Canterbury Week 1965: It Begins

Thursday 5 August 1965.

LBJ is in the White House. That night Morley Safer’s CBS News report showing US troops setting light to the homes of unarmed Vietnamese villagers starts to turn public opinion against the war.

In London, the Wilson Cabinet and the House of Commons meet for the last time before the summer break. “The whole place is completely conked out” records the Minister of Housing and diarist, Richard Crossman. “We have taken a terrible beating; our own people are disheartened and the press are utterly vicious.”

The Beatles are No 1 with Help!, both on Top of the Pops—Alan Freeman presenting on BBC 1—and at the cinemas.

In Kent, My Life in Cricket Scorecards goes to the cricket for the first time, fifty years ago today.

It was Canterbury Week, Middlesex the visitors. A Thursday, half-day closing in Herne Bay, so our grocer’s shop shut at one and we got there for the afternoon session. My Dad had been lent somebody’s membership card (thus adding a touch of illicitness to the outing) and we took our seats in the what was then referred to as “the wooden stand”, but which now bears the names of two of those playing that day, not much more than boys, but who have been surpassed by none in the half-century since, in my eyes at least: Derek Underwood and Alan Knott. Mike Brearley appeared for the visitors.

Piecing together the evidence from Wisden, I certainly saw Knott bat, but not for long; he was out for a duck, just as he was the last time I saw him, twenty summers later. I have no specific memory of Brian Luckhurst completing the first century that I ever saw, but the Wisden helpfully says that he batted for three hours 40 minutes, so I must have joined in the applause, and that for a jaunty eighty by Alan Dixon.

Dixon had a good game. Kent had scored only 138 batting first, but his five for 22 had helped conjure a lead of 65 as Middlesex were skittled for 73. Four of Dixon’s five victims went for ducks, as did two more off Alan Brown the fast bowler. Those were the days of uncovered pitches of course, but Wisden’s report makes no mention of it having rained and tellingly, young Underwood didn’t even get a bowl. Difficult pitches were accepted as part of the game.

Batting was easier by Thursday afternoon. Bob Wilson, captain in Colin Cowdrey’s absence at the test match, declared at nine down at about the time we left. Eric Russell made a hundred, but Kent still won by 76 runs.

In truth, I remember nothing precise about the play. But the occasion stays with me: the buzz of the stand, abating as the first ball of the over was bowled; the attractiveness of white movement on green grass; all those numbers flicking over on the scoreboard; a scorecard (cricket and writing went together even then); the routine, the ritual, the theatre. 

The recruiting officer signed me up there and then.

A test match umpire tries and fails to teach My Life in Cricket Scorecards to ski

The time: 1985. The place: a hillside in the Massif Central, France. Imagine yourself in a helicopter looking down on the snow-covered scene.

You see two figures. The first is flat on the ground, rigid with fear at the imminent prospect of sliding to an icy oblivion. He is thinking that he will die not knowing the identity of Wisden’s five cricketers of the year for 1985.

The second is standing, wedging the first perfectly securely, coaxing him to a standing position (but not in the accidental racing configuration of the skis that led to the wiping out of not one, but two lines of Gallic infants the previous day).

The first figure is My Life in Cricket Scorecards, the second Barry Dudleston of Leicestershire, Gloucestershire and Rhodesia, scorer of 32 first-class hundreds, then at the beginning of a distinguished umpiring career that would include two test matches.

It was a joint trip by two Bristol schools. Barry was tagging along to enjoy the skiing and to help some of the novices stay upright (failing in my case), and a few of us teachers were also there as paying guests (in view of what follows it is important to establish early on that at no time was I responsible for the welfare of the young people present).

I recognised Barry as soon as I got on the bus that took us from Bristol to central France, but it wasn’t until the second night we became acquainted. He was impressed that I had seen him make 171 not out against Kent at Canterbury 15 years before. It was the innings that established him in the Leicestershire line-up. At No 4 rather than the opener’s position that he filled for most of his career, he batted almost throughout the second day and was 159 not out at the close, a fair rate of progress for the time, particularly as Norman Graham, Kent’s opening bowler, delivered 50 overs for 70 runs (yes, 50 overs; I checked).

Of course, it was a delight for a cricket fan to sit in a French hotel room listening to tales of the game, particularly as told by as entertaining a raconteur as Barry. But a bottle of whisky made an untimely but telling intervention. I made the beginner’s error of trying to keep up with a pace practised over almost twenty years on the county circuit. Imagine going for a run with Usain Bolt and trying to keep up; the physical consequences would not be dissimilar. By refilling my glass from the bottle and his own mostly from the tap, my Clifton correspondent—who I also met on this trip—did not materially assist matters.

My recall of the later events of the evening is imprecise, but it is reported that at one point I rose from the horizontal to correct a minor error of cricket statistics before returning at once to the recumbent. I skied little over the following two days, hence the lesson on the last day that did manage to get me down a hill intact and free of collateral damage to other skiers. I have not put on skis again from that day to this.

Over the next three or four years there were regular catch ups, often on Thursday evenings. The usual venue was The Vittoria on Whiteladies Road, run by Sam Glenn, a keen cricket fan. Sam was a resourceful landlord as exemplified by the Vittoria’s winning of a prize in the Pub Garden of the Year competition despite not having a garden, an impediment that a lesser man would have regarded as insuperable. He also had problems with his sight to deal with. Or at least I assume he did. It would explain why most Thursday nights he called closing time and shut the doors apparently not having seen that we were still there, drinking.

