John
Arlott’s Vintage Summer 1947 was one
of the first cricket books I owned. Written 20 years after the event, it is the
great commentator’s memoire of the second post-war season, his first as a
full-time commentator and reporter. By the time he wrote the book Arlott was
established as one of Britain’s best wine writers; “vintage” was his highest
bestowment of approval.
Arlott
had spent most of the Second World War as a policeman in Southampton, dodging
the bombs and dealing with the detritus that war washes up on civilised shores.
Two years after peace, he spent the summer watching cricket and counting it as
work. His pleasure at this personal liberation suffuses the pages and there is
a sense that the country as a whole was breathing out, at last.
Cricket
grounds were packed: 14,500 wedged into the College Ground at Cheltenham for
the Championship decider between Gloucestershire and Middlesex. A third of that
today and the ground would be thought full. Forty-six thousand paid at the gate
to join the members during the five days of Canterbury Week.
There
was some wonderful cricket, much of it from the Middlesex pair of Denis Compton
and Bill Edrich, both of whom scored an unprecedented 3,000 runs, carefree, and
dashing, and including six centuries between them in the tests against South
Africa.
I
went to a talk by Compton at the County Ground in Bristol in the early 90s, and
saw boyhood adoration in the rheumy eyes of those who had seen him play, though
some had the decency to be as appalled as I was at their hero’s shameful
racism.
Which
have been my vintage summers?
The
sun-drenched salad days of the mid-seventies are certainly among them. In 1975 I
saw hundreds for Clive Lloyd in the first World Cup Final, and Colin Cowdrey
against the Australians in the same week.
In 1976
I was there for double and single hundreds, both of pure silk, by Zaheer Abbas
in Canterbury Week; Holding’s demolition of England on an Oval featherbed; a
Lord’s final win for Kent, all but denied by a one-legged D’Oliveira fifty; and
a helicopter bringing the Sunday League trophy to Maidstone as rivals faltered in
the last moments of the season. The early years of the new century are there
too, when I was CricInfo's man in the North Island. Like John Arlott, I could
barely believe that I was being paid to watch cricket and report on it.
But
2015 topped them all. It presented as pure a distillation of remarkable cricket
as it would be possible to conceive or hope for; cricket that was better than
any that I have seen before or, unless I am very lucky, will see again.
Here
are some of the features that made it an unmatched vintage.
The summer of Sangakkara
The
great Sri Lankan batsman Kumar Sangakkara said farewell to Wellington with a test
double hundred and two one-day hundreds. The double century was a masterpiece
of technique and restraint. The second half of the innings was made with the
tail for company, but he farmed the strike as efficiently as a Dutch tulip
farmer and still scored at four an over.
At
the Cake Tin during the pre-World Cup one day series, he peeled off a hundred with
the nonchalance of a high roller taking a thousand dollars from his stash. Made
at just over a run a ball, it set New Zealand a target that was too much on the
day.
Best
of all was his 70-ball century against England in the World Cup. Poor England. In
their old-fashioned way, they thought that 309 offered maximum security, but it
turned out to be an open prison out of which Sri Lanka could saunter at will.
Sangakkara’s century was his fastest in ODIs, one of four consecutive hundreds
he made in the World Cup, but he was no more than toying with the England
attack. Victory came in the 48th over, but it could have been ten
overs earlier if he had felt like it.
To
see one of the greatest batsmen in the history of cricket displaying his full
brilliance would be enough to make any summer a vintage one.
Williamson and Watling’s world record
Kane
Williamson’s batting in 2015 gave us an inkling of what watching Bradman must
have been like.
Please
understand that I am not being so foolish as to say that Williamson is the new
Bradman. That would need a touch of the sun well beyond what is available here in
Wellington. But the relentless rationality that Williamson brought to the
crease in 2015 (it produced a test average of 90 or so for the year;
Bradmanesque, some might say) must have been about the closest we have seen to
the Don’s human algorithm for a long time: a run-scoring answer to almost every
ball, but usually low-risk, rarely flashy and never extravagant (except when
driving a six to win a game against Australia with one wicket to fall); timing
and placement rather than power and effort. Of course, Bradman kept it up for
twenty years, that’s the difference.
He
began at the Basin during the test against Sri Lanka during the first week of
the year. After a first-innings 69—it was a surprise when he was out, as it
always is these days—in the second innings Williamson was established again,
but with wickets falling around him. Soon, only five remained, the lead a mere
24.
Williamson
addressed the situation by ignoring it. As the finest batsmen do, he responded to
each ball by assessing its merit and acting accordingly. As commentators have
noted, he does this no matter what form of the game he is playing. It sounds
straightforward, but only a very good player bring it off.
Williamson
and BJ Watling put on an unbroken 365 for the sixth wicket, a new test record. Remarkably,
the existing record was created at the Basin less than a year before, by
Brendon McCullum and Watling against India. So Watling joined Bradman, Hammond
and Ames as the only players to break their own world partnership record (at
least since the early days of test cricket when it must have happened more
often).
