James Taylor is a batsman. That is what he does. Or, as of last Tuesday, that's what he did. Batting, something he has done since he was little - well, he's always been little, but you know what I mean - has gone, in the beat of a defective heart, from being both what he does best and the source of his income, to something he used to do but which he cannot, for circumstances beyond his control, do any more.
This is a profound source of sadness. To Taylor, of course, and to his family and friends, but also to many cricket followers, most of whom have never met him.
Cricket is like that.
In modern professional rugby union, players are forced to retire before their time with increasing frequency. It happens so often that it barely causes comment, still less any great outpouring of sentiment or regret. It happens in football too. Always has done. Time and the game move on with barely a backward glance.
Cricket is different. Players sometimes die young, but comparatively few have to retire early. The tragic deaths of Ben Hollioake and Philip Hughes, and the circumstances surrounding them, are etched on memories throughout the world; young lives abruptly ended, careers curtailed with thousands of runs unscored, wickets not taken, hours in the field denied.
Although losing the ability to do the thing that you are best at is awful, it is not as bad as dying. Hopefully Taylor has a long and fulfilling, if sadly compromised, life ahead of him. But he will always be susceptible to thoughts - early on spring and summer mornings, and as the evening shadows lengthen on cricket grounds - of what was and what could have been. Memories of Shrewsbury School, of early games at Grace Road, of taking that double hundred off Surrey that everyone talks about, of digging in amid the chaos caused by Pietersen's genius at Headingley, and of batting long for the Lions in the cloying heat of Dambulla. Thoughts of the innings at Manchester and Sharjah and Durban, and the magical short leg catches at the Wanderers, and what they might have led to in the era of Bayliss and Farbrace.
Amid the doubts and quandaries which never seem to go away - over spin bowlers and opening batsmen and levels of public engagement - these are times of renewal and optimism for the England team. They are finally, after longer than many people have been alive, getting to grips with one-day cricket, and, in Joe Root, Ben Stokes and Jos Buttler, they have three cricketers under the age of 26, all of whom who, in their own ways, are world-class.
Taylor may never have quite made it into that category, but there was enough about him, from the way in which he instantly adapted to county cricket, to the way he took the knocks and the rejections and the redundant jibes about his stature, and came back stronger, to suggest that he could have had a long and successful career in international cricket. The summer of 2016 may have decided which way his career would go. Instead, it has ended before the summer has even begun.
There are few things better than being young and being good enough at a sport to make a lucrative career out of it. Most of us would settle simply for being able to play a single off-drive or pull like James Taylor, let alone hit the ball clean out of Headingley as he once did, or manage a run chase as he could. We wouldn't need to be paid to do so. Just doing those things would be enough to take our lives to a higher plane. But, in an instant, Taylor has been forced to leave that world behind and retreat to the foothills of life which the rest of us occupy. Nothing will ever quite feel as good again.
There is a salient lesson in life's unpredictability there, but, while most of us can only dream of having been a contender, James Taylor will always know that he was.
17.4.16
13.3.16
Art or Science?: Martin Crowe (1962-2016)
Cricket, and the world, and the cricket world, move on so quickly that it already feels a little late to be posting something about Martin Crowe. I wrote this piece last weekend and offered it to ESPN Cricinfo. They haven't replied, so it feels like it's time to post it here.
Martin Crowe was one of my very favourite batsmen of all, and I don't think he quite received the recognition he deserved during his career. It's a well-observed phenomenon in all kinds of areas of human activity that when people die - especially if they die young - they receive all the dues that they didn't when they were at their peak.
So it goes. I was just happy that he was widely described as New Zealand's greatest batsman. I believe that's what he was, and while there's little doubt that the magnificent Kane Williamson will beat most of his records, I don't think he'll reach Crowe's level of technical perfection. As I say below, the only player I've seen who's got anywhere near doing so is Rahul Dravid.
When I first heard the news, on News Briefing on BBC Radio Four, very early on the morning of Thursday 3rd March, he was described as 'the former Somerset and New Zealand cricketer'. This was unusual, but it was gratifying, and it felt completely right, because his years at Somerset were some of his most important and influential. Influential on him and influential on the club. In the last fifty years, Somerset County Cricket Club has employed some of the greatest players the world has ever seen. There's no need to list them; everyone knows who they are. Martin Crowe is fit to rank with any of those.
Is batting an art, or is it a science?
It may be one, it may be the other, it may be both, or it may be neither, but batsmen, nevertheless, are often categorized as artists or artisans. Geoff Boycott was unquestionably an artisan; David Gower an artist. Brian Lara was an artist; Graeme Smith an artisan.
Martin Crowe was both. Rahul Dravid was too, but Martin Crowe was Dravid before Dravid. Patient, rigorous, endlessly disciplined, but with the great player's essential ability to instantly take advantage of the bad ball, and to bend bowlers to their will.
If someone's defence is so sound, their ability to leave the ball so finely honed, their capacity to counter your skills and variations so good, it is easy to slip into the feeling that you will struggle to ever dismiss them. Shoulders drop, and, as night succeeds day, bad deliveries follow.
Of course, while there are similarities between Crowe and Dravid, there are also contrasts. Like every other batsman who came into the Indian side between 1990 and 2013, Dravid batted in the reassuring shadow of Tendulkar. While Martin Crowe was far from a lone standard bearer in New Zealand's greatest team – Richard Hadlee, of course, was always there – as a batsman he was largely surrounded by artisans. Fine players, yes, like John Wright, like Bruce Edgar, like his own elder brother Jeff, but artisans nonetheless. Crowe was always the artist, and was distinctive in other ways. He was young, he was cool, he was stylish.
Another contrast with the experience of Dravid is that in New Zealand cricket is a small game in a small country where Rugby Union is king. In India it is precisely the opposite. While Dravid and his compatriots were continually exposed to the demands of countless millions, Crowe was subject to differing pressures, expectations and vulnerabilities. The pressure of being the best batsman in the team, and, in later years, the need to maintain your customary level of performance in the face of debilitating injury problems. The feeling of being at the fulcrum of a small country battling against the world, or, as it was in Crowe's time, the might of the West Indian machine.
The premature death of Martin Crowe has been mourned around the world, the sorrow undiminished by the widespread knowledge of his protracted illness. Many people – Mike Selvey, Mark Nicholas, Gideon Haigh, Jarrod Kimber – have written about their personal interactions and friendships with him. I can do no such thing, but I can still think, and write, and talk, of the many occasions I saw him bat.
When he came to England with his national side for the first time in 1983, Crowe's purity of technique was instantly apparent, and I followed his career, with New Zealand and with Somerset, unusually closely, although, in those distant days before worldwide television coverage of anything resembling an international cricket match, this could be a hard thing to do.
There were many peaks: Brisbane, November 1985, where he supplied most of the runs and Hadlee most of the wickets; the two Lord's centuries against England, the second made while in intense pain; the twin centuries, at Wellington and Auckland in early 1987, which helped his team to draw a series with the West Indies. His unbeaten hundred against Somerset at Taunton on his last tour in 1994, when the crowd rose in memory of what had been and in recognition of what was coming to an end.
In those days I used to get sent the New Zealand Cricket Almanack every year. The 1987 issue sticks in the mind, and now is a good time to get it out and dust it down. There is the beautiful moment in time colour photograph on the cover of the two musketeers, Hadlee and Chatfield, who have just bowled the greatest side in the world out for 100 at Lancaster Park. But there are also two pictures which frame the mastery of Crowe in his halcyon days. On the back cover he is hooking Malcolm Marshall to the Wellington fence in a way that few could ever do; inside there is a monochrome shot of a straight drive which could easily have been posed for the camera, such is the purity of Crowe's style.
For some players, moving images are needed to capture their essence. For batsmen like Crowe (and there haven't been many players like Crowe), for whom poise and timing is all, still photography can serve just as well.
As many have said, as well as being a great batsman, Crowe was a deep and innovative thinker about the game, its problems and its consequences. While, like many of his ideas, this could seem counter-intuitive, with the originality of his thinking contrasting with the orthodoxy of his batting, it is both logical and understandable. A mind which can produce and refine a batting technique like that is a fertile and varied one.
No game has the same depth of emotional resonance as cricket. Losses are always keenly felt and deeply mourned. The past year alone has seen the deaths of one of the greatest cricket figures of all, Richie Benaud, one of the greatest opening batsmen, Arthur Morris, and a man who was a special kind of hero for a certain generation of Englishmen, Tom Graveney.
But it is the early deaths which hit hardest. Since 1999 world cricket has lost Malcolm Marshall himself, Ben Hollioake, Manjural Islam, Philip Hughes and now Crowe. Two cancers, two road accidents and one death at the crease.
In his first season as a Somerset player, in 1984, Martin Crowe flourished with the bat after an uncertain start. However, in many ways, his most important role was played off the pitch, where he used his experience to coalesce the efforts of a group of young players whom he felt to be drifting. Ultimately, many of these players – players like Richard Ollis, Hugh Wilson and Mark Davis – had short careers in the game, but, wherever they are now, it would be surprising if they had failed to spare a thought these past few days for Crowe and those he has left behind.
Cricket is like this. When players die, the whole game bleeds.
Martin Crowe was one of my very favourite batsmen of all, and I don't think he quite received the recognition he deserved during his career. It's a well-observed phenomenon in all kinds of areas of human activity that when people die - especially if they die young - they receive all the dues that they didn't when they were at their peak.
So it goes. I was just happy that he was widely described as New Zealand's greatest batsman. I believe that's what he was, and while there's little doubt that the magnificent Kane Williamson will beat most of his records, I don't think he'll reach Crowe's level of technical perfection. As I say below, the only player I've seen who's got anywhere near doing so is Rahul Dravid.
When I first heard the news, on News Briefing on BBC Radio Four, very early on the morning of Thursday 3rd March, he was described as 'the former Somerset and New Zealand cricketer'. This was unusual, but it was gratifying, and it felt completely right, because his years at Somerset were some of his most important and influential. Influential on him and influential on the club. In the last fifty years, Somerset County Cricket Club has employed some of the greatest players the world has ever seen. There's no need to list them; everyone knows who they are. Martin Crowe is fit to rank with any of those.
Is batting an art, or is it a science?
It may be one, it may be the other, it may be both, or it may be neither, but batsmen, nevertheless, are often categorized as artists or artisans. Geoff Boycott was unquestionably an artisan; David Gower an artist. Brian Lara was an artist; Graeme Smith an artisan.
Martin Crowe was both. Rahul Dravid was too, but Martin Crowe was Dravid before Dravid. Patient, rigorous, endlessly disciplined, but with the great player's essential ability to instantly take advantage of the bad ball, and to bend bowlers to their will.
If someone's defence is so sound, their ability to leave the ball so finely honed, their capacity to counter your skills and variations so good, it is easy to slip into the feeling that you will struggle to ever dismiss them. Shoulders drop, and, as night succeeds day, bad deliveries follow.
Of course, while there are similarities between Crowe and Dravid, there are also contrasts. Like every other batsman who came into the Indian side between 1990 and 2013, Dravid batted in the reassuring shadow of Tendulkar. While Martin Crowe was far from a lone standard bearer in New Zealand's greatest team – Richard Hadlee, of course, was always there – as a batsman he was largely surrounded by artisans. Fine players, yes, like John Wright, like Bruce Edgar, like his own elder brother Jeff, but artisans nonetheless. Crowe was always the artist, and was distinctive in other ways. He was young, he was cool, he was stylish.
Another contrast with the experience of Dravid is that in New Zealand cricket is a small game in a small country where Rugby Union is king. In India it is precisely the opposite. While Dravid and his compatriots were continually exposed to the demands of countless millions, Crowe was subject to differing pressures, expectations and vulnerabilities. The pressure of being the best batsman in the team, and, in later years, the need to maintain your customary level of performance in the face of debilitating injury problems. The feeling of being at the fulcrum of a small country battling against the world, or, as it was in Crowe's time, the might of the West Indian machine.
The premature death of Martin Crowe has been mourned around the world, the sorrow undiminished by the widespread knowledge of his protracted illness. Many people – Mike Selvey, Mark Nicholas, Gideon Haigh, Jarrod Kimber – have written about their personal interactions and friendships with him. I can do no such thing, but I can still think, and write, and talk, of the many occasions I saw him bat.
When he came to England with his national side for the first time in 1983, Crowe's purity of technique was instantly apparent, and I followed his career, with New Zealand and with Somerset, unusually closely, although, in those distant days before worldwide television coverage of anything resembling an international cricket match, this could be a hard thing to do.
There were many peaks: Brisbane, November 1985, where he supplied most of the runs and Hadlee most of the wickets; the two Lord's centuries against England, the second made while in intense pain; the twin centuries, at Wellington and Auckland in early 1987, which helped his team to draw a series with the West Indies. His unbeaten hundred against Somerset at Taunton on his last tour in 1994, when the crowd rose in memory of what had been and in recognition of what was coming to an end.
In those days I used to get sent the New Zealand Cricket Almanack every year. The 1987 issue sticks in the mind, and now is a good time to get it out and dust it down. There is the beautiful moment in time colour photograph on the cover of the two musketeers, Hadlee and Chatfield, who have just bowled the greatest side in the world out for 100 at Lancaster Park. But there are also two pictures which frame the mastery of Crowe in his halcyon days. On the back cover he is hooking Malcolm Marshall to the Wellington fence in a way that few could ever do; inside there is a monochrome shot of a straight drive which could easily have been posed for the camera, such is the purity of Crowe's style.
For some players, moving images are needed to capture their essence. For batsmen like Crowe (and there haven't been many players like Crowe), for whom poise and timing is all, still photography can serve just as well.
As many have said, as well as being a great batsman, Crowe was a deep and innovative thinker about the game, its problems and its consequences. While, like many of his ideas, this could seem counter-intuitive, with the originality of his thinking contrasting with the orthodoxy of his batting, it is both logical and understandable. A mind which can produce and refine a batting technique like that is a fertile and varied one.
No game has the same depth of emotional resonance as cricket. Losses are always keenly felt and deeply mourned. The past year alone has seen the deaths of one of the greatest cricket figures of all, Richie Benaud, one of the greatest opening batsmen, Arthur Morris, and a man who was a special kind of hero for a certain generation of Englishmen, Tom Graveney.
But it is the early deaths which hit hardest. Since 1999 world cricket has lost Malcolm Marshall himself, Ben Hollioake, Manjural Islam, Philip Hughes and now Crowe. Two cancers, two road accidents and one death at the crease.
In his first season as a Somerset player, in 1984, Martin Crowe flourished with the bat after an uncertain start. However, in many ways, his most important role was played off the pitch, where he used his experience to coalesce the efforts of a group of young players whom he felt to be drifting. Ultimately, many of these players – players like Richard Ollis, Hugh Wilson and Mark Davis – had short careers in the game, but, wherever they are now, it would be surprising if they had failed to spare a thought these past few days for Crowe and those he has left behind.
Cricket is like this. When players die, the whole game bleeds.
9.3.16
Hamid Hassan and the Power of Junoon
When you run a blog like this, which has been around a while and has gained the odd bit of praise and notoriety here and there, people contact you from time to time about contributing guest posts. Invariably you rapidly develop the impression that what they're likely to contribute isn't going to add very much to the sum of human knowledge. My favourites are the ones (not as rare as you might think) who don't seem to have noticed that the blog is about cricket and offer to write about something completely different. On those occasions, I tend to say no.
However, when Nihar Suthar contacted me about writing something for the site, I decided to say yes. Nihar is the author of The Corridor of Uncertainty, a new book about the rise of Afghan cricket. As everyone knows, the way in which Afghanistan has risen to relative prominence in a historically and culturally alien world is one of the most remarkable cricket stories of the new millennium.
With the World T20 getting under way, Nihar has contributed a profile of Hamid Hassan, one of the stalwarts of the side, who has just been recalled to national duty.
By now, the fairytale story of Afghan cricket has spread around the world. In the 2015 Cricket World Cup, the Afghans proved that they could compete against the best, giving the Sri Lankans all they could handle. Cricket has become contagious in Afghanistan. It is an integral fuel of life.
What is different about this team, though? We see nations full of cricket promise climbing through the ranks of the ICC all the time, yet, none of them have made the full ascent from Division 5 to Division 1 as quickly as Afghanistan has. Put simply, it’s because of cricketers like Hamid Hassan. Hamid is without a doubt the best fast bowler in the Afghan team, and arguably one of the most powerful bowlers in world cricket. Yet his talent is not what sets him and his team apart.
He constantly reinforces the importance of junoon with his teammates. Junoon is an Urdu expression for passion. Hamid is just one of the many players on the Afghan side who eats, sleeps, and breathes constant junoon for cricket. He can never stop thinking about it. His mind is always immersed in cricket.
Hamid grew up in the refugee camps of Kacha Garhi, Pakistan, and it was there that he fell in love with cricket. At the age of just sixteen he had to make a major decision for the game he held so dear. Taj Malik, one of the people who is credited with getting the Afghan national cricket team off the ground, came to Kacha Garhi in 2003 to recruit future stars for Afghanistan. He was drawn to Hamid and tried to convince him to come back to Afghanistan. At that time, Afghanistan's cricket infrastructure was non-existent.
