GOOGLIES & CHINAMEN
An Occasional Cricketing Journal
Edition 11
November 2003 Burning Rubber
I went with Young Dave Myers to a re-union at Magdalene College at the end of September. Dave is an Essex Boy who attended the Royal Liberty School, Romford. He took up cricket at college utilizing equipment he inherited in an old fashioned bag from his uncle. After college he played for a while at Dulwich and is one of the most senior members of our fraternity still playing. He now captains the Sunday side for Much Wenlock, a Shropshire village, and accumulated a couple of fifties this season, although he modestly pointed out that the bowling wasn’t up to much on either occasion.
Peter Butler is another man of Essex who I played football with in my Touche Ross days. He has been a member of the Chelmsford Mafia for some time and I hope to get him to contribute at some stage - perhaps an appreciation of Big Ronnie? Eric Tracey tells me that Peter took the back numbers of Googlies to France this summer and so should now be suitably updated.
I was delighted to hear recently from Wally Barratt and Allen Bruton. Wally was Club Secretary at South Hampstead before Roy Dodson and my perusal of the early sixties scorebooks indicate that he took a lot more wickets at South Hampstead than I had previously realized. Allen Bruton was always a delight to play with and would have a laconic quip to suit every occasion. In the latter part of his career Len Stubbs took to fielding in plimsoles. In one game he was put on to bowl at the Sidmouth Road end and after his first delivery Allen, who was at mid-on, called across to me at mid-wicket “Can you smell burning rubber?” Len overheard this and spent the rest of the over in hysterics.
Clive Coleman has also joined the distribution list. He took up umpiring in the seventies and became my regular umpire when I captained the Sunday first eleven in the latter half of that decade. He developed a high and consistent standard and was a credit to the club wherever he stood. It’s only when you don’t have a reliable umpire that you realize how valuable the good ones are.
Seasonal Matters Eventually England won the first test against Bangladesh quite convincingly with the Durham Sprayer bowling straight and the batsmen playing in almost an Australian manner to knock off the runs at over four an over. Rafique looked an accomplished spinner and the precocious Enamel al Haque, who bowls in shades, spun the ball more than anyone and looks an extraordinary prospect at just sixteen.
I am beginning to think that there is an aspect of Freeze Brain that applies to captaincy. I am referring, of course, to their irresistible urge to put the other side in even when they know that it is the wrong thing to do. Nass committed this cardinal sin in the first test in Australia last winter and never recovered. So what did Heath Streak do in the first test at the WACA? Will Australia’s 735 for 6 and Hayden’s world record 380 be enough to convince him and his fellow captains to bat first? I doubt it.
*
Incidentally I got lucky on Friday 10th October. I turned the television on when I got up at 7.30am and Hayden was on 371, which meant that I was able to watch him take the world record live. The magnitude of his achievement can be measured in that only two other batsmen, Sobers and Lara, have made the highest test score since 1938.
*
I also got lucky ten days later when I turned on at 6.45am and he was 86 not out and so I was able to watch him progress to 101 not out and complete over 500 runs in a two match test series.
Sledging, Banter and Bankers
Kelvin West has noted that Australia’s elite cricketers have defined a set of standards of behaviour and values by which they intend to play the game:
“ Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting announced an elite players' definition of the Spirit of Australian Cricket based on playing the game hard but fair, accepting umpires' decisions and leaving the game in better shape than it was before they arrived. The definition, which documents issues that Cricket Australia-contracted players have been discussing for several years, is designed as a guide to the shared standards of behaviour they expect of themselves and of the values they hold. The players' code, finalised during the contract-player camp in Perth
last weekend, does not condone on-field abuse or sledging, but accepts that banter between opponents is part of the competitive nature of cricket. Test captain Steve Waugh said Australian players had been discussing the importance of playing the game in a positive way for several years. “We believe we have made good progress, despite a handful of set backs. But we acknowledge that the intense and increasing scrutiny of Australian international cricketers on and off the field imposes very high standards on us as role models and ambassadors for the game,” he said.”
I think that we should all welcome this intent but I must admit that I share Kelvin’s scepticism that it will have much impact when the chips are down. It would be sad if all it meant was that the dreadful practice of sledging were merely downgraded, verbally, to banter.
During our visit to the Bush in September we were all surprised by the volume of noise on the pitch that would never have been tolerated by the captains that I played under. Interestingly, Gus Frazer made similar observations about returning to club cricket at Stanmore in an article in The Independent: “The first thing I noticed on my return to club cricket, sitting in the pavilion watching my side bat, was the incessant din and the amount of appealing that came from the fielding side. There is obviously a fair amount of noise from fielding sides in first-class cricket, but it was nowhere near as constant or as loud as that I experienced on Stanmore Common.”
During my visit to South Hampstead I learned that, apparently, you can teach an old dog new tricks. They tell me that the Jovial Banker, Lionel Haywood, has picked up a one-week ban from the Middlesex League for threatening an umpire. I’m beginning to wonder whether they were pulling my plonker throughout my visit to South Hampstead.
