Lucky Number Nineteen

And so it's all over, bar the shouting.

Unless Blackburn pull out a surprising win over Manchester United on Saturday lunchtime (and it's over 5 years since United last failed to secure at least a point at Ewood Park), Sir Alex Ferguson will have guided United past Liverpool to a record 19th English league title.*

The expected 19-18 scoreline, however, is somewhat misleading. The first of Liverpool's 18 came in the 1900-01 season, and their most recent was in 1989-90, in the year after the Hillsborough disaster; United's started 7 years later than Pool's, in 1907-08, and their 18th was in 2008-09. While the chronological spread isn't so very different -- 89 years vs. (to date) 101 -- there is one fact that marks the two achievements as qualitatively different: United won 7 of their titles before the 1992 start of the English Premier League, and 11 have come since.

Traditions, as a collection of essays published in 2000 asserts, are invented. In other words, as much as the word 'tradition' conjures up ideas of age-old practices and dusty tomes, a 'tradition' is often a remarkably recent construction.

Nowhere is this more evident than in sport. The most recent example of this, in cricket, is the Indian Premier League, a competition that has brought together cricketing superstars -- often, as I commented last week, in the twilight of their careers -- to compete in a supercharged, low-attention-span, fizzy-drink form of the game.** Although the 20-over form of the game was in fact introduced into the English county game in 2003, it was the 2008 inauguration of the IPL -- with all the commercial perks of advertising, sponsorship, and astronomical signing fees -- that marked the beginning of the youngest of sporting traditions.

This commercial aspect is significant. To return to my initial topic: the tradition of football's English Premier League, 16 years its similarly named cricketing cousin's junior, saw an explosion in advertising, sponsorship, attendance, and merchandising revenue for the 22 (reduced to 20 in 1995) clubs in the English top flight. The link with BSkyB, who were granted exclusive broadcasting rights at the inception of the league, is a particularly contentious one. This particular tradition, then, as well as being heavily constructed, has been -- from the beginning -- a heavily commercial one.

My point, then, is this: while I do not mean to suggest that United's 18 (well, ok, 19) titles are in some way inferior to Liverpool's, having been achieved in the main (11/12 out of 18/19) with the help of the significant commercial backing that has arisen through the tradition of the BSkyB-backed Premiership, they should be seen as undoubtedly different.

But congratulations, United, on another success. And extra congratulations to the alcoholic-nosed, gum-chomping septuagenarian cyborg; will SAF ever retire?

*If United don't leave Ewood Park as champions, it'll be the first time in 9 years -- when Arsenal's 2-0 victory over Chelsea on May the 4th 2002 preceded the Gunners' clinching of the title four days later -- that the destination of FA Cup trophy has been decided earlier than the Premiership title.

**I'm aware this sounds like I have a fairly grumpy view of the IPL; this isn't in fact true, and this sentence was mainly included for the purposes of a cheap laugh along it's-just-not-cricket lines. Sorry about that.

Cricketing Digest

I feel I've neglected the initial focus of this blog in the not-so-glamorous cricketing months, so in a short post tonight I thought I'd do a quick run-down of recent news in the world of leather on willow. (I haven't been following it for a couple of weeks, so it may be that the new Lalit Modi has decided that playing the game with a metal post and a ball of rubber bands is a better crowd-puller than a leather ball and a wooden bat, and therefore that that particular figure of speech is even more outmoded than usual. [They don't still use willow, do they? I'm way out of my depth.])

Broadly Speaking

(That was just an excuse to use that pun; I'd have done so even if I didn't have anything to say about the England captaincy.) So Alastair Cook, who's played 3 ODIs in the past two and a half years, is the new England captain. Right. And Stuart Broad, 9 months after being fined 50% of his match fee for an act of borderline ABH, has got the T20 job. Hmmm.

Here's a thought: why not pick someone to do both jobs who's in both teams? And who doesn't have a yearly tantrum?

