Kent v Essex, St Lawrence Ground, Canterbury, 4th day, 14 September 2013

http://cricketarchive.com/Archive/Scorecards/472/472584.html

I am back in the old country for the end of the season, a little earlier than planned following the peaceful death of my father, who saw Bradman play before the Second World War. In the circumstances I was not able to make it to the first three days of this Championship game, which were severely disrupted by the rain, though not enough to keep Kent away from the precipice of defeat, 65 short of an innings defeat with four down.

A Saturday drive around rural east Kent—which looked quite enchanting, so green—inevitably led us to the St Lawrence to give my Waikato Correspondent her first sight of the great ground where I spent so many happy salad days. There had been a lot of rain, so I expected the game to have been called off, or if there had been play, for Kent to have capitulated. The ground was almost deserted as we drove in, but the umpires were inspecting and play would begin at 3.30.

There was plenty on it; Essex needed to win to stay in the promotion race. My Life in Cricket Scorecards was well represented; my Blean correspondent arrived as play began, thus allowing my Waikato correspondent a taste of the badinage that has been emptying the seats around us since the early seventies.

We were in the Underwood and Knott Stand; new name, familiar location. I have watched more cricket from this place than any other; not for some years now, but formative experiences permeate your DNA. So when Reece Topley hit Sam Northeast’s pads I gave it out ahead of the umpire. I got all subsequent decisions right too. The angle of viewing—over widish long on—precludes informed judgement based on the visual evidence available, so it must be the accumulated knowledge derived from hundreds of hours of sitting here and seeing what is out and what is not. Still got it.

Incidentally, Reece Topley is the nephew of Peter Topley, one of Kent’s least distinguished players of the past half century.

Pig farmer Geraint Jones hit three boundaries before going the same way as Northeast, so it was up to Darren Stevens to save Kent’s bacon. The following hour explained why Stevens is so popular with the Kent faithful. He attacked whenever there was the slightest opportunity, which was important as it put Kent ahead with little time available for Essex to bat again. His half century took 67 deliveries. When Stevens holed out, caught by former Wellington player Owais Shah, the job was done.

The bowler was none other than Monty Panesar, the most unlikely pantomime villain English cricket history, Julie Andrews cast as Cruella de Vil. My Waikato correspondent identified Panesar having last seen him in the Dunedin Test in March. I had not been aware that he was on loan to Essex.

So a satisfying glimpse of Championship cricket at St Lawrence, the first I have had since leaving for New Zealand in 1997. I have seen one-day and university matches here, and a Championship game at the Mote in Maidstone since, but nothing in my favourite competition. It was good to see a real contest and to find that Kent cricket is still a vertebrate creature.

Random thoughts on the Ashes: Chester-le-Street

http://www.espncricinfo.com/the-ashes-2013/engine/current/match/566935.html

In England I was renowned as a reluctant venturer north. A Lancastrian colleague years ago was irritated when I told her that I had a job interview “up north”, only to reveal that it was in Stroud, only twenty miles or so from Bristol (cricket relevance: the interview was at Jack Russell’s old school, but I did not get the job).

I have certainly never got as far up the country as Chester-le-Street, headquarters of Durham CCC and venue for the fourth Test. Fewer than 20,000 live in the town itself, which must make it the smallest place ever to have staged a Test match, though Google Earth confirms that Chester-le-Street is really an outpost of the Tyneside-Wearside conurbation. 

Durham only became a first-class county in 1992. For over a hundred years before then the north-east’s many talented cricketers had to travel south to play first-class cricket, and the nearest county, Yorkshire, would not have them because of its ridiculous rule about having to be born within the Ridings. Northamptonshire benefitted most from this situation. Geoff Cook and Peter Willey both had lengthy careers at Wantage Road, and played for England, in Willey’s case, not as often as he should have done. They had both followed Colin Milburn south.

Milburn was a cricketer out of time in the 1960s. We have been reminded at times during the current series of the funereal tempo at which cricket, in England at least, was conducted then. Milburn ignored the orthodoxy of the coaching book and counter attacked. David Warner would be his modern equivalent, in his approach to batting, at least. As a person, Milburn was altogether more jocular and friendly, which was his downfall.

Milburn was first picked for England in the 1966 series against the West Indies. Run out for a duck in the first innings, he made 94 from 136 balls in the second, following with a century at a similar pace at Lord’s in the second Test. This against Hall, Griffith, Sobers and Gibbs, the finest attack of the day. Supersonic batting in the subsonic age. Milburn opened with Boycott in two Tests that summer, a duet between Kiri te Kanawa and Janis Joplin.

Today, scoring like that in his first two Tests would have established Milburn in the England side for a couple of years. Not then. He never became a regular. Two appearances in 1967, two more in 1968, then a late call up from a successful season for Western Australia to join MCC in Pakistan. On arrival he asked who was injured. “No-one”, they said, “we just needed cheering up”. He scored a hundred in his only overseas Test, in Karachi, nevertheless.

He was only 27, and might yet have become one of England’s most renowned. But two months later he lost an eye in a car accident and that was that. He did a bit of commentary on radio and TV, but hit the drink hard. I did a bit of work for the phone commentary service Cricketcall in the late 1980s. Milburn worked for them too, and it was reported that he would turn up having apparently slept in his car all night. He was 48 when he died in 1990, one of Durham and England’s lost treasures.

I was at Sophia Gardens, Cardiff when Durham won their first Championship game, an innings victory over Glamorgan: http://cricketarchive.com/Archive/Scorecards/55/55768.html

In that first season the Durham team consisted largely of old lags enjoying a season or two’s superannuation, the average age that of a bowls club rather than a county cricket team. David Graveney was captain, supported by Paul Parker, Wayne Larkins, Simon Hughes, Gloucestershire’s Phil Bainbridge and, above all, Ian Botham, who was to describe joining Durham as the biggest mistake of his career. Dean Jones was the overseas player. On that day in Wales though, it was one of Durham’s own, medium-fast left-armer Simon Brown, who got it done with five for 66.