Barry was in the category of batsmen just below international level. Several players with career figures similar to his collected a few caps: David Steele, Graham Barlow and Roger Tolchard for example. He might have done so if a run of form had synchronised with the selectoral mercuriality of those times.

Instead he had the satisfaction of being at the heart of the successful Leicestershire team led by Ray Illingworth that won the Championship in 1975 and four one-day titles too, a record bettered only by Kent in the seventies (Lancashire won more one-day titles than Leicestershire, but not the Championship).

Illingworth was the key. He moved from Yorkshire for the 1969 season, taking the captaincy, disillusioned by Yorkshire’s feudal approach to its professionals. It seemed an odd move at the time. His home county had just completed a hat-trick of Championship titles, while Leicestershire were as unfashionable as a powdered wig. It made all the difference to Leicestershire; to Yorkshire too. Yorkshire led by Illingworth would have had a much better seventies than did Boycott’s unhappy band.

Barry regarded Illingworth’s cricketing knowledge and nous as unequalled. One example from dozens cited during those Thursday evening conversations: Illingworth could predict how many runs were in a one-day pitch with oracular accuracy. “This is a 180/220/240 pitch” he would tell his team of a Sunday afternoon. They then knew what pace to set, how many runs they could safely concede, and what level of risk they should take.

He was also the focus of a large number of funny stories, oddly for a man who was never deliberately humorous and, like many from the Ridings, wore dourness as a badge of pride. Much of this stemmed from the fact that, in a career that straddled five decades and consisted of more than 1,200 innings, he never, on any single occasion, believed himself to have been dismissed because the bowler bowled a ball that was better than he was. There was always an excuse so cast-iron that, by comparison, the Queen Mary appeared made of rice paper.

The apogee was reached on a benefit tour of the Caribbean. Leicestershire found themselves playing under a baking sun on a pitch from which steam rose as the bowler came in. Illingworth went out to bat wearing a sunhat, the first time that anybody could remember him donning any manner of head gear on the field. He was soon out, and as he walked back to the pavilion a good deal of money was laid down on whether his excuse would rest in the pitch or the hat.

The dressing room was tense when Illingworth returned as they waited for his preferred explanation. “How can they expect anybody to bat on a pitch like that?” he said. “Besides, my hat got in my eyes.”

Illingworth was also responsible for Barry’s fledgling career as a wicketkeeper. When Roger Tolchard was selected for MCC in the traditional season-opener versus the champion county at Lord’s, Leicestershire were without a stumper for a match against Cambridge University. When Illingworth asked if anybody had ever kept wicket before, Barry responded in the affirmative. This was a flat-out lie, but his view was that any opportunity to wear gloves to protect against the chilling April winds off the Fens should be taken.

He did enough of a job to be reinstated later in the season when Tolchard committed the cardinal sin of missing an easy chance off Illingworth’s bowling. Things went well until presented with a stumping chance when Illingworth lured a batsman down the pitch. Barry took the ball cleanly and with a flourish turned to the square leg umpire expecting the raised finger to be accompanied with a nod of appreciation to the skill of the keeper.

Instead, the hand remained by the official’s side, but he was laughing heartily, as were all the players. Except, tellingly, Illingworth. After gathering the ball, Barry’s sweeping movement with the gloves had failed to make any contact with the stumps and the batsman had returned to the crease bails intact. Thus ended a promising wicketkeeping career.

Playing for another county, Barry might have developed a reputation as an all-rounder. But for Leicestershire there were four slow bowlers ahead of him: the test off spinners Illingworth and Birkenshaw and slow left-armers Steele and Balderstone, so his own left-arm spin was not given the exposure he felt it deserved. “Fred Titmus took 3,000 wickets” he once told me. “How many of those does he remember? I took 47 and I can talk you through every one of them.”

After a spell as Gloucestershire coach (which is what took him to Bristol) Barry joined the first-class umpires list, on which he served with distinction until compulsorily retired on reaching 65. He regularly finished near the top of the assessments and was popular and respected around the county circuit.

Barry umpired two test matches in the era when officials were from the host country: against the West Indies at Edgbaston in 1991 and Pakistan at Lord’s in 1992. Along with my Clifton correspondent, I had the pleasure of being his guest on the Saturday of the latter game. From our complementary seats in the Mound Stand we watched Pakistan achieve a lead of 38 against an England attack of Malcolm, De Freitas, Lewis, Salisbury and Botham. Only now have I realised that we saw Botham’s final bowl in test cricket.

We have always regretted not taking up the offer of more free tickets for the Sunday, which turned out to be one of the great test days. England were dismissed for 175 by a combination of top-class fast bowling from Wasim Akram and Waqar Younis, and Mushtaq Ahmed’s leg spin. Chris Lewis gave us his finest hour (or five minutes, at least) and removed three of the top four for ducks, turning a target of 137 from a hillock to a mountain. They got there by two wickets, thanks to judicious hitting from Wasim and Waqar.

For many years Barry led bands of some England’s more discerning, less barmy, supporters on overseas tours. It was a pleasure to catch up with them in Sydney, Wellington, Rotorua, Auckland and Napier.

Barry Dudleston was 70 a couple of weeks ago. Happy birthday Barry, and thanks for the skiing lesson.

