Billy divines the rain: Wellington v Northern Districts, Basin Reserve, day one, 29 October 2016

Scorecard

Last weekend in Wellington was the New Zealand spring at its best. The sun shone from blue skies and the wind took a rare weekend off. What’s more, Monday was a public holiday. Wellington were at home to Auckland in the opening game of the Plunket Shield. How perfect to spend three days in the sun at the Basin.

A pity then, that the game was played in Mt Maunganui, 500 kms away from the capital. Why is unclear. The RA Vance Stand is shrouded in scaffolding, though the dressing rooms are open, and with a modicum of planning could have been last week, one might think.

Surely there is a venue somewhere in Wellington’s many parks and reserves that would be an acceptable local venue. The English equivalent would be Surrey being unable to play at the Oval and finding no alternative closer than Scarborough.

Admission to Plunket Shield games is free, which absolves the authorities from any responsibility towards spectators. Any coalescence between the fixture list and times when the working fan might get to the game are entirely coincidental. Wellington’s three remaining Plunket Shield games feature just a single day of weekend play.

It is good that the first half of next year’s (shortened) County Championship will be played from Friday to Monday, but the feeling remains that those in charge, mesmerised by T20, can’t be trusted with its well-being. New Zealand’s tale is cautionary.

Inevitably, this weekend it is cold and wet in Wellington. Nevertheless My Life in Cricket Scorecards braved wind-chill temperatures of six degrees and made its way to the Basin to for the first cricket of the season.

Two well-known Hamishes will play for Wellington this year. Gloucestershire’s Hamish Marshall has returned to New Zealand and today is in opposition to his old team Northern Districts for the first time. Marshall was playing the last time I had a day at the cricket, at Canterbury at the end of July. His appearance in the Wellington line-up does nothing to diffuse the air of superannuation about it. Not until Pollard at No 5 do we reach somebody who is under 33 years of age. When I covered domestic cricket for CricInfo 15 years or so ago there were hardly any players over 30 outside the international squad, because it didn’t pay enough. Now players can make a decent living they have no reason to move on. I’m not calling for a cricketing Logan’s Run; the presence of a couple old heads in a team is obviously of benefit, but there has to be space to try out promising young players in first-class cricket, as has traditionally been the practice in New Zealand.

Northern Districts have a much younger profile with only the openers, sometime test players Dean Brownlie and Daniel Flynn, over 30. ND have seven players with the Black Caps in India, evidence of their ability to bring on young players.

Hamish Bennett has moved to Wellington too. For a brief time four or five years ago he was the great hope of New Zealand fast bowling, but the strain of windmilling it down at 140 kph was too much for his body, as it so often is for New Zealand fast bowlers. He began well today, once Wellington had won the toss and put ND in. In the first over he produced a beauty that came back in to take Brownlie’s off stump.

Brent Arnel opened from the RA Vance Stand End, and trapped Flynn lbw with his first ball, which swung into the left-hander. Early indications were that this was a typical Basin first-day greentop. For new readers, Basin pitches have the life cycle of a domestic cat, offering playful excitement, unpredictability and regular danger in their youth before settling down to sleep through most of the last 75% of their existence.

Billy Bowden is standing in this game. Once the biggest act of all, Billy is now reduced to walk-on parts, cricket’s Norma Desmond. But what a pro. Even though there were only five of us spectators, we were privileged to be treated to the unexpurgated version of his rain-divination act. A brief shower sent the players from the field in the seventh over. It was gone almost as soon as it began. With the light improving, a lesser man would have restarted play, but Billy patrolled the middle using every human sense to divine moisture, wherever it might be. In a less sensitive age, a pig would have been taken to the middle and sacrificed so that Billy could read the entrails. He is to rain what Joe McCarthy was to communism—he sees its threat everywhere.

It should be said that he was quite right on this occasion. Some minutes later the rain came down more heavily and that was it for the day. But nobody else would have done it with such pathos and flair.

It’s great that he is prepared to go back to domestic cricket after losing his place on the international panel. He is still a star. It was the pitches that got small. Billy is always ready for his close up.

Here is another account of Billy Bowden’s weather divination. I wrote it for CricInfo in 2000.

The 1966 West Indians

Cohen, 1966.

Play word association with that, and most will say: George Cohen, doughty Fulham full back, and one of the most famous set of names of English sporting history. A hero of Wembley, 30 July 1966.

Very few will respond as My Life in Cricket Scorecards does: Rudolph Cohen, fast bowler, member of the 1966 West Indian touring team to England. Did not play a test.

The World Cup triumph has been widely and rightly remembered over the past few months, fifty years on. But by the time England kicked off against Uruguay in the tournament’s opening game, My Life in Cricket Scorecards was taking the 1966 Kent CCC Annual to school as his reading book. To him, “Hunt” was not Roger of Liverpool, but Conrad of Barbados, spelt with an “e”.

