Category Archives: sport

The Olympics: England and the Celtic Fringe

Robert Henderson

The final Great Britain tally of medals at the 2012 Olympics was 65  comprised of 29 Gold, 16 Silver, 19 Bronze.

Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland  managed a grand total of  six medals comprised of 3 gold, two silver and one bronze in individual events.

In group events,  the tally of Celtic Fringe medals was 16 comprised of  7 gold,  6 silver and 3 bronze.   There was no case of an all Celt team  winning.  There were always English competitors with them.

Scotland

Individual medals  (2)

Chris Hoy, Gold, Cycling, Keirin

Andy Murray, Gold, Tennis, Mens’ Singles

Michael Jamieson, Silver, Swimming, 200m Breaststroke

Medals as part of a group  (11)

Chris Hoy, Gold, Cycling, Team Sprint.

Heather Stanning, Gold, Rowing, Coxless Pair

Katherine Grainger, Gold, Rowing, Double Sculls

Scott Brash, Gold, Equestrian, Team Jumping

Timothy Baillie, Gold, Canoeing Slalom, C-2 team

David Florence, Silver, Canoeing Slalom, C-2 team

Luke Patience, Silver, Sailing, Mens  470

Andy Murray, Silver, Tennis, Mixed Doubles

Daniel Purvis, Bronze, Gymnastics, Team All-round

Laura Bartlett, Bronze, Field Hockey,

Emily Maguire, Bronze, Field Hockey

Wales

Individual medals (2)

Jade Jones, Gold, Women’s taekwondo under-57kg

Fred Evans, Silver, Men’s welterweight boxing

Medals as part of a group  (5)

Geraint Thomas,  Gold, Men’s cycling team pursuit

Tom James,  Gold, Men’s coxless four

Chris Bartley,  Silver, Men’s lightweight four rowing

Hannah Mills, Silver,  Women’s sailing 470 class

Sarah Thomas, Bronze, Women’s hockey

Northern Ireland

Individual medals  (1)

Alan Campbell,  bronze ,  the men’s single sculls

Medals as part of a group  (1)

Peter and Richard Chambers   silver,  the men’s lightweight four

How would the four home countries have fared as independent nations?

If the Celtic involvement in team medals had not existed it is probable that England would have been able to fill the places with competitors of equal quality.

If the Celtic nations had to compete as separate nations they would not be able to produce teams from their much smaller populations  to produce  an equivalent number of team medals.  In fact, it is probable that there would have  been  no team medals for Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland if they competed as individual nations in 2012.

The other  problem for separate  Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland  Olympic teams would be funding and facilities.  The vast majority of money provided for athletes (using the word broadly to include all sports and games involving physical abilities) under the British or UK banner is English.  Independent Celtic nations would not be able to fund Celtic athletes at anything like the same level as Britain currently does.

On top of the immediate funding of  athletes, the Celts would have the problem of facilities. Most of the major facilities are in England and many of the Celtic athletes train and live in England.  Those facilities would not be available without charge or all to athletes from independent Celtic nations. This would not necessarily simply be a matter of England wishing to deny Celtic athletes opportunities to train. It could also be that the facilities would not have the capacity to host more than one team.

How would an independent England fare at the Olympics?  England would probably have come fourth rather than third in the present Olympics if they had competed as an independent nation.  In the longer term it is likely there would be little if any difference because the population  of England is large enough to find talented replacements for the Celts  who would no longer compete under the Great Britain banner.

Appearing simply as England  could t improve English performances. As England provide the large majority of the funding for  British athletes and has almost all of the main training facilities,  the removal of Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland from the scene  could benefit English athletes as they received more funding and greater training opportunities.

There is a further consideration. Athletes who  say they  are Scottish, Welsh or Northern Ireland as things stand , might well claim they were English if the Celtic nations were independent to get access to  English funding and facilities.  This is especially true of those  athletes  who are English in culture and upbringing, but who claim to be Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish on tenuous grounds such as a grandparent who was or is Scottish, Welsh or Northern Irish.  They would probably have little difficulty in saying they were English.   The lure of English funding and facilities has the potential to significantly reduce the pool of talent available to the Celtic nations.

The picture is clear: England would suffer no disadvantage and might well gain by appearing as an independent team: Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland would  be reduced, at best,  to the status of a Norway or Slovenia.

Well, at least there wasn’t a six-foot dancing penis

Robert Henderson

Prior to the  opening ceremony of the  London Olympics,  the last time Britain put on a taxpayer-funded  entertainment that was  meant  to project the country to the world was on 31 January 1999.  The event was broadcast   from the  Dome (now the O2 Arena)  to mark the new millennium.  True to the politically correct  dicta of the time, the Millennium show  said precisely nothing about British history or culture and was an exceptionally  trite mishmash of  the “we are all one happy global family” variety of painfully right on exhortation and posturing  (see http://wwp.millennium-dome.com/news/news-dome-990916show.htm).  The lowlight of the show was a six-foot dancing penis.

In 1999 the liberal left propaganda concentrated on pretending that Britain’s past had nothing of merit at best or was positively  and unreservedly shameful at worst, while projecting the politically correct wonders of the joyous and fruitful  multicultural and multiracial society they fondly but erroneously imagined Britain was in the process of becoming.

By 2012  the politically correct narrative of Britain had changed.  The brighter amongst the  liberal left had realised that there were  dangers in both crudely alienating  the native British population at large (and especially the English and the white working class) and in allowing state sponsorship of ethnic and racial divisions through multiculturalism.  Consequently, they  began to develop a new narrative.   The liberal left  would present  the British past in terms which  allowed the multicultural message to be  imported into  it, most overtly by the pedantically true but grotesquely misleading claim that Britain has  received immigrants since time out of mind and  non-white immigrants for at least several centuries.  (What the pedantically true statement fails to mention is the small numbers and the nature of the immigration – overwhelmingly  white and European –  until the post-1945 mass influx .)  One  of the most enthusiastic proponents  of the “blacks have always been in Britain” school  is the black Labour MP Diane Abbott  (a history graduate God help us) who wrote a piece for the BBC’s black history month in which contained this gem:  “The earliest blacks in Britain were probably black Roman centurions that came over hundreds of years before Christ.”  (Like Captain Queeg I kid you not – see http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/british/modern/dabbott_01.shtml.  For those unfamiliar with British history, let me point out that the first known Roman contact with Britain was in 55 BC  – Julius Caesar –  and the first Roman settlement in Britain -the Claudian invasion –  dates from 43 AD. As for her curious idea that “black centurions” were the likely first black settlers in Britain, I can only guess that she confuses centurion – an officer rank with various meanings in the Roman military –  with the ordinary Roman soldier).  Three  questions arise from Ms Abbott’s concept of British history – how did she obtain a place to read history at Newham College, Cambridge; how did she managed to take a history degree and what does it say about the fruits of positive discrimination, official or unofficial?)

But the storyline that Britain had always been multicultural  and multiracial  has  a gaping practical drawback. The politically correct could fudge present British realities by using their control of the mainstream media to promote the false idea that blacks and Asians occupy a central place in British society by the  gross over-representation of  ethnic minorities as active participants in programmes and as the subject of programmes.  But they could not control the past effectively  because  the overwhelming majority of those standing large in British history were white, Christian  and not immigrants.  Of course, attempts were made to promote the idea that non-whites had produced great British figures, such as the attempt in recent years to present the Victorian  black woman Mary Seacole – as the equal of Florence Nightingale (http://www.bbc.co.uk/history/historic_figures/seacole_mary.shtml) . But these efforts were inevitably  puny because there were so few non-whites of note in British history.

Multiculturalist from the word go

The London Olympics were wrapped in the multiculturalist credo from the word go.  The central plank of the bid was that a London Olympics would be multicultural celebration not merely in terms of the competitors,  but through its positioning in London and specifically a part of London which contained a very  large non-white population.  Here is the leader of the bid Seb Coe in Singapore making the final bid for the games:

“… we’re serious about inspiring young people.  Each of them comes from east London, from the communities who will be touched most directly by our Games. 

And thanks to London’s multi-cultural mix of 200 nations, they also represent the youth of the world. Their families have come from every continent.  They practice every religion and every faith.  What unites them is London. “ (http://www.london2012.com/mm/Document/aboutus/General/01/22/85/87/singapore-presentation-speeches.pdf).

The official London Olympics website makes no bones about its mission either:

“It is our aim to make diversity and inclusion a key differentiator of our Games, celebrating the many differences among the cultures and communities of the United Kingdom.

It’s not simply about recruiting a diverse workforce. It’s about the suppliers, the competitors, the officials and the spectators – in fact, everyone connected with the Games, from the security guards to the bus drivers. Diversity and inclusion influence every detail of our Games-time planning, from accessible transport to our Food Vision.” (http://www.london2012.com/about-us/diversity-and-inclusion/)

Danny Boyle

The man given the job of producing  an Olympic ceremony which would accord with  the new politically correct propaganda strategy was Danny Boyle,  the director of,  amongst other films, the heroinfest   Trainspotting and the Indian-sited Slumdog Millionaire.  Boyle did not have to be told what to do because it would be what he would do naturally.  He was  Old Labour temperamentally but  also plugged into the one world politically correct switchboard.

Ironically, or perhaps not so ironically in the light of the  very unTory  nature of the Coalition Government, Boyle was appointed by  the Coalition.  However, as the appointment occurred on 17 June 2010 (six weeks after the Coalition assumed office)  it is reasonable to suppose that the Tory-led Coalition were  rubber-stamping  what the Brown Government had arranged without giving the matter much thought.  Nonetheless the appointment got some ringing  Tory support:

‘Jeremy Hunt, Secretary of State for Culture, Olympics, Media and Sport, said: “The opening and closing ceremonies are the jewels in the crown of any Olympics and Paralympics and are one of the benchmarks against which all games are judged.

“I am very pleased that British directors and producers of such outstanding international calibre and acclaim have given their backing to London 2012.

With their creativity and expertises on board, I’m sure that London’s showpiece events will make Britain proud.”

His sentiments were echoed by the Mayor of London Boris Johnson, who said the “brilliant” team had brought together “some of the most imaginative people in the world”.

“The work they have produced over the years has been quite extraordinary, with an impact not just in the UK, but also on the international stage,” he said.

“They exemplify some of the greatest attributes we have – creativity, vision, and intelligence – which will be critical to ensuring shows that are as stunning as they are uniquely British.” (http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/10338048)

The multicultural message is reinforced relentlessly by the mainstream British media. Someone drawing their idea of the make-up of the British Olympic team  from British newspapers and broadcasters  could be forgiven for thinking that the team was largely composed of  black and Asian competitors. The truth is rather  different. The Daily Telegraph on 27 July  (2012) thoughtfully provided photos of all 541 British Olympic competitors. There were only 40 black, brown and yellow faces amongst them, less than  8% of the total.  The  small number of black and Asian participants is even more striking  when  taking into account the fact that  blacks and Asians in Britain are on average substantially  younger than white Britons and consequently there are  proportionately far more blacks and Asians than there are white Britons in the age group suitable for the Olympics.

A political opening ceremony

By its very nature the Olympics  opening ceremony should be apolitical because of the vast range of political behaviours and ideologies  which are represented by the two hundred or so competing nations.  No overtly political production could do other than irritate many whilst pleasing few.   It should have gone without saying that that the opening ceremony should have eschewed any ideological message.

