27/08/2011 - Wiltshire

I shan't write too much about the match - essentially an intra-club game between us and a scratch XI made up of extra players from the tour party and locals. It follows the same format every year. We bat first, make quite a few, then the opposition try to chase them, usually fail, hold on for a draw and we go to the pub and get pissed. Photos here, some videos of us getting wasted on scrumpy on this account.

I just wanted to talk about Bob. Here are some facts about him.

1. That picture at the top is the view of Keevil Manor ground from Bob's bench. It was put there after he died in May 2010, aged 77.
2. I like the thought of Bob sitting there, staring out over the cricket while gliders from the nearby RAF college float overhead.
3. When Bob became my friend he was 73, and I was nearly 50 years younger than him.
4. Bob and I read English at the same college. We both liked Tennyson. He liked Housman, but I've never got into him.
5. Bob was a brilliant pianist. He could play Chopin and Ravel as well as he could Fats Waller. He was also, by all accounts, a great singer, but I never heard him.
6. Bob and I both come from the West Country, and both batted and bowled left handed. He was much better than me, in his day.
7. After university, Bob worked for Shell, then became Personnel Manager at Bristol-Siddeley Engines in Filton. He pioneered a staged retirement scheme that is still a model of its kind. The college obituary of Bob notes that 'at a time when industrial upheaval was rife elsewhere, Filton remained at peace.'
8. He devotedly nursed his wife through a long illness, until she passed away, and never asked for any help.

9. Bob once asked me what the toughest ball was to face. Easy I said, right arm inswinger from over the wicket. It opens up every mode of dismissal. He thought for a while and then said, 'I  like facing that ball. They've only got to get it a tiny bit wrong and it's easy to get runs.' Part of the difference between a good cricketer and a crap cricketer is that one sees opportunity where the other sees a threat.

10.  He really, really cared for his children.
11. The first time I went drinking with him he told me a filthy limerick which had a first line ending in 'Birmingham' and a last line ending 'Sperm in 'em'.
12. Bob retired at 55. He then joined eleven different cricket clubs.
13. I only saw him bat once. A fast bowler bowled him a wide half volley and he smacked it through the covers, even though we were clinging on for a draw. He must have been 75 then. I only saw him bowl once too. He was very slow by then. Apparently the year before he had wrapped his old fingers round the ball, given it a bit of a rip, and sent an awe-struck batsman back to the pavilion, bowled round the legs.
14. I once asked Bob if the 'fire escape' on his staircase at uni had been, as for us, a long bit of rope that could be suspended down the centre. He said it was, and in his day he'd dangled it out of his window so he could get down to see the local girls, who weren't allowed in the colleges back then.
15. He would often sustain a conversation while doing the Times Crossword, with no discernible difficulty.
16. I once hit 74*, with him watching. He didn't say much, other than 'Well batted.' I was hit by a joyous, unbridled sense of pride such as I'd not felt since I was about eleven years old. I don't know why, by the time you're an adult, most of your achievements seem to come with a bit of fear attached - as if they can only be bad news in the long run.
17. I never heard him say a bad word about anyone.
18. Bob loved imparting knowledge. He'd have been a very good teacher. He once talked at me for 15 minutes, without pausing, about the Bedouin. It was fascinating. That was years ago, and I still remember the conversation.
19. He'd have been a brilliant writer too, but he lacked the confidence to do it regularly.
20. I only hit one good shot on Saturday, but it was very good - a length ball flicked through midwicket. And no one noticed but I looked up at his bench and gave him a wink, because I think he must've enjoyed it.

What does cricket mean?

Fucked if I know. But the more I read the more it appears to be about class, race, a yearning for something that might never have existed.....

GM Trevelyan, English Social History (1944):

“If the French noblesse had been capable of playing cricket with their peasants their chateaux would have never been burnt.” (p.49)

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Hugh de Selincourt's The Cricket Match (1924)

“I am so delighted you’re playing for the village. With all this discontent that’s about nowadays, it is so good for them all. I am sure we ought all to mix with the people far more than we do.”
“Go on mother, laughed her son. “You’re becoming a regular Bolshie, we all know that. […] I like playing for the village better than playing for the Martlets, say. It may not be such good cricket, but I swear it’s a better game.” (p.5)

"Meanwhile Sid disposed of two large slices of bread and dripping at the corner of the kitchen table, and drank two mugs of tea, after which he set out on the three-mile walk to his work, cad to a bricklayer." (p.24)

“Night descended peacefully upon the village of Tillingford. Rich and poor, old and young, were seeking sleep” (p.212).

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Mike Marqusee, Anyone But England: Cricket and the National Malaise (1994):

"The Cricket Match is the work of a clever Tory propagandist, albeit of the one-nation variety so despised by Margaret Thatcher" (p29).

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CC, in an essay he found on his hard drive, 2002:

"The Cricket Match actually has plenty to say on World War One, in much the same way Monet's Lilies do".

