Jonathan Wilson Interview

My next guest for a cricket chat is the journalist and author Jonathan Wilson. In addition he is the founder and editor of The Blizzard a quarterly football magazine, indeed the majority of his writing is about football. You can find his match reports the The Guardian and features in The Observer

He writes with the wonderful combination of razor sharp attention to detail and a huge desire to uncover the soul and passion behind the stories. From the classic English language book on football tactics with “Inverting the Pyramid” to incredible studies of the culture and social history that shaped football and indeed life in Hungary, Argentina, and Eastern Europe. He actually has 11 books under his belt, I would love to know what formation he lines them in?

He has also written about cricket as well as playing the game at club level in Essex and for the Authors XI. His long form piece about parents, loss, memory and lance Gibbs for The Nightwatchman it both searingly honest and beautifully tender.

I spoke with Jonathan a few days before he was set to head off to cover the Football World Cup. which was due to take place in the sort of heat, that he would have fancied for a decent batting track in Essex.

Thank you for joining me today for a chat. What are your earliest cricketing memories?

I think it was, I know everyone says this, but it probably was the 81 Ashes series. I remember wanting to go and play cricket in the garden but my parents and grandparents were very reluctant as they wanted to watch the cricket on TV, I think it would have been the Old Trafford Test.

The first game I really remember watching would be the following summer, the Lord’s test against Pakistan when, if you remember England lost a load of wickets chasing quite a low total. Mudassar Nazar ran through the England top order with his dibbley dobbley swing quite suddenly. They ended up with Ian Botham and Vic Marks at the crease, they went off for bad light and came back the next morning needing, maybe forty something to win. They actually knocked off the runs pretty easily. I remember being incredibly tense that morning, not really understanding that batting in poor light, with the elements against you, is totally different to batting in brilliant sunshine the next day.

Then one of the great things about this job is that Vic Marks became a colleague, and I remember one Christmas lunch sitting with him and a bottle of red wine and telling him that was my earliest cricket memory.

Excellent, and as all bowlers do, I expect he enjoyed talking about his batting!

Yes.

Did you play cricket as a child?

I played in the garden and played obsessively in the garage, throwing the ball for myself. Which is still why the only shot I can play is the cut. If I played the ball off my legs, it was going to hit the tumble drier. That was bad news, not just because it left marks but it would make this terrible resonant bang, that my mam would hear!

In my junior school we had two or three games, then it was the time of the teachers strikes and so all extracurricular stuff stopped. I blame that for the end of my chess career as well!My senior school was attached to a different junior school. They took cricket very seriously, so suddenly it was a totally different level, but they weren’t particularly interested in helping people who had enthusiasm but hadn’t previously had any coaching.

I Played at university and really enjoyed that, playing sort of second team, wasn’t the highest standard, playing around Oxfordshire villages which was lovely. I then basically had given it up.

There is a mate of mine who is the grandson of Lord Denning, there used to be an annual game of Lord Denning’s XI V. Whitchurch (the village he lived in), so I was invited to play in that for three or four years. Basically, that was the only cricket I was playing.Then in 2012, I was at The Oval for the test against South Africa, when Graham Smith (131) and Hashim Amla (311) batted for weeks! I was working with Matt Thacker and he introduced me to Charlie Campbell and Tom Holland who had resurrected The Authors XI Cricket Team, and they persuaded me to come and play for them.

Having not played for a while, was there some trepidation about that?

Yes, because I hadn’t played for years. I actually made 39 in my first innings, which I think is still my highest Authors score. I came in at 16-4 and put on a hundred with Jon Hotten. Of that 39, I think there were two pulls for 4, every other scoring shot was a dab behind square on the off side!

They didn’t stick an extra fielder down there?

Well my dabs very good, I can direct it!One of the great things about getting to your late thirties is that you may have a bit of money. So, I was able to pay for coaching. I’m coached now, and it’s great. I at least know how to drive, even if I can’t actually do it. In March/April time I’ll go and have a two-hour session every week with a coach and it’s made me a much better player.

