LEE PAYNE

Tag: 2005

  • England’s World Cup success can get the country into cricket again

    It was in early January 2003, just before school started again after Christmas, that I first got into cricket.

    I was 10 years old and would get up in the morning to find my dad in the living room watching the Ashes Test from Sydney on TV. On the screen, I could see Michael Vaughan batting for England and can remember thinking ‘this is great’.

    Vaughan’s strokeplay, especially his cover drive, were just so pleasing on the eye. I knew next to nothing about the sport at the time. I didn’t know England were 4-0 down in the five match series. I didn’t know the Australian team was one of the best there had ever been. But I was fascinated by this Englishman artfully approaching these little red missiles being fired at him and making several Australians chase after them. I didn’t want to stop watching.

    Watching Michael Vaughan bat got me into cricket

    I would say I love football and cricket equally. Thankfully, with the end of the football season signalling the start of the cricket season in this country I rarely have to choose between the two. If I had to pick just one, however, it would be cricket.

    So much can happen at any moment in a cricket match. Every ball is an event. There are so many ways for the batsman to score runs and so many ways for the bowler to get him out. Football tends to be mostly tedious until the last ten minutes of a game. And cricket is so aesthetically pleasing – it certainly takes the crown of ‘the beautiful game’ for me. Sorry, Pele.

    I also love how cricket is so incredibly difficult to be good at. You’ve got three disciplines to tackle and it’s hard to be proficient at any of them. The chances of being good at all three are next to zero. International cricketers seem almost superhuman compared to mere mortals like me. Just look (below) at this catch England’s Ben Stokes took in an Ashes Test in 2015.

    Cricket was the new cool in 2005 when England won the Ashes for the first time in 18 years, beating an immensely strong Australia 2-1 in what is unlikely ever to usurped as the best Test series of all time. The game was on the front and back pages of the newspapers and 7.4 million people tuned in to watch the end of the final Test live on Channel 4.

    Since then, the England cricket team has only been visible on live television to Sky Sports subscribers. Prohibitively expensive to many and not likely to be stumbled upon by the casual viewer, cricket dropped out of the national consciousness and the numbers of people playing and watching sank. The conclusion of the final Ashes Test in 2009, only on Sky Sports, was watched by less than two million.

    These are the reasons why this year’s World Cup has been so important for cricket in the UK. The world’s best players have been competing on our doorsteps for nearly seven weeks. Fan parks have opened the tournament up to thousands of newcomers. And to top it all, England came into it as favourites and have reached the final.

    England thrashed Australia in the semi-finals to reach the Cricket World Cup final for the first time since 1992

    It’s hard to put into words what England winning the World Cup would do for the game. How often can we say that England are world champions in any sport? With the match against New Zealand at Lord’s being the first time the England team can be seen live on terrestrial television for 14 years – it’s going to be live on Channel 4 – this is a massive opportunity for cricket to engage with the wider public once again.

    I’d love for a kid to catch sight of cricket on the TV for the first time on Sunday and be captured by it in the way I was sixteen years ago. For Jonny Bairstow or Joe Root to inspire in the way that Michael Vaughan did. After all, success makes you popular.

    • The Cricket World Cup final between England and New Zealand at Lord’s will be live on Channel 4 and Sky Sports on Sunday 14th July, with the first ball at 10.30am.

  • 2005 and 2015: how Norwich City’s players are now recognised by their countries

    Carrow Road stands empty as we wait for yet another international break to end.

    It’s Sunday afternoon. Football fans should be watching the final stages of the first ‘Super Sunday’ game on Sky, ready for the next one at 4pm. They should be reading the papers analyse and discuss the events of Saturday’s matches. They should be setting their PVRs to record Match of the Day 2 on.

    But they’re not – for this is a weekend hand-crafted by the devil. It’s a weekend that comes along just as the football season is getting into its stride. This is the dreaded international break.

    As Norwich City fans, we tend to be pretty proud when one of our players is called up by their country. Until recently it was a pretty rare occurrence, so we would send them on their way wishing them to go and show what talent Norwich had in their ranks. As well as hoping they wouldn’t get injured.

    I thought I’d take a look at a City team from ten years ago, to see how many internationals we had then, and compare that to the eleven that lost to Leicester last Saturday.

    On 1st October 2005, Norwich beat Brighton 3-1 at the Withdean Stadium. The Canaries were getting back into life in the Championship after Premier League relegation, and lined up that day like this:

    Robert Green
    Jürgen Colin
    Gary Doherty
    Calum Davenport
    Adam Drury
    Dean Marney
    Youssef Safri
    Andy Hughes
    Paul McVeigh
    Darren Huckerby
    Kevin Lisbie

    Substitutes: Darren Ward, Jim Brennan, Ian Henderson, Simon Charlton, Craig Fleming

    Goalkeeper Robert Green is best known for his embarrassing error against the USA in the opening game of the 2010 World Cup. He made his England debut against Colombia a few months before this Brighton match, becoming only the sixth Canary to play for England. He was set to go to the Germany World Cup in 2006 but ruptured his groin in a B international against Belarus. He was sold to West Ham shortly afterwards and the rest of his 12 caps came elsewhere.

    Robert Green. Oh Robert.

    Gary Doherty – aka the Ginger Pele – made 34 appearances for the Republic of Ireland. Strange as it may seem but Doherty was mostly played as a striker by the Republic, while he obviously found a home at centre half for Norwich. His last international cap came in 2005.

    The most capped international in the City side that day was midfielder Youssef Safri, who played 77 times for Morocco, including games at the 2004 African Cup of Nations, where his team made it to the final. Safri will be remembered by Norwich fans for doing this in a Premier League match against Newcastle:

    Paul McVeigh played 20 times for Northern Ireland over six years, Kevin Lisbie has 10 Jamaica caps to his name, and among the substitutes at the Withdean, goalkeeper Darren Ward made 5 appearances for Wales and Jim Brennan 49 for Canada.

    That was it – a total of 207 international caps and most of those for British or Irish nations and the smaller footballing countries. Now let’s remind ourselves of the Norwich City team from last Saturday:

    John Ruddy
    Steven Whittaker
    Russell Martin
    Sebastien Bassong
    Robbie Brady
    Jonny Howson
    Alex Tettey
    Graham Dorrans
    Matt Jarvis
    Wes Hoolahan
    Cameron Jerome

    Substitutes: Declan Rudd, Dieumerci Mbokani, Kyle Lafferty, Nathan Redmond, Martin Olsson, Ryan Bennett, Gary O’Neil

    Kyle Laffery struggles to get into the Norwich team but has top scored for Northern Ireland as they qualified for Euro 2016.

    This squad has nearly 250 international appearances between them from as many as 12 different players. Overall, this shows how much things have changed for Norwich City in the last decade – and these players have been doing well for their nations too. Wes Hoolahan was man of the match for the Republic of Ireland as they beat Germany on Thursday – a game Robbie Brady also played in. Kyle Laffery is the top scorer in Northern Ireland’s European qualifiers, Dieumerci Mbokani scored for DR Congo and Alex Tettey scored for Norway against Malta last night.

    I hope you’ve found this an interesting look at how Norwich’s representation of the international stage has changed in the last 10 years – and I hope it’s made this awful international break that little bit more bearable.