They finished bottom that year, but with a focus on developing local talent, intelligent leadership both on and off the field and wise choices of overseas talent (Dale Benkenstein and Ottis Gibson among others) Durham have prospered to the extent of becoming county champions in 2008 and 2009 and one-day champions in 2007, having an attractive international ground and developing key talent (Harmison, Collingwood) for the England team. If only Kent’s past two decades had been remotely as successful.

The increase in the number of international venues in England over the past decade has not been wise. Southampton is too close to London to be a worthwhile addition, while Cardiff’s elevation was down to political largesse and the ambition of a few individuals. It has also turned a pleasant and friendly county ground into a stadium too big for purpose on all but a day or two a year.

But the addition of the Riverside is welcome. It is the most attractive of the international grounds and provides Test and ODI cricket to a large population area with a strong cricket tradition—even though Durham is the newest of the first-class counties, high quality club cricket dates back to the mid-nineteenth century and leagues have thrived in the region almost as strongly as in Lancashire and Yorkshire. The sporting folk of Newcastle and Sunderland surely welcome a diversion from the perpetual misery of following their under-performing football teams.

Durham folk enjoyed a good game for their first Ashes Test. Nothing cheers up an English crowd like an Australian collapse when in sight of the finish line. This one—eight for 56—rivalled the likes of Melbourne 1998—eight for 59,—Edgbaston 1981—five for 16—and, of course, the gold standard of Headingley 1981—nine for 55. A shame that they will have to wait for three years before they see another Test on their lovely ground.

Random Thoughts on the Ashes: Old Trafford

http://cricketarchive.com/Archive/Scorecards/438/438512.html

Cricket’s relationship with the weather has always been difficult, particularly in England and New Zealand. The rain is the game’s Calvinist uncle, sending us home just when it all looks like becoming too much fun. So it was in the third Test at Old Trafford, where we were deprived of a gripping final afternoon, with England struggling.

Here the rain ensured that England would retain the Ashes. I wrote after the Melbourne Test of the last Ashes series how the mere retention of the Ashes has become an overblown event, contrasting it with the 1972 series, when the three-day victory and retention of the urn by Ray Illingworth’s team meant that some members of the England team had an unexpected cross-country journey to appear for the counties in the Sunday League the following day:

http://mylifeincricketscorecards.blogspot.co.nz/2011/01/random-thoughts-on-ashes-melbourne.html

Celebrations at Old Trafford did appear a smidgeon more modest than they were at the MCG, and so they should, given that the rain intervened with England 37 for three with two sessions to survive.  Indeed, given the skin-of-the-teeth result in Nottingham, it is not too much of a stretch to say that with a tad more luck Australia could have led the series as they left Manchester.

England’s paper superiority has been nullified to a fair extent by the indifferent form of a number of key batsmen, particularly Cook and Trott; Pietersen and Root too, except for one dominating innings in each case. Prior is having a shocker, particularly with the gloves, which appear lead-lined. Who are the best keepers in England now?

It was good to see Michael Clarke’s class on display in Manchester. He would have been picked for any of the great Australian sides of the past twenty years and does better than Ricky Ponting would have with the talent available.

In days gone by, the rain would frustrate but also intrigue, for if play did resume it would be on an uncovered pitch, which as it dried would present batsmen with unbounded conundrums. Uncovered pitches were an effective way of keeping alive three-day games in wet weather, and players of that era will tell you that the experience was invaluable for the refinement of technique. The difference they made is indicated by comparing averages then and now. In 1966 (picking a year at random) only two batsmen[1]—Sobers and Graveney—averaged more than 50; in 2012, 11 did so. In ’66, 36 bowlers[2] averaged under 20; last season only 13 did so (of course, the overall improvement in pitches is also a factor here).

For the spectator the universal covering of pitches removed a dimension from the game, especially if your team had Derek Underwood in it. Some of the earliest colour television footage of cricket is of the last day of the 1968 Ashes. Famously, England needed five wickets to level the series when a lunchtime thunderstorm drenched the ground and appeared to have concluded proceedings. But with the help of volunteers from the crowd, and every spare garden fork and blanket in the Kennington area, the outfield dried sufficiently to allow for a maximum of 75 minutes’ play. John Inverarity and Barry Jarman remained resolute for 40 minutes, which was as long as the pitch took to start drying—a strip that remained wet was simply a pudding, it was the changing state that presented the batsmen with problems.

Basil D’Oliveira bowled Jarman whereupon Underwood began to make the ball fizz, as reported by Norman Preston in Wisden:

The Kent left-arm bowler found the drying pitch ideal for this purpose. He received just enough help to be well nigh unplayable. The ball almost stopped on pitching and lifted to the consternation of the helpless Australians.

The match was won with six minutes to spare.

As the years passed, pressure to cover up grew. First it was restricted to the hours of play; abandonment meant that the covers went on. Then in Tests it was done away with altogether, but not before Mike Denness had been undone by it at Edgbaston in 1975. Towards the end of the seventies county cricket followed. Apart from a half-hearted experiment in the early nineties, that was that.

Except once. At Canterbury in May 1984, Kent reached 179 for four on the first day when it began to rain. Play was impossible until late on the third afternoon. A deal was done. Kent declared, both teams forfeited an innings and Hampshire couldn’t believe their luck. 180 to win in more than two hours appeared a gift. True, water had seeped under the covers, but what was the harm? How quickly they forgot:

http://cricketarchive.com/Archive/Scorecards/44/44710.html

Fifty-six all out in 27 overs, Underwood seven for 21. In his hands the ball was a dog doing tricks. I was one of the few spectators at the St Lawrence Ground that wet afternoon and witnessed the most unplayable over I have ever seen, with Chris Smith, Mark Nicholas and Trevor Jesty all edging balls that leapt at them like tiny commandoes.  

I have not seen the like since and almost certainly never will again. These days a game would probably be abandoned if the ball misbehaved so. But something is missing as a result, and, though it means agreeing with Geoffrey Boycott, I lament the day they started rolling the covers over the pitch when the rain began.

