GOOGLIES & CHINAMEN
An Occasional Cricketing Journal
Edition 2
February 2003
Miserable Git
Thanks for all the encouraging responses to the first edition. An idle morning in Worcestershire enabled me to progress this offering a little ahead of schedule. The Professor and George dubbed my emailed realism (pessimism) as the outpourings of a Miserable Git - bollocks to them, particularly as they really agree!
It’s been great to hear from friends and dressing room fellows who I haven’t stripped in front of for years. Please continue to find others to mail this out to. It won’t surprise those who know him that Steve Thompson was unable to open a Word document (he wasn’t called Shambles for nothing). He has joined Bob Cozens on the hard copy mail out list. I will begrudgingly continue this antiquated form of communication for those who have to live out their nostalgia.
It’s also good to welcome some new friends and acquaintances that have never heard of St Clement Danes Grammar School or South Hampstead Cricket Club. I hope that you will be able to identify with these self-indulgently nostalgic references.
Thank you to those who are still able to string two words together and have submitted views for inclusion in this edition. Gary Rhodes has already revisited old grudges, communicated at length with Bob Proctor, reprimanded me for poor email etiquette and referred to someone as the Great Jack Morgan…
So without further ado, on with the bigotry.
One or Two Short
During the second one-day VB final (did anyone ever find out what VB stood for?), the Australian batsmen ran a comfortable two, probably inside the ring to Big Ronnie, only for the Umpire to signal one short. This is not actually possible since if one of the batsmen didn’t make his ground then both of the runs must have been short. If the Umpire will award one for a two with one short you have to ask yourself how far you actually have to run to be entitled to the one? Perhaps all you have to do is show intent to run two, perhaps by calling two enthusiastically when you hit it and then setting off at a pace only to scamper back to your respective ends when you feel it appropriate.
This may seem unimportant but could be an excellent tactic if you are trying to keep the strike at the end of an innings. This is something Collingwood doesn’t seem to have heard of, as he watched from the non-striker’s end first Caddick and then the absurd Anderson fall with 6 required to win. By adopting the above strategy you can get one and keep the strike. Someone is going to tell me that the batsmen have to cross, but I don’t think that that is in the laws of the game.
Talking of Anderson how confident did you feel when he walked to the crease in VB final 2? He had a silly smile on his face that said, “I’m not supposed to be here”. He then proceeded to bat in that manner; missing both balls he faced and being stumped off the second - yes stumped, not run out, since he was not attempting a run.
What advice do you think Nass gave him before he went to the middle? What preparation had he undertaken to participate in a last wicket stand with only six required in an extremely important international match for his country? This is why the England team performs so poorly. They are paid as professionals but perform like amateurs.
Anglo-Australian Views My initial distribution included some views on leadership and management and the impact on the respective English and Australian sides. It provoked this response from Dick Crawshay, an Old Dane, who lives in Oz
Interesting reading and I am broadly in agreement.
However, I think the gulf between the two teams is more than a couple of players and attitude. This can be most clearly illustrated by the wide measure of skills in fielding. That's not just commitment; it's also a honed skill, exemplified by Australian training techniques.
So here is another major difference. The Australian Cricket Academy in Adelaide has been taking young players and developing their skills and attitudes for nearly twenty years. This, I think, is a key reason for Australia's recent supremacy.
In England, it has been left to the individual counties to develop players on a fragmented basis, until recently, at least. Whilst overseas players have been accepted into the Academy, they have not received the continuous follow up that local youngsters get.
Every single Australian player is a strength in the field. The captain does not have to look for spots to hide players, England does.
Fielding apart, there is only one English player who would challenge for a place in the Australian side. I think that alone illustrates the huge gulf between the sides.
Perhaps there is yet another reason. Cricket is a glamour sport in Australia, football (called soccer here) isn't. The massive pay for footballers is not an issue here, in England it is. The brilliant young all round sportsman is more likely to be attracted to Football and its rewards rather than cricket in England. Less so here. That means you lose the services of youngsters who could well blossom as brilliant cricketers like the Comptons of the 50's.
Don’t forget to take your pads Back in December as the English players were falling like flies and the Professor was busy packing his bags for his sortie to the Antipodes, it became increasingly likely that he would be called upon to play. George was responsible for tendering some sound advice - he strongly recommended that the Professor should decline any invitation to don the mumsies since it would almost certainly involve broken fingers at the least, but if he felt the call of his country should not be ignored, even at his pace he should not bowl a bouncer at Brett Lee!