The
earlier stand had saved the game; this one won it, establishing BJ Watling as
the lost Tracy brother in terms of rescuing impossible situations. In this era
of batsmen-keepers, he is as good as anybody behind the stumps. Yet when the
journalists and websites picked their end-of-year World XIs only the Australian
writer Chloe Saltau (of those I have seen) picked Watling as wicketkeeper. He is
the forgotten hero of New Zealand cricket.
In
fifty years’ time people will look at the scorecard of the Basin Reserve test
of 2015 and will say “A win from a deficit of 135 on first innings, a world
record and double hundreds by two of the finest batsmen ever to play the game.
Anybody who saw that game was pretty lucky”. So we were.
A great day at the Cake Tin (1)
The
World Cup group match between New Zealand and England was among the best days I
have spent at the cricket, and certainly the most astonishing. I have watched
the highlights every few weeks since and it enthralls every time.
With
England 107 for three batting first, the game had fewer than 20 overs to run,
that’s how astonishing it was. This came about because of two extraordinary
performances.
Tim
Southee’s seven for 33 was the best one-day bowling I have seen. I have thought
about this and looked through Wisden
for alternatives. The Yorkshire slow left-armer Don Wilson’s six for 18 at
Canterbury in the first year of the Sunday League was the previous best,
statistically at least (it was one of the great Kent collapses: 70 for one
becomes 105 all out). Joel Garner at the ’79 World Cup final? Derek Underwood
most Sundays? Not as good as Southee at the Cake Tin this day.
The
ball in Southee’s hands was an obedient shepherd’s dog. Four of the seven were
bowled, each with the ball no more than grazing the off stump.
I’m
not one for atmosphere at the cricket, generally speaking. I’d choose the quiet
hum of the Mote or Pukekura Park a quarter full over a throbbing stadium almost
any day, but it was great to be at the Cake Tin to hear Southee’s name sang out
just as Richard Hadlee’s was thirty years ago.
Southee’s
performance would have been enough to put that day on this list. What followed ranks
it as a contender for the day, of all the days over the past fifty years, that
I would most like to watch again.
Brendon
McCullum went about the pursuit of the modest target of 124 as if it were a
silent film heroine tied to the train tracks awaiting urgent rescue. For
Anderson, Broad and Finn having an opening batsmen charging towards them like a
pocket Trumper was utterly disconcerting. A run rate of 15 an over in a 50 over
match. It was magnificent in its temerity.
A
wonderful day.
A great day at the Cake Tin (2)
Martin
Guptill caressed the first ball of the match to the straight boundary and the
World Cup quarter-final between New Zealand and the West Indies was under way. In
its way, Guptill’s innings was even more remarkable than McCullum’s, not just
for its prolificacy.
It
was paced quite beautifully and there was hardly a shot that the MCC coaching
book wouldn’t be proud of. Guptill’s century came up in 111 balls with 12 fours
but no sixes. Only then did he put the foot down, roaring out of sight leaving
behind a dust cloud of extraordinary numbers: 137 in 52 balls with 12 more
fours…and 11 sixes.
And
all with lovely, pure cricket strokes. I have been trying to decide who Guptill
reminded me of that day, without reaching a convincing answer. Cowdrey? Too
much power. Not the brutality of Viv Richards. Not as rugged as Gooch. Then
yesterday I read this:
…cricket of
elegant classicism, of economy of movement, of touch and precision rather than
brawn. But then I also remembered how he pervaded a crease rather than simply
occupying it, and how he obtained such power from such a minuscule backlift,
barely a flex of the wrists.
That’s
it. Apart from the bit about the miniscule backlift, that could be a
description of Martin Guptill in the World Cup quarter-final. In fact, it is
Gideon Haigh on Martin Crowe, whose death has inspired some fine writing. There
is no finer compliment for a New Zealand batsman than to say that he reminds
the spectator of Crowe, especially Guptill, whose mentor Crowe was.
At
the Basin test a couple of weeks ago I sat next to someone who dismissed Guptill’s
innings as being made against poor bowling. Well, up to a point, but let us
give Guptill some credit for making them bowl badly. It was a World Cup quarter
final and there was immense pressure on the batsman to which he responded
magnificently (the same man reckoned the McCullum’s triple hundred was made
against bent bowling, so perhaps I am paying him too much attention).
More McCullum
Only
once during that great day against England did I actually gasp at what was
occurring out there. Not at a Southee wicket, a McCullum six or even Adam
Milne’s brilliant boundary catch. It was when McCullum placed the sixth close
catcher for Morgan.
Six
close catchers in a 50-over game; something I have not seen before and am
unlikely to see again, unless McCullum’s disregard for the conventions of
captaincy becomes contagious. Who else would have bowled his lead bowler out as
McCullum did that day? It won the game.
Nor
would many captains have declared as early as he did at the Basin test, giving
Sri Lanka, Sangakkara and all, a glimpse of victory, staking the series lead on
a greater chance of winning the test.
McCullum’s
compulsion to audaciousness was one of the defining features of 2015. Batting with
resilience, style, panache, and charged with TNT. Bowling that was perfect. And
leadership that sailed over the horizon to confound the flat Earth sceptics. A
vintage summer indeed, the best in half a century.
