G&C 255
GOOGLIES & CHINAMEN
An Occasional Cricketing Journal
Edition 255
March 2024
Spot the Ball
1.Baz: Its not true we were playing India’s 2nd XI. We even recognised some of their names.
2.Jonathan Agnew: Would Jaiswal get in the England team?
Baz: Yes, he is a fine player and fits our style perfectly.
Jonathan Agnew: Who would he replace?
Baz: No-one. I have every confidence in our players.
3.Jonathan Agnew: How would you play our young spinners?
Baz: I would slog them out of the park.
4.Jonathan Agnew: Do you think that a player of Joe Root’s class should be playing Mickey Mouse shots in test cricket?
Baz: Of course, it demoralises the opposition and contributes to our ultimate victory.
Jonathan Agnew: But you lost by a mile!
Baz: That’s too bad.
Out & About with the Professor
I have always been slightly hesitant about cruising (the aquatic kind). I have never found the possibility of holidaying on one of those giant Butlins-afloat ships very captivating. In addition I recall a phrase from Michael Foley’s celebrated book, The Age of Absurdity, where he identifies shopping and travel as contemporary (and vacuous) searches for personal satisfaction: “the cruise ship is the perfect symbol of the contemporary age - an enormous, mobile pleasure palace conveying outsized infants in pastel leisure-wear around a series of shopping venues”. However, in the past few years I have been on a couple of (small) cruises and, having avoided both the leisure-wear and the shopping (not, in truth, too difficult), I have enjoyed them a great deal. So now, here I am on yet another cruise, this time up the Mekong.
The difficulty for the Googlies reader is that this part of the world was plundered and pillaged by the French, whereas, had it been plundered and pillaged by the British there might have been some cricket grounds. The story, doubtless apocryphal, was that the British military command (possibly Wellington himself) ordered all military garrisons to construct cricket fields, the game being thought suitable for both officers and men, because it was non contact. Sadly, there were none here and not too many passengers who had opinions about (or had even heard of) cricket.
But…there is Geoff.
Geoff is a walking oxymoron - a nice Australian. He’s an MCC member (theirs) and has a framed picture of himself on the visitors’ dressing room balcony at Lord’s: “One of the best moments ever”. He used to play a lot in younger days: “bowled a bit, batted a bit”. Both bits took place in the St Kilda first team. “Used to get quite a crowd in those days…not anymore”. Geoff is nice but not too nice: he thinks Carey was right to stump Bairstow and Cummins to appeal. I asked him what, in his playing days, was his preferred grade of sandpaper : “The heavy-duty roughest you could find…obviously”.
One thing that puzzles him about England (and not just him) is the side’s ability to get into winning positions and “throw it away”. It happens too often for it just to be chance, he thinks, and puts it down to a lack of desire to win. Indeed, it happened three times in this last Test: the second part of India’s first innings, almost the whole of England’s second innings, and the second part of India’s second.
“How can you do that?”
I had to confess I had no idea. I could run through the standard Stokes’ denials, but none of that really seemed to ring true. “Aussies wouldn’t let that slip” - although Geoff did concede that when things went very badly wrong at least the English don’t cry.
There seems to be a lot on the news channels about the success of the England spinners - and two look to be inspired selections - although it will be interesting to see if either make their county first XIs in April (or whenever Leach is fit and Lyon arrives). Perhaps there should be more about the failure of the England batters.
Still, as I told Geoff, the English are stoic in defeat: “You’ve had a lot of practice” (bit of a half volley there, I confess) and we can all look forward to a summer of international cricket, when just about every team in the world is coming. I’ll be looking out for Geoff.
This & That
The return of the PSL has meant the return to our screens of Azam Khan the rotund Pakistani who bats and keeps for Islamabad United. This year he looks even larger than in the past and Colin Milburn would look like his little brother if they were photographed together. And you definitely wouldn’t want to find yourself sitting next to him at tea. Presumably he has his shirts tailored from duvet covers. Does his size impede his running between the wickets? Of course not – he only deals in boundaries.
In the T20 between Australia and West Indies Glen Maxwell played another of his remarkable innings scoring 120 not out from 55 balls. This brought him level with Rohit Sharma who also has hit five international T20 hundreds and he also helped his side reach 241 for 4 their highest T20 score on home soil.
In the final game of this three-match series the West Indies batted first and slumped to 79 for 5 before Sherfane Rutherford and Andre Russell added 139 hitting twelve sixes between them. The West Indies won the match which salved some pride for them from the series. Rutherford has been around sometime on the fringes and is now starting to make his mark on the T20 franchise circuit. He is rapidly joining the ranks of Pooran and Hetmyer his fellow West Indian big hitting left handers.
After the SA20, South African players returned to their state sides for the 4-day domestic competition. Matthew Breetzke and Tristan Stubbs turned out for the Warriors against the Tuskers. After two wickets had fallen cheaply Breetzke and Stubbs added 473 for the third wicket. Stubbs finished on 302 not out and became only the eleventh player to score a triple century in South African first-class cricket. Breetzke was out for 188. In the SA20 the commentators referred to him as Jetski which may help any readers who are not too clear on Afrikaans pronunciation.
In the ODI between Sri Lanka and Afghanistan Sri Lanka made 381 for 3 mainly thanks to Nissanka’s 210 not out which was notable, not least, because he faced (139) less than half the balls bowled. In reply, Afghanistan were reduced to 55 for 5 before Azmatullah (149 not out) was joined by Nabi (136) and they added 242 but the innings closed on 339 for 6.
Before any match these days, all the bowlers go onto the ground and paint run up markers for themselves. These are often complex markings which only they can understand. Nevertheless, many of them still manage to bowl a costly complement of No-balls. Amongst the slower bowlers the South African Chinaman bowler, Tabrais Shamsi, chooses not mark his run up but rather to amble to the crease as the mood takes him. This is all well and good but this lackadaisical approach results in him bowling an inappropriate number of no-balls to the chagrin of his teammates.
Thompson matters
Last month the excellent Mihir Bose wrote a fascinating article in the Great Jack Morgan’s G about the changing power base in world cricket. In essence it describes how England, the nation that gave the globe the game, is no longer the controlling influence in world cricket.
With 80 pence of every £1 of cricket’s international income now being Indian money, what India says, goes. An Indian tour to England now generates more TV selling rights to Indian TV than an equivalent Ashes series. Indian money now sustains cricket in England.
The price though has been a heavy one in terms of England’s historical domestic structure. In adopting every English innovation and as Bose says, ‘making it their own’, they have forced such fundamental changes that it is hard to imagine what weeks of almost uninterrupted First-class county cricket looked like. With the staggering statistic of there being approximately 400 million middle-class Indians, Bose describes how this financial clout led to the Indian Premier League a phenomenon that addressed the, Bollywood aside, dearth of entertainment in Indian life. What could not perhaps have been foreseen was the manner in which over the next decade and a half the franchises and the players that represented them would develop soap opera celebrity status in India. One of his most fascinating insights was the the fact that in Indian homes, where single television ownership is the norm, women control the TV remote. They love the new soap opera and its stars and the crowds in Indian cricket stadia reflect that now.
So now we too have franchised cricket, centre stage at the very height of what was the peak period for the first-class and Test game. Individuals with the ability to bowl four overs with skills fashioned for the new shorter formats will miss the opening weeks of a domestic English season to earn money the likes of which some of the game’s greats of just two decades ago could only dream - it’s hard to blame them. Meanwhile an Ashes series is shunted forward in the calendar to accommodate the rise of the franchises.
