Can Et Al add its voice to those protesting the scandalous scheduling of next year’s Ashes? Admittedly, it isn’t as bad as the fart bubble about possibly moving an Australia-England Test to India, but the lack of northern exposure in the 2027 schedule is disappointing.

If Et Al has one home away from home, it is Manchester, and if we had to choose another outside of London, we are big fans of Leeds, but both of the northern venues have been snubbed by planners of the next men’s series.

The women’s Ashes Test will, at least, be played at Headingley, and the men may play a warm-up match at Old Trafford, but even that is contingent on not being in the WTC final.

I’ve got nothing against the other venues, but if you have followed our coverage over the last few series, you will know how much fun we have in Manchester. Birthplace of The Fall, the city is the musical equivalent of Bethlehem for Gideon and a place of pilgrimage for both of us. Gideon’s face lit up the night when we found mosaics of Mark E Smith in a back lane, and there was quite a spring in his step the day we did The Fall pub crawl, finishing as we did at the Smith’s favourite pub and the venue of his infamous wake.

Which gives me an opportunity to republish this picture from 2023 …

Any city where the sidestones squelch under your feet, even in summer, is our sort of city.

Cricket up that way has a distinctive flavour and a rich history.

Mike Atherton, one of the area’s finest exports, wrote an impassioned protest against the decision to snub the northern venues in a column for The Times.

Fifteen million people or thereabouts live in the north and when it comes to cricketing geography, the snub cuts even harder, because no region in the country has a stronger cricketing heritage or love for the game. Yorkshire has more cricket clubs than the entirety of Australia. It is our greatest county, the richest in tradition and has produced more great cricketers than any other. Lancashire hasn’t done too badly either.

Two years ago, then mayor of Manchester, Andy Burnham, wrote to the ECB to complain in similar terms with no apparent impact. The local politician has now been elevated to Prime Minister of the country and advocate of what he calls “Manchesterism”, a philosophy explained in a recent interview.

“I talk about doing for the rest of the country, what I have tried to do for Greater Manchester – Manchester-ism as we call it – and it’s that more interventionist approach to the economy,” he said. “People say, what is Manchester-ism?

“But let me answer it. It is the end of neo-liberalism. The end of trickle down, actually, that didn’t trickle much down to Makerfield or other places like it.”

Burnham’s book, Head North, sets out his cultural reference points which aren’t far from some of his and our generation’s.

“Music was my other obsession and, during the early 80s, my favourite album was Signing On by UB40. The album cover was a copy of the unemployment benefit form from which the band took their name … later on I was getting ready to take my O Levels in 1986, a schoolfriend lent me Hatful of Hollows by The Smiths. It changed everything. From that moment, I was a disciple of Manchester music”.

Burnham saw The Smiths on their 1986 The Queen is Dead tour at Salford Uni, calling it “the best gig I have ever seen". It might seem like a bid to be accepted as cool, but the new PM argues Manchester bands were an important source of pride and inspiration for young people in an area that had “been battered through the 80s, with hammer blow after hammer blow”.

Reading on, Et Al discovered a sporting link with Atherton.

Read more

Sir Garfield Sobers’ funeral will be held in Barbados on Wednesday. The Prime Minister Mia Amor Mottley has declared a National Day of Mourning and directed the army and cabinet to arrange events for a man she describes as one of the country’s “greatest sons”.

“Sir Garfield St Aubrun Sobers, our Sir Garry, did not begin life among privilege or parade,” the PM said when she announced his death to the nation. “He began in Walcott Avenue, Bay Land, a boy of Barbados, shaped by family, community, loss, discipline, and faith. He travelled from Bay Land to Kensington, from Kensington to Sabina Park, and onto the world stage, carrying his country Barbados, carrying the West Indies, and carrying the Caribbean as a whole with distinction.”

The state funeral will be held at the Kensington Oval; flags will fly at half-mast across the country. His body will lie in state over the two days prior to the funeral, first at the Parliament Buildings and then at the cricket ground.

Sobers’ first Test captain Sir Frank Worrell, who died at the age of 42 in 1967, was the first person to be granted a state funeral by an independent Barbados.

Barbados, a small island of about 280,000 people, takes great pride in the accomplishments of its athletes and artists.

Tickets for the funeral are free and are expected to be in great demand.

Et Al has been able to assist in providing tributes for the memorial from some past Australian greats, and organisers are hoping to make the live stream of the event available worldwide. Pat Cummins has also recorded a tribute for the event

Read more

Change comes slowly to the Australian Test team, but when that dam does, eventually, burst, there will be scenes. Until then, let’s just enjoy the calm waters, sunny skies and familiar company.

The 13-man squad for the first of the two Test series against Bangladesh next month looks for all the world just like the 15-man squad for the first Ashes Test of the summer past. And ain’t that a good thing? When you’re losing, you chop, change and gamble; when you’re on a roll, you gather a tight squad and change only when a hamstring pings or a back breaks.

There was churn, but all the familiar faces are back and reportedly back in fine fettle.

Australia managed to beat England 4-1 despite the absences of Cummins for four of those Tests, Hazlewood for the entire summer and Lyon, who was left out in Brisbane and injured in Adelaide.

Cummins is the only addition to those named for Perth last November. Usman Khawaja is absent, retired. Doggett, Abbott and Todd Murphy have all been preparing with the squad in Brisbane.

“While this is a 13-player squad, we have players prepared and available should any adjustments be required in the lead up to these matches,” selector George Bailey said.

“As previously stated, the volume of cricket and schedule across the next 12 months are likely to present further opportunities across all formats for many players.”

The series sees the reunion of the Big Four for the first time since last July’s second Test against the West Indies. Lyon (38), Boland (37), Starc (36) and Cummins (33) are not getting any younger, and cannot realistically be expected to be fit and available for the 21 Tests scheduled across the next 12 months, but are ready to go a few weeks out from the start of the Bangladesh series on August 13.