Warne Again? No

(That one was even worse. Sorry about that.) So Shane Warne is to retire from cricket at the end of the season. Who even knew he was still playing?? I'm surprised he can bear to prise himself away from his nice little earner in the commentary box. Or maybe he's started combining the two? Now that I'd pay to watch -- get on it, Sky.

KP's Back

(Yes, I gave up.) Coming in second on our list of 'talented yet incredibly arrogant cricketers whom you thought had long ago decided to concentrate on the more commercial sides of their careers rather than spend any time actually on the pitch' is the delightful Sir Kev, who's preparing for his come-back from injury.

Given that a middle order of Trott, Bopara, and Morgan made 73% of England's runs in their last game, thought, you have to ask: do we really need him?

Well that was a lazy post. Apologies. More of the same, or better (you never know), next week -- I'm off to bed. Live the Friday night dream, people! :)

A Tale of Two Rockets

Firstly, a declaration: I like snooker. I’ve never really been sure why I’m such a fan of a prissy and antiquated pseudo-sport on which heavy traces of the Edwardian drawing room lie heavy. Is it a mathematical attraction to patterns and angles? Perhaps. One reason may be that certain players throw up all sorts of mixed emotions that I don’t experience in watching other sportspeople.

Take Ronnie O’Sullivan, for instance. I have such mixed feelings that I feel the need to write paired pieces, both of which express an aspect of my thinking on the matter, and neither of which is the whole truth, in and of itself.

Why I Don't Like Ronnie O'Sullivan

When sports stars like the incredibly talented Marcus Trescothick and the surprisingly effective Michael Yardy have to truncate their international careers or limit their international opportunities as a result of widely publicised mental health problems, it does absolutely no good to have someone like O'Sullivan 'threatening' to retire from the game at every hint of things not quite going his way: the viewing public, quite rightly, see such ‘threats’ as so much hot air, which in turn diminishes the amount of sympathy for sportsmen and women with genuine health problems.

Mark Williams, O'Sullivan's fellow professional, perhaps had it right when he offered a rather biting comment on the other's vacillating attitude towards the game:

If he wants to pull out or retire, then just do it, because he's talked about it so many times... Just do it if you want to.

Sadly, this is how hearing some of O'Sullivan's comments on his commitment to snooker makes me feel -- a real pity, given that he is such an undeniably great sporting talent.

Why I Would Rather Watch O'Sullivan Than Any Other Snooker Player

The reason I would rather watch O'Sullivan play than any other is quite simple. It's not that he is great, although he is; it's not that he keeps the game flowing in a pleasing way, although he does; it's that at his best, he plays the game with the sort of carefree abandon with which Chris Gayle hits a 70-ball Test Match century, Chris Ashton carves open opposition back lines, or Lionel Messi leaves defences looking very stupid.

It doesn’t matter that Stephen Hendry, in terms of sheer numbers of titles won, will probably always be ‘a better player’ than O’Sullivan: it’s a case of Iniesta vs Scholes, or Lara vs Dravid; as undoubtedly great as the alternatives may be, you’d always rather see the one who plays the sport (or game, or hobby, or life) with style.

It is possibly this very Janus-like ability to encompass such conflicting opinions that makes me love sport. (Yes, all sport -- including snooker...) It is why Ronnie O’Sullivan has me purring in awe and shouting abuse at the television, almost in equal measure -- with behaviour like that, it’s probably a good thing I’m not at Sheffield this week.

Turning Points

From what I remember of sporting events in the mid-'90s, they were all pretty poor. Perhaps my judgement was clouded by the usual teenage angst, but I just don't feel there was anything to compare with the drama of, say, the great Lewis vs Powell World Championships in 1991 or, eleven years on, Brazil's 'pentacampeão' romp to the football world title.

Baggio's penalty miss in '94 was fairly dramatic, but it did come at the end of a mind-bogglingly dull 120-minute slog through the Pasadena heat. Gazza's goal at Euro '96 was sublime, and England beating the Netherlands 4-1 was special, but the rest of that tournament -- at least from the point of view of a 12-year-old England fan -- was forgettable enough.