Boyle  ignored this imperative wholesale and pumped out the  liberal internationalist message with shards of Old Labour  thinking embedded within it.   The world audience was treated to an idealisation of  pre-industrial Britain fit for a chocolate box being devoured by industrialisation,   toiling workers, suffragettes, Jarrow Hunger Marchers,  the arrival of the Windrush symbolising the beginning of the  post-war mass immigration,  nurses and patients bouncing on beds and dancing to supposedly extol the virtues of the NHS and CND marchers.  Apart from being  politically partisan it was doubly crass because the  overwhelming majority of the foreign audience would not have had a clue about what was going on.   The  British have  an additional beef because they were  taxpayers paying for unambiguous political propaganda which came from only one side of the political spectrum. Judging by phones-ins and comments left on blogs, newsgroups and mainstream media comment boards quite a few Britons cavilled at that.

The  use of cultural references which were unlikely to be anything other than Greek to foreigners went beyond the politically partisan. Who outside of Britain would be likely to understand references to the film Gregory’s Girl  or  had a clue what was meant by  the attempt to portray the significance of the inventor of the World Wide Webb Tim Berners-Leigh  by wrapping him up in a story of staggering banality about British youngsters connecting with each other digitally?  It is pointless when catering for the widest of audiences to make references to national events and cultural artefacts which do not  have  either a wide international currency  or are of a nature which is self-explanatory.

There were also what can only be hoped were  the last throes of Blair’s  “Cool Britannia” , with the celebration of the inane and superficial.  Various British personalities with  international traction were wheeled out: David Beckham,  Rowan Atkinson as Mr Bean, Daniel Craig as James Bond, JK Rowling and the Queen as herself, sadly  reduced to the status of a pantomime walk-on.   The idea that going for a night out represented modern British society at its most emblematic was beyond risible.

To understand how inappropriate Boyle’s show was,  imagine an equally politically  partisan and uncritical show put on by a director with non-pc  nationalist sympathies crossed with a religious belief in free enterprise. (This would be  a stupendously improbable event in modern Britain but  do your best to get your imagination to stretch to the Herculean lengths required) .  Such a director might   have started by extolling the British Empire as a great civilising force,  portrayed pre-industrial Britain as a place of poverty  and brutality which was transformed into a much wealthier and more ordered  society by industrial capitalism, created a narrative which  depicted state interference with the economy as disastrous with the nationalised industries of Attlee including the NHS being shown as inefficient and wracked with political activists, treated the dockers’  march of 1968 in support of Enoch Powell  after his  Rivers of Blood speech  resulted in his sacking by Tory leader Ted heath and  the Notting Hill riots as legitimate political protests against mass immigration before ending  with a scene encapsulating the  erosion of freedom in Britain by the  combination of politically correctness   and the vast  opportunities for surveillance offered by modern  digital technology. This last could have Tim Berners-Leigh with his head in his hands as a court sentenced someone to prison for putting out a non-pc message on Twitter.  All that would have been as inappropriate as Boyle’s offering but no more so.

No irony intended

Strenuous attempts have been made to suggest that Boyle was being ironic in his broad  historical commentary with his  portrayal of Britain as being a pastoral idyll before this was rudely disturbed by the  industrial revolution. I wish I could believe he was, but I cannot because this is just the type of sentimental ahistorical pap which a certain type of  left liberal  adores and, even more worryingly, believes. I would not mind betting that Boyle is an fervent admirer of William Morris and the Arts and Craft Movement of Victorian England, with its wistful looking back to a non-existent pre-industrial golden age.

Boyle’s  putative historical representation of a blissful agrarian life filled with peasants who were trampled by the grinding face of capitalist engineered industrialisation is  ludicrous to anyone who has any understanding of British and in particular English history.   The peasantry of England had effectively ceased to exist long before the industrial revolution because the very extensive enclosure movements of   the 15th century onwards had  turned huge numbers of peasants off land they worked themselves and forced them  to migrate to the towns,  work as casual labourers or become sturdy beggars.  By the time the industrial revolution  began circa 1700 there was no real peasantry,  the nearest  being yeoman farmers.

The second absurdity is the idea that pre-industrial Britain was a pre-lapsarian paradise. Life in agrarian societies is and was  no bed of roses. Pre-industrial Britain was no exception.  Famines were frequent, both because of  general crop failures and the absence of a system of reliable roads and fast  transport to move food around.   Heavy manual labour was the norm and the production of what we now call consumer goods was small. Sanitation was  poor to non-existent  and cities, especially London,  were death traps because of their propensity to spread diseases.  Medicine  was  so rudimentary that doctors, even those attending the rich, were as likely to kill their patients as not, often with a great deal of unnecessary suffering as  Charles II found out to his cost.   Industrialisation, and its fellow traveller science, eventually changed or at least greatly ameliorated those ills.

Nor is it true that the industrial revolution was simply a catalogue of cruelty and social dislocation. Great entrepreneurs of the early industrial revolution such as Josiah Wedgewood and Matthew Boulton  took a pride in the fine condition of their factories and later industrialists such as Titus Salt built model villages for their workers.  Moreover, even where conditions were extremely poor in rapidly growing industrial centres such as 19th Century  Manchester,  on which Friedrich Engels reported so vividly in the 1840s in his The Condition of the Working Class in England ,  there is no firm evidence that they were qualitatively worse than the conditions  experienced in cities before the coming of the mills and factories.  Nor was pre-industrial  agrarian labour a sinecure, with most of the work being strictly manual.  Imagine cutting a field of corn with scythes.

Boyle’s physical depiction of bucolic pre-industrial England  had all the authenticity of a Christmas scene in one of Harrod’s windows.  Not only were all things bright and fully sanitary, there was a cricket match of truly howling anachronism.  The cricket played in Boyle’s  fantasy was modern cricket, with modern pads and bats, wickets with three stump and bails  and overarm bowling,. The cricket  played in pre-industrial England had batsmen  with curved bats, no protective equipment, wickets with two stumps and bowlers delivering the ball underarm.    Boyle’s cricket match also carried forward the idea of Britain as a multicultural land way back when because the bowler was black, a sight as rare as a unicorn in the  seventeenth, or being generous, the  eighteenth century .

The relentless political correctness

The politically correct propaganda did not end with overt message of the various events.  It continued with the personnel. Take the  nine bearers of the Olympic Flag:   Ban-ki Moon, the United Nations secretary general , the runner Haile Gebrselassie , Muhammad Ali ,  Leyma Gbowee, a Nobel peace prize winner credited with ending the civil war in Liberia,  Marina Silva, who has fought against the destruction of the rainforest,    musician Daniel Barenboim, Sally Becker, known as the Angel of Mostar for her work rescuing  children from war-torn Bosnia,  Shami Chakrabarti  the director of human rights body Liberty and  Doreen Lawrence, the mother of Stephen Lawrence, the black teenager whose murder in 1993 led to the Metropolitan police being accused of “institutional racism”.    All fitted in with the liberal internationalist  Boyle theme, both in terms of  what they were noted for and their multicultural nature.  The racial and ethnic breakdown of the nine is five black, two Asian and two Jewish. The last three on the list represented Britain: a Jew, an Asian and  a black.

I mention this not because I think there should be no ethnic and racial diversity on display in such events. Indeed, it is inherently appropriate that they are. But it is a matter of proportion. Boyle’s show was unashamedly slanted towards the politically correct credo and the selection of flag bearers was emblematic of this bias, a bias which completely excluded the large majority of the British population who do not belong to ethnic or racial minorities. It also excluded the wider mainstream European populations and their offshoots in the New World and Australasia. Far from being that favourite modern liberal word “inclusive”, Boyle was excluding vast swathes of humanity. 

Chakrabarti coyly worried whether her inclusion might  be thought politically correct by bravely overcame her qualms because “… if, like me, you believe internationalism can be for people and values, not just corporations and military alliances, how can you resist sharing the optimism of Boyle’s ambition?” (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/news/9436921/London-2012-Olympics-Shami-Chakrabarti-had-doubts-over-flag-honour.html)

The inclusion of Muhammad Ali amused me as it always does. He has  totemic status amongst liberals , yet this is a man who,  until he became non compos mentis , was an unashamed anti-white racist who disapproved mixed racial sexual relationships and was happy to lend  his name to the Nation of Islam, a group led by  men such as Elijah Muhammad and Louis Farrakhan – see http://livinginamadhouse.wordpress.com/2011/11/09/muhammad-ali-and-the-white-liberals/.

The British media and politicians

The fare  Boyle   offered up was not to Tory MPs’ taste , but there was precious little public dissent by politicians from the mainstream media view that Boyle’s show  was generally a triumph. Good examples  of the crawlingly  uncritical media response can be found within a supposedly conservative newspaper  at http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/9434563/London-2012-the-experts-view-of-the-Olympic-opening-ceremony.html.

There were apparently rumblings behind the scenes in Tory ministerial ranks about Boyle’s politicisation of the ceremony, but these came to nothing:

“  In one account of the meeting Michael Gove, the Education Secretary, was said to have scored the ceremony just four out 10, a claim his spokesman denied last night.

Mr Gove was also said to have objected to the absence of Winston Churchill from the ceremony.

According to this version, Jeremy Hunt, the Culture Secretary, was also sceptical about some of the scenes, while Theresa May, the Home Secretary, was said to have intervened to defend Boyle and to have told her colleagues it was unfair to judge the ceremony in such a crude way…” (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/london-2012/9435509/Ministers-pushed-for-changes-to-opening-ceremony.html)

Just one Tory MP, Aidan Burley, spoke out publicly against the  political nature of the Boyle’s show. For this he has been roundly attacked by not only his own party leader and politicians of all colours,  but by the  mainstream media  with calls for his expulsion from the Tory Party. (http://www.guardian.co.uk/politics/2012/jul/28/olympics-opening-ceremony-multicultural-crap-tory-mp).Small wonder in the ideologically claustrophobic world of politically correct Britain that there was little open criticism from public figures.

Amongst the media Prof Mary Beard ,  Professor of Classics at the University of Cambridge, took the pc biscuit with her “ I liked ‘that kiss’ too – the split-second clip of two female characters from Brookside, the 90s soap opera – and what it achieved. What a great way to get the first gay kiss onto Saudi Arabian TV.”  (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/olympics/9434563/London-2012-the-experts-view-of-the-Olympic-opening-ceremony.html).

She went on to give the standard multicultural line on Britishness:

“ Governments are always complaining that we don’t feel proud to be British. They wag their fingers at us and instruct us to feel patriotic. But it’s a rather punitive approach to history and to identity – with all that checklist of Kings and Queens we’re supposed to know, and the nasty insinuation that you aren’t a ‘proper’ Brit unless you’ve read The Faerie Queene, or Merchant of Venice, or whatever.

Strikingly, Danny Boyle actually showed us that we are proud to be British.

It wasn’t a parade of majesty; the only monarch who featured was our own dear Queen. But instead of one official version, the stage made room for all sorts of people and many different narratives.

 It recognised all kinds of things that people care about – from Amy Winehouse to CND marches – and it let them into the story as symbols that can stand for Britain, and have played their own part in shaping our history. It was a really alert reading of what matters to people in Britain today – from JK Rowling to the NHS – and because of that Boyle managed to inspire pride where finger-wagging governments have failed.

He was able to play with the great symbols of Britain in a way that was both ironic and supportive; that takes a special gift. There are many different sorts and styles of histories. This wasn’t a competition with the Jubilee, which brought us pomp and majesty, this was something different: the people’s story.”

