Cricket

[Yozza]

Yeah I think it was deliberate

****ty thing to do - just try & get him out by playing the game ffs

[Les Zeffelin]

A bit of a snide act. I actually thought they'd changed the rule but maybe I'm thinking of the underarm thing with Trevor Chappell.

[ame="https://youtu.be/sGHScrCxF6Y?t=37"]https://youtu.be/sGHScrCxF6Y?t=37[/ame]

[Buzzo]

Put the smartphone down Aggers old chap. This spat really isn’t cricket

Barney Ronay

The BBC has reprimanded its cricket correspondent Jonathan Agnew after a foul-mouthed rant against journalist Jonathan Liew

Oh, stop it Aggers. The news that Jonathan Agnew MBE, the BBC’s voice of cricket, has been reprimanded by the corporation for repeatedly calling a journalist at the Independent “a cunt” might come as a bit of shock to those who follow Agnew’s sunny broadcast presence.

Everyone loves a high-profile tiff. But this isn’t really a tiff, just a bad judgment call on one side. Agnew has since apologised to Jonathan Liew after the abusive direct messages came to light.

I should declare an interest here. I know and like Liew, and feel dismayed on his behalf that he should receive a sustained and menacing screed of abuse from a senior figure in his industry. I also understand why Agnew was upset, as he believed that Liew was calling him a racist.

The abusive messages were a response to an article Liew had written in which he expressed concern about some of the language used in the media to describe Jofra Archer’s selection for England. Liew was writing about the notion of structural prejudice in the way we express ourselves, a shifting, gossamer thing that can often creep in unexpectedly but which can reinforce unhelpful tropes and stereotypes.

This was the passage towards the end that led to the BBC cricket correspondent’s foul-mouthed tirade, not to mention some unpleasant accompanying allusions to mental health problems.

Liew wrote: “‘A huge call,’ warned Jonathan Agnew. ‘Morale and camaraderie is a big part in team performance.’ Which feels instinctively unarguable – who doesn’t love morale and camaraderie, after all? – until you begin to ask why Archer is deemed such a grave threat to it.”

There was a comparison with Agnew’s warmer welcome for Gary Ballance, a white player of Zimbabwean origin. Further down, and summing up a lot of elements above, Liew wrote: “There’s an incendiary word you could posit to describe all this, but I’m not going to use it.”

This was the first response from Agnew: “****ing disgraceful. You have massive chips on your shoulder ... you are a racist.”

Liew replied that this was not about name calling but a wider societal issue to do with “the huge privilege we enjoy in the media, the subtle and often unconscious biases that occasionally seep into our language … Happy to engage further on this topic if you are prepared to put your pantomime outrage to one side. If not apologies for the offence caused and I wish you well.”

What came next was an unanswered blurt of abusive fury.

Agnew: “You really have issues”

Agnew: “Apologise now”.

Agnew: “I’m going no further on the advice of people who know you and think you are a cunt. I know you are. Think on.”

Agnew: “CUNT”

Agnew: “You are so strange I don’t know if you’d be upset to know those who think you are a cunt”

Agnew: “If you think so in hindsight then you have a chance. If you don’t ...

Agnew: “I’m SO angry”

Agnew: “Book yourself in somewhere”

Agnew: “You need help”

Agnew: “Who the **** are you?”

At the end of which, we probably all need help. What’s going on here exactly? I should point out that Liew is a waspish but well-liked journalist. The notes of the Cricket Writers’ Club meeting where Agnew raised his grievances in a written statement record the room bursting into laughter when Liew, who was late, walked in halfway through.

The other interest to declare here is that Agnew has done something similar but far less serious and bullying with me. Those who know him say Agnew is a very nice man, that he can just be thin-skinned. This is probably right. In my case Agnew was angered by an article in which I said I preferred TalkSport’s coverage and the Agnew-style voice could be a bar to cricket for some who found him slightly bumptious and Middle England.

In response he sent me a weirdly personal angry message. Later there was a strange email late at night referring to a listener interaction, and telling me “people like you” don’t realise how loved he is, how nice he is, what a beautiful person. In the course of which he took time to very lovably call me “a ******”. Which is, you have to admit, quite funny.

At the time I suggested he should stop doing this kind of thing as it’s just a bad idea. He has a perfect right to take issue with people. I’m glad he cares enough. He will perhaps call me a cunt for writing this, and I defend his right to do so. Maybe he’s right!

I don’t think Jonathan Agnew is a racist. I don’t think Liew ever suggested he was one but read the messages to Liew and something else emerges. Not just the sense of a pattern of unpleasant behaviour but something wider too. Abusing younger journalists from a position of power is a damaging thing to do. Even more uncomfortable is the spectacle of one of English cricket’s most influential media figures abusing a young English journalist of Chinese heritage who has brought up an issue of race, who is trying to talk about nuance and about the way we use language.

Agnew can disagree with this or take it on board. He might say, I am angry about this, explain yourself. But if the response is just: you are a cunt, then he is clearly not getting this right.

Agnew has now resigned from the Cricket Writers’ Club; quite rightly given his abuse of another member. And even if Danny Baker got the boot this week for something far less deliberately vitriolic, the BBC has probably done the right thing in reprimanding him.