Project Salvation
In our ongoing effort to get to the root of the problem of England’s test cricket we offer observations from various sources this month
After his wake at WGCCC, the professor reported: “ So, I opened my Independent on Sunday and there, on the breakfast table was an article by Bob Willis who has formed the Cricket Reform Group to save English cricket. The CRG hold that the Counties take far too much of the money, there are too many players on county staffs, that clubs should be strengthened and linked to counties, and on and on. Could it be that Boring Bob has hacked onto your mailing list?”
In discussing the dearth of English spinners with me the Great Jack Morgan pointed out that since the advent of fully covered wickets there are no spinners wickets any more (except at Northampton). Consequently the English spinners can only hope to get tidy analyses and average about 40 runs per wicket. The overseas super spinners-Murali, Mushtaq Ahmed, Stuart McGill, Saqlain Mushtaq- will dominate any opportunities that present themselves.
Chris Martin-Jenkins writing in the Times proposed a six point plan for English Cricket which included: a ten year experiment with uncovered pitches and run-ups, salary caps for counties and a limit to the number of full time professionals, scrap the national league and keep the Twenty20, geographical phases to both the County Championship and C&G matches.
The Great Jack Morgan has severely reprimanded me for not presenting both sides of the argument regarding overseas players. “It seems obvious to me that English players must play against the highest possible standard of opposition in the championship and you admit yourself that the overseas players are the best players, yet you want to take them out and replace them with local players who are not currently good enough to get in their county teams. This is nonsense: you will weaken the championship and weaken the national team. The other argument, of course, is that other sports flourish with a much higher proportion of overseas players than cricket has.”
Everyone seems to want to have a good national team but every step forward seems dogged by a downside. The move to central contracts was warmly greeted a couple of years ago but now the contracted bowlers are wrapped in cotton wool and not allowed to play for their counties. James Anderson is given a game off if he manages ten overs in a game- what would his fellow Lancastrian, Brian Statham, have made of that?
Points-Pointless
When I met up with the Professor in September he tried to explain to me the system of points scoring in the Thames Valley League East, Second Division. It went something like this:
1. The side batting first gets 10 points for every 50 runs scored up to 300.
2. The side bowling first gets 10 points for every pair of wickets it takes after the first. E.g. none for the first, but 10 for the third, fifth etc.
3. The side batting first gets five points for each boundary scored but they get one point deducted for each dot ball.
4. The side batting first gets a 25 point bonus if the first five batsmen all bat left handed and the side bowling first get a similar bonus if their first five bowlers all deliver in left handed style.
5. The side batting first gets five points for every over it doesn’t use (the games are 50 over matches) as long as it declares its innings closed and is not bowled out.
6. The side bowling first gets five points for every over it doesn’t use providing it bowls the opposition out.
7. Got it so far? After the tea interval the rules change for reasons that no one understands. Incidentally, the side that wins the toss gets cakes for tea at the other teams expense. This does not affect the distribution of points but never fails to induce rampant gluttony into the proceedings.
8. The side batting second gets 10 points for every 40 runs scored, up to the total they are chasing. This rider was added when one club insisted on batting on after it had won the game in order to get more batting points.
9. The side bowling second gets 5 points for an LBW, 10 points for a clean bowled, but only 7 if the batsman plays-on. One-handed catches attract 9 points whilst two-handed catches warrant just 6 points. Run outs and stumpings are the star dismissals attracting 12 points each.
10.Any player wearing black socks secures a 25-point penalty for his side.
Whilst schoolboys are the official scorers in these matches, the games attract mathematicians from all over the Home Counties to participate in the points assessment. In some matches it is not until well after the end of the match that the points tally is finalized. In one instance the winning side had to return the end of season trophy that it had been awarded when it was discovered two weeks later that the opposition had in fact accumulated more points.
Paddington CC
Paddington CC is an extraordinary success story against most of the odds since it has survived as a Sunday side without its own ground. Arthur Gates recalls as a young boy getting on the coach each Sunday to travel to the far flung grounds that made up Paddington’s fixture list: Addiscombe. Alexander Park, Aspro, Abbots Langley, Burnham, Cheshunt, Hoddesdon, Prices Athletic, Catford Wanderers, Boyne Hill, Wickford, Totteridge and South Woodford. The jewel in their fixture crown in those days was Ealing.
Arthur identifies the best players in the fifties as having been Sid Smith, who played for the CCC, and David Johns, who later played for High Wycombe and captained Bucks. During the early sixties the side improved, as players such as Ron Bunning, Eric Shepherd, John Bennett, John Cox, Alan Cox and Kenny Day became regulars. By 1964 Arthur Gates was playing regularly.
This strengthening of the side enabled the eccentric barber, Ernie Perrone, who was the club secretary, to improve the fixture list and soon most of what were to become the Middlesex League clubs were included. The club’s ability to attract prestigious fixtures culminated in their attaining an annual fixture against the Cross Arrows at Lords.
A wandering side was a nightmare for the fixture secretary of a three-team club who had to find two away fixtures without anything to offer in exchange. Therefore, it needed to be special side to get into your fixture list. That’s not so say that a fixture against a wandering side was undesirable and there were definite pluses-they were aware of their nomadic frailties and were always pleased to play on your ground. In the sixties at South Hampstead we played against the Essex Wanderers, captained by Jerry Jerman, as well as Paddington.