Taj went straight to Hamid’s father and said, “Salaam. My name is Taj Malik, and I am the coach of the Afghan national cricket team. I want to request you to leave Hamid with me. He wants to go to Afghanistan to play some cricket in Kabul.”
Hamid’s father was far from happy. He started cursing at Taj, and angrily responded, “Get lost. Hamid is my son. I don’t want to let him go. He has school exams coming in ten days.”
Taj kept pushing. “Hamid has great talent to be a professional cricketer.”
Hamid’s father scoffed. “No he does not. Look at his weight!” Hamid weighed 268 pounds.
“Have you asked Hamid what he wishes to do?” asked Taj.
Hamid’s father exploded. “It doesn’t matter. Just take Hamid and go away from here. If anything happens to him, you will be responsible.”
Taj was alarmed, but Hamid quickly interjected before the episode could escalate. “Stop arguing! Taj, go and wait for me on the road. I am coming.”
Hamid had no idea what to do. He was torn. He was just a boy. Confused, he went to his mother and broke down. “Mother, I wish to go to Afghanistan to play cricket with Taj, but father does not want me to go. What should I do?”
Hamid’s mother simply advised, “Son, this is your love, this is your choice. If you see a future for yourself in cricket, just go for it. If there is no future, why do you wish to waste your time and life like this?”
Hamid sobbed. He fully believed that he had a future in cricket. After receiving blessings from his mother, Hamid left with just $35 to his name and trekked over 200 miles to Kabul. It was the beginning of his professional cricket career. He called his father from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. “Dad, I’m sorry I left without saying anything. I’m going to Kabul. Please don’t mind. One day, I promise I’m going to make you very proud.”
Since that point in time, Hamid has devoted his body and soul to the junoon for cricket. He is driven to make his parents and his country proud. Furthermore, he has infused that same junoon into all the cricketers around him. Hamid is truly an example of how far the idea of junoon can take a cricketer and an entire nation. Ultimately, raw passion and drive for the game is even more important than natural talent or honed skill.
Nihar Suthar (www.niharsuthar.com) is a narrative non-fiction writer, and has written The Corridor of Uncertainty, about the miraculous and inspiring rise of the Afghan cricket team. It features never-before heard stories and narratives from the players. Purchase your copy at www.thecorridorofuncertainty.com.
However, when Nihar Suthar contacted me about writing something for the site, I decided to say yes. Nihar is the author of The Corridor of Uncertainty, a new book about the rise of Afghan cricket. As everyone knows, the way in which Afghanistan has risen to relative prominence in a historically and culturally alien world is one of the most remarkable cricket stories of the new millennium.
With the World T20 getting under way, Nihar has contributed a profile of Hamid Hassan, one of the stalwarts of the side, who has just been recalled to national duty.
By now, the fairytale story of Afghan cricket has spread around the world. In the 2015 Cricket World Cup, the Afghans proved that they could compete against the best, giving the Sri Lankans all they could handle. Cricket has become contagious in Afghanistan. It is an integral fuel of life.
What is different about this team, though? We see nations full of cricket promise climbing through the ranks of the ICC all the time, yet, none of them have made the full ascent from Division 5 to Division 1 as quickly as Afghanistan has. Put simply, it’s because of cricketers like Hamid Hassan. Hamid is without a doubt the best fast bowler in the Afghan team, and arguably one of the most powerful bowlers in world cricket. Yet his talent is not what sets him and his team apart.
He constantly reinforces the importance of junoon with his teammates. Junoon is an Urdu expression for passion. Hamid is just one of the many players on the Afghan side who eats, sleeps, and breathes constant junoon for cricket. He can never stop thinking about it. His mind is always immersed in cricket.
Hamid grew up in the refugee camps of Kacha Garhi, Pakistan, and it was there that he fell in love with cricket. At the age of just sixteen he had to make a major decision for the game he held so dear. Taj Malik, one of the people who is credited with getting the Afghan national cricket team off the ground, came to Kacha Garhi in 2003 to recruit future stars for Afghanistan. He was drawn to Hamid and tried to convince him to come back to Afghanistan. At that time, Afghanistan's cricket infrastructure was non-existent.
Taj went straight to Hamid’s father and said, “Salaam. My name is Taj Malik, and I am the coach of the Afghan national cricket team. I want to request you to leave Hamid with me. He wants to go to Afghanistan to play some cricket in Kabul.”
Hamid’s father was far from happy. He started cursing at Taj, and angrily responded, “Get lost. Hamid is my son. I don’t want to let him go. He has school exams coming in ten days.”
Taj kept pushing. “Hamid has great talent to be a professional cricketer.”
Hamid’s father scoffed. “No he does not. Look at his weight!” Hamid weighed 268 pounds.
“Have you asked Hamid what he wishes to do?” asked Taj.
Hamid’s father exploded. “It doesn’t matter. Just take Hamid and go away from here. If anything happens to him, you will be responsible.”
Taj was alarmed, but Hamid quickly interjected before the episode could escalate. “Stop arguing! Taj, go and wait for me on the road. I am coming.”
Hamid had no idea what to do. He was torn. He was just a boy. Confused, he went to his mother and broke down. “Mother, I wish to go to Afghanistan to play cricket with Taj, but father does not want me to go. What should I do?”
Hamid’s mother simply advised, “Son, this is your love, this is your choice. If you see a future for yourself in cricket, just go for it. If there is no future, why do you wish to waste your time and life like this?”
Hamid sobbed. He fully believed that he had a future in cricket. After receiving blessings from his mother, Hamid left with just $35 to his name and trekked over 200 miles to Kabul. It was the beginning of his professional cricket career. He called his father from the Afghanistan-Pakistan border. “Dad, I’m sorry I left without saying anything. I’m going to Kabul. Please don’t mind. One day, I promise I’m going to make you very proud.”
Since that point in time, Hamid has devoted his body and soul to the junoon for cricket. He is driven to make his parents and his country proud. Furthermore, he has infused that same junoon into all the cricketers around him. Hamid is truly an example of how far the idea of junoon can take a cricketer and an entire nation. Ultimately, raw passion and drive for the game is even more important than natural talent or honed skill.
Nihar Suthar (www.niharsuthar.com) is a narrative non-fiction writer, and has written The Corridor of Uncertainty, about the miraculous and inspiring rise of the Afghan cricket team. It features never-before heard stories and narratives from the players. Purchase your copy at www.thecorridorofuncertainty.com.
25.2.16
Eulogies
Retirement. Over the near ten years that this blog has been running, many great players have slipped, always voluntarily, from the limelight: Warne, McGrath, Gilchrist, Lara, Ponting, Tendulkar.
There is usually a pattern, certainly for those who, even marginally, outstay their welcome. The form starts to slip, the player's age is repeatedly mentioned, possible retirement dates are proposed and debated. Then, when it has happened, eulogies are written.
I should know. I've written many of them myself.
When Shivnarine Chanderpaul recently announced his 'retirement' (He bats on for Guyana, which is hardly surprising. Will there ever be a time when, even in his head, Shiv isn't batting?) many tributes were paid. The best of these, by Siddhartha Vaidyanathan and Liam Cromar, emphasized Chanderpaul's status as almost the last of a kind. The batsman who is best known for being very, very difficult to dismiss. In the art, or the science, or perhaps just the bloody-minded discipline, of outlasting bowlers, Chanderpaul was the nonpareil.
He was, of course, far more than a mere accumulator; the thing I always liked most about him was the counter-intuitive contrast between the ugliness of his stance and the transparent class of many of his strokes. With Chanderpaul gone we have Alastair Cook, who does a very similar job, but without quite the accumulative powers or the class. This, perhaps, is the greatest mark of Chanderpaul's status as an outlier; he batted longer, and harder, and in poorer teams, and in greater denial of the traditions of his country's batting (the country, lest we forget, of Kanhai, of Fredericks, of Lloyd, of Hooper), than anyone else in the last twenty years, even Alastair Cook. With the way the game is changing, nobody will ever do that again.
When anyone retires, personal memories come to the fore. After the Test match between the West Indies and England at Lord's in July 2004 - a match in which Chanderpaul made undefeated scores of 128 and 97 in the face of heavy defeat - I stood at the door of the Long Room as he prepared to run the gauntlet of the supporters massed outside the pavilion's rear door. His face is a mask of characteristic seriousness and intensity; he has felt the pain of defeat once again, despite his best efforts. He wants away, but you sense that he would rather be able to leave in private, without having to deal with the adulation which he will receive. But the thing that leaves the strongest impression is his physical stature. He is one of the slightest people I have ever seen in an adult sporting context. Seemingly he is a boy in a man's world. Except, of course, in the matter of batting.
Now we have had the international retirement of Brendon McCullum. This is different in many senses; for one he is still at the peak of his powers, and, much to his credit, he is finishing while people are still asking, as the old aphorism goes, 'why?' instead of 'why not?'. For another he was never anyone's idea of an accumulator. While Chanderpaul would keep a contest alive to the end of his days, McCullum's way was to grab a match by the scruff of the neck and throw it out of the window.
As Rick Walton's superb, thought-provoking piece on the 'Wondrous Carnage' created by McCullum at Christchurch shows, he can provoke varying and contradictory emotions, but what McCullum deserves most respect for is the way in which he has been at the fulcrum of everything that has changed the world's perception of New Zealand cricket. New Zealand play uncomplicated, attacking cricket, but they do it with a lightness of touch and a lack of sourness which is refreshing and distinctive. Apart from the short period in the eighties when they had the advantage of one of the greatest bowlers of all time, New Zealand have never been anyone's idea of world-beaters, least of all their own.
Now, though, if you watch cricket in New Zealand you can watch it at the Hagley Oval, the sanctuary of post-earthquake Christchurch, and you can watch the batting of Kane Williamson, which is as good as anything of its kind that can presently be seen anywhere on earth.
In population terms, New Zealand is a small country at the end of the earth. It has its vivid natural beauty, it has its rugby, parodically it has its sheep.
Now, thanks in large part to Brendon McCullum, it has cricket.
There is usually a pattern, certainly for those who, even marginally, outstay their welcome. The form starts to slip, the player's age is repeatedly mentioned, possible retirement dates are proposed and debated. Then, when it has happened, eulogies are written.
I should know. I've written many of them myself.
When Shivnarine Chanderpaul recently announced his 'retirement' (He bats on for Guyana, which is hardly surprising. Will there ever be a time when, even in his head, Shiv isn't batting?) many tributes were paid. The best of these, by Siddhartha Vaidyanathan and Liam Cromar, emphasized Chanderpaul's status as almost the last of a kind. The batsman who is best known for being very, very difficult to dismiss. In the art, or the science, or perhaps just the bloody-minded discipline, of outlasting bowlers, Chanderpaul was the nonpareil.
He was, of course, far more than a mere accumulator; the thing I always liked most about him was the counter-intuitive contrast between the ugliness of his stance and the transparent class of many of his strokes. With Chanderpaul gone we have Alastair Cook, who does a very similar job, but without quite the accumulative powers or the class. This, perhaps, is the greatest mark of Chanderpaul's status as an outlier; he batted longer, and harder, and in poorer teams, and in greater denial of the traditions of his country's batting (the country, lest we forget, of Kanhai, of Fredericks, of Lloyd, of Hooper), than anyone else in the last twenty years, even Alastair Cook. With the way the game is changing, nobody will ever do that again.
When anyone retires, personal memories come to the fore. After the Test match between the West Indies and England at Lord's in July 2004 - a match in which Chanderpaul made undefeated scores of 128 and 97 in the face of heavy defeat - I stood at the door of the Long Room as he prepared to run the gauntlet of the supporters massed outside the pavilion's rear door. His face is a mask of characteristic seriousness and intensity; he has felt the pain of defeat once again, despite his best efforts. He wants away, but you sense that he would rather be able to leave in private, without having to deal with the adulation which he will receive. But the thing that leaves the strongest impression is his physical stature. He is one of the slightest people I have ever seen in an adult sporting context. Seemingly he is a boy in a man's world. Except, of course, in the matter of batting.
Now we have had the international retirement of Brendon McCullum. This is different in many senses; for one he is still at the peak of his powers, and, much to his credit, he is finishing while people are still asking, as the old aphorism goes, 'why?' instead of 'why not?'. For another he was never anyone's idea of an accumulator. While Chanderpaul would keep a contest alive to the end of his days, McCullum's way was to grab a match by the scruff of the neck and throw it out of the window.
As Rick Walton's superb, thought-provoking piece on the 'Wondrous Carnage' created by McCullum at Christchurch shows, he can provoke varying and contradictory emotions, but what McCullum deserves most respect for is the way in which he has been at the fulcrum of everything that has changed the world's perception of New Zealand cricket. New Zealand play uncomplicated, attacking cricket, but they do it with a lightness of touch and a lack of sourness which is refreshing and distinctive. Apart from the short period in the eighties when they had the advantage of one of the greatest bowlers of all time, New Zealand have never been anyone's idea of world-beaters, least of all their own.
Now, though, if you watch cricket in New Zealand you can watch it at the Hagley Oval, the sanctuary of post-earthquake Christchurch, and you can watch the batting of Kane Williamson, which is as good as anything of its kind that can presently be seen anywhere on earth.
In population terms, New Zealand is a small country at the end of the earth. It has its vivid natural beauty, it has its rugby, parodically it has its sheep.
Now, thanks in large part to Brendon McCullum, it has cricket.
31.1.16
Learning to Fly
The District Six Museum commemorates the old and new life of a part of its city which apartheid tried to destroy. Those days are gone now, but the bleak legacy of memories endures and the road to restitution is long and far from run. This was the nature of the ancien regime writ large – in place of cosmopolitanism there must be uniformity, in place of spontaneity there must be predictability, in place of racial interaction there must only be white people – and, when you go there, the thought of what went on makes you reflect very deeply. For people of a certain age, the District Six Museum, with its monochrome photos and its banners and its people's maps, more even than Robben Island (although that has its moments, of course), takes you back to a time when unrest in South Africa was headline news every night, and nobody knew when, if ever, it would end.
These, of course, were the days of the sporting boycott, when it would have been impossible to imagine a side comprising the South African game's many lost white players taking the field in an official context, let alone a team captained by a representative of the Durban Indian community, or a tiny man from a Cape township, or a twenty year-old fast bowler from the Highveld.
Returning to South Africa after a twenty year absence – it is a salient thought that Kagiso Rabada was yet to walk, much less bowl, when I was last here – there was a palpable although indefinable sense of a more mature country, one that was embracing the future (even if it is still not sure if it likes it), rather than looking towards it with trepidation. The Truth and Reconciliation Commission, which began its hearings after I was last here, is long passed, and the system which gave rise to the need for it has faded even further into history. The flag of the old South Africa, which, in a strange moment of elemental and retrogressive madness, I saw paraded at St.George's Park in Port Elizabeth in December 1995, is gone for good too. Everywhere there is red, blue, green, black, yellow and white.
Newlands, in the city's affluent suburbs, is representative of a very different South Africa. Head out on the M3 past the university, and you enter a world of electronic gates, high walls and security notices. Here, paranoia is all.
Inside the ground, in its wondrous natural setting, the atmosphere is friendlier and more congenial. All sorts of South African are here, as well as many thousands from the British Isles, enticed by the January sunshine and a currency which is declining faster than the South African batting.
Day One. The sun beats down from a bottomless azure sky, while the pitch is the colour of bleached concrete. A batting day if ever there was. For once, Cook wins at the toss. He then goes early to a blinding catch, but Hales leaves with unusual care, building to 60. But he gets out when set, and others – Compton, Root – follow, while Taylor goes immediately to a poor shot. At 223 for 5 in the 68th, the day is in the balance. But it ends with Stokes and Bairstow powerfully settling in against the new ball, while never quite hinting at the carnage which is to follow.
It is trite now to say that Ben Stokes is a gifted batsman. Everyone has seen what he can do. But the loose limbed sixes, the balls which, on small grounds like Taunton, appear to be destined for orbit, are only part of it. To fully appreciate what he is capable of, watch him early, settling in, when in form. He must be in form because if he isn't he will more than likely be out before you have had a chance to form an opinion. He plays very straight and the ball leaves the bat with a rhythmical ease of timing which you only see from the very, very best. Later, when he's really in – and this can happen quicker than you realize – the timing is cast aside in favour of raw brutality, and this, in the first three hours of the second day, is what we get. Bairstow, who is still at this point trying hard to establish himself, provides dutiful support, before opening out when he's past his first Test hundred. Simply put, nobody in the ground has seen anything like it before. Self-awareness can be hard to find at times like this, but at a point quite early on, as I sit in the shade and watch cricket from the Gods in a temperature and crystalline light which carries an air of unreality when you have departed the gloom of the British winter just a few days before, I take a few moments between balls to focus on the fact that, seriously, life cannot get much better.
With a range of records cast to the winds that drift in off the mountains during a typical Newlands afternoon, South Africa have no choice but to bat long. After early losses, on a pitch without demons, this is what they do. Amla sniffs the ball with exaggerated care as he tries to piece together his muscle memory and recover his lost form, while always having the time to dismiss the bad ball from his presence with an elegance given to few. For the next day or so, the game seems to have entered a kind of stasis.
