New York Yankees – Bulletproof Truth

SA then, now and next

“At the start of the tournament Quinton de Kock said if I bat a lot then the frontline batters haven’t done their job.” – Wayne Parnell

Telford Vice / Sydney

“BELIEVE!” Of all the signs held up by spectators at Fenway Park in the heady days of October 2004 that one, with its singular exhortation, an injunction, an urgent, commanding verb, distilled the mood most viscerally. Others — “I believe”, “We believe”, “We still believe”, or “Still, we believe” — didn’t hit the mark as powerfully.

The Boston Red Sox hadn’t won the World Series for 86 years. Or, as opposition fans, especially those of the New York Yankees, delighted in chanting when Red Sox Nation were in earshot, since “Nineteen! … Eighteen!” Boston’s horses had been to the World Series water four times after that, and refused to drink.

And here they were, 3-0 down in the American League Championship Series (ALCS) — essentially the semi-finals — against those damn Yankees, who in 2003 before had waited until the bottom of the 11th inning of the seventh game of the ALCS to stab all of Boston in the heart using the sharp end of Aaron Boone’s walk-off home run.

A year on, and one more loss would be just another broken dream tossed onto the scrapheap of Red Sox history. Except that Boston didn’t lose. They became the first — and only — MLB team to reel off four consecutive wins to claim the American League pennant. There was no stopping them from there, and they thrashed the St Louis Cardinals 4-0 in the World Series.

But it was when they were 3-0 down against the Yankees, and trailing by two runs after six innings in the fourth game, that a particular kind of regular fella — middle-aged, paunchy, moustachioed — stood up from his seat in the stands and brandished his hand-scrawled order: “Believe!”

All cricketminded South Africans, not only those who are middle-aged, paunchy and moustachioed, know how he felt. And all of them would be hesitant to do what he did. Because they are all out of faith. If only they could believe their team had a real chance of winning the men’s T20 World Cup. History tells them they shouldn’t get their hopes up.

Going into the 2022 edition South Africa had a better winning percentage in the tournament than England, West Indies, New Zealand, Australia and Pakistan — champions all — but they had never advanced beyond the semi-finals, which they had reached just twice in eight attempts. In the ODI World Cup only New Zealand, India and Australia have won a bigger percentage of their games than South Africa. But, in their eight appearances in the tournament, they have won only one knockout match — the 2015 quarter-final against Sri Lanka — of the six they have played. They have reached the semis in more than a third of those 16 tournaments without once making the final, nevermind winning it.

Believe? In what, exactly? Maybe in the ability of this team to spread the load of winning. In a rain-ruined game against Zimbabwe in Hobart last Monday, Lungi Ngidi established South Africa’s dominance and Wayne Parnell and Anrich Nortjé took 2/16 in four overs between them before Quinton de Kock smashed an unbeaten 47 off 18. Three days later at the SCG De Kock’s 38-ball 63 was overshadowed by Rilee Rossouw’s 109, which flew off 56 deliveries. Then Nortjé and Tabraiz Shamsi claimed a combined 7/30 to nail down a comfortable victory.

Onto Perth for South Africa’s biggest game of the tournament so far, against India on Sunday. Ngidi removed Rohit Sharma, KL Rahul and Virat Kohli inside seven overs with only 41 runs scored. Ngidi took 4/29 and Parnell 3/15 in helpful conditions, which demanded gritty half-centuries by Aiden Markram and David Miller to seal the win with two balls to spare.

There’s a thread to be traced there — Ngidi, Nortjé, De Kock, Parnell — but also strengthening knots tied by other players. All of which have made South Africa the only unbeaten team in Group 2 and put them on top of the standings by points and net runrate. With matches to come against Pakistan in Sydney on Thursday and the Netherlands in Adelaide on Sunday, Temba Bavuma’s team are on course for a semi-final berth.

“That’s the pleasing thing, having different guys stand up in different guys,” Parnell told reporters in Perth after Sunday’s success. “In years gone by we maybe relied a lot on one or two guys. Now, from 1 to 11, someone can put in a matchwinning performance. We’re trusting our skill. It’s about trusting your processes. We trust everyone to perform.”