In the end this is a very minor bump in the road at the start of cricket’s big summer, something Agnew will be at the heart of. Perhaps as the sport tries to spread its wings a little it is a good moment to think about voices, about how we talk to others, and who we want to see doing that. This is something to learn from. And in the meantime, do put the sweary smartphone down my dear old thing.

[Shaggy]

Incredible isn't it. He often reacts badly to even the mildest criticism. He's really shown himself up.

[Saveloy]

I can see how he might take offence at Liew implying he was racist but what a way to make the situation worse! He comes across as unhinged - do you reckon he was pissed?

I must admit, this line made me laugh

“I’m going no further on the advice of people who know you and think you are a cunt. I know you are. Think on.”

[Buzzo]

Incredible isn't it. He often reacts badly to even the mildest criticism. He's really shown himself up.

The better way for sure would be to calmly respond using his own media platform. Going all Sweary on the texts shows he has very little understanding of the (valid) point being made. Take a deep breath Aggers.

The original article doesn’t mean he is racist, but his lack of attempt to see the point made suggests he casually is.

Racism within cricket eh - who’d have thunk it Lords members look like an enlightened bunch

[captainfog]

Incredible isn't it. He often reacts badly to even the mildest criticism. He's really shown himself up.

Do you remember when he got in a big twitter fight with KPs missus?

[labourRed]

Sending ranty emails late at night while presumably pissed. Not a tremendously clever thing to do, i'd say.

[Shaggy]

Do you remember when he got in a big twitter fight with KPs missus?

Yep

[Buzzo]

Do you remember when he got in a big twitter fight with KPs missus?

What about?

Googled it. I have no memory of this at all

https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/cricket/kevin-pietersen-autobiography-jonathan-agnew-quits-twitter-after-extraordinary-row-with-pietersens-9784526.html

[ChesterDave]

England smashing it about against Pakistan. Good value for the World Cup.

[Saveloy]

What about?

Googled it. I have no memory of this at all

https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/...s-9784526.html

So in the recent spat he comes across as a raging loon, in this he comes across as a petty petulant child.

Not sure social media is his thing

[ChesterDave]

Agnew's reply was over the top but it's a bit ****ty for Liew to chime ;
"There’s an incendiary word you could posit to describe all this, but I’m not going to use it.”

If you're going to veil it so thinly just use the ****ing word.

[Buzzo]

I think it is a really good article personally, and Liew chooses his words wisely and carefully. There is a reason Agnew is so pissed off. It is because Jonathan Liew is right and has called him out. Agnew should consider the point and what made him comment differently on Jofra Archer than he has on any number of other cricketers in the past.

England have always had foreign-born cricketers – so why would Jofra Archer have any effect on the team’s ‘culture’?

COLUMN: The loaded language of Archer's sceptics is that of the affronted nativist - the same objections you hear about asylum seekers being assigned council houses or ‘benefit tourists’ claiming free healthcare

Jonathan Liew Chief Sports Writer
Saturday 27 April 2019 09:30

So let’s talk about Boyd Rankin. Once Ireland’s Boyd Rankin, then England’s Boyd Rankin, and now - by a process far too arcane and protracted to bore you with here - Ireland’s Boyd Rankin again. These days, Rankin is best known for his role in England’s disastrous 2013-14 Ashes tour, where he was not picked when fit, then picked when injured, and whose participation stretched to several overs of sterile, grimacing medium pace, delivered to a roster of chortling Australian batsmen at the SCG.

Here’s the thing, though. Despite being born in Ireland, playing more than 50 times for Ireland, and only qualifying for England a matter of months earlier, nobody - at least on this side of the Irish Sea - seemed the least bit perturbed at Rankin’s initial selection. Nobody questioned the wisdom of tinkering with a winning side by parachuting in an untried fast bowler at short notice. Nobody raised qualms about whether, ahead of England’s biggest assignment of all, the selection of a quiet farmer from Bready in County Tyrone would disrupt team spirit or affect morale.

It’s a similar story with the dozen or so other naturalised England cricketers of recent years. Nobody queried whether the selection of Gary Ballance for the same tour was “morally right”. Nobody fretted about whether Keaton Jennings would “fit into the team culture”. Nobody cried foul play or affected lavish concern for the player Tom Curran replaced in the England side. Which makes it all the more curious that as Jofra Archer prepares to join up with his new team-mates for the first time this weekend, these somehow appear to be the burning questions.

Archer is 24 years old, and British. It says so on his passport: the only passport he’s ever had. He’s one of the most exciting young cricketers in the world in any format: a hair-raising, seat-wetting, popcorn-hurling Hollywood blockbuster of a player. A thrilling fast bowler. A destructive batsman. The sort of fielder you would pay to watch. You might think, then, that Archer’s promotion to the England squad - just in time for a home World Cup this summer - would be greeted with suitably untrammelled enthusiasm.