More than a day later, Amla is out. From the raised area at the back of the Railway Terrace, within earshot of the trains and the brewery, the dismissal is largely unseen. In this environment it is easy for minds to wander. Another wicket quickly follows, and then, with a hint of trouble in the air, Temba Bavuma is at the wicket. A Cape Town boy, born in the year of Mandela's release, he carries the air of a child among men, at least until he starts piercing the field. De Kock soon goes but, between his fall and tea, Bavuma, with a succession of compact drives and pulls, sets down a marker, while, in partnership with the debutant Chris Morris, bringing the balance of the game back within South Africa's reach. At the time a few people compare the neatness and self-possession of Bavuma to what the early stages of a Sachin Tendulkar innings were like. This seems a little fanciful. It is probably his tiny stature which prompts this as much as anything he does with the bat, but it is a sign. Here is a black African who can obviously bat, but this is not enough. People want, people need, him to succeed. To cement his place in the side in a way that no other man of his race, apart from Makhaya Ntini (and batting was never his strong suit), has ever done.
Later on the fourth day, as the torpid heat settles on the ground like a blanket, everything slows again as Bavuma gains on his century. Then, with five o'clock behind us and the shadows beginning to lengthen, he edges a drive at Finn wide of the only slip left to complete the first Test century for South Africa by a black batsman. It is coincidental and appropriate that by this stage Rabada has joined him, and in the lower tier of the President's Pavilion, the crowd – or at least those who are truly aware that they are witnessing history – rise to acclaim it.
The final day dawns cooler but more humid. The increased cloud cover encourages the South African bowlers, and England rapidly lose three wickets. After lunch they are falteringly drawn into an unexpected battle for survival. A match that, while it has contained moments of huge excitement and deep significance, has lacked any sustained dramatic tension, comes to life before sliding to a damp grave as the light closes in and rain briefly falls.
On trips like this life moves on quickly. There are buses to catch, cruises round a windswept harbour to negotiate, farewell dinners to enjoy. And, when you return to the English winter, which has become colder and harsher in your brief absence, the reality that such experiences are outliers in your life hits home. But this is no bad thing. The mundanity of normality provides the contrast against which times like these can be fully enjoyed for what they are.
From the Cape the teams travel to the country's higher northern latitudes. England secure the series in Johannesburg, before being cast aside at Centurion by a combination of their own fading focus and the bowling of Rabada, who starts to look like a prospect for the ages.
In Cape Town, although the mighty Stokes punishes him hard, he has periodically impressed with his lithe action and deceptive pace, but he has been overshadowed by his compatriot Bavuma. At Johannesburg and Centurion it becomes apparent that South Africa have a bowler around whom, as the era of the great Steyn draws to a close, they can build their recovery to the world game's heights.
It is too obvious, and it is also unrealistic and dangerous, to try to draw parallels and significances between what is happening to a country's cricket team and what is happening in the country itself. The rise of Bavuma and Rabada tells a small but possibly illusory truth about the evolution of South African society as it is reflected by cricket. Although Bavuma began life in Langa, the low-slung township you see as you drive from the airport towards central Cape Town, both he and Rabada had the benefit of being educated at church schools in Johannesburg where cricket played a central role in the sporting curriculum.
For most of South Africa's population, the world is not like this. But even from a short visit, impressions and memories beyond the priceless feeling of warm sun on the face in early January, can be taken away. While the District Six Museum portrays the worst which South Africa's bleak past threw up, its displays are far more about the multi-faceted nature of a society. Banners and photographs feature cricketers and their teams. Messages are sent, one of which is that, although in the years of division they were not allowed to compete on equal terms, cricket was always a vital and important part of black and coloured society. Whatever their adolescent privileges, Bavuma and Rabada are the heirs to a noble and resilient tradition.
Like so many other traditions, though, apartheid tried to crush it. For years players had to move abroad to get anywhere. However, these were not always players from the majority communities. On the third afternoon of the Newlands Test there is a ceremony on the outfield. Commemorative 'heritage blazers' are presented by Cricket South Africa to players from the old days who never had the chance to represent a united country. Among the unfamiliar local names there are players who, to someone of a certain age and mindset, are instantly recognizable from county cricket – Steve Jefferies of Hampshire, Ken McEwan of Essex, others. Sporting isolation affected everyone. It is little wonder – and it is entirely right – that England and South Africa compete in Test matches for the Basil D'Oliveira Trophy.
For all the feeling that it has advanced and stabilized, South African society remains unequal, turbulent and confusing, But then so, increasingly, is the whole world. A sensation of hesitant advancement is perhaps the best that can be hoped for, both on the cricket field and away from it.
From this place and time I will always retain the memories of Robben Island, of Table Mountain, of District Six; of Stokes batting like there was going to be no tomorrow; of Bavuma passing his century and leaving the field, shortly after, with Rabada. A walk that was interrupted at frequent intervals by England players, aware of the moment, running to shake Bavuma's hand.
As I have already said, it is necessary to be careful not to draw too many conclusions from moments such as this. The older ills and wounds of the country will take longer to cure, but, from the way in which Bavuma signed autographs for a kaleidoscopic crowd of admirers outside the South African dressing room at Newlands after the game had been laid to rest, to Rabada's penetrative and mature bowling at Centurion, which hinted strongly at potential greatness, there are good signs for South African cricket.
8.11.15
The Death of a Gentleman
For cricket followers of my English generation, born at a time when Tom Graveney was, as so often, biding his time away from the Test side, he is remembered chiefly as one of the team of commentators and presenters (Tony Lewis, Ray Illingworth, Jack Bannister and, of course, Richie Benaud, were others) who presided over the later years of BBC coverage of Test cricket (once again, for my generation, these can be precisely defined as the years after the retirement of Peter West in 1986).
Graveney was self-evidently a kindly man, steeped in cricket and with a western accent rich in its gentleness. And, as part of a cricket education, you gradually became aware of how much he meant to so many people.
At Worcester, of course, but earlier on the grounds of Gloucestershire, where for Jonathan Smith, at Bristol in 1952, he was 'coming down the pavilion steps now. And what a familiar sight he is, rosy faced, the elegant, tall right hander from Gloucestershire. And even against the fastest of fast bowlers Tom Graveney never seemed hurried. It was even the case when Hall and Griffith and the other West Indian quicks were battering the English top order. When the English top four seemed caught in the headlights, Tom somehow always had time. Time, ah, time: that's the thing. In sport, Having Time is class'.
I never saw Tom Graveney bat, but I knew what he looked like and admired him for what I knew him to have been. I remember two instances when I saw him. The first time he was walking round the boundary at Cheltenham in 1992, greeting and conversing with many of his long-time admirers. Both he and they have grown old, but time hasn't dimmed the richness of their memories.
Years later I saw him outside Trent Bridge with his wife, before a Test match day. Struggling with his bags, like many another mortal, but inhabiting a realm made different by his experiences. He is outside a ground on which he has made a century for England against Sobers and Hall and Griffith and Gibbs; where, years earlier he made 258, also against the West Indies. He wears his achievements lightly, but he also wears his England player's tie, proud forever of having represented his country.
Though he has gone, Tom Graveney will continue to exist in the memory as someone who encapsulated all that is special, unique even, about the English county game. Yes, there are his achievements in Test cricket, but there is a sense that, more than all those, he is Bristol, he is the old Wagon Works Ground at Gloucester, he is Cheltenham, he is Worcester, and the shadow of the cathedral.
Graveney was self-evidently a kindly man, steeped in cricket and with a western accent rich in its gentleness. And, as part of a cricket education, you gradually became aware of how much he meant to so many people.
At Worcester, of course, but earlier on the grounds of Gloucestershire, where for Jonathan Smith, at Bristol in 1952, he was 'coming down the pavilion steps now. And what a familiar sight he is, rosy faced, the elegant, tall right hander from Gloucestershire. And even against the fastest of fast bowlers Tom Graveney never seemed hurried. It was even the case when Hall and Griffith and the other West Indian quicks were battering the English top order. When the English top four seemed caught in the headlights, Tom somehow always had time. Time, ah, time: that's the thing. In sport, Having Time is class'.
I never saw Tom Graveney bat, but I knew what he looked like and admired him for what I knew him to have been. I remember two instances when I saw him. The first time he was walking round the boundary at Cheltenham in 1992, greeting and conversing with many of his long-time admirers. Both he and they have grown old, but time hasn't dimmed the richness of their memories.
Years later I saw him outside Trent Bridge with his wife, before a Test match day. Struggling with his bags, like many another mortal, but inhabiting a realm made different by his experiences. He is outside a ground on which he has made a century for England against Sobers and Hall and Griffith and Gibbs; where, years earlier he made 258, also against the West Indies. He wears his achievements lightly, but he also wears his England player's tie, proud forever of having represented his country.
Though he has gone, Tom Graveney will continue to exist in the memory as someone who encapsulated all that is special, unique even, about the English county game. Yes, there are his achievements in Test cricket, but there is a sense that, more than all those, he is Bristol, he is the old Wagon Works Ground at Gloucester, he is Cheltenham, he is Worcester, and the shadow of the cathedral.
18.10.15
A Kind of Greatness
I started writing this blog in the summer of 2006, just a few months after Alastair Cook made his Test debut.
I've missed a few Tests since then. He hasn't missed any.
Amid all the plaudits, and the veiled and often not-so-veiled criticisms, heaped on Cook after his epic this week, that's something worth remembering. The last Test match played by England in which he didn't participate took place in Mumbai in March 2006. It's remembered for different reasons (the mind's eye turns readily to the desperate sight of Monty Panesar circling under the Dhoni steeplers), but, since then, whenever and wherever England have played a Test match, Cook has been there. Usually batting.
I've grappled before with the thorny question of where Cook stands in the wider lexicon of English batsmanship, and, for someone who's scored so many runs, and so many centuries, assessing him is more difficult and entails more ambivalence than it should.
You can start by doing this. Think of any English batsman. Cook has scored more runs and more centuries than anyone you can think of. Not necessarily at a better average, and sometimes against bowling attacks which don't measure up to those faced by many players of the past, but the runs still have to be scored. Cook has done this in every country and in every type of pitch, match and climatic environment.
His cardinal virtues are so widely known that they hardly need further enumeration. He has unnatural levels of patience, resilience, physical fitness and self-discipline. He never gets injured, he barely sweats, he never appears to age. These are the things which set him apart in ways that the fundamentals of his batting don't.
With the exception of yesterday, he always goes in early. He leaves. He defends. He leaves. He defends. He leaves. He drives, rarely trusting himself to push the bat all the way through the line, but covering any movement, playing impeccably straight, and with beautiful natural timing. If the bowler is then prompted to drop short he will cut, and he will pull. Then he will leave and defend some more, lumbering regular singles with a gait which can seem in keeping with his alternative existence as a farmhand. In time, the bowlers tire and the runs pile up. At the other end, batsmen, usually his shifting and uncertain cast of opening partners, come and go. It is never sexy, it is in many ways old-fashioned, but, in its own way, it is brilliant and uplifting.
Away from the crease he gives the impression of being a reserved and conventional man. The most interesting and unusual thing about him is his batting. In the age of Twenty20, where speed of scoring and six-hitting is all, his approach is different and distinctive.
Wherever you look there are players who can clear the ropes at will. Could they bat for 14 hours in one innings? Could they heck.
Of course Cook can be criticized. Anyone can, especially with the benefit of a litany of grievances which paint him as one of the bad guys in a saga that is nuanced beyond the understanding of anyone who wasn't intimately involved, and with the benefit of Twenty20 hindsight.
Too much time can be wasted trying to assess the relative merits of players with different backgrounds, different approaches, different gifts. Cook may not quite be the type of player conventionally held to be 'great', and he is certainly no genius, but what he does is so far from easy that it bestows on him a kind of greatness. Nobody else, certainly among contemporary English players can do what he does. New players come into the England side to partner Cook every few matches, and none of them can do it. You can be sure that they would like to, but they cannot. In most cases they probably can't even imagine themselves doing it.
Batting at any level of the game is a hard business. A batsman is only ever one good ball or one poor shot away from failure. This uncertainty affects bodies and minds. Try going through ten years of that at the very highest level of the game, some of which you have spent failing, and you will be a mess. To be sane, and to be capable of doing what Cook has just done, perhaps you need, as I've said before about Cook, to be doing what you were put on earth to do.
This is someone who was born to bat.
I've missed a few Tests since then. He hasn't missed any.
Amid all the plaudits, and the veiled and often not-so-veiled criticisms, heaped on Cook after his epic this week, that's something worth remembering. The last Test match played by England in which he didn't participate took place in Mumbai in March 2006. It's remembered for different reasons (the mind's eye turns readily to the desperate sight of Monty Panesar circling under the Dhoni steeplers), but, since then, whenever and wherever England have played a Test match, Cook has been there. Usually batting.
I've grappled before with the thorny question of where Cook stands in the wider lexicon of English batsmanship, and, for someone who's scored so many runs, and so many centuries, assessing him is more difficult and entails more ambivalence than it should.
You can start by doing this. Think of any English batsman. Cook has scored more runs and more centuries than anyone you can think of. Not necessarily at a better average, and sometimes against bowling attacks which don't measure up to those faced by many players of the past, but the runs still have to be scored. Cook has done this in every country and in every type of pitch, match and climatic environment.
His cardinal virtues are so widely known that they hardly need further enumeration. He has unnatural levels of patience, resilience, physical fitness and self-discipline. He never gets injured, he barely sweats, he never appears to age. These are the things which set him apart in ways that the fundamentals of his batting don't.
With the exception of yesterday, he always goes in early. He leaves. He defends. He leaves. He defends. He leaves. He drives, rarely trusting himself to push the bat all the way through the line, but covering any movement, playing impeccably straight, and with beautiful natural timing. If the bowler is then prompted to drop short he will cut, and he will pull. Then he will leave and defend some more, lumbering regular singles with a gait which can seem in keeping with his alternative existence as a farmhand. In time, the bowlers tire and the runs pile up. At the other end, batsmen, usually his shifting and uncertain cast of opening partners, come and go. It is never sexy, it is in many ways old-fashioned, but, in its own way, it is brilliant and uplifting.
Away from the crease he gives the impression of being a reserved and conventional man. The most interesting and unusual thing about him is his batting. In the age of Twenty20, where speed of scoring and six-hitting is all, his approach is different and distinctive.
Wherever you look there are players who can clear the ropes at will. Could they bat for 14 hours in one innings? Could they heck.
Of course Cook can be criticized. Anyone can, especially with the benefit of a litany of grievances which paint him as one of the bad guys in a saga that is nuanced beyond the understanding of anyone who wasn't intimately involved, and with the benefit of Twenty20 hindsight.
Too much time can be wasted trying to assess the relative merits of players with different backgrounds, different approaches, different gifts. Cook may not quite be the type of player conventionally held to be 'great', and he is certainly no genius, but what he does is so far from easy that it bestows on him a kind of greatness. Nobody else, certainly among contemporary English players can do what he does. New players come into the England side to partner Cook every few matches, and none of them can do it. You can be sure that they would like to, but they cannot. In most cases they probably can't even imagine themselves doing it.
Batting at any level of the game is a hard business. A batsman is only ever one good ball or one poor shot away from failure. This uncertainty affects bodies and minds. Try going through ten years of that at the very highest level of the game, some of which you have spent failing, and you will be a mess. To be sane, and to be capable of doing what Cook has just done, perhaps you need, as I've said before about Cook, to be doing what you were put on earth to do.
This is someone who was born to bat.
9.8.15
Possibly Even Better
When it comes to the England team of 2015 - the England team which ultimately regained the Ashes with ease - there are plenty of players, and themes, to talk about.
There are many questions to answer. Some are easy, others are more vexed.
Just how good could Ben Stokes go on to be? Answer: Very Good. Possibly even better than that.
How good a bowler, how good a cricketer, is Stuart Broad? Answer: Very Good.
Who is going to open with Cook in the long term? Answer: Don't Know.
Who is going to be England's next specialist spin bowler? Answer: Don't Know.
How long has Ian Bell got left? Answer: It depends, just as it always did.
Elsewhere there is greater certainty. Increasingly, it seems, there are fewer questions to answer about Joe Root. He is already very, very good, and he may possibly be even better than that.
Over the forty years or so I've been watching England, a question which has occasionally preoccupied me, even in the days when we barely had a respectable team, is when we would produce our next truly great batsman. Our Tendulkar, our Lara, our Ponting.
Gower was unique. Gower, especially in his early years, was often extraordinary. But he wasn't quite great.
Pietersen was a player of great innings, as, in his different way, is Cook. These are people who have touched rare heights, but they haven't quite made it to the summit, unless Cook is considered as an opening batsman alone.
There was a time when everyone thought Ian Bell was going to be the man. And he should have been, he really should. Bell had both the talent and the technical equipment to join the ranks of the truly great, but there has always seemed to be something missing. Something hard to define, but recognisable by its absence. Now it is clear that for all his occasional charm and elegance and undeniable quality, it will never be found.
As Bell walked away from the Trent Bridge pitch, early in the afternoon of the most one-sided day of Anglo-Australian Test cricket any of us is ever likely to see, there was something which signified this. Bell, as has almost become commonplace, had been dismissed for 1, lbw to a characteristic inswinging yorker from Mitchell Starc. As he left the field he was shaking his head and muttering to himself. In a small way these have become his trademarks. Suddenly the hazy sunlight caught the lines in his features and, for just about the first time, I realized that Ian Bell, in cricketing terms, is starting to look old. He is 33, and he will hopefully play many more fine innings (for a player of fine innings is ultimately what he has become) for England.