For those who never had the pleasure of watching the Professor bowl (he only ever did when he was captain), suffice it to say he was less than military medium and bowled with so round an arm that he could pick the umpires pocket with every delivery.
Which reminds me – Is Ashley Giles the unluckiest cricketer of 2002, having incurred his injury at the hands of the Durham Sprayer?
Where was Thorpey?
You may recall that Thorpey, as they call him at the Oval, declined his invitation to join Nass and the gang because his personal commitments couldn’t accommodate them. However, he regularly turned up in the Sky studios, with all the unsocial hours that that entailed, to act as an expert reviewer of play. His expertise revolved around such penetrating responses as: “yes, well its not that easy”, and “they seemed to do their best”. Good to have you involved Thorpey.
The Welsh Wizard also acted in that capacity, although he had not been asked to join Nass’ gang. This was rather insulting since they used everyone else who had bowled an off spinner in the County Championship in 2002- Snape, Batty and Dawson as well as Vaughan. Apparently, even Foreman was listed ahead of our favourite Welshman.
George, in a flight of fancy in December, saw the WW as England’s saviour- “They send for Croft who then averages 84 in the one-dayers as a pinch hitter, turns the ball at right angles at Sydney, mesmerises Ponting at Melbourne and goes on to lead England to a remarkable World Cup victory in the New Year. England scour Wales for more genius.” The Professor asked what medication he was on.
The End of the Fat men?
One aspect of the changes being introduced by the current Australian side is that we might have seen the last of fat men in First Class Cricket. They have enforced a fitness regime that seems to involve, amongst other things, doing sit-ups for fun. All successful innovations are imitated and it won’t be long before all international sides are as svelte and as slim as the 2003 version of Shane Hamburger Warne.
So who will this most effect? Number one on the World Fatties stage is the Pakistani Podge, Inzaman-ul –Haq. He can normally be found at slip, although, in the Pakistan side, he is unlikely to recognise the wicket keeper, who is changed each match. In the field his lumbering frame makes Big Ronnie look graceful. It doesn’t seem right to include Ian Blackwell as an international cricketer, but if he is to play in that exalted arena then he will have to shed a couple of stone at least and his county colleague, Marcus, won’t avoid the big slim by looking the other way!
But perhaps this is a turn for the worse. Does it mean historically that we would have had to do without such veritable lardoes as Colin Milburn, Colin Cowdrey and Bishan Bedi?
In the county game we would also have had to do without Bomber Wells and David Shepherd. Bomber Wells wore Pickwickian glasses and bowled off-spinners for Notts and was so rotund that he dispensed with a run-up completely. David Shepherd, formerly a left-hander with Gloucestershire and now a test match umpire, is one of the true fatties. As a man of suspicion he stands on one leg whenever Nelson is reached, but he is then unable to maintain balance as his girth spins him round in a pirouette.
Big Ronnie’s Bowling Action
Everyone is wondering where Big Ronnie got his bowling action. This, though, is not a puzzle to those who played for or against South Hampstead CC in the 1960s. Colin Ezer at this time perfected the extraordinary ability to approach the crease at a faster pace than the subsequent propulsion of the delivery. It did, of course, as in Big Ronnie’s case, only fool the batsman once, since, in effect, every delivery was a slower one. The only difference between the architect from South Hampstead and Big Ronnie is that the former swung the ball more.
Pugsley’s Six
Sooner or later Pugsley’s six was bound to get a mention in these columns and so we might as well get it over with now. It happened in cricket week at St Clement Danes in 1966 and we were playing against the London Schools Colts side (under 15s). We had batted first and made steady progress towards a reasonable total. Bob Proctor, who must have been 15 at the time, was batting in what was about to be the declaration over. He launched an on-drive that cleared not only the boundary but also the new library building that was thirty yards beyond the boundary and three stories high. We abandoned recovering the ball and declared. I have never seen a bigger hit in amateur cricket. It was Russ Collins who called him Pugsley, but I never knew why.
In Memoriam
Dick Simpson died just before Christmas, he was 83. Most people, given his life style, were surprised that he lasted that long, but he was nothing if not resilient. He was also extraordinarily generous. Whenever he had cash he would spread it around liberally in the bar and often at nightclubs as well. His capacity for booze consumption was staggering although his language could deteriorate as the session progressed.