Of course, cricket isn’t the only sport to be undergoing massive change as a consequence of the injection of enormous financial packages. Some would bite the hand off a massive investor. Rugby Union suffers woefully for the absence of such a boost. Gone are the days when the names of Welsh Valley teams like Pontypool, Pontypridd and Neath would give a visiting All Blacks team a very fiery welcome in the hillside. The money isn’t there to sustain teams of sufficient quality and neither is the support. And therein lies the rub.
Living in Herefordshire for half my life I can state with complete confidence that the Welsh are not enamoured of the English when it comes to competitive sport; some might say many other aspects of life. A team representing Glamorgan, Gloucestershire and Somerset surely cannot possibly inspire the young boy from the Valleys in the way a thriving County side under Wilf Wooler, Ozzie Wheatley Tony Lewis or even, dare one say it, Majid Khan will have done. How can it be truly Welsh Fire when watered down by the presence of English Counties? How many of us will have been inspired by our home county to play the game when we were young. I’m not sure a side comprising representation from Essex (!!) and Northants would have done it for me. You can take the boy out of Middlesex but you can’t take Middlesex out of the boy and insert another root.
Grumpy old man? Probably, but the inevitable power and influence of money is surging its way inexorably through cricket. Next stop, the States and the waiting Indian diaspora. The soap opera will no doubt export well and if, as in its country of origin, the franchises do at least have some logical geographical connection the globe-trotting mercenary white ball experts may well inspire the young Californian to play for the next iteration of the L.A. Knight Riders
I last went to Loftus Road fifty years ago. On 9th March 1974 Rangers lost 0-2 at home to Leicester City in the FA Cup quarter-final courtesy of two goals from Joe Waters making his first team debut. This was the era of overcrowded stadiums. My last exit-bound step off the terrace was almost my last ever step at Loftus Road as my feet barely touched the ground as the crowd surged down the narrow passage to the gates. It put me off - effectively for life. When Hillsborough happened fifteen years later I felt I had some insight into the helplessness of the crowd. Despite that and fifty years on the first score I look for between 4.40 and 5 o’clock, depending on the degree of absurdity that is additional time, is of course that of Rangers. There have been entire seasons since then when I doubt if I could tell you many, if any, of the team’s names, but I knew the score. From an early age I was invested in QPR. They were and always will be my team. The same loyalty applies to County Cricket teams; whose score do we look for first? Of course it is.
If it were not for that little local difficulty it was facing at the time Yorkshire may now be owned by the Rajasthan Royals. It would be foolish to deny the existential importance of such financial heft. Ask any Wasps supporter of a certain vintage what they would prefer to have happened to the club of their roots. That Indian-generated 80 pence in the pound is clearly vital for the future of the game in general but the cost may be that our lifetime connections may well be further loosened - let’s hope not.
Six Hitting
In this year’s SA20 there were almost 500 sixes hit and many of them travelled a very long way, by which I mean over 100 metres. The biggest hits were generally made by South Africans: Klaasen, Verreyne, Smuts, Hermann, Rickelton, van der Dussen, Breetzke and Jansen. However, the three biggest hits measuring 108 and 107 twice were made by the Englishman, Will Jacks. Heinrick Klaasen hit 37 sixes which accounted for over half of his 447 runs in the competition.
I have previously commented that I think the distance of sixes is measured by the same bloke in a flat cap who sits on the mid-wicket boundary and assesses the speed of fast bowlers as in: “Shit, that was quick – we’ll call it 91mph”. Only in this case he announces “Wow, that’s gone miles – let’s say 92 metres”. However, when I discussed this with the Professor he told me, not for the first time, that I was just being silly and that there are highly sophisticated tools available in the 21st century alongside mobile phones and the like.
I decided I owed it to the readers of Googlies to research this matter and came up with following from Matt Harris:
“In every game where the technology is used, Hawkeye is involved. They have six cameras strategically placed around the ground and these are used to monitor the flight of the ball as it travels away from the batter’s bat. Those six cameras then combine to form a 3D image of the ball’s trajectory. That image will then help to gauge the final distance.
Speed is naturally important too. The speed is calculated from the moment the ball leaves the bat. The time it takes to travel 22 yards (the length of a cricket pitch) is also recorded and this is projected forward. Using calculations involving that 3D Image plus the trajectory and speed of the ball, the final distance is then determined.
A radar gun, similar to that which is used to measure bowling speeds, can also be used in this process. In terms of six hitting, it will calculate the speed of the ball as it leaves the bat and travels across the cricket field. The gun is often used in games where Hawkeye isn’t available. When this happens, the measuring applies a law of physics which is known as the Range of Projectile.
As you might have imagined, range of projectile can be used in missile technology, but it can also be applied to six hitting in cricket. The calculations involved can be quite complex. Essentially, the physics uses the speed of the ball, its trajectory and the time that it stays in the air. A system of divisions and calculations is then employed to get a final answer.
As with many areas of cricket technology, the systems used to calculate six hitting are not 100% perfect. In terms of the Range of Projectile Calculations, there is a problem in the sense that it uses the time that the ball stays in the air. As we’ve seen, there are problems with this. That ball can connect with a part of the stand while it is still travelling in an upwards direction. With the Hawkeye method, speed is measured but drops in speed, for whatever reason, can be variable. However, the margins of error are small ones, and the technology is certainly much better than it would have been in the past.”
So now you know. It could be as hit and miss as the guesses made by my guy in the flat cap.
Modern Euphemisms
There was a time when you would say to your bowler “I’m taking you off because you are bowling too many long hops and full tosses.” But the modern bowler would look at you dumbfounded and explain “Nonsense I have just been missing my yorker and some deliveries have been back of a length”.
Some of the commentators have introduced their own classifications into boundary hits. A four is now often referred to as a “boundary four” and a six is termed a “maximum”. If the batsman hits the ball straight he is said to be “going downtown”.
Most of the new-fangled strokes have their own euphemistic nomenclature. What has for millennia been called a “hoick” is now dignified as a slog sweep. When Joe Root in a test match attempts to ramp and is caught at second slip and ensures England have no chance of winning or even saving the match he is let off by it being explained as Baz-ball.
Fielders are also blessed by these new descriptions of their efforts. When a simple catch is dropped or the ball is allowed to pass between the fielders legs his efforts are described as “ordinary”. This is truly puzzling since I would expect from highly paid professional cricketers that ordinary denotes a very high standard of performance.
Oh, and by the way euphemisms are also rampant in political life as well. After the UK slipped into Recession last month, we were told that it was actually only a technical Recession. Of course it was! A Recession is a technical calculation and so every Recession is a technical Recession. Its’ means of calculation does not lessen the impact of those who have to suffer from it.
King Cricket
This appeared on the King Cricket website
Conviction. It's what Ben Stokes' England Test team is all about. This is great to watch but cringe-inducing to listen to. Is there any chance they could play the same way without… saying all of those things?
The most obviously groansome comment arising from England's 434-run defeat to India in the third Test was Ben Duckett's response when asked what England would be happy chasing in the fourth innings.
"The more the better. This team is all about doing special things and creating history. They can have as many as they want and we'll go and get them."
England in fact only 'got' 122 of the 557 they needed for victory. Maybe they'd have got closer if they'd been chasing 900.
Duckett's batting had been bold and unrestrained and his comments followed suit. Let us tell you now, overseas readers, this is actually quite hard to palate if you support the team he plays for. Self-confidence is not actually something Britons really celebrate. We in fact tend to view it as crass, needy and even pitiable.