The converse is that South Africa have struggled with the idea of world class players. Like a docile poodle that has somehow caught a bird, they haven’t known how to handle them. They are uneasy in the presence of greatness. So bona fide stars like Allan Donald, Herschelle Gibbs, Jacques Kallis and AB de Villiers are controversial figures in some cricketing conversations in South Africa. They are not alone: even Nelson Mandela, a global icon, has his homegrown detractors — many feel he sacrificed justice in the cause of racial reconciliation, which has not been achieved in any real sense.

Parnell also spoke of a corollary to South Africa’s new-found socialist approach: “At the start of the tournament Quinton de Kock said if I bat a lot then they [the frontline batters] haven’t done their job.” So far so good. Parnell was listed at No. 7 in all three matches. He wasn’t required in the game against Zimbabwe, and was called to the crease with two balls left in the innings against Bangladesh and with 14 remaining against India. He has yet to be dismissed and has scored two off seven.

But didn’t his teammates’ stated reluctance to see him shoulder too much of the batting burden contradict the idea of shared responsibility? It seems not: “That gives me the confidence [to know] that everyone’s hard on themselves to put in matchwinning performances.”

Call it a double-edged sword. Besides, Ngidi had enough belief in Parnell and Miller to chase down the last dozen runs of the target in Perth to not bother with changing back into his match gear, nevermind padding up. “This is how I’ve been the whole game,” he told reporters, in his training gear complete with hoodie, when he was asked if he was worried about having to go out and bat. “I had full faith in the guys. It was getting a bit nerve-racking towards the end there but the guys have played in situations like this before so you 100% have faith in them.”

He echoed Parnell: “The guys have been playing good cricket, and it’s been different performers each time. It’s not just us relying on one person to win us a game on the day. We’re trying to do it as a team, and I think that’s the biggest thing that’s working for us right now.”

Then he went a step further and used the B-word: “I think we’ve come in with the belief to do it. We’re not carrying any baggage.” Really? Ngidi played in the first two games of South Africa’s 2019 World Cup campaign, when they were rudely woken by England and knocked out cold by Bangladesh. He also featured in the losses to New Zealand and Pakistan. It turned out to be South Africa’s worst World Cup; five losses in eight completed matches.

Parnell was in the XI who went down to Pakistan in the 2009 World T20 semi-final, part of the squad who came badly unstuck in their 2011 World Cup quarter-final against New Zealand, as well as the squad who finished bottom of their group after losing all three of their round-robin matches in the 2012 World T20. He was in the XI who crashed out of the 2014 World T20 in a semi-final against India, who were also the opposition in the only match he played in South Africa’s ill-fated 2015 World Cup campaign. He had Shikhar Dhawan caught in the deep that day/night — for 137 in nine overs that cost 85. India surged to victory by 130 runs, which remains South Africa’s heaviest ODI defeat by any team on neutral territory.

None of which is to single out Parnell as a weak link or some sort of bad omen. Rather, it is testament to his mental strength that, at 33, he can recover from blows like those well enough to become an important part of South Africa’s current campaign — he is third among their wicket-takers and second in the economy rate stakes.

But this is bigger than that. South Africans remember the 2015 World Cup for a semi-final against New Zealand in which the suits demanded the dropping of Kyle Abbott, then the team’s best bowler, which forced the inclusion of Vernon Philander, who wasn’t at his best and had only recently recovered from a hamstring injury. It was a plainly stupid decision that cost South Africa more than just a decent shot at winning a World Cup.

As Faf du Plessis wrote in a new book, Faf: Through Fire: “Deep down, that selection controversy was playing at the back of all our minds as we went into the semi-final. On the day, we suppressed the feelings in a hard-fought effort to win the game, but when we got into the changing room afterwards, anger re-entered our collective being. I must emphasise that this had nothing to do with Vern; none of our emotions were caused by or directed at him. Our anger was towards the external interference and the sense that it might have sapped 10 or even just 1 percent of the energy and motivation we needed to go all the way. Whether it did in fact have that effect doesn’t matter. That’s how we felt. If you fast forward a few years, can you really blame players like Rilee Rossouw and Kyle Abbott for signing Kolpak deals? … You carry those emotions with you, and you lose that something special that is meant to define the experience of playing for your country. ‘Abbo’ was deeply wounded by what had been done to him.”