Forty years on: Cowdrey beats the Australians, Lillee steals my shoe

Kent v the Australians, St Lawrence Ground, 25 – 27 June 1975

Two of best days’ cricket I ever saw came in the same week in the summer of 1975, when the sun shone from blue skies and the world was full of promise.

The first World Cup final took place on midsummer’s day: ten hours of sparkling cricket to launch the game’s Caribbean era. From Lord’s the defeated Australians travelled to Canterbury to open their Ashes tour at St Lawrence, just as they are now, forty years on.

I got to the ground for the last two hours, straight from the examination hall having taken my final two O levels. The morning was occupied with the deployment of smoke and mirrors in a quantity unseen outside a nineteenth-century mill town or the Palace of Versailles respectively, as I attempted to lure the examiners away from the conclusion that my knowledge of the Russian language was not as comprehensive as they might have hoped.

Two hours of the afternoon were spent stumbling mapless in the foothills of calculus for Additional Mathematics. I passed both subjects, but over the four decades since the benefit extracted from this achievement has never equalled that I would have accrued from the splendid day at the cricket foregone.

By the time I arrived the innings of the day was already done: 156 from the left-handed New South Wales opener Alan Turner made quickly enough to be over by tea. It remained his career-best score.

Some elegance from Doug Walters—who would always return to the field after an interval puffing on a cigarette in the tour games—and biffing from Gary Gilmour and the reserve wicketkeeper Richie Robinson rounded off the day.

At the close we wandered down to the lime tree and started a game on the outfield (it was pleasing the other day to see, on the TV coverage of a T20 game, the new tree within the field of play, as its venerable predecessor invariably was).

I removed my school shoes, which joined a small pile of items used to mark the bowler’s end wicket. Those end-of-play games were joyful, never more so than on a day when the cares of exams were done for two years. They ended only when the groundsman reclaimed the outfield and sent us away.

At one point the great DK Lillee emerged from one of the tents on that side of the ground (usually they were there only during Canterbury Week). A swarm of autograph hunters buzzed around him. Our game paused to let them pass.

Only when play closed half-an-hour or so later did I discover that my right shoe was no longer present. Schoolboy japery eliminated as a possibility, I was forced to recognise that the facts pointed only one way: the great fast bowler Dennis Lillee—who knows for what reasons of psychological turpitude—had stolen my shoe. Forty years later, I am as sure of that as I was as I limped my way down the Old Dover Road that night.

Respectably shod, I was there from the start of the second day. Ian Chappell declared overnight at 415 for eight. The Kent line-up was without the England captain (but not for much longer) Denness and Alan Knott. The great CJ Tavaré was also unavailable, playing for Oxford University. Though they cracked along at four an over (not far off the speed of light we thought then) the wickets fell regularly, not to the shoe thief Lillee, who ambled in only for eight overs of barely-trying medium pace, but to Gary Gilmour, who had appeared from nowhere to swing England out of the World Cup the week before, and the leg-spinner Jim Higgs.

Chappell did not enforce the follow on, choosing to take more batting practice instead, just as Michael Clarke has done 40 years later. I do not remember this being dull, but the scorecard suggests it was: 140 for three declared from 58 overs. The Underwood factor was strong—38 runs from 21 overs—but it was the underrated Graham Johnson who took two of the three wickets to fall, including the Australian captain, bowled for a duck.

The declaration early on the third (and final) day set Kent 354 to win in five-and-a-quarter hours. Ian Chappell told the driver of the team bus to be ready to go by mid-afternoon, which seemed a reasonable request.

But surprise is often one of the ingredients of a great day’s cricket. Just as this year nobody expected Williamson and Watling to break a world record, or Southee to bowl England out for 123, or Guptill to score 237 in a World Cup quarter-final, so then nobody believed that a 42-year-old could take Kent to a famous victory over the mighty Australians.

Colin Cowdrey was as naturally gifted a games player as there can be. It is sometimes said now that he would not have made it in the modern game because he was fat. Well, he was fat because he played in an age when he spent the whole summer at first slip (where he was one of the best catchers of his time). Both of his sons, Chris and Graham, were terrific fielders anywhere, and so would Colin have been in a different age. There are stories of him running people half his age ragged at squash simply by standing on the T and dinking the ball around the court until they could chase no more.

There has not been a batsman with more time or better timing. Only his inhibitions stood between Cowdrey and greatness. Whether from the restrained nature of the times, or personal insecurities, or the burden of captaincy, he was rarely as magnificent as he could be. David Gower is a more recent example of a player who on his best days looked as good as a batsman could be, but frustrated us by putting it all together so rarely, though in Gower’s case it could be that a few more inhibitions might have helped.

On that day though—Friday 27 June 1975—Colin Cowdrey put everything else aside and let his talent take charge. He came in at 77 for two, with Bob Woolmer batting well at the other end. 

Woolmer spent too many years low in the order—he’d have gone to another county these days—but was now taking his chance at No 3 and by the end of the summer would be scoring a match-saving century in the final test. That day he reached 50 in just over an hour with eight boundaries, but was then forced to retire hurt when hit on the elbow by Lillee. Alan Ealham was out for a duck, and at 116 for (effectively) four it seemed that the coach driver should not dawdle.

But Cowdrey found effective support in Dave Nicholls, who did a fine job for ten years as fill-in keeper when Knott was away playing for England for half the summer. Nicholls was a punchy left-hander who was sometimes selected on merit as a batsman. He had made a double hundred—quite a rare feat in three-day cricket—as a 19-year-old, but had never lived up to the expectation that had created. Now he supported Cowdrey admirably with 39 in a partnership of 126.

