These it would seem did not include the man who is president both of the Board of Control for Cricket in India
Posted in General on 22. Oct, 2010
These, it would seem, did not include the man who is president both of the Board of Control for Cricket in India and of the Cricket Association of Bengal, Jagmohan Dalmiya. Fans are enraged that tickets are not only scarce but highly priced. In some areas they cost 5,000 rupees, or £70, a price which even the England and Wales Cricket Board have not tried yet. To vent their anger, the crowd burned effigies of Dalmiya last week.He is probably used to it, though there is absolutely no truth in the rumour that Tim Lamb, the chief executive of the ECB who arrived on Friday and is Dalmiya’s old adversary, lent them the lighter.. When Andrew Flintoff left the crease after being out in Bangalore last month he went back to the dressing room and cried.
Most observers probably had a quiet weep as well, those who were not screaming, that is. It makes you feel better.”I was upset, just about off the planet, distraught,” he said last week, still recoiling at the stroke “Letting the team down like that was awful. But sitting there then I realised that I still had a job to do, I had got a new ball, maybe I could redeem myself.”Flintoff did that all right. He bowled fast and menacingly, he looked fully recovered from the back injury which had threatened his whole bowling future a year earlier.
He took four wickets, he looked as though he meant it, as though he could at last be the all-rounder England have so long craved. If only he could now learn to bat.It was the revelation that he had cried that made you sit up. In the four years since he made his international debut he has always been far more sensitive than might have been conveyed, but it is the smile on his face and the laugh in his throat that mark out the man they call Freddie. He could win caps for England doing it.The great good nature of this big man (and natural athlete) may have hindered more than helped him after he was picked for a Test match at the age of 20. He has never secured his place, he has yet to reveal the depth of his gifts with either bat or ball But he has kept coming back. It sounds daft, as he only passed his 24th birthday a month ago, but it is so.When they have said that Freddie was too fat, or too unfit, or too lazy, or too greedy, he has gone and shown them.
One of the stories of 2000 was that he was heavier than Lennox Lewis, which happened to be true, and even Freddie laughed when the Sun ran a tale of the tape. But he has always managed to lose weight again.He was more annoyed when he was criticised about seeking more money from Lancashire. He is not driven by money, he loves the North-west, the dispute was all about the length of contract.England have never been shy of offering him opportunities because they know what a cricketer he could be, but equally the lad from Preston – no, it is never all quiet on the Preston front where he is concerned – has never shirked from facing up to his shortcomings.Last season in England was another indifferent one for him. He had last played a Test match early in 2000, he had been called up for the Pakistan tour, sent home and recalled again But he was out of the England side throughout the summer. He was bowling again after his back injury, but not very much, and his batting was bizarrely fragile He kept reaching 20 or 30 and then getting out. His agent, Chubby Chandler, and his Lancashire colleague Neil Fairbrother had a word.