Category Archives: cricket

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.

Ire in Babylon

UK Cinema Release Date: Friday 20th May 2011

Official Site: www.fireinbabylon.com

Written and Directed by: Stevan Riley

Starring:  Viv Richards, Gordon Greenidge, Michael Holding, Ian Botham, Jeffery Dujon, Colin Croft

Genre: Documentary

Runtime: 1 hour 27 minutes (approx.)

Between 1980 and 1995 the West Indies cricket team never lost a series, a most remarkable thing. They did this through discovering a discipline they had never consistently shown before and the development of a bowling attack consisting of three or four genuinely fast bowlers,  a fast bowling  lineage which began in the mid 1970s with Holding, Roberts and Daniel and ended in the mid 1990s with Walsh, Ambrose and Bishop.    Their dominance was aided by the failure of umpires to implement the  cricket law banning persistent short-pitched bowling –  arguably because of a fear of being called
racist – but  in truth they were formidable  even without bowling four or five short-pitched balls an over.  The runs scored against the West Indies in their period of dominance were almost certainly the hardest earned in the history of Test cricket (the first Test was played in 1877).

Those with no knowledge of cricket  will have read that paragraph and said, no, not interested.  Let them bear with me for a moment.  It is a film about a sporting side but it is far more than that.  Primarily it is  a masterclass in black victimhood and insecurities in which  cricket takes a distant second place. That explains  why  the film has been greeted with such rapture by British  film critics who are  signed up to the “ol’ whitey bad, black good “ liberal agenda  (for a wide range of quotes  see http://www.fireinbabylon.com/press.html).
The Daily Telegraph’s review is typical: “Director Stevan Riley’s joyous and uplifting film is a celebration of a sporting triumph and all its implications for black politics and culture.” (http://www.telegraph.co.uk/culture/film/filmreviews/8524438/Fire-in-Babylon-review.html)

The director  Stevan Riley made no bones about the purpose of the film: “a story of freedom, independence and black pride through bat and ball”. (http://www.channel4.com/news/fire-in-babylon-what-lessons-for-west-indies-cricket-now).   The result is a film which is an unrestrained act of pro-black  propaganda,   with whites and England  painted as the colonial oppressors and the Asian populations of the West Indies relegated to the role of non-persons.  Within this context,  the West Indies team of the late 1970s to the mid 1990s is portrayed as a vehicle for the political consciousness of the newly independent West Indian countries; a means by which the black West Indian population  (but not the white or Asian West Indians) could assert  themselves and show themselves to be able to compete with and dominate  their  old colonial masters.

Those not familiar with cricket in general or West Indies cricket in particular will require some background.  The West Indies is not a nation state. Rather it is a collection of British ex-colonies in the Caribbean  (Jamaica, Trinidad, Barbados being the main islands) plus one on the South American continent (Guyana).  Cricket is the only thing which brings them formally together.

The history of West Indies cricket is a mirror of the racial and ethnic tensions  in the
ex-colonies.  The team until the 1970s  was a mix of whites, blacks and Asians (mainly those who had ancestors who came from the Sub-continent).   Until 1960 the West Indies cricket team (known as the Windies) was always captained by a white man, apart from the odd match where injury or other absence of resulted in no  suitable white player  being available.

Throughout the period of white captains there was a growing restlessness amongst black West Indians for a black captain. After the appointment of the first  black man ,  Frank
Worrell,  to the (regular)  captaincy in  1960,   the  participation  of  white and   Asian  players  steadily  diminished  – in the case of whites it might be truer to  say effectively  ended.  Geoffrey  Greenidge was  the last  white   player to represent the West Indies (in 1972) before Brendon Nash appeared in  2008 (and he was a white Australian who qualified for the West Indies through his mother), while   no Asians were chosen between  Larry Gomes’  final appearance   in 1986 and Shivnarine Chanderpaul’s debut in 1994.  This left a side entirely composed of black West Indians.   In the late 1980s the
Windies Captain Viv Richards  proudly described his side as “a team of Africans”.

There is no mention in the film of this exclusion of whites and Asians from the Windies side during their period of dominance, nor Viv Richard’s celebration of the fact that he was leading  an all  black side.   This is scarcely surprising because those interviewed in the film are all black and the interviewer did not ask awkward  questions.   Famous white cricketers and commentators such as Geoff Boycott , Ian Botham and Jeff Thompson who had
played against the Windies during their period of dominance   were interviewed by the director,  but strangely not a single interview of a white man conducted for the film  appeared in the film. Tellingly, white faces were almost  absent from the film  except for the action shots. Ditto Asians.   Instead the film was packed with interviews with
West Indian cricketers and  commentators who had either played in or seen the Windies at their height , and film or commentary of black West Indian   celebrities uch as Bob Marley,  Bunny Wailer, Lord Short Shirt, Burning Spear  (no, I  am not making the names up) and Gregory Isaacs who happily mixed with players such as Viv Richards.

A  deep-rooted black paranoia shows itself in the interpretation as patronising of white attitudes and responses which are at worst neutral and at best complimentary.  The
description “Calypso cricket” by whites  is interpreted  as  meaning that West Indian sides play in an attractive but brittle and unthinking way. In reality it was simply a bit of lazy labelling by journalists and broadcasters  without any intent to patronise or insult.

