Tom Curran’s sledging added rare intensity to Hundred spectacle

With on-field war of words it is often a fine line between a genuinely pithy one-liner and cringeworthy stag-do bore

“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 a crass one, 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 on a Sophia Gardens back street 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 out 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’s 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.

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.

To sledge or not to sledge?

As Paddington Bear well knows, sometimes nothing but a hard stare will do. For Ambrose that was all he needed.

Ambrose’s former adversary Mike Atherton said of him: “He was extremely quiet and never said anything on the field, certainly never sledged. He did his talking with the ball, though would occasionally stand and stare if the ball beat the bat. I can’t remember one foul word coming out of Curtly’s mouth; the same with Courtney Walsh at the other end.”

Ambrose did lose it big style on one occasion, though – just ask Steve Waugh about their 1995 confrontation at Port of Spain. While sledging and ‘needle’ undoubtedly add some frisson and interest to the action on the field most of the time, the words exchanged don’t stand the test of time. Plenty of bowlers admit to looking back and cringing about things they said when white line fever took hold. Even the most well-known sledges are either apocryphal – see “You just dropped the World Cup” from Steve Waugh to Herschelle Gibbs in 1999 – or have aged about as well as a lump of brie left out on a Bondi sun-lounger. You can chirp all you like but you won’t see the Spin raising a smirk at anything to do with wives, mothers, biscuits or hospital food.

Quote of the week

If you really care about Test cricket, you don’t start by telling the smaller boards to play less of it. You start by helping them play more – the right way, with the right structures. You treat them like partners, not liabilities” – the former Australian fast bowler Mitchell Johnson responds to the comment last Wednesday by Cricket Australia’s chief, Todd Greenberg,: “We’re literally trying to send countries bankrupt if we force them to try to play Test cricket.”

Memory lane

Australia won the 1993 Ashes 4-1 and their sledger-in-chief, Merv Hughes, dismissed Graeme Hick three times in four innings. After one particularly splenetic outburst from the luxuriously slug-lipped bowler at Lord’s, Dickie Bird intervened. The umpire asked Hughes why he had it in for Hick so much. “He offended me in a former life,” came Hughes’s response. Australia, and Hughes in particular, had their noses put out of joint when Hick was compared to Sir Donald Bradman before he had even played his debut Test match. Hick had blazed a trail in domestic cricket and, sensing a tall poppy that needed cutting down to size, Australia and Hughes decided that Hick would get both barrels. Hughes’ relentless sledging was the ultimate backhanded compliment. Honest. In one of the great unfulfilled international careers, Hick failed to repeat his domestic success in Test cricket, averaging 31.32 from 65 Test matches spanning 11 years.

Still want more?

How best to deal with Barney Ronay, who had called the Hundred the worst thing in cricket? The commissioning eds decided: let’s send him for a day watching the Hundred.

Natricia Duncan on how the Caribbean is looking to rekindle its faltering relationship with cricket.

An obituary to Australian great Bob Simpson, by Mike Selvey.

And Gary Naylor has been enjoying the One-Day Cup – particularly Sussex v Lancashire and Somerset v Warwickshire.

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