Michael Vaughan Opens Up
“I think cricket is in a great state,” Michael Vaughan said recently at a Lord’s Taverners lunch to mark the start of the season and the charity’s 60th anniversary. “England have the Ashes, Yorkshire are top of the table and Surrey haven’t won a game yet.”
Vaughan was on good form at today’s lunch, although you can’t go wrong with a few anecdotes at the expense of Geoff Boycott and Andrew Flintoff. Asked to talk about the 2005 Ashes, he said: “There are three things that I always get asked about that series and none of them are to do with cricket.
“The first is what is Flintoff like. The answer is he is an alcoholic. One of my most important jobs as England captain was to be on Freddiewatch. I didn’t mind if he had a headache as long as he was playing well. Ten pints a night is not something I would recommend to everyone but it worked for him.
“The second is who p***ed in the Prime Minister’s plantpot – and I still don’t know that. And the third is whether Kevin Pietersen shagged Caprice. Yes he did. That’s why they call 2005 the best series of them all.”
As for Boycott, Vaughan told a good story about going to meet his fellow Yorkshireman at his home on a golf course in South Africa. “He stood on his balcony by the seventh fairway commentating on the technique of everyone who came through,” Vaughan said. “When I went up to see him, he was wearing a T-shirt with a picture of Boycott playing a cover-drive and the word ‘Legend’ written on the front. On the back it said ‘Were you there: August 11, 1977?’”
That refers to Boycott’s century – his 100th first-class hundred – at Headingley against Australia. Something to be proud of. But maybe not to put on a T-shirt.
Vaughan also revealed that he met Boycott in the Edgbaston car park after the first day of the Ashes Test in 2005, when England had been put in and made 407 in 80 overs. “That were entertaining but you won’t win many cricket matches playing like that,” Boycott told the England captain.
Finally, Vaughan paid a heartfelt compliment to Marcus Trescothick when asked which batsman in history he would most like to bat with. “It was such a sad moment for the game when he fell ill,” Vaughan said, naming his former team-mate. “If he had been able to carry on, I believe he would have made 12 000 runs in Test cricket and the same number in ODIs.”
With thanks to timesonline.co.uk
Vaughan Questions Kieswetter And Co
Craig Kieswetter celebrates after reaching his maiden one day century between Bangladesh and England on March 5, 2010.
The South African-born wicketkeeper Craig Kieswetter scored a match-winning century in his third match for England today but his decision to switch allegiance has not impressed everyone.
Kieswetter, in just his third one-day international, hit 107 during England’s 45-run victory over Bangladesh in Chittagong. But the former England captain Michael Vaughan would like to see 11 Englishmen representing the national side.
Vaughan told the London launch of the Jaguar Academy of Sport, in comments reported in The Independent: “I would like to see, in an ideal world, 11 complete Englishmen in the team.”
Vaughan said he could see how the likes of Kevin Pietersen, who had never played for South Africa, could make the move but was unhappy about Kieswetter and the batsman Jonathan Trott, who both played at some level for their native country.
“Someone like Kevin Pietersen made the decision very early to come over to England and he learnt a lot of his cricket here,” said Vaughan.
“I do have a problem when the likes of Jonathan Trott play for England and Kieswetter, who’s played for the South African Under-19s. I think in Trott’s case he even played for the South Africa A team.
“Now that is where I have a problem, that we have almost got a ’ship-in’ system of looking at talent, and a lot of them come over for the money. It’s very, very difficult to stop them. I would like to see, in an ideal world, 11 complete Englishmen in the team but I don’t think that’s ever going to be the case.”
With thanks to the guardian.co.uk
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England Lucky On Ball-Tampering
England were lucky to escape unpunished from a ball-tampering controversy in their third test against South Africa, according to former captain Michael Vaughan.
“England should treat the whole ball-tampering incident as a warning,” he wrote in a column in the Daily Telegraph on Thursday.
“They were lucky to get away without an official reprimand, or even a ban, because there is no doubt in my mind that they were trying to change the condition of the ball.”
South Africa raised concerns about the ball during the third day of the third test in Cape Town after television pictures showed England bowler Stuart Broad stopping the ball with his foot.
Footage also suggested seamer Jimmy Anderson may have been picking the seam with his thumbnail.
The International Cricket Council (ICC) decided no action would be taken, however, after South Africa made no official complaint.
Vaughan said Broad had been stopping the ball with his boot all the way through the series and recalled similar examples from his own England days.
“When I was captain, I would get my attack to bowl cross-seam bouncers at some point around the 15th over.
“You never knew which side of the ball was going to hit the pitch and become scuffed up, but after you had done it three or four times, you chose one side to shine and one to keep rough.
“Marcus Trescothick used to be our shiner: he would suck jelly babies to make one side of the ball sugary,” he added.
“I don’t really know whether it made any difference, but I do know that we had a good summer with reverse swing in 2005.”
Vaughan and Nasser Hussain, also a former England captain, said there would have been uproar had other nationalities been involved.
“There is no doubt in my mind that, if a Pakistani or Indian bowler had been caught doing what Anderson did, we would have said he was cheating,” Hussain wrote in the Daily Mail.
“I do not think the International Cricket Council have covered themselves in glory here,” he added.
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