I first encountered Dick as a friend of Ron Impey’s in 1964. Dick seemed to run Surbiton CC at the time in conjunction with a little bald man called Ron Ferry, who spoke immaculately and kept wicket badly. Dick soon became involved in the Wednesday XI at South Hampstead and was responsible for introducing Ossie Burton to that club. He is owed an enormous debt for that, if nothing else. By this stage Dick’s playing days were virtually over and I was never able to find an independent witness who could tell me how good a player he was. I suppose it doesn’t matter since he loved the game and that’s what really counts.
Dick was always a man of mystery. No one knew where he lived and he could only be contacted through a web of telephone messages. Rumour had it that he was involved with the Great Train robbers, that his money came from robbing banks and that Ossie was his full time minder. He would periodically disappear, as if lying low, and on one occasion to the horror of Colin Price, an Australian batsman playing a season at South Hampstead, decided to doss on the couch at his flat for four weeks! I suspect in his later years his financial status depended significantly on the performance of selected horses.
He was also a musician. His instrument of choice was the clarinet but when I knew him he could no longer play it because his lip had “gone”. He would on occasion play the piano and his great love was Jazz. He knew many musicians and once famously appeared at South Hampstead with Stefan Grappelli.
My Mum tells the story of taking Dick to the house of a friend where, after having arrived pissed, he was asked to play their white piano. After staring for a few moments at the closed lid he exclaimed, “ I can’t play this Audrey, its got no fucking black notes.”
I last saw Dick in 1990, but he was larger than life, not the sort of person you forget.
Too Old?
I can remember when the Surrey Stumper was picked for the England team as a opening batsman and on occasion he got his “working through midwicket” going well and played some creditable innings. It was then decided that one way of stopping a real wicket keeper from playing in the one-dayers was to get a batter to do it and Stewarty, as they call him at the Oval, got the job. To start with he was awful but after several years of practise he now does a reasonable job.
The big question, though, is – is he too old to carry on? At 39 he is over twice as old as Parthiv Patel, the Indian keeper, and is looking increasingly like Kirk Douglas. But the boys on Sky keep telling us that he is the fittest member of the team. I can’t work out whether this is a tribute to him or an indictment of the rest of the sorry bunch.
I was fortunate enough to play a few times in the mid sixties with the great Norman Cooper, although he was probably over sixty by this time. He stood up to all bowlers and let out grunts as his immaculate hands took the ball. However, if some southern relative of the Durham Sprayer fired one down the leg side, Norman would remain motionless and the epithet ”Fuck it “ would resound round the ground.
Maybe the Surrey Stumper has been given the job for life and we can look forward to him developing his own collection of idiosyncrasies.
Irritating trends in modern cricket-Number One
In 2001 I went with George and young Dave Myers to the day-nighter at Old Trafford when many weird things happened including the lights being on for the whole match, the Umpires conferring for bad light at the beginning of the England innings and England getting thumped (alright not so weird). At one stage during the England innings they needed 645 under the Duckworth Lewis method.
It was the first time for a while that any of us had been to an international match and we were horrified to hear that when a boundary was struck it was accompanied over the public address system by a blast of rock music. This appalling feature of the modern game serves no purpose whatsoever, other than to irritate the shit out of you. What are you supposed to do – sing along with it, clap louder to drown it out?
But it actually has a slightly funny side in that the person in charge of turning it on clearly has no knowledge of the game and if he or she hasn’t followed events it is nevertheless implemented late, sometimes when the next ball is being bowled. It shows what a good job the televisers do, as it is not audible down the tube.
When I first went to watch cricket at Lords there was complete silence as the bowler started his run-up. If yobos in the Tavern yelled out drunkenly they were ejected from the ground. It was the one-day game that attracted football fans and their habits into cricket - a very heavy price was and continues to be paid.
Who do you support?
Although I have lived in the High Peak for twelve years now I feel almost no affinity towards Derbyshire CCC. It’s always the Middlesex score I turn to first in The Times or on teletex or even these days on the Internet. I haven’t watched them play live since the sixties, but somehow it’s their performance that counts.
It’s the same, only worse, with the Rangers. I haven’t been to Loftus Road since before they laid their artificial pitch but I always check their result even though I have no idea who plays for them these days.
