Kennington News

Christopher Martin-Jenkins, Chief Cricket Correspondent

Recently I saw a production of Harold Pinter’s Old Times and, despite the high quality of the writing and the acting, felt a little short-changed when the piece was over in the time that some plays take to reach the end of the first act. Value for money, like beauty, is in the eye of the beholder. Spectators at the Brit Oval last night paid between £35 and £70 for their quickfire entertainment and for some it took a great deal longer to travel to Kennington than it did to see the drama.

The crowd did not reach its capacity of 23,500 because, to judge from some empty seats in the pavilion, a significant minority of those who had bought every ticket before Christmas gave up when they were among thousands left boiling on the Northern Line because a Tube train had stalled between Stockwell and Morden. But for those who saw every ball – the ones who never blinked and are blessed with Chanderpauline concentration – was it really all worth it?

Well, one of our many retired Prime Ministers once observed that “you can’t buck the market”. The fact is, the tickets were sold (as they have been again for this evening’s reprise) and no doubt a considerable proportion of those who had decided to come, expecting a golden summer’s evening and lots of thrills – at a time when it was getting dark at 4pm and England were losing the Ashes – had been to Twenty20 before so knew what to expect.

What they got was West Indies bowling fuller and straighter than England after a no-holds-barred approach by their batsmen. It produced the fourth highest score in the brief (16match) history of international cricket in this spectacular, madcap, helter-skelter form.

It must be fun to play if you happen to be lucky enough to be a batsman in the top four; more or less miserable if you are a bowler. Michael Yardy, whom an innocent with knowledge of Jamaica might assume to have been playing for the wrong side, was England’s most economical bowler, conceding a mere 35 in his four overs.

Talking of where cricketers come from, Matt Prior, who arrived in Britain as a boy and learnt his game in Brighton, is surely a different case from Jonathan Trott, who learnt his in Cape Town, Kevin Pietersen, who did so in Natal, and Dimitri Mascarenhas, who was born in London but spent his life in Australia between the ages of 2 and 21. For cricketing purposes, that makes him another of a growing number of mercenary cricketers who for some reason our selectors think are worthy of promotion above good English-bred alternatives.

It may be applying double standards to suggest that Pietersen is a special case, but he has extraordinary talent and a clear commitment towards playing for England. That was obvious from the moment he made up his mind to come here and qualify.

Unlike Trott, who represented his homeland at under-19 level, Pietersen played no representative cricket for South Africa. It is not their fault, but I do not believe that Trott and Mascarenhas, talented though they are, should have been picked.

Neither made an impact with his bat in the game of hit and hope that is no match to judge them by. Mascarenhas did go through his medium-pace variations effectively enough, but it was an Englishman through and through who kept the match bubbling to the end. There was a Collingwood in the thick of things at Trafalgar.

Scoreboard
West Indies
*C H Gayle b Anderson 5
D S Smith c Yardy b Mascarenhas 61
S Chanderpaul c Cook b Mascarenhas 41
M N Samuels c Mascarenhas b Sidebottom 51
D J Bravo st Prior b Yardy 1
†D Ramdin c Mascarenhas b Broad 24
D R Smith run out 6
R S Morton not out 2
D J G Sammy b Anderson 1
R Rampaul not out 0
Extras (b 1, lb 5, w 9, nb 1) 16
Total (8 wkts, 20 overs) 208
D B L Powell did not bat.
Fall of wickets: 1-13, 2-97, 3-115, 4-131, 5-190, 6-199, 7-204, 8-206.
Bowling: Sidebottom 4-0-42-1; Anderson 4-0-37-2; Broad 3-0-32-1; Yardy 4-0-35-1; Mascarenhas 4-0-39-2; Collingwood 1-0-17-0.

England
A N Cook c Bravo b D R Smith 15
†M J Prior c Powell b D R Smith 25
I J L Trott b Sammy 9
K P Pietersen run out
16 *P D Collingwood run out 79
O A Shah lbw b D R Smith 7
A D Mascarenhas c Morton b Sammy 2
M H Yardy not out 23
S C J Broad not out 1
Extras (b 1, lb 8, w 7) 16
Total (7 wkts, 20 overs) 193
R J Sidebottom and J M Anderson did not bat.
Fall of wickets: 1-40, 2-48, 3-69, 4-78, 5-90, 6-101, 7-192.
Bowling: Powell 3-0-39-0; Rampaul 4-0-26-0; D R Smith 4-0-24-3; Sammy 4-0-37-2; Samuels 4-0-52-0; Bravo 1-0-6-0.
Umpires: P J Hartley and N J Llong.