But he will never be truly great.
It is significant that Bell was replaced at the crease by Joe Root. Joe Root, at 24, has age on his side and he has already found the peerless consistency, weight of scoring and versatility of performance across the formats which have eluded all his peers and predecessors. The certainty of footwork, the soundness of temperament, evident from the early overs of his debut innings in Nagpur, are all there. There is a relative surfeit of elegance, but great players don't need this. Functionality and runs are what they need, and Root has both those in spades.
He can also, for good measure, bowl serviceable off-spin, and he catches everything. Although he has the sense of purpose and instinctive hardness of the natural born Yorkshire pro, he has lost none of the unfettered enjoyment of playing the game which he grew up with. He looks good, he interviews well, he is certain to be England's next captain. If you stop to think about it he feels like the most outstanding cricketer his country has unearthed in many a long year.
Of course, questions remain. How will Root deal with better bowling attacks, and with adversity? This winter, you suspect, both those will test his mettle.
What is his best position in the batting order? So far, with his compatriots in the middle order failing to match his consistency, England have sometimes seemed guilty of wishing to have him batting everywhere at once. For the time being, four seems fine, although a move to three will continue to hang in the air for as long as Ballance remains outside the team and Bell struggles for regular impact.
There is also the nagging feeling that he can't go on like this. England players don't simply go on averaging fifty.
Great players do, though.
There are many questions to answer. Some are easy, others are more vexed.
Just how good could Ben Stokes go on to be? Answer: Very Good. Possibly even better than that.
How good a bowler, how good a cricketer, is Stuart Broad? Answer: Very Good.
Who is going to open with Cook in the long term? Answer: Don't Know.
Who is going to be England's next specialist spin bowler? Answer: Don't Know.
How long has Ian Bell got left? Answer: It depends, just as it always did.
Elsewhere there is greater certainty. Increasingly, it seems, there are fewer questions to answer about Joe Root. He is already very, very good, and he may possibly be even better than that.
Over the forty years or so I've been watching England, a question which has occasionally preoccupied me, even in the days when we barely had a respectable team, is when we would produce our next truly great batsman. Our Tendulkar, our Lara, our Ponting.
Gower was unique. Gower, especially in his early years, was often extraordinary. But he wasn't quite great.
Pietersen was a player of great innings, as, in his different way, is Cook. These are people who have touched rare heights, but they haven't quite made it to the summit, unless Cook is considered as an opening batsman alone.
There was a time when everyone thought Ian Bell was going to be the man. And he should have been, he really should. Bell had both the talent and the technical equipment to join the ranks of the truly great, but there has always seemed to be something missing. Something hard to define, but recognisable by its absence. Now it is clear that for all his occasional charm and elegance and undeniable quality, it will never be found.
As Bell walked away from the Trent Bridge pitch, early in the afternoon of the most one-sided day of Anglo-Australian Test cricket any of us is ever likely to see, there was something which signified this. Bell, as has almost become commonplace, had been dismissed for 1, lbw to a characteristic inswinging yorker from Mitchell Starc. As he left the field he was shaking his head and muttering to himself. In a small way these have become his trademarks. Suddenly the hazy sunlight caught the lines in his features and, for just about the first time, I realized that Ian Bell, in cricketing terms, is starting to look old. He is 33, and he will hopefully play many more fine innings (for a player of fine innings is ultimately what he has become) for England.
But he will never be truly great.
It is significant that Bell was replaced at the crease by Joe Root. Joe Root, at 24, has age on his side and he has already found the peerless consistency, weight of scoring and versatility of performance across the formats which have eluded all his peers and predecessors. The certainty of footwork, the soundness of temperament, evident from the early overs of his debut innings in Nagpur, are all there. There is a relative surfeit of elegance, but great players don't need this. Functionality and runs are what they need, and Root has both those in spades.
He can also, for good measure, bowl serviceable off-spin, and he catches everything. Although he has the sense of purpose and instinctive hardness of the natural born Yorkshire pro, he has lost none of the unfettered enjoyment of playing the game which he grew up with. He looks good, he interviews well, he is certain to be England's next captain. If you stop to think about it he feels like the most outstanding cricketer his country has unearthed in many a long year.
Of course, questions remain. How will Root deal with better bowling attacks, and with adversity? This winter, you suspect, both those will test his mettle.
What is his best position in the batting order? So far, with his compatriots in the middle order failing to match his consistency, England have sometimes seemed guilty of wishing to have him batting everywhere at once. For the time being, four seems fine, although a move to three will continue to hang in the air for as long as Ballance remains outside the team and Bell struggles for regular impact.
There is also the nagging feeling that he can't go on like this. England players don't simply go on averaging fifty.
Great players do, though.
12.7.15
Old Pro
The Cheltenham College cricket ground is a very British type of idyll. Not the village green of a million rustic fantasies, but the epitome of the Victorian public school playing field. Flanked by the school's chapel, it is an arena born of the ideal of muscular christianity which the British, for good or ill, took to the world.
On a weekday in July, with the sun streaming from an azure sky and a light breeze taking the edge off the heat, this, for the cricket lover, is as good as it can possibly get.
And, for Gloucestershire's cast of young pros, it represents a release from the barren characterlessness of the north Bristol suburbs, a chance to play in front of a large and appreciative crowd, and, even if they do not know it, an opportunity to connect with history.
Grace played here, Hammond played here, Graveney and Procter and Zaheer played here. Hundreds of other county cricketers have played here. Christ, this is a place.
With Northants dying a prolonged but terminal death in the field in the face of a withering assault by Gloucestershire's young all-rounder Jack Taylor, it is hard, as he patrols the boundary and tries in vain to stem the flow of runs, not to contemplate the thoughts of Stephen Peters.
Stephen Peters is 36 years old now. Once upon a time, when he made a century in the final of the Under-19 World Cup in 1998, he was, briefly, a kind of star. There were expectations, ultimately unfulfilled. His long career in the game has been spent exclusively on the county circuit. For his native Essex, in the shadow of the cathedral at Worcester, and, latterly, at Wantage Road in Northampton. Somewhere along the line he has undergone the metamorphosis from promising youngster to old pro.
But, while members of the crowd have the privilege of descending into reverie, Peters is unable to do so. Having been dismissed without scoring in his side's first innings, he knows that he will be on a pair when he eventually bats again. When he does, with his side facing a deficit of 126, Gloucestershire's coltish and impressive young seamer, Craig Miles, rips one through his defences before he has had a chance to settle. He has his pair, his part in the game is done, and his side too is not long for the match. By the end of the day they have lost, badly.
Not very far away, on the other side of the Welsh border, England and Australia have spent the day locked in combat in the first of the summer's Ashes Tests. The sights, sounds, colours and throbbing intensity of a Test match are things which Peters will never know now, for it is late in his time in the game.
He has never engaged the thoughts of his country's selectors, but, for nearly twenty years, places like this, on days like this, have been his place of work. True, there have been cold days at Derby and Leicester, grey days watching the rain too, but the opportunity to play, even if just once, in a setting such as this and get paid for doing so, is a far richer experience than most of us will ever, ever have.
At the moment, such sentimentality will be far from his mind. But, in time, he will value these experiences for what they have been.
On a weekday in July, with the sun streaming from an azure sky and a light breeze taking the edge off the heat, this, for the cricket lover, is as good as it can possibly get.
And, for Gloucestershire's cast of young pros, it represents a release from the barren characterlessness of the north Bristol suburbs, a chance to play in front of a large and appreciative crowd, and, even if they do not know it, an opportunity to connect with history.
Grace played here, Hammond played here, Graveney and Procter and Zaheer played here. Hundreds of other county cricketers have played here. Christ, this is a place.
With Northants dying a prolonged but terminal death in the field in the face of a withering assault by Gloucestershire's young all-rounder Jack Taylor, it is hard, as he patrols the boundary and tries in vain to stem the flow of runs, not to contemplate the thoughts of Stephen Peters.
Stephen Peters is 36 years old now. Once upon a time, when he made a century in the final of the Under-19 World Cup in 1998, he was, briefly, a kind of star. There were expectations, ultimately unfulfilled. His long career in the game has been spent exclusively on the county circuit. For his native Essex, in the shadow of the cathedral at Worcester, and, latterly, at Wantage Road in Northampton. Somewhere along the line he has undergone the metamorphosis from promising youngster to old pro.
But, while members of the crowd have the privilege of descending into reverie, Peters is unable to do so. Having been dismissed without scoring in his side's first innings, he knows that he will be on a pair when he eventually bats again. When he does, with his side facing a deficit of 126, Gloucestershire's coltish and impressive young seamer, Craig Miles, rips one through his defences before he has had a chance to settle. He has his pair, his part in the game is done, and his side too is not long for the match. By the end of the day they have lost, badly.
Not very far away, on the other side of the Welsh border, England and Australia have spent the day locked in combat in the first of the summer's Ashes Tests. The sights, sounds, colours and throbbing intensity of a Test match are things which Peters will never know now, for it is late in his time in the game.
He has never engaged the thoughts of his country's selectors, but, for nearly twenty years, places like this, on days like this, have been his place of work. True, there have been cold days at Derby and Leicester, grey days watching the rain too, but the opportunity to play, even if just once, in a setting such as this and get paid for doing so, is a far richer experience than most of us will ever, ever have.
At the moment, such sentimentality will be far from his mind. But, in time, he will value these experiences for what they have been.
29.6.15
A Week in the Life
The fact that in certain contexts - in politics, in sport, in life itself - a week is a long time, is an old and enduring aphorism.
And, especially in the modern age, it is true, so true. Everything happens fast these days, even in cricket. Twenty20 innings are over in the blink of an eye, teams that for years have been the last word in constipated conservatism can change their very character in a few matches.
Andy Mathieson knows all about this.
On Saturday 20th June, Mathieson, a seam bowler from the North Island of New Zealand, is called into the New Zealand team for his One-Day International debut. As England chase an amended target, things go well at first - he takes the wicket of Jason Roy with his first ball in international cricket - but later they take a sharp turn for the worse. His fourth over, which turns out to be the final over of the match, is hit for 17 runs by a combination of two young Yorkshiremen, Jonny Bairstow and Adil Rashid, who are surfing the glorious wave of England's new era of limited-overs freedom. The match ends in defeat for New Zealand, and Mathieson's figures, which weren't great before he embarked on his final over, are left looking ugly. There is a wicket to cling on to, but he is left with a return of 4 overs for 40 to look back on, possibly for ever. An economy rate of 10. Not good. He is the latest person to be entrusted with the difficult job of bowling at the death as the opposition close on a total. In these situations things can go one of two ways. You can end up as a hero, or you can end up, at best, as a forgotten man.
Durham's Riverside Ground ends the day in ferment. Nothing can be heard above the noise of a crowd who, when the whole series is taken into account, can hardly believe what they have witnessed.
One week on it is Saturday 27th June, and Mathieson is opening the bowling for Sidmouth against Exeter in the Premier Division of the Devon League. On Exeter's old ground, Devon's County Ground, the ancient pavilion has been demolished to make way for a gleaming replacement, ringed by student flats. A crane dominates the skyline, the players change in prefabricated huts, and the spectators can be counted, one by one, in a few minutes. It is a humid, slightly soporific afternoon, with the morning's bright sunshine giving way to cloud. You can hear the birds singing. The players are wearing whites. Contrasts with Durham are everywhere.
Sidmouth's powerful batting line-up racks up 307 in their 50 overs. Exeter are below strength, and they are never serious contenders to win, but their chase begins with Mathieson taking the ball following an initial over of slow-medium seamers from his captain Will Murray.
On television, Mathieson's pace looked relatively benign. Here, at a much lower level of the game, it appears razor sharp, and he extracts bounce from a batsmen's track. When the Exeter batsmen have to play, they tend to play late, and in a hurry. But they don't have to play enough, and Mathieson's first spell is negotiated with relative comfort. Later, as Exeter's innings fades, he returns. Exeter's impressive fifteen year-old, Tom Lammonby, handles him without undue trouble, and he remains wicketless until he shatters the stumps of Exeter's number ten with the game's final ball, securing victory for his side by 129 runs.
For Mathieson it has been a quiet afternoon. He has not batted, and he has taken just one wicket and a single sharp catch in the deep, which, with the anticipation and sense of gathering danger which is second nature to one who has played at a higher level, he has made look easy.
This has been an unusually varied interlude in a jobbing cricketer's career. Two weeks running he has bowled the final ball of a match, but they have been worlds apart in setting, in relative importance, and in result. One has extended him to the furthest limits of his abilities and emotions; the other has been a subdued return to normality.
Who knows if the opportunity to repeat his experience at Durham will ever come again? If it does not, there is little need to worry. He is what he is, and what he will always be. There are plenty of people around with no One-Day International wickets, and nobody will ever be able to take Roy's scalp away from him.
A week in cricket can seem like a very long time.
And, especially in the modern age, it is true, so true. Everything happens fast these days, even in cricket. Twenty20 innings are over in the blink of an eye, teams that for years have been the last word in constipated conservatism can change their very character in a few matches.
Andy Mathieson knows all about this.
On Saturday 20th June, Mathieson, a seam bowler from the North Island of New Zealand, is called into the New Zealand team for his One-Day International debut. As England chase an amended target, things go well at first - he takes the wicket of Jason Roy with his first ball in international cricket - but later they take a sharp turn for the worse. His fourth over, which turns out to be the final over of the match, is hit for 17 runs by a combination of two young Yorkshiremen, Jonny Bairstow and Adil Rashid, who are surfing the glorious wave of England's new era of limited-overs freedom. The match ends in defeat for New Zealand, and Mathieson's figures, which weren't great before he embarked on his final over, are left looking ugly. There is a wicket to cling on to, but he is left with a return of 4 overs for 40 to look back on, possibly for ever. An economy rate of 10. Not good. He is the latest person to be entrusted with the difficult job of bowling at the death as the opposition close on a total. In these situations things can go one of two ways. You can end up as a hero, or you can end up, at best, as a forgotten man.
Durham's Riverside Ground ends the day in ferment. Nothing can be heard above the noise of a crowd who, when the whole series is taken into account, can hardly believe what they have witnessed.
One week on it is Saturday 27th June, and Mathieson is opening the bowling for Sidmouth against Exeter in the Premier Division of the Devon League. On Exeter's old ground, Devon's County Ground, the ancient pavilion has been demolished to make way for a gleaming replacement, ringed by student flats. A crane dominates the skyline, the players change in prefabricated huts, and the spectators can be counted, one by one, in a few minutes. It is a humid, slightly soporific afternoon, with the morning's bright sunshine giving way to cloud. You can hear the birds singing. The players are wearing whites. Contrasts with Durham are everywhere.
Sidmouth's powerful batting line-up racks up 307 in their 50 overs. Exeter are below strength, and they are never serious contenders to win, but their chase begins with Mathieson taking the ball following an initial over of slow-medium seamers from his captain Will Murray.
On television, Mathieson's pace looked relatively benign. Here, at a much lower level of the game, it appears razor sharp, and he extracts bounce from a batsmen's track. When the Exeter batsmen have to play, they tend to play late, and in a hurry. But they don't have to play enough, and Mathieson's first spell is negotiated with relative comfort. Later, as Exeter's innings fades, he returns. Exeter's impressive fifteen year-old, Tom Lammonby, handles him without undue trouble, and he remains wicketless until he shatters the stumps of Exeter's number ten with the game's final ball, securing victory for his side by 129 runs.
For Mathieson it has been a quiet afternoon. He has not batted, and he has taken just one wicket and a single sharp catch in the deep, which, with the anticipation and sense of gathering danger which is second nature to one who has played at a higher level, he has made look easy.
This has been an unusually varied interlude in a jobbing cricketer's career. Two weeks running he has bowled the final ball of a match, but they have been worlds apart in setting, in relative importance, and in result. One has extended him to the furthest limits of his abilities and emotions; the other has been a subdued return to normality.
Who knows if the opportunity to repeat his experience at Durham will ever come again? If it does not, there is little need to worry. He is what he is, and what he will always be. There are plenty of people around with no One-Day International wickets, and nobody will ever be able to take Roy's scalp away from him.
A week in cricket can seem like a very long time.
13.6.15
Sense of Loss
When cricketers retire because of injury, there is always a sense of loss. This is true even when the departures of the two England wicket-keepers who have left the game's stage in the last ten days were very far from unexpected.
With Craig Kieswetter, there is a sense of loss born of what might have been. In the case of Matthew Prior there is a sense of losing what actually was, even if the sad reality is that it was long, long gone.
On the broad acres of his adopted home ground at Taunton, the young Kieswetter stood out in ways that were never shrouded in subtlety or mystery. He always looked the part, standing with unfeigned comfort and self-possession at the root of the cordon, usually with Marcus and James Hildreth by his side. For a few seasons, for those of us who inhabit the Hill, or the Botham Stand, or even the one named after Marcus himself, there was comfort and familiarity in that. He used to vie with Jos Buttler for the gloves, and circumstances dictated that it was Somerset's very own world-beater who left. Craig was never quite going to be a world-beater, but he could keep alright, and would have got better as time passed. And he could really bat. The one-day arena saw him at his best, but the essentials of his game were the same whatever the context. To take just one, there was his characteristic off-drive, played with a distinctive flourish and the timing and withering power of one brought up on the type of track that encourages, indeed demands, virile, punishing strokeplay.
