Force of Nature

There is an orthodoxy of thought about modern cricket which often seems stultifying. Academies, bio-mechanical analysis and legions of support staff with rigid views on how the game should be played, right down to when and how much nutrition should be taken, have robbed the game of much of its eccentricity and individualism and tempo.

My earliest memory of cricket is watching John Price running in to bowl for England against Australia at Lord's in 1972. For those who don't remember him (and in truth, I barely do), John Price was a Middlesex fast bowler whose run had such a curve in it that he approached the wicket as though he was running round a sharp corner. While batting eccentricities are still tolerated (you only have to watch Shiv Chanderpaul assume his stance to know that), you'd never see an international bowler run in like that now. Such tendencies are coached out of bowlers long before they reach the first-class game.

Another bowler who did his own thing back in those days was Mike Procter. When his vulnerable knees allowed him to slip himself, he was a force of nature. After charging to the wicket with his buttoned shirt practically bursting off his chest, he used, in the vernacular of the time, to 'bowl off the wrong foot'. Back then, Procter wasn't alone. Max Walker and Lance Cairns hit the crease in similar fashion but nobody does that now. If anyone tried it, the average professional bowling coach would have a seizure.

Procter, like many of his compatriots denied the ultimate stage by politics, was a colossus of the seventies game. Most of his best work was done in the colours of Gloucestershire, and thirty-five years ago today, he did the best of his best work: 6 for 13, a hat-trick and four wickets in five balls on the old Northlands Road ground as Gloucestershire laid waste to the Hampshire of Richards, Greenidge and Roberts in the semi-finals of the Benson and Hedges Cup.

Anyone who saw it remembers it. I walked home from school on a sunny afternoon and turned on the TV. I can't remember whether I knew there was cricket on or not, but I probably did. I was that kind of kid.

When the set 'warmed up' (pictures didn't appear instantaneously in those days and there was always a period of pregnant, impatient anticipation) I realised that something remarkable was happening. The packed ground was in ferment, Hampshire were 18 for 3, and John Rice, a man whom I knew as a county stalwart of reliability but little distinction, was walking to the wicket like a man on his way to the gallows.

I was young. I really liked cricket but I didn't know it or love it in the way I later came to. But I instantly knew that Rice was in trouble. Procter was going to have him.

And he did.

Richie Benaud was never as excited again.

It's on YouTube here.

The More Things Change...

Brian Brain was a seam bowler who played county cricket, for Worcestershire and Gloucestershire, from 1959 until 1981. Just before he finished playing he published a diary - Another Day, Another Match - about Gloucestershire's 1980 season, and his part in it. It is a fine book, recording the life and opinions of a county journeyman who had begun his career in a time that now seems like something from cricketing pre-history, and it laid the ground for similar publications which came later, such as Peter Roebuck's It Never Rains, published in 1984, Eight Days a Week, by Jonathan Agnew (1988), and Ed Smith's On and Off the Field (2004).

In May 1980 he wrote this:

I've yet to see a bad South African cricketer over here. It must be a combination of learning the game on good wickets, strength of character, competitive instinct and natural ability.

Brain was writing with Allan Lamb in mind, and also his colleague Mike Procter, but his summary of what makes South African-raised cricketers good still holds true today for the likes of Kevin Pietersen, Jonathan Trott, Craig Kieswetter and Michael Lumb.

Hitting the Fan

With India having gone the way of every other team that faces Australia, the s*** has really started to hit the fan in Sydney.

From this distance one can only agree that the umpiring throughout the match was poor; Bucknor has looked past his best for a year or two now and Mark Benson probably hasn't reached his best yet. And most of the errors went against India, although Indian fans should be wary of getting too paranoid. Even allowing for the part played by the officials, the Indian batsmen should have been able to bat through the last day, especially when they made such a good fist of the first innings at the SCG. Andrew Symonds and Michael Clarke may be many things, but world-class bowlers they're not (even though Clarke's Test average - 15.54 for 11 wickets -suggests otherwise).