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[1] Of those who batted ten times or more

[2] Of those who took at least ten wickets

Random Thoughts on the Ashes: Lord’s

http://www.espncricinfo.com/the-ashes-2013/engine/current/match/566933.html

A few hours before the start of the fourth and final day’s play in the second Test I got an insight into what it is like to be Shane Watson. It was when an earthquake struck Wellington, 6.5 on the Richter Scale. Measured by the alternative fast bowlers’ scale of earthquake power it was at least a Glenn McGrath—penetrating, disconcerting and getting movement where it was least expected. It may even have been a Jimmy Anderson, with dangerous swing a threat. One day  Jeff Thomson will open from the Harbour End while Shoaib Akhtar steams in from the Island Bay End, but not this time.

I was in the gym at the time, which, as friends have been kind enough to mention, means that two exceptionally improbable events coincided. The MCC Civil Defence Manual is clear enough on the course of action in these circumstances: drop, cover and hold. Which is all very well, but on the day of the game conditions are never quite as ordered as they are in the coaching book. There was no desk or table to dive under; my treadmill was next to a large, shatterable window, so dropping where I was did not seem a sensible option.

So I attempted to make my way across the undulating floor towards the shelter of the doorframe. This is the civil defence equivalent of plonking your leg down the line of middle-and-off and playing across right across an inswinger. You know it won’t work, that you’ll be plumb lbw, yet you can’t stop yourself. I feel your pain, Shane.

Besides, even had I made it, I would have taken space that others coming after me might have made better use of. A bit like using up a DRS review on a decision that even someone in the bar at deep square leg can see is out. Moral of the story: don’t stand next to Shane Watson in an earthquake.

Watching a Test at Lord’s has an added pleasure quotient, even on television from this distance. The first match I watched there was the Gillette Cup final of 1967 between Kent and Somerset. From the early seventies until I left for New Zealand in 1997 there can only have been a handful of seasons in which I did not visit the ground. I watched three World Cup finals there, plus numerous domestic one-day finals, plenty of Tests and a good deal of county cricket (which was always a bit odd, like a busker playing in the Albert Hall, but it was an opportunity to watch from the pavilion, even if was necessary to put on a jacket and tie to do so).

Lord’s has changed a good deal in the 16 years since I was last there, much more so since my first visit thirty years before that; the new grandstand and the media centre have both appeared since ’97, but seem so familiar thanks to television coverage. MCC has done a fine job in modernising Lord’s while retaining its character as a cricket ground. Compare that to the Australian experience. The Gabba and the MCG have been turned into characterless bowls, and the SCG and the Adelaide Oval are on the way to being so.

Another reason why Lord’s is by some way the best Test venue in the UK is MCC’s intolerance. “Intolerant since 1787” might be the motto of the club, translated into Latin obviously (my Blean Correspondent will assist here), and for much of its history it has been an entirely reprehensible characteristic, shamefully racist, sexist and class-ridden. But now the MCC grandees have learned to use their intolerance for the common good, and are exercising it purposefully, for among its targets are ersatz patriotism, fancy dress and community jollity.

The playing of national anthems at the start of the game is fairly new to cricket. The Australians are to blame I think; I recall standing for the anthems for the first time when I attended the final Test of the 1998/9 series in Sydney and thinking how odd it was. It doesn’t suit the rhythm of cricket, especially for opening batsmen about to face a Test attack. For unfathomable reasons, the ceremony as often as not begins with the two teams walking onto the ground with each player hand-in-hand with a child. Invariably the cricketer is at a distance and bearing an expression that suggests the suspicion that the child is carrying leprosy, while the child has the sullenness of any contemporary youth who is a) awake and b) deprived of their on-line gaming device. Nothing could be further from the idyllic spirit that it presumably is intended to symbolise.

MCC sees this for the nonsense it is. Lord’s spared us God Save the Queen and gave us instead…the Queen. We also managed without the Jerusalem, Parry’s arrangement of four stupid questions from Blake about whether Jesus visited Glastonbury, the answer to all of which is clearly “no”. As the TMS commentator Don Mosey pointed out years ago, it is poorly chosen for community singing as it contains one note—on “built” in the penultimate line—that few untrained singers can reach.

And fancy dress (the sporting of which is defined in my dictionary as “a sad attempt to fabricate wit by those who have none”) is also out, unless, of course, it is in club colours and purchased by members from the Lord’s shop. The result is a wonderfully peaceful atmosphere characterised by an intelligent murmuring, a sound recently described by Simon Hoggart (about the House of Lords) as being that of “a basketful of puppies waking up”.

No wonder tickets for Lord’s Tests sell out faster than anywhere else, even though they charge the national debt for them. A pity that all the good cricket came from the home team this year. The Australians could pray for an earthquake.

 

Random Thoughts on the Ashes: Trent Bridge

http://www.espncricinfo.com/the-ashes-2013/engine/current/match/566932.html

Let us peer into the mind of Alistair Cook at around midday on the second day of the opening Ashes Test with Australia 117 for nine in their first innings.

“This is easy…all over in three days…five-nil…letter from the Palace…hire a top hat…limousine down The Mall…”

Enter Ashton Agar, No 11, 19 years old, Test debut, ten first-class matches, not even selected for the touring party. To watch over the following two hours was to look over the author’s shoulder as a famous story was written, a story that will be re-told as long as cricket is played. The first session of the second day was as gripping as any I have seen.

Whether Agar is any cop as a bowler remains to be seen. As a Test batsman he was nerveless, fluent and as replete of technique as a cordon bleu chef. In looking at once so at home, Agar put me in mind of the young David Gower on debut against Pakistan in 1978, pulling Liaquat Ali for four first ball. “Oh what a princely entry” said John Arlott on the radio.

Agar’s was proper batting, not hitting, let alone slogging. He played one late cut that was a thing of beauty, a shot beyond many established Test batsmen. That he missed a century by two runs only added to the romance. To witness a Test partnership record being broken, even on TV, is quite something.