A South African hard wicket player.
If this evokes a stereotype then it isn't appropriate. There was also an intrinsic subtlety and wristiness to his shots, while away from the arena he always seemed a balanced and understated character. You can bet that he would have played for Somerset long into the future. Perhaps England too, with the glorious rebirth of the national side's one-day cricket which the last week has seen suiting him down to the ground. It may or may not have happened, but Craig would have welcomed the chance to make it so.
A lasting memory, from a season or two back, sees me passing him as he came away from the Millichamp and Hall bat workshop that lies behind the Ondaatje Pavilion at Taunton. He had a clutch of brand new, logoless bats under his arm. The tools of his trade. Some of those probably never struck a ball in anger, and now they never will.
Unlike Craig Kieswetter, Matt Prior fulfilled his potential everywhere but in the one-day arena. During his, and England's, greatest recent days I saw a lot of Prior at Lord's, including both his Test centuries there. One, against the West Indies on debut, felt like snatching candy from kids, the other, against India in 2011, when he and Stuart Broad took the game away from England's opponents on a crystal blue Sunday afternoon, still feels to me like a matchlessly evocative summation of all that Flower and Strauss's England were. Prior the batsman was a focal part of that time, bounding onto the pitch, sweatbands on wrists, with endless confidence, aggression and damaging intent. Quick singles to start, always challenging the field, then, as bowlers tired and dropped short, there would be cuts and pulls. Overpitch and it would be one of the most powerful and reliable cover-drives in world cricket.
In those days, when Matt Prior was at the wicket, everything felt right.
Lord's against India was where it all ended for Prior too. An injury-ravaged performance in defeat, capped by a witless stroke and a proud, defiant exit. Watching him walk through the Long Room that day last July, head held high and expression fixed, there was a strong sense of an era ending.
A true sense of loss.
With Craig Kieswetter, there is a sense of loss born of what might have been. In the case of Matthew Prior there is a sense of losing what actually was, even if the sad reality is that it was long, long gone.
On the broad acres of his adopted home ground at Taunton, the young Kieswetter stood out in ways that were never shrouded in subtlety or mystery. He always looked the part, standing with unfeigned comfort and self-possession at the root of the cordon, usually with Marcus and James Hildreth by his side. For a few seasons, for those of us who inhabit the Hill, or the Botham Stand, or even the one named after Marcus himself, there was comfort and familiarity in that. He used to vie with Jos Buttler for the gloves, and circumstances dictated that it was Somerset's very own world-beater who left. Craig was never quite going to be a world-beater, but he could keep alright, and would have got better as time passed. And he could really bat. The one-day arena saw him at his best, but the essentials of his game were the same whatever the context. To take just one, there was his characteristic off-drive, played with a distinctive flourish and the timing and withering power of one brought up on the type of track that encourages, indeed demands, virile, punishing strokeplay.
A South African hard wicket player.
If this evokes a stereotype then it isn't appropriate. There was also an intrinsic subtlety and wristiness to his shots, while away from the arena he always seemed a balanced and understated character. You can bet that he would have played for Somerset long into the future. Perhaps England too, with the glorious rebirth of the national side's one-day cricket which the last week has seen suiting him down to the ground. It may or may not have happened, but Craig would have welcomed the chance to make it so.
A lasting memory, from a season or two back, sees me passing him as he came away from the Millichamp and Hall bat workshop that lies behind the Ondaatje Pavilion at Taunton. He had a clutch of brand new, logoless bats under his arm. The tools of his trade. Some of those probably never struck a ball in anger, and now they never will.
Unlike Craig Kieswetter, Matt Prior fulfilled his potential everywhere but in the one-day arena. During his, and England's, greatest recent days I saw a lot of Prior at Lord's, including both his Test centuries there. One, against the West Indies on debut, felt like snatching candy from kids, the other, against India in 2011, when he and Stuart Broad took the game away from England's opponents on a crystal blue Sunday afternoon, still feels to me like a matchlessly evocative summation of all that Flower and Strauss's England were. Prior the batsman was a focal part of that time, bounding onto the pitch, sweatbands on wrists, with endless confidence, aggression and damaging intent. Quick singles to start, always challenging the field, then, as bowlers tired and dropped short, there would be cuts and pulls. Overpitch and it would be one of the most powerful and reliable cover-drives in world cricket.
In those days, when Matt Prior was at the wicket, everything felt right.
Lord's against India was where it all ended for Prior too. An injury-ravaged performance in defeat, capped by a witless stroke and a proud, defiant exit. Watching him walk through the Long Room that day last July, head held high and expression fixed, there was a strong sense of an era ending.
A true sense of loss.
11.4.15
Richie Benaud (1930-2015)
Deaths come in different ways. Some are sudden, unexpected; others come after a long, slow fade from life's prime.
In keeping with the measured laconicism which was an intrinsic element of his unchallenged status as cricket's voice, conscience and heartbeat for more years than most of us have been alive, Richie Benaud's passing was one of the latter. He'd suffered a car accident in Sydney in October 2013, and, as the months afterwards passed, the intermittent reports on his health painted a picture of decline in the face of a cancer which was probably the legacy of long years spent in the burning sun of the world's Test match arenas. Benaud died yesterday in the country where he was born, which he represented, and in which he became a genuinely iconic figure, but the influence and legacy of his life extended far beyond the shores of Australia.
To anyone who grew up in England at any time from the middle of the 1960s onwards and who was interested in cricket, Richie Benaud didn't just represent or evoke the game. As in his home country, he was cricket.
Benaud never again commentated in England after the Oval Test of September 2005. After that, coverage of cricket in England became restricted to satellite television and Benaud wanted no part of it. So, at a time when English cricket is mired in one of its regular bouts of angst about the pitiful state of its representative team, its hopeless, befuddled administrators and its declining number of participants, the memory of Benaud in his glory years is, at one and the same time, a memory of a simpler era. A time when televised cricket meant turning on BBC 1 at 11.25, Soul Limbo and Peter West, Benaud and Jim Laker, and not an advert in sight. As I approach my fifties I like to think that I am resistant to reflex sentimentality about my youth, and in so many ways cricket is more varied, more colourful and more entertaining than it was then, but, as in many areas of life, there is a yearning for the ephemeral, ungraspable memory of those experiences which made us what we are. If you have spent what now seems like your entire life obsessed with cricket, the death of someone who exemplified and defined the game as you fell under its spell is sure to hit you hard.
Two memories of Benaud's life and commentating times: In the first I am eleven years old. It is a sunlit June day, with bottomless blue skies. I have walked home from school and turned on the television. I cannot, of course, remember if I knew that there was cricket on, but, as the set, our first colour television and some five years old at the time, warms into life I can at once discern the sound of a throbbing, excited crowd. Hampshire are playing Gloucestershire at Southampton's Northlands Road ground in the semi-final of the Benson and Hedges Cup. The first thing I see is a blonde fast bowler charge towards the wicket, sweat flying from his brow and his white shirt unbuttoned almost to the waist. I think I know that this is Mike Procter, but I have no idea that at this precise moment, he is seeking to complete a hat-trick. As his yorker disturbs the stumps of Hampshire's John Rice with a mixture of precision and inevitability, Richie Benaud's voice surges upwards with an air of barely controlled excitement, his normal wry detachment momentarily and involuntarily abandoned.
38 long years later, when Benaud dies, this is one of the moments that is replayed and replayed on the television news. It is both a replay of an essential chapter in the Benaud legend and a fundamental part of my childhood.
On 12th September 2005 I am at The Oval, in south London. It is again sunny, and a batsman is again bowled. This time it is Kevin Pietersen, who has scored 158 to take England to the brink of regaining the Ashes. Benaud's final spell of commentary concludes with Pietersen's dismissal. The ground rises, not just to salute Pietersen's achievement but also Benaud. The Australian players, about to become the first team from their country to lose a Test series against England for almost two decades, break from their drinks to applaud Benaud. This signifies what he has meant to cricket.
The last half-year has been, to put it mildly, a mixed period for Australian cricket. A Test series win and a World Cup triumph, bookended by the deaths of Philip Hughes and Richie Benaud, one tragically unexpected and one sadly inevitable. The response to both, though, has shown the vitality and fundamental dignity of the game, both in Australia and around the world.
It is far from an exaggeration to say that Richie Benaud was one of the most significant figures in all the game's long history. When someone like that dies, especially during a period where there is - as there always is - anxiety about the game's turbulent present and uncertain future, the temptation is to suggest that nothing will ever be the same. This is true, of course, for we shall never hear Benaud at the microphone again, but, as the World Cup showed, the game will continue to thrill, fascinate and entertain.
Benaud, never a rose-tinted nostalgist, would agree. Memories of Benaud will sustain all of us long into the future, but it is best if they are viewed as examples of the game's endless possibilities, not as signifiers of a lost past.
RIP.
In keeping with the measured laconicism which was an intrinsic element of his unchallenged status as cricket's voice, conscience and heartbeat for more years than most of us have been alive, Richie Benaud's passing was one of the latter. He'd suffered a car accident in Sydney in October 2013, and, as the months afterwards passed, the intermittent reports on his health painted a picture of decline in the face of a cancer which was probably the legacy of long years spent in the burning sun of the world's Test match arenas. Benaud died yesterday in the country where he was born, which he represented, and in which he became a genuinely iconic figure, but the influence and legacy of his life extended far beyond the shores of Australia.
To anyone who grew up in England at any time from the middle of the 1960s onwards and who was interested in cricket, Richie Benaud didn't just represent or evoke the game. As in his home country, he was cricket.
Benaud never again commentated in England after the Oval Test of September 2005. After that, coverage of cricket in England became restricted to satellite television and Benaud wanted no part of it. So, at a time when English cricket is mired in one of its regular bouts of angst about the pitiful state of its representative team, its hopeless, befuddled administrators and its declining number of participants, the memory of Benaud in his glory years is, at one and the same time, a memory of a simpler era. A time when televised cricket meant turning on BBC 1 at 11.25, Soul Limbo and Peter West, Benaud and Jim Laker, and not an advert in sight. As I approach my fifties I like to think that I am resistant to reflex sentimentality about my youth, and in so many ways cricket is more varied, more colourful and more entertaining than it was then, but, as in many areas of life, there is a yearning for the ephemeral, ungraspable memory of those experiences which made us what we are. If you have spent what now seems like your entire life obsessed with cricket, the death of someone who exemplified and defined the game as you fell under its spell is sure to hit you hard.
Two memories of Benaud's life and commentating times: In the first I am eleven years old. It is a sunlit June day, with bottomless blue skies. I have walked home from school and turned on the television. I cannot, of course, remember if I knew that there was cricket on, but, as the set, our first colour television and some five years old at the time, warms into life I can at once discern the sound of a throbbing, excited crowd. Hampshire are playing Gloucestershire at Southampton's Northlands Road ground in the semi-final of the Benson and Hedges Cup. The first thing I see is a blonde fast bowler charge towards the wicket, sweat flying from his brow and his white shirt unbuttoned almost to the waist. I think I know that this is Mike Procter, but I have no idea that at this precise moment, he is seeking to complete a hat-trick. As his yorker disturbs the stumps of Hampshire's John Rice with a mixture of precision and inevitability, Richie Benaud's voice surges upwards with an air of barely controlled excitement, his normal wry detachment momentarily and involuntarily abandoned.
38 long years later, when Benaud dies, this is one of the moments that is replayed and replayed on the television news. It is both a replay of an essential chapter in the Benaud legend and a fundamental part of my childhood.
On 12th September 2005 I am at The Oval, in south London. It is again sunny, and a batsman is again bowled. This time it is Kevin Pietersen, who has scored 158 to take England to the brink of regaining the Ashes. Benaud's final spell of commentary concludes with Pietersen's dismissal. The ground rises, not just to salute Pietersen's achievement but also Benaud. The Australian players, about to become the first team from their country to lose a Test series against England for almost two decades, break from their drinks to applaud Benaud. This signifies what he has meant to cricket.
The last half-year has been, to put it mildly, a mixed period for Australian cricket. A Test series win and a World Cup triumph, bookended by the deaths of Philip Hughes and Richie Benaud, one tragically unexpected and one sadly inevitable. The response to both, though, has shown the vitality and fundamental dignity of the game, both in Australia and around the world.
It is far from an exaggeration to say that Richie Benaud was one of the most significant figures in all the game's long history. When someone like that dies, especially during a period where there is - as there always is - anxiety about the game's turbulent present and uncertain future, the temptation is to suggest that nothing will ever be the same. This is true, of course, for we shall never hear Benaud at the microphone again, but, as the World Cup showed, the game will continue to thrill, fascinate and entertain.
Benaud, never a rose-tinted nostalgist, would agree. Memories of Benaud will sustain all of us long into the future, but it is best if they are viewed as examples of the game's endless possibilities, not as signifiers of a lost past.
RIP.
5.4.15
Vettori
Last week a cricketer retired. This happens all the time.
Some go when it's not what people expect - or when, as the old, somewhat trite, advice goes, people are still asking 'why?' instead of 'why not?' - others go when they have no choice, when thier virtues are starting to be forgotten as a result of their inability to face up to the future. You could perhaps put Ricky Ponting in the first category, and Sachin Tendulkar in the second, although Ponting had his share of moments when the leaving became inevitable. Even now, with years having passed, the vision persists of him face forward in the Adelaide dirt, his stumps rearranged by another ageing great. When things like that happen, retirement is the only way to go.
As in so many things, Daniel Vettori didn't fit any of the obvious templates. Over recent years, as injuries took their toll on a body that had spent half its time on earth playing international cricket, you could be forgiven for thinking that he'd slipped away quietly. As New Zealand's cricket has been transformed over the last few years, the days when he was the fulcrum of a struggling side have faded into the background, but the closing weeks of his career, with all that they meant for New Zealand as a cricket country, were a fitting and memorable way to go.
As with Ponting and anyone else, visions will persist. In Vettori's case, from his very last weeks it will be the sight of him jumping off the ground with perfect timing and catching a ball with his left hand as it heads inexorably for the Cake Tin crowd, but this, brilliant and remarkable as it was, will never capture the essence of a cricketer, who, in New Zealand terms, ranks with the very best.
No, with Vettori the sights to fix in the mind's eye include that of a gangling, floppy-haired teenager with long hair taking his first steps in international cricket against England in 1997. This is about how long his career was: the grainy video on YouTube, with the England of Caddick, Croft and Tufnell in their MCC sweaters against the New Zealand of Blair Pocock and Heath Davis, fixes the match in an era that might as well be prehistoric. Then there is Vettori the batsman, bottom-handed, rigid, consistently looking overmatched, but counter-intuitively capable, with all the temperamental soundness, courage and timing you could want. And Vettori the bowler, with the perfect pivot, the control of flight and pace, the under-recognized subtlety. 4,000 Test runs at 30 and 362 wickets say that he could play, really play.
But perhaps most of all, the thing to take away is that, as Brydon Coverdale said last week in a fine distillation of his career, 'soft-spoken and unfailingly polite, Vettori is the very essence of what New Zealand cricket has become'. In the immature and mean-spirited universe occupied by Brad Haddin and his apologists, virtues such as playing the game in the right spirit count for little. Success justifies everything. The New Zealand which goes on from here - not the New Zealand of Vettori, but the New Zealand of McCullum, of Boult, of Guptill, of Southee, of BJ Watling - will, I am sure, continue to show that playing the game with passion and with flair does not have to mean playing with disrespect.
Perhaps it is a failing in me, perhaps it is the effect of getting older and growing softer, but I hate, really hate, what Haddin did. This is not a partisan issue. I detest Jimmy Anderson's tedious, shallow, false, aggression too.
For Vettori's virtues, read New Zealand's. International cricket need not be a war zone. There are enough of those around the world already.
Some go when it's not what people expect - or when, as the old, somewhat trite, advice goes, people are still asking 'why?' instead of 'why not?' - others go when they have no choice, when thier virtues are starting to be forgotten as a result of their inability to face up to the future. You could perhaps put Ricky Ponting in the first category, and Sachin Tendulkar in the second, although Ponting had his share of moments when the leaving became inevitable. Even now, with years having passed, the vision persists of him face forward in the Adelaide dirt, his stumps rearranged by another ageing great. When things like that happen, retirement is the only way to go.
As in so many things, Daniel Vettori didn't fit any of the obvious templates. Over recent years, as injuries took their toll on a body that had spent half its time on earth playing international cricket, you could be forgiven for thinking that he'd slipped away quietly. As New Zealand's cricket has been transformed over the last few years, the days when he was the fulcrum of a struggling side have faded into the background, but the closing weeks of his career, with all that they meant for New Zealand as a cricket country, were a fitting and memorable way to go.
As with Ponting and anyone else, visions will persist. In Vettori's case, from his very last weeks it will be the sight of him jumping off the ground with perfect timing and catching a ball with his left hand as it heads inexorably for the Cake Tin crowd, but this, brilliant and remarkable as it was, will never capture the essence of a cricketer, who, in New Zealand terms, ranks with the very best.
