A Lot on His Mind (Peter Roebuck, 1956-2011)

Unlike many of the people, such as Peter English, who have been writing so well about their memories of Peter Roebuck, I didn't know him.

But then the impression you're left with after reading the tributes that have followed his tragic death last night is that nobody really did.

I saw him around a lot, though.

My earliest memories of Roebuck come from his days as one of the younger members of the great Somerset sides of the late seventies and early eighties. A man of intellectual gifts, if not great cricketing ones, he could never have been expected to exert a major influence in a team that contained Viv Richards, Ian Botham and Joel Garner. But he was always there, striding rapidly, purposefully, across the field with the air of someone with a lot on his mind, and making his fair share of runs in a style that was functional and effective, if rarely visually pleasing.

This went on for years. As captain he survived the fallout which followed the club's decision to release Richards and Garner in 1986, and then did his best to shore up a team that wasn't what it was. In those days he really did have a lot on his mind.

After he left Somerset and began captaining Devon, he made runs, took wickets and drove his players with a hardness and focus which was foreign to the minor county game. The result was a number of years of unprecedented success, the legacy of which persists to this day.

My chief memories of long days spent watching Roebuck's Devon by the sea at Sidmouth, Exmouth and Instow are of a transparently and unashamedly driven man, often fielding in unusual positions as he sought the tactical key to unlock victory, while occasionally breaking out of his carapace to lambast his players for any percieved lack of intensity or to bowl a few overs of strangely penetrative slow-medium, regularly taking wickets through sheer desire.

In an environment in which it was fashionable to drift along, he really, really cared, and he took others along for the ride. A lot of those players, waking up today around here in Devon, in south-east Wales, and in Sheffield, will be grateful that they had the chance.

In those days I also often saw him striding around the Taunton boundary on sunny midweek days. Rarely still for long, usually leaving behind an oblique comment, he gave the overwhelming impression of someone who inhabited a slightly different, more remote, place than the rest of us. This is probably why I never quite summoned the courage to speak to him.

Probably the fullest expression of Roebuck's love of cricket came on the page. Slices of Cricket, It Never Rains... and Tangled Up in White are among the finest written evocations of late twentieth century cricket from the standpoint of someone who had been both a participant and a shrewd, knowing observer.

All people ever said about Roebuck was that he was hard to fathom and that he could be difficult to get on with.

I don't know, but, when it came to cricket, he really cared.

Flak

It was interesting to hear on the radio this morning that Geoff Miller and Michael Vaughan were apparently going to have what the tabloids tend to call 'clear-the-air talks', with it being reported that Miller had said something about it being the duty of selectors to give their captain the team he wanted.

This instantly made me think of Vaughan's post-toss interview last Friday, when, with admirable diplomacy, he made it sound as though he had got the side he wanted, when you have to doubt if that was really the case.

Apart from that, there's flak flying all over the place, most of it hitting the target somewhere along the line, mainly because there are rather a lot of targets to hit.

While his manner often grates, I tend to agree with most of what Geoff Boycott says, and I can't disgaree with anything that's in his latest piece in the Telegraph.

With reference to the central issue of the patience and discipline (or lack of them) shown by the England batting, I totally agree, and the contrast with the South African approach was painful and damning. Somewhere, surely, Peter Roebuck will be writing about this, and treating it as a metaphor for the decline of English society (I just haven't found it yet).

If he is, he wouldn't be totally right, but I'm not sure he'd be completely wrong either.

Decline

A thought-provoking piece by Peter Roebuck, pushing themes - the decline of English cricket as a product of the decline of the country - he's often written about elsewhere.

After yesterday's confirmation that England are still a poor limited-overs side (false dawns a speciality) there's plenty to think about, but I don't have time now as I'm going up to Taunton today to have a look at the South Africans, a side who are bound to to test England even more.

I'll report back tomorrow.

Opening Up

This, courtesy of Cricinfo and Peter Roebuck, has a bearing on what I was saying the other day and I can only agree with every word.

A Nasty Taste

The other piece of fallout which sticks in the memory is the way in which, ultimately, and rightly, Harbhajan was exonerated. However, many aspects of the saga left a nasty taste in the mouth.