For cricket people, 1966 was a shaft of Caribbean sunlight in a dull decade. The previous season was described by Wisden as “mainly disappointing”. As for 1964, the recitation of Tom Cartwright’s figures in the Old Trafford Ashes test tell you all you need to know: 77-32-118-2. As a first step in cricket it would have been like giving a child War and Peace as their first reader.

There are some ultimate truths that can be understood as well by a seven-year-old as by anybody. Though, I was far too young to articulate it, at some level I appreciated that the West Indians were playing cricket as a form of self-expression, which is usually when the game is at its best. My attention was grabbed with the first ball of the series, square cut for four by Conrad Hunte. Here was a team that played without reticence or constraint. Hunte finished with 135, though he was dropped on seven by Ken Higgs at long leg. Norman Preston in Wisden provided the fielder with an excuse that would be without credibility almost anywhere but Manchester in summer, namely that he had sighted the ball “very late against the distant background of dark-coated spectators”.    

That day I was freed of an emotional dependence on England winning; I must have realised that it was probable that my cricket watching would be less traumatic if this was not so, a view that continued to enrich my spectating experience through the years.

Garfield Sobers made 161 in that innings at Old Trafford, the smallest of the three centuries he made in the series, which he finished with an average of 101. Then there were 20 wickets, second only to the great off-spinner Lance Gibbs, who took only one more. Against Kent at Canterbury Sobers took his career-best bowling of nine for 49. It is likely that I saw the first two of these wickets taken at the end of the second day; I was there after school for the last part of the day and have Sobers’ autograph in my 1966 Kent CCC junior membership card (cost: one guinea) to prove it, but have no specific recollection of his bowling that afternoon.

I wasn’t particularly lucky watching Sobers. The best I saw him play was at Lord’s in the first day of the final test of 1973 when he came in late in the day and made the 31 not out, carrying on the next day to 150 without any sleep in the intervening period, or so legend has it. But I did see him play, and he was the greatest player of my lifetime, so that’s something.

In 1966 Sobers also scored a Lord’s hundred, saving a match that appeared lost with an unbroken partnership of 274 with his cousin, David Holford.

The strength of the West Indian middle order was the basis of resounding victories in the following two tests to seal the series. England took a 90-run lead in the third at Trent Bridge, but in the second innings a double century from Basil Butcher, supported by fifties from Rohan Kanhai and Seymour Nurse and 94 from Sobers, took the game well beyond the home team.

There was then a month’s break in the tests so that the cricket would not distract people from the World Cup. A different time. Of course, the tour went on. Eight matches were played in the interim, including that game at Canterbury. There were 28 first-class fixtures on the tour itinerary. This would be untenable today, but it did mean that the whole party had the opportunity to become at ease in the conditions. New Zealand’s recent trouncing in India has again illustrated how a side can flounder without that opportunity. Making it compulsory for touring sides to play three first-class games before the tests would do more to make test matches more competitive, and therefore attractive to spectators, than any number of marketing gimmicks.

Here is a Movietone News report on the fourth test, at Headingley. West Indies racked up 500 in the first innings with big hundreds from Nurse and Sobers against an England attack that included the debutant Derek Underwood. The scorecard suggests a mental running of the white flag up the flagpole, with the two innings totalling 55 short of the West Indies’ one. Nurse is rarely mentioned as a significant figure of the great West Indian era, but he averaged 48 with six centuries in 29 tests, so he should be. Here in New Zealand people remember his 826 runs in the three-test series in 1969, when he had already announced his retirement.

It would be wrong though to give the impression that the attraction of that series rested only with the West Indies. For a start there was Colin Milburn, whose presence in the attritional England side of the mid-sixties was as incongruous as Falstaff would have been in Cymbeline. He batted in colour in a black-and-white world. Ninety-four at Old Trafford was followed by a blistering hundred at Lord’s.

Milburn is the subject of a new play written by Douglas Blaxland, the nom de plume of the former Kent all-rounder James Graham-Brown (there have been a few Kent players who might have been well-advised to live out their lives under a false name, but Graham-Brown isn’t one of them). The PCA has imaginatively arranged for the play to tour the county grounds. Expect the ECB to announce that a lavish musical will play the test grounds only on the same dates.

Milburn inspired a love of cricket in those who saw him, notably Matthew Engel. Backwatersman too. And me, though I don’t think that I ever saw him play live.

Tom Graveney was recalled for the second test. He was as old as my Dad, which for a seven-year-old meant that he was as old as Methuselah, but 96 at Lord’s was followed by a century at Trent Bridge, and he smiled as he played.

There was Basil D’Oliveira too. Children have a robust understanding of what is fair and unfair, so I understood with absolute clarity that it was outrageous that D’Oliveira was not allowed to play for South Africa because his skin was too dark. This, along with the brilliance of the West Indians gave me lifelong immunity from the prevailing nonsense of the Alf Garnett-Enoch Powell era.