When Agar passed Tino Best’s 96 at Edgbaston last year, Sky UK showed a list of the highest scores by No 11 batsmen in Tests. Two of these, in particular, resonated.

Of the many sessions of Test cricket that have challenged the endurance and mental fortitude of the New Zealand cricket fan, the last of 20 November 2004 and the first of the following day were among the most distressing. When Glenn McGrath joined Jason Gillespie at the Gabba, Australia were 471 for nine, 118 ahead of New Zealand’s first innings total, but not out of sight.

As McGrath and Gillespie carved, hoicked and larruped their way to a partnership of 114—McGrath’s 61 was the only half-century of his distinguished career in any form of cricket—we New Zealand fans had a sense of being in a submarine that was diving to uncharted depths; Gillespie’s bizarre celebratory imitation of a jockey whipping a horse home as he left the field seemed to signal that we had reached the ocean floor of our hopes.

But no. New Zealand were shot out for 76 in the second innings, 38 fewer than the Australian tenth-wicket pair contrived, the margin of defeat an innings and 156. That’s the effect that a last-wicket partnership can have. It’s not just the runs, it’s the stuffing that it takes out of the morale, the humiliation of a heavyweight unable to deliver the knockout blow to a featherweight.

The first time I appreciated this was during the final Test at the Oval in 1966. The first great West Indies team—Sobers, Kanhai, Hunte, Butcher, Hall, Gibbs included—had dominated England all summer, leading three-nil going into this final Test. England sacked MJK Smith as captain after the first Test, and Colin Cowdrey after the fourth. The Old Bald Blighter (as Alan Gibson called him) Brian Close was called up to bring Yorkshire obstinacy to the leadership.

At 166 for seven (103 short of a first-innings lead) damn-all difference it seemed to have made. Then Tom Graveney and wicketkeeper JT Murray both scored centuries as they put on 217 for the eighth wicket. Opening bowlers John Snow and Ken Higgs were together for the last-wicket partnership. Snow was at the start of his career as one of England’s most fluent fast bowlers. Higgs was the only Englishman to play in all five Tests of the series, an indication of the fickle approach of the selectors of that era. Higgs retired to run a boarding house in Blackpool before returning for several seasons with Leicestershire as cricket’s most rotund bowler. They put on 128, two short of the England record set by Foster and Rhodes at the SCG in 1903, and unbettered by an England partnership since.

My memories of that hot August Saturday afternoon are of listening to the commentary of Arlott, Robert Hudson and the Jamaican Roy Lawrence on a transistor radio as I accompanied my Dad as he delivered groceries to customers around Herne Bay. Arlott’s lyrical, romantic interpretation was one of the most pleasing of the many discoveries of that formative summer, the germination of a notion that cricket and words belong together.

It was perhaps the best way for a young enthusiast to follow the progress of the partnership. The scorecard reveals that this was far from the bash-crash approach of McGrath, or the more cultured urgency of Agar and Hughes. Neither Snow nor Higgs scored at much more than two an over. Yet the unfolding improbability of events at the Oval were enthralling, a window on the possibilities of cricket’s infinite variety.

Back in the present, that two different batsmen came within a whisker of stealing the Trent Bridge Test with another odds-defying tenth-wicket stand challenged credulity. For the good of the series it might have better had they made it, as there appears to be a canyon separating the batting quality of the two teams. It was a fine Test to start the Ashes marathon that stretches joyfully before us.

Basil D’Oliveira by Peter Oborne

For those unfamiliar with one of cricket’s most famous stories, Basil D’Oliveira was a South African cricketer of immense talent who would have become one of his country’s great cricketers if only the colour of his skin had not been a tad too dark for the tastes of his country’s Apartheid rulers. Instead, D’Oliveira (who was Cape-coloured in the nauseating vocabulary of that place and time) and his compatriots were condemned to performing on rough wasteland. On the evening before any game the players would gather to clear stones from the designated pitch area (there was no such thing as a cricket square). National representation was limited to white players, who played on the manicured fields that D’Oliveira could see from his home in Cape Town’s Bo-Kaap, but could never play on.

D’Oliveira’s ambition led him to look for possibilities outside his homeland. Persistence secured him a contract with Middleton in the Central Lancashire League in 1960. From there his talent took him to a county career with Worcestershire and 44 Tests for England. In 1968 he was selected to tour South Africa (after originally being omitted), which caused the South Africa’s Prime Minister Johannes Vorster to cancel the tour, and thus hasten his country’s long period of sporting isolation.

It is a story of some personal significance for me. D’Oliveira was first picked for England in 1966 when I was a young fan enjoying his first cricket season. I was drawn to his forceful, fluent batting, while the nascent proof reader and pedant within was intrigued that a name could have an apostrophe in it, or—wrongly according to Oborne—sometimes be written beginning with a lower case letter.

If 1966 was my cricketing foundation year, then 1968 was the start of political awareness, triggered not by events on the streets of Prague or Paris that momentous summer, but by those in the committee rooms of Lord’s. The understanding that a man could be refused a place on a cricket team on the grounds of colour was a shock; that South Africa was organised on racial grounds with whites the superior race was incomprehensible.  As a nine year old I knew that the proposition that people with other-than-white skins were inferior in some way to be a nonsense. My certainty on this matter was because I had seen Garry Sobers, Rohan Kanhai, Wes Hall, Clive Lloyd, John Shepherd, Asif Iqbal, Basil D’Oliveira and others play cricket. No further information was required.

I have taken too long to acquire Peter Oborne’s 2004 re-telling of the D’Oliveira story. It won every award for which it was eligible, and deservedly so. Oborne is a political journalist with a love of cricket, which is the right way round for this assignment. He explains the historical and political contexts—everything to this story—with the utmost clarity and brings the skills of a journalist accustomed to revealing the mysteries of Westminster to the task of unravelling the events around the selection of the MCC touring party in August 1968.