Then once you start playing, you hear about other teams being short of players, so you go and play for them. There was a spell when I played for four different teams. I now play league cricket in Essex. Marcus Berkmann has a team called The Rain Men, he’s written a couple of books about playing terrible amateur cricket, he got in touch through Charlie Campbell. I went and played with them.

Then I was playing in a game for them at Hutton Cricket Club in Essex, I played in a charity a Fenners previously with one of the Hutton players and after the game, he asked me if I was free next Saturday. I was, so that’s how I got involved with league cricket. They are now my most regular team, that’s the 5ths, so it’s not a great standard. Takes me about ninety minutes to get there, which is a time to sit and read, or listen to a podcast as I don’t do any work commute.

How was your form last season?

I got my first ever century!

Yeah, to be honest that had been the thing that had kept me going. After I started to have batting coaching, suddenly it clicked. I’d scored 77 not out, we lost by 1 wicket, we were chasing 160, we were 156-6 and we lost 4-0! I was stranded up the other end on 77 not out against decent bowlers. That’s the best innings I’ve ever played.

The following week, I got 74 in the league, and I thought I’d cracked it, batting’s dead easy.That was five or six years ago and I’ve struggled on from then. But the thing that kept me going was the thought that, on a good day, I think I could do this.

Even getting my first half century was a big moment, that was out at Reach Cricket Club in Cambridgeshire on a terrible pitch, literally electricity pylons going across the ground. The least glamorous place.

For the century though, we were bottom of the league, struggled with availability last summer both for me and the team. I think I only played five league games due to various things. It was very odd, we were bottom, hadn’t won a game all season, playing the team who were second in the league. It was at home, our pitch is a good one, the strip is on the top of a hill, so you get full value for your shots.

It was my 46^th birthday and on the way, I thought to myself. Wouldn’t a birthday ton be a great thing. We’d bowled really well, bowling them out for 180 odd. I opened, the captain took the first ball, that over was a maiden. There was quite a decent LBW shout against me first ball, one of those where you look around and think, Oh no…The next ball was a full toss, which I absolutely creamed through the covers for 4.

From then on, I couldn’t miss. Every time they dropped short it was four runs, every time they over pitched, four runs thank you very much. As a Sunderland (Football Club) fan, what was really appropriate was that the 50 came off 37 balls, we won the cup in 1937.Then the hundred came off 73 balls, the other time we won the cup was 1973. So, yes 117 not out off 80 odd balls and we won by 10 wickets.

Now it must be said that although they were second in the league, it was Eid and I think that hit their pool of players, but hey, that’s not my fault!I ended up averaging 40 odd with the bat in the league and maybe 14.8 with the ball, which makes it look like an extraordinary season, but I have to say that apart from that day, I didn’t really feel in good nick at any point.

How did you feel after finally making a Ton?

Totally drained. You know those times when you know you aren’t feeling the emotion because your body won’t let you do so. Then I got home, and my Mrs said, “what would you have said to your Mam?” (she died three years ago) And I completely broke down. Somehow cricket and my Mam were tied up together, it was such an emotional thing. I was very aware, when I scored it, that my body was saying – Don’t react to this.

Hutton is a great club, and what is really lovely is the spirit there. We can put out five teams which is great, the Women’s section of the club is absolutely thriving, they are very good at bring kids through and also, all the teams mix together.There is no sense that the first’s are up on a pedestal, separate to the rest.

I got back to the clubhouse and the number of people who congratulated me, or gave me a hug, it was a lovely feeling. You knew that they actually cared about me, it was lovely to feel part of this bigger thing.

It was a great day, the thirds were involved in a really tight game. When we got there, the opposition needed around 25 to win with 2 wickets in hand. With about 8 runs needed our captain took a brilliant catch at Short Extra. Then we won it by 1 run, thanks to the stupidest run out. The other team had brought along a group of fans as well, we were all watching and you thought, this is what it should be. Fifty or sixty people standing on the boundary with a pint, them cheering their runs, us cheering our wickets. It was just a perfect situation.

(Picture below is of Jonathan in the post century glow)

Going back to you really getting involved with cricket, were there any players that you were particularly drawn to when you were younger?