Then there was Alan Gibson’s Old Bald Blighter, Brian Close, drafted in to lead the side in the final test at the Oval replacing Colin Cowdrey. He brought with him hard-headed professionalism in the form of Edrich, Illingworth and JT Murray. But halfway through the second day, with England 166 for seven in reply to 268, it appeared that Close had made no difference whatsoever.

One of the great rearguard actions then began, led by Graveney and Middlesex keeper JT Murray, who took my eye at first because he wore his cap at the same angle as Norman Wisdom. They put on 217 for the eighth wicket, even now the seventh-best in test history.

On the Saturday I had my first experience of the joyful anarchy of a decent last-wicket partnership, this one between John Snow and Ken Higgs worth 128. I have clear memory of accompanying my father on his grocery delivery round on a sweltering day while following the partnership on my transistor radio, re-tuned for once from Radio Caroline, which broadcast from a ship just over the horizon in the Thames Estuary. The commentators were Robert Hudson, Roy Lawrence and John Arlott. A first chance to listen to Arlott was not least among the influential experiences of 1966.

West Indies were happy enough to let England have the consolation victory, so the series wrapped up on the fourth day.

The thought that, were it not for the talented exuberance of Garfield Sobers and his team, this blog might be called My Life in Football Programmes brings a shudder to the soul.

Finally, a pop quiz, based on a Pathé newsreel coverage of the opening match of the tour, Duke of Norfolk’s XI v West Indians.

1. Who is the Norfolk XI’s keeper?
2. Who is non-striker when Sobers is bowling?
3. What position links him and Sobers?
4. Who is the bespectacled umpire?
5. What was his link with the England team of 1966?

By the way, the West Indian opener Michael Carew was more often known as “Joey”.

The Art of Centuries by Steve James

What do we know, we who sit and watch?

When I have occasionally joined end-of-play conversations between those who had played and umpired in a game that I have watched, I have usually been struck by how different their perceptions of it were from mine, by how much I had missed. I thought that I’d been watching Hamlet, but they had been performing a French farce (or sometimes, vice versa). When I was reporting New Zealand domestic cricket for CricInfo, the highest praise was to told by a coach or player that my account of play was on the button. It only happened a couple of times, but when it did it was as if I had broken the secret code, for a day at least.

Reading Steve James’ The Art of Centuries reinforced my feeling of helpless ignorance. Fifty years’ watching and I didn’t know that? The shame. The book is a treatise on batting that will educate the aspiring player and the casual spectator alike.

James played first-class cricket from 1985 to 2003, mostly for Glamorgan, but also for Cambridge University, Mashonaland, and, twice, for England. He was unfortunate to catch the end of the period where players often had only one game in the test side instead of being given a run, the only fair measure of whether they are up to it. James made almost 16,000 first-class runs at 40 in first-class cricket, with a highest score of 309 not out, which remains the Glamorgan record. He is now a member of a brotherhood that is regarded with as much suspicion here in New Zealand as the most subversive political group: he is a British rugby writer. The border is already being fortified pending their arrival with the British Lions next year.

You’ll notice that the book is called The Art of Centuries, not The Art of Batting. This is because James regards the making of centuries as the true measure of batsmen. He made 47 of them in first-class cricket with seven more in the one-day game, so writes with authority. His view is that you have to understand how centuries are made to understand batting.

Steve James takes us not only into the dressing room, but also into the minds of batsmen. More often than not, we find a location that is cluttered with all manner of rubbish. The successful batsman sends most of it to the tip.

Before he comes to technique, James has a chapter on luck and another on superstition. He has come to regard luck as being more significant than he thought it while he was playing. He is talking about things like dropped catches, which could be called bad cricket rather than luck, but which the batsman has no control over, which is what James means by luck.

He had an interesting response to the luck going his way: he became a walker, which when started his career in the 80s was going out of fashion quicker than flares and platform shoes. This arose not out of sportsmanship or (dread phrase) the spirit of the game, but because in his mind his innings had become tarnished if he was allowed to remain at the crease when he knew he was out. He couldn’t come to terms with its imperfection, or, to put it another way, cope with his good luck.

James is intolerant of the hypocrisy around walking and describes how failure to walk attracts the vocal ire of players who would never walk themselves, and of bowlers who have no compunction in appealing for the most unlikely causes. He does not like sledging in general, dismissing the idea that it is a stream of Wildean wit rather than the boorish, boring verbiage that it more often is.

Other myths are exposed, including one that confirms a long-held suspicion, I am pleased to say. Batsmen who have made centuries in a losing cause often trot out the line that the three figures don’t mean as much in these circumstances. Six of Steve James’ hundreds were made in lost games. He goes through each of them, concluding in each case with the words “Happy? Yep”.

