Aggers’ Ashes. Jonathan Agnew

Чтение книги онлайн.

СКАЧАТЬ as the players, but I have learned that it is generally a mistake to do so because of the chaos created by the massive amount of baggage that accompanies them. This often results in long waits at the luggage carousel at the other end while everything is sorted out behind the scenes and increases the possibility of your bags not getting on to the flight. In the Caribbean the odds on this occurring shorten to a dead cert.

      On this occasion the team’s logistics planners have done a great job and, despite leaving some time after me, and flying via Sydney -which looks uphill on the map – the players arrive in Hobart an hour before I do. Three hours is a long time to kill in Melbourne Airport and, door-to-door, my journey has taken eight-and-a-half hours. It is cold and drizzling in Hobart where, once again, I am with the players in a hotel that has a lovely view of the harbour. Or it would if you could see through the mist.

      DAY 13: 15 November 2010

      It is without doubt the busiest day of the tour so far. It begins with the Australian selectors naming a squad for the First Test of seventeen players. Seventeen! That is bigger than England’s Ashes touring squad. To be fair to the selectors, the marketing men at Cricket Australia, who want a big launch of the Ashes in Sydney at an iconic venue, have determined that the announcement should be made today while there is a full round of Sheffield Shield matches still to go. This could give rise to injuries, so it seems that the selectors have had little choice but to cover all bases. “Sod ‘em!” was the view of one selector, apparently, but it has thrown up some intriguing scenarios. The launch, by the way, is a thoroughly windswept, bleak and damp affair (the rain is incessant) to which no one comes.

      The out-of-form batsmen Michael Hussey and Marcus North now have Callum Ferguson and Usman Khawaja breathing down their necks. The latter two have been named in the squad, and they will play for Australia A against England. What happens should either Hussey or North fail in their Shield match for Western Australia against Victoria (the Retrovision Warriors vs the DEC Bushrangers. Ugh!) and one of the youngsters makes runs against England? Surely in the interests of maintaining the integrity of the selection process Ferguson or Khawaja would have to be picked, while the feeling is that if their hands had not been forced, the selectors would, rightly or wrongly, go for experience, choosing North and Hussey for the Test. Likewise in the spin department. Xavier Doherty is a mostly unknown left-arm spinner from Tasmania, but he is in the party and will have a ‘bowl off with Nathan Hauritz when he plays against New South Wales on Wednesday. Again, if Doherty takes more wickets, won’t he have to be picked? It will certainly make the Sheffield Shield matches competitive, but this really is an extraordinary situation. You have to go back to the late 1970s, when Australian cricket was torn apart by the Packer revolution of World Series Cricket, to find the last time the Australian camp was so divided before an Ashes series had even started.

      Therefore, it is with perfect timing that England announce what we all suspected would be the case: England’s main attack of Anderson, Broad, Finn and Swann will fly to Brisbane on Wednesday evening. Quite frankly, the weather in Hobart has been so foul – windy and wet – that it is difficult to argue against the decision. I conclude my thoughts on the matter by saying that in an ideal world, a touring team would field its best players in the toughest warm-up match before the Test, and had this game been played anywhere in Australia other than in Hobart, they probably would have done so. Flower makes the announcement at the training ground and tells me that he has been surprised by the level of press interest in this particular topic. I disagree. It has been a fascinating early tour story to air and debate; usually at this preliminary stage of the campaign, we get little more than groin strains suffered in the nets to report on.

      The highlight of the day is an invitation extended to the media to take part in a very special training and skills session with the England team. Organised by England’s sponsor Brit Insurance, it has to be held indoors because of the weather. With complete wholeheartedness, the England team and back room staff set about giving the travelling press pack a thorough insight into the sort of skills and training an international cricketer takes for granted. All that is apart from your BBC correspondent, whose wonky fingers after seven operations to correct Dupuytrens contracture, simply cannot take it. Flower addresses the group at the start and makes it clear that the event is to be taken seriously by everybody. It is exactly the right approach and the result is that the players buy into it immediately and, I think, genuinely enjoy it.

      There are bowling clinics, batting classes and fielding drills during which the players give catches to members of the press. Can you imagine this happening in football? We really are incredibly fortunate to be involved in this wonderful sport. The highlight for me is the bowling clinic. Coach David Saker produces a framework model of a batsman featuring a helmet, a metal plate over where his ribs would be, a marker indicating the height of the bails and, by his feet, a bar two feet above the ground under which the ball must pass if it is to be deemed a perfect yorker.

      The clinic starts and round one requires the bowler to aim a bouncer at the helmet. Unsurprisingly, virtually every ball delivered by the press boys ends up in the side netting. Saker calls up Anderson, who hits the helmet with his first ball. It’s the same with his next two balls – the first aimed at the ‘ribs’, and the second a perfect, bail-high ball. His yorker inevitably flies under the bar. It is mightily impressive.

      Less impressive is the Sun’s John Etheridge, whose repeated attempts to catch balls spat out by one of the training machines are at the hopeless end of the scale: he manages to drops five out of five. Poor Tim Abrahams of Sky News, who is a magnificently fit athlete, takes his first wicketkeeping catch from Matt Prior straight in the unmentionables and ends up in a crumpled moaning heap on the floor.

      Graham Gooch conducts a batting drill that will guarantee some of my senior colleagues won’t be able to walk for a week. Fully padded up they repeatedly advance down the pitch as if they are attacking a spinner and then have to pick up a ball from one of three coloured cones that Gooch designates in his curiously squeaky voice. He then produces something I have never seen before: I am not sure where he has got the idea from but Graham uses a very whippy plastic slinger – the sort I use to launch tennis balls in a field for Bracken, my Springer Spaniel. These slings can fire a tennis ball twice the distance you can normally throw it. I don’t know how he does it, but Graham has mastered the art and timing of an over-arm release of the ball, like a bowler, with the thing sending the ball down the wicket with pinpoint accuracy. So we watch as he slings the ball at 90 mph with seemingly no effort at a bunch of hapless pressmen, many of whom have never faced a cricket ball in their lives. One well-known tour photographer is cringing and ducking, having an absolute nightmare, as the ball brushes his nose and then thumps in to his foot. It is a fantastic example of the innovative skills of the England coaching staff, and a great demonstration of what the day is all about.

      The whole afternoon passes off extremely well. Because we are in a cricketing environment, rather than simply making small talk around the hotel, I find myself having several fascinating chats with members of the England set up – firstly about bowling with Stuart Broad, during which we compare our respective generations’ styles and approaches, and then with Alastair Cook on the subject of three-day cricket. I think the two matches so far have been much more entertaining than most tourist games we see because they have been shorter and the captains have looked to play positively. Cook’s point about four-day matches being better preparation for Test cricket is correct, but we must not forget the spectator.

      It is while chatting to Broad that Graeme Swann appears with his video camera, clearly in recording mode. “Go on Broady,” he urges, “do your Sprinkler.” Broad seems to be rather embarrassed, but performs a strange movement involving an outstretched right arm, then rotating the top half of his body taking the arm with him. It is most peculiar and appears to be a new dance move. Swann finds the whole thing very amusing and moves on.

      DAY 14: 16 November 2010

      My first potentially dangerous invitation of the tour arrives by text message: ‘See you in the bar at 7. IC. Ian СКАЧАТЬ