Read more

England’s issues in the Test arena are, at least, clear, immediate and alliterative; no captain, no coach and a distinct lack of common sense. The two positions have only been recently vacated, but the absence of common sense has been painfully obvious for some years now. Never has such a talented side been so adept at snatching defeat from victory’s mouth.

The search for a coach is of most interest at this point. A new coach will play a role in the search for a new captain, and have to deal with the claim the former Test coach Brendon McCullum has made over Harry Brook, who he says is like a son to him.

Who is going to simultaneously take over from and work with a former husband still living in the back half of the family home?

Who has Rob Key, a man who has miraculously emerged from the carnage with a few scratches and a strange silence, been talking to? Apparently there’s a short list that’s as long as the sort of queue you see in auditions for Britain’s Got Talent. Some with more qualifications than others.

Andy Flower has said ‘thanks, but no thanks’ and Mike Atherton has mourned the missing of that boat, arguing Key should have acted immediately after the Ashes.

That Andy Flower should rule himself out of the England coaching conundrum is not entirely surprising, given the breadth of his portfolio, but it is a disappointment nonetheless, as he is unquestionably the outstanding coach of the moment. His decision reflects partly where he is at, partly where the game is at and partly where the ECB is at, which is to say in a muddle of its own making.

The Guardian is reporting that Langer is now a leading candidate. When Et Al contacted the Australian in England at the start of the process, he had not been contacted. We’ve left him alone since for various reasons, but his management did not respond when we asked if there’d been any movement over the weekend.

When Langer’s name first came up for the Australian job after Darren Lehmann’s demise, he was, understandably, not sure he had the desire to lift that shattered outfit out of the hole it had dug itself. It didn’t take long, however, for him to answer the call of his country.

Last time England were looking for a coach, Langer, shattered by the experience with Australia, was still putting the pieces of himself back together. He said at the time that he could never imagine himself coaching England.

Read more

In Cricket In The Leagues, John Kay describes a match in which Garry Sobers represented Norton and was hit back over his head. Sobers reportedly turned, ran towards the boundary shouting “leave it to me” and took the catch just in front of the sightscreen.

“Leave it to me” - and you could. To Ray Robinson, Sobers was “evolution’s ultimate specimen in cricketers”. He combined faculties of the game as no other, batting from one to nine in the West Indies order, bowling every variety of left-arm delivery, fielding in every position with uniform excellence and captaining with a knowledge that his predecessor Frank Worrell described as encompassing “everything” - this for two decades, with only the barest attenuation in performance as age encroached. Incorporate Sobers’ matches leading world XIs and his international record stretches from horizon to horizon: almost 9000 runs at 58, 265 wickets at 33, and 121 catches.

All this was accomplished, furthermore, with a unique elasticity and elan. Of his batting Barry Richards once observed that Sobers was “the only 360-degree player in the game”; that is, his follow-through ended where his pick-up began, swinging “right through every degree on the compass”. The generosity of swing was matched by a generosity of spirit, for Sobers was also a walker throughout his career - not only a mark of sportsmanship but indicative of a confidence in his abilities that needed no help from luck. And one notes of his bowling that, despite operating under front- and back-foot laws, he bowled only a handful of no-balls in his entire career. Such was his instinctive feeling for cricket’s calibrations.

In the post-colonial West Indies, not surprisingly, Sobers was a point of pride, almost a divine. CLR James - and none wrote better of Sobers than James - saw in him “the living embodiment of centuries of tortured history”, and “a West Indian cricketer, not merely a cricketer from the West Indies”.

The appointment of Worrell to lead West Indies to Australia in 1960-61 is generally regarded as the defining moment in Caribbean cricket. But, as Brian Stoddart suggests in Liberation Cricket: West Indies Cricket Culture, Sobers’ succession, taken on the field in March 1965, was “the real break with the past”. Worrell was courtly, tactful, educated at an English university, a Freemason; Sobers’ background was both indigenous and indigent. He was raised by a widow in a small shack in Bridgetown’s Bay Land, a tenantry created for plantation workers after the cessation of slavery in 1838. Between docks that were a crucible of industrial dispute and a local cricket club for whites only. His rise from exclusion to eminence, Hilary Beckles contends in The Development of West Indies Cricket, sent “a signal of hope for collective redemption”.

In some senses, however, Sobers was an awkward hero in the cause of West Indian self-affirmation through sport. He did not view defeat in a Test as setting back the struggle for national prestige: “Cricketers are entertainers”, he said, when he scandalised fellow countrymen with his costly declaration in Trinidad in 1967-68.

He was awkwardly apolitical too. He explained his controversial visit to Rhodesia for a double-wicket competition in September 1970 by saying he “knew nothing of politics at the time”. His avowal that “there should be no barriers in sport” smacked of an apology for sporting contact with South Africa. (Sobers, in fact, makes clear in The Changing Face of Cricket that he did not play in South Africa himself only because he had “had my fill of publicity and criticism” during the Rhodesian affair; it had “nothing to do with what was happening in the country”.)

He was raised by a widow in a small shack in Bridgetown’s Bay Land, a tenantry created for plantation workers after the cessation of slavery in 1838. Between docks that were a crucible of industrial dispute and a local cricket club for whites only. His rise from exclusion to eminence sent a signal of hope for collective redemption

He was as slow to militancy as some of his successors were quick. It is interesting, for example, to contrast Sobers’ and Viv Richards’ responses to Tony Greig’s vow to make the 1976 West Indians “grovel”. In Hitting Across The Line, Richards recalls it as a “racist dig”, which “gave strength to a lot of the West Indian guys”. In Twenty Years At The Top, Sobers dismisses it as a throwaway line.