The insecurity that bedevils cricketers is explored in the chapter on superstition, which runs through the game like nits in a nursery school, including some who one would have hoped more of. For example, Ed Smith—Mike Brearley’s heir as cricket’s foremost intellectual—bought Lucozade and The Times on his way to the ground on first-class debut. He scored a hundred, so made the same purchase every morning for the rest of his career. Steve James himself—also the beneficiary of a Cambridge education—did not allow his children to play with plastic ducks in their baths until he retired, presumably in fear of the fates playing word association.

It is good to hear that cricket’s most renowned reader of the auspices, Neil McKenzie of bats-taped-to-the-ceiling fame, went cold turkey on the whole business, recognising that if he didn’t it would get in the way of family life.

Jack Russell convincingly explains that most of his eccentricities were founded in science rather than superstition, but that doesn’t explain the hat. When Lord Maclaurin (the Giles Clarke of the late twentieth century for those who have never heard of, or mercifully forgotten, him) became head honcho of English cricket he insisted that Russell abandoned the battered white floppy for a smart blue cap, apparently mistaking the best wicketkeeper in England for a schoolkid doing an evening shift in a Tesco Express. The result was a rare bad day behind the stumps from Russell, which to James shows that however silly some of us might think it, superstition has to be respected.

A friend of mine knows the mother of the Wellington and New Zealand ODI all-rounder Luke Woodcock. He reports her view that of her four cricket-mad sons, Luke had the least natural talent, but was the only one with the determination (or you could call it character) to make it to first-class level. He probably got there by practising much of what Steve James writes about here. There is an emphasis on practice and preparation, in the long, medium and short-term. We know about Bradman’s stump, golf ball and water tank, but it was news to me that the young Brian Lara used to place flower pots in fielding positions, bounce a marble off a wall and aim to hit it with a ruler through the gaps between the pots. He became one of the greatest placers of shots that the game has seen.

Alastair Cook’s talent looks so natural. From James we learn that as a young teen he badgered his teachers to join them for an early-morning swim so as to improve his fitness. On other days he would get his cricket coach—none other than Derek Randall—out of bed for an early hour with the bowling machine. Similar stories are told here in New Zealand about the young Kane Williamson.

Anybody doubting the appropriateness of a fitness regime for cricketers should be persuaded by this book. James makes a strong link between physical and mental fitness, though admits that there was widespread ignorance when he was a young player about what constituted effective exercise, and how it had to be combined with a good diet. Graham Gooch now sees his commitment to endless running as “madness” though in the drive to improve his strength and fitness he was ahead of his time.

Gooch is one of a number of players interviewed for the book, the results being used to excellent effect. Gooch is recognised as one of England’s best batsmen, but perhaps has not been given correct recognition as one of modern cricket’s thinkers and innovators, which on this evidence he clearly is.

Among the wealth of clear thinking that characterises the book, this passage from page 198 about English domestic one-day cricket is worth quoting:

But often in early season...the formula fell down, with a clatter of early wickets on seaming pitches leading to low scores. It summed up the problems of playing one-day cricket in England. In early season it really has to be played to a different set of rules...It is one reason why England have been so poor at international one-day cricket, and have never won a global one-day trophy.

And yet, from 2017 the 50-over competition will be concentrated in April and May.

Anybody who wants to understand cricket a bit better will learn more from an afternoon spent reading The Art of Centuries than they will at any boundary’s edge. It has the depth of a textbook but is written with a light touch that makes it a most entertaining read. It will have a place in the My Life in Cricket Scorecards Library next to Brearley’s similarly entitled The Art of Captaincy.

Take Me Back to the Ballgame: Two Nights Under Lights

Tri City Dust Devils v Vancouver Canadians, Nat Bailey Stadium, 11 July 2016

Kent v Essex, T20, St Lawrence Ground, 22 July 2016

Two shirt-sleeved evenings under lights either side of the Atlantic. Two sporting contests played in attractive, homely venues before full houses of around 6,000. Both matches lasted a little under three hours and ended in defeat for the home team. The first was a baseball game in Vancouver, Canada, the second a T20 fixture at Canterbury the following week. How alike were these experiences? Which was better?

My Life in Cricket Scorecards watches a lot of baseball on television, but had never been to a game and was disappointed  to find that both the Giants and the As were to be on the road while I was in San Francisco on my way back to New Zealand. But there was rich consolation in Vancouver on the way out: a minor league game between the Tri City Dust Devils and the Vancouver Canadians (remember that baseball fixtures are listed with the home side second).

The two teams are feeder clubs for major league teams: Tri City for the San Diego Padres and Vancouver for the sole Canadian major league team, the Toronto Blue Jays. They are well down the food chain though, in the Northwest League, North Conference, five levels below the major leagues. Few if any of the players at the Nat Bailey Stadium will ever play at the Yankee Stadium or Fenway Park.

