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The Importance of Sport (NEW CONCEPTS)
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Mick Harper
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Yes, all magnificent points. But Shane Long belongs to that category of nearly-men who infest the Premiership. Every manager thinks he can turn him round and is prepared to pay fifteen million to try. And he always nearly succeeds. There is an unidentified structural reason.

But turning to Mike Hendrick Syndrome. It is agreed that in his opening spell, the batsmen will play and miss several times but generally survive. The ball and the stroke that gets them out -- the play and nick -- is indistinguishable from all the others balls and all the other strokes that are play-and-miss. It appears to be a matter of chance. One morning, it's a batting collapse, and Hendrick (though as you say more likely Botham) is a hero, another morning it's sixty for nought and we've been let down by our bloody seamers yet again. Presumably this has been the general picture since W G Grace.

But not now. Now it's always a batting collapse and since this is true for both sides we need not dwell on the usual self-basting reasons. It is the fact that the Duke ball has been given a slightly prouder seam. The same thing is happening in American baseball where nobody can understand why home run numbers have suddenly gone out of the park. The manufacturing process of the official baseball was changed coincidentally but nobody seems to think that significant.

The reason for the careful ignoral in both cases is that the public generally likes batting collapse cricket and home run baseball but nobody in charge (who are purists) want to admit these coarser times are here to stay. That's why the present 'put your best batsmen at one to five' is due for a rethink.
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Mick Harper
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Or a new groundsman treatment. As I pointed out long, long ago the present football revolution (ticky-tacky) was inaugurated by Arsenal going over to a new type of grass which didn't deteriorate. (Plus you didn't train on it and you didn't play reserve matches on it.)

I hear occasional comments from the pundit class about structural changes in the preparation of cricket pitches but need more information. Please avoid all the 'preparing a pitch for the home team' stuff which has been going on since W G Grace's time. Indeed I believe W G Grace was the groundsman as well as opening bat, opening bowler and wicketkeeper.
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Mick Harper
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So here’s the solution. Bowlers have always been have-a-go merchants. Their batting is not of a standard for anything else. Plus the imminent possibility of running out of partners make this the correct strategy anyway. But could they re-train their limited talents to judge when to leave? In other words, is ten-to-twenty knockabout runs down the order worth sacrificing for ten-to-twenty overs taking the shine off the new ball? Clearly it is but whether bowlers are capable of this and whether cricket traditions are capable of contemplating it, remains to be seen.

Of course running out of partners will affect specialist batsmen more but the plethora of all rounders down the order now makes this less important. If we are doomed forever to be 86-4 by lunch on the first day why not two of them be Andersen and Broad? Though not Andersen and Broad, they cannot be retrained.

“What about Tetherswick, he’s just got a fifer on a Scarborough help-yourself dinner plate?” “Aye, he's worth a look. Plus he’s averaging seven overs at top o’ order.”
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Hatty
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Sam Curran who's been a revelation in the test series was born and educated in England but it's just as well his family had to leave their home in Zimbabwe (when Sam was six) as he gained an Australian coach.

In 2004, Kevin Curran and his family were evicted from their farm in Zimbabwe by the Robert Mugabe regime. They were taken in by Geoff Marsh, then the coach of Zimbabwe, and his family at their house in Harare, which was arranged by the cricket board.
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Mick Harper
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An extraordinary difference between American and British sporting culture last night. A baseball was hit into the stand and a fielder caught it (which is allowed under the rules). However it transpired that it wasn't the ball he caught but one that a fan smuggled into the fielder's glove out of sight of the umpire. The batter was given out.

This action was hailed as a brilliant coup by American pundits. In Britain (and, I think most of the rest of the world) there would be outrage, wholesale suspensions and questions in Parliament.
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Mick Harper
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Spurs 1 Liverpool 2

Well, we won't be having any trouble with them this season. What a bunch of shnorrers. It was odd though that they didn't pick Harry Kane.
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Mick Harper
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So, at last, one of our own has won a Grand Tour. After the Australian Wiggins, the Kenyan Froome and the Welshman Thomas, Bury's other son, Simon Yates, has won the Vuelta. Yes, northerners count as English. We're a rainbow nation.
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Wile E. Coyote


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The pundits on MOTD played a blinder.... apparently Lokaku, a forward, is a great player as he chased back 50 yards to make a tackle (err he just lost the ball) for his team and our Jose.....whilst Hazard a Chelsea mid fielder, is once again a great player (he is no longer under The Chosen ONE) because he no longer has to defend as he once did under Jose.