So there you have, it was “the people’s story”, a phrase as redolent of the bogus as  Blair’s description of Princess Dianna as “the people’s princess”.   Back in the real world,   opinion poll after opinion poll says what really matters  to the British today are mass immigration and its consequences,  the economic mess we are in and our membership of the EU.

The blind alley of Britishness

The claimed promotion of Britishness by the show was bogus for two reasons.  Even at its strongest Britishness was not a natural nationality. But in the aftermath of the second world war it did have a certain overarching reach throughout the four home nations and a continuing emotional pull for countries such as Australia, Canada and New Zealand.   A mixture of mass immigration from all ends of the Earth,  the religious promotion of multiculturalism by the British elite, the devolution of political power to Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland  and  the weakening of links with  the old dominions caused by Britain’s entry into what is now the EU have killed Britishness as a functional concept.  Liberals left still cling to it because it is the fig-leaf which covers the consequences of mass immigration and to a lesser extent  of devolution.  Immigrants reluctant to call themselves English call themselves British, although that is usually a hyphenated British such a black-British or Pakistani-British. Pro-unionists insist that everyone is British. What Britrishness no longer represents is the native inhabitants of Britain.

But what Boyle gave the audience  in his parade of was not even this bogus  Britishness . He gave them  Englishness. Not an honest Englishness of course, but Englishness as filtered through the grossly distorting prism of political correctness.  The rural pre-industrial idyll could only have been England with its cricket and soft  greenness.  The industrial revolution scenes are set in an English context with Isambard Kingdom Brunel. Not only that but the industrial revolution  began in England and spread outwards: all the important early industrial advances took place in England: the invention of the steam engine , the smelting of  iron using coke,  the various machines which mechanised the cloth industry,  the great  factories of Wedgewood  and Boulton  and later the railways which utter transformed the distribution of  goods and people.  The personalities such as Daniel Craig, David Beckham, JK Rowling and the Queen are all English by birth and upbringing.

An appropriate show

What would have been an appropriate Olympic show for the world audience? There was a truly gaping  open goal for Boyle  to shoot into. All he had to do was narrow his focus and produce a show based on Britain’s immense contribution to the foundation and formulation of modern sport, including her considerable influence on the founder of the modern Olympics ,   Pierre de Frédy, Baron de Coubertin.  Apart from being highly appropriate this would have been something unique because no other country could have done  it  because they do not have the sporting history.

The show could have begun with a general  run through of the games and sports which originated in Britain – football, cricket, rugby union and league,  lawn tennis, golf, badminton, squash, table tennis, snooker – those which were derived from  British games  such as baseball and American and Australian football ,  and the strong hand of other pursuits such as rowing and horse racing which although not unique to Britain appeared as organised  sports very early in Britain.

Having established the British sporting foundations,  the show could go on to examine the  role played by Britain in establishing large scale spectator sport which could run from the 18th century  with cricket and horseracing to the 19th century with the coming of the railways opening the way to sport becoming national and then international as first the four home countries of the UK – England, Ireland, Scotland and Wales played one another at football and rugby then other countries as the 20th century came while   England and Australia became the first Test playing cricketing nations to meet.  The theme of Britain taking sport to the world could have been expanded with reference to the Empire and the considerable efforts made by private organisations such as the Marylebone Cricket Club to spread individual sports and games.

Having laid out the sporting DNA of Britain, the show could conclude with the long standing idea of Olympic games  in Britain,  drawing first on the  Cotswold  Olipick Games  of Robert Dover which began in 1612 and ran,  with a break during the English civil war and Protectorate, until 1852.  A modern revival began in 1965 (http://www.olimpickgames.co.uk/).  This would be followed by Dr William Penny Brookes’  Wenlock Olympian Games http://www.wenlock-olympian-society.org.uk/olympian-games/index.shtml and the subsequent formation, by Brooks and others  of the  National Olympic Association in 1865 (which continued to 1883) with the first  National Olympic games being held in  1866 (http://www.tiger2.f2s.com/JohnHulleyMemorialFund/national_olympian_association.shtml ).

The extent of Brookes influence on the modern Olympic movement  was recalled by Juan Antonio Samaranch when  president of the International Olympic Committee . He visited Much Wenlock in 1994 and laid a wreath at Brookes’ grave and in a speech said  “I came to pay homage and tribute to Dr Brookes, who really was the founder of the modern Olympic Games.” (http://www.shropshiretourism.co.uk/much-wenlock/).

What does the opening ceremony tell us?

The extent to which the media and politicians have fallen into line with the Boyle politicking demonstrates the success the liberal left have had in acquiring the levers of power and working them ruthlessly.  Whenever a highly contentious subject provokes little public debate you may bet your life on it being the consequence of the suppression of one side of the debate. It is no wonder that in present day Britain so little public opposition to the nature of Boyle’s show should have occurred.  Politicians and people with access to the mainstream media know only too well that to go against the politically correct tide is to invite serious trouble.

The real message of the Olympic opening ceremony is simple: the liberal internationalist triumph is at its zenith.  As things presently stand no one with contrary views can get a fair public hearing or most of the time any public hearing at all because the mainstream media censors such views severely.  The British people, and especially the English, are left with no means to control their own country in their own interests.  They are simply spectators of their own destruction.

Is modern fielding really superior to what it was in the past?

Robert Henderson

The idea that fielding in first class cricket is vastly superior to what it was even a generation ago has attained the status of a truism amongst sporting journalists and the idea is probably shared by the overwhelming majority of cricket followers today.  It is not hard to see why as fielders  throw themselves about the field and even statuesque fast bowlers are expected to perform the sliding manoeuvre to stop a ball.   This ostentatious athleticism overshadows other aspects of fielding and is increasingly the touchstone by which fielding is judged.  But more athletic does not mean necessarily mean better because it begs the questions of the accuracy of bowlers and expertise in field-setting . It could be that all this throwing around of bodies  counts for little in terms of restricting overall run-getting.  It would be interesting to see some serious research on where runs are scored today compared with the 1950s and 1960s. It could be that modern field settings are more conducive to run scoring, for example, the modern common failure to set a Third Man to pace bowlers  results in  inordinate amounts of boundaries which would otherwise be singles.

In the absence of such statistics I shall give my impressions of the difference between fielding now and in the past based   on my watching of first class cricket since the 1950s. Bowlers  today I judge to be  much less accurate both in length and direction  than they were forty or fifty  years ago.  In particular bowlers used to bowl much straighter.  Some idea of this can be g gleaned from recordings of bowlers which give an extended  passage of play with particular bowlers.  A lack of control over length and direction  makes it difficult to set a  field to which the bowler can bowl . If fielders in the past were not so generally mobile they did not have to be because the ball came more directly to them because bowlers could bowl to their fields.

Then there is the ability of captains and bowlers to set fields   which stifle runs.  I have already mentioned the runs leaked in the modern game through an unattended Third Man.  To that can be added the  much commoner  use today of deep-set defensive fielders , even to fast bowlers, for example, the sweeper on the cover boundary.   In the past it would be rare to see pace bowlers with such fielders. A pace bowler in the 1950s and 1960s would have a Third Man and a long leg  or square leg out and that would be it for deep fielders.   Having more deep fielders makes run scoring easier because a bowler can be milked for ones and twos with little risk. Why  do modern pace bowlers have more deep fielders? Probably because of their inferior control of line and length, although once something becomes a fielding fashion it tends to be copied by captains and bowlers without regard to the ability of a bowler to bowl to his field.

It is true that the ground fielding away from the wicket  is not merely more spectacular today than it once was and the stops which are made are, when  considered in isolation,  frequently  superior to what would have been seen.  But the key phrase here is “considered in isolation”.  If the bowlers today are less accurate and the fields less efficiently set, the need for many  of the spectacular saves may  occur only because of the deficiencies of the modern bowler and field setter compared with what obtained in the past.

It is also important to understand that fielders in  the past were not all laughably immobile. There  are there no   fielders  in county cricket today as hilariously immobile as the late lamented Bomber Wells , a man  who was the nearest thing to a beachball in human form when he plied his offbreaks for Gloucestershire  and then Notts  in the 1950s and Sixties.  But Bomber was amusing to watch simply because he was abnormal. Most fielders in first class cricket in his time were  at least competent  and many such as Tony Lock and Micky Stewart were outstanding fielders virtually anywhere; many more were top class specialists in important positions such as  slip (Cowdrey, Phil Sharpe)  or  the covers (Neil Harvey, Norman O’Neill , Ken Taylor).  It is worth adding that although modern field in on average much more athletic, there are still quite a few mediocre fielders, especially in first class cricket.

The part of fielding which I am sure has deteriorated substantially  is close catching.  This is probably largely  down to the fact that fielders have become generalists rather than specialists.  It is not an easy thing to be fielding in radically different positions and  attain or maintain the same level of expertise in them all.  The importance of having a specialist position was vividly shown when the fine Sussex opening John Langridge took 69 catches fielding at slip in 1955 at the age of 45, one of the most astonishing achievements in cricket.

Surrey built their seven successive Championships on ferociously efficient close catching, with Stewart Surridge, Barrington, Mickey Stewart and Lock all exceeding 50 catches in a season at least once.  They did this on uncovered pitches which could be prepared as a county choose – the Oval pitches of the 1950s were a batsman’s nightmare – and with vicious spinners of the ball in Laker and Lock and a master seamer in Alec Bedser  whose leg cutters reared nastily.  Modern English pitches by comparison are tame and the close catches which come are on average much less spiteful or unpredictable than they were when pitches were uncovered and prepared without fear of points being deducted by pitch inspectors.

Then there are  the effect of changes in equipment. Has  modern batting been changed by protective equipment in the sense that batsmen play shots differentially today than they did before helmets, bumper bras, arm shields and thigh pads on both legs?  The playing of the hook or pull  against quick bowlers has become routine today because of helmets.  Before helmets arrived it was very much a shot which was only played by those expert at it. Now  every Tom, Dick and Harry of a batsman, including tailenders will have a go. That probably means a greater use of  deep fielders  on the leg side.  Modern bats with their much greater power and often greater weight than those used in the past favour the drive over subtler shots such as the late cut.  However, I doubt whether that has had much effect on  field settings, although the greater power may be partly responsible for the use of more deep fielders in the modern game.  Nor can I see that the reverse sweep has caused a fundamental shift in field settings.

There is also the intriguing question of whether the considerable encumbrances donned by modern cricketers makes some shots easier than others simply because  batsmen are restricted in their movement by the load of protective armour they carry. Someone with the full monty of helmet, bumper bra, arm shield, double thigh pads as well as gloves and pads, may find it difficult to the more subtle shots.  The existence of such protection may also produce a sense of invulnerability  which could lead to the favouring of big shots.

Finally, there is the effect of limited overs cricket.  The defensive fields which have evolved for limited overs cricket may be partially responsible for the greater  use of deeper field settings  now.  Captains and bowlers use them routinely  in limited overs and T20 and it is easy to see the temptation to carry the practice into first class cricket.  It has also encouraged batsmen to attack, especially with big hitting which will have changed the general shape of run getting.

The other side of the fielding coin is the effect that batting and fielding changes  plus limited overs cricket have had on the bowlers.  Limited overs cricket has  taught them to vary their bowling massively, something which was not a feature of early times.  The limited overs mentality has been to a degree carried in first class cricket which is part of the reason for the decline in accuracy seen in present day bowlers.

Is modern fielding superior?   Probably not taken overall and judged not merely by the abilities of individual  fieldsmen but  the team as a unit with bowling accuracy and field setting thrown into the judgement mix.