One sporting occasion that does stand out from this rather fallow period, however, is the '95 Rugby World Cup. The political significance of this -- the recent emergence from apartheid, South Africa returning to the international sporting fold, Nelsen Mandela and Francois Pienaar -- has been covered in the recent film Invictus; suffice to say, then, this was an event the ramifications of which went far beyond the white lines.

Positioned halfway through the decade, and at the beginning of a new chapter in both international political and sporting relations with South Africa, this was a whole tournament of turning points.

This is not what I want to write about, however -- Matt Damon & co. have already covered all that. My turning point -- for English rugby, which spiralled into an 8-period of underachievement known as the 'we were waiting for JW's left foot' years; for international rugby itself; for a 6'5", 20 stone 20 year-old, who could have quite easily based a career on this one match, had he achieved nothing else -- came in the semi-final between England and New Zealand.

As I remember it, it was the first kick-off of the match; internet records inform me my memory is playing tricks.

Before I go any further, though, I should provide a little background for those of you unfamiliar with the niceties of the rugby union restart, or those of you who started watching the sport later, when what happened would have been nothing out of the ordinary.

When a game is (re-)started in full-XV rugby union (not Sevens, but that's another thing entirely), the fly half (or first five-eighth) kicks the ball diagonally forwards, the idea being to return it to the opposition team, but also to hang the ball up in the air long enough to give members of your team the time to run and put pressure on the catcher.

Rugby union was, for years, a rather genteel sport. When, in the late nineteenth century, a group of players at northern clubs thought to make polite enquiries as to the possibility of supplementing their meagre everyday incomes with money from the games they played in at the weekends, the southern clubs -- staffed in the main by rather-more-well-off types, who could afford to not receive remuneration for their rugby -- insisted that the Rugby Football Union was to remain amateur.

While Rugby League has been professional ever since -- and has indeed evolved almost into a separate sport -- Rugby Union spent much of the twentieth century an amateur endeavour. Which rather suited it.

Rugby Union is full of rules and regulations regarding 'set pieces' that essentially involve creating an elaborate ballet on the field of play. Where association football has one man throwing the ball in after it goes out of play, in union they involve up to 16 players in a cross between a morris dance, a synchronised swimming display, and a wrestling match. League have a perfunctory scrum that sees three players from each team linking arms, and waiting for the scrum-half to recycle the ball; in union the scrum has the sense of a ritual that must be performed in a certain way. When Gareth Edwards, say (like a Welsh Ben Youngs from the '70s, for younger readers), clipped the ball over the top and raced down the blindside, rather than passing it out across the field, you could hear The Guardians of the Game struggling to prevent their appreciation of his genius being tainted by a strong 'that's just not cricket' disapproval.

The hanging kick at the re-start is one of these performances -- 'things which must be done in a certain way before we can start playing the game'. The fly-half's kick is directed towards the opposition's heavier, slower forwards, who are in turn faced by the kicking team's forwards. The opposing catcher would either collect the ball and take it into contact or pass it straight to his own backs, or he would spill it (either under pressure or not). The game didn't really get going, in other words, until this 'kick to the forwards' had been got out of the way.

What, though, if this wasn't something that had to be done? Why not start playing the game much earlier?

20 minutes into the first half, Andrew Mehrtens -- the Kiwi #10 -- stepped up to take the re-start after a Rob Andrew penalty. The England forwards were lined up to the right of the right-footed Mehrtens, facing their All Black counterparts, and braced to receive the ball.

Mehrtens kicked left.

This had two repercussions: the England backs were completely unprepared for this, and so the advancing All Black backs reached the ball before they did; and the player who caught the ball -- the 20-year-old left winger making only his 5th appearance for the team -- had the bulk to brush aside the confused England defenders while they were still trying to work out which sport they were meant to be playing.

This wasn't what was meant to happen! They'd cheated!! By being fast, and quick-thinking, and powerful, and....generally better than England.