Oborne is particularly strong on D’Oliveira’s cricketing career in South Africa before he left for England. He argues that D’Oliveira was so good a young player that had it not been for the whites-only policy he would have been selected for the South African touring party to England in 1951, 15 years before he finally played Test cricket at the age of 34 (D’Oliveira maintained the fiction that he was 31 at that time; he believed that he would not have been selected had his real age been known). His actual Test career was a proud one: five hundreds, an average of 40 and a partnership breaker with his deceptively plain medium-pace bowling. But Oborne makes a persuasive case that had D’Oliveira’s talent been allowed to flourish unfettered by Apartheid he would have been one of the great players.

It is impossible to read without outrage the description of the indignities that were part of the everyday life of D’Oliveira and every other non-white South African. The deep imprint that daily humiliation leaves on a human being was shown by D’Oliveira’s constant unease during his first days in England:

The following day Kay[i] and D’Oliveira caught the train to Manchester. As they walked down the platform, D’Oliveira asked anxiously which was his separate carriage, but Kay firmly told him that things were not done that way in Britain…Kay told Arlott later that “he dined on the train, a factor that he could not get over because he was allowed to eat and travel with white people”

 It is incredible that the argument that politics and sport should not be mixed gained such traction in those years.

Osborne’s account reflects very differently upon the reputations of two of the heroes of my youth. John Arlott, the great commentator and writer, had been appalled by his experiences in South Africa as the BBC’s man on the 1948/9 MCC tour. So when letters in green ink from an unknown South African seeking a league contract began to arrive in the late fifties they were taken seriously. Arlott’s copious humanity made him determined to secure his correspondent the position as a league professional that was his dream. The political Arlott knew that if successful, he would be striking a blow against Apartheid, though he could not have predicted how great a blow it would be. Without John Arlott, there would have been no story to tell.

Colin Cowdrey, on the other hand, emerges as a man of straw. During the South African tour business Cowdrey assured D’Oliveira of his support while arguing against his selection in the privacy of the committee room, his responsibilities as captain compromised by his need to be universally well thought of.

Oborne’s analysis of the events around the selection of the MCC tour party to South Africa in 1968 is forensic. He concludes that there was no conspiracy to omit D’Oliveira. Examination of the sequence of events around the selection has never supported the view that there was. Not even the bunglers of Lord’s could have conspired with such incompetence.

D’Oliveira had had a poor tour of the West Indies in the early months of 1968. He had become a drinker comparatively late in life and was making up for lost time; late nights on the rum had taken their toll. Here was a chance, had it so wanted, for the Establishment to sideline D’Oliveira for the summer. Yet he was selected for the first Ashes Test, won by Australia, and top scored with an unbeaten 87 in the second innings. Then he was dropped.

The conspiracy kicking in? If so, it had no resolve. D’Oliveira had a below-average summer with Worcestershire and made no case for a recall up to and including the naming of the twelve for the final Test, from which he was omitted. Debate about the political viability of the tour all but ceased so unlikely had D’Oliveira’s selection become. Then Roger Prideaux, the Northamptonshire opener (and former Kent player), dropped out and was somewhat improbably replaced with D’Oliveira, a middle-order batsman. Had there been a plot to exclude D’Oliveira this lifeline would never have been thrown.

He grabbed it with such relish. 158, gloriously made, and, as a bowler, the breakthrough as the final hour of the game began, opening the door for Derek Underwood to mesmerise the remaining Australians on a drying pitch for a series-levelling victory. Now, they had to pick D’Oliveira, surely.

There were ten people in the six-hour selection meeting—the four selectors, Cowdrey, tour manager Les Ames (who had dealt with D’Oliveira’s drinking issues in the Caribbean) and four representatives of MCC (in whose name England toured in those days). Oborne talked to chairman of the selectors Doug Insole and studied all available accounts. Insole told the assembled group that that they should proceed as if they were picking a team to tour Australia. The political context was not referred to, which is not to say that it was not a factor.

Oborne believes that “at least one of the people in the room was acting as a spy for South Africa”. Others were aware of backdoor communications from the highest levels in the Cape affirming that the tour would be cancelled were D’Oliveira picked. Oborne does not go quite as far as he might have done in exploring the effect that this knowledge had on proceedings.

Though it would be unfair to cast all those present at the selection meeting as apologists for Apartheid, the view that sport and politics should be separate would have found no dissenters. The idea that the cancellation of a major tour would result from their deliberations would have been anathema to every one of them. It seems to me that this knowledge was enough to sway them, enough to explain why, as Oborne says, D’Oliveira had no strong advocates.

Oborne outlines the cricketing argument against D’Oliveira’s selection and points out that Colin Milburn (a player born in the wrong time if ever there was) also missed out, and that Ken Barrington nearly did so. Prideaux and the young Keith Fletcher (despite a famously disastrous debut at Headingley a few weeks before) were picked.

The all-rounder position went to Tom Cartwright, who was no more a true all-rounder, worth picking as a batsman or bowler, than D’Oliveira. They were at opposite ends of the all-rounder spectrum, D’Oliveira a No 5 or 6 batsman who could trundle efficiently, Cartwright a medium pacer of renowned parsimony (77-32-118-2 v Australia at Old Trafford in 1964—glad I missed that one) but a No 8 or 9 in a Test order at best.

Cartwright was one of the few left-wing cricketers, and Oborne raises the possibility that his withdrawal through injury two weeks was politically inspired. Though D’Oliveira was not a like-for-like replacement—Insole had made a point of saying that he was regarded as a batsmen only in South African conditions—a fortnight of furore had made the selectors repentant, and his addition to the touring party was a formality, as inevitable as the subsequent cancellation of the tour by the appalling Vorster.

Oborne timed his book well, sufficiently distanced from the events for historical perspective, but while many of the protagonists were still alive and talking. The result is one of cricket’s most important pieces of literature. It is clear-headed and insightful about the cricket and the politics. Most of all it does justice to its subject, portraying D’Oliveira as a man of decency and dignity, and reminding us what a fine cricketer he was.