Maybe Ngidi and Parnell mean South Africa have jettisoned baggage like that and are now travelling light. Who needs more than hand luggage for a T20 tournament, anyway? Suitcases stuffed with failure are too heavy and bulky to keep dragging around. But resolving to dump them and doing so are vastly different.

Not everyone is convinced that has happened in its own right. “India kabhi nahi chahega Pakistan aage jaaye [India will never want Pakistan to progress],” Salim Malik told Lahore-based 24 News HD with a smirk after South Africa’s win, which complicated Pakistan’s chances of making the semis. The irony of someone who was banned for life for matchfixing — and subsequently unbanned — seeming to suggest that the Indians threw the match just to keep Pakistan out of the playoffs is not lost.

But that’s not South Africa’s problem. Indeed, they are happy not to be dragged into the noise. “There’s a lot of hype about a lot of teams, and maybe that puts pressure on them,” Ngidi said. “We just keep going out there putting in the performances that we need to; getting those points.”

The Red Sox didn’t have that privilege. For many of the 86 years they didn’t win the World Series all they heard in opposition ballparks was, “Nineteen! … Eighteen!” At least, having never won a World Cup, South Africa can’t be beaten with that stick. Maybe that’s what faith really is: trusting that what you can’t see does in fact exist at a deeper level. Or could exist. In a word, belief. Or even “Believe!”

First published by Cricbuzz.

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David Miller is no fuss, all finish …

… but he wouldn’t be much good at baseball.

Telford Vice | Cape Town

DAVID Miller makes for a powerful argument against the view that T20 is closer to baseball than cricket, an opinion the lusty left-hander disproved not for the first time while master-blasting Gujarat Titans to victory over Rajasthan Royals in their IPL qualifier at Eden Gardens on Tuesday.

The last two sixes Miller hit in a hattrick of maximums that sealed victory would not have counted had he been playing baseball. Instead, they would have been foul balls. Or balls not hit into the 90 degrees between, in cricket terms, a straight line from middle stump through cover and to the boundary, and another drawn from middle stump through wide mid-on to that fence. All a foul ball earns you in baseball is a strike against your name — though it can’t be strike three — or dismissal: you can be caught off a foul ball.

Two of Miller’s three fours and 17 of his total of 26 singles and twos would also have been declared foul. He would have had two strikes against him from swings and misses, and one ball in his favour because it was outside an imaginary strike zone. He was twice hit by deliveries, which would have earned him walks to first base. The first of them was the fifth ball he faced. That would have ended his innings without him having achieved much.

Pitches come to baseball batters on the full, but they should not be confused with cricket’s full tosses, which are often easier to hit than deliveries that bounce first. The seams on a baseball, which follow a similar pattern to those on a tennis ball, are noticeably more raised than on a cricket ball. That makes a baseball dip and swerve every which way through the air significantly more sharply than a cricket ball, and at between 150 and 160 kilometres an hour. MLB pitchers have fine control even at that speed. Also, a baseball is always new — it’s replaced whenever a pitch bounces or is hit out of the playing area.

So, had Miller been playing baseball on Tuesday, his scintillating 38-ball 68 not out would have been reduced to a middling 35 off 38. And probably fewer than that considering hitting a baseball properly is exponentially more difficult than dealing with a cricket ball. A baseball bat does not have a cricket bat’s flat face, which tips the balance between bat and ball firmly in the former’s favour. The opposite is true of baseball, where the bat is as round as the ball you’re expected to hit. This is the most important point of departure between the two sports. It means that in cricket, particularly in T20, the finisher is a batter. In baseball, the role is played by a pitcher — a relief pitcher or “closer”.

Mariano Rivera, who played for the New York Yankees for 19 seasons, was the finest closer of them all. His total of 652 saves — awarded to a pitcher who preserves his team’s lead in a game, subject to certain conditions — is an all-time MLB record. His busiest summer as a reliever — he was a starting pitcher in 1995, his debut season — was 1996, when he threw 1,602 pitches. He was paid USD131,125 that year. In 2002, he threw only 724 times to get the job done and was paid USD9.45-million.