The exact ratios of those three things vary, but that's your basic mix. And England cricket fans arguably inhabit an even harsher subculture. To support the England cricket team is to never truly feel sure of victory, even when it is basically assured. In 1938, they made 903-7 against Australia and bowled the opposition out for 201 and then 123. We are positive there will have been fans catastrophising defeats until that last wicket was taken and mentally preparing themselves for the resultant humiliation.
In England, we do not like cockiness in our cricketers. If that sounds like a single rule, it actually stems from two:
If you're no good, don't be cocky - you'll only look like a pillock
If you're good, don't be cocky - no-one likes a show-off
Duckett's hundred was characterised by conviction. His words were too. Are these two sides of the same 2019 ICC Cricket World Cup 50p?
Because we're sure you're already aware that Duckett's comment was only really the latest verbal sortie from a squad that is fast developing a bit of a reputation for voicing this kind of brassy nonsense.
"I think even sending in a nightwatchman when you're 330 ahead shows that they're slightly wary of us," was another from the opener from that same interview. And despite stating that it had been, "one of those days when I feel we have to give credit to India," Duckett also couldn't restrain himself from acknowledging Yashasvi Jaiswal's innings by saying: "When you see players from the opposition playing like that, it almost feels like we should take some credit that they're playing differently than how other people play Test cricket."
Duckett's by no means alone. There are any number of examples.
One of the more infamous comments from recent times was Zak Crawley's "I think we'll win by, I don't know, 150 runs?" during the Ashes - albeit that was perhaps more knowingly ludicrous than most are willing to acknowledge.
For a purer example, we're better off turning to Ollie Robinson.
"We’ve entertained the world, and we’ve put the Aussies on the back foot," he wrote in his Wisden column... shortly after England had lost the first Ashes Test.
Nor is he going to let something like 'not actually playing' get in the way of his strutting bombast. "I don’t think India have ever experienced a team that’s come at them in the way that we did in that first Test," he said after the first match of this series.
The vibe is a group of England cricketers who are just certain that they're going to prevail. Could they perhaps play a totally different game in front of the dictaphones? How about a bit of 1990s defeatism? Is that too much to ask?
Robinson did a bit of a John Tavner on Brendon McCullum when he reported that the coach told his charges, "It feels like we’ve won, lads,” after that Edgbaston Ashes defeat. That seemed a very "for your ears only" comment and not at all intended for the wider world.
'Know your audience' is the crux of it. You might tell a toddler you're going to leave the house without him if you think it'll persuade him to put his shoes on. Similarly, you might tell Ollie Robinson that defeat feels like a victory if you feel the actual outcome of the match might result in counterproductive second-guessery from him in the next Test. (Credit to McCullum for not explaining that, by the way, which would have totally undermined the message.)
That alleged quote nevertheless sheds light on the psychological mechanics that are being employed to develop the stripped-back, unencumbered, in-the-moment mindset England are striving for. (Here's a piece about how England's philosophy is not about mindless positivity so much as it's about clear-mindedness and here's a piece about how reductive language has allowed people to lose sight of that.)
The central aim is to mould cricketers who play shorn of outside pressures and preconceptions. This of course first requires renouncing those outside pressures and preconceptions. The benefits of doing so are arguably hard to come by without also sounding like complete wingnuts from time to time.
Thompson mattersa
Here's another example: Robinson about England's win in the first Test of this series.
"The best thing about us in that first Test was that when we came off and they were 190 ahead, you wouldn’t know that they were 190 ahead. The mood in the dressing room, the morale, our confidence that we could win the game was as high as ever. The moment you stop believing is the moment that you’ve lost the game."
There's a broad and muddy no-man's land between confidence and delusion. The far narrower dividing line can only ever be uncovered afterwards - and crucially it will have been shifted one way or another by the attitudes of those involved.
Many of the greatest sports stars were basically delusional because that's often something of an entry requirement for delivering improbable feats. It's why these characters so often play on for too long or make ill-advised comebacks. They're fundamentally impervious to evidence.
Is the rhetoric from 'England' or is it from 'some England players'?
Duckett's "the more the better" was the most bullish in a series of comments from England players about chasing down fourth innings targets.
Looking back, when Jonny Bairstow was waiting to see what England would be chasing against the same opponents in 2022, his words were open-minded rather than silly.
“Whatever they set, they set and we’ll go about it in the same manner," he said. "Why not?”
This was one game after his Kingsman church scene innings against New Zealand and he and Joe Root did in fact then get England to a lofty target of 378 with ease.
So maybe you don't have to be utterly convinced that you will definitely triumph in order to play with conviction. Maybe you just have to be open to the possibility that things might pan out for you, because why not?
Or maybe it just manifests in different players in different ways. For every Ollie Robinson, there's a Joe Root, self-effacing to a fault. Given an opportunity to say something about his incredible record as a batter, Root is more likely to deflect towards his dreadful record as captain.
And for every Duckett, there's a Mark Wood, saying that Sarfaraz Khan "doesn't know unlucky he was" to get run out by "the worst fielder in the team".
A lot of these other quotes aren't nearly so memorable. Asked whether England would get a first innings lead, shortly after Duckett's spectacular hundred and shortly before England's spectacular implosion, Wood went with, "I'm a bowler, so I want every lead we can get. That's not quite how the game goes, so we'll have to see what happens tomorrow."
As a long-serving England fan, we knew - just knew - that they'd collapse the next morning, surrender another 400 to India in their second innings, and then find themselves 50-7 chasing 557.
The most brutal game -1970 Cup Final
George sent me this article by Phil Dawkes
Eddie Gray collects the ball in the centre circle and immediately sets his sights on Chelsea’s goal. But David Webb has other ideas. Fuelled by fresh memories of his roasting at the hands of the Leeds winger a couple of weeks prior, the defender hits him, both feet off the ground, no prisoners. Bang. It takes all of two minutes for the 1970 FA Cup final replay to live up to its billing as a game best avoided by the faint of heart.
It is a match that has gone down in football folklore as a meeting of pure malice between a defeated Leeds United side renowned for having the muscle to match their magnificence and a victorious Chelsea team with flashiness and ferocity in equal measure. Football was a very different game half a century ago, when much greater leniency was shown to crunching, full-bloodied tackles and their aftermath. But even by the standards of the time it made for brutal viewing.
Such is its enduring reputation, it has been re-refereed twice since by leading officials according to modern interpretations of the rules. In 1997, David Elleray concluded he would have shown six red cards, while in 2020 Michael Oliver opted for 11. On the night, referee Eric Jennings brandished just one yellow card.
‘A special sort of animosity.’ “Previous”. This is the polite phrase many of the 1970 final’s participants use to explain the history and lasting grievances being carried into the game at Old Trafford. On a grander scale, Leeds-Chelsea was the north-south divide personified. The Blues were seen as the fashionable southern fancy-dans, who hung out drinking champagne with celebrities on the King's Road, while the Whites were perceived as the dour, gritty northerners, smoking cigarettes and playing carpet bowls in their working men's club. In truth, the two sides were more alike than they would have been willing to admit - both a blend of brute force and brilliance, each driven and on the way up. This perhaps partly accounts for their bitter rivalry.
"The rivalry was there because Leeds had a name, a reputation as being dirty,” said Bonetti, in an interview with the Chelsea website in 2018. “I'd call them physical because dirty doesn't sound a very nice word. We matched them in the physical side of things because we had our own players who were physical and that was probably why we were such big rivals. We weren't unalike in the way we played." In his autobiography, Leeds midfielder Johnny Giles attests to “a special sort of animosity” between the teams. “I had that bit of ‘previous’ with Eddie McCreadie,” added Giles. “John Hollins, who would usually mark me, could do a bit. And Ron ‘Chopper’ Harris had made a name for himself.” Chelsea striker Ian Hutchinson put it more simply: “We hated them and they hated us.”