George, who lives in Chester when not at 33000 feet, has two daughters who he used to punish when they were growing up by taking them to watch the Rangers at such venues as Wigan, Tranmere, Crewe and Port Vale. Eventually they started to like it and have even been known to go on their own.
These loyalties are arbitrarily based but pursued passionately throughout our lives. I can’t think of any other facet of life where they are more enduring and it really makes no sense.
Conspiracy Theory
George offers this explanation of the bizarre events surrounding the 2nd VB final
Jim was ranting to me as usual about the performance of the England team in the 2nd 'final' of the recent 3 way series. In particular: 'that idiot Anderson who came out to bat with a grin on his face, tried to get stumped (= run out) one ball and succeeded the next', with England losing by about 5 runs.
A conspiracy theory behind this, the background to which I read before
rather than after the match, was that the England team wanted to get home before the World Cup, which ideally meant the series not going to the 3rdgame. The ECB had also refused to pay for their tickets home, rather than to South Africa.
It is well known that cricketers are not as well off as some other
sportsmen, and it became a minor scandal that several players had bought tickets to the UK to get a cheaper fare, before the scheduled start of what would have been the 3rd game.
I remember in my playing days we used to say that if you wanted to give your wicket away the surest way was to walk down the pitch and get stumped...
If you're still with me, the question arises, did Anderson throw it and if
he did who put him up to it?
Filling the gaps I have received some valuable responses regarding the rota of SCD 1st XI captains, which now reads:
1955/6 Bob Peach
1959 Rusty Williams
1960 Dick Crawshay
1963 Mick Cope
1964 /5 John Adams
1966 Jim Sharp
1967/8 Graham Sharp
1970/1 Roger Kingdon
1972/3(?) Steve Thompson
Can anyone help fill the residual gaps? The sooner we get it done we can drop it and go on to more important matters.
Did you miss the first edition?
I will happily email you a copy of the first edition of Googlies & Chinamen if you missed it. You will be able to find out who George and the Professor are and all about Tour Madness. Just send me an email and I’ll have one in the barrel.
Googlies and Chinamen
Is produced by
James Sharp
Broad Lee House
Combs
High Peak
SK23 9XA
Tel & fax: 01298 70237
Email: tiksha@btinternet.com
An Occasional Cricketing Journal
Edition 2
February 2003
Miserable Git
Thanks for all the encouraging responses to the first edition. An idle morning in Worcestershire enabled me to progress this offering a little ahead of schedule. The Professor and George dubbed my emailed realism (pessimism) as the outpourings of a Miserable Git - bollocks to them, particularly as they really agree!
It’s been great to hear from friends and dressing room fellows who I haven’t stripped in front of for years. Please continue to find others to mail this out to. It won’t surprise those who know him that Steve Thompson was unable to open a Word document (he wasn’t called Shambles for nothing). He has joined Bob Cozens on the hard copy mail out list. I will begrudgingly continue this antiquated form of communication for those who have to live out their nostalgia.
It’s also good to welcome some new friends and acquaintances that have never heard of St Clement Danes Grammar School or South Hampstead Cricket Club. I hope that you will be able to identify with these self-indulgently nostalgic references.
Thank you to those who are still able to string two words together and have submitted views for inclusion in this edition. Gary Rhodes has already revisited old grudges, communicated at length with Bob Proctor, reprimanded me for poor email etiquette and referred to someone as the Great Jack Morgan…
So without further ado, on with the bigotry.
One or Two Short
During the second one-day VB final (did anyone ever find out what VB stood for?), the Australian batsmen ran a comfortable two, probably inside the ring to Big Ronnie, only for the Umpire to signal one short. This is not actually possible since if one of the batsmen didn’t make his ground then both of the runs must have been short. If the Umpire will award one for a two with one short you have to ask yourself how far you actually have to run to be entitled to the one? Perhaps all you have to do is show intent to run two, perhaps by calling two enthusiastically when you hit it and then setting off at a pace only to scamper back to your respective ends when you feel it appropriate.
This may seem unimportant but could be an excellent tactic if you are trying to keep the strike at the end of an innings. This is something Collingwood doesn’t seem to have heard of, as he watched from the non-striker’s end first Caddick and then the absurd Anderson fall with 6 required to win. By adopting the above strategy you can get one and keep the strike. Someone is going to tell me that the batsmen have to cross, but I don’t think that that is in the laws of the game.
