Congrats to those plucky brownhatters eh? How much have you seen of Burns Jim? Whats the honest and true assessment beyond the runs?
Also, great interview with my favourite British sportsman: https://www.thetimes.co.uk/edition/s...iked-wlptsxxvk
Its in the spoiler if you cant get past the paywall
Toggle Spoiler
Share
Save
“It’s all part of the grand plan. I knew I needed a break from Test cricket at the end of the winter. I might have played at Lord’s as a comeback, but the weather cut the game down to four days, and [Chris] Woakes played instead and got a hundred. When I did come back, it could not have gone any better. I believe that God is the best of planners.”
Sitting in the late summer sunshine at the Kia Oval, four days after his man-of-the-match performance on his return to the side that helped to complete a series win at the Ageas Bowl against the world’s No 1 ranked side, Moeen Ali is reflecting on faith, family and cricket. In that order. For Ali, cricket is just a part of the whole — an important part, for sure, but only one part, an attitude not unconnected with his success.
It is the day before the fifth and final Test and everyone is flapping around. Just after we sit down, the media manager hollers at him to attend a short team meeting; representatives from the Professional Cricketers’ Association are badgering him for an interview to reflect on his player of the month award. I am pressing him with questions. Amid it all, Ali could not be calmer, his quiet but firm voice an antidote to the chaos of a pre-match day.
Faith is the most important thing in his life, although this was not always the case. Growing up in inner-city Birmingham on an estate in Sparkhill, Ali was a typical teenager and reckons life could have taken a very different path were it not for family, cricket, and then religion.
His father, Munir, was born to a mixed-race family — English mother, Pakistani father — and had a challenging childhood flitting between England and Pakistan, living with extended family and in financially straitened circumstances. As a father himself, Munir was determined to give his children the best start, sacrificing his career as a nurse to create time to allow him to help the cricketing ambitions of his sons, Kadeer, who played for Worcestershire and Gloucestershire, Moeen and Omar. He became a door-to-door chicken salesman.
Ali’s serious conversion to Islam was linked to the cricket, coming as it did after meeting a man called Ray Walee at the end of a game for Warwickshire against West Indies A at Edgbaston in August 2006. Role models were important, too, such as Hashim Amla, the great South Africa batsman who has broken more than one taboo during his career as an international sportsman.
“Muslim cricketers deep down want to have religion in their life,” he says. “I was a bit reluctant until I saw Hash. I was a bit hesitant. I would have got there in the end but Hash made it much easier for me. I thought, ‘If he can do it, why not me?’ ”
Not that Ali need have worried, given how understanding the England team, and cricket in general, has been of the importance of his faith to him. He remembers Graeme Hick clearing space in the Worcestershire changing room so that he could pray, which he must do five times a day in his home city and three times a day when beyond it. Noticeably, the England team make sure winning photographs are taken before the champagne is sprayed, so that Ali and Adil Rashid are not compromised by their refusal to engage with alcohol.
Ali says religion has been ‘pivotal’ to his success as a cricketer
Ali says religion has been ‘pivotal’ to his success as a cricketer
TIMES PHOTOGRAPHER MARC ASPLAND
Ali believes in decree and predestination, and it interests me how that belief fits with a sporting life that can turn on luck, whim and chance. Jonathan Edwards, the former triple jumper, once admitted how he used religion as a crutch to help performance when he said: “My faith was pivotal to my success. Believing in something beyond the self can have a hugely beneficial psychological impact, even if belief is fallacious. It provided a profound sense of reassurance because I took the view that the outcome was in God’s hands and God was on my side.”
These were the views of a sportsman rather than a religious man, and Edwards re-evaluated his beliefs when he quit sport, something that is unlikely with Ali. But how does he square his belief in predestination with a need to become the best player he can be? If all is decided in advance, why bother to train and prepare? If a coach demands change how does Ali square deference to what a coach wants to what a higher authority has determined?
“These are tough questions,” Ali says. “It is easy to think that if you are successful, then God is on your side. I try to not to think about it that way. For me, the religious side of things has nothing to do with how many runs or wickets I get. That’s not the goal.
“Religion is more important than sport to me. I work hard at my game like everyone else. Yes, you have faith in something or someone but it doesn’t mean that if you are playing poorly he doesn’t like you. You have to be very careful with that.
“I do believe in decree and predestination, but I get very disappointed like everyone else if things go badly. You know you’ve played a poor shot like everyone else, but it makes it easier to get over things and move on. My belief helps me deal with the stress and pressure. The only time I’ve ever struggled to deal with it was against Australia in the Ashes this winter.”
