Of Didcot and the Demon, the cricket journalism of Alan Gibson

Even before the jetlag had worn off on my recent trip to the frozen north, I was off to Waterstone’s to buy Of Didcot and the Demon. It’s a delight.

The bulk of the book is taken up with Gibson’s reports in The Times of county matches from the mid-sixties to the mid-eighties. I’ve spent many days at the cricket that were less entertaining than Alan Gibson’s learned, funny, elegant, idiosyncratic reports on them in the following morning’s paper.

On-field events were not necessarily his main focus. Plenty of reports in this collection make no mention of the game until several paragraphs in. A Gibson report would often begin with an account of his journey to the ground, an often tortuous one at the hands of British Rail, leaving him stranded on the platform of Didcot station at about the time play was due to start.

He had a fondness for the game’s spear carriers, and seemed to prefer to write about what was going on near the wings than what was happening downstage centre. His favourites were identified by the names he chose for them, and their achievements would be assiduously recorded, however insignificant they might be. Chief among them was the eponymous Demon of Frome, Somerset’s medium-fast bowler Colin Dredge. A Dredge 34 not out against Surry in 1982 took up half the report, Viv Richards’ 181 not out a few lines.

The stirring deeds of tail-end batsmen generally were a pleasing weakness of Gibson’s. On Dredge again:

Dredge, looking every inch a Frome opening batsman, was bowled, although he had played one stylish stroke which staggered the infield and produced four byes.

He was good on boring batting too. PJK Gibbs, the Derbyshire opener, was a regular target:

The evening was enlivened by a characteristic innings from Fireman Gibbs, who had scored one in half an hour when I stopped counting.

As befits a man with a first (in history) from Oxford, he was not afraid of scattering literary and classical allusions around:

This morning was commandingly, but, as it turned out, delusively attractive, like a fairy woman of the Hebrides, or a call by Boycott.

But his writing was much more than a collection of one-liners. His profiles of cricketers past and present showed not only a deep understanding of cricket, but also the ability to discern the character of men through the way they approach the game. His piece on the Graveneys, Ken, Tom and David, is the best of these.

A Yorkshireman by birth, Gibson spent most of his adult life in the west, and places that I know well crop up throughout. At the start of the book we find him newly married to his second wife, a young woman from the BBC, and living in Queen’s Court, Clifton, the big, sweeping building that resembles an ocean liner aground on the Victoria Rooms.

In the late seventies the Gibsons moved to High Littleton in north Somerset, and the village pub, the Star, began to feature regularly in his reports:

I left High Littleton with some reluctance, for the Star were due to play the Butcher’s Arms in the final of the Chew Valley shove-halfpenny competition.

For seven years my route to work took me through High Littleton, past the Star. I would always think of Alan Gibson and fortify myself for the unequal daily struggle with the youth of north Somerset by recalling some of his best lines.

Alan Gibson was also a radio commentator, one of the best. My ideal line-up of Test Match Special commentators would be Gibson, John Arlott and Don Mosey, troubled men all. His radio career came to an abrupt end at the Headingley test of 1975, when he turned up worse for wear for a late afternoon commentary stint.

And there’s the problem. The impression you get of Gibson from his writing would be that of a genial, contented man, and that could not be more misleading. He was an alcoholic, prone to serious depression. His eldest son Anthony Gibson, who put this collection together, writes a narrative at the start of each year’s selection. It is an affectionate, honest catalogue of his father’s decline, which by 1985 found him back at Queen’s Court, but now alone and living on whisky and tinned corned beef.

I last saw him either that year or the next. He was in his early sixties, but looked twenty years older as he shuffled on the arm of the catering manager from the Hammond Room at the County Ground, Bristol (he preferred writing in bars to press boxes) to his taxi. The business of reporting was almost beyond him (and the exasperated sub-editors of The Times) at that stage, but he could still turn out a memorable line, such as this about one of his regular cast members, Rev Andrew Wingfield Digby, bowling for Dorset against Somerset in the 60-over knock-out competition:

Wingfield Digby looked much the same, with those long legs consorting so oddly with his short strides in the run-up, like an evangelical curate approaching a session with the Bishop of London.