Sometimes I love the thrust and style of Peter Roebuck's writing, many times I don't. This time, though, his piece at Cricinfo chimes with most of what I've been thinking over the past few weeks.

Some of the comments are best avoided, though.

Mind Games

There's not much I can add to Peter Roebuck's superb summary of the Trescothick situation in the Sydney Morning Herald here or to what David Foot says here.

All very sad, and doubly so for those of us who've followed Marcus's career since he was a lad and thought that the outwardly balanced insouciance of his temperament would make him an unlikely candidate to suffer this type of problem. But that probably just illustrates how little we know both of him and his condition.

In hindsight there was always a good chance that this would happen, so the decision to take him to Australia must be questioned; I suppose nobody (including Marcus himself) really knew how likely his condition was to recur, but, having done so once, it's bound to be regarded as likely to do so again, making it unlikely that the selectors will be prepared to take any risks with him in the future. And, if he can't tour, then there can be no point in picking him for home Tests either. There must be a very good chance indeed, therefore, that his Test career has run its course, just over a month before his 31st birthday.

That's as maybe. If it has, well, he's done okay. Bloody well, in fact.

Myself and a good few others down here in the west will be hoping that he can flourish once again for Somerset, and, with his family near at hand, there must be a good chance that he can. I spend a large part of every summer in the Ian Botham Stand at Taunton, and we haven't seen Marcus round that way too much in recent years.

As and when he takes the field again in a Somerset sweater, I hope I'm there.

Major Minors

Last Tuesday was a big day for cricket. The world tried to come to terms with England winning a second consecutive ODI, the England squads for the Champions Trophy and the Ashes were named, and, most importantly (in my house, anyway), Devon won the Minor Counties Championship outright, beating Buckinghamshire in the final.

Most Minor County sides are an uneasy combination of weary old lags from the first-class game (Bucks' Keith Medlycott performed this role very ably when I was at Exmouth last Sunday), club cricketers who were never quite good enough to make it to county cricket and, in some cases, young home-grown talent from within the county borders. The Devon side which won all six of its Western Division games on the way to the final had all three sorts of player, but with a welcome accent on young players born, schooled and coached in the county. Devon's captain, Bobby Dawson, fits into at least two of the categories, having been born and educated in Exmouth itself and played for the county's junior sides prior to a lengthy period on the Gloucestershire staff in the nineties. For the last few years he's been captaining his native county with a potent blend of experience and tactical nous, and is a very good focal point for the younger players under his command. The only other player in Devon's victorious side with first-class experience was Ian Bishop, who had periods with both Somerset and Surrey but largely seemed to miss the boat with both. Having seen him bowl a majestic spell of controlled fast-medium outswing to run through the Wales side at Exmouth last month (he took 9-35), it was hard to understand why. Then you have the range of young players who have come through the county's excellently organised youth system, including the powerfully built seam bowler Trevor Anning, from whom much more will surely be heard around the Minor Counties circuit, the slight but powerful batting all-rounder David Court (who I once played against when he was sixteen - I doubt if he remembers) and the stylish and technically sound batsman Neil Bettis. And then you have the ones who don't fit into either of those categories, such as the excellent young wicket-keeper, Sandy Allen, who migrated south to Exeter University from Warwickshire when it became clear he wasn't going to make it there, and the county's two principal spinners, Andy Procter, an offie, and the leading championship wicket-taker this season, and Arwyn Jones, the former Oxfordshire left-armer who bowled Bucks out on the final's last day. Best of all is Neil Hancock, a New South Walian who came to Devon in the nineties, stayed, became naturalised and has repeatedly proved himself this season to be the outstanding batting all-rounder on the circuit.

Since moving to Devon at the start of the nineties I've watched a lot of the county's cricket, my early years here coinciding with the club's golden era under the captaincy of Peter Roebuck. Over recent seasons playing demands have meant that I've seen a lot less, but it's been a real pleasure to get back into it in 2006.

I reckon I might be seen at a few Devon games again in 2007.