What now for Williams?
Hmark Butcher’s joke about Virat Kohli upset the home fans but he will not be changing his genial style behind the mic Hall-rounder back in England Test squad after break at home hmoeen fetches £700,000 at auction and joins Super Kings
was about belief and alpha-female dominance.
Williams can still hit a ball with withering power, but this event – more than any other of her recent defeats – has underlined how far she is from being the top dog these days. It will be a difficult lesson to swallow, all the more so because there is no single weakness that she can go away and address.
Williams’s appetite for the game – like that of sister Venus, still playing at
Martina Navratilova
33 years 263 days – 1990 Wimbledon
Flavia Pennetta
33 years 201 days – 2015 US Open
Virginia Wade
31 years 357 days – 1977 Wimbledon 40 – is extraordinary. But it cannot be inexhaustible. Particularly when she already has one daughter in three-year-old Alexis Olympia, and has spoken before about her desire for a larger family.
The circumstantial evidence is mounting. During her on-court interview after the Halep win, Williams was asked about the documentary crew that has been following her around Melbourne. “There could be something in the works,” she replied. But is she filming a season’s diary or a farewell tour? The sense of an imminent ending can have an inspirational effect. Pete Sampras won the last major he entered: the 2003 US Open. But it can also prove discombobulating, as Kim Clijsters discovered to her cost. The favourite for the 2007 Australian Open, she revealed her intention to retire, and crashed out in the semi-finals.
While Williams may prefer to keep her cards close, the signs and portents are accumulating. Especially as the Olympics – where she has four gold medals, three of them in tandem with Venus – have been such a significant part of her life.
Tokyo represents a key date in the diary for both sisters. Yet by the time the US Open is done, they will both be past 40. An end must surely be approaching to this greatest of all tennis stories.
Mark Butcher has a simple approach to commentary – albeit one that has not always sat well with India’s passionate supporters. “There is always a lightness to it, a bit of humour, but I just try and imagine what I would like to listen to if I was sat at home,” he says. “As for being outspoken, you just tell the truth, don’t you?”
It is the last bit that has stuck out. Butcher has not been afraid to go where others fear to tread when working for an Indian broadcaster. He poked fun at Virat Kohli for not walking when clean bowled, questioned a pitch prepared with a home win in mind and failed to hide his exasperation when the third umpire botched a review when England desperately needed a wicket.
It was all blended with a lightness of touch, the soft hands of a man who occasionally lit up the game when his talent flowered during a 71-Test England career.
“I learnt a lot from Bob Willis about discipline as a commentator. Bob said people like Richie [Benaud] and Tony Greig told him don’t talk over the ball being bowled, leave some dead air. But there is no such thing as a commentators’ school. People might find it hard to believe that TV companies let people run wild with live microphones without giving them a great deal of tuition but that is how it goes. You are learning on the job.”
At 48, after years of working in the Sky second XI and for Talksport, Butcher has matured into an accomplished broadcaster – not to mention a fine musician, with albums to his name – who just happened to play cricket in a previous life.
The pandemic meant bigger, more famous names were unavailable, or their employer did not bid enough for the rights, giving Butcher his chance to commentate on Test cricket for the first time. Star Sports, the Indian broadcaster, needed an English voice and Butcher put himself in the right position by going to Sri Lanka in early January to work for Sony on the England series. It meant he could fly to India, emerge from quarantine and work on the first two Tests.
He is home now with a reputation enhanced, and thanks to Channel 4 winning the rights, familiar to a new audience back home.
At times, it sounded as though he was the lone English voice in the lion’s den, as Butcher alternated with Nick Knight alongside two Indian broadcasters.
There is a much closer relationship between broadcaster and team in India, the commentary is more partisan and lacks English cynicism or fear of being construed as a flagwaver. So, for example, it was left to Butcher to call out the poor state of the Chennai pitch for the second Test, an opinion that brought plenty of heat on social media.
“It was a difficult conversation to have. My take was pretty simple. I did the pitch report with Murali Kartik on the first morning. We both looked at it and then at each other and said, ‘Well, this is going only to last two days. Tops’. We knew it was underprepared and had not seen a drop of water for God knows how long. We just knew it was going to explode.
“My take was England did not lose because of the pitch, it was the fact they did not bowl particularly well on day one. But the pitch was designed to fall apart on first contact and it did. If people think that is fine, then fine. I happen not to. It is not a park game. But the conversation becomes tainted by who is on top. Would you be saying this if it’s a green seamer at Lord’s? Well, funnily enough, yes.”
The Kohli quip – “he’s given it the full WG” – after he was bowled middle stump by Moeen Ali was brave. Not many take on the India captain and some home fans interpreted the British humour the wrong way. “It was one of those things that flashes into your head. I had never seen a guy question being bowled before. The first thing in my mind was, ‘They are here to watch me bat, not you bowl’.
“I just thought it was funny. That is my approach. See the humour in it, rather than going all guns blazing at people. My view when I played was that it is only a game to be enjoyed as much as possible so I will try to look for something.