As the stand grew, the shoots of excitement started to break through, watered by Cowdrey’s excellence. It could be done. 350 to beat the Australians. He worked the spinners around the ground, Chappell filling a gap in one place only to see the ball going through the space thus created.

Though Lillee had barely gone through the motions in the first innings, as the afternoon went on he quickly worked up through his gears. He was offended by the possibility that this old codger, sent out to Australia a few months before to take on him and Thommo, could possibly win the game. Lillee steamed in from the Nackington Road End, shirt billowing, that most graceful, fluent of actions producing pace and wile.

Cowdrey was equal to it all, matching the smooth beauty of Lillee’s bowling with his driving, the ball hardly making a sound as bat caressed it to the boundary. He hooked fearlessly and with time to spare, Lillee’s raw speed compensating for the lack of pace in the pitch. Cowdrey’s century, his 106^th and penultimate, came up in under three hours with 17 fours.

The loss of Nicholls was quickly followed by that of John Shepherd, and 107 were needed from the compulsory final 20 overs that began at 5 pm. The young Charles Rowe, whose status as an ironic folk hero for my Blean correspondent and myself probably dates from this occasion, eased our qualms, outscoring Cowdrey with 30 in a partnership of 49 for the sixth wicket. When Rowe fell to Gilmour, 59 were still needed, so it was reassuring to see Woolmer returning to the crease, elbow bound.

Between them Cowdrey, Rowe and Woolmer accelerated in the final phase to the extent that eight an over came from the first ten overs in the final hour, even with plenty of fielders on the boundary, an eye-rubbing rate from two of the game’s supposedly stodgiest batsmen. One shot in particular is fresh in the mind from this phase of the game. Lillee bowls short and the ball rears towards Cowdrey’s head. He swivels and with perfect timing hooks to the square leg boundary leaving long leg no chance whatsoever of covering the ten yards of so needed to cut the ball off.

Soon it was done and Kent had beaten the Australians by four wickets, their first victory on this fixture since 1899 and still their most recent. My, how we stood and cheered.

Several innings have challenged Cowdrey’s that day as the greatest I have seen, most recently Guptill’s extraordinary World Cup double hundred. I would say that none has beaten it, for technique, for occasion, for quality of opposition, for surprise value, for beauty.

How great it was to have two such days within one week in my sixteenth year.

Pedantry Corner

Incidentally, Kent did not beat Australia that day. Kent have never played Australia. However, they first opposed the Australians in 1882. This year’s contest is the 34^th between Kent and the Australians. Outside internationals, touring teams are correctly identified by their nationality, except England who, since they stopped touring under the banner of MCC, should be referred to as “an England XI”.

Derek Underwood at 70

If, under threat of some kind of cruel and unusual punishment, such as death or having the cricket writing of Piers Morgan read to me, I was compelled to name one cricketer as my favourite, a few names would pass through my mind.

Early heroes, such as Colin Cowdrey and Asif Iqbal. Great players who I have seen do magnificent things, like Viv Richards and Kumar Sangakkara.

CJ Tavaré, obviously.

The case for Brendon McCullum is compelling, at a time when measured writers say that he is changing test cricket (a few days ago, he hit his first ball in a test match for six over extra cover).

But two names stand above the rest, always have, always will: Alan Knott and Derek Underwood, Kent and England’s greatest wicket-keeper and spin bowler (though there is strong local competition in both categories). Today, l’ll choose Underwood, if only because last week he celebrated his 70^th birthday.

Not that you could tell by looking at him. There were a couple of glimpses of Underwood in the crowd at the Lord’s test, looking much as he has always done, barring a case of creeping sideburns in the early seventies. He looked quite capable of taking off the jacket and tie, rolling up the sleeves and delivering a perplexing ten overs or so.

The run-up would have changed no more than it did from 1963 to 1987. Fifteen steps culminating in an elegant uncoiling, buttoned shirt billowing in the breeze.

For years Playfair persisted in describing him as LM rather than SLA, which was true but missed the point, just as foie gras might be accurately described as meat paste. Underwood took the spinner’s role, to bowl long, constricting spells on good pitches and to attack when the ball turned. No commonplace spinner though, being quicker, Swiss-clock accurate and, at least early in his career, bowling cutters as much as conventional spin. The fact is that if he was injured, a spinner, not a seamer, took his place.

But there’s the thing. In 25 years when was he injured? I don’t recall him missing a test, or a county game of any significance. Yet the thought persists that if the young Underwood were to turn up for a county trial today, round-shouldered, slightly stooping, cigarette on and lacking in enthusiasm for weights and shuttle runs, he would be sent to the gym, or obscurity.

The first thing people say about Derek Underwood is that he was lethal on drying pitches, and so he was, perhaps the best ever at this now-lost art. Underwood ball-in-hand with a damp patch on a length made the Christians v the lions look a fair fight.

The most unplayable over I ever saw was bowled by Underwood against Hampshire at St Lawrence in 1984. The era of uncovered pitches had ended, but water seeped past the protection and the pitch was wet.

Kent declared their first innings at 179 for four when play resumed late on the third afternoon. Both teams forfeited an innings and Hampshire were left with 180 to win in more than two hours, an offer that they took with the eagerness of a man who, given the chance to purchase Tower Bridge for a thousand pounds, does not stop to consider that it must be a scam.

