mamba of Thursday morning.None of which seemed to bode well for Woakes and his prim, orthodox approach when he was called back into the fray after lunch. But then you don’t survive for more than a decade in international cricket, claiming almost 300 wickets as well as a World Cup winner’s medal, if you don’t have a bit about you. Maybe the “dogf*ck” was there after all, or perhaps it was simply a change of fortune, but Woakes had suddenly gone from school prefect to bearded brawler in the thick of the action.Chris Woakes struck twice in one over•Getty ImagesImmediately he began to bowl a more attacking line, England reviewing unsuccessfully for an edge down the leg side off Blackwood, then seeing a similar decision given against Nkrumah Bonner only for the DRS to intervene again. But Woakes kept bashing away until he finally hit pay dirt.His first wicket came via a skidding bouncer that left Bonner on his backside as it kissed the glove through to Ben Foakes. Three balls later, he again tested out the middle of the pitch to good effect, Jason Holder miscuing a pull to deep square leg. Blackwood was then pinned just above the knee roll and this time the umpire – and the technology – sided with the bowler. West Indies were 95 for 6 and, while not quite in the same stew that England had extricated themselves from 24 hours previously, the game was evenly poised.”To pick up three today was really nice,” Woakes said. “I always try to do a job for the team. That was quite an important spell after lunch, getting their middle order out. It’s the sort of wicket, with the ball getting softer that they could have cashed in. As long as I’m doing a job for team I’m happy.”Obviously I would have loved to have taken more wickets, but it hasn’t happened. The most important thing is trying to do a job for the team and whilst I’m still selected I will continue to do that.”At the end of the day things were still in the balance, as another lower-order fightback edged West Indies in front on first innings. Woakes had bared his canines and claimed three or more wickets in an innings of an away Test for only the fourth time in 36 attempts – whether his efforts are to be remembered as a vital contribution to a gutsy Test win or a footnote in England’s latest failure in the Caribbean is as yet unwritten.It wasn’t quite a case of Woakes saying “No more Mr Nice Guy” and tearing up all our pre-conceptions. But it might help prevent England from deciding “No more Mr Nice Guy” the next time an overseas tour comes around.

Batters have not had it easy at Lord’s but New Zealand pair strike perfect balance

Osman Samiuddin03-Jun-2022They couldn’t even let as essentially unremarkable an act as leaving the ball alone, could they? No, these new batting whizzes had to come and start doing fancy things even with the leave.It’s leaving a cricket ball. Not home. It doesn’t need drama. Line it up, make sure the off-stump is exactly where it was when you arrived – a tip: it hasn’t moved – and leave it. Move on to the next ball. Don’t name-check yourself, don’t high-five yourself. Don’t look back at the bowler like you’ve pulled him for six. Don’t pretend it’s Darth Vader and that this is a battle for the galaxy (looking squarely at you Marnus). Don’t do the one where you’ve been beaten but by pulling the bat inside the line late, pretend that you left it.You’ve left the ball. Do it with some decorum and move on. It’s not difficult. A leave is not a win. It is not a loss. It is, in some way, the most basic element of batting and the game itself but that is it: it doesn’t need sexing up.Now Tom Latham, he does the leave right. He does it boring. Today he left 16 balls from the 33 he faced and sorry-not-sorry if in this Test writing about Tom Latham leaving feels not even like the slices of bread between which you mix the peanut butter and the jelly, but the plate that holds that sandwich. The plate is not the party.It is useful though. You will definitely not remember any of his leaves – that’s what ball-by-ball commentary is for. There are three leaves – all in a row – worth recalling if only for their unremarkability, to Matthew Potts in the innings’ 10th over. The first of those was to a delivery that was wide, harmless and a little apologetic as it went through to Ben Foakes. The next was everything the first was not, a boast of a ball: nipping back in from some way outside off and not missing by much at all. The third landed the same but straightened.Related