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[i] John Kay, cricket correspondent of the Manchester Evening News whose contacts had secured D’Oliveira his contract with Middleton.

New Zealand v England, 2nd Test, Basin Reserve, Wellington, 14–18 March 2013

http://www.espncricinfo.com/new-zealand-v-england-2013/engine/current/match/569244.html

A Basin Reserve Test between New Zealand and England must always be worthy of report. For us in the South Pacific it is the nearest we get to the G on Boxing Day, or the Ashes at Lord’s. But in truth the second Test was a touch mundane. I was there from lunch on the second day until the rain sluiced the game away on the fourth afternoon.

The encouraging performance in Dunedin had not done much to make us locals any more cheerful about New Zealand’s prospects. Five years ago a victory in Hamilton was quickly offset by a resounding loss here, and it was hard to find anybody who would stake more than a few cents on anything other than a repeat here. When I arrived, Trott and Compton had both departed having scored centuries in the manner of accountants totting up the petty cash.

Splendid achievement as any Test century is, I did not feel deprived on account of not being there to see them. A century by Compton is much like Christmas dinner. As enjoyable as one may be, you don’t feel like sitting through another one a week later. There remained a feeling that the New Zealand attack may have done the Australians an unintended favour (all favours done to Australians by New Zealanders are unintentional) in establishing Compton at the top of the order.

The immediate appeal when I burst through the CS Dempster Gate was that Pietersen was in. Purveyor of fifteen kinds of foolishness he may be, but Kevin Pietersen is a wonderful, innovative, unpredictable batsman who any cricketing cognoscente would want to watch. It was therefore disappointing when he tapped a catch to Fulton off Martin a few overs into the afternoon. That three of the top five fell to catches by Fulton at mid on/off suggests that some the English batsmen remained afflicted by the laxity that had been their downfall in the first innings in Dunedin. There were plenty of scornful remarks about Pietersen’s frequent absences from the field later in the game, but it turns out that he was struggling with the knee injury that kept him out of the Auckland Test and all cricket until the start of the Ashes series at the earliest.

Matt Prior provided the most watchable batting of the day—as he had in Dunedin and was to do in Auckland—bustling along to 82 at not far short of a run a ball. Around him there was subsidence, if not collapse, as the last seven wickets managed 198 between them from a starting point of 267 for three.

The Basin was close to full on Saturday for the most enjoyable day of the Test, even if it largely consisted of New Zealand’s futile attempt to avoid the follow on. Starting the day on 66 for three, the home side had to scratch together another 200, a target that should have been well within their ability on a pitch so friendly that had it been a Labrador it would have licked the batsmen on the chin. After the early loss of Williamson and Brownlie, McCullum and Watling put on a hundred before the captain was sixth out with 77 still needed to deprive Cook of the option to ask New Zealand to bat again.

Out strode Tim Southee, apparently having just finished his copy of Brain Dead Batting the Broad Way. Finn set a trap so obvious that the heffalump with the lowest IQ in the herd would have spotted it and taken avoiding action. Two men back on the boundary and a short ball almost at once. Southee obliged by hooking it straight to the squarer of the two. Watling and Martin (who batted capably again) took New Zealand to within 30 of the target, but Wagner and Boult could not survive long enough to reach it.

The top order was more assured in the second innings, reaching 162 for two by the time the rain brought an end to events on an episodic fourth day. There was no play, or even the remotest prospect of it, on the final day, which my Whiteladies Road correspondent spent in Te Papa, our excellent national museum on the Wellington waterfront.

The action on the field was not the totality of the Basin’s charms; I bought five books for $10 at the second-hand book stall, three by John Arlott. There was the great man’s account of the 1959 season and, more intriguingly, of the MCC tour of South Africa of 1948/9, which Arlott covered for the BBC. He returned imbued with a hatred of the racial divide that remained with him for the rest of his life. It will be interesting to see how much of this comes through in the book. There was a spin off from the TV series Arlott and Trueman On Cricket, which enlivened the Saturday mornings of my Blean correspondent and myself in the spring of ’75. Also two of cricket’s best-known autobiographies: Jim Laker’s Over To Me, which provoked Surrey to sack their greatest spin bowler; and Don Bradman’s end-of-career Farewell to Cricket.

Mike Denness

It was on the 5 am radio news here in New Zealand that Mike Denness had died. I thought it fitting that the passing of the captain who received six of the sixteen trophies that Kent has won in its 143-year history was regarded as internationally newsworthy (even if the announcer did mangle the pronunciation of his name). But of course it was as ex-England captain that his death was being noted.

It is Mike Denness’ fate to be the Alec Douglas-Home of English cricket, the Scot who wasn’t quite up to national leadership (it was Douglas-Home who presented Denness with his Man of the Match medal in the Gillette Cup Final of 1967[i]). Many of the obituaries have made the point that Denness’ record as England captain is better than might be supposed. He won more Tests than he lost, and had a batting average only a smidgen under 40, better, as one online Kent loyalist pointed out, than Atherton’s or Hussain’s.  

Mike Denness was appointed as England captain for the 1974 tour of the West Indies despite not having been selected for the Test team in the 1973 English season. He succeeded Raymond Illingworth, who had led England to a two-nil defeat against the West Indies including an innings-and-226 run hammering at Lord’s—I was there for the first day, which featured a century from Rohan Kanhai, one of the finest I have seen[ii]. There were two county captains assured of their places in the England XI, but they were Geoffrey Boycott and Tony Greig, neither Establishment men. So Denness, the most successful county captain of the day, it was.

With the lack of tact and sensitivity for which the rulers of English cricket have been famed through the ages, the announcement was made while Denness and Illingworth were leading their counties in a Championship match at Folkestone. Illingworth escaped the press pack waiting for a quote on the pavilion steps by climbing out of the dressing room window and shinning down a drainpipe.