Well, I was a big fan of John Embury (I didn’t understand rebel tours and apartheid, so I feel quite uncomfortable now looking back at it), I am a slow off spinner, I was a bowler rather than a batsmen. Then I had problems with my shoulder, so I reinvented myself as an opening batsmen. Embury was probably my big mid eighties hero.

Then Graham Gooch around the turn of the Nineties. I was very much on his side in the Gooch/Gower spat – “Work harder, don’t be a fancy dan who has all the time in the world. Work!” Although I have slightly softened on that stance now.

Growing up in the North East, Durham weren’t part of the first class set up. Did you go anywhere to watch first class cricket?

Yes, Durham didn’t join until 1992, so there were two things that I did. We used to go to Jesmond in Newcastle to Northumberland’s homeground, which oddly has been taken over by my old school. A travel agent used to put on two exhibition one day games there every summer.

It started as Durham and Northumberland V. The Rest of The World, which was very much how life felt in the early 80’s! Then it became England V. The Rest of The World. That was great, really big name players like Derek Randall, a very young Nasser Hussain, Clive Rice, Carl Rackemann, Terry Alderman, Martin Crowe, Farokh Engineer, it was very friendly and it was easy to get autographs.

So that was my first experience of watching those sorts of players, I was probably 7 or 8 years old, when I first went, and we went every year for 4 or 5 years. Occasionally Yorkshire would play a John Player League game in Middlesbrough, so we went to a few games there. I remember seeing Martyn Moxon hit three 6’s against Kent. Then when Durham became a first class county. I’d go with my mates to Darlington particularly as Feethams was easy to get to.

The Jesmond ground is very close to Gosforth and the South Northumberland ground, Durham have started playing some games there. They played a Royal London game there. Now I love “Out Ground” Cricket but even by the standards of that it was pretty out there. I went with a mate who thankfully lived ten minutes from the ground, we got to the ground and were told that we were meant to bring our own chairs! That hadn’t been mentioned anywhere. So we decided that I would get a space, whilst they nipped home to pick up a couple of chairs. They have even played a championship game there this summer.

It must have been very exciting when Durham broke the old order of 17 first class counties.

Yes, but the problem was that we were rubbish for a long time! Obviously, we had Botham and Simon Brown, so you would hope that they could prepare a pitch that would allow Brown to take 8-30 and we might have a chance.

In 2007 I’d been covering England v. West Indies at Chester le-Street, it was a great thing to see test cricket there. The day after that, Durham were playing Essex in the semi-final of Friends Provident Trophy, I’d been covering the Test for the FT and they said I could stay up for the Durham match. Durham bowled Essex out for around 70 and then were 30-odd for 6 when Liam Plunkett hit a massive 6 and the pressure was off. I feel very lucky to have seen Durham win that semi-final.

They played Hampshire in the final, just prior to that Ottis Gibson had taken a 10fer against Hampshire in the championship. In the press conference before the final, Shane Warne who was the Hampshire captain, was asked if they had any special plans to deal with Gibson, “Have you worked out how to play him yet?” He replied that it had been a freak, it wouldn’t happen again, Two balls in they were 0-2.

Since then, it’s been a bit of a financial rollercoaster!

Well, they’ve been absolutely stiffed by the ECB, haven’t they? No two ways about it. They have been treated completely differently to Hampshire.

They overextended by building Chester-le-Street, it’s a lovely ground, the facilities are great, the view up to Lumley Castle is great. Chester-Le-Street, with the best will in the world’s a very hard place to get to. Even from Sunderland right, so it’s just not in a good place, you are never going to get big T20 crowds that you get even in somewhere like Chelmsford. It’s just really hard to get to.

Did they make a mistake with the location of the ground? It’s difficult, Newcastle is not actually in Durham, it’s in Northumberland. If you put it there, people from Sunderland won’t go. If you put in Sunderland people from Newcastle won’t go. Could they have put it in Gateshead because they did play there initially? I don’t know but Chester-le-Street is not a convenient place. It’s why The Northern Super Chargers team for the 100 are based in Leeds, which is a hundred miles away.