On the face of it, then, there is a tension here. Sobers was, for many fellow countrymen, a cultural embodiment. Yet he could appear remote, removed from dimensions of that culture. Why? It may be instructive to consider one of the most intriguing events in West Indian cricket history - or, to be precise, non-events, for ultimately it did not happen.

After his first few years in Test cricket Sobers followed the well-trodden route of many West Indians into the English leagues, representing Radcliffe in the Central Lancashire League from 1958 to 1962. After his feats in 1960-61 he was also lured to South Australia for three seasons, inspiring their first Sheffield Shield win in a decade. “My kind of cricket is world cricket,” he explained breezily in Cricket Crusader. “And the jet plane makes all-year-round cricket possible for the individual world player.”

It was as an “individual world player” representing South Australia that, in early 1963, the invitation from the West Indies board to tour England found him. The tour fee, a derisory £800, irked Sobers: he could earn far more in a summer of one-day-a-week league cricket. He equivocated, discussing the tour with Donald Bradman and Richie Benaud. Both urged him to go, although Bradman agreed that “with your standing you should get more money than anyone in the game”, and Sobers remained ambivalent. What finally persuaded him was a strongly worded letter from Worrell reminding him of his patriotic duty.

Read more

SIR GARFIELD SOBERS

Test Batting

160 inns, 8032 runs, 57.78 avg, 365no hs, 26/30 (50s/100s)

Test Bowling

159 inns, 235 wkts, 34.03 avg, 8-80 bbm, 6/8 (5w, 10w)

(*On 31 Aug 1968, Sobers became first batsman ever to hit six sixes in a single over of a first-class match at St Helen’s while captaining Nottinghamshire against Glamorgan.)

If Dad was still alive, I’d ask him about that time he took me to my first Test match at the MCG in January 1972. I was eight years old and only had eyes for the rock star Dennis Lillee, but was distracted by the exotic sight of Bishen Bedi fielding in a patka, and impressed by the magnitude of such an event. I saw DK bowl late on the second day, and then we drove back to Bendigo, where the radio would have relayed the news of Garry Sobers seeking his 254-run revenge on the Australians over the next few days.

Callow I was, and incapable of comprehending the magnitude of the innings at the time, but the passing years have insisted its significance be recognised and its architect elevated.

The story of Bradman calling the Rest of the World onto the balcony to witness the “best innings he’d ever seen” has become part of the folklore of the game.

Sir Garfield Sobers was 35 then, presumably slowing down, but the innings was a reassertion of his status as the ultimate cricketer. One praised by peers and adored by fans, a man who could bowl spin of several varieties, swing so swift some said he was as fast as Wes Hall in his prime and one who could make magic happen in the field.

Dad’s not alive, but Dennis still is, and Saturday was his 77th birthday. While out on a walk in the bright Perth morning, he paid tribute to the Sobers who played with him like a cat does a mouse in that innings.

Read more

APOLOGIES: Earlier post had incorrect date

When the Chappells put on a dinner, people come to town. When they sound that charity klaxon for those less fortunate, cricket responds in the most heart-warming of ways. The Chappell Foundation is hosting its ninth annual fundraising dinner at the SCG on July 31. The brothers’ old teammate Jeff Thommo Thomson is the special guest, following in the footsteps of his former partner in crime, Dennis Lillee, who lit up the room last year.

The Et Al community has rallied, as you’d expect.

Sam Perry and Ian Higgins, our colleagues from The Grade Cricketer, are flying up from Melbourne to host a table of friends and former teammates. “Purely in a social capacity,” Pez informed listeners this week. “We’re sitting in the back.”

Et Al’s artist, author of the Fisher Classics Substack and Melbourne resident, Dan Toomey, is also crossing the mighty Murray River to be at the SCG for the event. You can see the artwork he has generously donated atop this article. It will be part of our silent auction alongside another artwork from friend of the pod, Paul McGrath of French Cuts, who makes incredible art from the skins of the dead cricket balls he finds in the long grass around Sydney’s suburban cricket grounds. He’s been donating works for years now and is one of those quiet supporters of volunteer-run charities like ours.

At The Chappell Foundation we support homeless kids; we’re really good at it and are shameless in asking people to help us in this cause.

Fortunately, cricket people are generous. People do what they can, and some almost go beyond that. Some pay $10,000 for the front tables where the VIPs hang out, and the rest of us cobble together the $350 dollars for a single seat back where you’ll find the rest of us.

One night, moved by the testimony of one of the children rescued from abuse and nurtured to the point where she has a job and somewhere independent to live, John Singleton thrust a crumpled piece of paper into our chairman’s hands, Darshak Mehta. On it he’d written a note saying to come and see him Monday morning where he would donate $1m.

BluesBerries saxophonist and former Prospect Cricket Club player John McMurtrie is one of our original and most generous benefactors.

Our dinner, I can safely say, is the best night out in Australian cricket this side of a catch-up in the Exeter after a day at the Adelaide Test.

Jimmy Barnes was our guest that year; every other event has featured a former Test star. Shane Warne did the first event; since then we’ve had Adam Gilchrist, Ricky Ponting, Tim Paine, the three Chappells, Pat Cummins, and the aforementioned Lillee.

Adam Spencer brings his wit and charm to the MC role again this year.

You will not find a more frugal charity operation than The Chappell Foundation. We genuinely strive to save every possible cent in the dollar. The directors are volunteers but pay for their tickets. We do not spend any money we raise on office space, staff, fundraising, legal fees, accountants or the like. Our only fixed fee is insurance we are forced to take out and the money the banks skim in fees, but we even try to avoid those getting that by encouraging people to use direct deposit when dealing with us (a nightmare for our treasurer).