Also in 2002, the Yankees’ most used starting pitcher, Mike Mussina, threw 3,350 pitches and was paid USD11-million. So Rivera earned 85.91% of Mussina’s salary for shouldering only 21.61% of his workload. All told, Rivera threw 19,438 pitches and was paid almost USD170-million. Mussina’s 53,509 pitches across 18 seasons for the Baltimore Orioles and the Yankees earned him USD144.5-million. Rivera’s pitches fetched USD8713.95 apiece, and Mussina’s USD2701.11. Why was Rivera worth more than three times as Mussina to his team despite working almost three times less than the starter? Because he was available for most games — typically starters pitch only once every five games — but mainly because, as the closer, he nailed down wins. He was the cool-headed finisher.

Cool-headed big hitters of Miller’s calibre do with the bat what pitchers like Rivera do with the ball. Miller has been at the crease 17 times when his IPL teams, Kings XI Punjab and Rajasthan, have won batting second. In that scenario, he has scored five half-centuries — among them efforts of 80 not out and 94 not out — and a century. Only three times in matches in which his team have chased has he finished on the losing side despite scoring an unbeaten half-century. When he has been dismissed in the single figures with his team hunting a target, they have won four times and lost 10 times. The upshot is that, like Rivera, finishers like Miller are good for business.

Can there be any surprise that the most consummate of the ilk in cricket history, MS Dhoni, holds the record for not outs in the IPL with 79? That’s in 234 matches, 26 of which his team have won with him at the crease. In those terms, he has reached 50 five times.

Connecting the dots between baseball players like Rivera and cricketers like Miller and Dhoni may seem, well, dotty. But it offers an avenue for understanding the similarities and differences between the world’s two greatest bat-and-ball games, neither of which can be seriously considered superior to the other.

Even so, there is a stark degree of separation between these three stars. Miller has earned USD9.5-million from his dozen IPL campaigns. Dhoni, who has played in all 15 editions, has made USD21.2-million from the tournament. So playing for the Yankees earned Rivera more than 15 and seven times as much as Miller and Dhoni have been paid by the IPL.

But that equation isn’t settled there. Dhoni has also played 538 matches across the formats for India and, of course, guided them to World Cup glory. Miller has won 238 white-ball caps for South Africa, and turned out for 13 teams — aside from his IPL franchises and South Africa — based in seven different countries. There’s more to them as professionals, and thus their bank balances, than their IPL exploits.

Maybe the buck stops with their estimated net worth. Miller’s is USD11-million, Rivera’s USD90-million, and Dhoni’s USD113-million. But even that isn’t conclusive, because Rivera retired in 2013. What might Dhoni’s net worth be nine years after he calls it quits? Or when cricket’s finest finisher finally finishes finishing.

First published by Cricbuzz.

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From Maradona, maybe, to Jagger, definitely, to Mugabe, unfortunately

Some writers on sport can no longer take in a game without also taking notes. Others have forgotten the simple joy of being part of a crowd.

Times Select

TELFORD VICE in London

IS that Maradona? There! Leaning out of that balcony and thrashing his arms at the players down on the field like a crazy crackerjack. Is it him? Could be. But it’s difficult to be sure here in the cheap seats behind the goal.

Which is where I was a few years ago, at La Bombonera watching Boca Juniors play Independiente. It was hard to know whether you were less safe inside the stadium or immediately outside it, in some of Buenos Aires’ meanest streets.

To be there was impressive enough. To survive the experience was a triumph. I celebrated the fact the next afternoon by going across town to watch a quarter-final in the Argentinian polo championship, where the only clear and present danger was in failing to recognise the designer draped celebrities in the stands. At least, they behaved like celebrities. I can confirm that Maradona was not in attendance.

To go, inside a few hours, from average beer and a burger of uncertain provenance to chilled champagne and classy canapés was only part of the story of the journey. Unlike at the football, at the polo there were no flags, no flares, and no chanting, bristling, duelling sections of the crowd.

At the old Yankee Stadium in New York — they’ve since built a new one next door — I watched Derek Jeter and Mariano Rivera from high above the third base foul line. To know that Babe Ruth, Lou Gehrig and Joe diMaggio played on the same field still gives me goosebumps.