Chelsea had beaten Leeds in controversial circumstances in a 1967 FA Cup semi-final. Leeds still carried lasting scars from their 1967 FA Cup semi-final defeat by the Blues, in which they felt they had a perfectly good Peter Lorimer free-kick ruled out. In the 1969-70 season alone they faced each other six times, with Leeds winning both league games, including a 5-2 win at Stamford Bridge, and the Blues coming out on top over two games in a League Cup third-round tie.
There were also individual scores to be settled, with one of the freshest that between Webb and Gray. Leeds’ Scottish winger had given the Chelsea full-back an absolute chasing in the drawn final at Wembley that prompted the replay. The Whites had largely dominated but somehow failed to win on a national stadium surface buried under a mountain of sand, in an attempt to make it playable following poor weather. Webb was switched to centre-back for the replay to get him away from Gray and give Harris the task of keeping the winger quiet, but fate drew the two back together almost immediately and gave the Chelsea man a chance to make his mark. This he did, about halfway up Gray’s left shin.
Referees looked very different back in 1970. By 2020 standards, this would have earned Webb a first yellow, according to Oliver. His second would follow 12 minutes later for another late, two-footed lunge, this time on Alan Clarke deep in his own half, and a third in extra time. But back in 1970, Jennings kept his whistle from his lips and cards firmly in his pocket. Further seemingly clear offences came and went without punishment - Billy Bremner sent spinning from the field by Peter Houseman, Hunter and McCreadie coming to blows, a foot left in by Clarke. As renowned Observer journalist Hugh McIlvanney wrote afterwards: “At times, it appeared that Mr Jennings would give a free-kick only on production of a death certificate.” Webb recalled later to the Daily Mail: “Every time he went for his pocket and you thought he was going to book somebody he pulled out his hanky, blew his nose and said, ‘Get on with it, will you?'”
Harris would more or less finish the job on Gray before the first half was out, catching the winger on the back of his left knee, leaving him with an injury that restricted him for the remainder of the game and crucially robbed Leeds of arguably their most talented attacking player. Ever the hatchet man, Harris would attempt to do the same to Gray’s left-wing colleague Terry Cooper in the second half but succeeded only in tearing right through his shorts. Years later, Gray was enjoying himself at a black-tie dinner when Harris tapped him on the shoulder, put his hand out and, with a grin, asked: "Can I have my studs back?"
‘Bites Yer Legs’ and ‘The Cat’ Leeds recently renamed their South Stand after Norman Hunter. If Harris’ reputation preceded him, so too did the man at the heart of the Leeds defence, Norman Hunter. It would be two more years before the infamous banner that read ‘Norman Bites Yer Legs’ would be held aloft by Leeds fans at the 1972 FA Cup final, but his uncompromising style was well-publicised. His first touch in the 1970 replay - a throw-in - is conducted to a chorus of boos from the Chelsea fans. His second meaningful involvement would provoke a fiercer response. After relinquishing possession following a forward run, Hunter and McCreadie come together in midfield, leading to a brief flurry of post-challenge blows between the two. Later in the game, the Leeds defender is seen prowling following another heavy challenge, fists clenched and ready for battle. For many, this is the indelible image of Hunter on the pitch, but one that does a huge disservice to a player with silk to match the steel, who won 28 England caps and was part of the 1966 World Cup-winning squad aged 22.
It was certainly not representative of the man - a warm, generous and beloved figure, the death of whom on 17 April 2020 was deeply felt not just at Leeds but across the football world. “I worked with him on the after-dinner circuit,” Harris told the Mail. “On the field he was an animal, but away from the football you won’t meet a nicer fella, a gentleman.”
Bonetti required lengthy treatment in the 1970 replay following a clash with Jones Just five days prior to Hunter’s death, Chelsea lost one of their own all-time heroes in Bonetti, whose influence over the 240 minutes of the 1970 final is perhaps greater than any other. His heroics in goal in the first game at Wembley was one of the main reasons for the replay, but even this stellar performance was overshadowed by the fortitude he demonstrated at Old Trafford. In the 31st minute he suffered a painful knee injury in a fiercely contested aerial duel with Leeds forward Mick Jones - one that required lengthy treatment and prompted BBC commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme to comment: “This almost deserves an X-certificate”. He emerged after half-time heavily strapped and unable to take goal-kicks. Jones would take advantage almost immediately after the injury by giving Leeds the lead, but Bonetti would have the last laugh, living up to his reputation as 'The Cat' by launching off his one good leg to make a string of important saves. Fittingly, Bonetti - the foundation on which Chelsea’s first Cup final triumph was built and a revered figure in their history - collected the base of the trophy at its presentation.
As the game wore on and the light faded above Old Trafford, the violence taking place on its pitch only increased. Peter Osgood fouled Jack Charlton, who immediately leapt to his feet and barged the striker to the turf - an immediate act of retribution that the Leeds centre-back usually saved for his infamous little black book of future victims. It was another attempted act of revenge from Charlton that cost Leeds their lead with the defender leaving Osgood unmarked to score as he went off in search of a Chelsea player who had whacked his thigh moments earlier.
The most brutal moment of all, though, came in the 85th minute. Billy Bremner, Leeds’ brilliant midfield heartbeat, always gave as good as he got, but in 1970 he was a clear target for the Chelsea players. It was for a shove on the Scot that Hutchinson earned the game’s only booking, sparking a running battle between the two for the remainder of the game that saw late tackles, retaliatory kicks and some expressive hand gestures from each. It would be McCreadie, though, who would strike the biggest blow, leaping high into the air in the box, missing the bouncing ball and performing a karate kick to the head that “almost cut Bremner in half” according to Blues defender John Dempsey. Jennings, in his final game as a professional referee, waved play on.
Hutchinson and Webb would have the decisive say and ultimately win the war for Chelsea in extra time, with the former’s booming long throw making its way to the back post off the head of Charlton for the latter to nod home.
“Once I saw the Leeds players, I knew I could celebrate,” Webb told the Mail. “Leeds would complain about anything. If there was any reason to claim a foul, they’d have been doing it and they weren’t complaining, they were deflated.”
The 1970 FA Cup final was watched by a UK television audience of 28.5m
Much has been said and can still be read about that rampaging replay at Old Trafford. But perhaps the most revealing recollection remains that of Leeds' right-back on the day, Paul Madeley: "It was just the way the game was played back then."
Barnet Watch
I had started to think that Poch had put an embargo on exotic tonsorial creations at Chelsea but then Reece James got injured and has been replaced by Malo Gusto who has a hair style that would make even the absurd Kelvin Phillips jealous.
Marc Cucurella doesn’t feature in Poch’s selections these days and maybe should seek an alternative venue where his long flowing locks would be better appreciated. Maybe he should team up with Tahith Chong at Luton who has similar long black locks. You wouldn’t want to be around these two on Halloween.
Old Danes Gathering
We are planning to hold another bi-annual Old Danes Gathering this summer. Full details will be included in the next edition. Old Danes will be notified beforehand on a separate distribution.
Missing Recipients
I recently transcribed my googlies email address book to a newer format and fear that some individuals may not be receiving their copy. Please advise me if you are aware of anyone who is not receiving it. I also suspect that Bob Baxter. Lionel Hayward and Bob Fisher may fall into this category. Please advise if you are getting it.
Googlies Website
All the back editions of Googlies can be found on the G&C website. There are also many photographs most of which have never appeared in Googlies.