All of that means that we’re passing on around 99 cents in the dollar of profits raised (99.4 to be exact). Merivale do us a very good deal on the excellent meals they serve that night in the dining room, while Little Giant kindly donate all the wine and Powder Monkey the craft beer. We’re charity partners with Cricket Australia, and they’re magnificent in their support, as is the SCG (Venues New South Wales) who bend over backwards to ensure that we put on the best night possible. Qantas get our guests here and are one of the organisations that offer the high-end items auctioned on the night by the inimitable Jimmy Smith.

If I were to list all the people who help, I’d get blisters on my fingers.

People come back every year because it is a great event and a unique experience. Have you ever had drinks on the SCG while the sun is setting behind the Members’ Stand? We do that every year, although last year we were unfortunately rained off.

Having endured charity dinners where every moment of your attention is demanded by somebody with a microphone and something to say or sell, we work very hard to ensure that there’s space to mingle and talk.

Youth homelessness is something of a hidden crisis. The charities we support tell us there are over 45,000 people in Australia under 25 who do not have anywhere to live. They couch hop, they expose themselves to danger, and at worst they huddle in abandoned factories, under bridges or wherever they can find that’s relatively sheltered or safe.

To that end, we’ve distributed nearly $6m to charity partners who have over 1000 kids in their care. Operations like the extraordinary BackTrack in New England, Raw Potential in Canberra, Ways in Bondi and Coffee Brigade in Brisbane.

While the streets are unsafe, the one thing we know about most kids who choose to live on the streets rather than at home is that they do it because home is even less safe. Singo’s money helped set up one of the care homes run by Stepping Stone House in inner Sydney where a dozen young people have shelter, care and respect. They’re a remarkable organisation who guarantee children somewhere to live and someone to guide them through to adulthood. They teach them life skills as basic as cleaning their teeth and as necessary as driving a car, before they graduate to renting their own homes. It’s intense work, and it is costly, but it’s a damn sight cheaper than the consequences. Life on the street can often lead to encounters with the justice system. BackTrack’s research says it costs $1.1m a year to incarcerate a young person. Our charity partners can give them security and hope for a fraction of that.

We still have tables (10) or individual seats left for the dinner on July 31. If you can’t get there but would like to contribute to a fantastic cause, there is a donate button on this page.

Sometimes, issues like youth homelessness seem insurmountable, but I attach a letter from one of the outstanding young women who has found her feet after being at Stepping Stone House. It shows you what good can be done by good people when the resources are there.

To all the staff at Stepping Stone House,

I couldn’t find the words to thank each of you individually, so I hope this message
can somehow express what you’ve all meant to me.To say I’ve tried to escape a few times would be an understatement. There were days when I was convinced that running was easier than staying. But every time I found myself sitting at a bus stop, ready to leave, it was never a bus that pulled up.

Instead, it was a little Toyota RAV4 with one of you workers behind the wheel, a smile on your face, and a simple invitation to hop in. No lectures. No judgment. Just the reminder that whatever came next, we would face it together, and that I didn’t have to do it alone. You showed me that I wasn’t alone in this big, scary world, even when I felt completely lost in it.

And even calling you “workers” doesn’t feel quite right. Somewhere along the way,
that title stopped fitting. The relationships we built went far beyond staff and resident.

You became the people I called when I was falling apart, the people who celebrated
with me when things went right, and the people who showed up time and time again when I needed someone in my corner. You were mentors, role models, cheerleaders, safe people, and sometimes exactly the family I needed in that moment. The care you gave was never just a job, and I hope you know how much that has meant to me.

There were many moments where you guys could’ve just given up. You could’ve just seen a lost cause. You could’ve just seen what everyone else saw....an angry girl, a child who hated the world but hated herself even more. Someone who pushed people away, lashed out, and made it hard to see past the walls she had built.

Instead, you chose to see a person worth fighting for. You stood by me through the
hard days, the angry days, the messy days, and the days when I made it difficult to
care. You never stopped showing up, and over time, that taught me something I will
carry with me forever.

You guys always cheered and clapped so loudly for every achievement, that I forgot
who wasn’t present. You celebrated every win, no matter how big or small, and made me feel proud of myself even when I struggled to see what there was to be proud of.

Thank you for the support, patience, guidance, and care you’ve shown me
throughout the years. You have all played a part in helping me grow into a stronger,
more confident, passionate (in the best way), and determined person. There were
times when I needed someone to believe in me before I could believe in myself, and so many of you did exactly that.

Stepping Stones has been more than just a place to live. It has been a place where
I’ve felt safe, supported, encouraged, accepted, and loved. The memories,
conversations, laughs, life lessons, and even the tough moments have helped shape who I am today.

For a long time, I thought moving out of Stepping Stones would be the end of my
story. Now I realise it’s not an ending at all but in fact the beginning of a new and
beautiful chapter.

I’m sure this next chapter will come with challenges, but you’ve taught me
something I’ll carry with me forever, every new challenge brings a new adventure.
And because of everything you’ve given me, I’m ready for this next adventure.
I know this isn’t really goodbye; it is the end of an important chapter. I will always
be grateful for everything you’ve done for me and for the impact you’ve had on my life.

Thank you for being part of my journey. Thank you for helping me find a home
when I was convinced I didn’t belong anywhere. I will carry what you’ve taught me,
the memories we’ve made, and the kindness you’ve shown me wherever life takes me next.

With love and gratitude,
Ava

Around the time the ECB announced Brendon McCullum was toast, Travis Head’s moustacheoid mug was being rendered, in shades of green and gold, onto the wall of an Inner West coffee shop.

There’s something appropriate about that. After all, it was Travball that delivered the fatal blow to Bazball in Perth at the start of last summer. England took a long time to bleed out, and some might say they’re still bleeding, but it was that Head innings in Perth that signalled the start of the end for that bombastic experiment.