Where have all the express bowlers gone?

Robert Henderson

The relative speeds of fast bowlers today and in the past is a perennial subject to which England batsman Alastair Cook recently gave fresh legs.  He claimed that pace bowlers playing now every bit as fearsome as those in the  early 1990s when the likes of Waqur Younis, Wazim Akram,   Walsh and Ambrose, Bishop and Donald  were around (http://www.mirror.co.uk/sport/cricket/test-matches/england-v-west-indies-england-845223).  Cook also contends that the bowlers of today must be quicker because in all other sports athletes have become fitter and faster  (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/international/england/9306922/England-v-West-Indies-Jonny-Bairstow-is-not-alone-in-the-pace-battle.html)

As someone who has been watching first class cricket since the mid 1950s I would profoundly disagree with the contention  that modern bowlers are bowlers are faster than those in the past and would go further and say that there is no Test bowler today who is of extreme pace. That is arguably a unique situation because until now every decade of Test cricket has been able to furnish examples of such bowlers.

The improvement of athletic disciplines argument does not stand scrutiny. It may be true that in pure athletic activities such as running and jumping improvements occur simply through more efficient training routines, although even there the qualification of improved tracks and running equipment is responsible for a significant part of it. There is also the shadow of performance  enhancing drugs which probably were and are widely used. Moreover, athletics was amateur until a generation ago. It would be expected that full-time professionals would substantially improve on their amateur predecessors. The British Olympic  sprinter Peter Radford , who won a bronze medal in the 1960 100 metres,   has written interestingly on the standard of  athletic performance before organised amateur athletics arose in the 19th century.  He makes a persuasive case that the athletic feats  of the 18th century –  invariably achieved by professional athletes – may well  have exceeded the performances of the organised amateur era  until well into the twentieth century (http://www.guardian.co.uk/sport/2004/may/02/athletics.comment1). It is also debatable whether faster is always better in the case of ball games.  For example, Premier League football is very fast but is it better football than the slower football of the past when there was more dribbling and the ball was given away far less?

It is also debatable whether faster is always better in the case of ball games.  For example, Premier League football is very fast but is it better football than the slower football of the past when there was more dribbling and the ball was given away far less?

Where bowling is concerned there is no improved equipment involved and  full-time professionalism  in cricket has been established for  over a century and a half.   Despite extensive testing in recent years drugs have rarely been discovered amongst first class cricketers. Nor is it easy to see how drugs would enhance a bowler’s speed. It is true that a steroids might build muscle, but bowling  fast is not a matter of strength. Fast bowlers come in all shapes and sizes from the pint-sized Aborigine  Eddie Gilbert  in the 1930s – probably the man who bowled genuinely fast with the least physical resources – to giants such as Ambrose.   Not only that but fast bowling methods  vary enormously. Fast bowlers fall into two broad categories, the sprinters who get their pace from a fast, often long  runup  such as, Larwood or Hall and the strength bowlers such as Sylvester Clarke or Wayne Daniel.  Actions can be divided into the side-on and the chest-on but there is far more variation than that. Get on YouTube and compare the difference between two side-on bowlers such as Jeff Thompson and Fred Trueman or two front-on bowlers,  for example Bob Willis and Brian Statham. In short, fast bowling is such an individual matter that it cannot be meaningfully taught and attempts to “improve” actions can easily ruin a bowler vide James Anderson’s travails after the England coaching staff changed his action.

As for my personal witness of many bowlers over more than half a century, the obvious objection is that until the past twenty years or so there was little attempt to objectively  measure the pace of bowlers.   The advent of systems such as the radar gun and Hawk-eye then made measurement routine in international matches.  Interestingly,   the measurement of fast bowling over the past twenty years supports the idea that fast bowlers of today are certainly no  faster than they were twenty years ago – which supports the idea that pace has not improved over  a generation – and may suggest that present day fast bowlers have gone back on the pace scale because there is no one as today recorded as  fast, either on individual balls or generally  as Shoaib Akhtar  or Allan Donald.

There are really two classes of fast bowler, fast and express.  The fast bowler is someone like Finn or Statham: the express bowler  a Tyson or  a Holding.  There are no bowlers currently playing whom I would class as express,  but quite  a few who would fall into the classification of fast.   It is of course important to remember that fast bowlers  do not maintain their pace throughout their careers or even  for much of their careers.  A good example is Dennis Lillee who was a genuine express when he visited England in 1972 but significantly slower afterwards as injury took its toll.

Before I was 15 I had seen Tyson, Trueman, Statham, Adcock,  Lindwall, Miller, Davidson,  Gilchrist,  in action.   I will not offer a certain judgement on their pace because a child, even in  his early teens, is not a reliable witness to a bowler’s  speed.  However, I can offer an impressionistic memory of these players.  Trueman, Adcock and Gilchrist struck me as magically  quick,  but Tyson was something else. I saw him bowl often and he  invariably  produced a response from the crowd I have heard no other bowler ever do: a  regular shocked astonished gasp.  I suspect he was the fastest bowler I have ever seen. Lindwall and Miller were of course near the end of their careers.

By 15 someone is in a position to make an adult judgement. I reached that age in 1963. Since then  I would place these Test  bowlers as  fast at some time in their careers:

Trueman (bear in mind he was past 30 then), David Larter, Jeff Jones, John Snow, Statham (he maintained his pace well into his thirties) Ken Shuttleworth,  Peter Lever,  Bob Willis, Graham Dilley, David Lawrence,  Darren Gough, Andrew Flintoff,   Steve Harmison,   Alan Pascoe, Rodney Hogg, Alan Hurst, Geoff Lawson, Craig McDermot,  Merv Hughes, Jason Gillespie,  Mike Procter, Dale Stein,  Joel Garner, Colin Croft,  Curtley Ambrose,  Courtney Walsh, Kemar Roach, Dick Motz, Richard Hadlee,  Wazim Akram.

and these as express in at least part of their careers:

Alan Ward, Devon Malcolm,  Jeff Thompson, Dennis Lillee, Brett Lee, Wes Hall,  Charlie Griffith,  Andy Roberts, Wayne Daniel, Malcolm Marshall, Michael Holding, Marshall, Patrick Paterson,  Ian Bishop, Peter Pollock,  Allan Donald, Shane Bond, Imran Khan, Waqar Younis,  Shoaib Akhtar.

One other thing needs  to be taken into account. Until the reform of the no-ball law in the 1960s which replaced the back-foot law with the front-foot law, pace bowlers could quite legitimately bowl from significantly closer to the batsman. Any pace bowler  could easily gain 18 inches beyond what is permitted today and some bowlers by the practice of dragging gained three feet.   A yard closer to the batsman makes a significant difference to the reaction time available to the batsman.

Genuine  fast bowlers like elephants are difficult to describe but you know when you have seen one. Perhaps the most telling sign is a top class batsman playing much more deliberately than usual. I am constantly reading or hearing that X or Y bowls at 90+ yet when I see them in the flesh they do not strike me as express.  I have not seen a bowler new to first class cricket who struck me as extreme in pace in the past  ten years. Finn is the  probably the fastest bowler regularly playing county cricket, but his pace at best  is no more than that of David Larter of Northants and England from the 1960s, a bowler Finn  much resembles in physique and method.

As for the claim that the average pace of bowling is faster today because players are fitter and can sustain their pace for longer I have my doubts on that score.     Of those modern bowlers who are claimed to be fast such as Stuart Meaker, when I have seen them they bowl the odd fast ball but for the most part are fast medium. The modern pace bowler’s proneness to injury also argues against a higher average speed because they so often  carry an injury.

Johnny Bairstow displayed some uncertainty against Kemar Roach’s fast bowling in the recent Tests against the West Indies.  This has been ascribed to a lack of genuine fast – and the extinction of express –  bowling in county cricket these days.   There may be something in this because there are few bowlers in county cricket even of Finn’s pace.  This was not so in the past. For example, in the 1960s there were many bowlers who  played little or no Test cricket who were at least as fast  as Finn.  In 1965 county batsmen Harold Rhodes, Jeff Jones, Butch White, Bob Cottam (fast when he first appeared), Alan Brown, David Sayer,  Ken Shuttleworth, Peter Lever, John Price,   David Larter, John Cotton, Fred Rumsey and  Geoff Hall They were in addition to Snow, Statham and  Trueman, the latter two being still able to bowl a fast opening spell – I saw Trueman knock Mickey Stewart’s bat out of his hands twice in an opening spell very late in Trueman’s career – if unable to sustain their pace throughout the day.

Steve James writing in the Telegraph lists the current bowlers who have clocked 90 mph or better  “at the  National Cricket Performance Centre in Loughborough, using their own testing equipment, there is a list of current fast bowlers who have been clocked at 90mph (not that Roach was bowling at that pace; he was only at about 87mph at best). It includes those who have been picked by England, such as Broad, James Anderson, Graham Onions, Stuart Meaker, Steven Finn, Chris Tremlett, Jade Dernbach, Ajmal Shahzad, Liam Plunkett, Sajid Mahmood, Steve Harmison, Simon Jones and Amjad Khan, as well as others such as Mills, James Anyon (Sussex), Mark Footitt (Derbyshire), Boyd Rankin, Chris Wright (both Warwickshire), David Griffiths (Hampshire) and Matthew Dunn (Surrey). Another Surrey youngster, George Edwards, is close, as is Kent’s Matt Coles.” (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/sport/cricket/international/england/9306922/England-v-West-Indies-Jonny-Bairstow-is-not-alone-in-the-pace-battle.html). It is one thing to achieve such a pace occasionally in practice, quite another to do it in match conditions and do it consistently.  I would also question 90 mph as the benchmark for fast bowlers and the measurement of pace by modern methods. If the likes of Meaker and Finn  are bowling at 92 04 93 mph, the likes of Hall, Holding and Marshall must have regularly bowled at  97-100 mph  because the difference in their speed compared with Meaker and Finn is the difference between a regulation fast medium bowler delivering at around 80 mph and Meaker and Finn at their fastest.

Why have fast bowlers largely gone out of fashion and genuine expresses giving a good impression of an extinct species? A case might  be made for modern pitches, especially Test pitches, being  on average  much slower and less bouncy than those of yesteryear,   the ever increasing protective equipment and the tighter restrictions on short pitched bowling. But probably the most likely explanation is the introduction of central contracts and the ever swelling international calendar.  In terms of overs, bowlers  do not play more than they did fifty years ago and in most cases less even if all the limited overs cricket is added to the first class cricket, but they do have a travel burden much greater than previous generations of professional cricketers.    The increasingly harum scarum fixture list has the effect of fast bowlers being not overbowled  but underbowled . This, together with injuries resulting from fast bowlers being asked to throw themselves around in the field in a manner which would have been deemed unseemly by earlier generations of quick bowlers,  makes them generally less fit to bowl than previous generations.  Note that I don’t say  less fit in the athletic sense but fit to bowl. There is a difference. Bowlers get fit to bowl by bowling not running for miles or lifting weights.

Can it ever be shown objectively what the speeds of bowlers in the past were? It might be possible to calculate speeds from pre-Hawkeye era footage (from 1990 onwards) and then use the same technique for footage from the Hawyeye-era where a speed has been calculated using modern methods. That would both serve as a check on the accuracy
of modern methods and give a reference point for bowlers from all
periods for which film  exists of sufficient speed to give a realistic
representation of the action.  All that needs to be done to be done is
to measure the time of the ball in the air  from, say, leaving the
hand to pitching and the distance covered – its line of  trajectory not the distance down the pitch –  to the ball pitching. Taking the measurement at pitching might remove biases from short and fuller length balls and short and taller bowlers.