1995 is the year that Rugby Union turned professional, and I like to connect this with that moment, in which Jonah Lomu walked over poor little (as he looked) Tony Underwood. Gone was a time in which re-starts went in an expected direction, and wingers were the weedy members of the XV: in came the professional era, and daily training, and nutrition programmes, and back lines with an average weight north of 15 stone.

Perhaps my memory of the event is significant in its faultiness: it felt like the beginning of the match; New Zealand's dominance throughout deserved a first-minute try. It was a defining moment. English rugby was not going to be the same again; Tony Underwood certainly wasn't.

What's your sporting turning point? Leave a comment below, and we can continue the nostalgia-fest.

The Numbers Game

I've been a bit lax updating the blog of late (an excuse that seems to get trotted out by about one in every three online writers, so apologies for the tedium), but I've been meaning for a while to write something on a subject close to my....well, not heart -- more head. It combines two of my favourite things -- sport and numbers -- although not in a particularly traditional way.

It's a question that gets asked on such a regular basis that it's become almost a non-question -- a topic that serves only to service a nation's journalists and commentators (oh the irony of spending yet more [virtual] column inches on this): why are the England football team perennial underachievers?

I have a possible answer, and it has nothing to do with Fabio Capello, the Lampard/Gerrard combination, striking partnerships, or the captaincy merry-go-round. (Though don't get me started on the many hideousnesses of John Terry...) It's the numbering of the England players' shirts.

(Stick with me.)

In club football in this country (this sample is taken for two reasons: it's what I know most about; and it's where the vast majority of the players in recent England squads ply their trade), players are assigned -- or choose -- a squad number. Wayne Rooney and Frank Lampard are #10 and #8, numbers corresponding to their positions, but the aforementioned racist thug (sorry, I'll keep quiet) is #26.

Often there are personal reasons for this. Although my gag reflex prevents me from spending any more time googling Terry, I believe the choice of #26 relates to his admiration of an ex-player with a similar number. This is also the reason for Cesc Fàbregas's #4 shirt, in honour of the great Spanish midfield maestro -- and, incidentally, management wunderkind -- Pep Guardiola. And the story of David Beckham's various shirt numbers -- #7 at Manchester United, after Best/Cantona; #23 in more recent years, in honour of Michael Jordan -- is practically a feature-film narrative in its own right.

But whatever the reasons, each individual player has his own number. He has a shirt he can call his own -- the shirt, quite literally, has his name on it.

Not so when he plays for England, however: the 11 starting players, on the day, are allocated the numbers 1 to 11. This gives rise to the following extremes:

• if a player has a less-than-regular role in the team he can never be sure of his shirt number
• a bit-part player feels immediately like a first-choice player

Not such a bad thing, you might think: why should a regular starting number matter to a player? And surely an instant feeling of belonging is good for morale?

Well, not entirely.

To suggest that the number of his shirt doesn't matter to a footballer, at least at some level of the unconscious mind, is to deny his humanity. (No jokes about Wayne Rooney and potatoes.) Human beings, at the most basic level, need to feel wanted; they need to feel they have a role; having an assigned shirt number taps into this essential need.

And while a one-off international -- I have a feeling that, after his comments about Gareth Barry, Joey Barton is likely to remain in this category -- may benefit in the short term from the instant feeling of being a part of the team, what does this mean for the recent occupant of the same shirt? How, for instance, does Frank Lampard feel about seeing 'WILSHERE' on the back of the white #8?

There are other problems. Club football is the 'day job' of the players; when they step up to international level, surely the system should do everything possible to ensure they're able to play in the same way? Instead, each match is a one-off -- a busman's holiday, granted, but still a holiday.

To take simply the most obvious example, Lampard and Gerrard, who have driven their respective clubs' midfield engine rooms for the best part of a decade, wear the same number: the attacking-midfielder-with-a-licence-to-roam-from-box-to-box's #8. What happens when they're made to play in the same team? Who -- both metaphorically, and literally -- is the team's #8? The age-old 'why can't L&G play together?' debate may have more to do with Gerrard's mental struggle to accommodate seeing another #8 on the pitch than one might think.