The first time we played Paddington was a new cultural experience for us. Paddington treated every game as an extended family outing and wives, girlfriends, parents, children, grandchildren, former players and honorary members arrived long before the start of play. At South Hampstead they set up their stall in front of the willow tree and the rows of deckchairs and picnic layouts extended from the tennis courts to the fence on the Milverton Road boundary.
Paddington were also good spenders in the bar both at lunchtime and at the close of play. In the new pavilion era at South Hampstead (i.e. post 1966) this was an important consideration and it also showed us what could be achieved when the right events were planned. A number of the Paddington stalwarts became social members at South Hampstead and it was always good to see Tiny Day, Vic Chapman, Ernie Perrone, Stan Buckingham and others at the club.
The club suffered a tragedy in the late sixties when the wicket keeper, Kenny Day, died in a roofing accident. But such a loss seemed to strengthen the club’s resolve to survive. By the seventies second generation Bunnings, Shepherds, Chapmans and Coxes were featuring in the side and I am informed that under Chris Bunning’s guidance the club still prospers. Unfortunately in recent years John Cox, Ron Bunning and Eric Shepherd have all died.
Peter Ray
When I visited South Hampstead in September the match being played was a first team fixture against the newly re-constituted Wanderers and who do you think they had with them as their umpire? None other than the Wembley veteran, Peter Ray, who Steve Thompson told us about in G&C7 as having failed to qualify as a League umpire. Well this apparently is still his status, although he certainly looked the part with a trilby to frame his glowering visage.
Peter is one of those individuals who cannot keep a low profile and he had entered the conversation on Saturday at the Bush when it was recalled that when bowling he would add a vocal element to his slow left armers. If a batsman was having difficulty reading him he would announce at the point of release of the ball “Arm ball!” If a batsmen offered a chance to him, he would announce before he caught the ball “Caught and bowled!”
On this occasion he found it difficult to get into the game as the South Hampstead batsmen were retired in quick order without assistance from the man in white.
The Old Fart’s Column
It’s not like it was in my day. I remember when the spectators were three deep all round the ground and they went to get their tea from a little hut in the corner by the bowling green and were served by May Checkley and Lily Coleman and the players had their tea in a cabin where the mound is now until it burned down and Henry Malcolm scored a hundred every week and his brother, Douglas, did too most weeks and there was only a shower in the home dressing room and that was either cold or scalding hot and the water didn’t drain away properly and so all the players had verrucas or athletes foot and the beer in the bar was served out of wooden barrels which were ranged behind the barman and you had to open them by banging in a brass tap with a mallet and they wouldn’t accept any old applicants as members, you had to be proposed and seconded and demonstrate a keen interest in cricket and promise never to shout or barrack the players or get drunk and if they didn’t believe you knew enough about cricket you had to go on a two week course of instruction at Nosh Robertson’s and then take a written test when you got back and that’s not all, they used to fly a flag on the flagpole and if visiting teams remembered to bring a flag theirs would be flown on the pole too and the honorary members would help to do odd jobs around the pavilion and ground and there was two sight screens at each end and its not like it was in my day.
Match Report
I wasn’t at the Oval on Wednesday 19th June 2002. In fact I wasn’t even in the country and am indebted to George for saving me the Sports Section of The Independent from the following day. Surrey were hosts to Glamorgan in a 50 over Cheltenham & Gloucester Trophy match. The wicket was situated on the Gasometer side of the square and the boundary was just 60 yards on that side. Surrey won the toss and elected to bat.
Ian Ward and Ali Brown opened the batting for Surrey and when the former was bowled by the Welsh Wizard for 97 the Surrey score was 286. He had made his runs from only 95 balls and his innings had included four sixes. But he had been playing second fiddle throughout his knock. At the other end Ali Brown was blasting his way towards his second one-day double hundred; there have only been six scored all told. He reached his hundred in the 25th over, his double century in the 44th over and was finally bowled in the 50th over for 268. He hit 12 sixes and 30 fours in his stay at the crease. He beat the previous best one-day score of 222*(scored by Graham Pollock in 1974) at a canter and only just missed Ian Botham’s World Record of 13 sixes in a one day innings.
The Surrey total of 438 for 5 was easily the highest ever score made in one day cricket, particularly at the 50 over level. The Surrey bowling attack comprised exclusively international bowlers - Bicknell, Giddings, Ormond, Saqlain and Clarke - and so the outcome was presumably a formality? The Welsh Wizard opened the batting for Glamorgan and hit Bicknell’s first five deliveries for four, reached his fifty in 22 balls and went on to a hundred in 59 minutes from 56 balls. When he was caught off Hollioake for 119, David Hemp took over and reached his hundred in 85 balls but then fell immediately to Bicknell. However, Alan Dale kept things going through the 300s and David Thomas thrashed 71 from only 41 balls.
When the final over started Glamorgan had scored at the required rate of nearly nine an over for 49 overs and needed just ten to win off the final two balls, but they were down to their last wicket and Hollioake bowled Cosker to win the match.
Glamorgan’s score of 429 would have been the highest ever one-day score just six hours earlier and it is hard to imagine that the match aggregate of 867 will ever be approached. The extraordinary thing is that Ali Brown scored 268 and almost ended up on the losing side.