 

 

Poems of cricket

George Brown
(Hampshire and England)

George Brown,
Aztecs’ face;
Iron courage.
Eccentric always,
Chesting Larwood or
Keeping wicket for England
In a pair of
Motor cycle gauntlets.
Jessop one day; Scotton the next;
Average not so much,
But figures may deceive.
Bowled when Lionel Tennyson
Forgot Kennedy and Newman;
And the heart never belied
A man of honest strength.

E.R. Dexter
(Cambridge, Sussex and England)

Dexter on the drive,
Hitting straight,
A thing of beauty
As a lion walking is;
Both unconscious of what they do,
Glorious in their naturalness.

Hooking Hall, driving Sobers,
Cutting Griffith past point
As though he’s a net bowler:
Lords 1963, and seventy runs
As bravely struck as any ever made.

1968, and one last glance,
Two hundred and three,
Made without practice,
But in the grandest of manners –
A hint of what was left unsaid

F.H. Tyson
(Northants and England)

I saw Tyson bowling
In ’55 or ’56.
When he was really fast,
Causing an intake of breath
From people who had never seen
Him bowl or had forgotten
What he was.

Not swing or cut
Or change of pace
But pure speed
Undiluted with guile,
Just the elemental release
Of bowling quick.
And the joy of a hunter’s ectasy.
The cricketer S.F. Barnes
(Warwickshire, Lancashire, Staffordshire and England)

‘E were a contrary fellow,
Nay, reet awk’ard.
There wern’t no doing
Nowt but business wi’ him
From beginning to end.

A Staffordshire man ‘e were,
Not that ‘e cared for that
Except when brass t’were there
And world gave its due to ‘is pride
Wi’ a pocketful o’ gold.

Couldn’t be doing wi’ maisters;
Allas his own man
Even in’t days when maisters were maisters
And a workin’ man had owt
But his hands and brain and fear.

But, my, ‘e could bowl
Forty nine wickets in South Africa
Just afore the Great War,
Then cussed booger refused t’ play in last test
‘Cos his missus wern’t paid for!

Yet ‘e had ‘is cricketing pride.
In nineteen eleven at Sydney
There’s Johnny Douglas takin’ new ball afore ‘im:
Bowled suet puddings out o’ temper,
Takes four for a hundred and plenty.

Next up coom Melbourne;
Barnes’s given new ball.
Bardsley, Kellaway, Hill, Minnett and Armstrong out –
‘E’s taken five for six afore dinner
And ‘is place in t’ world back again.

‘E grew old but not like most,
Still a pro when passed sixty.
Action never went you see,
Allas high and mighty
Like the man.
David Gower

They come but rarely,
Perhaps six in a century:
Spooner, Palairet,
Woolley, Kippax,
Graveney, Gower:
To fill the place of long forgotten Joseph Guy
‘elegance, all elegance.
Fit to play before the Queen
In her parlour.’
But such felicity
Mocks the minds of mediocre men
Who feel the puritan’s desire
To destroy.

Modern batsmen don’t know they’re born

Robert Henderson

The absurdly early start (the first week in April)  to the English  first class cricket season has brought a wailing and gnashing of teeth from batsmen.  Pace bowlers have been ruling the roost and wickets have been averaging around 24 runs apiece,  the sort of figure associated with a wet season in  the English county game of  the 1950s when all Championship games were of three days duration as opposed to the modern four days..

Batsmen say it is impossible to play so early in the year because the pitches and conditions offer too much help to the bowlers and consequently it is impossible, indeed pointless,  to play correct cricket because sooner or later,  and most probably sooner, a ball will have your name on it.

The batmen’s complaints  look more than a little thin as the wickets continue to tumble as the season progresses into May and past the traditional date for a season to begin. Not only that, but in 2011 when the season started just as early the average runs per wicket at the same stage of  the season was around 30. Nor can this year’s low scoring be blamed on the ECB rule banning the use of the heavy roller after a Championship match  has started be blamed because that was in place in 2011.

What is going on? The answer is simple enough:  a failure of technique and mentality in the modern batsman who has been spoon-fed good batting conditions all too often.  This year has been wetter in April and early May and the atmospheric conditions widely conducive to swing.  In contrast 2011 had a dry April which meant that both off the pitch and in the air bowlers got less assistance.   The more demanding conditions of 2012 have found out  those unused and largely incapable of playing the moving ball.  The failures stem from  at least three general reasons:

1. Lack of patience

2. Playing too much off the back foot. This is particularly dangerous in early season English conditions  when the only sane thing to do is play almost everything of the front foot unless it is very short.

3. Not leaving enough

I also have a suspicion that the protective equipment with which modern batsmen lumber themselves has reduced their mobility, flexibility and ability to concentrate because of the extra weight  they carry and the discomfort  they experience from the equipment. It could also be that the helmets, much improved as they are, affect the way batsmen hold their heads and their sightlines. All of these things could make playing  in demanding conditions more difficult.

In terms of  playing  conditions , batsmen  in the 1950s had a much tougher time of it and consequently developed a  sound technique which allowed them to play in difficult conditions. Pitches and run-ups were uncovered and counties were allowed to  prepare pitches as they liked. This meant that , for example, Derbyshire prepared  greentops for Less Jackson and Cliff Gladwin while Gloucester produced pitches which turned on the first morning to accommodate their spinners Mortimer, Wells, Allen and Cook

To deal with such pitches 1950s batsmen  had protective equipment which would make a modern batsman scoff or gasp  with disbelief: rudimentary gloves, a box probably made of wire mesh, a towel shoved down the leading leg  as a thigh pad – no helmets, arm guards, efficient gloves, bumper bras or  efficient thigh pads on both legs. With this rudimentary protection they had to  face the likes of Jackson, Gladwin, Rhodes, Bailey, Shackleton, Ridgeway, Spencer, Staham, Moss, Tyson, Bedser, Loader, Thompson, Flavell, and Trueman  amongst the pacemen and Lock, Wardle, Cook, Illingworth, Tattersall, Titmus, Laker, Appleyard, Hollies, Doug Wright, Dooland, Tribe and  Jenkins from the spinners.    Batsmen were tested not only by the pitches and conditions but by every variety of bowling, much of it top class.  Present day batsmen  have neither the pitches to contend with nor the variety of high class bowling available in the 1950s, not least  because there are so few good spinners in county cricket today.

In addition to the quality of the pitches and bowling, 1950s batsmen also operated under two different laws  from those obtaining now. The back foot law was used for  no balls. This  meant that  bowlers, especially pace bowlers, delivered from anything up to a yard and half  closer to the batsman than they do today . (Older readers will recall  the notorious draggers). Then there was the absence of restrictions on the number of leg side fielders which meant batsmen had to be very adept at dropping the ball dead and finding ways to score which did not involve the area between forward short leg and leg  slip. (The  subsequent restriction on leg side fielders was unique in cricket history. It was the only instance of a law being changed simply to remove an attacking option from  bowlers,  in this instance  from the offspinning and inswing exponents.  Bodyline is the nearest parallel, but  there the law was changed for  reasons of safety although the effect was the same, namely removing an attacking option).  There was also an important difference  in the management of the game’s laws between now and then: spin bowlers were allowed to get rid of the shine from a new ball by rubbing the ball in the dust (honest).

That was not the end of the demands made on batsmen in the 1950s. There was no first and  second division in the Championship. All teams had to play the other (then) sixteen teams.  This meant the weaker sides were still coming up against the likes of Trueman and Tyson  regularly.  In addition, unlike today there were no central contracts and England players were expected to turn out whenever they were not playing for England or  a match such as MCC versus the tourists  or Gentlemen versus Players.  As there were at most five Tests in a season, no limited overs internationals and at least 28 Championship games (sometimes there were 32) the England regulars such as May, Cowdrey, Bedser and Trueman often turned out for more than 20 Championship games a season.  Finally, over rates in the 1950s were around 20 per hour on average. Today we are lucky to get 15 an hour.  1950s batsmen had to face far more balls per hour at the wicket than their modern counterparts.

The mind struggles to imagine what the result would be if today’s batsmen  could be transported back to the 1950s and put into the first class game then. Apart from any deficiencies in technique, I think it improbable that many could bring themselves to play without a helmet and most would flinch at the 1950s equipment  they would be expected to use.   It would be very interesting to see whether any modern cricket would be willing to play a match today which was restricted to using 1950s equipment.

The 1950s batsmen would be in a completely different situation if they were transported to the present time. They could comfortably play in today’s conditions without using helmet, arm guards and so on.  Indeed, those brought up on 1950s pitches would think they were in heaven.

A specialist batsmen in the 1950s would have thought he had done well  if he achieved a career average of 30.  Even the best players  struggled to average 40. (Peter May’s ability to average around 50 in Championship cricket in the 1950s despite playing half his cricket on the  then  hideously bowler-friendly  Oval pitches is a testament to his greatness). Today a specialist county batsman is considered to be a mediocrity if his career average is in the mid-thirties and a top class county player who  does not play much or any Test cricket is  expected to average in the forties.  That is the difference between then and now.  Modern batsmen have become  pampered. It is unrealistic to imagine the protective equipment being removed but let us hope that the ECB will not weaken on the question of the heavy roller or tighten rules on how pitches should be prepared.

Is it in the blood? and the hypocrisy of the media

The death of the great England all-rounder Trevor Bailey prompts me to take down and dust off a classic example of the discrepancy between what mainstream mediafolk privately believe and their public obeisance to political correctness.

In 1991 I wrote to a group of sports journalists who specialised in cricket. Some such as E M Wellings and E W Swanton were at the time amongst the best known of the breed. All wrote or broadcast for the national media. My subject was the influx of foreign players into county cricket and the employment of foreigners in the England cricket team, both of which I deplored. On the grounds that foreigners in county cricket denied opportunities for English players and the use of foreigners in the England side made a mockery of the idea of national sides.

The letter I sent to the sports journalists was published as an article in Wisden Cricket Monthly in 1991. I have posted the article at http://englandcalling.wordpress.com/2011/02/14/a-fundamental-malaise/

Bailey was one of those I wrote to. He replied in March 1991 with this:

Dear Mr Henderson,

Thank you for your letter and interesting comments on the effect of having so many overseas mercenaries representing England, and playing in county teams.

 You certainly have a point and I may well do an article about if the Essex middle order is Malik, Hussain and Shahid. It would have such a county ring about it!

 Yours sincerely,

Trevor Bailey.

Most of the journalists replied. All were in at least partial agreement with me and many were wholeheartedly with me. There is a selection of their letters in the appendix below.

The support was still there three years later. Here is the then editor of the Cricketer magazine, Richard Hutton, writing to me on August 17, 1994:

Dear Mr Henderson,

Thank you for your letter of August 14 and the accompanying article about overseas players in the English game, which I read with interest.

I feel what you have submitted is too lengthy for use at it stands and also contains too much restatement of existing laws and  regulations. However, I will promise you immediate publication – in October’s issue – if you rework the piece without any loss of argument or point into a 200-300 word letter. Otherwise, if it is to be considered as a feature article we will still require a substantial reduction, because we would not be able to allot more than one page to it in view of the demands on our space. Even then I cannot say when the space will materialise and by the time it does topicality may be lost.