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Latham didn’t light-sabre his way through any of these leaves. He played pretty much the exact same leave to each, designed in a way to make sure they will not be remembered. A little step, a little look and move on because there really is nothing to see here.Latham is a serial leaver. He needs to be given he opens in New Zealand. Only Dom Sibley has left a higher percentage of deliveries from pacers (34.54% to Latham’s 31.58%) in the last five years. The top five in that list is properly eclectic and it’ll be difficult to find another place that houses Sibley, Latham, KL Rahul, Cheteshwar Pujara and Labuschagne together.Leaving is – or should be – a dull, routine skill.That said, it isn’t an easy one, as the first day and a half of this Test has confirmed. Not on a surface like this and especially not with the quality of new-ball bowlers here – not for no reason were people recalling the Antigua Test of 2000, with the two Ws and Ambrose and Walsh together – for another occasion with such heft of fast-bowling quality and experience.After all, seen in isolation, Foakes could have left the ball that he reached out to and edged to slip. Except it was Tim Southee, working a wider angle of release and the Lord’s slope, so adeptly, the kind of thing he’s done forever, that it can’t have been easy for Foakes to just leave the ball.Another thing about leaving is that it’s unhelpful to view it as a binary equation, where leaving well makes a good batter and not leaving enough a poor one. Top of the list for leaves per 100 balls in England (against pace bowlers and a minimum of 300 balls faced) for instance is Labuschagne. On average he leaves 38 out of every 100 of those balls. He also averages over 73 in England. Next on the list is Sibley, who has left around 36 out of every 100 balls he’s faced in England; he averages 27. At the bottom is Joe Root who leaves only 15 balls out of 100 but has scored more runs than anyone on the list and averages 42, behind only four others.Tom Latham looked solid – until he got out•Getty ImagesRoot probably could’ve left the ball he got out to on the first day, except that it is precisely one of those shots that helps him live and breathe, one that is seeing him come off a record-breaking year.Kane Williamson probably could’ve left the ball he got out to today. He isn’t a big leaver. He’s also desperate to get out of a rut and so he’s chased one like he’s chased a gazillion times before but this time, this time, he’s just edged it and why not leave that one? Well, because that one shot might be the one that speeds away to the ropes and clicks everything back in place for him, that painful, chiropractor-administered crack in the back that actually kills the pain. Also because – let’s not sugarcoat this – getting bat to ball is literally the one job any batter has.By the last ball of the day, as Daryl Mitchell reached into a drive through to the extra cover boundary, to a ball that he might have left, this truism was shining through. Mitchell and Tom Blundell put ball to bat plenty as they turned this Test that’s turned around so often already, one more time. That, as Blundell said later, was the plan. To show intent, to be positive, to play to our style, to reap the benefits of the sort of wicket where if you did show intent, runs would come.By then, with both near hundreds, Mitchell had left 24% of the balls he faced from pacemen and Blundell less than 23%. Of course, the ball was softer, the bowlers tired, the pitch easing up and so leaving became both less important and easier. As an opener it helps to be able to leave well; lower down the requirement doesn’t feel quite as urgent.Still because both were in relatively early in the new ball’s life, there needed to be some balance. Both had to negotiate mini-phases where the ball or bowler was doing enough; Blundell left well early and as late as the third-last over of the day, Mitchell was leaving impeccably off Potts.The balance is delicate. “It’s just knowing your areas, where you want to score,” Blundell said. “For Daryl anything overpitched, both of us, we look to capitalise on anything overpitched. England bowled really well so it was just trying to be patient, and to keep bringing the bowlers back.”For all his impeccable leaving, Latham ultimately fell to one he probably could’ve left. Which is the final thing about leaving. It’s fine. Until it isn’t.