The chances are that readers won’t have heard of the Tri City, but will know that Vancouver is an attractive place on the west coast of Canada. Yet it is Vancouver that feels it necessary to provide further information by way of the name of its baseball team: the Vancouver Canadians. It’s as if they need to say “you Americans may not have heard of Canada; here’s a helpful reminder in our name”. They may have stopped just short of having a map stitched on the team’s uniforms. We New Zealanders know their pain. The Tri City is located about 250 miles south of Vancouver in Washington, not a notably dusty state. The Tri City is presumably a centre of vacuum cleaner manufacturing.

The Nat Bailey Stadium is tucked away in the prosperous southern suburbs four kilometres or so from the city centre. An L shaped stand spreads out from home plate to first and third bases. Behind the fence that had to be cleared to score a home run was a ring of trees. It was Canadian Tunbridge Wells.

Nat Bailey Stadium, Vancouver

Best of all, it was bring your dog to the game day. Three-hundred-and-eighty-three dogs joined the 6,143 capacity crowd. Mayhem appeared inevitable, but not so. It was the ultimate vindication of the principle that dogs imitate their owners. These were Canadian dogs: pleasant, easy-going, eager to please, and averse to conflict. It was splendid.

Three of the 383 dogs present

You are much closer to the action in baseball than cricket; my modestly priced seat was located above leg slip’s head, so to speak, close enough to the action to agree with those who say that the hardest thing in sport is hitting a pitched baseball.

The sun sets in Canterbury

St Lawrence under lights was enchanting, as it often is to see a familiar place in a new way. I sat next to the sightscreen at the Nackington Road End, and watched the sun set behind the stands, gaining aesthetic pleasure and a ready-made metaphor for Kent’s performance at the same time.

The duration of the two games is the same, but the tempo is not. The scoreboard at the Nat Bailey Stadium didn’t shift from 0-0 until the fourth inning, three-quarters of an hour into the game. In that time, only two batters reached base, and one of them was a walk (ie without hitting the ball). This is more like first-class cricket than T20, which promises constant action. But the lack of scoring did not mean that nothing was happening. As in cricket there was all manner of subtlety there for those equipped to spot it: curve balls, sliders, fast balls, knuckle balls, marked by a ripple of applause here, a murmur of approval there, just like the members’ stand at any county ground when nothing is happening but everything is happening.

Something else that baseball has in common with all forms of cricket is an obsession with statistics. It even records errors, of which there were more this night than you would see in the major leagues. Tri City’s first run was achieved with the help of two errors, first when a wild pitch allowed a runner to advance from first to second, then an errant throw from the catcher that allowed the same runner to get home.

The standard of fielding at Canterbury was higher. Kent only took two Essex wickets, but both were cracking catches. Kagiso Rabada sprinted around the deep mid-wicket boundary to dive full length to dismiss Nick Browne, the best catch I have seen by a member of the arthritic brotherhood of Kent fast bowlers. Sam Northeast’s effort to get rid of Dan Lawrence was even better, an over-the-shoulder running catch that he never looked as if he was going to get and hold on to, but did. And without the assistance of a large glove.

The experience of the batsman and batter is a big contrast. A good batting average for a baseball player is anything above .300 (at the time of writing only 23 batters in the major leagues better this figure this season). This means that a batter who gets to first base once every three at bats is a top performer. Batsmen get only the one go in cricket, but have the chance to build an innings in their own style, something that is at the heart of cricket’s appeal. One reason why T20 has less charm to some of us is that generally the batsman does not have the time to express his individuality in how he goes about this task, though the Canterbury game provided a happy exception. Tom Westley and Ravi Bopara batted through the last 12 overs of the innings undefeated. Bopara’s 35 in 51 balls was a masterclass in running the fielders ragged, Westley’s 74 in 49 no less so. Unusually for T20, craft was favoured over muscle; there were only two sixes all evening.

Richness of language is something that the two sports have in common. Poetic secret codes that capture the beauty of the game. There is no better term in sport than “stolen base”, which conveys perfectly the audacity of the commitment to run the 30 yards between bases made with the ball still in the pitcher’s hand.

T20 maintains a frenetic pace. A baseball game, like a test match, is slower but can explode into action without warning. Fielders and batters must have sharp decision-making abilities. The top of the seventh at the Nat Bailey Stadium provided a fine example. With two out and no runners on, it seemed that the Canadians would have two innings to make three runs to take the game, even after the next batter, Aldemar Burgos, got to second with a fly to left field. A base hit by Nate Easley allowed the swift Burgos to score.

With only two innings left, another run would surely settle the game. In baseball each inning has the potential to be a one-act play of its own, the denouement depending on who remembers their lines under pressure. Here, it was the Canadians who needed the prompter.   

A balk (a dummy pitch) allowed Easley to advance to second, which in baseball commentators’ lingo is scoring position. Balks are comparatively rare (only two MLB pitchers have as many as four at this late stage of the season), a sign of stress. Next to the plate was Buddy Reed, who hit straight to the third baseman. A routine throw to first base would end the inning. But the throw was wild and Easley on second was quick to see his chance and make for home. Had Reed stuck at first, the inning would have continued, but he was also sucked in by the exuberance of the moment and was out at second.