You will probably gather that I very much favour the former option, and I await a revised submission.

Sincerely,

RICHARD HUTTON Editorial Director

And here is the editor of the Wisden Cricket Monthly, David Frith, writing to me on 30/3/94:

“Let me just assure you that I was one of the earliest to feel a sense of unease at the number of foreign players piling into the England XI. It’s hard to separate oneself from the personal side of it all I know all of them – even the reclusive Caddick – and like them almost without exception. But the principle seems wrong, and I think that  there has been some sort of dislocation in the national psyche. How can a true Englishman ever see this as his representative side despite all the chat about the commitment of the immigrant?”

The following year Wisden Cricket Monthly (WCM) published an article by me in the July issue entitled Is it in the blood? (The title was chosen by the editor – I submitted the article under the title ‘Racism and national identity’).

The article again questioned the appropriateness of foreigners playing for England. In this I also questioned whether ethnic minority players raised wholly or substantially in England would be moved by feelings of English patriotism when playing for England both because of the way in which ethnic minorities tend to live lives segregated lives and the victimhood industry which eggs ethnic minorities to view themselves as being persecuted and used by ol’whitey. Sometimes the evidence comes from the mouths of top sportsmen who have played for England. Here is the footballer John Barnes making his anti-English feelings very clear in his autobiography:

I am fortunate my England career is now complete so I  don’t  have to sound patriotic any more.(P69 – John Barnes: the autobiography)

I feel more Jamaican than English because  I’m black.  A lot of black people born  in  England feel more Jamaican than English because they are not accepted  in  the land of their birth on  account of their colour, (P 71)

Was I more patriotic for England than I would have been for  Scotland?  No.  To keep everyone happy  throughout  my  international career,  I always  said  that  my  only  choice was England because England is where I settled,  but that wasn’t true. (p72)

When I played for England, I could never declare that nationalism is loathsome and illogical.  I couldn’t say that if I played for France, I would try just as hard, which I would. I tried hard for  England out of professional pride  not patriotism  – because I never felt any. (P72)

Is it in the blood? produced the most tremendous furore which ended with David Frith telling a direct lie by denying that he shared my views, viz:

“I tried all along to make it clear that I did not support the majority of the sentiments expressed by Mr Henderson (and a paragraph on page 1 of each issue of the magazine supports this). But I also believed that it was an editor’s responsibility to tackle difficult issues, to bring them into the open so that solutions might be found. My particular hope in respect of this article was that the plight of foreign-born cricketers in this country and those with immigrant parents — whether from West Indies, Australasia, southern Africa or Asia — might be better understood when their difficulties were considered. Publication of this particular article was, I now realise, not the best way to have gone about it. The national-identity element was drowned out.” WCM August 1995

What parts exactly of my article did not agree with Mr Frith? As for the national identity side of the debate being overwhelmed by race, how could it be that the man who declares himself wanting to investigate the question of national identity changed my title from the national identity focused “Racism and national identity” to the racially suggestive “Is it in the blood?”? It is also worth noting that in the edition of WCM in which the article was published Frith put this on the contents page: “Is it in the blood? Robert Henderson studies the foreign-born England players. No mention of concern for “those with immigrant parents”.

As the row evolved and Devon Malcolm, Philip DeFreitas and Chris Lewis issued libel writs against WCM, despite the Professional Cricketers Association taking counsel’s advice on their behalf and his opinion being that no libel existed. (Extraordinarily no writs were issued against me as the author, most probably because I made it clear from the outset that I would take any libel claim to the floor of a court). After the issue of the writs Frith distanced himself ever further from the article until this statement was read in court following an out of court settlement with Malcolm (none of the cases was never brought to trial)

‘Mr Rupert Elliott, counsel for Wisden Cricket Magazines Ltd and for the magazine’s editor [David Frith], said they  disassociated  themselves  entirely  from  the allegations made by an independent contributor’ Guardian report 17/10/95 . Bearing in mind Frith’s true feelings, that strikes me as a deliberate attempt to pervert the course of justice.

Frith humiliated himself in this fashion because the management of WCM put the wind up him. Here he is writing to me on July 14 1995

Dear Mr Henderson,

In reply to your letter of the 7th, I have to say that in view of the furore (an understatement) which has followed publication of  your article in our July edition, I have been told by the management of Wisden that I should not accept anything further from you. I  hardly needed telling, for the past fortnight has been probably the most difficult of my life.

I hope you are successful in persuading the Daily Telegraph to run your latest offering.

Yours sincerely,

DAVID FRITH Editor

So much for editorial independence and the first rule of being an editor: stand by your contributors and what you have published.

Frith added insult to injury by publishing 4 pages of criticism of me in the issue of WCM which followed then publication of Is it in the blood? whilst refusing me any opportunity to reply.

Firth found that his Maoist confession of guilt was not enough to save him and was forced out of WCM within the year.

What did those in the media who had privately agreed with my ideas from 1991 onwards do? They all refused to support me or even help me to get a hearing in any mainstream media outlet. One, Matthew Engel, then editor of Wisden Cricketer’s Almanack, was ion such a panic that he even went as far as to publish in the Guardian that he had never heard of me, despite having written to me a couple of months before the publication of Is it in the blood? congratulating me on continuing to push the question of foreigners playing for England.

———————————————-

Appendix

1. Tony Lewis 6 2 1991

Dear Mr Henderson,

Thank you so much for writing. I really enjoyed your letter which contained so many good points.

I did write about David Gower that I would have docked him his day’s pay but I do understand that many believe an up-country match  between the Tests is as sacred as the Test matches themselves. I quite agree with you about the need to exclude overseas cricketers and those with the passports of convenience. How else will we ever grow our own cricketers if the way is blocked by late entrants into the system.

Can I add to your other points the thought that we lack true leadership. I have never believed that control can possibly come from off-the-field, i.e. through Mickey Stewart. Graham Gooch is very content to leave a lot of things to Mickey. In fact true leadership can only come from someone who is actually playing in the match. This is why Stewart, who is probably  selector-in-chief fits your bill as someone who is too closely involved with the players to be objective.

A major thesis is there to be written. Kind regards.

Yours sincerely,

A. R. Lewis.

2. Matthew Engel March 20 1991

Dear Mr Henderson,

Thank you for your Interesting letter re cricketing nationalities, Up to a point – but only up to a point- I agree with your  arguments, I could argue at length with you here but I think your suggestion of addressing the subject in a column or article is a good one and I shall try and do that shortly,

With best wishes,

Yours sincerely Matthew Engel

3. E W Swanton March 8, 1991

Dear Mr Henderson ,

Thank you for your forceful and interesting letter. I would have had time to respond at greater length if I had not returned from holiday to find a desk full of unanswered letters.

Briefly, I have sympathy for your point of view, but, of course, its implementation is unattainable. A considerable body of men  cannot suddenly be deprived of their livelihood.

I think the integration of disparate groups is largely a matter of leadership. I would however include in Test teams only those  who have been educated and learned their cricket here: for instance Lamb no, Ramprakash yes.

With best wishes,

Yours sincerely,

Jim Swanton

4. DAVID FOOT

Freelance Journalist

4th March 91

Dear Mr Henderson,

I have today received your letter, forwarded by WCM. You make a number of unquestionably valid points, not least the very first one (loss of pride). I’m not too sure that, based on recent events, the X1 can even be called a team of All Stars, though!

I have some minor reservations. On practical level, county cricket without even a hint of overseas talent (it was always so – think of Ranji) would today be painfully bereft of skills that go beyond the ordinary and mundane. I’d like to accept – but cannot- that our cricket would automatically improve, at least gradually, with a team of ‘locals’. Your remarks about cultural background are academically sound but are partly overtaken by necessary practicalities and a shifting society.

 Over the past couple of decades I have become more concerned about the declining interest in cricket at school level (the State system rather than the public schools). This, I believe, is the root cause of our depressing problems.

 Thank you for writing at such length. As an overworked freelance and full-time cricket writer in the summer months, I have scope and  time only to contribute a monthly column for WCM on regional prospects. But I do feel your well argued letter deserves a genuine ‘airing’. Would you like me to send it to the editor?

David Foot

5. E M Wellings 1991

Dear Mr Henderson,

Thank you for you most interesting letter. I enjoyed it greatly and agreed 99% with what you said. I am also grateful, for the letter crystalised my thought and ideas on cricket.

Like you I have always thought Australia’s selection method much superior to ours. It avoids the sort of blunders caused by captain’s preferences in England, including the omission of Bowes and Paynter from the 1936-37 team for the Australian tour. Gubby Allen was very anti Yorkshire and Lancashire. And they thought less than nothing of him off th field.  There have of course been several instances since the war, Bill Edrich left out of the 1950-51 team which Freddy Brown packed with immatures.

Also  like  you  I deplored the decisions  to  abandon  county qualifications. I looked at the matter from the supporter’s viewpoint. How could he feel the same about his county team when players were gathered from distant parts of the world and other counties without having to belong to the county? It did not occur to me that the ‘not belonging’ could in part account for the decline of our Test capability, but I am sure you are right.

 In fact I propose to write along those lines. How many of those who have been letting us down in Australia think of themselves as English. Off hand I should say only Gooch of the seniors has been consistent in belonging to his county and country. Gower  is a fly-by-night. Hemmings has also switched allegiance. Russell looks like remaining constant, and his reward is to be dropped.

 We are thus back to the days when Jim Parks, a very fine batsman but a hack behind the stumps, made some very costly mistakes.

 As a bowler myself I know the importance of the stumper  to the bowlers. Of course in my time the wicketkeeper stood up to all but the very fastest bowler. He probably would not stand up to Malcolm, because the fellow seems to concentrate on pitching the  ball just eyond his font foot to send the ball flying high overhead. But Russell showed the value of the stumper standing up to the other when he brought off his brilliant leg side stumping off Small.

 That brings me to what you said about the reason behind the picking of so many black fast bowlers to the exclusion of whites.

It has been done to excess, as became very obvious when a fifth rate quickie from Middlesex was bought into the alleged England  side. Of course selection is mainly done, as it has been for many years, by batsmen.  Hence the dropping of Russell behind the stumps and as you point out, the neglect of Atherton’s potential as a leg spin bowler.

Failure to understand spin bowling is one of Gooch’s faults. Another, in my view, is his insistence on super fitness, track suit  and gymnasium training. Which is probably why his players break down so often.  Trueman, Statham and company never trained in that way, and they did not break down.

General overall fitness, such as comes from the playing of games, is what cricketers need. That is all the training I ever did.  Yet at the age of 18 I bowled 36 overs out of 40 at the Pavilion end at Lord’s, and in the remaining time, upwards of 2 hours,  that day I carried my bat through our innings.  It was very slow scoring, for the soft pitch was becoming more testing. I  wonder how many superfit performers today would have the necessary stamina, i should say that my bowling pace was medium.

 Your comments on the ass Dexter and the cocky Stewart amused me greatly, I followed Dexter’s Australian tour. He  was surely England’s worst ever captain. His was a see-saw tour, bewildering to players and onlookers alike. Yet he proved an excellent  vice-captain to Mike Smith in South Africa. I still remember my first sight of Dexter in the School games at Lord’s- two beautifully struck fours followed by impetuous dismissal. Out for 8.

Would that the plan you have advanced for the revival of English cricket could be adopted. What you said about absorbing the native culture is so true. How many foreigners in the England side have done so? 1 knew two such cricketers of the past,  Duleepsinhji and Pataudi, very well, in fact I played two full University seasons with the latter. They both absorbed our  culture. Duleep was at Cheltenham College before going to Cambridge and while here was essentially English. So was Pataudi who so absorbed our culture, sense of fun and humour that in 1946 he was out of tune with the Indian team he captained here.

