Mooresy: We’re doing everything we can
December 5th, 2008 by Alan Tyers in Alan Tyers, England, England in India, Test cricket and tagged cricket, England, peter moores
Obviously the situation is not ideal but we’ll be looking to do what we can in the time available. Two days in Abu Dhabi is probably not long enough to teach the boys how to play cricket but we’ll just have to do our best.
It doesn’t look like we’ll actually be having any match practice out in the UAE. We had lined up a match against a team of local waiters, but our security consultant Reg has heard some chatter on the wires about how one of their lads had once worked in a restaurant in Melbourne and there was a rumour that the guy might even have played for a club over there, so we thought it was better to be safe than sorry. The last thing the team need at this time is a hammering from a crack collection of Australian-trained busboys.
Instead, we’re going to have a couple of days of net sessions. They offered us some local bowlers to practise against but, again, you just can’t be too careful so we’ve got Saj and Plunky coming over from England instead. Our batters’ confidence took a bit of a knock in India – poor Belly still wakes up in the night screaming about powerplays and shouting “there’s fielders everywhere, I cannot escape them”– and we thought it might be better to avoid any potential banana skins against some wily deckchair attendant who can give it a nasty rip or what have you.
Ali Cook has never been the same since the working-over he got at French Cricket from those schoolgirls on the beach in Antigua, and it just goes to show how delicately poised the confidence of the international sportsmen can be. I sometimes think that the best way to prepare is just to forget about cricket altogether.
I mean have you seen that India team? Still, it¹s my job to keep the players relaxed and loose, which I do by smiling a lot and putting Calpol in their Lucozade.
Everyone’s saying that at times like these it makes you realise just how unimportant cricket really is and having just finished a three-hour session trying to get Jimmy Anderson to hit the right areas (pitch) I have to say it’s a point of view I’m definitely coming round to.
Onwards and (Reg permitting) upwards!
Alan Tyers served Peter Moores Lucozade on the flight to Abu Dhabi
Posted in Alan Tyers, England, England in India, Test cricket | 2 Comments »
December 6th, 2008 at 11:27 am
More from Moorsey:
I’ve a great new program on my laptop which shows the mean deviation of the standard regression curve for each of Steve Harmison‘s balls (the one’s he bowls of course not the dangly ones).
If I apply the coefficient of linear infraction to the square root of the pitch bounce mean then it seems that at the impact point (wayward leg-side deliveries) or the point of generative force (wayward off-side deliveries) there is a pattern developing. Basically if we can modify Harmy’s arm action in such a way that at the point of release his feet are just off parallel, and he is facing the bowler within an arc of not less than two vectors, then the ball will take the optimum line before pitching.
The regression from pitch point onwards seems to be a modal intersection of Steve’s finger position in relation to the seam and increases (this was a big surprise!) depending on the extent of the moisture in his palms.
Steve and I have a computer session booked for tomorrow morning when I’ll be taking him through all of this and I’m sure that he will be firing on all cylinders when we get to India (if we do).
December 8th, 2008 at 8:57 am
Now that even Freddie is ready and Harmison is also boarding the India-bound plane,I guess I have to doff my hat at Pietersen and party. Difficult not to lampoon a side which has lost five matches on the trot. But the moment KP & Co decided to return to India despite the Mumbai mayhem, everything else became irrelevant. Well, I don’t foresee them taming India but whatever the results, we all know who are the winners. Take a bow Sirs.