Finally, cricket is the winner – day five at Lord’s

 
England beat India by 196 runs
 
People’s Monday, they’ll probably call it. Extraordinary scenes of mile-long queues through St John’s Wood. Fans arriving at 2.00am to bag a seat. The ground rammed to the gills with ordinary cricket followers, on the fifth day of a test match. The best atmosphere anyone could recall at Lord’s for years.
 
The cynic in me suspects the queues owed much to the amateurism characteristic of major cricket occasions. 28,000 paying customers, and probably one bloke on the gate taking the money. But fair play to the MCC for reducing the prices, and making it free for under sixteens.

Earlier this season, media pundits were pondering over the low attendance for the Sri Lanka tests. There are some important lessons to learn from yesterday’s events – exceptional though the circumstances were – about what incentivises people to go to cricket.

– It was cheap. £20 entry and discounts for concessions. Lord’s tickets are generally £50-£90.

– It was a major occasion. England play too many test matches now, which dilutes the significance of each one. Less is more.

– It fell during the prime of summer, and during the school holidays – not May, when it’s too early for marquee cricket and fans don’t trust the weather.

ECB, please take note. And maybe the MCC will realise why the atmosphere was so good yesterday – the ground was full of real punters, cricket-lovers. Usually, Lord’s is far too corporate – dominated by stockbrokers and management consultants who are far more interested in gossip and champagne than the actual cricket. If only MCC would cut prices, and replace most of the debentures and boxes with seats for fans, and we might have scenes like yesterday’s more often.

Meanwhile, I may be the only England supporter who believes this series has been improved by the absence of reviews for LBW. We could easily not have won yesterday due to two failed appeals which Hawkeye later proved were out. On Twitter and in the commentary boxes, all hell broke loose. But neither decision was a howler – the kind UDRS was designed to prevent. They were in fact both pretty marginal calls.

We may not have got the wickets, but as spectators we enjoyed the heightened drama of the umpire’s decision remaining final. No anti-climax of TV replays and computer analysis. Out meant out, no reprieve. It may have been slightly less fair, but still made for a more satisfying spectacle.

I was surprised by how many England supporters wanted Tendulkar to score a century. This wasn’t even his final test match. The more runs he scored, the smaller our chance of victory – which was actually the whole point. Tendulkar can look after himself – we were there to win. Personal milestones are of secondary importance.
 
As supporters, we can only say very, very well done to our side. England were utterly professional and ruthless. Remember, we were put in, when the conditions were very tricky, and then fought back from real trouble on Sunday afternoon to win by nearly 200 runs without being bowled out in either innings. That’s how champion teams perform. Our bowlers were under immense pressure to deliver yesterday, but delivered superbly. Right now we are the only team in the world who can sustain so much pressure in the field throughout an entire day.
 
Long way to go yet, though, and India will certainly get much sharper as the series goes on. At Trent Bridge they will at least have four bowlers: the early loss of Zaheer Khan distorted the rest of this game. But we have the momentum, stacks of confidence, and an entire XI of players in form.
 
Maxie Allen

7 comments

  • Agreed on all points except one: Bowden’s decision not to dismiss Raina LBW on 63 was indeed a ‘howler’.

    Pitched on the stumps, going on to hit middle, bat nowhere near (but he had to give *some* reason for not giving it plumb, obviously). UDRS would have corrected that mistake – but I’m being a little churlish; the rest of the match was umpired brilliantly, and there’s the nub of it.

  • Good stuff Maxie. Yes, a great day for cricket, and another fantastic performance from an England team which is worth so much more than the sum of its parts. All credit to Stuart Broad in particular for the way he bowled (finally learning to pitch it up) and for (just about) keeping his cool amid some poor umpiring.

    On that point, I have to disagree with you on the DRS – it’s a disgrace that India have been able to bully us into not using Hawkeye. It’s far more important we get decisions right – with the technology now available, we can no longer hide behind “the umpire’s decision is final” if it’s clearly wrong. I suspect you may not have been as generous if a wrongly reprieved Tendulkar had got his hundred and India had saved the game.

  • I actually Tweeted the same point about DRS just after Tendulkar was reprieved – so I’m not being hypocritical!

    As I said, I’m probably in a very small minority about the reviews, but what I’ve always argued is that cricket is a game, played by humans, and having a computer make the decisions seems so soul-less. The fall of a wicket is cricket’s key source of drama, and DRS replaces that drama with anti-climax.

    How do you define howler? We were told that DRS was intended to prevent the kind of real balls-ups which embarrassed everyone, like when the ball pitches way outside leg, or there’s a huge inside edge. With the appeal to Raina, my memory is the ball pitched just on, so Bowden probably thought it was too close to pitching outside to give.

    Remember that not even Hawkeye’s manufacturers claim 100& accuracy.

    • I thought Raina’s pitched on and was hitting the top of middle, so the immediate reaction was that he’d not given it on height, which was later refuted by his obvious mouthing of “bat” to an incredulous Broad.

      So OK, perhaps ‘howler’ is a bit strong but it was a straightforward decision at that level, especially for a respected umpire like Billy B :)

  • You can see how this is going to evolve. Captains will have 2 referral opportunities, then 3, then……?
    Hey, electronic umpires will be very, very accurate, you know?

  • Increasingly, you wonder whether umpires are even needed apart from controlling onfield discipline. Bowden had a terrible game with a number of poor decisions so I woulkd rather except the automated analysis of decisions even if it is not 100% accurate.

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