England were outplayed for much of the series but a win in the final Test at Port-of-Spain salvaged an unlikely overall draw, ironically due to the brilliance of Boycott with the bat and Greig with the ball. That he had effectively kept Denness in the captaincy so upset Boycott that after the first Test of 1974 he absented himself from the England team for more than three years. Such a team man.

An easy home summer meant that Denness was guaranteed what Colin Cowdrey never achieved: the captaincy of a tour to Australia. He set out with apparently realistic hopes of keeping the Ashes that Illingworth had won in 1971 and retained a year later. Most of the previews wrote off Dennis Lillee, who had not played a Test since suffering a crippling back injury in the Caribbean 18 months before. None mentioned Jeff Thomson, an erratic quick with a bizarre slingy action who had bowled a wicketless 17 overs for 100 runs against Pakistan in his solitary Test appearance.

There was no clue that the 1974/75 Ashes series would establish Lillee and Thomson as one of the great fast-bowling partnerships. They blew Denness and his team away. It was, remember, the last helmetless Ashes series in Australia. So wretched was Denness’ form that he dropped himself for the fourth Test. So it is that in any game of word association “Denness” will produce “Lillee and Thomson” or “Ashes humiliation” not “Kent’s best team” as it should do.

He was given one more chance in the first of the four-Test series that followed the World Cup in England the following summer (back-to-back Ashes series are not a new idea) but, despite a dodgy weather forecast, put Australia in when he won the toss. This, in the time of uncovered pitches, handed the Aussies the game, as well as condemning young Graham Gooch to a pair on debut. That was it for Mike Denness in Tests.

Mike Denness’ Test debut was also mine. I was in the Vauxhall Stand at the Oval as he walked out to bat against New Zealand in 1969.[iii] He came in with England at 88 for one in reply to New Zealand’s 150 (Underwood 6 for 41). It was one of the most tortured innings I have seen. This free-flowing stylist made two from 43 balls, playing and missing repeatedly against Cunis, Taylor and Motz. It was a relief when he was caught behind off Cunis after three-quarters of an hour.

Perhaps it was as well for Kent that he did not make an immediate impact on international cricket. It meant that he was available for most of the five seasons (six if you count 1971 when he deputised for the ill Cowdrey for most of the season) for which he was captain. It was Kent’s Golden Age, and for those of us who watched it, especially those fortunate enough to be young and impressionable, it was quite wonderful. A team of very good cricketers, and two great ones, played the game as it should be played, and made it seem beautiful.

Mike Denness led by example. As a batsman he always had an attacking attitude, and had the technique to make 17,000 runs for Kent, mostly in the top three, though he was also good against spin. As I always write about the batsmen of the uncovered pitches era, add ten to Denness’ first-class career average for Kent of 32.90 for comparison with the batsmen of today. And he was one of the best fielders—mostly in the covers—in a team that was ahead of its time in this part of the game.

It was a disappointment that the three Championship wins of the seventies came in the seasons immediately before and after his captaincy, but six one-day titles in five years kept us happy. Then they sacked him.

I have written before about the mysterious case of the sacking of Mike Denness, which Clive Ellis did a good job of unravelling in Trophies and Tribulations:

http://mylifeincricketscorecards.blogspot.co.nz/2012/07/trophies-and-tribulations-forty-years.html

Denness spent the last years of his career in Essex, and it was a pleasure to be at Lord’s when he was part of the team that won that county’s first trophy, the 55 over competition, in 1979. He had made his peace with Kent and was on the committee for a number of years, no doubt making sure that players were treated better by the men in suits than they had been in his day. At his death he was in the final days of his term as President of the club, having succeeded John Shepherd in that role.

Too many of the golden Kent team have died before their time: Cowdrey, Bob Woolmer, Dave Nicholls, Stuart Leary and Mike Denness’ opening partner Brian Luckhurst. My, they stole singles as easily as Scousers nicking hubcaps. As my Blean correspondent wrote on Facebook this morning “part of our youth has gone”.

Here’s to the softly spoken Scot with the exquisite cover drive.

 

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[i] http://cricketarchive.com/Archive/Scorecards/29/29107.html

 

[ii] http://cricketarchive.com/Archive/Scorecards/33/33728.html

 

[iii] http://cricketarchive.com/Archive/Scorecards/30/30442.html

 

New Zealand v England, 1st Test, University Oval, Dunedin, 6–10 March 2013

http://www.espncricinfo.com/new-zealand-v-england-2013/engine/current/match/569243.html

A midsummer dawn, June 1978. Catching the first train on the north Kent line; urging the tube faster around the Central Line to make a 125 from Paddington to Taunton; arriving to find standing room only for the 55-over semi-final between Somerset and Kent. No matter. They played for an hour before the rain set in.

For 35 years the 212 miles between Herne Bay and Taunton remained my personal record for travel to a washed-out day’s cricket. Not any more.

The present day. Take off from Wellington as the sun rises, change at Christchurch, a lift cadged from Dunedin airport (curiously located some distance from the city), and a hurried walk to the University Oval, the world’s most southerly Test ground. More portliness, less hair, but the same sharp anticipation of a day’s cricket in a new place, the same fatalism when the first drop of rain hits the ground the second I walk through the gate. 472 miles for a washout. New record.

No matter. My Whiteladies Road Correspondent, just arrived from the frozen north, was sheltering under a tree, and we repaired to a bar to dry out and swap old stories.

The second day provided rich consolation. It was one of the best—and certainly the most surprising—day’s Test cricket that I have seen. My correspondent remarked on the downbeat mood of the locals as far as the cricket was concerned compared to his last visit, in 2008. I explained that we had become as accustomed to failure as an Italian field-marshall and were simply providing verbal ballast against the tide of disappointment. There was relief that Brendon McCullum had put England in. We would settle in and watch England bat for a couple of days. At least there would be no New Zealand collapse today.

Southee induced Compton to play on in the third over, but nothing suggested that either the pitch or the bowlers would be a source of English distress. But on his first day as captain in a home Test (and in his home town) McCullum was Midas. Every bowling change seemed to take a wicket, every field change an irresistable lure for the batsman to hit the ball straight to the relocated fielder.