As for the other controversy of the hour, well, who knows what was said, although I assumed that the umpires must have heard something and reported it to Procter for the case to have been declared open and shut so rapidly. Now I read that it was the word of Ponting and Symonds against that of Harbhajan and Tendulkar.

Either way, there's too much postured verbal sparring between players going on for my liking. No sooner have we gained an injury-induced respite from the lunatic Sreesanth than Harbhajan's piling in. Not that Australia can complain; they virtually invented 'sledging' and there's more than a few players in the current side who know how to mix it with the best of them. And then there's Nel and Prior (oh, sorry, the England selectors have seen him off for the time being).

Time to grow up, calm down and just play the game.

Disorientation

Falling asleep in front of the Ten O'Clock News is probably one of the first signs of getting old. It still doesn't happen to me that often but it induces a level of disorientation that is often surprising. That's made even worse when you wake up to see an ICC Match Referee (in this case Ranjan Madugalle) passing judgement on the events of a Test match. What? Cricket on the Ten O'Clock News? Have England regained the Ashes or something?

Nothing that exciting, but The Oval, August 17th-20th 2006, was, as we know, no ordinary Test match.

Without going into everything again, I think the ICC got it about right. It was clearly felt that there was no visible evidence of tampering to the ball, and that Hair (and Doctrove don't forget) were mistaken. That's fine. But, as big Darrell apparently said yesterday, '…I know that if I make any mistake when I umpire, I make it in good faith'.

While Madugalle's statement (available on the ICC website here) clearly implies that he did not believe that the actions of Hair and Doctrove were either 'perverse...or involved bad faith' and emphasizes that it was '...no part of his [Inzamam ul-Haq's] defence to these charges to suggest that any of Mr.Hair's decisions were taken in bad faith or dishonestly', there are many in the Asian cricket firmament who take a different view. One of those is of course Shaharyar Khan, the PCB chairman and an annoyingly self-righteous presence throughout, who persists in maintaining that Pakistan's whole stance on the issue has been vindicated.

Well, not exactly, since Inzamam was found guilty of 'bringing the game into disrepute', in case you hadn't noticed. This was also about right as teams can't be allowed to refuse to play if they don't agree with an umpire's decision. That way anarchy lies.

Amid so much hot air, the sanest voice of reason belonged to Bob Woolmer, who reiterated his view that Law 42.3 urgently requires reform. How, in all logic, can polishing be allowed while virtually any other means of altering the condition of the ball is expressly prohibited?

In many ways, the most interesting and sensible clauses of Madugalle's judgement are the final ones, which state that:

'This was an unprecedented situation. If (one hopes not) such a situation were to recur in international cricket, I would hope and expect:

(1). The Umpires would do everything possible to try to defuse tensions in the dressing-room by explaining that a team is entitled to raise any grievance through the ICC but that it is not in their interests, or in the interests of the game, for the team to interrupt play.

(2). The Umpires and other officials should do everything possible to ensure the resumption of play. And they should not return to the field of play and then declare the match to be forfeited unless and until they are absolutely sure that the team is refusing to play the rest of the match. All other options should first be exhausted, involving discussions with the team captains and management.'

There is a clear implication here that Madugalle feels that Hair and Doctrove abandoned the match prematurely, and possibly also that Mike Procter, the Match Referee, did not do enough to try to defuse the crisis.

It also emerged from the hearing that Doctrove initially favoured a more moderate approach, advocating that he and Hair should spend a few further overs observing what was happening and trying to see if they could positively identify the 'culprit' before changing the ball. If that course of action had been followed and no culprit had been found, it is of course possible that the decision to change the ball may not ultimately have been taken and all this could have been avoided. One's feeling, though, is that Hair was dead set on changing the ball and awarding the penalty runs from the time of his first suspicions, so it would probably all have happened anyway.

We'll never know, though, so let's move on.