Strange Elevens
Bob Peach drew my attention to The Dane of 1955, in which Ronnie Amelot picked his best pre and post war Danes XIs. The pre-war side would not mean much to any of us but some of you will be able to recognise at least some of the post war side:
RA Peach (captain), JE Pickering, DO Baldry, AWJ Nienow, AH Dorrington, J Quail, GAM Eades, HE Burley, AJ Hawes, AH Gillott (WK), AP Turner.
Amelot also selected Bob Peach to captain his best ever side, which Nienow also made.
Well, you know what comes next! I explained all this to the Great Jack Morgan and he agreed to produce the best side from our years 1959-66. However, this became more difficult than we thought because it is almost impossible to assess those we didn’t play with against those we did. Besides, neither of us got into the team!
We decided to narrow it down to the four years that we played in the first team: 1963-6. In addition to the team, I have included some of Jack’s reasons for selection:
“I thought quite a bit about this, but in the end it was fairly clear-cut. I have included R Kingdon, whose performances in ‘66, especially, were already so classy as to make nonsense of your suggestion that we could get away with leaving him out. Although JSM got the most runs and George had the highest average (an astounding 50, which he probably never lets you forget), I know that RFK was the best batsman and has to be included. I can almost hear you objecting that this conflicts with my decision to omit him from my “best I have played with” XI, but I do not think that it does. There he was competing with county players (first class, county 2s or minor county players) or, in one case, an Australian state player, most of whom were also good bowlers and fine fielders; here he is only competing with the likes of you, me and the Professor!
It gets worse: I have picked Proctor too. He was top of the bowling and third in the batting in ‘66 and, although I am not taking much notice of the remarkable bowling figures and I have no idea how good a batsman he eventually became, I felt in ‘66 that he was better than any of us, apart from Roger. I have managed to sneak you in as captain. Cozens and Harvey probably would have needed their ‘67 form to get them in, though I have little information on that.”
I have exercised some editorial license and by agreeing to keep wicket I have managed to squeeze Jack into this side. I have also included the Professor at number six as a specialist cover fielder at the expense of one of the plethora of seamers that Jack had selected. We just won’t need them as George and Arthur will do all the bowling. Steve Caley seems to have got in as a mate of Jack’s. I have selected Ralph ahead of Russ as umpire since I decided he would probably be more fun. Besides Russ will, no doubt, be busy with the catering.
J Morgan
R Kingdon
F Foreman
J Sharp (C & W)
R Proctor
J Adams
G Sharp
M Cope
S Caley
A Gates
M Jordan
I Gibb – scorer
R Pooley – umpire
We will never know if this bunch would beat Bob Peach’s illustrious team but funny things happen in cricket.
Irritating trends in modern cricket-number 10 When the Football World Cup was played in Mexico in 1970 our Latino cousins decided that one way to overcome the tedium of watching their side get beaten by overseas wallahs was to stand up in rotation. They perfected this and to the amusement of the world the Mexican Wave was born. It probably started as an accident with adjacent parties getting up to go for a slash almost simultaneously and the next guy knowing nothing about football thought it was time to leave and so on.
Thirty years later it has been adopted at many large stadium sporting events. Incredibly this has extended to test matches and the proponents of this adult version of musical chairs seem to be able to involve most of the spectators in the ground in this pointless antic. Except, of course, the inhabitants of the pavilion who, quite rightly, will have nothing to do with it.
It seems to me that the people who pay to go test matches will do almost anything to avoid sitting down and concentrating on the match itself, which should be quite enough to engage their attention for the duration of the day’s play. Maybe it has something to do with short attention spans. They also pay significant sums of money to attend these matches. Soon the cricket will be completely superfluous to their activities. What they seem to want to do is attend an all day street party. I wonder if they would pay £45 a head to come and spend the day in one of my warehouses? We would supply them with fancy dress and A4 cards with 4 and 6 printed on them, rock music could be blasted at them periodically and they could Mexican Wave to their heart’s content.
Earlier Editions
I will be please to email you a copy of the earlier editions of Googlies & Chinamen, if you missed or have mislaid them:
Edition 1 includes: Tour Madness
Edition 2 includes: One or Two Short and Conspiracy Theory
Edition 3 includes: Naff & Absentee Journalism, The Russ Collins Circus
Edition 4 includes: World Cup Awards, Rhyming Slang, Duckworth Lewis
Edition 5 includes: The Cult of the Celebrity Umpire, The Great Jack Morgan, Just Like the Ivy
Edition 6 includes: Duckworth Lewis Revisited, Appalling Fielders, The SH Wed XI-1964
Edition 7 includes: A-Level Sport, The SH Wed XI-1968
Edition 8 includes: O-Level Cricket, The SH Sixes, Hitting an Eric
Edition 9 includes: Project Salvation, Shits, Ron Hooker’s Benefit Match, Arthur Gates’ Two Seasons
Edition 10 includes: Hawkeye, Morgan the Bowler, Behind the Sightscreen
Just send me an email to secure your copies.
If you received this edition through a third party, please send me your email address to ensure that you get on the main mailing list for future editions.