Ali celebrates the wicket of Ravichandran Ashwin during his man of the match display at the Ageas BowlAli celebrates the wicket of Ravichandran Ashwin during his man of the match display at the Ageas Bowl
STU FORSTER/GETTY IMAGES
Although his faith seems to insulate him from some of the pressures experienced by others, clearly he is not completely immune, as his reaction to his struggles in the winter suggests. Short of runs and wickets, he was finally left out of the last Test of the winter in Christchurch. Although it was the first time that he had been dropped from the team, he admitted that being left out came as a relief.
“I found it very difficult in Australia to switch off,” he says. “It was my first Ashes tour and I was desperate to do well and was really looking forward to it. I worked so hard on the short ball before the series began, maybe too hard. Then [Nathan] Lyon kept getting me out. I found that very hard to deal with. I never thought that I was a poor player of spin but I really struggled against him. I wasn’t getting any wickets either. Things just got tougher and tougher.
“After the third Test I’d almost had enough. You never want to get dropped but I was at that point. I probably shouldn’t have played the second Test with my finger injured; then someone got injured and I had to play the fourth Test; then I played the fifth. After that I just needed a break; needed to get away from the game.”
Ali is very critical of the Australia team, and his lack of respect for them lingers still. “Everyone you speak to . . . they are the only team I’ve played against my whole life that I’ve actually disliked. Not because it’s Australia and they are the old enemy but because of the way they carry on and [their] disrespect of people and players.”
As for the events in Cape Town that led to Steve Smith, the Test captain, being banned for 12 months, along with David Warner and Cameron Bancroft, who got nine months, Ali insists it was always coming. “I’m someone who generally feels sorry for people when things go wrong but it’s difficult to feel sorry for them. This ODI series they were very good actually; they’d been . . . ” Humbled? “Yeah, humbled.
“The first game I ever played against them, in Sydney, just before the 2015 World Cup, they were not just going hard at you, they were almost abusing you. That was the first time it hit me. I gave them the benefit of the doubt but the more I played against them they were just as bad, the Ashes here [in 2015] they were worse actually. Not intimidating, just rude. Individually they are fine and the Aussies we’ve had at Worcester have been fantastic, lovely guys.”
When Cookie told us he was finishing nobody knew what to say so I just told him he’s put a real dampener on things
Ali was brought back into the team for the fourth Test of the India series, but the way his roles have changed reflects on how uncertain England have been as to how best to deploy him. He batted at No 7 in the first innings, No 3 in the second (a position he held on to at the Oval) and, ostensibly there as second spinner, he bowled far more overs and outperformed Rashid. Having batted in every position from one to nine, he has been England’s utility man selflessly offering himself for whatever role is needed.
“The match at the Ageas Bowl felt like my debut again,” he says. “I was really excited. It was funny, I knew I needed a break from Test cricket but I found it hard to watch when I was out of the team, missed it more than I imagined.
“As soon as I started bowling I knew it was coming out well. I’d been bowling well for the club, been working with Saqqui [Saqlain Mushtaq, the part-time England spin coach]. He’s really good. Basically I don’t think we bowl enough as spinners in England and he’s always on at me to do more. I’d bowled 16 overs and didn’t have a wicket but almost for the first time as a spinner I wasn’t worried. I knew the wickets would come if I stayed patient.”
“We talked about batting at No 3 the night before. I just see it as a huge opportunity. Two years ago I went to Trevor [Bayliss] after I batted at No 5 against India and I said to him that’s where I want to be. But I ended up at No 4 when someone got dropped then immediately back down to No 7 or No 8 in the English summer. I want to get up the order somehow, so why not?”
Ali better at No 3 in the fifth Test against India and said he saw the promotion as a ‘huge opportunity’
Ali better at No 3 in the fifth Test against India and said he saw the promotion as a ‘huge opportunity’
PAUL CHILDS/REUTERS
It was at the Ageas Bowl that Ali, twinkle in his eye, cut short the maudlin silence after Alastair Cook announced his retirement aafter the game.
“Cookie had had a few beers and then got a bit emotional when he told us he was finishing,” he says. “There was one of those silences and nobody quite knew what to say so I just told him he’s put a real dampener on things, and everyone fell about laughing.
“Cook has been a great man in this team. I feel like he has always backed me, even when things weren’t going well. I know I’ve let him down with the ball and the bat from time to time but he never stopped backing me. He made me feel like I was integral to the team.
“I was so happy that things went well having got back into the side. I got a fantastic ovation from the crowd, and they were brilliant with me on the boundary edge. I really missed that buzz, which you don’t get in county cricket. I felt very proud to be doing it for my country again.”