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An Occasional Cricketing Journal
Edition 255
March 2024
Spot the Ball
1.Baz: Its not true we were playing India’s 2nd XI. We even recognised some of their names.
2.Jonathan Agnew: Would Jaiswal get in the England team?
Baz: Yes, he is a fine player and fits our style perfectly.
Jonathan Agnew: Who would he replace?
Baz: No-one. I have every confidence in our players.
3.Jonathan Agnew: How would you play our young spinners?
Baz: I would slog them out of the park.
4.Jonathan Agnew: Do you think that a player of Joe Root’s class should be playing Mickey Mouse shots in test cricket?
Baz: Of course, it demoralises the opposition and contributes to our ultimate victory.
Jonathan Agnew: But you lost by a mile!
Baz: That’s too bad.
Out & About with the Professor
I have always been slightly hesitant about cruising (the aquatic kind). I have never found the possibility of holidaying on one of those giant Butlins-afloat ships very captivating. In addition I recall a phrase from Michael Foley’s celebrated book, The Age of Absurdity, where he identifies shopping and travel as contemporary (and vacuous) searches for personal satisfaction: “the cruise ship is the perfect symbol of the contemporary age - an enormous, mobile pleasure palace conveying outsized infants in pastel leisure-wear around a series of shopping venues”. However, in the past few years I have been on a couple of (small) cruises and, having avoided both the leisure-wear and the shopping (not, in truth, too difficult), I have enjoyed them a great deal. So now, here I am on yet another cruise, this time up the Mekong.
The difficulty for the Googlies reader is that this part of the world was plundered and pillaged by the French, whereas, had it been plundered and pillaged by the British there might have been some cricket grounds. The story, doubtless apocryphal, was that the British military command (possibly Wellington himself) ordered all military garrisons to construct cricket fields, the game being thought suitable for both officers and men, because it was non contact. Sadly, there were none here and not too many passengers who had opinions about (or had even heard of) cricket.
But…there is Geoff.
Geoff is a walking oxymoron - a nice Australian. He’s an MCC member (theirs) and has a framed picture of himself on the visitors’ dressing room balcony at Lord’s: “One of the best moments ever”. He used to play a lot in younger days: “bowled a bit, batted a bit”. Both bits took place in the St Kilda first team. “Used to get quite a crowd in those days…not anymore”. Geoff is nice but not too nice: he thinks Carey was right to stump Bairstow and Cummins to appeal. I asked him what, in his playing days, was his preferred grade of sandpaper : “The heavy-duty roughest you could find…obviously”.
One thing that puzzles him about England (and not just him) is the side’s ability to get into winning positions and “throw it away”. It happens too often for it just to be chance, he thinks, and puts it down to a lack of desire to win. Indeed, it happened three times in this last Test: the second part of India’s first innings, almost the whole of England’s second innings, and the second part of India’s second.
“How can you do that?”
I had to confess I had no idea. I could run through the standard Stokes’ denials, but none of that really seemed to ring true. “Aussies wouldn’t let that slip” - although Geoff did concede that when things went very badly wrong at least the English don’t cry.
There seems to be a lot on the news channels about the success of the England spinners - and two look to be inspired selections - although it will be interesting to see if either make their county first XIs in April (or whenever Leach is fit and Lyon arrives). Perhaps there should be more about the failure of the England batters.
Still, as I told Geoff, the English are stoic in defeat: “You’ve had a lot of practice” (bit of a half volley there, I confess) and we can all look forward to a summer of international cricket, when just about every team in the world is coming. I’ll be looking out for Geoff.
This & That
The return of the PSL has meant the return to our screens of Azam Khan the rotund Pakistani who bats and keeps for Islamabad United. This year he looks even larger than in the past and Colin Milburn would look like his little brother if they were photographed together. And you definitely wouldn’t want to find yourself sitting next to him at tea. Presumably he has his shirts tailored from duvet covers. Does his size impede his running between the wickets? Of course not – he only deals in boundaries.
In the T20 between Australia and West Indies Glen Maxwell played another of his remarkable innings scoring 120 not out from 55 balls. This brought him level with Rohit Sharma who also has hit five international T20 hundreds and he also helped his side reach 241 for 4 their highest T20 score on home soil.
In the final game of this three-match series the West Indies batted first and slumped to 79 for 5 before Sherfane Rutherford and Andre Russell added 139 hitting twelve sixes between them. The West Indies won the match which salved some pride for them from the series. Rutherford has been around sometime on the fringes and is now starting to make his mark on the T20 franchise circuit. He is rapidly joining the ranks of Pooran and Hetmyer his fellow West Indian big hitting left handers.
After the SA20, South African players returned to their state sides for the 4-day domestic competition. Matthew Breetzke and Tristan Stubbs turned out for the Warriors against the Tuskers. After two wickets had fallen cheaply Breetzke and Stubbs added 473 for the third wicket. Stubbs finished on 302 not out and became only the eleventh player to score a triple century in South African first-class cricket. Breetzke was out for 188. In the SA20 the commentators referred to him as Jetski which may help any readers who are not too clear on Afrikaans pronunciation.
In the ODI between Sri Lanka and Afghanistan Sri Lanka made 381 for 3 mainly thanks to Nissanka’s 210 not out which was notable, not least, because he faced (139) less than half the balls bowled. In reply, Afghanistan were reduced to 55 for 5 before Azmatullah (149 not out) was joined by Nabi (136) and they added 242 but the innings closed on 339 for 6.
Before any match these days, all the bowlers go onto the ground and paint run up markers for themselves. These are often complex markings which only they can understand. Nevertheless, many of them still manage to bowl a costly complement of No-balls. Amongst the slower bowlers the South African Chinaman bowler, Tabrais Shamsi, chooses not mark his run up but rather to amble to the crease as the mood takes him. This is all well and good but this lackadaisical approach results in him bowling an inappropriate number of no-balls to the chagrin of his teammates.
Thompson matters
Last month the excellent Mihir Bose wrote a fascinating article in the Great Jack Morgan’s G about the changing power base in world cricket. In essence it describes how England, the nation that gave the globe the game, is no longer the controlling influence in world cricket.
With 80 pence of every £1 of cricket’s international income now being Indian money, what India says, goes. An Indian tour to England now generates more TV selling rights to Indian TV than an equivalent Ashes series. Indian money now sustains cricket in England.
The price though has been a heavy one in terms of England’s historical domestic structure. In adopting every English innovation and as Bose says, ‘making it their own’, they have forced such fundamental changes that it is hard to imagine what weeks of almost uninterrupted First-class county cricket looked like. With the staggering statistic of there being approximately 400 million middle-class Indians, Bose describes how this financial clout led to the Indian Premier League a phenomenon that addressed the, Bollywood aside, dearth of entertainment in Indian life. What could not perhaps have been foreseen was the manner in which over the next decade and a half the franchises and the players that represented them would develop soap opera celebrity status in India. One of his most fascinating insights was the the fact that in Indian homes, where single television ownership is the norm, women control the TV remote. They love the new soap opera and its stars and the crowds in Indian cricket stadia reflect that now.
So now we too have franchised cricket, centre stage at the very height of what was the peak period for the first-class and Test game. Individuals with the ability to bowl four overs with skills fashioned for the new shorter formats will miss the opening weeks of a domestic English season to earn money the likes of which some of the game’s greats of just two decades ago could only dream - it’s hard to blame them. Meanwhile an Ashes series is shunted forward in the calendar to accommodate the rise of the franchises.