Googlies and Chinamen
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James Sharp
Broad Lee House
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Tel & fax: 01298 70237
Email: tiksha@btinternet.com
An Occasional Cricketing Journal
Edition 11
November 2003 Burning Rubber
I went with Young Dave Myers to a re-union at Magdalene College at the end of September. Dave is an Essex Boy who attended the Royal Liberty School, Romford. He took up cricket at college utilizing equipment he inherited in an old fashioned bag from his uncle. After college he played for a while at Dulwich and is one of the most senior members of our fraternity still playing. He now captains the Sunday side for Much Wenlock, a Shropshire village, and accumulated a couple of fifties this season, although he modestly pointed out that the bowling wasn’t up to much on either occasion.
Peter Butler is another man of Essex who I played football with in my Touche Ross days. He has been a member of the Chelmsford Mafia for some time and I hope to get him to contribute at some stage - perhaps an appreciation of Big Ronnie? Eric Tracey tells me that Peter took the back numbers of Googlies to France this summer and so should now be suitably updated.
I was delighted to hear recently from Wally Barratt and Allen Bruton. Wally was Club Secretary at South Hampstead before Roy Dodson and my perusal of the early sixties scorebooks indicate that he took a lot more wickets at South Hampstead than I had previously realized. Allen Bruton was always a delight to play with and would have a laconic quip to suit every occasion. In the latter part of his career Len Stubbs took to fielding in plimsoles. In one game he was put on to bowl at the Sidmouth Road end and after his first delivery Allen, who was at mid-on, called across to me at mid-wicket “Can you smell burning rubber?” Len overheard this and spent the rest of the over in hysterics.
Clive Coleman has also joined the distribution list. He took up umpiring in the seventies and became my regular umpire when I captained the Sunday first eleven in the latter half of that decade. He developed a high and consistent standard and was a credit to the club wherever he stood. It’s only when you don’t have a reliable umpire that you realize how valuable the good ones are.
Seasonal Matters Eventually England won the first test against Bangladesh quite convincingly with the Durham Sprayer bowling straight and the batsmen playing in almost an Australian manner to knock off the runs at over four an over. Rafique looked an accomplished spinner and the precocious Enamel al Haque, who bowls in shades, spun the ball more than anyone and looks an extraordinary prospect at just sixteen.
I am beginning to think that there is an aspect of Freeze Brain that applies to captaincy. I am referring, of course, to their irresistible urge to put the other side in even when they know that it is the wrong thing to do. Nass committed this cardinal sin in the first test in Australia last winter and never recovered. So what did Heath Streak do in the first test at the WACA? Will Australia’s 735 for 6 and Hayden’s world record 380 be enough to convince him and his fellow captains to bat first? I doubt it.
*
Incidentally I got lucky on Friday 10th October. I turned the television on when I got up at 7.30am and Hayden was on 371, which meant that I was able to watch him take the world record live. The magnitude of his achievement can be measured in that only two other batsmen, Sobers and Lara, have made the highest test score since 1938.
*
I also got lucky ten days later when I turned on at 6.45am and he was 86 not out and so I was able to watch him progress to 101 not out and complete over 500 runs in a two match test series.
Sledging, Banter and Bankers
Kelvin West has noted that Australia’s elite cricketers have defined a set of standards of behaviour and values by which they intend to play the game:
“ Steve Waugh and Ricky Ponting announced an elite players' definition of the Spirit of Australian Cricket based on playing the game hard but fair, accepting umpires' decisions and leaving the game in better shape than it was before they arrived. The definition, which documents issues that Cricket Australia-contracted players have been discussing for several years, is designed as a guide to the shared standards of behaviour they expect of themselves and of the values they hold. The players' code, finalised during the contract-player camp in Perth
last weekend, does not condone on-field abuse or sledging, but accepts that banter between opponents is part of the competitive nature of cricket. Test captain Steve Waugh said Australian players had been discussing the importance of playing the game in a positive way for several years. “We believe we have made good progress, despite a handful of set backs. But we acknowledge that the intense and increasing scrutiny of Australian international cricketers on and off the field imposes very high standards on us as role models and ambassadors for the game,” he said.”
I think that we should all welcome this intent but I must admit that I share Kelvin’s scepticism that it will have much impact when the chips are down. It would be sad if all it meant was that the dreadful practice of sledging were merely downgraded, verbally, to banter.
During our visit to the Bush in September we were all surprised by the volume of noise on the pitch that would never have been tolerated by the captains that I played under. Interestingly, Gus Frazer made similar observations about returning to club cricket at Stanmore in an article in The Independent: “The first thing I noticed on my return to club cricket, sitting in the pavilion watching my side bat, was the incessant din and the amount of appealing that came from the fielding side. There is obviously a fair amount of noise from fielding sides in first-class cricket, but it was nowhere near as constant or as loud as that I experienced on Stanmore Common.”
During my visit to South Hampstead I learned that, apparently, you can teach an old dog new tricks. They tell me that the Jovial Banker, Lionel Haywood, has picked up a one-week ban from the Middlesex League for threatening an umpire. I’m beginning to wonder whether they were pulling my plonker throughout my visit to South Hampstead.