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Neville Cardus, An Autobiography (1949):

“I saw the blossom come upon orchards in Gloucestershire, […] I saw midsummer in full blaze at Canterbury, […] I saw the autumn leaves falling at Eastbourne....It is not fanciful, I think, to say that a national game is influenced by the spirit and atmosphere of the period. [After 1920] as disillusion increased and the nation’s life contracted and the catchword “safety first” became familiar […] cricket itself lost confidence and character. when Lancashire was wealthy “and the mills were busy most days and nights, cricket at Old Trafford was luxuriant, with MacLaren […] squandering runs […] It was as soon as […] mill after mill closed that Lancashire cricket obtained its reputation for suspicious thriftiness” (p.59).

“Aye,” said Roy Kilner, “it’s a rum ‘un is t’Yarkshire and Lankysheer match. T’two teams meets in t’dressin’ room on t’Bank Holiday; and then we never speaks agean for three days – except to appeal.” (p.69).

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Marcus Berkmann in Rain Men:

"…To the vast majority of non-participants, the mere mention of the words “village” and “cricket” instantly conjures up a sepia-toned rustic idyll, full of burly blacksmiths and wily off-spinning parsons, and chaps with pipes called Jack […] Robin redbreasts tweet from the branches of 200-year old oaks, while floppy-eared rabbits scamper cutely through the undergrowth.
The truth […] is rather less palatable. Never […] have I seen a floppy-eared bunny rabbit scamper anywhere, unless it’s under the wheel of a passing lorry. Robin redbreasts search in vain for branches of 200-year-old oaks from which to tweet, as Farmer Giles plc has had them all cut down. The last burly blacksmith died in 1967. The jolly landlord waters down his Skol." (p30).

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Mike Marqusee again:

"The village green, certainly as a meeting point of different classes and generations, hardly exists, having been replaced by the limitless suburbia of “commuter villages” in which car parks take precedence over cricket fields. But the myth of the village green and the cricket played on it is not only a lie about the present. It is an even bigger lie about the past" (p30).

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Stephen Fry, The Liar (1991):

This fantasy of England that old men took with them to their death-beds, this England without factories and sewers and council houses, this England of leather and wood and flannel, this England circumscribed by a white boundary and laws that said that each team shall field eleven men and each man shall bat […] it was like [an ex-lover’s] beauty, […] a momentary vision glimpsed for a second in an adolescent dream, then dispersed like steam into the real atmosphere of traffic-jams, serial murderers, prime ministers and Soho rent (p112).

“You won’t cheat will you sir?”

“Cheat? Good heavens. This is an amateur cricket match amongst leading prep schools, I’m an Englishman and a schoolmaster supposedly setting an example to his young charges. […] Of course I’ll cunting well cheat. Now, give me my robe and put on my crown, I have immortal longings in me.” (p.121)

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Oh, and also....

Neville Cardus on Ranjitsinhji:

"And then suddenly this visitation of dusky, supple legerdemain happened; a man was seen playing cricket as nobody in England could possibly have played it. The honest length ball was not met by the honest straight bat, but there was a flick of the wrist, and lo! The straight ball was charmed away to the leg boundary. And nobody quite saw or understood how it all happened" (citation lost).

And.......C.L.R. James in Beyond a Boundary (1962):

"But there was racialism! So what? I am the one to complain. I don’t. […] Those exquisites remind me of ribaldry about Kant’s logical imperative: there was racialism in cricket, there is racialism in cricket, there always will be racialism in cricket. But there ought not to be." (p.58)

Shane Warne pissing abaaat

Some proper posts after the weekend.

Brillo Broad animation

One day all cricket videos will look like this.

21/08/2011 - Dulwich

On Saturday we were due to play at Parliament Hill. We got through about 3 overs before the heavens opened. We waited the best part of an hour before the opposition took their leave. Of course by about 3.30 this was the scene:

So we headed to the nets for the day:

To Sunday: I forgot to get any photos of the ground again. The ground was owned by a university, but it was closed last year. A conglomerate of local sports clubs took over the lease, which is largely great news, but it would appear that they haven't the resources to fund a good groundsman. The pitch had been a belter. Now it's council standard - the sort of green top where you hope there's been a good rain storm the night before to take the sting out of it.

I didn't play well. Obviously, what with it being my second team, my bowling was expensive and I didn't get any wickets. My first three balls went for four, the next four overs were ok but in terms of the spell I was always playing catch up, and the opener cruised to one of the easiest hundreds he will ever make.

Batting was tough. The pitch was a bit of a nightmare in the second innings having got firmer. They had four men round the bat which on an uneven wicket is surprisingly hard to deal with, even if the bowling is crap (which it largely was). I also had a hangover, and they really wanted to win. Still, I have no qualms about the way I got out - I clipped the ball off my legs, it flew straight out of the middle, short leg stuck his hand out, and the ball stuck in it. Afterward he claimed to just be very good in that position, but I still don't think he'd have taken it seven or eight times out of ten. One of the best catches I've ever gone to.

Back on the sidelines the chatter was marvellous. I love my second team, because they are 20 years older than me, for the most part, and even more aware of the ludicrousness of their pastime, indeed, of the ludicrousness of life. One of them had a tantrum and stropped off because he'd been moved from five to six. One of them was getting married in France, and was interrogated by the others about whether he'd have to pledge allegiance to the Euro.