Fifty-six all out in 27 overs, Underwood seven for 21, the ball defying physics and geometry as it leapt and spat. In that single, magnificent, over Chris Smith, Mark Nicholas and Trevor Jesty all demonstrated that they were good batsman by managing to get an edge to one of these conundrums. I would have defied anybody—Bradman, Hammond, Tendulkar, anybody—to have touched any of the other three deliveries.

But don’t think that Underwood was just a wet-pitch bowler. Some did, even then. “That’ll sort Underwood out” they said around the counties when fully covered pitches came in for the 1981 season. Over the next two years only Malcolm Marshall and Richard Hadlee took more first-class wickets than Underwood, then in his mid-thirties and playing for a team in decline.

Then look at his record overseas, where he took 152 of his 297 test wickets. In Australia he took 50 wickets at 31 (plus 16 at 27 in the WSC “supertests”), in India 54 at 26. In New Zealand he fed like a whale at a plankton convention with 24 wickets at 13 in just four tests; all those soft pitches and inadequate techniques.

He was also one of the finest one-day bowlers of his time, his mid-innings spells as inhibiting to acceleration as a line of sleeping policeman along a straight road. Underwood's parsimony was a major factor in Kent’s one-day triumphs of the seventies.

As I write I am watching a replay of the second in the current ODI series between England and New Zealand in which 400 has become the new 260. How would Underwood have coped in the era of big bats and fielding restrictions?

Well, batsmen would have been forced out of respectful prudence, and he would have gone for more runs, certainly. But that William Tell accuracy, and the change of pace, would still be there; get it slightly wrong and the ball goes straight up in the air. He would win as many matches now as then.

World Series Cricket effectively ended his test career; there was a reluctance to pick WSC players for England even when they became available once more, and Underwood was picked only for a single test against the West Indies in 1980 and the tour of India and Sri Lanka in 1981/2, so played little in his peak years. Earlier, as England captain, Ray Illingworth often preferred Norman Gifford to Underwood, passing over a painter of subtle portraits in oils in favour of an efficient whitewasher of walls and ceilings.

Had Underwood’s England career not been interrupted, Jimmy Anderson would still be chasing the England test wicket record.  

Offer me a ticket on a time machine to go back to watch just one innings of any in cricket history, and I wouldn’t choose Bradman’s 300 in a day at Leeds in 1930, or even WG’s 344 at the St Lawrence for MCC in 1876. I’d go to Hastings on 2 July 1984, to see Derek Underwood, in his 618^th first-class innings, score his only century.

I recall the day clearly, and the memory is a reminder of how far the information revolution has taken us. I had not caught any of the radio sports bulletins during the afternoon, and got home late, so it was only when I picked up a copy of the Bristol Evening Post that I had an inkling of the drama on the Sussex coast.

There it was in the stop press: Underwood 84*. It will astonish anybody under 30 that only after two hours of mental torment was I able to establish that Underwood had indeed secured his century (nobody I knew even had teletext). But it was before the pubs shut, and my non-cricketing flatmates were happy to repair to the Alma Tavern in Clifton to raise a glass that they hadn’t paid for to a man they had barely heard of for an achievement that they didn’t understand.

The relationship between Derek Underwood and the Central Recreation Ground, Hastings—scene of the triumph—was to akin to that of Henry VIII and the monasteries: an infinite source of easy pickings. Twenty years before the century, it was there that Underwood achieved his career-best bowling figures: nine for 28. In 1967 he took seven in both innings and in 1973 took eight wickets for nine runs. In just nine first-class appearances there, he took 61 wickets.

On the day before the hundred I enjoyed watching TV coverage of Underwood taking six for 12 at Hastings in the Sunday League, the best one-day figures of his career barring an eight-wicket skittling of Scotland in his final season, so he has the best one-day bowling performance on the ground as well as the best first-class performance. These records are frozen in eternity; under the frozen foods, in fact: the ground is now buried under a supermarket.

So, again I raise a glass to you and your achievements, Derek Underwood. You are my favourite cricketer. At least until 9 April next year, when Knotty turns 70.

Richie: Cricket's Finest Team

International Cavaliers v Rest of the World, September 1967

What was cricket’s finest television commentary team?

In the UK, Channel Four’s was pretty good, particularly when Richie Benaud, Ian Smith and Mike Atherton were together. Sky UK play at a decent level, with Atherton, Nassar Hussain, David Lloyd, Mikey Holding and the rest providing pleasing contrasts of attitude and accent. The BBC, often retrospectively maligned as stuffy and old-fashioned, were strong when Benaud, Tony Lewis, Jack Bannister and Ray Illingworth were together in the late eighties and early nineties.

Even Channel Nine has to be mentioned. Not the incumbent cheerleaders obviously, but in the days when Benaud and Ian Chappell led the team, and they were more willing to use overseas commentators, particularly Tony Cozier. I still rate Chappell with Ian Smith as the best contemporary commentators.

Our own Sky New Zealand panel takes a lot of beating, particularly when Grant Nisbitt takes a break from the rugby to join Ian Smith, Simon Doull, Mark Richardson et al. If Jeremy Coney were to re-enlist, they would be non-pareil.

But all these teams had weaknesses, commentators who were not necessarily bad—though sometimes they were—but who averaged in the mid-thirties rather than the high forties or above. Benaud or Atherton on one side of the scales, a tracer-bullet spotting Tony Greig or blustering Ian Botham on the other.

