Wild times in the Windy City
Three stories from the weekend, including that stumping and a Belfry breakthrough
While I don’t know each and every one of you personally, I know enough to understand that as a collective, you’re mostly here for the cricket, the footy and the big, universal “issues” that envelope this sporting world.
Because you’re a mostly loveable bunch, I know you humour me from time to time as I point you in the directions of weird, wonderful and occasionally icky stories from the outside world.
None of you are here for Nascar. I get that.
It makes zero sense to lead on this when we’ve just witnessed a cricket test that was soap-operatic in scope but… Shane van bloody Gisbergen!
Yes, he had a few things going in his favour during his Nascar debut, but nobody’s won their debut in that series for 60 years.
People that know a lot more about fast machines than I - Sportstalk’s D’Arcy Waldegrave for one - reckon SVG is the best racing driver in the world bar nobody.
I texted D’Arcy something silly. He replied with something less silly.
His versatility is astonishing. He’s won in rally cars, in Supercars, in sprint cars, in single seaters, on quad bikes. He’s won on dirt, roads and track. He’s won short races and very, very long ones.
He started the New Zealand Grand Prix from the pits… and won.
His was a brilliant performance in tough conditions at Chicago, although some Nascar-heads have noted that if ever you’re going to win a debut, it would be on a course never used before in a style of racing you have more experience in than your competitors. Yeah, maybe, but he was still competing for a part-time team in an unfamiliar car against what Nascar fans assume to be the most talented collection of stock car racers in the world.
Van Gisbergen’s long road to overnight success is indicative of the richness of New Zealand’s motorsport talent right now.
On the same day as SVG was shocking America, Scott Dixon (2nd) and Scott McLaughlin (5th) were carving up at the Mid-Ohio round of IndyCar, while rumours abound in the F1 paddock that Liam Lawson is being lined up to replace Nyck de Vries at Alpha Tauri.
The last New Zealand F1 driver, Brendon Hartley, recently finished second at Le Mans, where he was going for his fourth 24-hour title.
Good times to be a petrol head.
Wild happenings in the Long Room!
Holy bacon-and-egg blazers, that was one of those nights of cricket that will stay with me for a long time.
Ben Stokes played one of the great lost-cause innings of all time and Australia overpowered England by combatting what amounted to bodyline tactics better than the home side, and somehow they are not the two things being talked about.
Instead we’re talking about a careless batter, an opportunistic keeper, dithering umpires, booing in the most celebrated inner-sanctum in cricket and the millstone that is The Spirit of Cricket.
As the Australians walked through the Long Room on their way to their changing sheds and a hearty lunch they were abused by some unruly members. The word “cheats” could be picked up on video. Usman Khawaja was not taking it on the chin, engaging with his abuser, while you could also see what appeared to be an MCC staffer angrily confronting one of the more vocal members.
As for the incident itself…
It’s one of those things where the reaction to it is mostly risible because you can easily fit an argument to suit your own biases. You can make nonsensical comparisons with misdeeds and good deeds of the past, and you can even read the rules around dead and live balls to suit your argument.
For example, this is ambiguous.
If you ask me, Jonny Bairstow was clearly out and no rule was broken in effecting the dismissal. It’s just a long stumping.
If you ask me whether he should have been dismissed, that’s slightly more complicated.
It felt pretty cheap. Bairstow was not batting outside his crease nor was he trying to gain advantage for a run. After watching Bairstow’s movements like a hawk, Alex Carey likely waited for the last ball of the over to strike. Well done him, I suppose, for effecting what should have been a hard-fought wicket without any fight at all.
Despite my cynicism at the tactic, I can’t muster much sympathy for Bairstow, who time and again leaves the crease early for some pointless gardening leave and a grumble with his batting partner. He was, you could argue, overdue a harsh lesson.
Could the on-field umpires, Ahsan Raza and our own Chris Gaffaney, have defused the situation? Probably not, but they could have looked a little less confused. Raza, at the bowler’s end, did look like he had unclipped Cam Green’s hat to give it back to the bowler as Bairstow stepped out, a subtle yet potentially telling detail that gives some indication he thought the over was completed. Gaffaney, at square leg, appeared to not even see it as he had his head down and was walking to take his position, which would indicate he too thought the over was, well, over. Still, if they’d retroactively called the ball dead, you can imagine the Australian reaction after the perceived injustice of Mitchell Starc’s non-caught catch the night before.
The most politic situation would probably have been for Australian captain Pat Cummins to quietly withdraw the appeal and for him to personally tell Bairstow to stop being such a wandering fool, but it’s not that easy because many of his teammates would vehemently disagree with that course of action.
