Time.
It is one of the greatest clichés in the vocabulary of sport, but, like many clichés it is true The greats appear to have more time than others. In cricket it is usually used in relation to great batsmen, who appear, by virtue of superior eyesight and physical coordination, able to move more slowly and play the ball later than their confrères.
Jimmy Anderson had time, but in a different way. He cheated it. He cheated it by staying fitter and slimmer and more supple and more mobile and more committed than any 41 year-old has ever done in cricket’s modern age. And, because cricket’s modern age is so distinct from all that has preceded it, it is conceivable, if not certain, that cricket has never seen anyone like him. What is completely certain is that it will never know anyone like him again.
With the shadows lengthening on the future of Test cricket, nobody will ever again play as many matches, or bowl as many balls, or take as many wickets. These are truths.
In regard to the complex amalgam of repetitive physical effort, honed technique and mental application that is top-level seam bowling, Jimmy Anderson was the phenomenon’s phenomenon. When the greats retire they always speak of the loss of hunger. Jimmy Anderson never did this, and in his own mind the only road he had reached the end of was one he’d been directed down. Sure, one he was reconciled to, and the rare smiles of nostalgia, of joy and of familial love he displayed these past days showed that, but one he would not have chosen to travel if given the choice.
It was a rare privilege to be at Lord’s on Friday 12th July 2024 and to be only yards from Jimmy Anderson’s family and his England colleagues as the accolades flowed. I found my attention drawn to the younger members of the England team: Harry Brook, Gus Atkinson, and especially Jamie Smith; people who were barely more than toddlers when Anderson’s career began. Brook fooling around with carefree insouciance; Atkinson thoughtful, perhaps considering the fact that on his debut he has managed to do something which Anderson, in 188 matches, never did; Smith, 24 years old on the day but looking younger than his years and taking everything in with thoughtful intensity.
These people have time. They probably have more time than they can even imagine, since their careers may last more than half as long as they have yet lived. There is every chance that any or all of them will be greats of the world game. Now people talk about the fact that Jimmy Anderson played Test cricket with Alec Stewart; in time people will talk about the fact that they played with Jimmy Anderson.
Time lends perspective, prompts reflection, magnifies memories. In time Jimmy Anderson will reflect on a career fulfilled and a seam (pun intended) well mined. His younger colleagues will remember him for what he was and the fact that they, once, were with him in his last days.
So, we move on. The world is different now.
14.7.24
18.4.24
On Derek Underwood
The name has it.
Derek Leslie Underwood.
Cricketers aren’t called Derek anymore. Or Leslie. The name speaks of forgotten times. When Derek Underwood was born, in the anticipatory months between VE Day and the war’s ultimate end, people were called names like Derek and Leslie. Some of them even went on to be cricketers.
To me, the association of Derek Underwood, who died this week, with a time that all the world mythologises but increasingly few actually remember, is significant. Because, over the long years since he left the first-class game in 1987, he himself seemed a player who increasingly few remembered, but others, like me – who did recall the accuracy, oh yes, the accuracy – spoke of with a reverence and an admiration which could lead others to believe that the man was a myth. The figures helped; 101 wickets in his first season at barely 18 years old, 500 before the age of 22, a thousand at 25. To modern eyes these numbers are imbued with a strong sense of unreality.
But he wasn’t a myth. He could bowl like nobody else.
In cricket there are also mythologised times. As the game which people of my generation fell in love with hits the rocks and struggles for air, we reach for what we can. We reach for memories.
I am too young (How nice it is to say that. It is rare now.) to remember The Oval in 1968, which is what people older than me always talk about, but to me Underwood is symbiotically linked to the time cricket hooked me. It is the early to mid-1970s; the John Player League is on the television every Sunday afternoon in summer, presented by Peter Walker or Peter West. Kent, with their unique scoreboard, and a tree inside the Canterbury boundary, with Bob Woolmer when he bowled, and Graham Johnson, and the peerless cover work of Alan Ealham, and Norman Graham, and Asif, and of course Knott and Underwood, are always on and are usually winning. And Underwood is always there, splay-footed, tugging at his sleeve as he plods back and considers his options, before jogging in and bowling and hitting the spot with the rhythm and regularity of a metronome. In batting these are pre-evolutionary times: ramps are what you sometimes drive over, scoops are used to serve ice cream or what passed for mashed potato in school dinners. As Underwood bowled, batsmen defended then vainly attacked because their overs were limited and they had to; any amount of cut, or swing or swerve, or change of pace, and he would have them.
This also happened in Championship or Test cricket, where he had more time, more overs and more assistance from weather and turf, but I saw less of that. Championship games weren’t on TV and Tests often happened on schooldays.