Of course, cricket isn’t the only sport to be undergoing massive change as a consequence of the injection of enormous financial packages. Some would bite the hand off a massive investor. Rugby Union suffers woefully for the absence of such a boost. Gone are the days when the names of Welsh Valley teams like Pontypool, Pontypridd and Neath would give a visiting All Blacks team a very fiery welcome in the hillside. The money isn’t there to sustain teams of sufficient quality and neither is the support. And therein lies the rub.
Living in Herefordshire for half my life I can state with complete confidence that the Welsh are not enamoured of the English when it comes to competitive sport; some might say many other aspects of life. A team representing Glamorgan, Gloucestershire and Somerset surely cannot possibly inspire the young boy from the Valleys in the way a thriving County side under Wilf Wooler, Ozzie Wheatley Tony Lewis or even, dare one say it, Majid Khan will have done. How can it be truly Welsh Fire when watered down by the presence of English Counties? How many of us will have been inspired by our home county to play the game when we were young. I’m not sure a side comprising representation from Essex (!!) and Northants would have done it for me. You can take the boy out of Middlesex but you can’t take Middlesex out of the boy and insert another root.
Grumpy old man? Probably, but the inevitable power and influence of money is surging its way inexorably through cricket. Next stop, the States and the waiting Indian diaspora. The soap opera will no doubt export well and if, as in its country of origin, the franchises do at least have some logical geographical connection the globe-trotting mercenary white ball experts may well inspire the young Californian to play for the next iteration of the L.A. Knight Riders
I last went to Loftus Road fifty years ago. On 9th March 1974 Rangers lost 0-2 at home to Leicester City in the FA Cup quarter-final courtesy of two goals from Joe Waters making his first team debut. This was the era of overcrowded stadiums. My last exit-bound step off the terrace was almost my last ever step at Loftus Road as my feet barely touched the ground as the crowd surged down the narrow passage to the gates. It put me off - effectively for life. When Hillsborough happened fifteen years later I felt I had some insight into the helplessness of the crowd. Despite that and fifty years on the first score I look for between 4.40 and 5 o’clock, depending on the degree of absurdity that is additional time, is of course that of Rangers. There have been entire seasons since then when I doubt if I could tell you many, if any, of the team’s names, but I knew the score. From an early age I was invested in QPR. They were and always will be my team. The same loyalty applies to County Cricket teams; whose score do we look for first? Of course it is.
If it were not for that little local difficulty it was facing at the time Yorkshire may now be owned by the Rajasthan Royals. It would be foolish to deny the existential importance of such financial heft. Ask any Wasps supporter of a certain vintage what they would prefer to have happened to the club of their roots. That Indian-generated 80 pence in the pound is clearly vital for the future of the game in general but the cost may be that our lifetime connections may well be further loosened - let’s hope not.
Six Hitting
In this year’s SA20 there were almost 500 sixes hit and many of them travelled a very long way, by which I mean over 100 metres. The biggest hits were generally made by South Africans: Klaasen, Verreyne, Smuts, Hermann, Rickelton, van der Dussen, Breetzke and Jansen. However, the three biggest hits measuring 108 and 107 twice were made by the Englishman, Will Jacks. Heinrick Klaasen hit 37 sixes which accounted for over half of his 447 runs in the competition.
I have previously commented that I think the distance of sixes is measured by the same bloke in a flat cap who sits on the mid-wicket boundary and assesses the speed of fast bowlers as in: “Shit, that was quick – we’ll call it 91mph”. Only in this case he announces “Wow, that’s gone miles – let’s say 92 metres”. However, when I discussed this with the Professor he told me, not for the first time, that I was just being silly and that there are highly sophisticated tools available in the 21st century alongside mobile phones and the like.
I decided I owed it to the readers of Googlies to research this matter and came up with following from Matt Harris:
“In every game where the technology is used, Hawkeye is involved. They have six cameras strategically placed around the ground and these are used to monitor the flight of the ball as it travels away from the batter’s bat. Those six cameras then combine to form a 3D image of the ball’s trajectory. That image will then help to gauge the final distance.
Speed is naturally important too. The speed is calculated from the moment the ball leaves the bat. The time it takes to travel 22 yards (the length of a cricket pitch) is also recorded and this is projected forward. Using calculations involving that 3D Image plus the trajectory and speed of the ball, the final distance is then determined.
A radar gun, similar to that which is used to measure bowling speeds, can also be used in this process. In terms of six hitting, it will calculate the speed of the ball as it leaves the bat and travels across the cricket field. The gun is often used in games where Hawkeye isn’t available. When this happens, the measuring applies a law of physics which is known as the Range of Projectile.
As you might have imagined, range of projectile can be used in missile technology, but it can also be applied to six hitting in cricket. The calculations involved can be quite complex. Essentially, the physics uses the speed of the ball, its trajectory and the time that it stays in the air. A system of divisions and calculations is then employed to get a final answer.
As with many areas of cricket technology, the systems used to calculate six hitting are not 100% perfect. In terms of the Range of Projectile Calculations, there is a problem in the sense that it uses the time that the ball stays in the air. As we’ve seen, there are problems with this. That ball can connect with a part of the stand while it is still travelling in an upwards direction. With the Hawkeye method, speed is measured but drops in speed, for whatever reason, can be variable. However, the margins of error are small ones, and the technology is certainly much better than it would have been in the past.”
So now you know. It could be as hit and miss as the guesses made by my guy in the flat cap.
Modern Euphemisms
There was a time when you would say to your bowler “I’m taking you off because you are bowling too many long hops and full tosses.” But the modern bowler would look at you dumbfounded and explain “Nonsense I have just been missing my yorker and some deliveries have been back of a length”.
Some of the commentators have introduced their own classifications into boundary hits. A four is now often referred to as a “boundary four” and a six is termed a “maximum”. If the batsman hits the ball straight he is said to be “going downtown”.
Most of the new-fangled strokes have their own euphemistic nomenclature. What has for millennia been called a “hoick” is now dignified as a slog sweep. When Joe Root in a test match attempts to ramp and is caught at second slip and ensures England have no chance of winning or even saving the match he is let off by it being explained as Baz-ball.
Fielders are also blessed by these new descriptions of their efforts. When a simple catch is dropped or the ball is allowed to pass between the fielders legs his efforts are described as “ordinary”. This is truly puzzling since I would expect from highly paid professional cricketers that ordinary denotes a very high standard of performance.
Oh, and by the way euphemisms are also rampant in political life as well. After the UK slipped into Recession last month, we were told that it was actually only a technical Recession. Of course it was! A Recession is a technical calculation and so every Recession is a technical Recession. Its’ means of calculation does not lessen the impact of those who have to suffer from it.
King Cricket
This appeared on the King Cricket website
Conviction. It's what Ben Stokes' England Test team is all about. This is great to watch but cringe-inducing to listen to. Is there any chance they could play the same way without… saying all of those things?
The most obviously groansome comment arising from England's 434-run defeat to India in the third Test was Ben Duckett's response when asked what England would be happy chasing in the fourth innings.
"The more the better. This team is all about doing special things and creating history. They can have as many as they want and we'll go and get them."
England in fact only 'got' 122 of the 557 they needed for victory. Maybe they'd have got closer if they'd been chasing 900.
Duckett's batting had been bold and unrestrained and his comments followed suit. Let us tell you now, overseas readers, this is actually quite hard to palate if you support the team he plays for. Self-confidence is not actually something Britons really celebrate. We in fact tend to view it as crass, needy and even pitiable.
The exact ratios of those three things vary, but that's your basic mix. And England cricket fans arguably inhabit an even harsher subculture. To support the England cricket team is to never truly feel sure of victory, even when it is basically assured. In 1938, they made 903-7 against Australia and bowled the opposition out for 201 and then 123. We are positive there will have been fans catastrophising defeats until that last wicket was taken and mentally preparing themselves for the resultant humiliation.