Talking of Anderson how confident did you feel when he walked to the crease in VB final 2? He had a silly smile on his face that said, “I’m not supposed to be here”. He then proceeded to bat in that manner; missing both balls he faced and being stumped off the second - yes stumped, not run out, since he was not attempting a run.
What advice do you think Nass gave him before he went to the middle? What preparation had he undertaken to participate in a last wicket stand with only six required in an extremely important international match for his country? This is why the England team performs so poorly. They are paid as professionals but perform like amateurs.
Anglo-Australian Views My initial distribution included some views on leadership and management and the impact on the respective English and Australian sides. It provoked this response from Dick Crawshay, an Old Dane, who lives in Oz
Interesting reading and I am broadly in agreement.
However, I think the gulf between the two teams is more than a couple of players and attitude. This can be most clearly illustrated by the wide measure of skills in fielding. That's not just commitment; it's also a honed skill, exemplified by Australian training techniques.
So here is another major difference. The Australian Cricket Academy in Adelaide has been taking young players and developing their skills and attitudes for nearly twenty years. This, I think, is a key reason for Australia's recent supremacy.
In England, it has been left to the individual counties to develop players on a fragmented basis, until recently, at least. Whilst overseas players have been accepted into the Academy, they have not received the continuous follow up that local youngsters get.
Every single Australian player is a strength in the field. The captain does not have to look for spots to hide players, England does.
Fielding apart, there is only one English player who would challenge for a place in the Australian side. I think that alone illustrates the huge gulf between the sides.
Perhaps there is yet another reason. Cricket is a glamour sport in Australia, football (called soccer here) isn't. The massive pay for footballers is not an issue here, in England it is. The brilliant young all round sportsman is more likely to be attracted to Football and its rewards rather than cricket in England. Less so here. That means you lose the services of youngsters who could well blossom as brilliant cricketers like the Comptons of the 50's.
Don’t forget to take your pads Back in December as the English players were falling like flies and the Professor was busy packing his bags for his sortie to the Antipodes, it became increasingly likely that he would be called upon to play. George was responsible for tendering some sound advice - he strongly recommended that the Professor should decline any invitation to don the mumsies since it would almost certainly involve broken fingers at the least, but if he felt the call of his country should not be ignored, even at his pace he should not bowl a bouncer at Brett Lee!
For those who never had the pleasure of watching the Professor bowl (he only ever did when he was captain), suffice it to say he was less than military medium and bowled with so round an arm that he could pick the umpires pocket with every delivery.
Which reminds me – Is Ashley Giles the unluckiest cricketer of 2002, having incurred his injury at the hands of the Durham Sprayer?
Where was Thorpey?
You may recall that Thorpey, as they call him at the Oval, declined his invitation to join Nass and the gang because his personal commitments couldn’t accommodate them. However, he regularly turned up in the Sky studios, with all the unsocial hours that that entailed, to act as an expert reviewer of play. His expertise revolved around such penetrating responses as: “yes, well its not that easy”, and “they seemed to do their best”. Good to have you involved Thorpey.
The Welsh Wizard also acted in that capacity, although he had not been asked to join Nass’ gang. This was rather insulting since they used everyone else who had bowled an off spinner in the County Championship in 2002- Snape, Batty and Dawson as well as Vaughan. Apparently, even Foreman was listed ahead of our favourite Welshman.
George, in a flight of fancy in December, saw the WW as England’s saviour- “They send for Croft who then averages 84 in the one-dayers as a pinch hitter, turns the ball at right angles at Sydney, mesmerises Ponting at Melbourne and goes on to lead England to a remarkable World Cup victory in the New Year. England scour Wales for more genius.” The Professor asked what medication he was on.
The End of the Fat men?
One aspect of the changes being introduced by the current Australian side is that we might have seen the last of fat men in First Class Cricket. They have enforced a fitness regime that seems to involve, amongst other things, doing sit-ups for fun. All successful innovations are imitated and it won’t be long before all international sides are as svelte and as slim as the 2003 version of Shane Hamburger Warne.