Instead, the reaction has been loaded with caveats and regrets, with prevarication and pearl-clutching angst. And indeed, the entire affaire Archer resembles nothing so much as a classic English comedy of manners, in which ridiculous trifles like status and etiquette are elevated to matters of the highest importance, where every utterance is lined with a devastating - and occasionally sinister - subtext.

The problem - albeit, only really a problem if you want it to be - is that Archer was born in Barbados, and spent his entire childhood there. He learned his cricket in the Caribbean, but after being left out of the West Indies squad for the under-19 World Cup in 2014, decided that his international future would lie with the country of his father’s birth: England. This last fact is often conveniently overlooked by those who lament that Archer is not playing for the West Indies, and blame the England and Wales Cricket Board for cruelly scavenging him.

And so, after a seven-year qualification period was sneakily reduced to three in order - you suspect - to get Archer in before the World Cup - here he is, and not everyone is delighted. “Whether someone should just walk in at the drop of a hat because they’re available, whether that’s the right thing, I don’t know,” said all-rounder David Willey, one of the seamers most threatened by Archer’s emergence. “It probably wouldn’t be fair, morally,” said Chris Woakes, when prompted and goaded by an unscrupulous BBC interviewer. “If he was to come in and someone was to miss out, it would be extremely unfortunate.”

Archer is an explosive bat, a brilliant quick bowler and top fielder (Getty Images)
Mark Wood, another of England’s existing fast-bowling contingent, had a more colourful analogy, comparing Archer’s selection to Newcastle United’s signing of the Colombian striker Faustino Asprilla in 1996. Here, again, the subtext was unmistakable: Asprilla’s much-heralded arrival was followed by one of the most spectacular collapses in the history of the Premier League. “All of a sudden,” Wood warned, “you can lose the momentum and drop down.”

Naturally, all three also paid warm tributes to Archer’s talent, and stressed they would have no problem with his selection. Equally, though, the register of their reservations was impossible to ignore. The loaded language, the suggestion of queue-jumping, of unfairness, of disruption to an established population: this is, intentional or not, the vernacular of the affronted nativist. They’re the same objections you hear about asylum seekers being assigned council houses or ‘benefit tourists’ claiming free healthcare. Nothing personal, you understand. It's not your fault. But, you know, we have a way of doing things here.

Often, the message is subtler, wrapped and swaddled in layers of well-meaning code. “A huge call,” warned Jonathan Agnew. “Morale and camaraderie is a big part in team performance.” Which feels instinctively unarguable - who doesn’t love morale and camaraderie, after all? - until you begin to ask why Archer is deemed such a grave threat to it. And why no other player, foreign-born or not, is ever subjected to the same standard. (“Deserves his call, clearly a good player,” was Agnew’s snap verdict on Ballance’s Ashes call-up in 2013, in case you’re wondering.)

Equally, it’s worth asking why Michael Vaughan - broadly supportive of Archer - nevertheless feels “there are questions about whether he fits into the team culture”, when Archer has displayed no indication of being anything other than a sound, inspirational team-mate. Or why coach Trevor Bayliss wonders whether Archer will “upset the applecart”. This is, by the way, a one-day team that has fielded 21 different players in the last nine months. Somehow, England’s morale and team culture have miraculously managed to survive the selections of Dom Bess, Tom Curran and Olly Stone unscathed. But no, it’s Archer who’s going to ruin things.

Tom Curran was born in South Africa... but his affect on morale was never questioned

There’s an incendiary word you could posit to describe all this, but I’m not going to use it. All I will point out is that there’s nothing new in English cricketers being sourced from far and wide. The team for the third ever Test match in 1879 featured two players born outside England: Lord Harris (Trinidad) and Leland Hone (Ireland). One in seven male England cricketers was born abroad. It’s a myth that nationality and identity are somehow more fluid and complex these days. England sides have always been diverse, a product not just of our multicultural present but our imperial past. Borders are porous and wealth is unequal and rules are bent, and now Jofra Archer gets to play for England. You can celebrate it or you can castigate it, but that doesn’t change the fact that it just is.

The sadness is that already, Archer clearly senses on some level that he may not be entirely welcome. “I don’t want to step on anyone’s toes,” he said this week, and should England fall short of expectations this summer, be in no doubt who will be made to carry the can. Such is the fate of the outsider, the other, the guy who may play a good game but whose face - for whatever reason - just doesn’t fit. This, like it or not, is what we talk about when we talk about Jofra. You may have got in on a technicality. You may have a right to stay and work. But don’t for a second presume that you’re one of us.

https://www.independent.co.uk/sport/cricket/england-cricket-world-cup-squad-jofra-archer-a8887246.html

[Zapater]

First game about to start.

Really don't understand the lack of balance that du Plessis and Gibson seem to always select in limited overs cricket for the Proteas. Test cricket is for specialists, but in one day cricket you need allrounders even if it means sacrificing quality. Specialist batting until 6, then using Pretorius and Phehlukwayo who both can 'hold a bat' makes no sense. If things don't goto plan, we're basically 6 all out and it screws Duminy coming in at 6 as he'll have to shepherd the other player constantly.

Oh well, we won the toss and elected to field. Not really looking to the tournament as it's going to be overly high scoring. Should be a tight one, regardless.