I fancy we shall go on muddling through, soon perhaps to be surpassed by Sri Lanka. I do not expect the TCCB to return to the use of clay soils, instead of slower producing loam, to give us again the fast true pitches which produce good cricket and good cricketers.

Surely the experience of Robin Smith this winter should make them think about our conditions. Smith’s defence always locked a trifle suspect, but on pitches lacking true pace he  prospered. Faster conditions on most  Australian grounds – not Adelaide – found him wanting . Give us fast pitches here again and he will have to work on his present jerky defence.

Normally at this time of the evening I would be watching TV news, but there isn’t any. Of all the great events war is the least productive, both sides producing false news, and at best  half news with much contradiction in official statements.  Anyone who was adult from 1939 to 1945 could have told the Media that.  Yet it went overboard about the Gulf war.

The BBC were so besotted by their many correspondents and home commentators that on day one, when there was very little hard news, and that only in outline, BBC1 kept the Gulf going with  speculation, guesswork and fiction for nearly 12 hours until the triviality of ‘Neighbours’ was deemed important enough to break into the War flow Again thank you very much for your letter, which I have already read twice and will surely read again.

Yours sincerely,

E.M.Wellings.

6. Peter Deeley Mar 21st 1991.

Dear Mr Henderson,

First may I apologise for this extremely belated reply to your letter of mid February concerning the loss of our national cricketing identity.

As I hope you will appreciate, I was in Australia at the tie and that tour was followed by the short (suicidal) visit to ^’  Zealand. After that I followed Australia n the Caribbean and after a short holiday have only just started sifting through my mail.

I agree wholeheartedly with much of what you say, though I would add a caveat in the instance of players born elsewhere who arrived in this country  with their parents  when they (the players)  were  but babes-in-arms. I would think that in this case they have a right  to look upon England as their true (if not natural ) home.

You outline practical steps which you think could be taken. Counties are now down to one overseas player on their hooks – though  perhaps this is not going far enough.

But you are right to raise the question of a new “invasion” – that of players from within the EEC. I suspect however that even if counties did take a self-denying ordinance towards such talent that in itself could be a reach of the Treaty of Rome (as amended) and that cricket could be accused of applying a closed shop by the EEC.

It is a complex issue. Like you, when I go to see a county gain I would like to think that not only were all the players British (English is too narrow a word in this context) BUT that they actually came  from Kent or Worcestershire, etc. Yet Yorkshire,  remaining true to this rule for so long, have paid the penalty in terms of results.

Yours Truly,

Peter Deeley

7. Richard Streeton 15 3 91

 Dear Mr Henderson,

 I am afraid I have only just received your long letter dated Feb 24. I have been in Pakistan and Sri Lanka with the England A team and only returned the UK this week.

You certainly made some extremely interesting points and there is a lot in what you said.

It was the sort of letter that must have taken  you some time to compile and I am returning it is case you want to send the gist to somewhere else. I would have thought The Cricketer magazine or Wisden Monthly might use it in their columns.

I do not think there is any way that I can reproduce it in The Times as it is, as I have readers’ letters on our sports pages and if at any time you want to write to the paper, may I suggest you address your remarks to the Sports Editor? We correspondents do not like to pass things on to him for publication when it has been addressed personally to us and the writer might not wish it to appear in print.

It is certainly a bit cooler in the UK than it was in Sri Lanka. It’s exciting to think of a new season “round the corner.”

 Again thank you so much for writing and I apologize again for not replying sooner.

 Yours sincerely,

 Richard Streeton (Cricket C) writer)

A fundamental malaise

I had this piece published in Wisden Cricket Monthly in 1991. The situation has not changed substantially. The re-entry of South Africa to Test cricket has removed the excuse for South Africans to play for England but this has in practice had little effect, vide Trott and Pietersen in the present side. The position with foreigners in county cricket has significantly worsened following the Kolpak judgement which resulted in the right of anyone with a passport from any EU country and those with associated EU status to work in any EU state.

The foreign invasion of English cricket is matched in all our other important team sports: football, rugby Union and rugby league.  The situation of such sports is an accelerated microcosm of what is happening to English society in general. Those with power, influence and authority are wilfully allowing our country to be invaded (there is no other word which adequately describes what is happening) by those who cannot or will not fully assimilate. It is the most fundamental form of treason because once here they have effectively conquered our territory as they form alien outposts in which they attempt to replicate the cultures from which they came and this isolates their descendants born here.  

                 A Fundamental Malaise

If the loss of the Ashes series [1990/91] is to be a watershed, it must  be  seen for what it is; not just a defeat but  an humiliation; and an humiliation heaped on many others in the past ten years. Until that unsavoury fact is accepted  the process of renewal cannot begin, because the causes of the truly sorry state of English cricket will not be honestly sought. Instead,  comfortable excuses will be made, false   comfort found in thoughts about cricketing cycles, of how things will take a turn for the better simply by the passing of time.

Many reasons have been given for England’s present cricketing weakness; too much limited overs cricket, poor opportunities in the schools and so forth. The problem with these excuses is that other, more successful countries, experience the same difficulties, if difficulties they truly are. This being so, it is reasonable to look for a deeper, more general, cause.

The quality which distinguishes contemporary English cricket from that of other nations is a lack of pride. This I ascribe largely to the destruction of any real sense of national cricketing identity. How can an eleven substantially composed of ex patriot South Africans, Asians and West Indians command any sense of belonging? It is, in effect, no  more than a team of ‘All Stars’. The same defect operates at the county level.  It is this loss of the cricketing equivalent of patriotism, which I believe to be at the bottom of the present failure to produce a worthy England eleven.

Too readily, I fear, British nationality is used as no more than a legal convenience; vide Nasser Hussein, who before departing for the West Indies blithely stated that he thinks of himself as Indian although – how big hearted of him – for cricketing purposes he considers himself to be “English” (this was reported in the Daily Telegraph). And this is a man   who has spent the greater part of his life in England. What then of the Smalls, Lambs, Smiths, and Malcolms who spent either all, or the greater part of their childhoods, in foreign cultures?

The rot began in 1969 when the residential qualifications for county sides were considerably relaxed, and foreign players, both official and unofficial, flooded the county scene. The self-interested such as Imram Khan may argue disingenuously that their presence improves the standard of English players. That this is a demonstrable nonsense can be shown by   reference to the steady decline in England’s performance since 1969, the date at which qualification rules were greatly relaxed. The decline is particularly marked since the  mid nineteen eighties by which time, interestingly, most of the pre-1969 generation of cricketers had retired.

Some might argue that the decline would have been more pronounced without the introduction of foreign players, but  this is an illegitimate form of reasoning.  I can say as a matter of fact that England’s performance has declined since 1969 by reference to the years prior to 1969. No one can say as matter of fact that England’s performance would have been worse since 1969 without the participation of foreign players in county cricket, because there is no point of comparison. The only way to test the matter is to have a comparable period (twenty one years) with foreign players excluded (I say a comparable period because an English first class cricketing generation is approximately twenty years).

The disadvantages arising from foreign players are generally well rehearsed – lack of opportunity for English players, the improvement of foreign players and so forth – but there is a consequence  which I have never seen or heard discussed, in print or over the air, namely, the evasion of responsibility. The general attitude of English players seems to be that of the amateur to the pro in a league side. They assume a   subordinate position to the official foreign players almost as a matter of course. If English players do not feel that they can take the leading part in their county eleven what chance can they have when promoted to the England side?

I believe the qualification for England should be the same as  that which I consider would be a sane basis for the citizenship of any country, namely, the imbibing of a culture.  Where  a man is born  is  irrelevant.  What distinguishes him is his instinctive allegiance to a culture and the assumption in childhood of the manners and values of that culture. The successful ingestion of manners and values produces the social colouring necessary for any coherent society and allows a man’s peers to accept him without question as one of themselves. That unquestioning acceptance is  the only objective test of belonging. The most unhappy and unnatural beings are the Mr Melmottes of the World who ‘…speak half a dozen languages but none like a native.’ These are men without country or psychological place. 1

The problem was crystalised by the Duke of Wellington. To those who insisted on calling him an Irishman he replied “if a man is born in a stable it does not make him an horse”. To this I would add that if a man is born in a house but later chooses to live in a stable, he does not become a horse.

What practical measures can be taken to recreate a true English first class cricketing community? The first step should be to exclude all cricketers classified as “Overseas Players” under the present rules. The second is for counties to agree to a self-denying ordinance to ensure that genuine  EEC nationals and those with passports of convenience, for  example, Kevin Curran, are excluded. The third and most contentious, is to accept only those players who have either spent their childhood in this country or have received what is a effectively a British upbringing abroad – Dermott Reeve would be a good example of the latter. All eligible players would have to pass the test of being accepted as English, Irish, Scotch or Welsh by their peers.

In the coming season we have the prospect of Graham Hick playing for England. Now, as a runscorer (although not as a stylist), I rate Hick very highly indeed. In fact, young as he is, I will stick my neck out and say that he is the nearest thing to another Bradman (although he is no Bradman) the cricketing world has yet seen. Having watched him bat on   five occasions, on all of which he has scored more than fifty, I am left with a memory of the sort of mechanical efficiency which is recorded in contemporary descriptions of the Don. If he played for England I do not doubt that he would score heavily. On cricketing grounds the temptation to include  him in the England side is very great.  Yet objectively, there is no more reason to play Hick now than there was seven years ago. All he has done since then  is  spend approximately half of each year in Britain and refrain  from playing for Zimbabwe. In no discernable sense is he more British now than he was at the age of eighteen. Let the  selectors signal a new beginning by telling Hick openly that they will not select him, now or in the future.

But apart from the question of practical success or failure, there is another reason why English cricket should be restricted to those with a genuine cultural stake in Britain. For me, the present England side mocks the very idea of national teams. Why? Well, it is essentially an aesthetic judgement.  The inclusion of South Africans, West Indians and an Indian in recent elevens offends my sense of rightness or proportion, just as a badly drawn picture or self  conscious acting performance does.

My feelings about the England side apply equally to county cricket. If I go to a county match I want to see twenty two players who have an unquestioned and primary allegiance to Britain. I do not want to see “All Star” elevens. When I see Yorkshire take the field I feel satisfaction, notwithstanding their often disappointing play in recent years. It simply   feels right, that sense of what is fitting again. How sad that the thin end of an extremely broad wedge has been forced into Yorkshire CC during the winter. Let us hope that it is  not the harbinger of something worse.

 1 Melmotte is a character in Trollop’s ‘The Way We Live Now’

English education and the great grade inflation fraud

English education has suffered greatly from its politicisation in the liberal internationalist interest, but even more fundamental damage was done by progressive teaching methods which failed to provide many children with an adequate grasp the three ‘Rs’ (and left a depressing number either completely  illiterate or what is coyly called “functionally illiterate”, while  most are unable to do simple arithmetic and lack any sense of number or proportion,  so that they have no idea whether the sums they poked into their calculators produced answers which were correct.

The most obvious consequence of the gradual decline in educational standards  was an erosion in exam quality.  At first it was small things. Practical exams for science O Levels were dropped. Then came multiple choice questions. The curricula in all subjects  shrank.  New,  less academic subjects such as media studies found their  way into the exam system and elbowed the academic aside. Eventually  came the ultimate corruption of the exam system with the introduction of continuous assessment.  With  the fall in school standards, the  universities and polytechnics inevitably had to drop their standards. 

