MARTIN SAMUEL’S VERDICT
It must have come as a shock to those with such little faith in cricket to discover it exists without pyrotechnics, dayglo graphics, urban franchises and scoop shots. It must have been a shock to see that it packs houses just the same, even when Dom Sibley is batting.
It took 70 balls and more than one complete session for Sibley to make his 18 runs and yet, around the ground at lunchtime, nobody was stampeding for the ticket office demanding their money back.
there were no children in tears, or even bored to them. One late arrival with his dad, wearing an England shirt, hurried him towards the action, such as it was.
that is the beauty of test cricket. It’s all excitement, just not of the obvious kind. the great pity of the Hundred controversy is how little belief in the game those at the helm of it have.
they truly feel it cannot survive without their bells and whistles — that cricket, left alone, is a turnoff. And, indeed, nobody has ever confused late afternoon at a midweek County Championship game with a fortnight in Benidorm courtesy of Club 18-30. But it wasn’t like that 30 years ago, either.
test matches, however, are different. test matches sell out without any hype or hoopla. the buildup to this series, huge for both countries, has been very low-key.
Up against the Olympics, the British and Irish Lions tour, football’s transfer season firing up in readiness for the season, the news agenda is pretty packed. Yet what cricket chat there has been, the Hundred has dominated, just as the ECB hoped. Despite this, every available vantage point at trent Bridge was occupied. So cricket — in white uniforms, unfolding in its own time, to its own cadences — does have value, financial as well as aesthetic.
A steady stream of cricket lovers — as well as fancy dress lions, cavemen and white rhinos — made their way between seats and bar.
And, yes, there was singing and some bawdy behaviour and all the associated shenanigans that seem to embarrass the ECB so, but it was good natured and no doubt of great interest to treasurers and chief executives and far removed from the crises to which the Hundred was pitched as the only answer.
this is not to say the shortest form of the game was to blame for what befell England’s batsmen yesterday. there were England collapses long before the Hundred and they will continue, even if it failed to make it beyond its first season. Collapses have been England’s stock in trade for as long as anyone can remember.
England did not fail yesterday because of the Hundred. they were not aided by it, either, though. the Hundred has skewed a calendar that was already imbalanced given the challenges faced by England’s test cricketers. Yesterday, against an India side that is arguably better equipped to bowl in English conditions than any in recent memory, England picked three players who were playing their initial first-class game of the summer.
Jonny Bairstow, Jos Buttler and Sam Curran had not played a game in a red-ball format since the winter. So it was a minor miracle, in many ways, that Bairstow and Curran were among England’s better performers with the bat, not that there was great competition.
Joe Root was, again, the only England batsman to record a score that achieved respectability.
Still, if the Hundred is not of great use in a professional sense, at least its worth as a selling point for the wider sport remains?
Well, not exactly. the sell is that the Hundred will drive those who do not love cricket to appreciate its beauty and create a new generation of fans.
Yesterday, when the test finished, the coverage of the Hundred’s night game began — Birmingham Phoenix versus Oval Invincibles at Edgbaston. ‘
‘After a serene day of test match cricket, we now have the big hitters...’ it started. Not exactly a sales pitch is it? Not exactly an endorsement that will capture young imaginations. During the day, the promised cross-pollination did not materialise, either.
the Hundred’s social media feeds made no connection between their teams, their players and what was unfolding at trent Bridge.
Nobody on the official twitter line steered followers of trent Rockets towards their batter Root’s performance for England, nobody sought to draw the line between Bairstow of Welsh Fire and the player at trent Bridge.
AND maybe it is too soon. Yet this was the sell — the Hundred as a vehicle for all cricket, the gateway drug that would get a generation hooked on the hard stuff. Yesterday, it felt as if there were two distinct sports — the irony being it was anything but a ‘serene’ day in Nottingham.
It was carnage at times, as collapses invariably are. At one stage England nosedived from 138-3 to 160-9 — equating to a hardly serene 22-6. ten wickets fell across 394 balls and while that is not quite at Hundred levels of action, it was not as if Sibley’s glacial 18 was representative of the day. there was some outstanding cricket played, particularly for fans of the tourists, who left genius spinner Ravichandran Ashwin out of their line-up and then justified the call by taking every wicket with seam. Just the thought of England having the talent pool to omit Ashwin boggles the mind.
As for drama, watching Virat Kohli contemplating sending a decision for review is excitement enough for some. India’s captain has a marvellous sense of theatre, leaving his appeal to the last unexpired second.
Just before lunch he lost an ill-advised challenge against Zak Crawley. three balls later, given the chance again, he seemed sceptical. It was an appeal for caught behind. Wicketkeeper Rishabh Pant was adamant Crawley got a touch and, after 14 seconds elapsed, finally persuaded Kohli.
He made the signal and then immediately appeared to regret it. His face crumpled as if asking, ‘What have I done?’ the rerun discovered a clear nick. the look on Kohli’s face when he heard it provoked laughter and cheers in equal measure. He was the most astounded man in the arena. It was a beautiful, surprising moment — and no fireworks required.