“It did get me into trouble. A couple of times I remembered too late that stuff gets printed and when it gets printed it looks and sounds different to saying it. I said Ashwin can sometimes look 20 years older in the field. I was having a bit of a joke. But Chennai is Ashwin’s home town and all the newspapers and online media picked it up, so I was slagged off for that.
“Then another presenter asked me if England were hoping Ashwin would be too tired after his hundred to bowl and I said, ‘Too tired? I suspect they are hoping he pulls a hamstring’. Ha ha, big grin. Of course, some people picked that up as me wishing Ashwin was injured and called me every name.”
It was the review of Ajinkya Rahane’s wicket when Butcher was thanked by England supporters for “going to war” for the team. He sounded increasingly frantic, watching the car crash unfold as the third umpire failed to check whether a bat-pad catch had ricocheted off the glove.
“I saw it live. I picked up immediately what had happened. The guys on with me had not spotted it. All I was doing was saying they are looking at the wrong thing. The longer it went on and the more they kept repeating the look at the inside edge and pad, the more it dawned on me they were not going to run it through. Then they went to the lbw. Nobody was appealing for that. So, I did start to get frustrated.
‘I had never seen a guy question being bowled before. I just thought it was funny. That is my approach’
Jonny Bairstow has said the sums on offer in the Indian Premier League are “very hard for anyone to turn down” as he launched a staunch defence of England’s under-fire rest-and-rotation policy.
England have been criticised after Moeen Ali joined Jos Buttler in heading home midway through the tour of India in pre-planned decisions to minimise the impact of life in the bubble.
Bairstow has warned that players would be “mentally and physically exhausted, if not injured” without breaks during England’s gruelling three month, three-format tour of Asia but there are concerns that players are prioritising the IPL, with some likely to miss the home series against New Zealand at the start of the summer if their sides reach the knockout stages.
And on the day of the IPL auction, Bairstow admitted players cannot ignore the potentially life-changing sums on offer in the IPL, with Moeen signed by Chennai Super Kings for £700,000. Bairstow had already secured a £220,000 contract with Sunrisers Hyderabad before this year’s auction, with South African Chris Morris becoming the most expensive player in auction history, being signed for £1.6million, while
New Zealand’s Kyle Jamieson went for
£1.5 million.
England batsman Dawid Malan, No1 in the world Twenty20 rankings, joined Kings XI Punjab for £150,000.
Tom Curran was purchased by Delhi Capitals for a fee of almost £520,000.
Liam Livingstone, part of England’s T20 squad for the tour of India next month, fetched £74,000 from Rajasthan Royals and Sam Billings was signed by Delhi Capitals for £197,000. However, Alex Hales, Jason Roy, Adil Rashid and Liam Plunkett all went unsold.
“If you’re going for that money it’s very hard to turn down – very hard for anyone to turn down,” Bairstow said. He called on those who criticise players for playing a full IPL campaign to accept that the tournament is “part and parcel of the game at the moment”.
Bairstow himself has returned to the squad after missing the first two Tests in India as part of the controversial rotation policy, under which all England’s three-format players have been guaranteed a period at home during the tour of Asia, which runs from Jan 2 to March 29. The 31-year-old believes those who oppose the policy risk endangering players’ mental and physical health given the volume of cricket and the demands of bubble life.
“In 2021 there’s 17 Test matches, the T20 World Cup, there’s other international fixtures that are in the pipeline – so naturally, it’s tricky,” Bairstow said. “You don’t want to leave because you are playing, but at the same time if you’re physically, mentally, emotionally exhausted, you may get injured, you may lose form.
“At some point people are going to have rest. The benefit is you get to go home, sleep in your own bed, cook your own food. You get to be with your family. That’s the benefit of it, it’s a complete mental refresh.
“Not being able to leave the hotel all summer, not being able to leave the hotel all winter, you’re going down into a dining room and sitting on separate tables, you’re not necessarily able to have the food that you would choose to cook at home. Getting home for that mental and physical refresh was really important.
“Mentally we’ve got to stay as fresh as we can, being in hotel rooms and not being able to leave is taxing at the best of times. Everyone is trying their best to stay fresh and produce their best performances on the pitch.”
Bairstow pulled out of his Big Bash deal in Australia to return to the Test team in Sri Lanka, which he said emphasised his commitment to the format.
“I lost my red-ball contract last year, so having the opportunity to play in the Big Bash arose and you are going to try and take it. At that point, I didn’t know it was in the plans to be recalled for Sri Lanka. But I wanted to play Test cricket and that’s why those plans got put on hold and I went to Sri Lanka.
“There are lots of different things for people to juggle within cricketing careers currently, absolutely. But that is the nature of the sport at the moment.”
Bairstow said he hoped that a continuation of his strong performances in Sri Lanka – where he scored 139 runs at 46.33 apiece in his first Tests since 2019 – would be rewarded by a fresh red-ball central contract. These remain considerably more lucrative than white-ball contracts, giving players financial security that makes it easier for them to be more choosy about which T20 leagues they appear in. “There is a reason why I went to Sri Lanka, there’s a reason why I am here in India and wanting to play Test cricket. That is to hopefully do well and play Test cricket for England. By doing well, you get rewarded by earning your contract back.”