The queue to get into Wimbledon; ah, I know it well. It takes so long that once you’re finally in you don’t care who is playing on the courts available to plebs like you. Any pair, or quartet, of racqueteers will do.

I’ve seen bullfighting in Seville — where exponentially more sunflower seeds were chewed by spectators and their husks spat onto the floor than bulls were brutally if artfully killed — ocean yacht racing in Auckland, and hurling played by a bunch of homesick Irish in a park in London.

And that’s all apart from my improper job of writing about, and sometimes talking about, sport.

The closest I’ve come to blurring the line is when I found myself aboard an ocean racing yacht outside Cape Town harbour, trying to work out which way was up while also hanging onto my already eaten lunch and taking enough mental notes to be able to put together a half-decent feature.

That and facing Ottis Gibson, then Border’s big fast bowler, in the nets at Buffalo Park to write what my editor called a “participation piece”. I’m not sure how many times my helpless swishing at deliveries Gibson bowled at significantly less than his full pace could be termed participating.

Watching sport and reporting it are starkly different. Some of us can no longer take in a game for the hell of it without also taking notes. Others, grown far too used to the free food, free drink, free wifi and free desk space in ever more comfortable pressboxes, have forgotten the simple joy of sitting in the stands and being part of a crowd.

For several years until a year or so ago, reporters covering Test cricket in England would have the services of a masseuse. Yes, in the pressbox. All jokes about happy endings have fallen foul of the sub-editors.

Civilians of a sport-loving inclination tend to ask us two questions: “Do you have any spare tickets?” and “Can I hide in your luggage?”. We do not have tickets: our access is strictly by accreditation. We never see a ticket. And, no, you can’t hide in my luggage: I need all the space and weight allowance I have for hats, running gear and spare notebooks and pencils.

And the presence of a masseuse isn’t the joke it might seem. At games at this year’s men’s World Cup, some of us would live blog the match, a job that stretches into many thousands of hurriedly thought and typed words on its own, write two match reports — one for print, the other for digital, both to be filed the instant the last ball was bowled — attend the press conferences and the mixed zones, write up quotes pieces from the press conferences and mixed zones, and whip up a fresh quotes piece for the morning’s online offering.

That done, we would sink back into a metaphoric leather chair with an even more metaphoric whisky to hand, to essay an entirely metaphoric piece to be published by the future of serious cricket writing itself.

By which I mean one of the slew of Indian websites for whom, essentially, you explode a mustard seed of an idea into a fully fledged faith of how that aspect of the game should be played. And adored, of course.

That all added up to days that started at around 9am with the trip to ground — the toss was at 10am — and ended just in time to sink a pint or three before the pubs closed at 11pm. We could have used a massage after all that, even if only to ensure the elbows of our drinking arms hadn’t seized in typing mode.

But there are perks. Once, while covering a Test at the Bourda in Georgetown, I saw Mick Jagger looming whitely out of the deep verandah of the stand opposite. I still have an unpaid phone bill in Barbados, circa 1992, and I was thrown out of Robert Mugabe’s Zimbabwe.

So, was that Maradona at La Bombonera. Dunno. But I hope it was.

Shohei Ohtani makes baseball fear to tread where cricket has always gone

Garfield Sobers is cricket’s only genuine, unarguable, bulletproof allrounder. Wasim Akram? Bowler. Jacques Kallis? Batsman.

Times SELECT

TELFORD VICE in Florence

A nice young man is scaring the bejaysus out of Major League Baseball (MLB). His name is Shohei Ohtani and — make sure any kids who play Little League are out of the room if you’re reading this aloud — he hits as well as he pitches.

That’s right: he hits as well as he pitches, a fact that is causing shock, horror and not a little amazement from California to Connecticut.

Thereby hangs a lesson for cricket, which is decades behind its American cousin in how to get the best out of its players.

In cricket, Ohtani would not be a phenomenon purely because he is what baseball is calling, quaintly, a “two-way” player. Closer to the truth is that cricketers who are able to bat as well as they are able to bowl have always been rare. Of all the 2 899 men who have played Test cricket, Garfield Sobers is the only genuine, unarguable, bulletproof article. Wasim Akram? Bowler. Jacques Kallis? Batsman.