On first hearing the news, I’d speculated that locals had chipped in to celebrate the Sir Trav Slayer of Bazball, but that wasn’t it.

On Tuesday, Trav was in Marrickville shooting an advertisement for the summer that involved the painting of a mural on the wall of Espresso Connect Marrickville, purveyor of fine coffee machines and accessories since the turn of the century.

Et Al was all over this yarn. The People’s Republic of Marrickville is my turf, and I, as I explained to the crew shooting the advertisement, am a local busybody. Opening an interesting new business? That’s me pushing the door open when you’re fitting out the shop to see how it’s all going. In the process of making a new beer? Hope you don’t mind if I look over your shoulder and mutter about the tiresome ubiquity of pale ales. Drove over from the Eastern suburbs to queue up for Vietnamese? I heard. I got this former swamp covered.

Read more

Is the ex still in the room with us now?

Brendon McCullum’s time as the head coach of the Test team has come to an end. He is, however, going to hang around and lead the white-ball teams.

It is a grown-up solution, and one that will stress-test whether two people really can be friends after a break-up. Harry, Jofra and Jacob will now spend their summers with Andy Flower, but they can still visit Brendon on the weekends.

On the surface, it’s a decision that makes sense, and also no doubt saves a bit on McCullum’s severance payout. England’s Test side is struggling, so he’s been removed from that post. But their T20 team is flying, so there he’s staying put. It might not work in the end, but it’s a reasonable starting position.

One area of concern however, is how it can work for English cricket’s main character over the last four years now to be operating off-Broadway. Test is still best here. And the man who used to have cricket named after him, now won’t be calling the shots.

Read more

Baz and the boys had a sanctioned drink the night before he was sacked as Test coach. McCullum gave the side permission to celebrate a T20 series win over India, less than 24 hours before he was given his marching orders from the key job.

And now England finds itself without a Test coach or a Test captain. Losing seven of your last nine Tests can do that to you, but this was bigger than just performances. This is a cultural reboot, an admission that the grand free-wheeling experiment that was Bazball under Brendon McCullum and Ben Stokes, Batman and Robin, had gone awry amidst a string of failures, increasing controversy and internal acrimony.

Rob Key, the svengali, survives, but the relationship between McCullum and Stokes, once so strong, had turned septic according to those who knew and has cost both.

There was some thought that Stokes’ self-immolation during the third Test would save McCullum, but the captain appeared to throw his arms around his old mate soon after lighting the match. He didn’t deserve to go out alone, and in some ways he’s assured that he does not.

The scorch marks will be visible on the walls of the English dressing room to come.

Read more

Having lost its way, English cricket has now officially lost its mind.

Rattled by a series of ill-disciplined incidents on and off the field, frustrated that a midnight curfew was not enough to correct the issues that have seen Bazball pivot from saviour to scourge, it has codified that controversial curfew and bolted on a booze ban just so everybody knows they’re really, really, really serious.

The head master is unhappy, and the whole class is in detention until grades improve.

The Telegraph’s Will Macpherson broke the story on Friday, reporting that a new set of rules, so extensive they are set out into two sections, have been imposed on England’s cricketers in the immediate aftermath of the incident involving captain Ben Stokes and bowler Gus Atkinson at a Chelsea nightclub.

The team’s reputation had already been called into question following a number of alcohol related incidents in the summer, one which involved white ball captain Harry Brook on the eve of an ODI, and the other involving Ben Duckett during the team’s mid-Ashes holiday.

The curfew was the first acknowledgement of a team culture gone awry and an administration that was trying to wrest back lost control; the drinking ban is a doubling down on that.

Macpherson reports that the first section of the new rules state that for “every day of an England men’s home series and tour”:

• The midnight curfew is in place

• Players cannot appear under the influence of alcohol in public, or post on social media about any “alcohol-related material or activities”

• Players must inform the team management or security if they are out of the hotel after 10pm, including changes of plan.

But, wait, there’s more. The second section deals with a set of recommendations and more onerous restrictions that apply “from the day before the start of any match until the end of the day after that match has finished”:

• “We recommend that no alcohol be consumed”

• Players cannot drink at all in public, including public areas of the team hotel, unless “specifically approved by Key or head coach Brendon McCullum”

• Players are “strongly discouraged” from consuming alcohol in private in this period because “preparation, recovery and professionalism must take priority”.

Asked to clarify what happens when a match finishes on day five, the ECB confirmed that the ban continues for day six.

The codification follows confusion that saw its captain exploit a loophole when called out for breaching the curfew which he’d reportedly helped craft.

Drinking isn’t the problem for this team or its management. It probably couldn’t even be categorised as a symptom of the problem. It wasn’t drinking that cost England the Ashes, so much as a lack of “preparation” and “professionalism”.

You have to wonder if England’s players are being treated as children because they have behaved as such, or England team management has turned 180 degrees from its libertarian stylings to something more befitting a reform school as a way of appeasing their employers, and presumably hanging on to their jobs.

Read more

This time last year at the State Library of Victoria, board and senior management were hard at work at their so-called Strategic Reorganisation Change Proposal. That meant chair Christine Christian; chief executive officer Paul Duldig; chief operating officer John Wicks; chief digital officer Paula Bray; director, experience Joel McGuinness; director, people and partnerships Kath Brown. Change came all right: it won’t be long before, of that contingent, only Brown remains.

The quiet top-level makeover since our successful campaign to thwart the SRCP continued last week. The library board revealed its new CEO as Vicki McDonald - in charge of the State Library of Queensland for the last eleven years. McDonald’s background, in fact, is in collecting institutions rather than management. Out-of-the-box thinking right there: the State Library of Victoria hasn’t been run by an actual librarian since Anne-Marie Schwirtlich went to Canberra in 2011. So let’s take this at face value as a good sign, along with the recent appointments to the board of some adults - new chair Helen Silver and new directors Christine Mackenzie and Peter McPhee. This pipe dream seems to have been forgotten too, although this executive appointment continues to rankle, this board member is attracting some unwanted publicity, and nobody wants to mention the war.