Project Salvation
In our ongoing effort to get to the root of the problem of England’s test cricket we offer observations from various sources this month
After his wake at WGCCC, the professor reported: “ So, I opened my Independent on Sunday and there, on the breakfast table was an article by Bob Willis who has formed the Cricket Reform Group to save English cricket. The CRG hold that the Counties take far too much of the money, there are too many players on county staffs, that clubs should be strengthened and linked to counties, and on and on. Could it be that Boring Bob has hacked onto your mailing list?”
In discussing the dearth of English spinners with me the Great Jack Morgan pointed out that since the advent of fully covered wickets there are no spinners wickets any more (except at Northampton). Consequently the English spinners can only hope to get tidy analyses and average about 40 runs per wicket. The overseas super spinners-Murali, Mushtaq Ahmed, Stuart McGill, Saqlain Mushtaq- will dominate any opportunities that present themselves.
Chris Martin-Jenkins writing in the Times proposed a six point plan for English Cricket which included: a ten year experiment with uncovered pitches and run-ups, salary caps for counties and a limit to the number of full time professionals, scrap the national league and keep the Twenty20, geographical phases to both the County Championship and C&G matches.
The Great Jack Morgan has severely reprimanded me for not presenting both sides of the argument regarding overseas players. “It seems obvious to me that English players must play against the highest possible standard of opposition in the championship and you admit yourself that the overseas players are the best players, yet you want to take them out and replace them with local players who are not currently good enough to get in their county teams. This is nonsense: you will weaken the championship and weaken the national team. The other argument, of course, is that other sports flourish with a much higher proportion of overseas players than cricket has.”
Everyone seems to want to have a good national team but every step forward seems dogged by a downside. The move to central contracts was warmly greeted a couple of years ago but now the contracted bowlers are wrapped in cotton wool and not allowed to play for their counties. James Anderson is given a game off if he manages ten overs in a game- what would his fellow Lancastrian, Brian Statham, have made of that?
Points-Pointless
When I met up with the Professor in September he tried to explain to me the system of points scoring in the Thames Valley League East, Second Division. It went something like this:
1. The side batting first gets 10 points for every 50 runs scored up to 300.
2. The side bowling first gets 10 points for every pair of wickets it takes after the first. E.g. none for the first, but 10 for the third, fifth etc.
3. The side batting first gets five points for each boundary scored but they get one point deducted for each dot ball.
4. The side batting first gets a 25 point bonus if the first five batsmen all bat left handed and the side bowling first get a similar bonus if their first five bowlers all deliver in left handed style.
5. The side batting first gets five points for every over it doesn’t use (the games are 50 over matches) as long as it declares its innings closed and is not bowled out.
6. The side bowling first gets five points for every over it doesn’t use providing it bowls the opposition out.
7. Got it so far? After the tea interval the rules change for reasons that no one understands. Incidentally, the side that wins the toss gets cakes for tea at the other teams expense. This does not affect the distribution of points but never fails to induce rampant gluttony into the proceedings.
8. The side batting second gets 10 points for every 40 runs scored, up to the total they are chasing. This rider was added when one club insisted on batting on after it had won the game in order to get more batting points.
9. The side bowling second gets 5 points for an LBW, 10 points for a clean bowled, but only 7 if the batsman plays-on. One-handed catches attract 9 points whilst two-handed catches warrant just 6 points. Run outs and stumpings are the star dismissals attracting 12 points each.
10.Any player wearing black socks secures a 25-point penalty for his side.
Whilst schoolboys are the official scorers in these matches, the games attract mathematicians from all over the Home Counties to participate in the points assessment. In some matches it is not until well after the end of the match that the points tally is finalized. In one instance the winning side had to return the end of season trophy that it had been awarded when it was discovered two weeks later that the opposition had in fact accumulated more points.
Paddington CC
Paddington CC is an extraordinary success story against most of the odds since it has survived as a Sunday side without its own ground. Arthur Gates recalls as a young boy getting on the coach each Sunday to travel to the far flung grounds that made up Paddington’s fixture list: Addiscombe. Alexander Park, Aspro, Abbots Langley, Burnham, Cheshunt, Hoddesdon, Prices Athletic, Catford Wanderers, Boyne Hill, Wickford, Totteridge and South Woodford. The jewel in their fixture crown in those days was Ealing.
Arthur identifies the best players in the fifties as having been Sid Smith, who played for the CCC, and David Johns, who later played for High Wycombe and captained Bucks. During the early sixties the side improved, as players such as Ron Bunning, Eric Shepherd, John Bennett, John Cox, Alan Cox and Kenny Day became regulars. By 1964 Arthur Gates was playing regularly.
This strengthening of the side enabled the eccentric barber, Ernie Perrone, who was the club secretary, to improve the fixture list and soon most of what were to become the Middlesex League clubs were included. The club’s ability to attract prestigious fixtures culminated in their attaining an annual fixture against the Cross Arrows at Lords.
A wandering side was a nightmare for the fixture secretary of a three-team club who had to find two away fixtures without anything to offer in exchange. Therefore, it needed to be special side to get into your fixture list. That’s not so say that a fixture against a wandering side was undesirable and there were definite pluses-they were aware of their nomadic frailties and were always pleased to play on your ground. In the sixties at South Hampstead we played against the Essex Wanderers, captained by Jerry Jerman, as well as Paddington.
