“Fat slob?” Well that’s not very nice. But as insults go, I suppose it gets the job done. What’s that? I’ve got a what … a surfboard on my front leg? A surf … say again, Davey? No, you’ve lost me.
It has been a busy few weeks for the sledgers. First up, Liam Livingstone v Tom Curran. Ding Ding! Curran normally gives off the energy of a man who would only really emerge from his perma-chilled bunker if, say, someone smashed his avocado the wrong way. Yet here he was on a Tuesday evening at Edgbaston throwing off his fedora and dungaree sporting coffee-bro image to give his “good friend” Livingstone an earful as his Oval Invincibles grappled with Birmingham Phoenix.
“He is one of my good friends and he called me a fat slob or something,” said Livingstone after bludgeoning a match-winning 69 not out that included marmalising Rashid Khan for three sixes and two fours and taking Curran for 21 runs off the nine balls he faced from him, adding: “I have no idea why Tom started to spray me.” You suspect those in charge of the tournament were clapping their hands at the heated exchange and ensuing pyrotechnics.
One of the many criticisms aimed at the Hundred is that the freshly minted teams are here today and gone tomorrow (or here for August, forgotten by September) and thus for players and fans it is all a bit of a “hit and giggle”, an easy pay cheque for the former and a fun but forgettable evening out for the latter. The jeopardy and raised emotions surrounding the Hundred have always been off the field rather than on it. While Curran’s sledge was crass, here was a passage of play where the intensity and war of words added to the spectacle, showed that the players do have skin in the game, crisp branded epidermis at most, perhaps, but something at least.
Still, Vikram Banerjee’s talk of injecting tribalism into the Hundred and creating more of a football fandom among the supporters still seems far-fetched. Last year the competition’s now managing director told journalists: “I’m an Aston Villa fan, for my sins, and I travel up to Middlesbrough and down to Bournemouth and wherever else to watch my team. That’s where we want to get the Hundred to: fans of London Spirit travelling around the country, rather than it being a day out. That’s what we’re looking to do.” Banerjee’s sunlit upland of Danny Dyer interviewing face-pixellated Welsh Fire ultras in a back street near Sophia Gardens still seems a long way away. Let’s be clear – that isn’t a bad thing.
And yet, compared with the bone-crunching eyeball-melting intensity of the England v India Test series just gone, the Hundred still pales in comparison. Tuning into the tournament in its first few days after that last morning of the Test series at the Oval was a significant drop-off not just in spectacle but intensity, like being airlifted from an SAS interrogation chamber and dumped on your sofa in front of The One Show, joggers flecked with Dorito dust but the distant sound of Mohammed Siraj’s gunfire still echoing in your ears.
Along with the absorbing cricket there was a significant side portion of needle in the Test series. As is the way with these things, some of it added to the drama and some it was fairly risible. With on-field sledging it’s often a fine line between a genuinely pithy one-liner and cringeworthy stag-do bore. For every “Mind the windows, Tino” or “When in Rome, dear boy” there’s a thousand “Grow some fucking balls” or Harry Brook offering a cod-handshake.
The fifth Test at the Oval did see something noteworthy, the usually unflappable Joe Root clearly angered by something Prasidh Krishna muttered to him. While England’s greatest modern batter didn’t go the full Zidane and plant a helmeted-head-butt into the bowler’s chest, he was about as angry as he has ever appeared on a cricket pitch in his career. What did Krishna say? It must’ve been bad to get Root – who usually deflects any sledging as deftly as one of his glides behind point with a boyish grin – ticking like Malcolm Tucker on election night. The stump mic didn’t pick up the exchange, adding to the intrigue, only for Krishna to later play it down while admitting it was a preconceived plan to try to put Root off his game. Root was clearly ruffled and fell not long after for 29, considerably less than his series average of 67.12, so you could say that India’s plan worked … or that Root just got a good ball from Siraj.
One thing is for sure, with the Ashes looming a few months away there will be no shortage of words flying back and forth between the hemispheres. David Warner described Root as England’s “big anchor” before sticking a few jabs in about his lack of a Test century in Australia and declaring: “Josh Hazlewood tends to have his number quite a lot. He will have to take the surfboard off his front leg.” Root has fallen to Hazlewood lbw a grand total of three times in Test matches so Warner’s surfboard is more of a children’s pool float.
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Root is always adapting and advancing his game. They are just some of the traits that make him one of the all-time great batters. Far easier to ignore an off-field slight than a jibe out in the heat of the middle but perhaps Root made a mental note after losing his cool with Krishna. He was back to his phlegmatic default in his response to Warner’s brand of walrus-tached shit-stirring – describing it as “irrelevant” and “all part of the fun”. The famously non-sledging Curtly Ambrose used to say he preferred to let the ball do his talking for him. Root knows the ultimate riposte will be with his bat and in the scorebook. Everything else is just hot air.