Let’s just say that there’s a bit to do: relations to repair between management and staff, reputation to rebuild with the literary community, service standards to restore after their slide during COVID, maybe even a look at the uses to which the library is being put for which it was never designed. In April, for example, there was a disturbing incident in the La Trobe Library, involving the damage to a unique and precious book deposited by the artists Gracia Harby and Louise Jensen, and displayed in its central dais as part of its Looped display.

I’ll let Gracia and Louise tell the story of its destruction as they related it here.

We’d thought the greatest threat to our artists’ books, on loan in our Looped display, was light. Sadly, it turns out the greatest threat was a member of the public launching themselves at the heritage listed dais for a selfie, at an after-hours speed dating event in late April.

As the glass of the lid to the cabinet broke, so, too, did the artists' book beneath it, an edition of the aptly titled, it transpires, Disrupted and rumpled. The shards of glass cut and scratched every section of the concertina and the base on which it rested. Damaged beyond repair, we have been shocked that such a thing could occur. The limited edition was one of five artists’ books displayed on custom-made collage scenic bases created especially for SLV. We remain absolutely stunned and ultimately dismayed that such a thing could transpire. The stuff of fiction, surely, in a safe haven for the curious.

The library is a venue for ‘selfies’ at ‘speed dating events’? This must be why ex-chair Christian last year called the library a ‘temple of engagement’, although it sounds distinctly like ‘party central’. This is what comes of management treating the library simply as a space or a destination, of being transfixed by visitation numbers, and of neglecting its core purposes. Gracia and Louise are long-term library users who have drawn for inspiration extensively on its collection. Yet more than ten weeks later, the matter has still not been satisfactorily resolved.

Speaking of long-running irritations, readers of Et Al will be aware of the imbecilic closure of the beloved cafe Mr Tulk for the benefit of the unappealing corporate catering behemoth The Big Group. We have at last had a glint of what’s to come: staff were advised on their intranet this week that warm and welcoming Mr Tulk will be replaced by….brace yourselves….

While more information will be shared with staff as work progresses, we can reveal that the new café will be named Biblio – which according to the Macquarie Dictionary is derived from the Greek word biblion, meaning, ‘book’.

Wow. Just wow. I mean, if ever a group of people did not need to be told the meaning of ‘biblio’, it is surely the staff of a library. But wait there’s more.

With the lease last renewed in 2011, the terms of the new agreement deliver significant value for the Library and is an exciting opportunity to reimagine and elevate the Library’s food and beverage offering.

‘Reimagine and elevate’? I….can’t….even….

Australian company The Big Group employs over 2,000 staff and has extensive experience in events and hospitality.

Cafes not so much. And why the pre-emptive insistence on The Big Group being an ‘Australian company’? Could it betray some sensitivity that a major shareholder is UK-based reimagination elevator Compass Group PLC? Anyway I can’t wait not to go, can you? Because it will be a cold day in hell before I spend a cent in somewhere called Biblio - which, by the way, means ‘book’, did you know? What’s that? Sounds like a grudge in the making? No, it’s already made. And, as Fran Lebowitz said, grudges are simply a sign you have standards.

Still, let’s be grateful for what we have, eh? I’ve been in the Redmond Barry every day this week, the collection is still awesome, the staff are still terrific, and the building sublime. And a library run by a librarian? It’s so crazy it might work.

PS: This part of Et Al is about to take three and a bit weeks of Travis Head-style ‘personal leave’ in an associate member of the International Cricket Council, but otherwise far from cricket, laptop and phone. So be kind to Pete while I’m away, and don’t privatise anything without me.

The towering figure of Shapoor Zadran was Afghanistan cricket’s first true poster boy - a long-haired, larger-than-life fast bowler who carried his team from dusty refugee camps to the global stage. His death from a rare illness, a day before his 39th birthday in India, has left Afghan fans in tears, and touched the wider cricketing world.

For those who followed Afghanistan’s improbable rise in international cricket, Zadran was not merely part of the story - he was its personification. The headband, the flowing hair, the long, rhythmic run-up and the explosive release: he looked every bit the fast bowler from a different era, a throwback to when pace was theatre as much as technique.

Zadran was fast and furious on the field. Eyes locked on the target, he charged in with long, rhythmic, almost regal strides. He did not glide; he attacked the crease. For Afghan fans, especially in the early days, watching him bowl was to witness a kind of defiance - a refusal to be invisible on a stage dominated by cricket’s traditional powers.

It was a surge to surmount obstacles too. Zadran belonged to the first generation of Afghanistan’s cricket pioneers - young men who discovered the game not in structured academies or lush outfields, but in the harsh, uncertain reality of displacement. Many of them, including Zadran, were raised in Pakistan’s refugee camps during decades of war at home. It was there, amid dust and deprivation, that cricket took hold - improvised, shared, and cherished.

When these young men returned to Afghanistan, they brought the game with them, carrying bats and balls into a country rebuilding itself in fragments. Zadran stood at the heart of that transformation, lending Afghanistan presence on the field, legitimising them as an emerging cricket force. Off the field, however, he was the very opposite - warm, witty, disarmingly gentle, carrying himself with a quiet humility. His smile came easily, and his humour softened the most serious conversations.

I first met him in Karachi, where Afghanistan were holding a training camp ahead of the 2015 World Cup in Australia and New Zealand - a defining chapter in their cricketing journey, when every major tournament felt like both an achievement and an audition.