Once the wickets were broken and Bairstow was clearly out, there was no simple fix-all, just a whole lot of angst and theatrics - mostly from incoming batter Stuart Broad who promptly told Carey it was all he would be remembered for and Cummins that it was the worst thing he’d ever seen on a cricket field - that played into it.
A few false equivalences to get out of the way.
It was not the same as Ollie Pope running out Colin de Grandhomme first ball on the same ground last year, the big man’s last test innings. On that occasion de Grandhomme set off for a potential leg bye after being struck on the pads from Broad and Pope fielded the ball at gully and threw the stumps down. There was an ongoing appeal from the leg before and there was never a suggestion the ball was not “live”. The narrative from the English press then was that it was exceptional awareness from Pope, which was also bollocks - it was just gormless from de Grandhomme.
It is not the same as 10 years’ ago when Broad nicked Ashton Agar and it ended in the hands of slip and he didn’t walk. For a start, he nicked it to the keeper and it rebounded to Michael Clarke at slip. Yes, it was still an outrageously poor decision from Aleem Dar, a good umpire, but this idea that he nicked it to slip and got away with it is false. Second, not walking is one of the most common ‘sins’ and to condemn someone for defiling the spirit of cricket under the non-walking (or, for that matter, appealing when you know they’re not out) imaginary bylaw is to censure anybody that has ever played the game to a decent level.
It is not the same as Ben Duckett walking back to the crease after being happy to leave when ‘caught’ by Mitchell Starc earlier on day four. It’s not even in the same postcode, though it has been brought up several times. It is amusing to see many in the Australian cricket cognoscenti fall back on the “rules are are rules” mantra to defend the dismissal of Bairstow when they rejected out of hand the “rules are rules” mantra when it came to Starc’s ‘catch’.
It is almost the same as Brendon McCullum running out Muttiah Muralitharan when he left his crease to congratulate century-maker Kumar Sangakkara at Lancaster Park. I covered that 2006 test and hated it at the time, though plenty of the idealism has been thrashed out of me since.
I was younger and more naive then, but even with the benefit of time, the Bairstow dismissal still leaves me cold.
I’ll always prefer watching skill over naked opportunism, but if there’s one thing we, including myself, should all stop chuntering on about, it’s the hopelessly amorphous “spirit of cricket”.
“I was lucky enough to play for a long period of time and you learn over a long period that the game and the spirit of the game is so vital to this great game,” McCullum said.
“If the shoe was on the other foot I would have… had a deep think about the whole spirit of the game and would I want to do something like that. For Australia it was the match-winning moment. Would I want to win a game in that manner? The answer for me is no,” Stokes said.
Seriously? The spirit of the game stopped off at the pub to get drunk a long time ago.
It’s now in a similar state to the sozzled members in the Long Room who were, quite probably, the only truly disgraceful figures in the entire affair.
***
There will be plenty of spirited cricket to cover in the midweek ($) letter.
“I’m over the moon and a bit lost for words… those last few holes are going to take a while to process I think.”
That’s the words of Daniel Hillier, a 24-year-old only golf aficionados would have heard much about until this season where he’s rattled off some great results on the DP World Tour.
This morning he won the British Masters at the Belfry in some style.
His final four holes were the stuff of dreams: a long putt for eagle on 15; a brilliant birdie on 16; another eagle of 17 after just carrying the bunker with his second; and a scrambling par save on 18 to win by two strokes.
The win moves him up 63 places to 14th in the Race to Dubai, the tour’s lucrative season-ending championship. Ryan Fox is in 42nd.
Of more immediate interest, he is in the field for this month’s Open Championship at Royal Liverpool.
I agree with your sentiments about the wicket feeling cheap, and definitely prefer to see wickets taken through skill. It's why I've always felt a little uncomfortable about the mankad, even if the batter is taking an advantage in that situation it just feels instinctively wrong for a wicket to fall before a ball is even bowled. But I accept it is a legitimate tactic now.
However I just struggle to feel any sort of sense of injustice for Bairstow or any genuine desire for Cummins to have withdrawn the appeal. Ensuring the ball is dead is drilled into us from a young age and it just looks lazy for Bairstow to unilaterally declare the over has finished without even a cursory glance at the keeper. I've watched Kane Williamson his whole career thoroughly and cautiously ensuring the ball was dead before walking to the middle for a chat with his batting partner. That most batters are similarly cautious feels like an unspoken acknowledgement that failure to do so means a genuine risk to your wicket.
I refer to The Grade Cricketer's Ian Higgins who asks a pertinent question re. the dead ball, end of the over argument: if Carey had a mare, missed the stumps, and the ball had dribbled into no man's land, would Bairstow have run one or two?