The  corruption of exam standards was further driven by a desire to expand the numbers of children passing school exams and the numbers going on to Higher Education.  To this end O Levels and the old CSE exams for less able pupils were abolished in the 1980s  and replaced with the General Certificate of Education (GCSE). Around the same time a decision was made to vastly increase the numbers of students in Higher Education. To make this policy more attractive to would-be students, the polytechnics were renamed universities in 1992, with the consequence that more than 100 institutions with that title were suddenly competing for students, with as we shall see later, evil effects.

The consequence of having a single exam (GCSE) for all 16 year olds was predictable: to prevent embarrassing numbers of failures, the standard of the new exam had to be reduced below that of the already much less demanding O Levels of the 1980s (even so, in 2005 around 30 per cent of children fail to gain five GCSEs at C grade or higher.) The upshot was that the GCSE candidates either left school at 16  lacking even  the rudiments of education needed to fill run-of-the-mill jobs – many are functionally illiterate and even more lack basic numeracy –   or entered A Level courses woefully under-prepared, especially in subjects such as maths.  A Levels and degree courses were again, of necessity, reduced in standard to adapt to pupils and students who were substantially under-prepared compared with those arriving under the pre-GCSE examination regime.

At the same time as standards were eroding, the Tories introduced in the 1980s the madness of league tables and targets.  The consequence of these – not just in education but generally – is to distract from the actual purpose of what an organisation is supposed to do and to promote dishonesty in the pursuit of attaining the targets and showing well in league tables. 

The league tables provoked even more tampering with the academic standards of school exams as examination boards competed with one another to produce the “best” results, that is, ever higher pass rates and grades and schools chose the examination board most likely to give them ostensible examination success.

The  response of both politicians and educationalists  to the inexorable rise in GCSE and A Level results since GCSE was introduced has been to hail them as evidence that educational standards are continually rising. Such claims have the same relationship to reality as Soviet figures for the turnip harvest or tractor production.  All that has happened is that both the difficulty of exams and the severity of marking has been reduced.  In 2004 an A Grade in GCSE Maths  from Edexcel, one of the largest exam boards, could be gained with 45 per cent (Daily Telegraph 18 9 2004), while a “B” grade at one Board in 2004 (OCR)  could be a obtained with a mere 17 per cent (Sunday Telegraph 16 1 2005).  (When challenged about lowered grade marks, those setting the exams claim that the questions are becoming  more difficult.)  Course work, which counts towards the overall exam mark,  is reported as being either routinely plagiarised from the Web or showing other evidence of being  other than the pupil’s unaided work. 

In addition to the lowering of exam marks and the fraud of continuous assessment, school exams have begun to shift from final tests  to  modular exams which are taken throughout the course. Hence, pupils on such courses never take an exam which tests them on their entire course. 

Of course, all this change to school exams, combined with the introduction of the national curriculum tests,  creates a great deal of extra work for teachers and distracts them from the actual task of teaching – pupils are tested at 7, 11, 14, 16, 17 and 18.  It has also spawned a truly monstrous examination bureaucracy,  which according to a recent report from the Qualifications and Curriculum Authority (a state body) costs £610 million per year (Daily Telegraph 14 2 2005) and has left the country desperately scrabbling around for  examiners.

The  frequent complaints of university teachers about the inadequacy of the students coming to them  and the even more  vociferous  complaints of employers about applicants who lack competence in even the three “Rs” are pretty substantial straws in the wind suggesting a general educational failure. My own direct experience of youngsters all too often bears out such complaints –  I find especially depressing recent graduates with good degrees from top universities who are  bizarrely ignorant of their degree subjects and poorly equipped to research or analyse.

The universities also joined in the grade inflation caucus race.  I went to University in the late sixties. In those days – when less than 10% of UK school-leavers went to university – Oxford and Cambridge awarded around 40%  of undergraduates the top two degree classifications . The newer universities were much stingier, many awarding only  4-5% of firsts and 30% of upper seconds.  They did this to establish their credibility.  Now it is common for universities to award  firsts to more than 15% of undergraduates and firsts and  upper seconds to two thirds of those who graduate.  A recent (I Jan 2011) Sunday  Telegraph  investigation discovered “The universities awarding the highest proportion of firsts or 2:1s last year were Exeter, where 82 per cent of graduates received the top degrees compared with just 29 per cent in 1970, and St Andrews – Scotland’s oldest university, where Prince William met fiancée Kate Middleton – where the figure was also 82 per cent compared with just 25 per cent in 1970.

“Imperial College London and Warwick both granted 80 per cent firsts or 2:1s last year, compared with 49 per cent and 39 per cent respectively in 1970.  At Bath University the figure was 76 per cent last year compared with just 35 per cent in 1970. “http://www.telegraph.co.uk/education/universityeducation/8235115/Dumbing-down-of-university-grades-revealed.html

There was some grade inflation before the late eighties but it was small compared with what has happened since. Until, the late eighties universities received their funding in the form of a block grant from a government body called the Universities Grants Committee ((UGC) This meant there was no temptation to inflate degree awards because the money did not follow the individual student. The UGC was scrapped in 1989 and the money attached to each individual student. This changed the relationship between  the university and student from being one where the student was seen as just that to one where the student became primarily a bringer of money. This relationship changed again with  first the abolition of grants and then the introduction of fees which made placed the student in the position of customer.

Anecdotes are always tricky as evidence,  so let us consider an objective fact which explains why widespread educational incompetence is inevitable in the circumstances which have been created.  IQ  is normally distributed within a population, that is it forms a Bell Curve with most people clustering in the middle of the curve and a few people at the extremes of the curve. Such a distribution means that the proportion of the population with IQs substantially above the average is quite small – approximately 25 per cent of the UK population have IQs of 110 or more.  Now, it is true that IQ as a measure of academic success is not infallible, not least because motivation is necessary as well as intellect.  But what is true is that a decent IQ is necessary for  academic success. Put another way, someone with an IQ of 150 may or may not take a First in maths: someone with an IQ of 90 never will.

The way IQ is distributed means that the ideal of an exam suited to everyone (GCSE) is a literal nonsense, because that which would test the brightest would be beyond the large majority and even that which the majority could cope with would be beyond those in the lower part of the ability range. The grades awarded for GCSE bear this out.  The  large numbers of those getting the top marks mean that the exam is too easy for the brightest, while the 30 per cent or so of school-leavers who cannot attain 5 passes at C grade or better tell you it is too difficult for the lower part of the academic ability continuum. 

 A similar problem of fitting exams to a very wide ability range has affected universities. Tony Blair set a target of 50 per cent of either school-leavers or people under the age of 28 (the target seems to move) to be in Higher Education – at the beginning of  2005 the percentage is over 40 per cent. Blair’s target meant that many of those at university will have mediocre IQs. 

Let us  assume for the sake of simplicity  that 50 per cent of school-leavers is the target rather than 50 per cent of those under 28. There are only around 25 per cent of people with IQs of 110 or higher in any age group. If every one of those 25 per cent went to university (50 per cent of those scheduled to go to university if the Blair target is met) it would still leave the other half of those going to university  to be found from those with IQs of less than 109. Hence, with 50 per cent of school-leavers at university,  at least half the  people taking degrees would have, as a matter of necessity,  moderate IQs.  In fact, the position is worse than that,  because significant numbers of those with IQs substantially above average will not go  to university.  That means even more than 50 per cent of students would have moderate IQs. Trying to set degree courses suitable for people with,  say,  IQs  ranging  from 90-160 cannot be a  practical proposition.

The coalition government has not committed themselves to Blair’s 50% target but neither have they said it will not the reached or even exceeded, the Government line being anyone who wants to go to universitty should go.

The upshot of all this is that the better  universities can no longer trust an A at A Level to be a true reflection of excellence because so many people are awarded As and a new A* grade has been introduced in the hope that it will distinguish outstanding candidates.  However, this is unlikely to be a long-term solution as it is a sound bet that A* will be awarded in ever greater numbers.

It isn’t “just sport”

Sport  has  a  particular  importance to  England  at  present  because sporting sides are the only source of national focus the English  have. The  English  are  denied a parliament,  they  are  betrayed  by  their political  elite who shudder at the idea of English  nationalism,  they are constantly insulted by the national media,   but the national sides continue. These sporting institutions  permit the English to articulate their  feelings as a tribe.  Even  English men  and women  without  any interest in sport should support them for that reason if no other.

Those  who say “it’s only sport”  should stand back and reflect on  the amount of time, effort and money which is spent throughout the world on sport. Women may be generally less enthusiastic,  but sports  obviously speak to a deep seated desire within men.

Man  is  a  tribal animal.  If he were not it would matter  not  a  jot whether  one team won or another,  unless money was on the result.  But manifestly men do care and care passionately when no material advantage is  to  be  gained or lost by the result.  In  fact,  the  relationship between  a football fan and his club is probably the most  enduring  of his life, for it commonly begins in childhood and ends only with death.

The  outpouring  of joy when a goal is scored dwarfs any  other  public expression  of  positive  feeling  today.  Those  who  imagine  that  a football  club  is merely a business and that selling  football  is  no different from selling baked beans, fail to understand the game and  the fan.

Sporting heroes are heroes in the literal sense for they play the role of the champion whether it be in single combat (tennis) or as part of an army (football). There is something primal about this.   Watch even a powerful man  in  the presence of his sporting hero and the  powerful  man  will almost certainly be unconsciously  deferring to the sportsman.

Team sports are war games, a war game in fact as well where men meet in a  form  of direct  physical confrontation  which  is  a  pretty  good substitute  for  tribal war,  war fought hand to hand  with  sword  and shield  and  spear.  Sport is  war without the  weapons.  That  is  its primal  glamour.

Because of their  function as lightening rods of national feeling  the  existence of England sides are  hated and feared by  our  elite. The  erstwhile  and now deceased Labour Sports minister,   Tony  Banks, persistently  puffed  the idea of a British football  team,   something that is indubitably not wanted by any of the four home FAs or the  vast majority of fans.

The  political  dimension  goes beyond  the  English  national   sides. In  these politically correct times sporting crowds in England for  the major sports are also disturbingly white for the liberal  bigot  elite. Vast amounts of time and money have been devoted to making crowds “more representative”, happily with precious little  success.  Football crowds in  particular  are  a source  of concern to our  liberal elite because they provide  the  one opportunity  where large numbers of the white working class can  gather together and express themselves  uninhibitedly without having to gain the permission  of the police. This concern is amplified by  the general contempt which the British  elite  have developed for the white working class which, in the sporting context,  is especially focused on the football fan.  (Margaret Thatcher more  than any  other  individual  fostered  the  contempt    when  she  routinely painted  English football supporters as hooligans and  enthusiastically promoted  the  exclusion  of English football clubs  after  the  Heysel stadium  tragedy at the 1985 European Cup final between  Liverpool  and Juventus. )

But  sport has much more to it than tribalism.  It is a constant  in  a changing world.  It is a source of aesthetic delight.  It speaks to the whole range of human emotions. When a great batsman goes to the wicket  when his side is in trouble and makes the bowling look easy,  the whole mood of the players and spectators  changes within minutes: when a football side which is 2-0 down gets a goal back the swing in moral certainty from one side to another is palpable.  It is much more than being “just sport”. It is a mirror of what it is to be human.