But there are vignettes. Vignettes which speak of skill, and shrewdness and the competitiveness of the great bowler. In one such it is The Oval, it is August 1976 and the ground is brown. Viv Richards has a lot of runs – maybe 150, or 170, or even 230 – just a lot. Underwood has been toiling in the heat and dirt and sweat for hours. He is not renowned for variation or experiment or guile, but he knows what to do. So he holds one back and gives it a little air; Richards is fooled and drives it straight to mid off, where Chris Balderstone, who is having a nightmare match, drops it. Underwood looks daggers at him and then returns to his mark. People who met him talk of Underwood’s humility, but at that moment, with a momentary flash of dissatisfaction, you saw an element of the underlying steel which went with all the technical skill and layers of experience to make him the bowler he was.
In an era when innovation in batting demands innovation in bowling, and the worth of a seamer is judged on how well they can meet originality with their own sense of difference, the thought of a bowler doing what Underwood did, dropping it on a length year after year and letting the (often rain affected) pitch do its worst, seems alien. In a world addicted to mystery, to slower balls, yorkers and slower ball yorkers, Underwood’s image in the mind is of the conservatism of the post-war cricket that he was born into; the era of Derek Shackleton bowling maiden upon maiden at Northlands Road, or Ken Barrington blocking for England. A monochrome game in a monochrome era.
It is a truism to say that – sometimes for good and others for ill – the game is not what it was, and it is also a truism to say that nowadays nobody bowls like Derek Underwood.
But then nobody ever did.
Derek Leslie Underwood.
Cricketers aren’t called Derek anymore. Or Leslie. The name speaks of forgotten times. When Derek Underwood was born, in the anticipatory months between VE Day and the war’s ultimate end, people were called names like Derek and Leslie. Some of them even went on to be cricketers.
To me, the association of Derek Underwood, who died this week, with a time that all the world mythologises but increasingly few actually remember, is significant. Because, over the long years since he left the first-class game in 1987, he himself seemed a player who increasingly few remembered, but others, like me – who did recall the accuracy, oh yes, the accuracy – spoke of with a reverence and an admiration which could lead others to believe that the man was a myth. The figures helped; 101 wickets in his first season at barely 18 years old, 500 before the age of 22, a thousand at 25. To modern eyes these numbers are imbued with a strong sense of unreality.
But he wasn’t a myth. He could bowl like nobody else.
In cricket there are also mythologised times. As the game which people of my generation fell in love with hits the rocks and struggles for air, we reach for what we can. We reach for memories.
I am too young (How nice it is to say that. It is rare now.) to remember The Oval in 1968, which is what people older than me always talk about, but to me Underwood is symbiotically linked to the time cricket hooked me. It is the early to mid-1970s; the John Player League is on the television every Sunday afternoon in summer, presented by Peter Walker or Peter West. Kent, with their unique scoreboard, and a tree inside the Canterbury boundary, with Bob Woolmer when he bowled, and Graham Johnson, and the peerless cover work of Alan Ealham, and Norman Graham, and Asif, and of course Knott and Underwood, are always on and are usually winning. And Underwood is always there, splay-footed, tugging at his sleeve as he plods back and considers his options, before jogging in and bowling and hitting the spot with the rhythm and regularity of a metronome. In batting these are pre-evolutionary times: ramps are what you sometimes drive over, scoops are used to serve ice cream or what passed for mashed potato in school dinners. As Underwood bowled, batsmen defended then vainly attacked because their overs were limited and they had to; any amount of cut, or swing or swerve, or change of pace, and he would have them.
This also happened in Championship or Test cricket, where he had more time, more overs and more assistance from weather and turf, but I saw less of that. Championship games weren’t on TV and Tests often happened on schooldays.
But there are vignettes. Vignettes which speak of skill, and shrewdness and the competitiveness of the great bowler. In one such it is The Oval, it is August 1976 and the ground is brown. Viv Richards has a lot of runs – maybe 150, or 170, or even 230 – just a lot. Underwood has been toiling in the heat and dirt and sweat for hours. He is not renowned for variation or experiment or guile, but he knows what to do. So he holds one back and gives it a little air; Richards is fooled and drives it straight to mid off, where Chris Balderstone, who is having a nightmare match, drops it. Underwood looks daggers at him and then returns to his mark. People who met him talk of Underwood’s humility, but at that moment, with a momentary flash of dissatisfaction, you saw an element of the underlying steel which went with all the technical skill and layers of experience to make him the bowler he was.
In an era when innovation in batting demands innovation in bowling, and the worth of a seamer is judged on how well they can meet originality with their own sense of difference, the thought of a bowler doing what Underwood did, dropping it on a length year after year and letting the (often rain affected) pitch do its worst, seems alien. In a world addicted to mystery, to slower balls, yorkers and slower ball yorkers, Underwood’s image in the mind is of the conservatism of the post-war cricket that he was born into; the era of Derek Shackleton bowling maiden upon maiden at Northlands Road, or Ken Barrington blocking for England. A monochrome game in a monochrome era.
It is a truism to say that – sometimes for good and others for ill – the game is not what it was, and it is also a truism to say that nowadays nobody bowls like Derek Underwood.
But then nobody ever did.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
.jpg)