No, with Vettori the sights to fix in the mind's eye include that of a gangling, floppy-haired teenager with long hair taking his first steps in international cricket against England in 1997. This is about how long his career was: the grainy video on YouTube, with the England of Caddick, Croft and Tufnell in their MCC sweaters against the New Zealand of Blair Pocock and Heath Davis, fixes the match in an era that might as well be prehistoric. Then there is Vettori the batsman, bottom-handed, rigid, consistently looking overmatched, but counter-intuitively capable, with all the temperamental soundness, courage and timing you could want. And Vettori the bowler, with the perfect pivot, the control of flight and pace, the under-recognized subtlety. 4,000 Test runs at 30 and 362 wickets say that he could play, really play.
But perhaps most of all, the thing to take away is that, as Brydon Coverdale said last week in a fine distillation of his career, 'soft-spoken and unfailingly polite, Vettori is the very essence of what New Zealand cricket has become'. In the immature and mean-spirited universe occupied by Brad Haddin and his apologists, virtues such as playing the game in the right spirit count for little. Success justifies everything. The New Zealand which goes on from here - not the New Zealand of Vettori, but the New Zealand of McCullum, of Boult, of Guptill, of Southee, of BJ Watling - will, I am sure, continue to show that playing the game with passion and with flair does not have to mean playing with disrespect.
Perhaps it is a failing in me, perhaps it is the effect of getting older and growing softer, but I hate, really hate, what Haddin did. This is not a partisan issue. I detest Jimmy Anderson's tedious, shallow, false, aggression too.
For Vettori's virtues, read New Zealand's. International cricket need not be a war zone. There are enough of those around the world already.
28.3.15
Cricket Country
After more than a month of hard labour - early, early mornings, snatched sessions in front of the highlights, fast forwarding through the introductory guff from Ward or Gower and that dog, that bloody infuriating dog - memories of the 2015 World Cup are hard to categorize.
For sure though, for all that the time difference and the need to earn a living and be vaguely awake while doing so has meant that the amount of live cricket I've seen has been limited, memories there are, and most of them revolve around New Zealand.
Not just the New Zealand of McCullum, batting and captaining like there's no tomorrow, or Guptill, with his signature orthodoxy and power, or Boult, hooping it with pace and control, but the New Zealand of Dunedin, of Hamilton, of Napier, of Nelson. Intimate, verdant grounds, where you didn't need to be there, or even be within 12,000 miles, to feel the extent of the country's new-found love for the game.
Orange shirts everywhere, people realizing, sometimes for the first time, that the country's sporting fabric, even its wider identity, need not just be about fifteen men with a white fern on their chests. England humiliated, Australia and South Africa defeated with late sixes. Crowds, with Tuesday at Eden Park the apogee, going utterly, wonderfully, mad.
The New Zealand of 2015 looks like the cricket country many of us would like England to be, both on and off the field.
Australia is different. Grounds are characterless and monolithic, success is expected, players and commentators grate. As a neutral approaching the final, little time needs to be wasted in deciding who to support.
Can New Zealand, this time away from the comforts of home, make one last push?
This time tomorrow all the questions will have been answered.
For sure though, for all that the time difference and the need to earn a living and be vaguely awake while doing so has meant that the amount of live cricket I've seen has been limited, memories there are, and most of them revolve around New Zealand.
Not just the New Zealand of McCullum, batting and captaining like there's no tomorrow, or Guptill, with his signature orthodoxy and power, or Boult, hooping it with pace and control, but the New Zealand of Dunedin, of Hamilton, of Napier, of Nelson. Intimate, verdant grounds, where you didn't need to be there, or even be within 12,000 miles, to feel the extent of the country's new-found love for the game.
Orange shirts everywhere, people realizing, sometimes for the first time, that the country's sporting fabric, even its wider identity, need not just be about fifteen men with a white fern on their chests. England humiliated, Australia and South Africa defeated with late sixes. Crowds, with Tuesday at Eden Park the apogee, going utterly, wonderfully, mad.
The New Zealand of 2015 looks like the cricket country many of us would like England to be, both on and off the field.
Australia is different. Grounds are characterless and monolithic, success is expected, players and commentators grate. As a neutral approaching the final, little time needs to be wasted in deciding who to support.
Can New Zealand, this time away from the comforts of home, make one last push?
This time tomorrow all the questions will have been answered.
22.2.15
How to Do It (and how not to)
One of the more salient aspects of England's defeat to New Zealand was that, even in the alternative universe in which England win games like that, you simply couldn't imagine them doing it in that way.
Why?
McCullum, that's why.
Or, more precisely, the type of cricketing culture which McCullum represents. A culture in which flamboyance, optimism and spontaneity are embraced. Alright, McCullum may be a one-off, or near enough (this, perhaps, may have been how Shane Warne would have captained Australia had he been given the opportunity), but the way in which he was prepared to attack, attack and then attack some more, simply threw the pedestrian, conformist, tactically bewildered nature of the England team's collective mentality into sharper relief.
Tim Southee is maturing into the world-class bowler he always threatened to become, and his work at the Cake Tin was devastating. But England have, and have had, outstanding bowlers too. On another day, in another time, Jimmy Anderson could have bowled like that. Even - though in the light of his brainless performance in Wellington this appears to be stretching credibility - Stuart Broad could have done the same. But you know, you just know, that a captain like Cook, or Strauss, or probably Morgan, wouldn't have backed his bowler in the way McCullum instinctively did. McCullum's tactics were innovative in that they went against what has become ingrained thinking about how one-day innings should be conducted, especially in (or by) England, but they weren't used in a self-conscious or hesitant way. They were simply what he felt to be the best way to win the match. It's been said many times - though more, one suspects, in stands and commentary boxes than on the pitches of the international world - that the best way to slow a side's scoring rate down is to take wickets. But how many captains will actively try to do that? How many bowlers would love to feel the type of confidence in them which such an approach represents?
There has to be a touch of arrogance in it, sure - 'you're pissing on this lot, just keep bowling' was what McCullum was saying to Southee - which goes against the natural English instinct too, but it sure as hell beats putting the field back and brining on someone to bowl darts hook when you have a side on the slide. Okay, it could all have gone wrong, but on this day you knew it wouldn't. This was a rapidly improving side, brimming with confidence and feeding off home advantage, against a team that have long since forgotten (if they ever knew) how to play one-day cricket.
English cricket has been mired in ponderous, hubristic conservatism for as long as you care to recall. Though he was complicit in his own downfall and there are a myriad nuanced complexities to it that most of us will never know about, this is what fed the long-term distrust of the greatest batting genius England have ever had. This is what fed the retention of Alastair Cook as one-day captain long beyond the point where his position had become untenable. This is what fed England's part in the carve-up of international cricket by the 'big three' (the idea of England being part of a big anything in cricket terms just seems mad). And this is what fed the rejection of a different type of domestic Twenty20 competition when the chance was there. Possibly most damagingly of all, this is what feeds the underlying feeling that, because England can still win the odd Test series, and people actually turn up in numbers to watch it, that continually failing in one-day cricket doesn't really matter.
McCullum can bat, too.
Why?
McCullum, that's why.
Or, more precisely, the type of cricketing culture which McCullum represents. A culture in which flamboyance, optimism and spontaneity are embraced. Alright, McCullum may be a one-off, or near enough (this, perhaps, may have been how Shane Warne would have captained Australia had he been given the opportunity), but the way in which he was prepared to attack, attack and then attack some more, simply threw the pedestrian, conformist, tactically bewildered nature of the England team's collective mentality into sharper relief.
Tim Southee is maturing into the world-class bowler he always threatened to become, and his work at the Cake Tin was devastating. But England have, and have had, outstanding bowlers too. On another day, in another time, Jimmy Anderson could have bowled like that. Even - though in the light of his brainless performance in Wellington this appears to be stretching credibility - Stuart Broad could have done the same. But you know, you just know, that a captain like Cook, or Strauss, or probably Morgan, wouldn't have backed his bowler in the way McCullum instinctively did. McCullum's tactics were innovative in that they went against what has become ingrained thinking about how one-day innings should be conducted, especially in (or by) England, but they weren't used in a self-conscious or hesitant way. They were simply what he felt to be the best way to win the match. It's been said many times - though more, one suspects, in stands and commentary boxes than on the pitches of the international world - that the best way to slow a side's scoring rate down is to take wickets. But how many captains will actively try to do that? How many bowlers would love to feel the type of confidence in them which such an approach represents?
There has to be a touch of arrogance in it, sure - 'you're pissing on this lot, just keep bowling' was what McCullum was saying to Southee - which goes against the natural English instinct too, but it sure as hell beats putting the field back and brining on someone to bowl darts hook when you have a side on the slide. Okay, it could all have gone wrong, but on this day you knew it wouldn't. This was a rapidly improving side, brimming with confidence and feeding off home advantage, against a team that have long since forgotten (if they ever knew) how to play one-day cricket.
English cricket has been mired in ponderous, hubristic conservatism for as long as you care to recall. Though he was complicit in his own downfall and there are a myriad nuanced complexities to it that most of us will never know about, this is what fed the long-term distrust of the greatest batting genius England have ever had. This is what fed the retention of Alastair Cook as one-day captain long beyond the point where his position had become untenable. This is what fed England's part in the carve-up of international cricket by the 'big three' (the idea of England being part of a big anything in cricket terms just seems mad). And this is what fed the rejection of a different type of domestic Twenty20 competition when the chance was there. Possibly most damagingly of all, this is what feeds the underlying feeling that, because England can still win the odd Test series, and people actually turn up in numbers to watch it, that continually failing in one-day cricket doesn't really matter.
McCullum can bat, too.
27.11.14
Playing Hard Ball
I don't really play cricket anymore. The last time I did, in 2011, I batted for quite a long time and then couldn't move properly for several weeks. Not for the first time, my back had gone.
I never say I've retired though. Once I could have been a contender, and I could be again, in my mind anyway.
My brother, though he is nearly ten years older than me, still plays village cricket in Derbyshire. Earlier this year, in the summer, I visited him and spotted a ball - a brand new cherry red ball - lying around in his house. Prompted by me, we went outside on to a large grass area near his house and threw it to each other. We weren't far apart and we didn't throw it very hard.
I grew up with cricket balls. Back when I was young they hadn't invented the sort of soft balls I see kids playing with on the Taunton outfield. There were tennis balls, which we tended to play with in the garden to avoid breakages, and there were what were then called composition balls, which, in truth, weren't much softer than the real thing. They were just cheaper and less responsive.
When I was younger, cricket balls and their hardness never really concerned me. Many's the time, as a dour front-foot prodder of an opening bat, I returned home with garish bruises on my thighs, and my stomach, and one time a pain in my hip bone that took half a year to subside. This time, though, I was struck (both literally and metaphorically) by just how hard a cricket ball is. In comparison with the ball used in virtually any other game, cricket balls are stupidly hard. Dangerously hard. Get hit by one in the wrong place and you could get badly hurt.
I made the comment, only partly in jest, that if someone invented cricket today and made the ball as hard as that, the game would be banned for Health and Safety reasons.
I grew up with other things too. I am old enough to remember Thomson and Lillee terrorising England's batsmen, and I am old enough to remember Michael Holding bowling to the helmetless Brian Close and John Edrich at Old Trafford. I am old enough to remember Peter Lever hitting Ewan Chatfield on the head. I also remember reading that one of Jeff Thomson's mates - Martin Bedkober he was called - had died after being hit in the chest by a cricket ball.
I knew then that cricket balls could kill you, but somehow it didn't really enter my thinking again until this morning, 39 years on, when I heard that Phillip Hughes had died.
Other people had things like this, but they always recovered. Chatfield was nearly killed - his heart stopped - but years later he was still tirelessly running in for the best side that New Zealand ever had. Phil Simmons almost went the same way at Bristol but still had a Test career ahead of him. Michael Schumacher, Jules Bianchi. Nobody knows what state they are in, but they are still alive. It was only boxers who died.
Until today.
Cricket has had days like this before. On hearing the news my mind instantly went back to the time I woke up on a similarly dark November morning and heard that Malcolm Marshall had died. And, later, I thought of the time that I was listening to TMS and heard Christopher Martin-Jenkins say that Ben Hollioake had been killed in a car crash.
This morning seemed a little different, though. Marshall had cancer; car crashes happen all the time, to all kinds of people. An international cricketer had never been killed by a ball before.
Now cricket has Twitter. People from all over the world post messages, montages, pictures, say profound things, say stupid things, say insensitive things. But the feeling is of a community coming together. The world is full of people who know nothing of cricket, and people who think they know enough of cricket to say that they dislike it. But for those of us who are left, no game engenders such loyalty and love, both for the sport itself and for the people who play it.
I hardly saw Phil Hughes bat live. Just his two Lord's Tests, in 2009 and 2013, when he failed as his homespun New South Wales country boy's technique was badly exposed. But I had seen him enough on TV and I had seen enough of his statistics to know that he would probably have come good in time. People always say things like this, but it is true to say that his best years were ahead of him. He was a contender.
Sadly, another thing being middle-aged teaches you is that 25 is no kind of age to die.
I never say I've retired though. Once I could have been a contender, and I could be again, in my mind anyway.
My brother, though he is nearly ten years older than me, still plays village cricket in Derbyshire. Earlier this year, in the summer, I visited him and spotted a ball - a brand new cherry red ball - lying around in his house. Prompted by me, we went outside on to a large grass area near his house and threw it to each other. We weren't far apart and we didn't throw it very hard.
I grew up with cricket balls. Back when I was young they hadn't invented the sort of soft balls I see kids playing with on the Taunton outfield. There were tennis balls, which we tended to play with in the garden to avoid breakages, and there were what were then called composition balls, which, in truth, weren't much softer than the real thing. They were just cheaper and less responsive.
When I was younger, cricket balls and their hardness never really concerned me. Many's the time, as a dour front-foot prodder of an opening bat, I returned home with garish bruises on my thighs, and my stomach, and one time a pain in my hip bone that took half a year to subside. This time, though, I was struck (both literally and metaphorically) by just how hard a cricket ball is. In comparison with the ball used in virtually any other game, cricket balls are stupidly hard. Dangerously hard. Get hit by one in the wrong place and you could get badly hurt.
I made the comment, only partly in jest, that if someone invented cricket today and made the ball as hard as that, the game would be banned for Health and Safety reasons.
I grew up with other things too. I am old enough to remember Thomson and Lillee terrorising England's batsmen, and I am old enough to remember Michael Holding bowling to the helmetless Brian Close and John Edrich at Old Trafford. I am old enough to remember Peter Lever hitting Ewan Chatfield on the head. I also remember reading that one of Jeff Thomson's mates - Martin Bedkober he was called - had died after being hit in the chest by a cricket ball.
I knew then that cricket balls could kill you, but somehow it didn't really enter my thinking again until this morning, 39 years on, when I heard that Phillip Hughes had died.
Other people had things like this, but they always recovered. Chatfield was nearly killed - his heart stopped - but years later he was still tirelessly running in for the best side that New Zealand ever had. Phil Simmons almost went the same way at Bristol but still had a Test career ahead of him. Michael Schumacher, Jules Bianchi. Nobody knows what state they are in, but they are still alive. It was only boxers who died.
Until today.
Cricket has had days like this before. On hearing the news my mind instantly went back to the time I woke up on a similarly dark November morning and heard that Malcolm Marshall had died. And, later, I thought of the time that I was listening to TMS and heard Christopher Martin-Jenkins say that Ben Hollioake had been killed in a car crash.
This morning seemed a little different, though. Marshall had cancer; car crashes happen all the time, to all kinds of people. An international cricketer had never been killed by a ball before.
Now cricket has Twitter. People from all over the world post messages, montages, pictures, say profound things, say stupid things, say insensitive things. But the feeling is of a community coming together. The world is full of people who know nothing of cricket, and people who think they know enough of cricket to say that they dislike it. But for those of us who are left, no game engenders such loyalty and love, both for the sport itself and for the people who play it.
I hardly saw Phil Hughes bat live. Just his two Lord's Tests, in 2009 and 2013, when he failed as his homespun New South Wales country boy's technique was badly exposed. But I had seen him enough on TV and I had seen enough of his statistics to know that he would probably have come good in time. People always say things like this, but it is true to say that his best years were ahead of him. He was a contender.
Sadly, another thing being middle-aged teaches you is that 25 is no kind of age to die.
12.10.14
The Age of Pietersen
As Kevin Pietersen himself has said in the past few days: 'How did it come to this?'
When Kevin Pietersen made his debut for England in a one-day international against Zimbabwe in Harare in November 2004, Twitter was something birds did.
How did we end up with England's most-capped cricketer arguing via the radio with a bloke from the East Midlands who just happens to know a few England players, about who had access to a Twitter account that was, when all has been said, a parody?
It is squalid, and it is pointless, but it is more than that. As others better qualified to comment than me have said, it is sad. Sad that an era in which the England cricket team were really successful - as we have seen and been told they were far from popular, but they did win matches, and series, and played some great cricket in their way - will, at least for a time, be recalled as an era which ended in dispute and recrimination, claim and counter-claim.
The truth according to Pietersen, or the truth according to Graeme Swann.
What actually happened, or 'the greatest work of fiction since Jules Verne'.
Unless you were there, you will never know.
We are only days into this but it already seems as though all that can be said has been said. Of course, this is never true. There is always more. In this sort of stupid, childish situation, someone will always want to have the last word.