Though the Essex innings provided powerful testimony against one charge against T20, Kent’s batsmen made no case in defence against another: that too often the result is clear soon after the interval. A do-not-resuscitate sign was stuck on the game by halfway through the Kent innings. The final margin of defeat—33 runs—was a chasm in T20 terms, but would have been much worse but for some running-towards-the gunfire hitting by(who else?) Darren Stevens and a six-run penalty for Essex bowling their overs too slowly.

Baseball’s format gives it a chance to apply CPR when the game appears a corpse. The contest at Nat Bailey provided a glorious example. Though they got a runner to third in the eighth, the Canadians went into the bottom of the ninth (the final inning of the game) four-nothing down, an apparently hopeless position.

First-up Lance Jones advanced to first on a walk, but stayed there while the next two at the plate were out, so the last dismissal appeared no more than a formality. The official record says that Jones then advanced to second due to “defensive indifference” a term that cricket could have done with over the years. It makes me think of John Snow at fine leg at Canterbury in 1976, arms folded.

Pitching indifference followed. Christian Williams was walked to first. There was a murmur about the crowd. Some of the dogs emerged from under the benches, sensing that something was afoot. Sports fans pretend to be pessimists, but are really optimists. There was not Vancouverite in the ground who had not shifted an inch or so towards the edge of their seat, knowing that the bases were loaded and the tying run, in the form of the splendidly named Venezuelan Yeltsin Gudino, was at the plate with the bases loaded.

Panic was now spreading through the Dust Devils like a vicious rumour. Pitcher Will Stillman, who had been brought in at the start of the inning, now lost control and walked Gudino, allowing Jones to score: 4-1. A home run from new batter Javier Hernandez would win the game. The coach now came to the mound, for the second time this inning. He brought bad news. Stillman, supposed to be the finisher, was finished, replaced by Bednar.

Hernandez turned out to be of the McCullum all-out-attack school of dealing with tricky situations. First pitch: swing, miss. Second pitch: swing, miss. The count was two and O, which meant that another strike would end the game (a swing and miss is always a strike). Hernandez was more circumspect to the next pitch, and left it as being high. The umpire did not agree and called a strike to end the game.

It would have been extraordinary had one of those swings sent the ball over the fence. Regular baseball watchers would go many seasons before seeing a game decided on a last-inning, grand slam homer, and I was lucky to be there just for the possibility.

So which of these two nights under lights was better? The baseball game represented its code more effectively, a tale of the unexpected. There was much to enjoy in the T20, but in the end it was mundane. Of course, on other nights it might have been the other way round, but it seems to me that baseball is more comfortable in its own skin, fitting perfectly the three hours for which it was designed, happy to see quiet periods as integral to the game. T20 remains an artificial construct. In trying to compress a game of cricket into a small space it sacrifices too much of what is wonderful about it.

Put it this way. If there is a major league game on one channel and a test or 50-over match on another, I’ll choose the cricket. A ball game v a T20 and I’m likely to go for the baseball.

Kent v Gloucestershire, 50 overs, St Lawrence, 31 July 2016

Scorecard

For the first time in 19 years I find myself at Canterbury Week, at least for the first day, a one-day contest between Kent and Gloucestershire. Back then, there was something of the Edwardian stately home about it, with marquees shimmering around a third of the boundary, temporary homes for all sorts of organisations ancient and antiquated: the Buffs Regiment; the Band of Brothers; the Old Stagers; the Association of Men of Kent and Kentish Men. Now most of the house has been sold to ward off impoverishment and the family is reduced to living in a few rooms in one wing. Just five marquees remain, though readers will be relieved to learn that the High Sheriff of Kent was present, perhaps to protect us from the cowboys on the building site that occupies the Old Dover Road side of the ground. A giant crane looms over the playing field as the old lime tree once did from much the same place, an apt symbol of how things have changed. The club has done a good job in retaining the character of the playing arena thus far during the redevelopment. I hope that I can make the same report on my next visit once the building is complete.

The match was the penultimate in the group stage for both teams. A win would come close to ensuring a quarter-final place for Kent. Gloucestershire, who won the competition last year, have had a nightmare and are already out, which is disappointing (you will remember that My Life in Cricket Scorecards lived in Bristol for 19 years and spent many a freezing day on the Hammond Room roof, so retains secondary affection for Gloucestershire).

Kent won the toss and put Gloucestershire in. What followed was consistent with the timeless, retro feel of the day: the visitors proceeded at a leisurely four an over to be all out for 200 in the fiftieth over, an analogue score in the digital age.

