I Do Declare

In the first Test of the 2014 England Sri Lanka series Alastair Cook declared too late and cost his team the game.

This is not an opinion, this is fact, a glance at the scorecard will show you that.

My opinion is that he did what I would have done. I may have even kept batting until all out.

His bowling line-up was Broad, a guy who has recently been worked too hard with too little support; Anderson, a great bowler who has just been through an uncharacteristically lean patch; Chris Jordan, completely untried; Liam Plunkett, picked out of left field, in the hope that Sri Lanka might wilt under relentless pace; and, well, that's it. A couple of batsmen who lob up little dobleys.

Sri Lanka have Sangakkara and Jayawardene, who could well do it on their own if its their day and they want it badly enough. They have cause to want it badly.

And by not declaring Gary Ballance could make his first Test ton. This is important. Its a young side. It is in a phase of its development where finding things to celebrate is worth prolonging the journey for.

But I am an idiot. I floundered around my whole career in lower grade cricket and only ever captained a side once.

I never got a chance at making a declaration. I won the toss and elected to bowl on a perfect wicket on a 40 degree day. I had my reasons, of course. I was also Secretary of the club and the poor mug stuck with trying to find eleven blokes willing to play. We got hammered every week, and we never had training. My theory was that if we bowled first every time we would eventually be fit enough, even if we were never good enough.

I crept away to the toss whilst the rest of the team were distracted and came back and said we'd lost the toss and been asked to bowl. At this point one of my teammates informed the rest of them that he had in fact snuck out after me and had overheard the whole transaction.

The team erupted, the warm up chat quickly descended into argument, and I unfortunately told them the real reason I had bowled: It had taken me three days to find enough players, we'd just travelled nearly three hours to get there, and I was buggered if we were gonna be rolled for fuck-all and be heading home again by lunchtime.

With this confident endorsement ringing in their ears, the only thing that would have saved us from a loss is if we'd all died first in the extreme heat. Some of them nearly did.

I was subsequently deposed and banned from ever being captain again.

If I were captaining England I would have done what Alastair Cook did.

Like For Like

I never did like Kevin Pietersen. Not just because he is a dickhead, because he is ugly.

I watch cricket for the grace and beauty of the game and Kevin is a lanky, stiff-legged gimp of a batsman.

I hate the way he is constantly knee flexing, I hate the ugly faces he makes stretching his jaw, I hate the way he fiddles with the bat, the pulling on the knee flap, the grabbing at the front of his jumper. It all annoys me.

When he finally settles down to face a ball he crouches too low, his back-lift is too high and in his follow-through he waves the bat around his head like a Klingon with a bat'leth.

In his forward shots he brings his feet together like a tin soldier, and his famous 'flamingo' is nothing but a stiff, ugly swipe in the air to short mid-wicket.

I suppose I also have a slight issue with where he came from.

A privileged white man in a society where resources for more than a hundred years were dragged out of poor black communities for the benefit of greedy, aggressive, exploitative Caucasians.

And when this disgusting social order is finally broken does Kevin put his shoulder to the stone, making whatever meagre contribution he can to the restoration of freedom and fairness?

No, in his late teens, as soon as a black kiddie gets picked in front of him, he takes his privilege and frumps off to England.

So now he has gone and in the very next Test England have picked not one, but two replacements. Chris Jordan, who left his own country in his late teens to go and play in England, and Sam Robson, who left his own country in his late teens to go and play in England.

Chris Jordan is from Barbados, a third world country, a remote island in the Caribbean, offering little in the way of social or financial opportunity. He is certainly good enough to have played for his own country, almost certainly good enough to play for his region, but England offered a better life, a life unattainable in his own society.

He still could, of course, have put his shoulder to the stone and tried to improve whatever he felt was wrong in that society, but he didn't. I guess its understandable.

Sam Robson is from Sydney, from an expensive inner-city suburb, a student of elite private schools, and has status unreachable even by most Australians. From a social standpoint he is privileged.

He was picked in all the age group teams for NSW, had access to the very best coaches, hell, his old man is still employed by the Sydney Cricket Ground to run indoor cricket nets for the elite. In cricket terms, his upbringing was beyond privileged, he was a prince.

He says he is playing for England because he lives there, it is his home, he likes it, he wants to be there. He doesn't say he has any issues with Australia, but he aint living here, making grand claims about this joint is he?

Look, I get it, really I do. I don't especially want to be living in this bogan hellhole either. I imagine I would be much happier in England, living amongst cultured folks who have educations and such, and who know how to be behave in polite society.

Mind you, I have never been to England and my entire notion of the place is drawn from Jane Austen novels. I'm willing to believe it is not quite like that in reality.

But even if I had the capacity to live and work in England I wouldn't. I was born a bogan, and for better or worse, since this is where the resources were dragged from to bring me up, then this is where I ought to put my shoulder to the stone. Some baggage you just don't put down.

Whether I like it or not, if I were good enough to play for Australia, even if I thought all of my team-mates were uncouth, drunken bozos I would still play only for them, because I am an Australian.

It was good enough for Don Bradman.

Sam Robson is no Don Bradman. I have never seen him play, so I don't have an opinion on how good he is. I guess I will never know if he was good enough to be picked for Australia.