When the Madness Descends

Spectators find failure just as compelling as success, in life and sport. It’s why people slow down for crashes on the other side of the road and are drawn compulsively to meltdowns on the sports field. How many rugby fans genuinely turn away in disgust when a mass brawl breaks out?

As a youngster who didn’t know any better, I was drawn to Formula One by the prospect of an early crash, of which there were many in the 1980s, but soon lost interest once the debris had been cleared away and the cars settled into their monotonous laps. I wanted more of the ‘first corner madness.’

There was madness of the purest, crack cocaine intensity on the fifth morning of the second Test at Lord’s. The greatest moments of sporting madness are defined by the obviousness of the irrational behaviour to everyone watching – which is in direct, inverse proportion to the awareness of the players. So, 25,000 people at the home of cricket could see that Joe Root and his bowlers had lost the plot. Only Joe Root and his bowlers could not. Oh, and coach Chris Silverwood.

Cricket, to all intents and purposes, is a contact sport. Combatants may not be permitted to tackle each other but there wasn’t much doubt about the seriousness of the contact Jasprit Bumrah was making with Jimmy Anderson with the ball on the fourth evening. Or about the contact Mark Wood’s bouncer made with the side of Bumrah’s head on the fifth morning.

Emotions run high and clear, level-headed thinking isn’t always possible. Which is why Root and his bowlers were over-run by an obsession with vengeance and retribution towards Bumrah for his attack on Anderson, why they wanted to knock his head off rather than his off stump out of the ground. 

The vast majority of the 25,000 in the ground and the millions more watching on television around the world have no experience of the level of emotion and testosterone flying around in the heat of a top level international sporting contest and are quick to judge, despite being equally quick on the draw with a middle finger when a cyclist cuts in front of them at a traffic light.

Anger and frustration directed at the England players for their hour of madness which cost them any chance of winning the Test match is not misplaced, but it should be - and in most cases will be – swiftly forgiven. The Test match was still there to be saved. It was lost by their hapless batting, not their dumb bowling. 

It may well be that the top order batsmen England have selected are not good enough for Test cricket. It could be that simple. India’s bowlers are too good for them. But Dom Sibley and Rory Burns do have five Test centuries between them and when Sibley scored an unbeaten 133 against South Africa at Newlands in just his fourth match, I don’t recall anybody saying he didn’t look the part of a Test opener.

Burns, too, for all his quirks, looked comfortable scoring centuries against Australia at Edgbaston two years ago and New Zealand at Lord’s in June. Zak Crawley’s 267 against Pakistan was eight Test matches ago and he has averaged 11 since then. So, what’s gone wrong? Could it have something to do with the summer schedule which has prioritised revenue-generation above all else?

The Hundred competition was placed front and centre of the English summer and was played alongside the 50-over competition, the Royal London Cup. Between June 6 and August 30, the prime of the English summer, almost the only red-ball cricket being played was in the 2nd XI. The shotless, catatonic Sibley has not now been dropped and replaced by Dawid Malan who has played one first-class match for Yorkshire this season. At least he scored 199 in his only innings.

Players have a reason and a right to make poor decisions under duress. What excuse do the administrators have? What was their heart rate when they drew up a fixture list that looked like it was systematically designed to undermine the Test team? And, for that matter, the ODI team because all the best limited overs players were either Hundreding or trying to remember how to play against a seaming, swinging red Dukes ball in the Test bubble. What was their excuse for such shoddy planning?

The madness which descended on Root and his players at Lord’s had paid a much lengthier visit to their bosses before the season even began. There’s a lot of it about in cricket offices at the moment. 

Cricket South Africa’s old board of directors bungled things for over two years, incapable of stepping back for a dispassionate look at the consequences of their selfish behaviour – and the increasing disdain with which the rest of the cricket playing world regarded them. Just one of the consequences is a meagre 15 Test matches in the next 18 months, including three each against the ‘big three’. There will be even less in the 18 months which follow. 

Not to be outdone, Cricket Australia managed to get in on the madness with a hastily and clumsily issued statement of support for under-fire coach Justin Langer in which his “great success” was lauded on the back of back-to-back 4:1 series losses to the West Indies and Bangladesh. The only Test series Australia has played in the last six months was also lost. It also pointed out that his contract finished in the middle of next year and mentioned nothing about extensions. Langer is a sacked coach walking, and everybody knows it. 

New Zealand Cricket continue to set the benchmark for the rest to follow, both on and off the field. Once again all of their contracted IPL players have been given permission to resume those contracts when the tournament resumes in September despite the national team touring Bangladesh and Pakistan at the same time. The result is that Kane Williamson and the other nine IPL players can earn what NZC cannot afford to pay them, more players are exposed to the international game and everybody responds positively to being treated like individuals and professionals rather than contracted assets. No madness in the land of the Long White Cloud. At least, not cricketing madness.    

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