So who will this most effect? Number one on the World Fatties stage is the Pakistani Podge, Inzaman-ul –Haq. He can normally be found at slip, although, in the Pakistan side, he is unlikely to recognise the wicket keeper, who is changed each match. In the field his lumbering frame makes Big Ronnie look graceful. It doesn’t seem right to include Ian Blackwell as an international cricketer, but if he is to play in that exalted arena then he will have to shed a couple of stone at least and his county colleague, Marcus, won’t avoid the big slim by looking the other way!
But perhaps this is a turn for the worse. Does it mean historically that we would have had to do without such veritable lardoes as Colin Milburn, Colin Cowdrey and Bishan Bedi?
In the county game we would also have had to do without Bomber Wells and David Shepherd. Bomber Wells wore Pickwickian glasses and bowled off-spinners for Notts and was so rotund that he dispensed with a run-up completely. David Shepherd, formerly a left-hander with Gloucestershire and now a test match umpire, is one of the true fatties. As a man of suspicion he stands on one leg whenever Nelson is reached, but he is then unable to maintain balance as his girth spins him round in a pirouette.
Big Ronnie’s Bowling Action
Everyone is wondering where Big Ronnie got his bowling action. This, though, is not a puzzle to those who played for or against South Hampstead CC in the 1960s. Colin Ezer at this time perfected the extraordinary ability to approach the crease at a faster pace than the subsequent propulsion of the delivery. It did, of course, as in Big Ronnie’s case, only fool the batsman once, since, in effect, every delivery was a slower one. The only difference between the architect from South Hampstead and Big Ronnie is that the former swung the ball more.
Pugsley’s Six
Sooner or later Pugsley’s six was bound to get a mention in these columns and so we might as well get it over with now. It happened in cricket week at St Clement Danes in 1966 and we were playing against the London Schools Colts side (under 15s). We had batted first and made steady progress towards a reasonable total. Bob Proctor, who must have been 15 at the time, was batting in what was about to be the declaration over. He launched an on-drive that cleared not only the boundary but also the new library building that was thirty yards beyond the boundary and three stories high. We abandoned recovering the ball and declared. I have never seen a bigger hit in amateur cricket. It was Russ Collins who called him Pugsley, but I never knew why.
In Memoriam
Dick Simpson died just before Christmas, he was 83. Most people, given his life style, were surprised that he lasted that long, but he was nothing if not resilient. He was also extraordinarily generous. Whenever he had cash he would spread it around liberally in the bar and often at nightclubs as well. His capacity for booze consumption was staggering although his language could deteriorate as the session progressed.
I first encountered Dick as a friend of Ron Impey’s in 1964. Dick seemed to run Surbiton CC at the time in conjunction with a little bald man called Ron Ferry, who spoke immaculately and kept wicket badly. Dick soon became involved in the Wednesday XI at South Hampstead and was responsible for introducing Ossie Burton to that club. He is owed an enormous debt for that, if nothing else. By this stage Dick’s playing days were virtually over and I was never able to find an independent witness who could tell me how good a player he was. I suppose it doesn’t matter since he loved the game and that’s what really counts.
Dick was always a man of mystery. No one knew where he lived and he could only be contacted through a web of telephone messages. Rumour had it that he was involved with the Great Train robbers, that his money came from robbing banks and that Ossie was his full time minder. He would periodically disappear, as if lying low, and on one occasion to the horror of Colin Price, an Australian batsman playing a season at South Hampstead, decided to doss on the couch at his flat for four weeks! I suspect in his later years his financial status depended significantly on the performance of selected horses.
He was also a musician. His instrument of choice was the clarinet but when I knew him he could no longer play it because his lip had “gone”. He would on occasion play the piano and his great love was Jazz. He knew many musicians and once famously appeared at South Hampstead with Stefan Grappelli.
My Mum tells the story of taking Dick to the house of a friend where, after having arrived pissed, he was asked to play their white piano. After staring for a few moments at the closed lid he exclaimed, “ I can’t play this Audrey, its got no fucking black notes.”
I last saw Dick in 1990, but he was larger than life, not the sort of person you forget.
Too Old?
I can remember when the Surrey Stumper was picked for the England team as a opening batsman and on occasion he got his “working through midwicket” going well and played some creditable innings. It was then decided that one way of stopping a real wicket keeper from playing in the one-dayers was to get a batter to do it and Stewarty, as they call him at the Oval, got the job. To start with he was awful but after several years of practise he now does a reasonable job.