In England, we do not like cockiness in our cricketers. If that sounds like a single rule, it actually stems from two:
If you're no good, don't be cocky - you'll only look like a pillock
If you're good, don't be cocky - no-one likes a show-off
Duckett's hundred was characterised by conviction. His words were too. Are these two sides of the same 2019 ICC Cricket World Cup 50p?
Because we're sure you're already aware that Duckett's comment was only really the latest verbal sortie from a squad that is fast developing a bit of a reputation for voicing this kind of brassy nonsense.
"I think even sending in a nightwatchman when you're 330 ahead shows that they're slightly wary of us," was another from the opener from that same interview. And despite stating that it had been, "one of those days when I feel we have to give credit to India," Duckett also couldn't restrain himself from acknowledging Yashasvi Jaiswal's innings by saying: "When you see players from the opposition playing like that, it almost feels like we should take some credit that they're playing differently than how other people play Test cricket."
Duckett's by no means alone. There are any number of examples.
One of the more infamous comments from recent times was Zak Crawley's "I think we'll win by, I don't know, 150 runs?" during the Ashes - albeit that was perhaps more knowingly ludicrous than most are willing to acknowledge.
For a purer example, we're better off turning to Ollie Robinson.
"We’ve entertained the world, and we’ve put the Aussies on the back foot," he wrote in his Wisden column... shortly after England had lost the first Ashes Test.
Nor is he going to let something like 'not actually playing' get in the way of his strutting bombast. "I don’t think India have ever experienced a team that’s come at them in the way that we did in that first Test," he said after the first match of this series.
The vibe is a group of England cricketers who are just certain that they're going to prevail. Could they perhaps play a totally different game in front of the dictaphones? How about a bit of 1990s defeatism? Is that too much to ask?
Robinson did a bit of a John Tavner on Brendon McCullum when he reported that the coach told his charges, "It feels like we’ve won, lads,” after that Edgbaston Ashes defeat. That seemed a very "for your ears only" comment and not at all intended for the wider world.
'Know your audience' is the crux of it. You might tell a toddler you're going to leave the house without him if you think it'll persuade him to put his shoes on. Similarly, you might tell Ollie Robinson that defeat feels like a victory if you feel the actual outcome of the match might result in counterproductive second-guessery from him in the next Test. (Credit to McCullum for not explaining that, by the way, which would have totally undermined the message.)
That alleged quote nevertheless sheds light on the psychological mechanics that are being employed to develop the stripped-back, unencumbered, in-the-moment mindset England are striving for. (Here's a piece about how England's philosophy is not about mindless positivity so much as it's about clear-mindedness and here's a piece about how reductive language has allowed people to lose sight of that.)
The central aim is to mould cricketers who play shorn of outside pressures and preconceptions. This of course first requires renouncing those outside pressures and preconceptions. The benefits of doing so are arguably hard to come by without also sounding like complete wingnuts from time to time.
Thompson mattersa
Here's another example: Robinson about England's win in the first Test of this series.
"The best thing about us in that first Test was that when we came off and they were 190 ahead, you wouldn’t know that they were 190 ahead. The mood in the dressing room, the morale, our confidence that we could win the game was as high as ever. The moment you stop believing is the moment that you’ve lost the game."
There's a broad and muddy no-man's land between confidence and delusion. The far narrower dividing line can only ever be uncovered afterwards - and crucially it will have been shifted one way or another by the attitudes of those involved.
Many of the greatest sports stars were basically delusional because that's often something of an entry requirement for delivering improbable feats. It's why these characters so often play on for too long or make ill-advised comebacks. They're fundamentally impervious to evidence.
Is the rhetoric from 'England' or is it from 'some England players'?
Duckett's "the more the better" was the most bullish in a series of comments from England players about chasing down fourth innings targets.
Looking back, when Jonny Bairstow was waiting to see what England would be chasing against the same opponents in 2022, his words were open-minded rather than silly.
“Whatever they set, they set and we’ll go about it in the same manner," he said. "Why not?”
This was one game after his Kingsman church scene innings against New Zealand and he and Joe Root did in fact then get England to a lofty target of 378 with ease.
So maybe you don't have to be utterly convinced that you will definitely triumph in order to play with conviction. Maybe you just have to be open to the possibility that things might pan out for you, because why not?
Or maybe it just manifests in different players in different ways. For every Ollie Robinson, there's a Joe Root, self-effacing to a fault. Given an opportunity to say something about his incredible record as a batter, Root is more likely to deflect towards his dreadful record as captain.
And for every Duckett, there's a Mark Wood, saying that Sarfaraz Khan "doesn't know unlucky he was" to get run out by "the worst fielder in the team".
A lot of these other quotes aren't nearly so memorable. Asked whether England would get a first innings lead, shortly after Duckett's spectacular hundred and shortly before England's spectacular implosion, Wood went with, "I'm a bowler, so I want every lead we can get. That's not quite how the game goes, so we'll have to see what happens tomorrow."
As a long-serving England fan, we knew - just knew - that they'd collapse the next morning, surrender another 400 to India in their second innings, and then find themselves 50-7 chasing 557.
The most brutal game -1970 Cup Final
George sent me this article by Phil Dawkes
Eddie Gray collects the ball in the centre circle and immediately sets his sights on Chelsea’s goal. But David Webb has other ideas. Fuelled by fresh memories of his roasting at the hands of the Leeds winger a couple of weeks prior, the defender hits him, both feet off the ground, no prisoners. Bang. It takes all of two minutes for the 1970 FA Cup final replay to live up to its billing as a game best avoided by the faint of heart.
It is a match that has gone down in football folklore as a meeting of pure malice between a defeated Leeds United side renowned for having the muscle to match their magnificence and a victorious Chelsea team with flashiness and ferocity in equal measure. Football was a very different game half a century ago, when much greater leniency was shown to crunching, full-bloodied tackles and their aftermath. But even by the standards of the time it made for brutal viewing.
Such is its enduring reputation, it has been re-refereed twice since by leading officials according to modern interpretations of the rules. In 1997, David Elleray concluded he would have shown six red cards, while in 2020 Michael Oliver opted for 11. On the night, referee Eric Jennings brandished just one yellow card.
‘A special sort of animosity.’ “Previous”. This is the polite phrase many of the 1970 final’s participants use to explain the history and lasting grievances being carried into the game at Old Trafford. On a grander scale, Leeds-Chelsea was the north-south divide personified. The Blues were seen as the fashionable southern fancy-dans, who hung out drinking champagne with celebrities on the King's Road, while the Whites were perceived as the dour, gritty northerners, smoking cigarettes and playing carpet bowls in their working men's club. In truth, the two sides were more alike than they would have been willing to admit - both a blend of brute force and brilliance, each driven and on the way up. This perhaps partly accounts for their bitter rivalry.
"The rivalry was there because Leeds had a name, a reputation as being dirty,” said Bonetti, in an interview with the Chelsea website in 2018. “I'd call them physical because dirty doesn't sound a very nice word. We matched them in the physical side of things because we had our own players who were physical and that was probably why we were such big rivals. We weren't unalike in the way we played." In his autobiography, Leeds midfielder Johnny Giles attests to “a special sort of animosity” between the teams. “I had that bit of ‘previous’ with Eddie McCreadie,” added Giles. “John Hollins, who would usually mark me, could do a bit. And Ron ‘Chopper’ Harris had made a name for himself.” Chelsea striker Ian Hutchinson put it more simply: “We hated them and they hated us.”