You see people like Kevin Pietersen saying you need to concentrate the talent, but County Cricket’s not just about that. It’s also about development. Look at the players Durham have developed in the last thirty years. Where would English cricket be without Mark Wood. Steve Harmison, Ben Stokes, Paul Collingwood and slightly more minor figures like Borthwick, Stoneman and Keaton Jennings.

It’s a wider problem in sport for the North East generally. The Women’s Super League in football is another example. For the last World Cup the England team, a third of the squad came from the Sunderland academy, yet where is the nearest Super League franchise to Sunderland? It’s in Manchester! If you’re a lass growing up in the North East, where do you play your football? Where do you go and watch your football?

Do you still regard Durham as “your team” even though you moved away a while ago?

Yes, absolutely.

Do you get much of a chance to watch them?

Last Summer, for one reason and another I didn’t. I much prefer going to County Cricket rather than Test Cricket.

I had a bit of a revelation at The Oval in 2013, the test where Shane Watson smashed Simon Kerrigan all over the ground. I paid £100 or so for the ticket, I was square on to the wicket, so although I could see Simon Kerrigan’s full tosses pretty clearly, I couldn’t see much else. It was baking hot, there was no cover, no leg room, everyone was absolutely leathered and I just thought, I’m not really enjoying this. Why have I paid a hundred quid for this? So I thought that from now on, I’ll watch my international cricket on the telly and I’ll go to County cricket.

Scarborough, I try to get to every year, go for two days. That’s a great day out, it a Yorkshire-On-Fete! The conversations around you are great.I remember Yorkshire against Worcestershire, Yorkshire were getting battered, it was a little bit gloomy, a tiny bit of drizzle in the air. Around us there was this group of around a dozen seventy-year-olds, Neil Mallender was the umpire. For about an hour, as the drizzle got slightly heavier, they were shouting: “Get ‘em off Mallender!” “Get ‘em off it’s a disgrace Mallender!” “I can’t see me hand in front of me face!”

When they come off. The umpires walk round in front of the stand. This one bloke, must have been well into his seventies start shouting “MALLENDER! MALLENDER!” Mallender looks up. The guy shouts again. “Your 5fer at Headingley 1992. Cheapest Test 5fer in history. You’re a disgrace!”It was the most precision heckle and had some truth as the wicket had been specifically produced to help average county medium pacers. Brilliant.

Any other grounds that you love to visit?

I love Scarborough. Completely different vibe but Arundel is also great. Worcester is incredibly beautiful. I like The Oval, it’s my nearest ground, nice and easy to pop along to. The Blizzard, the football magazine that I run, has an office there. For County games, I can just go along and pop out on the balcony. I love out-grounds, been to Radlett a couple of years ago, also Beckenham. I hope to do a couple of out-grounds a year.

When it comes to watching, is it a social or solitary thing for you?

I wouldn’t go on my own, it would be one mate upwards. That’s the beautiful thing about an out-ground. You trot along with your picnic hamper, you can have bread a nice cheese, some charcuterie and a couple of good bottles of wine. It all very relaxed and civilised, you don’t have stewards searching through everything.

There was a game at Chelmsford, when I’d taken quite a nice bottle of champagne and the steward said, “You can’t take in a glass bottle.”, I said, “No, it’s champagne, champagne comes in plastic bottles.” “Really?” “Yes.” “Ok, in you go.”

Are you a big listener to Test Match Special or would you always be watching?

Yes, absolutely, a big listener. Often, I’m working with the telly on but the sound off. I very much enjoy TMS, Dan Norcross is a mate, I’m delighted that he’s got his break on there, he’s just a great raconteur. Remember playing computer games with it on in the background, the voices of Brian Johnstone and Jonathan Agnew.

I also think that the Sky team at the moment is amazing. I think that It’s the highest level of coverage (in any sport that I know about). Ian Ward is great as a presenter, then Nasser, Mike Atherton and Rob Key when he was doing it, they just get that perfect balance of technical expertise and taking the micky out of each other. They are amusing to listen to, but also informative. That’s what all broadcasting should aspire to.