I know of only one team that was without imperfection, and it worked together on only two or three occasions on Sunday afternoons in the sixties, the first of which that I can trace was 3 September 1967, when the International Cavaliers (captained by Ted Dexter) played a Rest of the World XI (led by Garry Sobers). Other players included Kanhai, Barlow, Hunte, Gibbs and both Pollocks. A treat for those present, but more so for those who stayed at home to watch in grainy black-and-white.

For the commentators on BBC 2 that afternoon were Richie Benaud, John Arlott and Learie Constantine, three of cricket’s greatest men.

Constantine began life in a poor working family on a plantation in Trinidad and ended it as a member of the House of Lords (that was still to come, but in 1967 he was already a knight). He had been a pioneering professional in the Lancashire League for Nelson, him and his wife the only black people in the small northern mill town (until CLR James turned up to become a somewhat tiresome lodger, judging from his own account in Beyond a Boundary).

Constantine was an electrifying cricketer. He bowled with pace and aggression, delivering what was to become known as “bodyline” against the MCC tourists in 1930, which may have planted the germ of an idea. As a batsman an accurate modern parallel might be Shahid Afridi, and he was the best fielder that Bradman ever saw. Michael Parkinson tells how Constantine had the trick of having the ball thrown hard at him from behind as he walked back to his mark, only to catch it without looking at the last moment. Of course, he never captained the West Indies, as that privilege was reserved for white men. He spent the rest of his life fighting against discrimination of that kind.

I was too young to offer a critique of Constantine’s commentary, but remember a degree of wry humour. How could it have been anything other than wise?

No commentator has distilled cricket’s truth more purely than Arlott, nor had its perspective in better focus. However sumptuous the shots or brilliant the bowling, Arlott’s words would have been their equal.

And then there was Benaud. Cricket has never been as unified in mourning as it has been for him. When Dr Grace died in 1915, there were plenty left to step forward with tales of chicanery on the field of play and the lining of pockets with “expenses” off it. Fingleton and O’Reilly reached eternity before Bradman, but left enough negative stories behind them to ensure an element of rebuttal to the woe.

You would have to be pushing 70 to remember cricket without Benaud. He made us think that cricket had what he did: dignity, wisdom, wit, humanity. That it was civilised. He shared his experience with us, yet never said that the old days were better than the present (this he had in common with Arlott and Constantine). I never saw him play, but nobody did more to help me understand cricket; millions would say the same.

You will be wondering where a match with such a parade of talent was played. Lord’s probably, or the Oval, you will be thinking. A test match ground certainly. Not so. It was played at Ascott Park at Wing in Buckinghamshire (a minor county!). Aside from this match and the same fixture the year before, the ground’s claim to fame has consisted of staging the annual contest between the old boys of Eton and Harrow along with the odd minor counties match. Many of the Cavaliers games were played on small country grounds, for reasons that are no longer clear. Bigger grounds usually filled for Cavaliers games (Canterbury certainly did) but TV was the priority. The Cavaliers presaged World Series Cricket in that respect.

And you may also be surprised that there was such a thing as a Rest of the World XI in 1967. It was the summer of love, and those of us who were too young to get to San Francisco to wear flowers in our hair surely deserved some decent cricket as compensation. A Rest of the World XI appeared in the last couple of weeks of The English season for several years in the second half of the sixties. I saw them play a three-day game against Kent at St Lawrence in ’68. They played tournaments against England and the tourists of the year that there is a fair case for regarding as the first one-day internationals, but that is a discussion for another day.

Today's the Day

February 2001. Pukekura Park in New Plymouth, the most beautiful cricket ground in the world. Grassy recreations of Inca temples on three sides, ocean views on the fourth. I am there because I am paid to watch and write about cricket. The best of times.

The match is the third of a series of four-day games between the under-19 representatives of New Zealand and South Africa. I am looking forward to my first chance to watch the New Zealand captain, who has scored centuries in both preceding games. His name is Brendon McCullum.

He comes in at No 6, when the 16-year-old Ross Taylor is out. Soon, New Zealand are 93 for five. McCullum’s response? Attack. His third hundred in three matches comes up in 121 balls. As soon as he reached his century he was caught behind, playing loosely.

He returns to the pavilion furious with himself for giving it away. For most 19-year-olds, three centuries in three games would be enough. Not Brendon McCullum. There was a double there and he wanted it.

Don’t think that getting to the final will be enough for Brendon McCullum.

Report.

***********

September 1967. Herne Bay, Kent, 5.30 am. I am eight. I am catching a bus to go to Lord’s for the first time. Kent will get the glory years under way by beating Somerset in the Gillette Cup final.

There have been countless fine days in the sun since, but I have always assumed that nothing in later life could match the excitement of an eight-year-old’s anticipation of a big game.

Turns out I was wrong.

***********

June 1975. Back at Lord’s for the first World Cup final. Australia are all Chappells, fast bowlers and Aussie self-belief. But the West Indies have some exciting young players, an inspiring captain who leads the way with a century, a former captain who has been around for 18 years to steady things and they field like banshees.

They also have a point to prove.

They win.

***********

For New Zealand, this World Cup has been excitement and surprise from the start. England’s capitulation, Williamson’s six, Guptill’s double hundred, Vettori’s catch, every moment of the semi-final, McCullum’s nuclear batting, McCullum’s brain whirring away.

