Capacity isn't everything

I rejoiced in the news today that the Marylebone Cricket Club have decided against major redevelopment of the Nursery End of Lord's. Reading report after report of the proposals the question kept springing up in my head - WHY? Why irreversibly spoil the beautiful vista from the pavilion end? Why move the Real Tennis court underground? Why - and this was the biggest question - does the MCC need this extra £100 million? The answer to all these questions seemed to be "to maintain and enhance the reputation of Lord's as the pre-eminent cricket ground in the world", but I am pleased that in the end people have realised that pre-eminence is about more than simply how many seats the ground holds, as this is to miss the point entirely.

If you have ever been to Lord's, you will know that it is sacred ground. To travel there is to make a pilgrimage to cricket's holiest place, and to sit in the stands as play takes place can feel almost spiritual. It is to worship at the high temple of cricket. If Lord's is to maintain its status it is THIS experience that must be preserved, and ultimately the best way to guarantee its future as a Test venue is to guard this atmosphere jealously, as then touring teams will forcefully demand the right to play there.

On those happy occasions when I have been blessed with the offer of a 'members and friends' ticket from my father's MCC-member friend to go to Lord's my chosen vantage point has been the Warner Stand, and from here the vista is almost entirely devoid of anything that is not part of Lord's Cricket Ground, and all the better for it. It is a little oasis of calm in one of the world's busiest cities. The tree-line behind the Media Centre is a huge asset to the atmosphere of the ground, and while I wouldn't mind too much if higher stands were built at the Nursery End, the idea of having four large tower blocks - however beautifully designed - looming down on the pavilion just leaves me cold. The MCC is often held up as a pretty stuffy organisation but for once I am only too happy to stand on the side of stuffiness. There is a place for muscular modernity, but Lord's isn't it.

W, T, and indeed F.

This:

Winter blues

It's been 81 long, cricketless days since I last donned my whites and took to the field of battle. It's getting me down. It's very unfair of the Sun to waste 6 months favouring the Southern hemispere - firstly because there's less landmass down there, and secondly because the populations of what land there is only go and squander it all by organising a criminally truncated 2-Test series between two of the great teams* in cricket.

Anyway, you'll have noticed there hasn't been any new posts here for a little while, and that's because a) there's very nearly nothing going on in my own cricket career, and b) commenting on what cricket there is currently taking place around the World seems a little silly, in view of the many excellent professional and amateur cricket writers you could have been reading instead of wading through my ramblings.

What's wrong with playing on?

Reading the paper yesterday, a familiar sight confronted me - the cheeky grin, the huge hands, the massive forearms that speak of prodigious power. The green shirt was unfamiliar, but it was unmistakably the one and only SK Warne, coming out of retirement for another turn in the spotlight.

There seems to be a consensus that great sportsmen should choose to retire at the top and never come back, for fear that they may sully their legacy. I think this is poppycock, especially in the case of a World-class leg-spinner.

Sure, it holds true for people whose sport involves a certain amount of risk such as boxers and racing drivers, and certainly Jackie Stewart was right to stop when he did and not go back, despite having a few years left in him, but in the case of Michael Schumacher, 7 times a champion and now pootling around in an uncompetitive Mercedes, the sport is reasonably safe now, Schumacher seems to have a smile on his face and Mercedes seem happy, so I don't understand those who think he should have stayed with his pipe and slippers. F1 is better for having him back.

Why shouldn't sportsmen carry on in the sport they love? As long as they remain in decent physical shape, quality spinners don't get worse with age, and many get better. CV Grimmett was dropped from Tests on the grounds of age several years before he stopped playing, and by all accounts he was bowling better than ever in that period. Warne's last three or four years in Test cricket were his best, not just in his results but in the holistic quality of his bowling, taking wickets with the intelligence that comes from experience, allied to the incredible spin he always had. You don't lose that level of skill.

Further to that, T20 is a perfect format for a wily old spinner - not too arduous, and rewarding accuracy and subtlety - both key aspects of what made Warne's latter years so successful. Add to that that Warne gets to play at the MCG in front of his beloved Victorian faithful, and everyone's a winner.