The beauty of the writing is matched by the book’s presentation, 315 large-format pages on high-quality paper, superbly designed with a fine selection of photographs. This is the work of Stephen Chalke’s Fairfield Books. Chalke has done more than anybody to maintain cricket’s literary tradition in the face of the digital revolution, and deserves thanks and admiration for returning the words of Alan Gibson to print.

One Lynne Truss, there’s only one Lynne Truss...

...For you might be forgiven for thinking that there were several. There’s Lynne Truss the TV reviewer (in The Times in the nineties). Also Lynne Truss the novelist (I’ve just finished Tennyson’s Gift, a novel predicated on the concurrent presence on the Isle of Wight in the summer 1864 of Lewis Carroll, the young Ellen Terry, her husband GF Watts (the artist) and the eponymous Poet Laureate, among others). Not forgetting Lynne Truss the radio playwright. Obviously, there’s Lynne Truss, preserver of the apostrophe for the nations (Eats, Shoots and Leaves), not to mention the Lynne Trusses the broadcaster and the award-winning columnist.

And then there’s Lynne Truss the sportswriter.

I remember being surprised when Lynne Truss started to turn up on the sports pages in 1996. Not as surprised as she was, apparently. In May 1996 the sports editor of The Times invited Truss to join the team covering Euro ’96, the biggest feast of international football held in England since the 1966 World Cup, and an event the existence of which she was, at that point, unaware.

Truss speculates that she was seen as “a trundling wooden horse freighting a few new readers into the sports section”. No doubt the expectation was for nothing more than for a few columns of light relief among pages of serious football analysis. If so, it was a considerable underestimate of a writer who, a few short years later, would have the intelligentsia of the English-speaking world whooping with joy over semi-colons and parentheses. Compared to that, getting a few laughs out of blokes in lurid shirts chasing a ball about was like asking Michelangelo to distemper the ceiling.

The result was so pleasing that her foray into the sports pages was extended into the following domestic football season, and from there her range spread, embracing everything from world heavyweight title fights at Madison Square Garden to the Ryder Cup and (her favourite) the World Darts Championship. She recalls her experiences in Get Her Off the Pitch!, her memoir of her press box years, which I have just finished.
Her presence was not always welcomed by the hacks of the sports pages, though she took to cricket writers more easily than many of the others:

cricket writers are generally quite tall, very amusing [I recognise myself already], a bit Aspergers [ah...], and well informed on highbrow topics like art and music [well, up to a point].

She puts the hostility she encountered down to simple misogyny, but I think that it was because they’d read her stuff and were annoyed that, though she might know about 1% of what they did about their sport, she could still write about it better than they could.

Take her account of the Cricket World Cup semi-final between South Africa and Australia at Edgbaston in 1999 (the one where Allan Donald forgets to run so handing the match to Aussie). She describes the events of the day perfectly adequately. But she also captures the increasing tension as only a very few could, still in her deceptively conversational style:

Six balls left in this semi-final. Nine runs required. The contents of our brains are starting to dribble out of our noses. I am pressing wads of tissue to all the orifices of my head. Fleming bowls to Klusener, and he smashes it as if he were playing baseball. It’s a four. A four! All one can do is whimper, watch it fly, absorb the cheering, and keep trusting the Kleenex.

Truss admits her ignorance about cricket freely. When she took her place in the Headingley press box for the Ashes test of 1997 she had to ask what all the talk of “Headingley 1981” was about.* She may not understand cricket (she is heavily dependent on the radio commentary to make any sense of what she witnesses), but she gets it completely:

But the main reason I could never feel comfortable about cricket is that there is clearly no substitute for a lifetime of enthusiasm. It can’t be faked or mugged up, no matter how many times you pick up CLR James or Neville Cardus...This stuff has to go deep, you see.

And:

One of the attractions of cricket, surely, is that it requires a lot of thinking about afterwards. In fact it’s a sport that largely takes place after it’s finished, in the splendid and reassuring comfort of the inside of one’s head.

I don’t think it could be put better than that.

Lynne Truss gave up sport for punctuation when she concluded that she had no capacity for the massive recall of obscure facts that sports journalists and fans have, and that her emotional memory (“the sturdy means by which I navigate my life”) got in the way.