His first bowling change, an obvious one, replaced Southee with Wagner. Unaccountably, Alistair Cook slapped Wagner’s second delivery straight to Rutherford at point. Next ball Wagner welcomed Kevin Pietersen with the ball of the day, one of full length that swung in late to trap him leg before.

Bell and Trott settled in for an hour until Bell drove straight at Rutherford at short extra cover, a third wicket for Wagner. Was the ball stopping a little or was it simply the Englishmen’s inbred suspicion of abroad that causes them to start away series so poorly?

Another McCullum bowling change, another wicket. Left-armer Boult pushed one across Root, who edged to second slip. Eighty for five at lunch. Enough to overcome local reticence? No. There were two lines of argument. First, that Prior or Trott, probably both, would be good for a century in the afternoon. Second, that the pitch had devils (unspecified) in it, and that New Zealand would struggle to make three figures. Three fours off successive Boult deliveries by Prior suggested that the former was the more likely explanation, but it was time for an unlikely hero to step forward.

Bruce “Buck” Martin was selected for the New Zealand twelve against Australia at Hamilton in 2000, but was omitted on the first morning. The selectors did not call again until the tour of South Africa early this year, but Martin was not picked for a Test. So here he was, 32 years old and 14 seasons into his career, on Test debut. Buck played for Northern Districts when I was CricInfo’s man at Seddon Park, so I was happy to be there when he finally bowled with the fern on his jersey, but a mite concerned that the step up to international level would expose him.

I need not have worried, not today at least. He sent both potential centurions back to the rooms, within four balls of each other. Prior became Martin’s first Test victim when he top-edged a cut to Williamson at backward point. Trott followed in Martin’s next over, another top edge, well caught by Boult, running in from short fine leg.

His third wicket owed much to McCullum‘s new-found ability to travel about 30 seconds into the future before returning to the present to set the field accordingly. Brownlie was pushed back to the mid-wicket boundary; Broad hit the very next ball—a long hop— straight to him. It is difficult, watching Broad bat, to work out how he could possibly have scored 160 in a Test, as he did against Pakistan at Lord’s in 2010, such is the absence of worthwhile brain activity in his approach.

Buck Martin was jubilant. Players who come to the international game late usually savour it all the more, the perspective of experience allowing them to appreciate their time in the sun knowing that it will be short.

Finn and Anderson were obdurate for a while, but England were all out for 167, 300 fewer than the visiting supporters were hoping for, and 700 fewer than the home fans feared.

Martin and Wagner had four wickets each. Wagner was playing his first Test in his adopted homeland after a protracted qualifying period, so two patient bowlers had good days. The New Zealand bowling was certainly tidy and disciplined, but most of the England batsmen got out to bad shots.

What had happened before tea was, to we locals at least, astonishing. But what occurred in the final session suggested that credulity had an elasticated waistband, so far was it stretched. For at the close New Zealand were 131 for (and here’s the thing) none, the recalled Peter Fulton and debutant Hamish Rutherford untroubled, indeed  dominant. We wandered away from the University Oval much like kids leaving Disneyland for the first time, our emotional reservoirs drained by a day on which something wondrous was to be found around every corner.

On day three, just to confirm that it had not all been a dream, Fulton completed his first Test fifty for seven years, before being caught behind off Anderson. Fulton’s innings was all the more admirable for being against type: his strike rate was 33, about half what the rate at which he scores in domestic cricket.

At the other end Rutherford was secure, then dominant. He was particularly strong through the covers, invariably a sign of class. There were three sixes, all off the pedestrian Panesar, and 22 fours. He reached 171 before chipping Anderson to midwicket.

Rutherford apart, the most relishable New Zealand batting came from McCullum, who always bats as if he is seeing it like Bradman, and at the moment actually is. Three fours from one over off Finn early on was a statement of intent. Early on day four there were three sixes within six balls off Broad and Anderson. This combination dismissed McCullum for 74 (from only 59 deliveries) when Anderson held on to under a skyer.

Buck Martin’s fine debut continued with 41 from 63 balls. McCullum declared when Martin was dismissed. The lead was 293 and the best part of two days remained.

For New Zealanders, the rest of the day was a matter of watching Hope move steadily towards the horizon, disappearing over it by the close, at which point England were 234 for one. Though there was little to cause the pulse to race, it was satisfying viewing, chiefly for the enjoyment of the technical mastery of Alistair Cook, out shortly before the close for 116. As much as any batsman I have seen, Cook has refined batting to a state of technical purity. Loose balls are scored off, good balls defended. Here, he seemed slow, but scored his runs at not much short of three an over. Watching Hutton must have been something like this. Besides, nobody has seen an England player score his 24th Test century before.

At the other end, Nick Compton reached his maiden Test century shortly before the close. His was a more dogged effort, but impressive enough for someone on a pair and with the press raising questions about the genuineness of his credentials as a Test batsman.

It was cold though. Not for nothing is Dunedin known as the Edinburgh of the south. My Waikato correspondent had joined us for the weekend, and, with little prospect of excitement at the University Oval, we decided to explore Dunedin on the fifth day. My correspondent was concerned that we would miss something remarkable, and that she would be left with a shell of a man as a result. I always bear in mind John Arlott’s cautionary tale of skipping a day of an up-country match in South Africa in 1948/9, only to find that he had missed Denis Compton scoring the fastest triple century of all time.

There was no need for such concerns here. Steve Finn, taking his night-watchman job far too seriously, ground out 56 over two sessions. I arrived at tea for the most interesting hour of the day, during which three wickets fell, but it was too late to be of any significance.

The University Oval is an impressive venue, just right for Test cricket. Though it is a comfortable walk from the city centre, it has a rural feel to it, tree-lined with green hills nearby. I was reminded a little of Mote Park, Maidstone, one of my favourite grounds. It was a pleasant place to watch a good Test match, even if the weather and the placidity of the pitch combined to produce anti-climax.