Winter reading

The winter months seem cruelly long for a cricketer, and they're all the longer if, like me, you're a devotee of Test Match cricket and no amount of ODI yawn-a-thons will quite fill the gap left between the end of August and the middle of January by some idiot of a scheduler. So, the only thing to do (short of setting out for the southern hemisphere, which I can't afford) is settle into a comfortable chair with a good book.

As such there's a towering pile of cricket books for me to get through over the next few months, even before I get the inevitable extra book or two for Christmas. Here's a little list of what awaits me:

New stripes

With last Thursday's Special General Meeting following the presentation evening the previous Friday, this week could be said to be the point at which the 2011 season properly ends and next season begins. A Special General Meeting sounds a little bureaucratic and pretty far removed from anything that happens on a cricket field, but it is in fact the meeting at which we as a cricket section choose our captains and committee for the coming season.

The presentation evening was a good night, with everyone having a good time. I took my girlfriend along and she enjoyed getting to know all my team-mates. Each captain in turn gave their review of the season and selected their player of the season. I got an honourable mention as "most improved" for the 4ths, while Shaun got the award (quite rightly) for his batting and keeping. I had a little cameo on the microphone as I gave a brief review of the tour, and it seemed to go down well. There was a little bit of fun at the end as we had a "True or False" game (there's several rounds, each round you each guess true or false. If you're wrong you sit down and the last person standing wins) where two of the questions involved me - firstly did 4th team captain Sam register more ducks this season than me? (he did) and secondly did Wilko take more wickets than me? (he didn't).

"Let's have a warm hand..."

A couple of weeks ago I was in Waterstone's, inevitably browsing the cricket section of their selection of sports books, when my eyes alighted on a table of gifts and I spotted something that every spinner should have: hand warmers. They're very clever thingies. From having studied chemistry I'm sure it's some sort of reversible reaction that's highly exothermic one way and endothermic the other, with the upshot that when you press a little clicker inside the pouches, the gel quickly crystallises and heats up. Once they've given their heat off, you pop them in a pan of boiling water for five minutes, the crystals dissolve back into a gel and once they've cooled down they're ready to go again.

I first became aware of them when Steve Smith used them in the Australia 'A' game against England at Hobart (they were hidden in his pockets but they showed up on HotSpot). Next to a wet ball, I can't think of anything more debilitating for a spinner than cold fingers, so they should be a nice little gadget to keep in my kitbag for those "multi-jumper" match-days.

Prayers to St Parasceva

Today is the feast day of Parasceva of the Balkans, the patron saint of spinners.

Yes I know, they probably meant people who twist fibres together to make yarn, but there is no patron saint of cricketers, at least not yet, and there are a fair few spinners who would look rather silly praying to the patron saint of athletes, myself included. As such, since Parasceva is listed as the patron saint of spinners, and I'm a spinner, she's my patron saint.

She is described as an "ascetic" saint, and ascetic is derived from the greek word askēsis, which means practice, training or exercise. "Originally associated with any form of disciplined practice," says Wikipedia, "the term ascetic has come to mean anyone who practices a renunciation of worldly pursuits to achieve higher intellectual and spiritual goals for himself." Given the time and sacrifice it takes to develop a decent leg-break, that's pretty apt for a leg-spinner if you ask me...

Not being a Christian myself, I'm unfamiliar with exactly what one does to celebrate a saint's feast day, but I'm given to understand that emulating some aspects of the saint's life is the done thing. Since Parasceva was known for having given her expensive clothes away, I'm going to take a bin bag full of clothes to a charity shop today. And I've got a little prayer ready:

Oh pious St Parasceva, as your parents could not comprehend your charity, so I pray that my captain is more understanding of my own generosity. I humbly ask you to pray for me as you pray for all spinners. Assist me by your intercession that I may face batsmen long on ego and short on sense, and that, through application of what talent God has given me and what skills many hours of dedicated practise has honed, I may offer unto the heavens a ball most fiercely spun and accurately pitched, so that I may swiftly and mercifully dispatch them on their way. Amen.