The pitch was slow, and from the Pavilion End the odd ball stopped (as they say). Of the 13 wickets that fell, only four were to catches, and three of those were caught-and-bowled, a sure sign that timing is tricky. In these conditions Darren Stevens—the human tourniquet—was predictably abstemious, conceding only 28 from his ten overs. Will Gidman, bowling at a similar pace to Stevens, had the best figures, three for 28 in eight overs. Gidman is on loan from Nottinghamshire, but it would be good if he could be persuaded to stay; he’s more than useful and at 40 Stevens has no more than seven or eight seasons left in him.

Twenty-two-year-old bowler Charlie Hartley bowls a notch or two quicker. He claimed two wickets, both front-foot lbws. With Matt Coles getting Cockbain in the same fashion, Nos 3 to 5 in the Gloucestershire order were sent on their way by Rob Bailey. None of these decisions looked clear cut, which is not to say that they were wrong. There had been a celebration of the 80th birthday of Ray “Trigger” Julian a couple of days before and the thought occurred that umpires around the country were firing ‘em out in celebration.  

Matt Coles took the first two wickets. Like Jesse Ryder, in any other era Coles would have been regarded as a character. In our age of scientific Calvinism he is a problem, just back from suspension after a late night (or nights). He has talent and unpredictability. Is it possible to inject conformability into the mix without diluting it?

The best Gloucestershire batsman was Hamish Marshall, who is finishing at the County Ground this year after 11 seasons. It was a pleasure to see Marshall in prime form. My period as CricInfo’s man in Northern Districts coincided with Hamish and his (absolutely) identical twin James establishing themselves as first-class cricketers, to the confusion of scorers, umpires and journalists everywhere. It was not quite a valedictory as I far as I am concerned, however; it is rumoured that Marshall will play for Wellington in the coming New Zealand season.

He and Michael Klinger put on 42 for the third wicket, the biggest partnership of the innings. At 71 for two in the 18th over, things were pretty even, but by the 37th over it was 138 for eight. Tom Smith, David Payne and Matt Taylor did well to get as far as 200, but it was surprising that Kent did not try to finish the innings off. For the last ten overs only the minimum four fielders were retained inside the circle. The tailenders used the gaps in the field intelligently to take the score to the foothills of respectability. Today the difference between 150 and 200 all out was not significant, but on a pitch that was not straightforward it might have been on another day. At the risk of becoming a one-tune band, I will ask my usual question: what would McCullum do?

Kent’s top order are in rich form at the moment. Daniel Bell-Drummond and Joe Denly were largely untroubled, though the odd ball from the Pavilion End was still struggling to make it  all the way to the batsman. Once past 50, the shots came more freely, with Denly in particular happy to come down the pitch. The partnership was at 92 when Bell-Drummond played around a straight one to be bowled by Howell. This equalled the record for Kent’s first wicket in one-day cricket against Gloucestershire, matching Luckhurst and Johnson in the Gillette Cup in 1972 (I didn’t see that one).

Sam Northeast picks up where he left off each time he comes up to bat at the moment. Like Bell-Drummond, it was a surprise when he was out, to a sharp return catch to Payne. There are vacancies for batsmen in the test team. On form, Bell-Drummond and Northeast have as good a bid as anyone. Will their being being second division players be an insurmountable objection?

Sam Billings, on top of the world a week before for England A, left his timing at home today. What had been brilliantly audacious reverse sweeps were now mere errors of judgement.

Joe Denly was there throughout for 82. He is also playing very well, though his time as an international player has probably passed. Darren Stevens (who else?) saw him through to the end and finished the game with a six onto the bank on the south side of the ground.

A mundane game to finish my visit to the old country, but days in the sun at Canterbury are precious and never disagreeable.

Kent came second in the group, and played Yorkshire in the quarter-final, a game that I was able to watch on TV back in New Zealand. Kent chased 256 on a pitch much like that the Gloucestershire game was played on. Against Yorkshire’s international attack they came just 11 runs short (and the lbw that ended the innings not even Trigger Julian would have given). It supported the view I formed during my short visit that the old county is in better shape on the field than it has been for a while.

England A v Pakistan A, 50 overs, St Lawrence Ground, 24 July 2016

Scorecard

Two new spectating experiences came my way on my recent trip to the old country: floodlit cricket at Canterbury (of which more later) and an A international, England v Pakistan.

The game was part of a tri-series also involving Sri Lanka. This was the fifth and penultimate game; thus far England had won both their matches and Pakistan had defeated Sri Lanka twice.

It was a chance to see some of the young guns of English cricket: Ben Duckett, who is stacking up the runs for Northamptonshire; Brett D’Oliveira, the latest chapter of a marvellous story; and most of all the Curran brothers, infant prodigies with the ball.

It was another perfect day. My three weeks in Kent were blessed with weather reminiscent of 1976, the gold standard of English summers. A day to bat, one would have thought, but Pakistan put England in.