Legspinner feels “responsibility” to enjoy his craft after month-long apprenticeship in the Hundred

Vithushan Ehantharajah15-Jul-2022In the players’ dining room of the Ageas Bowl, where there were once pictures of former Hampshire greats on the wall, there is now just one. Following the passing of Shane Warne in March, the collage was replaced by a mural of the legendary Australian, accompanied by one of his famous quotes: “Never give up. Just absolutely never give up.”Warne was associated with Hampshire between 2000 and 2007, captaining them from 2004, leaving an indelible mark on many who remain involved with the club at all levels. Much of the Big County Energy on the south coast emanates from his personality and what he achieved at the club. But in the tougher moments at the start of the club’s Vitality Blast campaign, with four defeats on the bounce, that quote and the image of the man himself were reminders of who they were.Hampshire went on to win 10 out of the next 11, including a 104-run demolition of a strong Birmingham Bears in the quarter-final. Victory in 2012 was their last successful run to the end, repeating a trick they managed in 2010. Given Hampshire’s pedigree in Twenty20 – Saturday will be their ninth appearance at Finals Day – two trophy lifts in the previous 19 campaigns rankles as underperformance. But there is an overriding desire for victory in 2022 to pay the perfect tribute to the county’s adopted Australian son.”Every day, you see him and his words on the wall,” Mason Crane tells ESPNcricinfo. “I guess he is a big part of it, really. A lot of his attitude towards the game and his way of the game has certainly been passed to a lot at the club. I’d like to feel he’s part of what’s going on at the moment.”Related

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It’s not for nothing that three of Hampshire’s key performers were around the club’s academy in the time of Warne. Captain James Vince (31 years old), allrounder Liam Dawson (32) and left-arm seamer Chris Wood (32) have continually been at the forefront of white ball success, as per this season with 653 runs, 17 wickets at an economy rate of 7.34, and 19 at 7.81 respectively.All three have been responsible for setting consistently high standards while ensuring the ethos laid down by Warne, fresh when they were around the first-team squad, is still being passed on. The impacts of younger players, such as Brad Wheal (21 dismissals) and outside recruits, such as James Fuller (20, along with 273 runs as a finisher, striking at 150.82) suggest it remains strong.It is Crane, however, who holds the strongest link. Not just as a legspinner who was inspired to throw himself into the craft after the 2005 Ashes, or even as one donning Hampshire colours. For six weeks last summer, as part of London Spirit in the inaugural season of the Hundred, Crane worked under Warne, who was head coach at the new team.Crane wheels away in celebration•PA Images/GettyIt was the first time they had consistent interaction, having first come across each other on the 2017-18 Ashes tour, in which Crane made what remains his one and (to date) only Test appearance. “London Spirit was every spinner’s dream,” Crane beams. “It was such a surreal experience. As fun as it’ll get, I imagine.”While Spirit’s campaign saw them finish last with a single win from their eight matches, Crane reflects on what was an intense, enjoyable education. The pair would spend almost every interaction focusing on Crane’s craft, often with Warne setting him hypothetical challenges and then offering up solutions while Crane was still pondering them.”He’d say to me: ‘If there’s a pitch that’s not going to spin much, what do you do?’ And then he’d go, ‘you’re just going to have to really spin one quite big in the first few balls’. I’d be like, ‘what do you mean?’ And he’d say, ‘Well, you’re going to have to spin one a long way to get in their head.'”I’d laugh and be like, ‘yeah, I’m f***ing trying mate!’ And you realise he’s just telling you what he used to tell himself when he was bowling. But he could do whatever he wanted.”They exchanged messages over the winter; almost all were Warne keeping track on how Crane was. The day Warne passed, Crane was devastated, tweeting his condolences in the afternoon. Even four months on, he struggles to comprehend the loss.

Shane Warne made me fall in love with the game as an 8 year old and he has completely inspired me every day since. I am so honoured and lucky to have been able to spend time with him and learn from him. He was everything I could have asked for and so much more. RIP to the King pic.twitter.com/wQDXuK7C1j

— Mason Crane (@masoncrane32) March 4, 2022