Chelsea had beaten Leeds in controversial circumstances in a 1967 FA Cup semi-final. Leeds still carried lasting scars from their 1967 FA Cup semi-final defeat by the Blues, in which they felt they had a perfectly good Peter Lorimer free-kick ruled out. In the 1969-70 season alone they faced each other six times, with Leeds winning both league games, including a 5-2 win at Stamford Bridge, and the Blues coming out on top over two games in a League Cup third-round tie.
There were also individual scores to be settled, with one of the freshest that between Webb and Gray. Leeds’ Scottish winger had given the Chelsea full-back an absolute chasing in the drawn final at Wembley that prompted the replay. The Whites had largely dominated but somehow failed to win on a national stadium surface buried under a mountain of sand, in an attempt to make it playable following poor weather. Webb was switched to centre-back for the replay to get him away from Gray and give Harris the task of keeping the winger quiet, but fate drew the two back together almost immediately and gave the Chelsea man a chance to make his mark. This he did, about halfway up Gray’s left shin.
Referees looked very different back in 1970. By 2020 standards, this would have earned Webb a first yellow, according to Oliver. His second would follow 12 minutes later for another late, two-footed lunge, this time on Alan Clarke deep in his own half, and a third in extra time. But back in 1970, Jennings kept his whistle from his lips and cards firmly in his pocket. Further seemingly clear offences came and went without punishment - Billy Bremner sent spinning from the field by Peter Houseman, Hunter and McCreadie coming to blows, a foot left in by Clarke. As renowned Observer journalist Hugh McIlvanney wrote afterwards: “At times, it appeared that Mr Jennings would give a free-kick only on production of a death certificate.” Webb recalled later to the Daily Mail: “Every time he went for his pocket and you thought he was going to book somebody he pulled out his hanky, blew his nose and said, ‘Get on with it, will you?'”
Harris would more or less finish the job on Gray before the first half was out, catching the winger on the back of his left knee, leaving him with an injury that restricted him for the remainder of the game and crucially robbed Leeds of arguably their most talented attacking player. Ever the hatchet man, Harris would attempt to do the same to Gray’s left-wing colleague Terry Cooper in the second half but succeeded only in tearing right through his shorts. Years later, Gray was enjoying himself at a black-tie dinner when Harris tapped him on the shoulder, put his hand out and, with a grin, asked: "Can I have my studs back?"
‘Bites Yer Legs’ and ‘The Cat’ Leeds recently renamed their South Stand after Norman Hunter. If Harris’ reputation preceded him, so too did the man at the heart of the Leeds defence, Norman Hunter. It would be two more years before the infamous banner that read ‘Norman Bites Yer Legs’ would be held aloft by Leeds fans at the 1972 FA Cup final, but his uncompromising style was well-publicised. His first touch in the 1970 replay - a throw-in - is conducted to a chorus of boos from the Chelsea fans. His second meaningful involvement would provoke a fiercer response. After relinquishing possession following a forward run, Hunter and McCreadie come together in midfield, leading to a brief flurry of post-challenge blows between the two. Later in the game, the Leeds defender is seen prowling following another heavy challenge, fists clenched and ready for battle. For many, this is the indelible image of Hunter on the pitch, but one that does a huge disservice to a player with silk to match the steel, who won 28 England caps and was part of the 1966 World Cup-winning squad aged 22.
It was certainly not representative of the man - a warm, generous and beloved figure, the death of whom on 17 April 2020 was deeply felt not just at Leeds but across the football world. “I worked with him on the after-dinner circuit,” Harris told the Mail. “On the field he was an animal, but away from the football you won’t meet a nicer fella, a gentleman.”
Bonetti required lengthy treatment in the 1970 replay following a clash with Jones Just five days prior to Hunter’s death, Chelsea lost one of their own all-time heroes in Bonetti, whose influence over the 240 minutes of the 1970 final is perhaps greater than any other. His heroics in goal in the first game at Wembley was one of the main reasons for the replay, but even this stellar performance was overshadowed by the fortitude he demonstrated at Old Trafford. In the 31st minute he suffered a painful knee injury in a fiercely contested aerial duel with Leeds forward Mick Jones - one that required lengthy treatment and prompted BBC commentator Kenneth Wolstenholme to comment: “This almost deserves an X-certificate”. He emerged after half-time heavily strapped and unable to take goal-kicks. Jones would take advantage almost immediately after the injury by giving Leeds the lead, but Bonetti would have the last laugh, living up to his reputation as 'The Cat' by launching off his one good leg to make a string of important saves. Fittingly, Bonetti - the foundation on which Chelsea’s first Cup final triumph was built and a revered figure in their history - collected the base of the trophy at its presentation.
As the game wore on and the light faded above Old Trafford, the violence taking place on its pitch only increased. Peter Osgood fouled Jack Charlton, who immediately leapt to his feet and barged the striker to the turf - an immediate act of retribution that the Leeds centre-back usually saved for his infamous little black book of future victims. It was another attempted act of revenge from Charlton that cost Leeds their lead with the defender leaving Osgood unmarked to score as he went off in search of a Chelsea player who had whacked his thigh moments earlier.
The most brutal moment of all, though, came in the 85th minute. Billy Bremner, Leeds’ brilliant midfield heartbeat, always gave as good as he got, but in 1970 he was a clear target for the Chelsea players. It was for a shove on the Scot that Hutchinson earned the game’s only booking, sparking a running battle between the two for the remainder of the game that saw late tackles, retaliatory kicks and some expressive hand gestures from each. It would be McCreadie, though, who would strike the biggest blow, leaping high into the air in the box, missing the bouncing ball and performing a karate kick to the head that “almost cut Bremner in half” according to Blues defender John Dempsey. Jennings, in his final game as a professional referee, waved play on.
Hutchinson and Webb would have the decisive say and ultimately win the war for Chelsea in extra time, with the former’s booming long throw making its way to the back post off the head of Charlton for the latter to nod home.
“Once I saw the Leeds players, I knew I could celebrate,” Webb told the Mail. “Leeds would complain about anything. If there was any reason to claim a foul, they’d have been doing it and they weren’t complaining, they were deflated.”
The 1970 FA Cup final was watched by a UK television audience of 28.5m
Much has been said and can still be read about that rampaging replay at Old Trafford. But perhaps the most revealing recollection remains that of Leeds' right-back on the day, Paul Madeley: "It was just the way the game was played back then."
Barnet Watch
I had started to think that Poch had put an embargo on exotic tonsorial creations at Chelsea but then Reece James got injured and has been replaced by Malo Gusto who has a hair style that would make even the absurd Kelvin Phillips jealous.
Marc Cucurella doesn’t feature in Poch’s selections these days and maybe should seek an alternative venue where his long flowing locks would be better appreciated. Maybe he should team up with Tahith Chong at Luton who has similar long black locks. You wouldn’t want to be around these two on Halloween.
Old Danes Gathering
We are planning to hold another bi-annual Old Danes Gathering this summer. Full details will be included in the next edition. Old Danes will be notified beforehand on a separate distribution.
Missing Recipients
I recently transcribed my googlies email address book to a newer format and fear that some individuals may not be receiving their copy. Please advise me if you are aware of anyone who is not receiving it. I also suspect that Bob Baxter. Lionel Hayward and Bob Fisher may fall into this category. Please advise if you are getting it.
Googlies Website
All the back editions of Googlies can be found on the G&C website. There are also many photographs most of which have never appeared in Googlies.
www.googliesandchinamen.com
Googlies and Chinamen
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James Sharp
Broad Lee House
Combs
High Peak
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