Fewer allrounders are produced now than ever because T20’s reliance on players who are jacks of all disciplines and masters of none has the equal and opposite effect of making Test cricket invest more heavily in specialists, if only to set itself apart from the terrible infant. One of these decades, if that trend continues, the poles of cricket’s core skills are going to be as far apart as baseball’s.

The 2018 MLB season, in which each team plays at least 162 games, was less than 30 matches old on May 9. But in his first US campaign Ohtani, at 23 already a household name in his native Japan, where he played for the Nippon-Ham Fighters, is attracting the kind of attention reserved for World Series stars.

He has made a decent beginning as a starting pitcher for the Los Angeles Angels, winning three of his five games and losing one, allowing 20 hits and 12 runs in 26.1 innings.

So far, so understandable — for Americans. What’s startling them is that Ohtani has also had 20 hits, four of them home runs, in his 60 plate appearances for an average of .333.

The context of all that is that pitchers don’t bat at all during the regular season in the American League (AL), where the Angels play, because they spend so much time and effort pitching and practising pitching that they invariably make awful batters.

Since 1973 in the AL, instead of the pitcher going down looking at or swinging at strikes, a “designated hitter”, or DH, has batted on their behalf in the nine-strong line-up.

In the National League (NL), where pitchers still bat, Jacob de Grom, a right-handed starter for the New York Mets, was at the plate more times than any other pitcher in 2017. But 273 of all the 509 players who took a swing in the NL batted more than De Grom. That’s more than half. Forty-six players didn’t bat at all. They were all pitchers.

Starting pitchers will often take five days’ rest after they play a game, and rarely fewer than three days.

Scandalously, on some of what should be his rest days, Ohtani serves as the Angles’ DH.

Not since Babe Ruth strode the diamond has something similar happened with any seriousness. Ruth arrived at the Boston Red Sox in 1914 as a pitcher who could bat a bit. A bit became a lot, and by the end of the 1919 season he was no longer pitching regularly — mostly because the Sox could put more bums on seats if Ruth played every day as an outfielder rather than once or twice a week as a pitcher.

Ruth was sold to the New York Yankees before the 1920 season, and in the next 15 years as “The Sultan of Swat” built his legend as the home run king, he pitched only 31 innings. In his six years in Boston, he had hurled 1 190.1.

So Ohtani is challenging 99 years — the difference between 1919 and 2018 — of how things have been done in baseball.

It’s early days yet, but his batting average is in the ballpark with that of last season’s AL batting champion, the Houston Astros’ José Altuve, who averaged .346.

If you know anything about big league ’ball, you know what Ohtani is doing is not unlike Galileo daring to suggest the earth isn’t flat.

Such is baseball’s belief in specialists that Mariano Rivera, the greatest relief pitcher the game has seen, was paid US$169.6-million over the course of his 18-year career. That’s good money for anyone, much less a player who threw an average of only 14.8 pitches per game as a reliever between 2002 and 2013.

American high schools aren’t short of baseball players who can bat, can pitch, can field. But that’s how the scouts figure out who has the raw talent to make it to the majors.

After that, it’s each into their own pigeonhole: as pitchers or position players, and position players are parsed further. Outfielders and first-basemen are expected to do the bulk of the hitting, and next in that order come the middle infielders — second-basemen, shortstops and third-basemen.

Middle infielders especially but also outfielders need plenty of pace around the bases, particularly if they don’t carry big bats.

Catchers are almost as specialised as pitchers, some of whom will only pitch to their “personal catchers”.

Imagine Kagiso Rabada bowling only when Quinton de Kock is behind the stumps, and Heinrich Klaasen strapping on the pads for everyone else.

That’s difficult to fathom, but South Africans who remember when sport had seasons and players had real jobs know it used to be feasible to play more than one sport to a high level.

Exhibit A: Errol Stewart, the former South Africa and Dolphins wicketkeeper-batsman and Sharks centre. He is the most recent example in a club that counts Herschelle Gibbs, Peter Kirsten and Gerbrand Grobler among its many members.

But rampant professionalism and specialisation has changed all that, and made the allrounder extinct in that sense and endangered in others.

Much more of that, and one day the kids will have to be sent out of the room before we can talk about that outrageous youngster who bats No. 6 and bowls first change.

Scary stuff, isn’t it.