The big question, though, is – is he too old to carry on? At 39 he is over twice as old as Parthiv Patel, the Indian keeper, and is looking increasingly like Kirk Douglas. But the boys on Sky keep telling us that he is the fittest member of the team. I can’t work out whether this is a tribute to him or an indictment of the rest of the sorry bunch.
I was fortunate enough to play a few times in the mid sixties with the great Norman Cooper, although he was probably over sixty by this time. He stood up to all bowlers and let out grunts as his immaculate hands took the ball. However, if some southern relative of the Durham Sprayer fired one down the leg side, Norman would remain motionless and the epithet ”Fuck it “ would resound round the ground.
Maybe the Surrey Stumper has been given the job for life and we can look forward to him developing his own collection of idiosyncrasies.
Irritating trends in modern cricket-Number One
In 2001 I went with George and young Dave Myers to the day-nighter at Old Trafford when many weird things happened including the lights being on for the whole match, the Umpires conferring for bad light at the beginning of the England innings and England getting thumped (alright not so weird). At one stage during the England innings they needed 645 under the Duckworth Lewis method.
It was the first time for a while that any of us had been to an international match and we were horrified to hear that when a boundary was struck it was accompanied over the public address system by a blast of rock music. This appalling feature of the modern game serves no purpose whatsoever, other than to irritate the shit out of you. What are you supposed to do – sing along with it, clap louder to drown it out?
But it actually has a slightly funny side in that the person in charge of turning it on clearly has no knowledge of the game and if he or she hasn’t followed events it is nevertheless implemented late, sometimes when the next ball is being bowled. It shows what a good job the televisers do, as it is not audible down the tube.
When I first went to watch cricket at Lords there was complete silence as the bowler started his run-up. If yobos in the Tavern yelled out drunkenly they were ejected from the ground. It was the one-day game that attracted football fans and their habits into cricket - a very heavy price was and continues to be paid.
Who do you support?
Although I have lived in the High Peak for twelve years now I feel almost no affinity towards Derbyshire CCC. It’s always the Middlesex score I turn to first in The Times or on teletex or even these days on the Internet. I haven’t watched them play live since the sixties, but somehow it’s their performance that counts.
It’s the same, only worse, with the Rangers. I haven’t been to Loftus Road since before they laid their artificial pitch but I always check their result even though I have no idea who plays for them these days.
George, who lives in Chester when not at 33000 feet, has two daughters who he used to punish when they were growing up by taking them to watch the Rangers at such venues as Wigan, Tranmere, Crewe and Port Vale. Eventually they started to like it and have even been known to go on their own.
These loyalties are arbitrarily based but pursued passionately throughout our lives. I can’t think of any other facet of life where they are more enduring and it really makes no sense.
Conspiracy Theory
George offers this explanation of the bizarre events surrounding the 2nd VB final
Jim was ranting to me as usual about the performance of the England team in the 2nd 'final' of the recent 3 way series. In particular: 'that idiot Anderson who came out to bat with a grin on his face, tried to get stumped (= run out) one ball and succeeded the next', with England losing by about 5 runs.
A conspiracy theory behind this, the background to which I read before
rather than after the match, was that the England team wanted to get home before the World Cup, which ideally meant the series not going to the 3rdgame. The ECB had also refused to pay for their tickets home, rather than to South Africa.
It is well known that cricketers are not as well off as some other
sportsmen, and it became a minor scandal that several players had bought tickets to the UK to get a cheaper fare, before the scheduled start of what would have been the 3rd game.
I remember in my playing days we used to say that if you wanted to give your wicket away the surest way was to walk down the pitch and get stumped...
If you're still with me, the question arises, did Anderson throw it and if
he did who put him up to it?
Filling the gaps I have received some valuable responses regarding the rota of SCD 1st XI captains, which now reads:
1955/6 Bob Peach
1959 Rusty Williams
1960 Dick Crawshay
1963 Mick Cope
1964 /5 John Adams
1966 Jim Sharp
1967/8 Graham Sharp
1970/1 Roger Kingdon
1972/3(?) Steve Thompson
Can anyone help fill the residual gaps? The sooner we get it done we can drop it and go on to more important matters.
Did you miss the first edition?
I will happily email you a copy of the first edition of Googlies & Chinamen if you missed it. You will be able to find out who George and the Professor are and all about Tour Madness. Just send me an email and I’ll have one in the barrel.
Googlies and Chinamen
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