This is all speculative, but there may just be something in it: numbers matter. (If you remain in any doubt, count the number of #7s on display for Manchester United in this testimonial.) I reckon Fabio Capello could do worse than break out the squad numbers from now on -- maybe Darren Bent could start to replicate his consistently awesome club form of recent years if he were allowed to wear 'BENT 39' for his country...

Putting Mr Creosote on a Diet

This weekend sees the start of that period in the cricketing year when the ICC seem to think that taking a tired and disillusioned format that has been superseded in the entertainment stakes by the upstart younger brother (Twenty20) and that has never had the prestige of the grandaddy of the game (Test) and producing a staggeringly bloated tournament out of it is the way to have the fans flocking in their droves to cricket grounds and tv screens. Even the England captain has stuck his oar in -- when you're responsible for a feat of anti-organisation so extreme it gets Straussy criticising you, you know you're in trouble.

Once the thing has got underway fully, I'll no doubt weigh in with an opinion or two on the games themselves. (And no, I don't mean I'm just waiting for England to play, because 'only then does the tournament start properly'; I just think that a weekend of minnow-crushing doesn't give many pointers as to the form of the teams involved. Did we really doubt that Kenya and Canada would be humbled? [Although, actually, didn't England only just scrape past Canada? Maybe England should be classed as minnows, too. To be honest, that's probably not a bad idea: then at least we wouldn't go into the match against the Netherlands as firm favourites; we all know how that's turned out in the past...])

For the moment, here are some suggestions for the ICC of ways to ensure future World Cups aren't overshadowed in the excitement stakes by their own adverts.

• drastically limit the number of teams involved: I know, I know, allowing Canada/Netherlands/etc. to take part encourages interest in those countries, increasing revenue, and thereby aiding development -- honestly, though, when Kenya get destroyed by 10 wickets, how much good is that doing...well, anyone?
• shorten the tournament: a by-product of the first point, but the length of time covered by the WC needs to be analysed. Cutting out the second group stage (Super Sixes) is a good start.
• play Twenty20 instead: ok, not an entirely serious point, but do we really need a WC as well as a World T20?

I could go on, but it's time to go and watch the highlights: having cricket on terrestrial tv is a wonderful thing. Also, it's Sri Lanka, for whom I do have a bit of a soft spot -- I'd love another 'home' win for them, 15 years after their first...

Cricket's Coming 'Home'...Briefly

This morning -- well, afternoon; it's all relative, hemispherically speaking -- Team England crawled over the finish line, two days into the fourth month of a tour of Australia that has seen, for all the hype surrounding the Test series, mixed results.

Tour matches

Opponents: Western Australia, South Australia, Australia A, Victoria, Prime Minister's XI

England's Record: 3-0; W (6 wickets), D, W (10 wickets), D, W (7 wickets, D/L)

Verdict: An undeniable English success. Three comfortable wins, and two draws in which England lost only 20 wickets in four innings, and outscored their opponents 1305-857.

Tests

Record: 3-1; D, W (inn + 71r), L (267r), W (inn + 157r), W (inn + 83r)

Verdict: Another England victory. Unlike last time, this was fully deserved: the century count, a bone of contention among Aussie pundits in 2009, was England 9, Australia 3. Wickets taken was another battle won by the English: they took 91, bowling the Aussies out on every occasion except the 2nd innings in Brisbane; Australia managed only 56, bowling England out 5 times.

T20s

Record: 1-1; W (1 wicket, last ball), L (4 runs)

Verdict: Not so much a contest in which the teams won a game each, as one in which the scores were level after each failed to win one. Australia probably edge it, with two 50-plus scores (Watson and Finch) to England's one plus-40 (Morgan).

ODIs

Record: 1-6; LLLWLLL

Verdict: Hmmm.

So there you have it: a tour in which England dominated the longer format with an ease that was at times embarrassing, but that saw a resurgence from Australia in the shorter forms of the game. And with a World Cup imminent, England's shortcomings on the one-day field are likely to obliterate any residual feelings of euphoria over a third Ashes win this century.