Australians turning out in  great numbers to applaud the West Indies touring party as they toured the streets of Melbourne at the end of the 1960/61 series against Australia was dismissed as Australians being happy to applaud losers (they lost the series 2-1).
In fact, they were being applauded because the series was (1)  thoroughly exciting with the first tied Test in history and (2)  Test cricket was going through a period when it was feared that slow, defensive play was killing the public’s appetitive for the game and the series was seen as a  renaissance of attractive cricket.

The only instance in the film of a white man suggesting that the Windies were chokers was made by  the England captain in the 1976 series between the Windies and England. This was the South African Tony Greig (playing  for England after qualifying residentially) predicting  before the series that the Windies “would grovel”.  Had he made the comment about Australia or an Australian made it about England it would have just been treated for what it was, a bit of “pre-fight” banter. In the film it is treated with an immense  earnestness as if it was the deadliest of insults.

This outrage is very odd because the central  thesis of the film is that until the late 1970s the Windies were a team  which often contained great individuals,  but hich was all too prone to not playing as a team, whether that be because of racial strife (especially under white captains) ,  the difficulties of bring people together from different countries in a representative team or the lingering effects of colonialism which led to an unconscious lack of belief in themselves.  (The alleged weaknesses  were supposedly only cured after Clive Lloyd became captain and  eventually moulded the Windies into a relentless machine for winning. )

This  story is some way adrift from reality. It is untrue that the Windies were a consistently brittle side  before Clive Lloyd became captain. They always had great players and in the space of four years in the  1960s they won two series in England and beat the Australians in the West Indies.  By 1965 they had good claims to be the strongest side in the world.  That they  declined towards the end of the 1960s and early 1970s was simply the natural consequence of a great side growing old and losing important players.  In short, it was simply  what any top cricketing  Test side experiences,  peaks and troughs of performance.

One of the most intriguing passages is the series between  Australia and the Windies in 1975/76 when the Australian fast bowlers Lillie and Thompson physically knocked the Windies about so badly that the series was lost 6-1.  That was time when the Windies captain Clive Lloyd decided on playing a three or four man fast bowling attack. In fact, what appears to have been the real turning point was the rebel Packer matches of a
few years later. Kerry Packer was an Australian media mogul who signed up (to
the horror of the national cricket boards who banned the players from playing
Test cricket) many of the best  cricketers in the world, including most of the Australian and West Indies players.

The Packer series began badly for the Windies who folded weakly in an early match. According to the film,  Packer came into Windies dressing room and gave them a tongue-lashing along the lines of improve or you will be on a plane home.  Packer also arranged for then to use a  physiotherapist and fitness trainer by the name of Denis Waite because he was doubtful about their fitness. (http://www.catholicnews-tt.net/joomla/index.php?view=article&catid=49:sports&id=174:sports010209&option=com_content&Itemid=82).  Waite, a white Australian, got them fit and psychologically prepared.  By the end of Packer’s rebel games (they lasted two years) the Windies had started to win relentlessly.  It could be argued that the Windies built their later success on a platform constructed by two white men, Packer and Waite.

The other great  hand-up from ol’ whitey was the decision of the English cricket authorities in 1969 to relax the qualification rules for county cricket, the English domestic first class teams.  This meant that foreign players, including most of the major West Indian cricketers of the period 1970-1995, were able to play regular professional cricket in England. This both gave the Windies players a regular source of income from cricket (something which had never  been readily available before)  and a great deal of experience both of playing and English conditions and culture.

After 1995 the great days were over, although they were still competing for another five years or so as the great old players held the team together. After 2000, the Windies team declined rapidly until it became a pathetic shadow of what it had been only a few years before.  Why did this happen? Perhaps it was this:

“The things that had driven us in the past were no longer important to the newer generation. Black pride and its militancy, the shrugging off of our colonial legacy, Frank Worrell completing the West Indian version of the Jackie Robinson journey, these things have been historically severed” Calypsonian David Rudder on the difference between the 80s and today (http://www.espncricinfo.com/magazine/content/story/483624.html)

If Rudder is correct, that paints a bleak picture of the future of the West Indies not only as cricketers but generally.  What he is saying is that only the mixture of anger and fear left by colonialism is sufficient to energise West Indians.

From a purely cricketing point of view the film offers  many examples of great fast bowlers in action.  Those too young to have watched cricket in the 1970s and 1980s should watch the film and see the  difference between genuine fast bowling and what passes for it  now.  In particularly I was reminded of what a nightmare Jeff Thompson was at his best , not merely one of the fastest  of bowlers, but one with an uncanny knack of getting a ball to rear into a batsman’s face from barely short of a length. Most of the action shots are of batsmen being hit or nearly hit, which is a little unedifying,  but they  do  give  a
graphic idea of exactly how much courage and skill is required to face great fast bowling.  The most poignant shots are  those of a 45-year-old Brian Close batting against Holding and Roberts in 1976 before the era of helmets and being repeatedly hit on the body, an assault he met with a remarkable stoicism.

Those wanting  a flavour of the film can click on http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=n57LPYiragE