New Zealand has been consumed with cricket this week, if anything more than it was with the rugby world cup final in 2011, bold though that claim may seem. The nation will stop at 4 30 this afternoon.

Can’t wait.

 

New Zealand v West Indies, World Cup Quarter-final, Cake Tin, 21 March 2015

Scorecard

We’re a cautious lot, we New Zealand fans. If our interest was the theatre, we would have gone to the Cake Tin yesterday hoping for a decent performance of something worthy. Ibsen, say, or Pinter. The provincial reviews had been good, but this was the West End, the knock-out stage. All we wanted was for the Brendon McCullum Players to remember enough lines to get us to the semi-final. Instead we got the most lavish Broadway show imaginable, full orchestra song and dance from start to end. Martin Guptill: the Musical.

What I love about cricket is its capacity for surprise, its ability to exceed expectation. After, yes, half a century watching the game you think you know what the parameters are. You assume, for example, that you will never see someone, particularly a New Zealander, score 237 not out in a World Cup knock-out game.

It was glorious. This New Zealand summer has conjured up cricket that stands with the best of the past fifty years. Williamson and Watling at the Basin, Southee at the Cake Tin, Sangakkara anywhere, McCullum everywhere. This innings of Guptill’s was the best of the lot. It has to be judged against Cowdrey at Canterbury in 1975, Richards at Lord’s in 1979, Slater at Sydney in 1999, to name but three, as the best I have seen.

It was the shots he didn’t play, as much as those he did, that measured its quality. No reverse laps, ramps or premeditated movements. Pure cricket, from the Rolex timing of the push drive that sent the first ball of the innings to the straight boundary to the pull that put the ball on the roof in the final over. Watch a recording of the innings and see how straight is the backlift, even for cross-bat shots. As well as being spectacular and surprising it was aesthetically pleasing, which the best batting always is.

Incidentally, it is not true, as has been reported, that Craig McMillan is the only batsman to hit the ball onto the roof of the Cake Tin. Guptill has done it once before, off Lonwabo Tsotsobe of South Africa in a T20 in 2012, a hit estimated at 125 metres, 15 metres longer than yesterday’s. His two-fingered gesture to McMillan after the hit was not, as Simon Doull said on commentary, to say “two of us have done it” but “I’ve done it twice”. Michael Lumb of England also did it, in a T20 in 2013.

Guptill’s innings changed in tempo. At times early on runs were hard to come by. His century came up in 111 balls, which is hardly laggardly. At that point it was already a classy, memorable innings. He got there in the 35^th over, just before the start of the powerplay. With only two wickets down, the foot could be pressed firmly to the floor.

Cricket is a game of numbers, and those for this match stretch credulity. Guptill’s second century came in just 41 balls. All eleven of his sixes came after the century mark. 207 came for New Zealand from the final 15 overs, 85 from the final five. It was wonderful.

From the third ball of the first over, Marlon Samuels became Dick Rowe for a day. Rowe was the Decca Records executive who, in 1962, refused to sign the Beatles on the grounds that guitar groups were on the way out. Samuels had the opportunity to send Guptill back to the rooms, but put down a sharp but catchable low chance at square leg. That was the only one Guptill offered. Just as Rowe would have spent the following years avoiding news of the Fab Four’s record sales, so Samuels spent the next 49 overs looking in any direction but that of the scoreboards as they audited the ever-increasing scale of his error.

A word in praise of Ross Taylor, who has been a worry for New Zealand supporters during the World Cup. He is hard to get out, but has got stuck in situations that he has hit himself out of in the past. Yesterday, he began slowly, with 23 off 43 balls, but he scored a run a ball thereafter and supported Guptill superbly in a partnership of 143, an excellent platform for the ensuing carnage.

Guptill is very fast between the wickets but is sometimes more cagey about his intentions than his partner would find ideal. We had already had one episode in which he and Taylor headed intently for the same end, so it was no surprise when Taylor was run out.

Earlier, Williamson had looked in as good touch as Guptill and it was a surprise when he got out to a soft shot. Later, Anderson, Elliott, Ronchi and Vettori all added to the mayhem.

My heart was filled with joy at New Zealand’s display. Yet it was also a little broken. I have written often enough about how early exposure to the West Indians fed my love of cricket. One of them was at the Cake Tin yesterday: the great Clive Lloyd of Guyana, Lancashire and the West Indies, the captain who brought together Jamaicans, Bajans, Trinidadians et al and made them a great West Indian team.

For Clive Lloyd, watching the shambles that the West Indies became in the final fifteen overs of the New Zealand innings must have been awful. How can the team of Richards, Sobers, Marshall, Greenidge, Holding and the rest have come to this?

To see England humiliated was comedy. To see the degradation of the West Indies was tragedy. The writer Dileep Premachandran recently tweeted “each time West Indies do well, the inner 10-year-old pumps his fist”. Today, the boy wept.

Jason Holder, the 23-year-old fast bowler who has been lumbered with the captaincy, looked bereft towards the end, and placed himself at long on, symbolically near the exit to the dressing rooms. It is always a bad sign when the skipper fields on the boundary. A little later, Darren Sammy, one of many recent captains, was seen in heated debate with the bench.

The fielding lacked commitment. Where were the dives, where were the support fielders? How the crowd roared later when all three of New Zealand’s slip fielders chased a ball to the boundary. What a difference.