It’s touchingly simple. One week you are a Spurs Fan so devoted to Dimitar Berbatov that you get the Bulgarian national flag tattooed across your face; and the next week, when he’s signed to Manchester United, you go out and buy a balaclava. You don’t dwell on it, that’s the main thing. You might shout "Judas!" at him on his first re-visit, but then you let it go. I suppose you are too happily occupied recollecting every Leicester-Liverpool score since the dawn of football. Or maybe you are too busy studying a straggly frond in your goldfish bowl for the hundredth time today and saying "Blimey, that’s attractive. Is it new?”.

If you get the chance to read anything by Lynne Truss, take it, even if it means ransacking her dustbin for old shopping lists.

*England’s most famous test victory against Australia. Australians who saw it have “Headingley ’81” engraved on their hearts as Mary Tudor did "Calais".

Why I can’t take Sunil Gavaskar seriously as a T20 commentator

Sunil Gavaskar was a great player. In my team of test players who I have enjoyed watching the most, he would open the batting with Gordon Greenidge. His 221, chasing 438 to win at the Oval in 1979, was one of the finest innings I have seen (saw it on TV, having attended the third day of the game):

http://www.cricketarchive.com/Archive/Scorecards/39/39662.html

But when I listen to him commentating on the T20 World Cup, in the West Indies currently, I can’t take him seriously, and here’s why:

http://www.cricketarchive.com/Archive/Scorecards/35/35184.html

It was opening day of the first World Cup. England played India at Lord’s, batted first and racked up 334 for four , an immense score at the time, quite the equivalent of 400-plus in a 50-over ODI today. They were 60-over matches, but there were no fielding restrictions, no powerplays, and as I’ve explained before, one-day cricket remained a stately affair in those days, first-class cricket with a slightly fast pulse.

The innings was built around a Denis Amiss century, and Chris Old scored 51 at the end of the innings at a timewarp strike rate of 170.00.

So how would India, with the great Gavaskar opening, go about the chase? Would they risk all from the start, or would they build towards an all-out onslaught in the second half of the innings? What a wonderful start to the World Cup it would be if they got even close.

He batted throughout the 60 overs for 36 not out.

I shall repeat that for effect.

Thirty-six not out.

It was as if Sir Edmund Hillary had looked up at Mount Everest, decided it was a bit steep, and gone for a cup of tea instead. Unwilling to compromise his dignity by essaying unorthodox strokes, Gavaskar opted for practice instead, no matter that 25,000 people had paid in expectation of something wonderful.

His teammates tried to lay the blame solely on Gavaskar, but the total of 132 for three does not suggest that all caution was thrown to the four winds (and did it occur to nobody to run him out?). Only Gundappa Vishwanath, a batsman incapable of truly dull play, scored at more than three an over.

India, more than any of the cricketing nations, did not take one-day cricket seriously in those days, when 90,000 would fill Eden Gardens in Calcutta for the most irretrievably dull test match. That changed, literally overnight, when India surprised everybody, but most of all themselves, by winning the 1983 World Cup, a victory that initiated a chain of events culminating in the Mardi gras that is the IPL (S Gavaskar commentating).

You can tell, even now, that his heart isn’t in it. Today, there were two games that imitated the pattern of that match at Lord’s, the teams batting first scoring a very high total that almost immediately became beyond the teams batting second. He kept talking about the need to keep the scoring rate up, and to take risks, when what he really wanted to say was “Keep your bat straight, play yourself in, give nothing away and improve your average. Like I did.”

And that is why I can’t take Sunil Gavaskar seriously as a T20 commentator.

Brightly Fades the Don by Jack Fingleton

I’ve just finished reading Brightly Fades the Don, Jack Fingleton’s account of the Australian tour of England in 1948, Don Bradman’s last appearances in test cricket as captain of a team that crushed the hosts four-nil in the tests.

Fingleton was a test batsman himself, and a good one, with an average of 42 from 18 Tests, three of which were in the Bodyline series of 1932/3. He was also a trained journalist who covered national politics when not at the cricket, and the reporter’s eye that he casts over post-war Britain makes the book much more than just an account of cricket matches.