Cricket is still blessed with ease of access at all levels. Nasser is connected to Hutton, so people mix across all levels. I’ll give you an example of the difference between football and cricket. Back in 2003, when Sussex won the championship for the first time. It was their penultimate game of the season, away at Lancashire. I’d been covering the day’s play and thought it would be nice to talk to Peter Moores (Sussex Coach). So I asked the Sussex press officer if there would be any chance of talking to him? “Oh yes. Just go and knock on the door” “What, I’m not naive, I’m just going to look an idiot if I do that.” “No, go on, just go and knock on the door.” That just wouldn’t happen in football.

Just going back to your playing career. I’m interested to hear about your bowling as well, especially after reading the description on the Authors CC website.

Well, when I first started bowling for the Authors CC, I hadn’t bowled for ages, so I was quite slow and quite loopy. I have speeded up a bit. I’m not an orthodox bowler in any sense. I bowl non turning off breaks but with quite a lot of overspin, so it skids on.

I had an operation on my shoulder in June three years ago, which it took quite a long time to get over. Injured myself chasing a ball downhill to the boundary, didn’t realise how serious it was and kept bowling for a year and a half.

If you compared my record on a Saturday to a Sunday, you could tell there was something badly wrong, but I kept going. My Saturday stats didn’t really change but the Sunday ones were atrocious. I was bowling loads of full tosses. After the surgery, I’ve developed this little away swinger, which is how I get my wickets. But I can’t bowl more than four or fiveovers without a break.

The week after I got my century, we were really short of bowlers and I ended up bowling ten overs, took 4-33. So, I got my best batting and bowling figures in the league in successive weeks! But at the end of that spell, it felt like my arm was dropping off. The last two or three balls, I could barely get it to the other end. It kind of messed me up for the rest of the season.

So, maybe something of a later period David Gower with regard to throwing the ball in whilst fielding?

I’ve never been able to throw. What I think I am good at though, is dummying to throw. Also I’m good at those sliding stops, when you go down on one knee, going past the ball, grab, stand and shape to throw, They often think you will have a good arm and don’t chance it. The key is to never, never, ever throw it!

Tactics are a specialist subject of yours in your football writing. What do you think about the approach to tactics, especially in red ball cricket over recent years?

Well, my sense is that it’s weirdly lapsed. I guess that’s a money thing. If you are a data analyst, and data is clearly the way things are going now, both in football and cricket.

The money in cricket is in T20 and franchise formats. The idea of “match ups” can be slightly over played at times but I find it fascinating. I talked to Ben Jones for a piece I was doing on football, it struck me that so much of the data was context specific. It could be that a ball pitching in a certain place, takes a wicket, against this sort of batsmen, every so many balls. But if you bowl that ball, every ball, it will cease to be so effective because batters will adjust to it.

Ben was very interesting on this. Saying that he, as an analyst was very aware of that and thinks that data analysis can only work in conjunction with video analysis. That’s where football analysis, which I know much more about, is lagging, due to lack of understanding of context.

A simple example of that will be, a coach at a premier league team, who I know fairly well, they were playing another premier league team. Their main centre back was injured, the replacement was an older player who was slow on the turn. The data analyst said that you have to push high against this side.

The coach was saying, we will be slow on the turn, their forwards are quite quick, this doesn’t feel right. At half-time they are 3-0 down. In the second half, they come back into a bit the xG (expected goals) end up being even and the data analyst, says, “see, we got it right.” The coach says, “no, we only got back into it because we were 3-0 down and they were sitting back, absorbing pressure. They didn’t need to do anything else, because we had conceded the first three goals of the game in half an hour”. So you have to know what the data means. The two sets of information have to work together, that’s true in cricket and football.

I think there is a drip down from 20 and 50 over cricket, to test cricket. With regard to match ups, the amount of variation that you can get in test cricket is so vast compared to white ball games, so it’s harder to pin those down. The deterioration of a pitch over five days, is totally different to just playing 40 overs. Conditions make such a difference. The state of the game makes such a difference.