Something which I haven't seen said yet is that 'it was always going to end in tears'. But you can be sure that someone, somewhere, will be thinking that, and saying it. And, as with many people you met around the grounds of England during the age of Pietersen and who would tell you for nothing why they didn't like him, or didn't trust him, they will be spectacularly wrong. Because, for a long time, for all Pietersen's unorthodoxy and flamboyance and apparent immodesty, it did work.
Christ, it worked. 8,000 Test runs at 47, with 23 centuries, say that it worked.
For a long time there were no tears, except, perhaps, the tears of joy which may have been shed by people who saw an England batsman doing things which they never thought they'd see.
These days few people remember the Norwich Union League, but a fair few Somerset fans will recall the time in 2002 when Pietersen took their county for two centuries in two days, one at Trent Bridge and one at Taunton. 269 runs off 201 balls, with 25 fours and 10 sixes. This, it seemed, was a player.
Then there were the ODI tons in South Africa; a time which gave new meaning to the phrase 'batting under pressure'. Then the Test debut at Lord's, head hung low on a gloomy last afternoon as the England lower-order disintegrated around him. Then, seven epoch-making weeks later, the last day at The Oval. Opening out against Lee after lunch, Tait scrambling in the dirt at fine leg, ticking off the overs to safety with Giles, the crowd going wild as they embraced a future most didn't expect and rejected a past many couldn't remember.
Then more great times at Lord's. For some reason I have a particular memory of being in the Long Room when Pietersen returned after scoring a second innings 134 against India in 2007. The members applaud him to the rafters and Pietersen, who walks with his customary upright stride and air of detachment, smiles slightly, his mask of coolness temporarily lost. You sense that it has occurred to him that he has been accepted. Things ran like this for a long time - through the captaincy, through the first Moores era and into that of Flower - there were detractors, of course, in many cases people who couldn't see past the accent and the tattoos, but there were just as many of us who saw him for what he was: a player of genius, playing for a country which doesn't really do players of genius.
For many, 2012 was a watershed, but still we had Headingley and Mumbai, two of the greatest innings ever played by an England batsman.
Many people have written about what it was like to grow up following England in the barren nineties. Those of us who are a little older can remember the Brearley era, and 1981, and 1985, and Botham and Gower, so the success enjoyed by England in recent years hasn't seemed quite so unusual. But, for all the relative joylessness, and the surplus aggression, the years between the regaining of the Ashes in 2009 and the end of it all in Australia in the winter of 2013-14 have been sweet ones. Of course, it has been just as much the age of Cook, or of Swann, or of Prior, or of Flower, but such is the nature of the English cultural psyche, whereby genius - and especially genius combined with outspokenness - is innately mistrusted, the greatest thing about them was the fact that we, England, had a batsman who, on his day, could frighten any team in the world.
Now this is gone for good. Whatever Pietersen may say - and, as an intelligent man, you have to doubt whether he really believes it - it is over. He will never play for England again in any form of the game.
So it is best to recall the Age of Pietersen for what it was. Because, for all kinds of complicated reasons, it will be a very long time before anything like it ever comes again.
When Kevin Pietersen made his debut for England in a one-day international against Zimbabwe in Harare in November 2004, Twitter was something birds did.
How did we end up with England's most-capped cricketer arguing via the radio with a bloke from the East Midlands who just happens to know a few England players, about who had access to a Twitter account that was, when all has been said, a parody?
It is squalid, and it is pointless, but it is more than that. As others better qualified to comment than me have said, it is sad. Sad that an era in which the England cricket team were really successful - as we have seen and been told they were far from popular, but they did win matches, and series, and played some great cricket in their way - will, at least for a time, be recalled as an era which ended in dispute and recrimination, claim and counter-claim.
The truth according to Pietersen, or the truth according to Graeme Swann.
What actually happened, or 'the greatest work of fiction since Jules Verne'.
Unless you were there, you will never know.
We are only days into this but it already seems as though all that can be said has been said. Of course, this is never true. There is always more. In this sort of stupid, childish situation, someone will always want to have the last word.
Something which I haven't seen said yet is that 'it was always going to end in tears'. But you can be sure that someone, somewhere, will be thinking that, and saying it. And, as with many people you met around the grounds of England during the age of Pietersen and who would tell you for nothing why they didn't like him, or didn't trust him, they will be spectacularly wrong. Because, for a long time, for all Pietersen's unorthodoxy and flamboyance and apparent immodesty, it did work.
Christ, it worked. 8,000 Test runs at 47, with 23 centuries, say that it worked.
For a long time there were no tears, except, perhaps, the tears of joy which may have been shed by people who saw an England batsman doing things which they never thought they'd see.
These days few people remember the Norwich Union League, but a fair few Somerset fans will recall the time in 2002 when Pietersen took their county for two centuries in two days, one at Trent Bridge and one at Taunton. 269 runs off 201 balls, with 25 fours and 10 sixes. This, it seemed, was a player.
Then there were the ODI tons in South Africa; a time which gave new meaning to the phrase 'batting under pressure'. Then the Test debut at Lord's, head hung low on a gloomy last afternoon as the England lower-order disintegrated around him. Then, seven epoch-making weeks later, the last day at The Oval. Opening out against Lee after lunch, Tait scrambling in the dirt at fine leg, ticking off the overs to safety with Giles, the crowd going wild as they embraced a future most didn't expect and rejected a past many couldn't remember.
Then more great times at Lord's. For some reason I have a particular memory of being in the Long Room when Pietersen returned after scoring a second innings 134 against India in 2007. The members applaud him to the rafters and Pietersen, who walks with his customary upright stride and air of detachment, smiles slightly, his mask of coolness temporarily lost. You sense that it has occurred to him that he has been accepted. Things ran like this for a long time - through the captaincy, through the first Moores era and into that of Flower - there were detractors, of course, in many cases people who couldn't see past the accent and the tattoos, but there were just as many of us who saw him for what he was: a player of genius, playing for a country which doesn't really do players of genius.
For many, 2012 was a watershed, but still we had Headingley and Mumbai, two of the greatest innings ever played by an England batsman.
Many people have written about what it was like to grow up following England in the barren nineties. Those of us who are a little older can remember the Brearley era, and 1981, and 1985, and Botham and Gower, so the success enjoyed by England in recent years hasn't seemed quite so unusual. But, for all the relative joylessness, and the surplus aggression, the years between the regaining of the Ashes in 2009 and the end of it all in Australia in the winter of 2013-14 have been sweet ones. Of course, it has been just as much the age of Cook, or of Swann, or of Prior, or of Flower, but such is the nature of the English cultural psyche, whereby genius - and especially genius combined with outspokenness - is innately mistrusted, the greatest thing about them was the fact that we, England, had a batsman who, on his day, could frighten any team in the world.
Now this is gone for good. Whatever Pietersen may say - and, as an intelligent man, you have to doubt whether he really believes it - it is over. He will never play for England again in any form of the game.
So it is best to recall the Age of Pietersen for what it was. Because, for all kinds of complicated reasons, it will be a very long time before anything like it ever comes again.
17.8.14
Starting Out
In early 2013, I was fortunate enough to receive an invitation to the annual Wisden dinner, held at Lord's each April to celebrate the publication of the most famous annual publication in the sporting world.
I wrote about it here.
The people around my table in the Long Room that evening included Mike Selvey (who was frustratingly out of easy conversational reach) and the ageless Wisden Middlesex correspondent and sometime radio commentator Norman de Mesquita, who is now, sadly, no longer with us.
At the far end of the table was a young man from Taunton, sitting with his father. Tom Abell, who was there to receive the Schools' Cricketer of the Year award, was polite and quietly impressive company. After he'd received his leather-bound Wisden from David Gower the talk was of his degree at Exeter University, his ambitions for the future and anecdotes from his father's playing days, which coincided with various teams and players of my own acquaintance. At the end of the evening I advised him to savour the moment, as it was something which, in years to come, he would look back on with affection, even if it didn't seem such a big deal at the time.
Sixteen months later I am at the County Ground at Taunton as Tom Abell makes his debut in first-class cricket for Somerset against Warwickshire. This time there is more distance between us: I am in the Ian Botham Stand and he is on the pitch.
After winning the toss his Somerset team bowls and he fields. He takes two catches, one to remove the centurion Ian Westwood late on the first day, and another to end the Warwickshire first innings, early on the second morning. He performs these duties competently, but it is no more than we should expect from a professional cricketer. A sterner test seems certain to come when he is required to bat, and so it proves. Abell, in at 4, comes to the wicket after Johann Myburgh is dismissed, and Somerset are 55 for 2. As Myburgh is out to the last ball of an over from Richard Jones, Abell has the temporary sanctuary of the non-striker's end to collect his thoughts, but any reverie he experiences is abruptly shattered as Nick Compton edges the second ball of the next over, bowled by Oliver Hannon-Dalby, into his stumps. Somerset are 55 for 3, and both batsmen are yet to face a ball. One of them, Tom Abell himself, has still to face a ball in first-class cricket.
From here, assisted by the experience of James Hildreth (although, given Hildreth's shaky form, it is hard to discern which is the experienced man and which the rookie), Abell slowly finds his feet, picking up runs on either side of the wicket with nudges and glances and covering up when required, his bat as straight as a die. He receives his fair share of short stuff, but, unlike his senior partner, he is never drawn towards recklessness. He ducks, he weaves and he leaves with the maturity and patience of the old pro that he is not.
As wickets continue to fall, Abell silently and unspokenly mutates into the senior partner. As Alex Barrow, Peter Trego and Craig Overton come to the wicket, he is the one who does the talking, focusing on the uncertainties of the situation and emphasizing the way they should play. When they each depart, he is still there, defending the good balls with efficiency of technique and economy of effort, and dealing with the rare bad ones with the sort of timing which can surprise and unsettle even experienced fielders. An example of this comes when he forces Jeetan Patel towards Jonathan Trott, who is fielding at mid on. As the ball comes towards him, Trott moves slowly, feeling that he has it covered. However, as the ball reaches him it is clear that it has much more pace on it than he first thought and he is forced into a late, scrambling dive. It is too late, though, and the ball is past him and into the boards.
On another occasion, Patel bowls a rare long hop and Abell is quick to abandon his circumspection. His bat comes down somewhere in the hinterland between a square cut and a back foot drive and the ball races to the fence like a shot from a gun. The thought starts to intrude that not only is this uncommonly assured batting for an inexperienced player, it is, in its adaptability and recognition of opportunity, batting of quite high class.
When Lewis Gregory comes to the crease the tempo rises, and Abell finds himself drawn in. In part this is an unconscious effect of the freedom and aggression of Gregory's strokeplay, but also the fact that Abell has realized that making runs in professional cricket is something he can do. They put on 84 in an hour, saving the follow-on, before Gregory is caught in the deep attempting another pull into the crowd. Soon after, the players leave the field because of bad light with Abell on 73, but within a short time they are back and Abell, with the impassive maturity he has shown throughout his four hours at the crease, continues to collect runs, assisted by the flamboyance of Alphonso Thomas and George Dockrell.
Once Abell reaches the nineties it is possible to sense the tension among the crowd, which, as the autumnal evening closes in, barely numbers three figures. To the left of where we are sitting, in the Old Pavilion, which has just weeks to go before demolition, there is a hill named after Harold Gimblett, a local folk-hero and the last Somerset-born batsman to make a century in his first innings in the County Championship.
Just as people are starting to believe, Abell turns a ball from Patel into the hands of William Porterfield at short midwicket. Abell has spent the afternoon dealing easily with such deliveries, but perhaps this one has stopped a little on him, or perhaps he has gone a little hard at the ball as the tension of the approaching landmark starts to weigh on his mind.
We will never know. As Abell, the last man to be dismissed in Somerset's first innings, walks towards the Andy Caddick Pavilion with 95 to his name, several of the Warwickshire players shake his hand. Some of these men, like Rikki Clarke, have been around, and they know that they have seen something which speaks of high promise for the future.
Nothing, though, is ever assured. Should Abell think that it is, he need only ask his erstwhile partner James Hildreth, who knows all about the way in which early promise and recognition can slip through the fingers before you really know what has happened.
Like everyone else who has ever batted for a living, Abell faces an uncertain future. There will be many cheap dismissals at the hands of skilled bowlers and errant umpires, but there will also be times, such as yesterday, when almost everything goes right.
This was only the start.
I wrote about it here.
The people around my table in the Long Room that evening included Mike Selvey (who was frustratingly out of easy conversational reach) and the ageless Wisden Middlesex correspondent and sometime radio commentator Norman de Mesquita, who is now, sadly, no longer with us.
At the far end of the table was a young man from Taunton, sitting with his father. Tom Abell, who was there to receive the Schools' Cricketer of the Year award, was polite and quietly impressive company. After he'd received his leather-bound Wisden from David Gower the talk was of his degree at Exeter University, his ambitions for the future and anecdotes from his father's playing days, which coincided with various teams and players of my own acquaintance. At the end of the evening I advised him to savour the moment, as it was something which, in years to come, he would look back on with affection, even if it didn't seem such a big deal at the time.
Sixteen months later I am at the County Ground at Taunton as Tom Abell makes his debut in first-class cricket for Somerset against Warwickshire. This time there is more distance between us: I am in the Ian Botham Stand and he is on the pitch.
After winning the toss his Somerset team bowls and he fields. He takes two catches, one to remove the centurion Ian Westwood late on the first day, and another to end the Warwickshire first innings, early on the second morning. He performs these duties competently, but it is no more than we should expect from a professional cricketer. A sterner test seems certain to come when he is required to bat, and so it proves. Abell, in at 4, comes to the wicket after Johann Myburgh is dismissed, and Somerset are 55 for 2. As Myburgh is out to the last ball of an over from Richard Jones, Abell has the temporary sanctuary of the non-striker's end to collect his thoughts, but any reverie he experiences is abruptly shattered as Nick Compton edges the second ball of the next over, bowled by Oliver Hannon-Dalby, into his stumps. Somerset are 55 for 3, and both batsmen are yet to face a ball. One of them, Tom Abell himself, has still to face a ball in first-class cricket.
From here, assisted by the experience of James Hildreth (although, given Hildreth's shaky form, it is hard to discern which is the experienced man and which the rookie), Abell slowly finds his feet, picking up runs on either side of the wicket with nudges and glances and covering up when required, his bat as straight as a die. He receives his fair share of short stuff, but, unlike his senior partner, he is never drawn towards recklessness. He ducks, he weaves and he leaves with the maturity and patience of the old pro that he is not.
As wickets continue to fall, Abell silently and unspokenly mutates into the senior partner. As Alex Barrow, Peter Trego and Craig Overton come to the wicket, he is the one who does the talking, focusing on the uncertainties of the situation and emphasizing the way they should play. When they each depart, he is still there, defending the good balls with efficiency of technique and economy of effort, and dealing with the rare bad ones with the sort of timing which can surprise and unsettle even experienced fielders. An example of this comes when he forces Jeetan Patel towards Jonathan Trott, who is fielding at mid on. As the ball comes towards him, Trott moves slowly, feeling that he has it covered. However, as the ball reaches him it is clear that it has much more pace on it than he first thought and he is forced into a late, scrambling dive. It is too late, though, and the ball is past him and into the boards.
On another occasion, Patel bowls a rare long hop and Abell is quick to abandon his circumspection. His bat comes down somewhere in the hinterland between a square cut and a back foot drive and the ball races to the fence like a shot from a gun. The thought starts to intrude that not only is this uncommonly assured batting for an inexperienced player, it is, in its adaptability and recognition of opportunity, batting of quite high class.
When Lewis Gregory comes to the crease the tempo rises, and Abell finds himself drawn in. In part this is an unconscious effect of the freedom and aggression of Gregory's strokeplay, but also the fact that Abell has realized that making runs in professional cricket is something he can do. They put on 84 in an hour, saving the follow-on, before Gregory is caught in the deep attempting another pull into the crowd. Soon after, the players leave the field because of bad light with Abell on 73, but within a short time they are back and Abell, with the impassive maturity he has shown throughout his four hours at the crease, continues to collect runs, assisted by the flamboyance of Alphonso Thomas and George Dockrell.
Once Abell reaches the nineties it is possible to sense the tension among the crowd, which, as the autumnal evening closes in, barely numbers three figures. To the left of where we are sitting, in the Old Pavilion, which has just weeks to go before demolition, there is a hill named after Harold Gimblett, a local folk-hero and the last Somerset-born batsman to make a century in his first innings in the County Championship.
Just as people are starting to believe, Abell turns a ball from Patel into the hands of William Porterfield at short midwicket. Abell has spent the afternoon dealing easily with such deliveries, but perhaps this one has stopped a little on him, or perhaps he has gone a little hard at the ball as the tension of the approaching landmark starts to weigh on his mind.
We will never know. As Abell, the last man to be dismissed in Somerset's first innings, walks towards the Andy Caddick Pavilion with 95 to his name, several of the Warwickshire players shake his hand. Some of these men, like Rikki Clarke, have been around, and they know that they have seen something which speaks of high promise for the future.
Nothing, though, is ever assured. Should Abell think that it is, he need only ask his erstwhile partner James Hildreth, who knows all about the way in which early promise and recognition can slip through the fingers before you really know what has happened.
Like everyone else who has ever batted for a living, Abell faces an uncertain future. There will be many cheap dismissals at the hands of skilled bowlers and errant umpires, but there will also be times, such as yesterday, when almost everything goes right.