Watford, Man United was a typical Jose performance. Jose rightly reasoned, at half time, that Watford would be unable to score 2, so he parked the bus. It worked today, so the pundits were happy.
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Mick Harper
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What are we to make of the vicissitudes of the premiership's three best strikers of only a few months ago: Salah, Lukaku and Kane?

Salah's case is perhaps the weirdest. He seems to be doing everything as before in a Liverpool team that, if anything, is better than before, yet everything he does just misses. Last season everything just didn't. Are we to view this as random swings and roundabouts? I don't think so. The reason? Last season, I often thought, "Blimey, that was brilliant ... or just lucky"; this season I often say, "Blimey, that was brilliant but really unlucky." It's as though the swings and roundabouts have shifted to a different ball park. We need to know where.

Lukaku (and maybe Kane though it's less clear with him) is completely out of touch -- half the time, out to lunch. Now this is all very familiar (especially for strikers) but it should be an AE question: why, and/or what can be done about it? Orthodoxy is always clear: "He'll just have to get back on the practice pitch and work that much harder. The manager must show faith, class is permanent, form is temporary. A goal, even a scuffed goal, will have him right as rain." A strategy that sometimes works but always takes forever.

I can't help thinking this is a bunch of bollocks. In the first place this question of confidence seems misplaced. Every time he scuffs a shot his confidence presumably goes down further. My own solution would be much harsher. After three games (say) he's dropped. Not to the bench, dropped. Plays for the reserves. Trains at the Academy. The full grim works. In baseball even stars can get 'sent down to the minors' -- the argument being that playing against lesser fry and out of the media storm, is what re-supplies confidence. After all, he will be doing exactly what he's supposed to be doing, only presumably more successfully. Confidence or no confidence. Both strategies rely on even minor success to regain confidence.

But my guess is that it is managers who don't have the confidence to mess with multi million pound players. If everybody in the squad -- all multi million pound players -- were told they would get this treatment at the start of the season then poor old Lukaku (and Kane) would understand it was nothing personal so he wouldn't have a fit of the vapours, demand a transfer, badmouth the manager etc etc. He bangs in a few against Skelmersdale Town and he's ready for the run up to Christmas. Suffering is better for the soul than mollycoddling. Quicker.
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Wile E. Coyote


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Mick Harper wrote:
. Not to the bench, dropped. Plays for the reserves.


That might be difficult as Premiership teams dont have reserve teams.....
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Mick Harper
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Rather makes my point. If an out of form striker knows there is nowhere to go he won't go there. Painsville City, I mean.
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Mick Harper
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Here's an idea for the dressing room. Roman army units would form two lines armed with sticks and force out-of-form strikers to run the gauntlet. Avoid the legs, chaps.
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Hatty
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But my guess is that it is managers who don't have the confidence to mess with multi million pound players.

Sir Alex would sell top players while they were still, apparently, top players. Not many managers are as ruthless, nor presumably have permission from the club's board to be.
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Mick Harper
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Surely he was the last manager who actually caused pain -- mostly verbal, occasionally with flying hairdryers -- to underperforming players. That's the AE point: nobody would be allowed to do that nowadays.* Even though it might be the correct strategy in certain circumstances for certain players.

* We're talking about top players at top clubs i.e. where everyone thinks they are too precious for abuse. Neil Warnock at Cardiff City probably does it all the time. But even he's a dinosaur. Jesus Christ, Premiership players will soon be coming out of the tunnel on their own customised therapists' couches.
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Mick Harper
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You may have heard of Eddy Merckx, aka 'the Cannibal' because he devoured all his opponents. The Don Bradman of cycling. Anyway his modern day version is among us in the form of an 18-year-old Belgian called Remco Evenepoel. In yesterday's World Cup Juniors he rode the most dominant race I have ever seen. The entire world was ganging up against him; he had a crash which left him a minute behind everyone else, he lost all three of his team-mates, he had to lead the peleton (a suicidal strategy), he broke away with fifty miles to go (an even more suicidal strategy), he won on his own blowing kisses to the crowd from the red kite onwards. I'm so glad I'm becoming a Belgian after Brexit.
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