The first time we played Paddington was a new cultural experience for us. Paddington treated every game as an extended family outing and wives, girlfriends, parents, children, grandchildren, former players and honorary members arrived long before the start of play. At South Hampstead they set up their stall in front of the willow tree and the rows of deckchairs and picnic layouts extended from the tennis courts to the fence on the Milverton Road boundary.
Paddington were also good spenders in the bar both at lunchtime and at the close of play. In the new pavilion era at South Hampstead (i.e. post 1966) this was an important consideration and it also showed us what could be achieved when the right events were planned. A number of the Paddington stalwarts became social members at South Hampstead and it was always good to see Tiny Day, Vic Chapman, Ernie Perrone, Stan Buckingham and others at the club.
The club suffered a tragedy in the late sixties when the wicket keeper, Kenny Day, died in a roofing accident. But such a loss seemed to strengthen the club’s resolve to survive. By the seventies second generation Bunnings, Shepherds, Chapmans and Coxes were featuring in the side and I am informed that under Chris Bunning’s guidance the club still prospers. Unfortunately in recent years John Cox, Ron Bunning and Eric Shepherd have all died.
Peter Ray
When I visited South Hampstead in September the match being played was a first team fixture against the newly re-constituted Wanderers and who do you think they had with them as their umpire? None other than the Wembley veteran, Peter Ray, who Steve Thompson told us about in G&C7 as having failed to qualify as a League umpire. Well this apparently is still his status, although he certainly looked the part with a trilby to frame his glowering visage.
Peter is one of those individuals who cannot keep a low profile and he had entered the conversation on Saturday at the Bush when it was recalled that when bowling he would add a vocal element to his slow left armers. If a batsman was having difficulty reading him he would announce at the point of release of the ball “Arm ball!” If a batsmen offered a chance to him, he would announce before he caught the ball “Caught and bowled!”
On this occasion he found it difficult to get into the game as the South Hampstead batsmen were retired in quick order without assistance from the man in white.
The Old Fart’s Column
It’s not like it was in my day. I remember when the spectators were three deep all round the ground and they went to get their tea from a little hut in the corner by the bowling green and were served by May Checkley and Lily Coleman and the players had their tea in a cabin where the mound is now until it burned down and Henry Malcolm scored a hundred every week and his brother, Douglas, did too most weeks and there was only a shower in the home dressing room and that was either cold or scalding hot and the water didn’t drain away properly and so all the players had verrucas or athletes foot and the beer in the bar was served out of wooden barrels which were ranged behind the barman and you had to open them by banging in a brass tap with a mallet and they wouldn’t accept any old applicants as members, you had to be proposed and seconded and demonstrate a keen interest in cricket and promise never to shout or barrack the players or get drunk and if they didn’t believe you knew enough about cricket you had to go on a two week course of instruction at Nosh Robertson’s and then take a written test when you got back and that’s not all, they used to fly a flag on the flagpole and if visiting teams remembered to bring a flag theirs would be flown on the pole too and the honorary members would help to do odd jobs around the pavilion and ground and there was two sight screens at each end and its not like it was in my day.
Match Report
I wasn’t at the Oval on Wednesday 19th June 2002. In fact I wasn’t even in the country and am indebted to George for saving me the Sports Section of The Independent from the following day. Surrey were hosts to Glamorgan in a 50 over Cheltenham & Gloucester Trophy match. The wicket was situated on the Gasometer side of the square and the boundary was just 60 yards on that side. Surrey won the toss and elected to bat.
Ian Ward and Ali Brown opened the batting for Surrey and when the former was bowled by the Welsh Wizard for 97 the Surrey score was 286. He had made his runs from only 95 balls and his innings had included four sixes. But he had been playing second fiddle throughout his knock. At the other end Ali Brown was blasting his way towards his second one-day double hundred; there have only been six scored all told. He reached his hundred in the 25th over, his double century in the 44th over and was finally bowled in the 50th over for 268. He hit 12 sixes and 30 fours in his stay at the crease. He beat the previous best one-day score of 222*(scored by Graham Pollock in 1974) at a canter and only just missed Ian Botham’s World Record of 13 sixes in a one day innings.
The Surrey total of 438 for 5 was easily the highest ever score made in one day cricket, particularly at the 50 over level. The Surrey bowling attack comprised exclusively international bowlers - Bicknell, Giddings, Ormond, Saqlain and Clarke - and so the outcome was presumably a formality? The Welsh Wizard opened the batting for Glamorgan and hit Bicknell’s first five deliveries for four, reached his fifty in 22 balls and went on to a hundred in 59 minutes from 56 balls. When he was caught off Hollioake for 119, David Hemp took over and reached his hundred in 85 balls but then fell immediately to Bicknell. However, Alan Dale kept things going through the 300s and David Thomas thrashed 71 from only 41 balls.
When the final over started Glamorgan had scored at the required rate of nearly nine an over for 49 overs and needed just ten to win off the final two balls, but they were down to their last wicket and Hollioake bowled Cosker to win the match.
Glamorgan’s score of 429 would have been the highest ever one-day score just six hours earlier and it is hard to imagine that the match aggregate of 867 will ever be approached. The extraordinary thing is that Ali Brown scored 268 and almost ended up on the losing side.