Karachi’s coastal heat was relentless, but Zadran seemed unfazed. He ran in again and again, pounding the pitch with determination, working on his rhythm, his swing, his control. When I asked him about his expectations for the World Cup, he spoke with grounded confidence of his pride in representing Afghanistan on one of cricket’s biggest stages and his belief they belonged.

After the formal interview, our conversation drifted into more personal territory. When I mentioned my village, Sharana, in Afghanistan’s central highlands, his face lit up with recognition and warmth. Calling over a few teammates, he began to share a story - one that revealed far more about the roots of Afghan cricket than any statistic or match report ever could.

As he told it, in those early days, their group of young Afghan players in Kabul had little more than ambition. Resources were scarce; equipment was limited; even securing regular meals was a challenge. Yet their passion for the game kept them going. Then came an unlikely source of support - a modest, old hotel in Kabul’s bazaar that began to host and feed them.

The arrangement was simple and deeply human. The players would stay overnight, eat whatever was available - sometimes fresh, sometimes leftover - and in return, they would continue to pursue the game they loved. For a couple of years, this arrangement remained in place, neither a sponsorship nor a program - simply an act of generosity, and of belief in this group of young men.

When Zadran revealed that the owner of that Sharanwal Hotel was from my village, he did so with a wide, knowing smile. In that moment, the vast and often fractured geography of Afghanistan seemed to shrink into something intimate and interconnected. Stories like these help explain why Afghan cricket resonates so deeply with its people. This is not just a team assembled through systems and funding; it is a collective born out of struggle, sustained by community, and carried forward by individuals who refused to give up.

Beyond villages and borders, the Afghan team’s rise captured imaginations across the cricketing world, their journey too compelling to ignore. For many Afghans, particularly those in the diaspora, cricket became a source of identity, a reminder of connection, and, at times, a rare cause for collective celebration in stadiums from Multan to Melbourne. So Zadran’s passing is not just the loss of a former international cricketer, but of a symbol of how far Afghanistan has come. In mourning him, we remember our dreams of something better, partly realised but also abiding.

For better and for worse, the United States has been the capital country of sport for the last month.

The twenty-third edition of the FIFA World Cup is unfolding before our eyes. The National Basketball Association just wrapped up a thrilling finals series in Texas in which the New York Knicks win their first title in over 50 years. Even the White House Lawn has served as a venue, with the Ultimate Fighting Championship hosting an event to….it’s still hard to believe I’m writing this….celebrate the semiquincentennial of of American independence. Or Donald Trump’s 80th birthday. Whichever you regard as more important.

You would be forgiven for hardly noticing that there is also cricket underway. Major League Cricket’s fourth season has been cruelly swamped by the general tsunami of sport. The MLC started a week before the World Cup and will finish a day before the final, leaving the burgeoning T20 tournament to pine away for lack of attention.

That said, those distracted by the quadrennial event haven’t missed a lot. Thus far, it has been a strangely even tournament with all teams losing their second match and all but one side winning their second and fourth matches. The bottom side is just two points, or one win, off the top spot, and there have been no clear standout players – although Mitch Owen’s 68-ball 155 and Dasun Shanaka’s death over double hat-trick deserve mention.

Read more

Pete and Gid catch upon the latest twists in the privatisation saga, and the captaincies of England and Pakistan, then settle down for a chat with Paul ‘Blocker’ Wilson, his journey in umpiring, the stresses of the international and franchise world, and the state of Major League Cricket. Also: does cricket need a benevolent despot?

You Tube -

Spotify -

Also available on Apple Podcasts

Talking Heads -

The current work on possible CA governance reform was agreed as part of the Nazare process. If Nazare were paused, that governance work would logically be paused as well. No Member sought, and the meeting did not agree, that all Nazare work should stop until governance reform is resolved.

The good old Nazare process, eh?

Only the bravest dare to catch the monster wave that breaks on that picturesque Portuguese coastline, a wave so large that those who ride it write their names into legend and one so cataclysmic that life has been lost and terrible injury sustained when that attempt goes wrong.

The BBL privatisation process is no place for the faint-hearted either, with developments in the past few days ensuring a process that had shifted from the collaborative to the chaotic and compromised is caught inside again.

‘Project Nazare’ was the name given to the BBL privatisation push in the original Boston Consulting Group report advocating such a move.

And so Australian cricket, having invoked a surfing metaphor during its closed-door meetings, presumably with visions of the franchises being towed onto that huge breaking wave of private capital, finds itself not so much riding toward a bright new BBL future, as being pounded by in the shallows.

On the day the NRL, run by majestic dictator Peter V’landys, announced a seriously impressive broadcast deal, cricket turned on itself once more, states divided, confusion rampant, claim and counterclaim.

The leaders of Australian cricket, the people tasked with steering the game, can’t even agree on what was agreed to. And that’s a situation which should concern every lover of the game.

Read more

Today is MS Dhoni’s forty-fifth birthday. He has not played a competitive game since May last year. He now spends most of his time appearing, investing, endorsing, encouraging, and generally being genuflected to. Having given up Test cricket in 2014, he has confined himself the last six years to the Indian Premier League, but last season was stricken by a slow-healing calf injury. He was constantly rumoured to be on the brink of selection. He was hitting it well! He bowled in the nets! His return was delayed, then delayed again, then finally scrubbed altogether. Early on, he was going to games with the Chennai Super Kings squad, until the distraction of his mere presence grew too great. Yet he nominally remains an active player. Is there more? Captain Ruturaj Gaekwad recently gave an update on Dhoni’s future, which was….he didn’t know.