At 49 for four in the tenth over it looked a good decision. All four wickets fell to Bilawal Bhatti, a skiddy medium-fast right armer who CricInfo says is only five foot six, but perhaps the margin of error that applies to the measurement of the ages of Pakistan’s cricketers has been extended to their height. Bilawal maintained a superb line on and just outside off stump and induced errors from batsmen who were looking to force the pace early on a good pitch. Both Bell-Drummond and Duckett went driving at balls on this line. Bilawal was nowhere near the pace that his 30-yard run up suggested, but he was quick enough.

Bilawal was removed from the attack after seven overs, not to reappear until the end of the innings, when he was expensive against a rampant Billings. I ask my usual question: “what would McCullum have done?” “Used him as an attacking force earlier” is, of course, the answer.

Kent’s own Sam Billings came in second down and won the game with an innings that was among the best I have seen in one-day cricket: 175 from a tricky situation. He began with a shot that was a perfect imitation of that which Colin Cowdrey wished to execute as his “last act on Earth”—a drive down to the lime tree. I have always thought that impending mortality fogged Cowdrey’s mind a little as the tree (now a younger version, but in much the same place) is behind square, so it would be more of an outside edge, hardly a fitting way for such an elegant batsman to shuffle off this mortal coil. But Billings dispelled that misconception with a genuine drive to that very place.

It became clear that Billings has an astonishingly broad repertoire of shots, some of which Cowdrey would not have conceived of, let alone attempted. Neither the forward nor backward defensive are prominent among them. Billings has a McCullumesque belief in attack as the best course of action when backs are to the wall.

108 of his 175 came in boundaries, including four sixes. The prize for audacity of shot—fiercely contested—was won in the 49th over when Billings changed to a left-handed stance as the ball was released and pulled a six over what a second before had been cover. What will the next step be in the quest for surprise? The way Billings and co are going it might be the batsman producing a golf club at the moment of delivery, or the bowler finding that the ball has turned into a dove as he releases it. It was a treat to see Billings of Kent batting with such talent and skill on a rare international occasion at St Lawrence.

Billings put on 125 for the fifth wicket with Liam Livingstone of Lancashire. To say that Livingstone is partial to the onside is like saying that Winnie the Pooh enjoys the odd drop of honey. Both are good at finding what pleases them, but trouble sometimes results. Livingstone made deep incursions into the offside to make space for a legside biff, and did so with some success. He beat Billings to fifty, which not many do these days. Though he twice dispatched slow left-armer Mohammad Nawaz into the building site that occupies the northern side of the ground, the ball turning away from Livingstone caused him some difficulty and he must learn not to spurn half the field if he is to do take his talent to a higher level.

Eighty-nine came from the final ten overs, which was as good as Pakistan could have realistically hoped for. England finished on 324 for eight, a tall order but possible on a trustworthy pitch.

The Curran brothers opened the attack and both claimed an early wicket. I saw a lot of their late father Kevin in his Gloucestershire days. Only the qualification criteria prevented him from being an international cricketer. It looks as if both his boys will surpass him in this respect; they have his talent, and perhaps a touch more purpose.

Jaahid Ali and skipper Babar Azam put on 97 for the third wicket at a decent pace. Babar made a half-century the last time I saw him, at the Basin’s ODI earlier this year. Now he made another, just as composed.

The partnership was progressing well when, in the 20th over, Jaahid went down the pitch to slow left-armer Dawson only for the ball to pass the outside edge. Billings’ hands did not move and a straightforward stumping chance was missed. Jaahid was on 39 at the time, and went on to make a century. More than that, when he was out, in the 39th over, Pakistan were five down requiring a shade over nine an over. Had he stayed there for just a few more overs he might have won the game for Pakistan. Billings’ miss was closer to costing England the game—and negating his own brilliant innings—than the apparently comfortable 56-run margin of victory suggests.

It was good to see the Campaign for Real Ale flourishing still, its marquee bursting at every match I attended. What about a Campaign for Real Wicketkeepers? Billings’ international class as a batsman is obvious; his lack of it as a keeper equally so. He has this is common with all the other contenders including Bairstow and Buttler. All are capable of winning the game with the bat and losing it with the gloves. England’s profusion of all-rounders offers the selectors all sorts of options. One is to pick the best wicketkeeper in the country; it would win a test match soon enough.

Who is the best keeper in England? It would be interesting to hear the views of those who watch county cricket.

Only last year Mark Wood was first choice as the back up to Anderson and Broad for England. Injury has laid him low, but on the evidence of this performance he will be a strong contender again soon. Wood generates real pace from a short run up and bowls with intimidating intelligence. He ended Jaahid’s threatening innings and followed up with two more soon after to close out the game. Dawson also impressed, exercising control in mid-innings.

It was a treat for an occasional spectator to see so much young home talent in one place. Well done the ECB (and we don’t hear that very often) for offering Pakistan the chance to develop its second rank, a level that has always been a deficiency in that country’s game, even in more stable times. For all the grand talk about a global game, cricket’s talent is concentrated in just a few places. Preserving it where it already exists must be a priority over speculative expansion.