Strange Elevens
Bob Peach drew my attention to The Dane of 1955, in which Ronnie Amelot picked his best pre and post war Danes XIs. The pre-war side would not mean much to any of us but some of you will be able to recognise at least some of the post war side:
RA Peach (captain), JE Pickering, DO Baldry, AWJ Nienow, AH Dorrington, J Quail, GAM Eades, HE Burley, AJ Hawes, AH Gillott (WK), AP Turner.
Amelot also selected Bob Peach to captain his best ever side, which Nienow also made.
Well, you know what comes next! I explained all this to the Great Jack Morgan and he agreed to produce the best side from our years 1959-66. However, this became more difficult than we thought because it is almost impossible to assess those we didn’t play with against those we did. Besides, neither of us got into the team!
We decided to narrow it down to the four years that we played in the first team: 1963-6. In addition to the team, I have included some of Jack’s reasons for selection:
“I thought quite a bit about this, but in the end it was fairly clear-cut. I have included R Kingdon, whose performances in ‘66, especially, were already so classy as to make nonsense of your suggestion that we could get away with leaving him out. Although JSM got the most runs and George had the highest average (an astounding 50, which he probably never lets you forget), I know that RFK was the best batsman and has to be included. I can almost hear you objecting that this conflicts with my decision to omit him from my “best I have played with” XI, but I do not think that it does. There he was competing with county players (first class, county 2s or minor county players) or, in one case, an Australian state player, most of whom were also good bowlers and fine fielders; here he is only competing with the likes of you, me and the Professor!
It gets worse: I have picked Proctor too. He was top of the bowling and third in the batting in ‘66 and, although I am not taking much notice of the remarkable bowling figures and I have no idea how good a batsman he eventually became, I felt in ‘66 that he was better than any of us, apart from Roger. I have managed to sneak you in as captain. Cozens and Harvey probably would have needed their ‘67 form to get them in, though I have little information on that.”
I have exercised some editorial license and by agreeing to keep wicket I have managed to squeeze Jack into this side. I have also included the Professor at number six as a specialist cover fielder at the expense of one of the plethora of seamers that Jack had selected. We just won’t need them as George and Arthur will do all the bowling. Steve Caley seems to have got in as a mate of Jack’s. I have selected Ralph ahead of Russ as umpire since I decided he would probably be more fun. Besides Russ will, no doubt, be busy with the catering.
J Morgan
R Kingdon
F Foreman
J Sharp (C & W)
R Proctor
J Adams
G Sharp
M Cope
S Caley
A Gates
M Jordan
I Gibb – scorer
R Pooley – umpire
We will never know if this bunch would beat Bob Peach’s illustrious team but funny things happen in cricket.
Irritating trends in modern cricket-number 10 When the Football World Cup was played in Mexico in 1970 our Latino cousins decided that one way to overcome the tedium of watching their side get beaten by overseas wallahs was to stand up in rotation. They perfected this and to the amusement of the world the Mexican Wave was born. It probably started as an accident with adjacent parties getting up to go for a slash almost simultaneously and the next guy knowing nothing about football thought it was time to leave and so on.
Thirty years later it has been adopted at many large stadium sporting events. Incredibly this has extended to test matches and the proponents of this adult version of musical chairs seem to be able to involve most of the spectators in the ground in this pointless antic. Except, of course, the inhabitants of the pavilion who, quite rightly, will have nothing to do with it.
It seems to me that the people who pay to go test matches will do almost anything to avoid sitting down and concentrating on the match itself, which should be quite enough to engage their attention for the duration of the day’s play. Maybe it has something to do with short attention spans. They also pay significant sums of money to attend these matches. Soon the cricket will be completely superfluous to their activities. What they seem to want to do is attend an all day street party. I wonder if they would pay £45 a head to come and spend the day in one of my warehouses? We would supply them with fancy dress and A4 cards with 4 and 6 printed on them, rock music could be blasted at them periodically and they could Mexican Wave to their heart’s content.
Earlier Editions
I will be please to email you a copy of the earlier editions of Googlies & Chinamen, if you missed or have mislaid them:
Edition 1 includes: Tour Madness
Edition 2 includes: One or Two Short and Conspiracy Theory
Edition 3 includes: Naff & Absentee Journalism, The Russ Collins Circus
Edition 4 includes: World Cup Awards, Rhyming Slang, Duckworth Lewis
Edition 5 includes: The Cult of the Celebrity Umpire, The Great Jack Morgan, Just Like the Ivy
Edition 6 includes: Duckworth Lewis Revisited, Appalling Fielders, The SH Wed XI-1964
Edition 7 includes: A-Level Sport, The SH Wed XI-1968
Edition 8 includes: O-Level Cricket, The SH Sixes, Hitting an Eric
Edition 9 includes: Project Salvation, Shits, Ron Hooker’s Benefit Match, Arthur Gates’ Two Seasons
Edition 10 includes: Hawkeye, Morgan the Bowler, Behind the Sightscreen
Just send me an email to secure your copies.
If you received this edition through a third party, please send me your email address to ensure that you get on the main mailing list for future editions.
Googlies and Chinamen
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