This was only the start.
31.7.14
Retirement
The old shibboleth which has it that there are only two certainties in life - death and taxes - missed one out. Or at least one that presents itself at the end of most working lives.
Retirement.
In cricket, as in most professional sports, retirement comes early. A cricketer departs the stage just as his peers are getting into their stride; he is required to pick up the pieces of his life - often an abruptly terminated adolescence - at just the time his school and university mates will be sorting theirs out.
Professional sport gives you the chance to do many things which most people will rarely, if ever, experience: you can earn your living - and by most people's standards it is a very good living - by doing something you love and would happily do for nothing; you will have regular opportunities to perform in front of crowds of people who will hang on your every action and applaud, even idolise, you if you do what you do well; you can travel the world (or at least the United Kingdom) and stay in the best hotels, with someone else picking up the tab. And in most cases you will do all this before you are thirty-five years old.
The payback is that you then have to start living your life all over again in the knowledge that nothing you do again will ever be so much fun.
In cricket, like life, retirements come and go. Some, such as that of Jacques Kallis, attract world-wide attention. Others, such as that of David John Grimwood Sales, who also announced his retirement this week, resonate a little less. Unless you've followed county cricket closely these past twenty years or so you may not have heard of David Sales. I have, though, and these are some fragments of his story.
David Sales grew up in Surrey. In his very early, and so talented, years, it seemed obvious that he would become a Brown Cap, but something I once knew about but which is now lost in the mists of time, went wrong, and he fetched up at Northampton. At Wantage Road. A venue never prominent in an England selector's diary, then or now. But it fitted Sales, and things started to happen.
70 not out in a Sunday League game at Chelmsford, aged 16, 1994. 210 not out in a championship match at Kidderminster, aged 18, 1996. 303 not out on his home ground, aged 21, 1999. 276, again at Northampton, in the first home championship match of 2000.
Sales could bat. This much was obvious, but, for all the scores, and despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that in these years England were a poor, turbulent, often rudderless side, he never seemed to be talked about too much as a potential international. Consistency was a problem, but what really set him back was the knee injury he suffered while playing beach volleyball on the England A tour of the West Indies in early 2001. It cost him a tour, and the whole of the following season, at a time in his career, anyone's career, when lost momentum can do terrible damage. He returned in 2002 but a season's average of 25 saw him fall back into the pack. Despite 7000 runs at 50 over the next six English seasons, double centuries scattered around like confetti on a windy day, he never left it.
In these lost years Wantage Road was a long way from my regular beat too and Northants never seemed to be on TV very much, so, in my mind's eye Sales remained an uncomplicated seventeen year-old in an England under-19 shirt on a clear blue day at Taunton in the summer of 1995, holding his own as he vied for attention with the likes of Trescothick, Flintoff and Alex Tudor, who charged in from the Old Pavilion End like our very own Walsh or Ambrose. In the seasons afterwards he often felt like a mirage: that player who once promised so much but who seemed destined to play his days out under leaden skies in soulless midlands towns. No matter how many runs he made, the vacancies weren't there, or, if they were, the selectors weren't looking in his direction.
Sales returned to my consciousness when he made a fine 70 against Middlesex at Southgate in a 40 over play-off game, late in the 2007 season. This was the Sales of legend: uncomplicated, technically sound, powerful and indefinably classy. But it wasn't enough. It never would be.
As with most players who were never given the opportunity to sample even the briefest taste of the international game, it's impossible to define or classify the reasons why with any certainty. A lack of form here, a lack of opportunity there. Injuries. Where they played. Everyone knows that historically it's been harder to get noticed by the selectors if you play for one of a number of counties. Broadly speaking these are those on the western fringes of the English first-class game - Glamorgan, Gloucestershire, Somerset - and the unfashionable counties of the East Midlands - Leicestershire, Derbyshire, Northamptonshire.
Ask Don Shepherd, ask Alan Jones, ask Peter Trego, ask David Sales.
Other counties have players like this too. Once upon a time Hampshire had Peter Sainsbury; in Sales' own era Lancashire have had Glen Chapple.
If Sales, as he once seemed destined to, had spent his career at The Oval, he would probably have played for England.
Success at the highest level, or even having the chance to show what you can do, isn't everything, though. The county game, with its cultural richness, its history and its folklore, is a pretty good arena in which to spend the short years between apprenticeship and retirement.
There was a time when everything about David Sales - the prodigy's upbringing, the irresistible strokeplay and the massive scores - suggested that he would grace Test cricket. That he never did does not diminish Test cricket and it does not diminish him.
As he said this week: 'I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my career...and whilst disappointed that I didn’t play at the very highest level, I will look back with pride at my achievements.'
Retirement.
In cricket, as in most professional sports, retirement comes early. A cricketer departs the stage just as his peers are getting into their stride; he is required to pick up the pieces of his life - often an abruptly terminated adolescence - at just the time his school and university mates will be sorting theirs out.
Professional sport gives you the chance to do many things which most people will rarely, if ever, experience: you can earn your living - and by most people's standards it is a very good living - by doing something you love and would happily do for nothing; you will have regular opportunities to perform in front of crowds of people who will hang on your every action and applaud, even idolise, you if you do what you do well; you can travel the world (or at least the United Kingdom) and stay in the best hotels, with someone else picking up the tab. And in most cases you will do all this before you are thirty-five years old.
The payback is that you then have to start living your life all over again in the knowledge that nothing you do again will ever be so much fun.
In cricket, like life, retirements come and go. Some, such as that of Jacques Kallis, attract world-wide attention. Others, such as that of David John Grimwood Sales, who also announced his retirement this week, resonate a little less. Unless you've followed county cricket closely these past twenty years or so you may not have heard of David Sales. I have, though, and these are some fragments of his story.
David Sales grew up in Surrey. In his very early, and so talented, years, it seemed obvious that he would become a Brown Cap, but something I once knew about but which is now lost in the mists of time, went wrong, and he fetched up at Northampton. At Wantage Road. A venue never prominent in an England selector's diary, then or now. But it fitted Sales, and things started to happen.
70 not out in a Sunday League game at Chelmsford, aged 16, 1994. 210 not out in a championship match at Kidderminster, aged 18, 1996. 303 not out on his home ground, aged 21, 1999. 276, again at Northampton, in the first home championship match of 2000.
Sales could bat. This much was obvious, but, for all the scores, and despite (or perhaps because of) the fact that in these years England were a poor, turbulent, often rudderless side, he never seemed to be talked about too much as a potential international. Consistency was a problem, but what really set him back was the knee injury he suffered while playing beach volleyball on the England A tour of the West Indies in early 2001. It cost him a tour, and the whole of the following season, at a time in his career, anyone's career, when lost momentum can do terrible damage. He returned in 2002 but a season's average of 25 saw him fall back into the pack. Despite 7000 runs at 50 over the next six English seasons, double centuries scattered around like confetti on a windy day, he never left it.
In these lost years Wantage Road was a long way from my regular beat too and Northants never seemed to be on TV very much, so, in my mind's eye Sales remained an uncomplicated seventeen year-old in an England under-19 shirt on a clear blue day at Taunton in the summer of 1995, holding his own as he vied for attention with the likes of Trescothick, Flintoff and Alex Tudor, who charged in from the Old Pavilion End like our very own Walsh or Ambrose. In the seasons afterwards he often felt like a mirage: that player who once promised so much but who seemed destined to play his days out under leaden skies in soulless midlands towns. No matter how many runs he made, the vacancies weren't there, or, if they were, the selectors weren't looking in his direction.
Sales returned to my consciousness when he made a fine 70 against Middlesex at Southgate in a 40 over play-off game, late in the 2007 season. This was the Sales of legend: uncomplicated, technically sound, powerful and indefinably classy. But it wasn't enough. It never would be.
As with most players who were never given the opportunity to sample even the briefest taste of the international game, it's impossible to define or classify the reasons why with any certainty. A lack of form here, a lack of opportunity there. Injuries. Where they played. Everyone knows that historically it's been harder to get noticed by the selectors if you play for one of a number of counties. Broadly speaking these are those on the western fringes of the English first-class game - Glamorgan, Gloucestershire, Somerset - and the unfashionable counties of the East Midlands - Leicestershire, Derbyshire, Northamptonshire.
Ask Don Shepherd, ask Alan Jones, ask Peter Trego, ask David Sales.
Other counties have players like this too. Once upon a time Hampshire had Peter Sainsbury; in Sales' own era Lancashire have had Glen Chapple.
If Sales, as he once seemed destined to, had spent his career at The Oval, he would probably have played for England.
Success at the highest level, or even having the chance to show what you can do, isn't everything, though. The county game, with its cultural richness, its history and its folklore, is a pretty good arena in which to spend the short years between apprenticeship and retirement.
There was a time when everything about David Sales - the prodigy's upbringing, the irresistible strokeplay and the massive scores - suggested that he would grace Test cricket. That he never did does not diminish Test cricket and it does not diminish him.
As he said this week: 'I’ve thoroughly enjoyed my career...and whilst disappointed that I didn’t play at the very highest level, I will look back with pride at my achievements.'
22.7.14
Antidote to Madness
When people make definitive statements about places, or about books, or about people, there is always room for doubt, for contrary opinion.
Some you take, others you leave. Some you agree with, others you dismiss.
When people, as people often do, say that Lord's is 'the greatest cricket ground in the world', I tend to agree (Although that other familiar cliché 'the Home of Cricket' I'm less sure about. The Home of Cricket these days surely lies, literally or metaphorically, somewhere in India.).
I've been going to Lord's since the summer when Sunny Gavaskar batted through sixty overs for 36 not out. Today the ground, and the game, and the Indian cricket psyche, are very different. But they still fascinate and compel.
Friday 18th July 2014 is the hottest day of the British year. The mercury is in the low thirties - Lord's is a Fahrenheit sort of place, you feel, but these twenty-first century days Celsius is king - and, in the early afternoon, with the sky a deep and bottomless shade of blue, the fading vapour trails left by soaring aircraft traverse the sky. They, and the outside world they represent, seem abstract and separate, as they always do when cricket, even slow Test cricket, captures the attention.
The game is an antidote to the madness of the world.
Late the previous afternoon the news comes via Twitter that a civil airliner has been blown out of the sky over the Ukraine, probably by a ground-to-air missile. Then there is Gaza, where defenceless people are killed on a daily basis. Syria, where much the same thing has been happening for more than three years, has been temporarily relegated from the front pages, but it will, as surely as night follows day, return. These are examples of the lunatic chaos of a world in which millions of people have more important things on their mind - simple survival will do - than the outcome of a bat and ball game.
At Lord's, though, things are different, especially in the old Victorian pavilion and the adjacent Warner Stand. The talk is of the lives of sons, of daughters, of former pupils, of the price of London property, which, it seems, is rising faster than the shade temperature. In certain conversations there are deaths and serious, painful injuries, but these are the result of leisure time accidents, suffered while hiking, or skiing, or playing rugby; not of unavoidable exposure to terrorism or war.
During the hour before lunch in the Warner Stand the incessant chatter is punctuated by the sound of corks being forcibly expelled from champagne bottles. Such is their velocity, many of these end up on the beautifully manicured turf, which can often look more like a carpet than something composed of living, growing, grass. And, on a Sunday, when the pavilion fills with a younger class of member, with their pristine yellow passes and their sharp dress sense, the prevailing sensation for the older member is that of a friendless outsider at a public school reunion.
Lord's, with its hotchpotch of ancient and modern buildings, is a very different place from virtually any other cricket ground in the world. And, despite the heat, for the Indian players, brought up on the parched dustbowls of Uttar Pradesh or the cramped suburban fields of Greater Mumbai, that difference must seem especially pronounced.
But it is also welcome and inspirational. At different points in a match which remains even and compellingly contested until lunch on the last day, we are treated to the beautiful yet combative neatness of the Mumbaikar Ajinkya Rahane, and the versatility of Uttar Pradesh's Bhuvneshwar Kumar, a man who knows he can bowl but is finding out at international level that he also has an unsuspected gift for batting. Ishant Sharma, a man who has always looked to have the potential to take on the world but has rarely hinted at consistency, supplies the coup de grâce.
On the English side there are only poignancies and uncertainties and regrets. As the match hurtles to its conclusion on Monday afternoon, Matt Prior and Joe Root are both dismissed pulling the ball to deep fielders placed specifically for such errant shots. It is a kind of collective madness, based on the confidence deficit which repeated failure to win brings, and the uncertainty of the confused mind, brought low by injury and defeat.
As he leaves the field and walks slowly through the Long Room, Prior holds his head high. Although he surely knows, as we do, that not only has he played a poor shot but that it may be the last thing he ever does in an England shirt, he shows little remorse. He is the old warrior leaving the stage. Root, by contrast, can barely drag himself off the field, such is his obvious regret. For all his runs, Root is still a young pro who has yet to learn to guard his emotions. He wears his heart on his sleeve.
A short while later, with the game over and Alastair Cook, a drowning man clinging desperately to a sinking ship, answering Michael Atherton's questions with the same bland assurances we have heard so often before, the eye turns to Paul Downton, standing on his own, close to the pavilion gate. He looks around him with unfeigned seriousness, but you sense that he isn't seeing or hearing much.
He is wondering what on earth he has got himself into.
Some you take, others you leave. Some you agree with, others you dismiss.
When people, as people often do, say that Lord's is 'the greatest cricket ground in the world', I tend to agree (Although that other familiar cliché 'the Home of Cricket' I'm less sure about. The Home of Cricket these days surely lies, literally or metaphorically, somewhere in India.).
I've been going to Lord's since the summer when Sunny Gavaskar batted through sixty overs for 36 not out. Today the ground, and the game, and the Indian cricket psyche, are very different. But they still fascinate and compel.
Friday 18th July 2014 is the hottest day of the British year. The mercury is in the low thirties - Lord's is a Fahrenheit sort of place, you feel, but these twenty-first century days Celsius is king - and, in the early afternoon, with the sky a deep and bottomless shade of blue, the fading vapour trails left by soaring aircraft traverse the sky. They, and the outside world they represent, seem abstract and separate, as they always do when cricket, even slow Test cricket, captures the attention.
The game is an antidote to the madness of the world.
Late the previous afternoon the news comes via Twitter that a civil airliner has been blown out of the sky over the Ukraine, probably by a ground-to-air missile. Then there is Gaza, where defenceless people are killed on a daily basis. Syria, where much the same thing has been happening for more than three years, has been temporarily relegated from the front pages, but it will, as surely as night follows day, return. These are examples of the lunatic chaos of a world in which millions of people have more important things on their mind - simple survival will do - than the outcome of a bat and ball game.
At Lord's, though, things are different, especially in the old Victorian pavilion and the adjacent Warner Stand. The talk is of the lives of sons, of daughters, of former pupils, of the price of London property, which, it seems, is rising faster than the shade temperature. In certain conversations there are deaths and serious, painful injuries, but these are the result of leisure time accidents, suffered while hiking, or skiing, or playing rugby; not of unavoidable exposure to terrorism or war.
During the hour before lunch in the Warner Stand the incessant chatter is punctuated by the sound of corks being forcibly expelled from champagne bottles. Such is their velocity, many of these end up on the beautifully manicured turf, which can often look more like a carpet than something composed of living, growing, grass. And, on a Sunday, when the pavilion fills with a younger class of member, with their pristine yellow passes and their sharp dress sense, the prevailing sensation for the older member is that of a friendless outsider at a public school reunion.
Lord's, with its hotchpotch of ancient and modern buildings, is a very different place from virtually any other cricket ground in the world. And, despite the heat, for the Indian players, brought up on the parched dustbowls of Uttar Pradesh or the cramped suburban fields of Greater Mumbai, that difference must seem especially pronounced.
But it is also welcome and inspirational. At different points in a match which remains even and compellingly contested until lunch on the last day, we are treated to the beautiful yet combative neatness of the Mumbaikar Ajinkya Rahane, and the versatility of Uttar Pradesh's Bhuvneshwar Kumar, a man who knows he can bowl but is finding out at international level that he also has an unsuspected gift for batting. Ishant Sharma, a man who has always looked to have the potential to take on the world but has rarely hinted at consistency, supplies the coup de grâce.
On the English side there are only poignancies and uncertainties and regrets. As the match hurtles to its conclusion on Monday afternoon, Matt Prior and Joe Root are both dismissed pulling the ball to deep fielders placed specifically for such errant shots. It is a kind of collective madness, based on the confidence deficit which repeated failure to win brings, and the uncertainty of the confused mind, brought low by injury and defeat.
As he leaves the field and walks slowly through the Long Room, Prior holds his head high. Although he surely knows, as we do, that not only has he played a poor shot but that it may be the last thing he ever does in an England shirt, he shows little remorse. He is the old warrior leaving the stage. Root, by contrast, can barely drag himself off the field, such is his obvious regret. For all his runs, Root is still a young pro who has yet to learn to guard his emotions. He wears his heart on his sleeve.
A short while later, with the game over and Alastair Cook, a drowning man clinging desperately to a sinking ship, answering Michael Atherton's questions with the same bland assurances we have heard so often before, the eye turns to Paul Downton, standing on his own, close to the pavilion gate. He looks around him with unfeigned seriousness, but you sense that he isn't seeing or hearing much.
He is wondering what on earth he has got himself into.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
.jpg)