Whilst I’m still very pro data, as we can learn a lot from it, so we shouldn’t dismiss it as some sort of cabalistic gobbledygook. I still hope that there is a place in the game, for a captain having a feeling of, this bloke, who hasn’t bowled for three months – this is his day. I hope there is still a place for those inspired guesses.

There was a very good piece in The Atlantic recently about the “moneyballisation” of everything. It talked specifically about film, I thought it was an age thing that I hardly go to the cinema anymore, twenty years ago, I would go every week, now I never go. Then you look at say, Marvel films, which I have no interest in. They work for the studios because there is a guaranteed profit, a certain number of people like them. So the studios have “moneyballed” the system, so this is not a great auteur producing “art”. It’s “product”, that is efficient in making money and bringing a certain number of people into cinemas.

I really hope that football and cricket, don’t go the same way, where it just becomes a formula that gets applied. I wrote a piece recently on football, saying that at the moment it’s the most dominant cultural mode that there has ever been.

Never before, have so many people, in so many countries been so invested in this one thing. So, it seems unassailable, but what would it take to challenge that? All things have their time. Chariot Racing was in this position two thousand years ago, nobody watches Chariot Racing now! Cricket had a dominant position in the 1930’s, now it’s, in some ways, struggling.

What would it take for football to go that way? I was talking in relation to Qatar and the World Cup, the corruption, the sense of disgust and distaste around this World Cup. Could it be the thing that affects the popularity of future World Cup’s?

Also there are a few other issues with football. The Super League which collapsed before it got off the ground last year, they have taken legal action against UEFA, accusing them of taking a monopoly position. If they win that, and football goes like boxing and has multiple hierarchies, which cricket has sort of done with the franchise formats, does that mean the best never play the best as happens in boxing? What if Manchester United never play Real Madrid? That would affect the popularity.

There is also an issue with youth becoming detached from the sport because of cost factors. I also wonder if “data” may just turn the game into a formula. What if everyone plays the same way, because the data says that’s the best way to play?Cricket and football are games of such variety, even at the level I play. What if it loses that. If they lose the capacity for individual genius or for a coach to come up with his own theories? Those narratives of geniuses, whether playing or coaching are what drive the sport. Not the guy who says that “if you bowl two and a half feet outside off stump this ball, then next ball you bowl an outswinger on leg stump, you’ll win”.

I heard you talk passionately about the importance that teams play in their communities, especially when everything else has gone. Is that something that could be lost, is that something that concerns you?

Yes, that’s the issue with franchises. I get that franchise cricket might make the level of cricket better. But is that the only thing we are interested in?

I’m not sure that Counties quite represent their communities in the way that football clubs do. But they do so, to an extent.Certainly, the fact the cricket goes to Scarborough once a year, goes out in the community, that’s a good thing. Access to facilities and top-class sport is important. It shouldn’t just be for the people who live in the big cities.

It’s about striking a balance between excellence in the level of sport and also making it available to all. Creating something that brings the community in, may not always pay the bill in the short term but in the long term it creates good will and a community of fans, who are in a low key way, activists for the club.

It’s interesting that the perspective of someone like Kevin Pietersen is very different, he left his home to go and play cricket in a different hemisphere. So, I get why he’s less concerned with those ties to community and why the franchise model makes more sense to him.

Have you watched cricket overseas?

I went to Galle, two friends got married there in 2012. It was meant to be the day after the test finished but it was two days after, because Herath ran through us on the 4^th afternoon!

That was great, we sat up on the fort for two days, we were in the ground for two days. On the first or maybe the second day, we were in the bar in a hotel and we saw Kumar Sangakhara, who was playing. One of us went over and said that we were there for a friend’s wedding, was there any chance that he could get hold of a publicity poster for the game and sign it for them?

He said I’ll get both teams to sign it and drop it off at the hotel tomorrow.” And he did, what a wedding present to have. If it was just his signature we would have been very happy. What a lovely man. We were talking about commentators earlier, he’s a great one as well. He has a level of insight, intelligence and expertise all delivered in a way that’s never off putting and is very engaging.