‘Cult of personality’ has been an expression widely used in the context of Ben Stokes’s ascendancy. Indian cricket says: hold my beer. As Mandela became Mandiba, so Dhoni is now Thala - Tamil for ‘leader’. Whether or not he’s playing, every CSK home game takes place before a sea of humanity wearing replica shirts bearing the number 7. No-one dares say he should retire; it’s only permissible to say he shouldn’t. What gives? If you inhabited an echo chamber of sycophancy, I dare say you’d probably learn to enjoy it too. But it also suits everyone for Dhoni to stick around, so much of CSK’s brand, sponsorship structure and potential resale value is vested in Dhoni; he is almost worth more dead (not playing) than alive (playing), non-performance obviating the risk of underperformance. Fans can ascribe CSK’s bottom-bumping season to Dhoni’s absence; Dhoni’s adjacency offers the hope of success without real change or reform.

Retirement, eh? It used to be so simple. You got old, you lost a bit, you saw the end, you took your leave. Sporting mortality was, of course, unavoidably seasoned with melancholy. In Terrence Rattigan’s The Final Test (1953), the veteran Sam Palmer, with his meditative pipe and aldermanic girth, faces what looms as his last Test at The Oval with a mix of resignation and chagrin. ‘The trouble with making a game of profession is that you’re at the top too young,’ he muses. ‘The rest of the way’s a gentle slide down. Not so gentle sometimes. It makes one feel so ruddy useless and old.’

Yet I realised watching it again last night that Palmer never actually retires. He never mulls over an announcement; he does not conclave with his agent and sponsors. Rather does he fend off inquiries (‘How old are you, Sam?’; ‘None of your business’) and deflect blandishments (‘Just wishing I was 20 years younger’; ‘Don’t worry Sam, you’re just as good as ever you were’). It’s essentially the crowd that calls time: when Palmer is out for a Bradman-esque duck on the stroke of lunch on the final day, spectators spontaneously swarm the field, chorusing their acclamation to the balcony. Palmer’s in no position, really, to say: ‘Oh, reckon I might go on playing a bit of white ball stuff, then I’ll see how I feel about the two Tests in Bangladesh, and I’m available for The Hundred draft’. He knows the time is ripe, and by the end of the film, shares with his son a sense of hope in the lifted burden (and also the promise of love contained in a romantic subplot):

You know, it’s a funny thing, Reg. When Sid Thomson lifted his finger this morning, I thought to myself: “This is it, Sam Palmer. This is the finish.” But you know, I’m just wondering whether it wasn’t really the beginning.

Read more

Pete and Gideon celebrate Australia's comfortable and emphatic seven-wicket victory over England in the Women's T20 World Cup final, revere Beth Mooney and toast Sophie Molineux for their flawless tournaments, and enjoy Ellyse Perry's golden twilight. Catch up with our match reports here and here, complete with Thomas Miles’s scoresheets, and also the amazing story of the impresario behind the original Women’s World Cup.

You Tube -

Spotify -

Also available on Apple Podcasts

Anita Lane -

The final? Though it rightly involved the oldest rivals and hitherto unbeaten teams, it wasn’t quite the showpiece one would have wished for. It could have done with a better pitch than the dry, slow, low yardage that Lord’s rolled out. The Long Room was thinly populated, the crowd patriotic but subdued. Mind you, the Australians left them little to cheer. Even Nat Sciver-Brunt, fresh from her bold semi-final innings, struggled to break free, taking three boundaries from her first fourteen deliveries then two from thirty-nine more. The Australian batting was then rather a clinic, with Beth Mooney and Phoebe Litchfield adding 100 in sixty-seven balls. Mooney’s lofted cover drive off Sophie Ecclestone and Litchfield’s reverse swept six off Linsey Smith lit up the balmy afternoon.

Read more

The Australians were, as they have been all tournament and in so many tournaments before this one, too good for England in the Women’s T20 World Cup final at Lord’s overnight.

It is the 7th T20 victory for a side which appears to have taken its game to even higher levels. Every time the opposition closes the gap, the Australian women find a way to re-establish it.

Clinical, professional and always in control, the rebooted outfit held England to 4-150 after sending the home side into bat in front of a 28,000-strong crowd on a glorious day at Lord’s.

Skipper Nat Sciver-Brunt led the way with a steady 58no for 53 balls, and while a half century in a final is nothing to sniff at, the slow pace left the door ajar for the Australians in their reply.

Freya Kemp’s 44no from 28 balls helped lift the total, which would normally be enough in this format, but the opposition are an elite outfit, and if they wanted this final they needed to be bolder.

The Australian bowlers were relentless on a wicket that wasn’t easy to score on. Lucy Hamilton opened with Kim Garth, and picked up her first World Cup wicket when she had Amy Jones caught at backward point with her second delivery.

The decision to leave Alana King out must have been a tough one, but it is a reflection of the depth of talent in this outfit that she missed a number of games including the big one.

Georgie Voll hit the first delivery of the Australia innings for four, and Australia were in control from that moment until the winning runs were scored from a leg bye in the 18th. The young opener was gone early, but Beth Mooney had, as Beth Mooney does, locked in on her way in an innings that further confirms her class, skill and calm.

Mooney (64 from 49) and Phoebe Litchfield (48 from 35) put on a partnership of 100 in a display that was a batting masterclass. They were just too good for an England side many of whom were left in tears at the match’s end. Mooney plays with the opposition like a cat with a mouse, bringing the fielders up with short, sharp runs and then knocking it over their heads for four. There’s not a gap she can’t squeeze a ball through.

After the match, the veteran said she was relieved just to make the final.

It has been well documented that we haven’t come this far in the last two World Cups. I just woke up this morning grateful to be here. I was rusty at the start but it has been nice to have some consistency with the gloves and play a role. It was important to settle the dugout in the powerplay (with the bat) Phoebe came out and announced herself from ball one.

This has been on the calendar for a little while. It’s nice to be part of the squad first and foremost and have a role to play. It’s fun to be here. There’s been a lot of evolution in this group over 12 months, so it’s nice to cap it off..

Read more