The Wicked Cricket Column

One suspects the word 'lovers' or 'followers' has been accidentally missed out.

"For the whole of February, cricket (followers) who shop at the Waitrose branch in Hove ..."

When Wisden Cricket Monthly was set up in the 70s it was a genuine breath of fresh air challenging the stuffy minor public school hypocrisy of the Swanton-dominated Cricketer with all its ridiculous puffery of Eton Ramblers and Repton Pilgrims and the sheer effrontery of cads like Packer. For many years it set new benchmarks for quality journalism in cricket and was midwife at the birth of many excllent journalistic careers. Sadly that standard declined and it began to ape its predecessor even before the inevitable sales slump of the late 90s when the internet started to chanbge the way we perceived writing about cricket.

The subsequent merger of WCM into the Cricketer and then the semi-reversal, without change of title, that Freestone describes have all been part of the cycle of trying to find a unique identity in an age when the badge of recognition is all. That badge has for many years been worn by Test Match Special, both as an on-air entity in itself and for the very successful showcasing of its presenters as the ne plus ultra of cricketing wisdom and erudition. This, despite the bland pabulum of Agnew, the old-school Monty Pythonism of Boycott's Grump Yorkshireman and the despicable, unctuous grubbling of Henry Blofeld. Against this benchmark of popular esteem it is very hard for any writer or broadcaster to challenge the received perception of "talking (writing) about cricket" with anything that offers insight or perception.

The Cricinfo school of the last few years has many faults, but at their best - Miller amongst them, and certainly Tim Wigmore - they have done more to challenge perceptions and to encourage people to think about cricket in the context of the actual game played now, and not against the smeared reflection of how it might have been when young Aggers was fagging for Johnners and keeping the toilet-seat warm for his august posterior.

HH - Cricinfo .... journalism = oxymoron.

This is Twitter at its best. Publishing gem posts like this one.

Nottinghamshire CCC @trentbridge

"I hope it rains for the rest of the season." A letter from captain Arthur Carr to the Notts Committee from 1933...



Alongside Douglas Jardine, Carr encouraged ‘bodyline’ bowling and under his direction, Voce and Larwood employed and perfected the method in English county cricket during 1932, before the controversial tour which effectively ended the career of more than one of the participants.

In 1934, a section of the crowd at Trent Bridge demonstrated against the Australians, on behalf of their two local bowlers, whom they believed to have been ill-treated. Arthur Carr stood, uncompromisingly, with Larwood, Voce and their supporters.



This led to bitter dissention within the club that caused the captaincy to be taken away from him. He accepted Membership of the Committee and declared himself available for the county in 1935; but Carr never played for Notts again. Instead, he moved to Yorkshire and turned to another interest, horse-racing. Carr virtually cut himself off from the cricketing world until his latter years, when the bitterness had dissipated, and he turned up at Trent Bridge, as a welcome guest, during Test Matches.

Carr died in February 1963 at the age of 69.

www.espncricinfo.com/england/content/player/10666.html

Hhs,

Great stuff - really enjoyed it.

It's pancake day and Gary Pleece who has spearheaded Sussex CCC digital media onslaught during the last 4 years offers an
honest appraisal.

Gary Pleece ‏@garypleece 
One of my nicknames at school was pancake face, and so today was always a day I dreaded:
'happy pancake day, pancake face'. Sigh.

While some on this Forum feel Gary's written approach can be a bit 'crepe' and 'waffle' and gives the
club an eccentric and rather verbose 'battering', others reckon differently. 

The Sussex CCC coaching staff in training