Oh, and South Africa as well. I was at the Football African Cup of Nations in 2013, I don’t drive which has never been a problem except for South Africa where the public transport is so bad. I was with Mark Gleeson the doyen of South African football writers when it was announced that the tournament was being moved there. He said to me that he would drive me everywhere, but you have to understand that you will need to get up early every morning.

It was the most brutal tourism I’ve ever done. He’d get us up at 4AM to go on a Game Drive. They were amazing but I was saying to him, “I’m trying to work here, on 4 hours sleep. Brilliant, there are some Rhinos but…” One day he took us to The Wanderers in Johannesburg for the last day of South Africa – Pakistan, I think it was over before lunch. Mark blagged us into the press box, we were journalists working on sport. Just not that sport. I witnessed something even rarer than seeing four rhinos, which is apparently quite rare. But even rarer, I was in the lift when Kepler Wessels cracked a joke! It was in Afrikaans so I didn’t understand it but Shaun Pollock laughed, so it must have been quite a good joke.

What cricketers have given you the most pleasure over the years?

It’s Ben Stokes. Has to be Ben Stokes. Especially as he’s a Durham player, with all the difficulties that he’s had. His capacity to always be there, doing the right thing at absolutely the key moment of the game.

The Authors CC have a WhatsApp group, at the beginning of the World Cup, there was a lot of “Oh why is Stokes in the team? What Does he actually bring?” I was saying, well he bats and bowls and he’s Ben Stokes! There will be a moment when we need someone to be Ben Stokes and there is nobody better at Ben Stokes than, Ben Stokes.

There was a piece in The Guardian by Taha Hashim that was published on the 5^th October, the final paragraph is: “The value of Stokes may not come on a batting paradise, but a sticky one, when brains begin to fry and someone just needs to stick it out in a chase of 140.” Well, Yes!

When he got that very quick double ton in South Africa, it was amazing to watch but the fear was that he would try to do that every game. And, for a little time he did. But what was brilliant about the innings at Headingley was that he was only on 3 after 73 balls, he just worked it out. Even the 2019 World Cup final, the way he paced that chase, when he talks about the final ball. That he decided not to try to hit it for 4, just to push it to the gap, to guarantee getting the single, to be that smart and have the awareness to manage the situation.

When it comes to the post-match interviews, when you compare his attitude to, say Botham’s at Headingly in 1981 and Botham’s hostility to the press. Stokes is very humble and lucid. I think he comes across incredibly well.

If there is one thing you could change about Cricket, what would it be?

Oh God, well we wouldn’t have the 100.

We’d have a sensible integrated calendar, where you’d have a proper County Championship season. Probably only seven test matches, financially obviously that won’t work, ideally the crowds will flock back to the County Championship games though. I’d like two tests against a smaller nation, maybe even an associate nation and then a proper series of five tests.

Also work out some sort of Test Championship without all the nonsense coefficients. Maybe having the four playing a semi-final and a final. I realise the calendar is packed and it would be difficult.

I do quite enjoy the IPL now despite myself, the problem is the time it takes. I do like the idea of the best in the world playing against each other. One of the knock-on effects of the IPL, which I think has been incredibly positive, is that when you watch international games now, the players all know each other. There is far less ill feeling, because they have been sharing drinks together in Bangalore or wherever. There seems to be much more mutual respect and friendship.

So, sort out the calendar, so we have: Test Cricket, County Championship, Fifty Overs, T20, no 100. Also have exactly the same for Women’s cricket.

So rather than constantly chasing this entirely illusory audience of young people who demand that everything is in neon, and you have a song after every ball or whatever. Maybe just appreciate the middle aged and old have their place, we want to sit and watch a gentle game, drinking nice wine and eating good cheese.

We also pay money, so don’t ostracise us, maybe you created this glitzy T20 competition that straddled the mythical youth market and us. Maybe that’s the way to do it. Rather than turning to Cricket’s traditional fanbase and saying “We don’t care about you now, we’re going for the youth/city audience and the players have got be dressed as crisp packets”

https://www.thenightwatchman.net/news/jonathan-wilson-on-his-parents-loss-memory-and-lance-gibbs

https://theblizzard.co.uk/about/

https://www.theguardian.com/profile/jonathanwilson