So it was good that the West Indies took an adventurous approach to their futile task of chasing 394 for victory. They achieved more than was expected in maintaining a rate of eight an over for the 31 overs that they lasted.

But, in the words of a young member of the catering staff who took a seat behind us when they ran out of chips, West Indies were doing well “apart from the wickets thing”. Indeed. In cricket, it’s the wickets thing that gets you in the end. The wickets fell regularly and they never stood a chance of getting near. New Zealand knew how much protection they had and did not panic.

There were two noteworthy aspects to the innings. First Daniel Vettori’s catch at third man to dismiss Samuels. Vettori has always been highly competent in the field, but has never presented the world with an athletic persona. So, when, at the age of 36, he executed a perfectly timed, improbably high standing jump to pluck the ball from the night, it was as surprising as Maggie Smith rapping.

My Blean correspondent and myself have long been connoisseurs of one-legged innings, those made by batsmen under physical duress. The benchmark has always been Basil D’Oliveira’s half-century in the Benson and Hedges final in ’76. Despite his elderly hamstring having pinged earlier, D’Oliveira almost turned the game.

There was Basharat Hassan’s century at Canterbury the following year. Also Terry (though it might have been Michael) Parlane’s hundred at the Basin four or five years ago.

Chris Gayle’s 61 from 33 balls, with eight sixes, may have beaten them all. He has a bad back and could only hobble singles when there would normally have been a safe two. All of us who thought that Gayle’s non-appearance against the UAE was simply because he couldn’t be arsed, owe him an apology. Yet his hitting was devastating, if Sisyphean.

New Zealand’s two World Cup games at the Cake Tin have been two of the best days I have ever spent at the cricket. Years hence I shall remember them if I can’t recall my own name. The nation has become consumed with cricket. You hear people talking about it as you walk down the street. I have always wanted to live in such a place.

Tuesday, South Africa, Eden Park.

South Africa v United Arab Emirates, World Cup, Cake Tin, 12 March 2015

Scorecard

Public opinion is on the march. Social media is outraged, in a mild, cricket sort-of-way, that the lesser nations are to be excluded from the 2019 World Cup, which will be contested by ten teams. "Let them stay!" is the cry. This match was a rebuttal of that view.

John Arlott used to tell a story about Phil Mead, the prolific Hampshire batsman of the inter-war period. “Mead”, an old spectator said, “was a boring batsman. Saw him at Southampton once, blocked all day for 200”. The obvious point being that Mead was so much better than the bowling that he could score a lot of runs quickly without taking risks or appearing at all spectacular.

So it was today. South Africa—mysteriously put into bat—made 341 without hurrying or straying far from the orthodox. Only in the last over, when Behardien went after Amjad Javed, did any urgency appear in their approach.

AB de Villiers’ innings was a case in point. He made 99 from 81 balls, a pedestrian pace by his standards. After the match, he was flattering about the bowling. But we did not see a single sweep, reverse sweep, paddle or any of the bespoke shots with which de Villiers so magnificently challenges top bowlers. He didn’t need them. He knew that South Africa would reach an unbeatable target without any such exertion.

When they batted, UAE made not the slightest pretence of chasing the target. The required rate started at a little under seven an over. By the 13^th over it was eight, by the 19^th nine, by the 24^th ten and then exponentially on. Runs were taken when available, but for UAE the honour lay merely in survival.

The fact that of the South African bowlers only Morne Morkel—in competition with Abbott for a place in the knock-out phase, according to some reports—was operating at full throttle assisted them, but the margin of victory was still a massive 146 runs. We all knew what would happen and it did. Where’s the fun in that?

Of the associates, only Ireland beat one of the eight major sides, and that was the West Indies, a team that makes the Greek economy look a model of stability. They also beat Zimbabwe, a country no more worthy of test status than it is of being called a democracy.

The twitterati have hailed the Irish for having shown up the ICC. I’m all for red faces among the ridiculous and self-important in Dubai, but on this issue there is scant evidence for it. The eleventh ranked team beat the eighth and tenth ranked teams, which is hardly a sensation.

If, as I hope, the ICC proves uncharacteristically resolute and the next World Cup is a ten-team tournament, there should, of course, be a qualification process. What would be a greater incentive for Ireland to continue to improve? To be handed a near-certain place or to know that if they work very hard, they will qualify to play against all the major teams at a World Cup? They are more than capable of doing so. Meanwhile, the ECB has a responsibility to assist Ireland in a more meaningful way than a one-off ODI in early May for which they will not even bother to recall the captain from the IPL.

I may be cynical, but I fancy that the patriotic devotion of the players to the Irish cause might wane quickly if they were granted the test status to which they aspire and found their county contracts plummeting in value because of their absence touring Zimbabwe or somewhere every July and August.

If there were any justice, England should also have to qualify after their hopeless display this time, but their status as hosts will probably protect them. Perhaps a Champions Trophy could be used to sort out a top six, the bottom team in both groups joining the qualifying process.

If we peer through the sentimental mist generated by the associates issue, we could see a wonderful ten-team World Cup in 2019. The format would replicate the 1992 tournament, the best of all according to many of those who have seen most of them. All teams would play nine games against all the rest, leading to semi-finals. There would be 48 games, one fewer than this year, but without a quarter or more being foregone conclusions like the non-event I watched today, and without a third of the teams having no realistic hope of progression.

I can’t wait. First, to the Cake Tin for New Zealand v West Indies.