We capitulated and lost by over 100 runs. So a miserable weekend, then? Not really. The two things I love about the game as I play it now - the fact I get to do it with people I consider my friends, the socialising (and what a miserably inadequate word that is) - were in abundance. In an email to the organiser of my second team this week I described them as 'one of the most successful teams I know'. I stand by that, and they've won two games all year.

As I type this tens of thousands of English cricket followers are willing an opposition batsman to get a hundred. Fuck all the controversy. Cricket does have a spirit.

The Secret Cricketer

Marvellous.

The Small Print

Isn't Damian Fleming's action a beautiful thing? And what a little cracker to Sachin. Just slightly lazy in his footwork, and it's all over.

Ah, to quote Freddie to Fidel, cricket has a funny way of biting you in the arse. How often, I wonder, would Sachin have got his footwork slightly wrong twenty or thirty times in the course of an innings, and the worst result the odd thick edge to third man? But you get it wrong once, to the wrong ball, and game over. Is batting like life? It certainly seems to share its arbitrary nature. Hard work gets rewarded and sloppy discipline is punished, but it often feels like success or failure are determined by far greater forces than the individual - his contribution is mere quibbling over the details. It's like there's a legal document which either bankrupts you or makes you a millionaire (there is really no middle ground in cricket), and you're fighting over the small print without knowing to what end it pertains.

James Anderson. I was wrong. I saw a lithe kid who bowled nippy away swing and had model looks, and I thought - of course they'll keep picking him. His face fits. He tries hard. He fields well. He'll sell replica shirts. He's quite good. He's usually playing people who are very good. He's going to be one of those fucking bowlers whose primary talent is for getting picked, like Phil Defreitas, and he'll really piss me off. He doesn't really know where it's going, he 'wangs it down and hopes for the best' ((c) M. Hoggard) and if there's no swing he's shit.

For the best part of six years I was right. Then something changed. Quite a lot changed, in fact. First, the pace. He bowled about 82-3mph. Fast if you're a club player, nippy if you're a pro, sluggish if you're Matthew Hayden. Suddenly he went up to 85mph and sometimes touched 90mph and really scared the odd batsman. It was about a yard of pace, but at the upper limits of human reaction time that's a hell of a distance. It doesn't look terrifying on TV but watch him live and unless you're a pro you realise that he is, by your standards, pretty bloody fast.

Then the accuracy. He used to let his head dip at the point of delivery, so he was looking at the ground as he let the ball go. He doesn't quite so much. I've not a clue about biometrics. Maybe he just bowled a lot more balls, suffered less injury and found a better rhythm. Whatever: a sky-high economy rate dipped dramatically.

But in Test cricket a bowler who takes it away from the bat in the mid-80 mphs is still par for the course. We had more than enough of them since 1979, and they all averaged just over 30 and didn't do much when they were up against someone good. But Anderson broke the trend: he mastered the inswinger.

The full magnitude of this achievement has been downplayed. I don't think there's another bowler, ever, who can say they managed it at Anderson's pace. Praveen Kumar, Asif and Ed Giddens did it at medium pace. There are plenty of fast bowlers who found they could dip it both ways via reverse swing, where all that's required is a reversal of the shiny side - Wasim and S. Jones (2005) among the best exponents. And there are plenty who can make the ball hold its line as a counterpoint to the stock ball by scrambling the seam - Hadlee, Alderman. But not one that I can think of with such utmost mastery of seam position. It's something I've tried to master for years now, but I never will.

As of 2009, Anderson genuinely swung new and old ball both ways. I'd never seen that before from a fast medium bowler. I wonder if I will again. There are easier, more reliable ways to get wickets - primarily the Ambrose/McGrath model of bounce and accuracy. Both better bowlers than Anderson. But their gifts were genetically inherited, up to a point, and far less enjoyable to watch.

As long as there is anything in the air, Anderson is near enough unplayable. Have a look at his performances after 2009. In retrospect the turning point was that tour to the West Indies. A tough series on featherbed after featherbed. He bowled and bowled, and tried everything against a pretty shoddy batting line up, for scant reward. When the return series came round in the muggy early English Summer, he was in a beautiful groove. To watch him now is to watch a master bowler in action. Round the wicket, over the wicket, inswing and outswing, conventional or reverse, and now with a wobbly seam ball to test the pitch out when there's nothing coming in the air - there is no bowler with such command of every technique. Dale Steyn is very, very good. Anderson is better.

Those improvements in every area aren't much taken in isolation. A bit of pace, a bit more accuracy, a bit more swing - it doesn't sound a lot, but together they've made him lethal. I single Anderson out because his improvement embodies the reasons England are so good. There are some very good players, but I don't know if any of them will finish their careers as shoo-ins for an all-time great Test side - Trott, Cook and KP have a claim, but it's not their fault their runs have been taken off largely less skilled attacks than the past. As a sum though, I think this team could give any opponent in history a run for its money.

It's all about the small print.