Inevitably, Bradman is the book’s central character. It is known that Bradman did not get on with Fingleton when they were teammates (or with Bill O’Reilly, the great leg-spinner who was also reporting on the ’48 tour). Religious differences were thought by some (probably including Bradman) to be behind this, but it might be that their different denominations merely signposted contrasts of character that were at the heart of the matter: Bradman was of work-ethic Presbyterian stock, while Fingleton and O’Reilly were feisty Irish Catholics. Bradman’s experiences with the press had led him to distrust journalists, which wouldn’t have helped.

A notorious incident during the Bodyline series compounded matters. Australian captain Bill Woodfull entered the England dressing room at the end of a fraught day on which he and several teammates had endured painful blows, the worst of which was an agonizing strike to wicketkeeper Oldfield’s face (the British newsreel commentator said “Larwood was the unlucky bowler”). He famously told the hapless England manager Pelham Warner “there are two teams out there, but only one is playing cricket”.

We know this because someone told the press. Fingleton, the journalist, was the prime suspect but always denied it (he repeats the denial here). He thought it the reason for his omission from the 1934 English tour. But if not Fingleton, then who? The writer and cricket historian David Frith, who knew Fingleton well in his later years, has concluded that it was Bradman, a view that Fingleton almost certainly shared.

The depth of the animosity between the two is not evident in Fingleton’s comments about Bradman here, which are scrupulously fair and moderately expressed. Bradman the batsman is praised almost unconditionally, Bradman the captain only slightly less so, though there is criticism that his determination to go through the tour unbeaten caused him to deny the fringe players fair opportunity.

It is Bradman the man about whom Fingleton holds the strongest reservations, for his “somewhat indifferent, cold and unfriendly attitude towards most of those with whom he played”. Several anecdotes that support this view are spread through the book, though Fingleton concedes that this singlemindedness may have been part of what made Bradman cricket’s greatest batsman.

Bradman’s team became known as “the Invincibles”, and feature early in any discussion of the greatest-ever team. Do they justify that title?

Not according to Fingleton, who selects a combined XI from the 1921 and 1948 sides that includes only four members of the latter. He explains that part of the reason for this is the weakness of the England team in 1948, with a poor standard of domestic cricket combining with inconsistent and eccentric selection (themes repeated many times since) to produce a side that had was not a proper test for Lindwall, Miller and the rest, so their worth was not truly tested.

There are numerous unexpected delights. Fingleton, proving himself to be a man of taste and discrimination, liked Bristol.

Not even London, I thought, had more character about it than this hilly city of churches and types.

It came as a shock to read that the rather bleak stone building at the far end of the Bristol ground was still an orphanage.

There is gay but sad colour in the uniformed orphans who cram the walls along the side of the ground and their huge home.

When I first started watching at Bristol, in the late seventies, that far end of the ground was still sometimes referred to as the Orphanage End, a usage now, I think, obsolete. The function of the buildings as a refuge for waifs, strays and the listless remains; it is now part of Bristol Polytechnic aka the University of the West of England.

While in the north, Fingleton leads an expedition to track down his old Bodyline adversary Harold Larwood, who he found running a sweetshop in the back streets of Blackpool. Fingleton, using that reporter’s eye again, notes that Larwood does not have his name on the shop, odd for a famous sportsman, even in those commercially unsophisticated days.

He finds Larwood welcoming, but bitter, not at the Australians, but at the English cricketing establishment, which shunned him when it became expedient to place distance between itself and the events of 1932/3. The meeting had unexpected consequences. Fingleton was surprised to hear Larwood contemplating emigration to Australia, “the country which once flamed from end to end over his bowling”. The encouragement that they received from Fingleton helped the Larwoods and their five daughters to take the momentous decision to emigrate. He lived happily in Sydney for another 45 years.

At various points Fingleton rails against the disruption and intrusiveness of the new-fangled loudspeakers that were a feature of the English grounds. This might appear to date him hopelessly, but I reckon he was onto something. There’s nothing an announcer can say that the spectator cannot tell by looking at an efficiently operated scoreboard, or by consulting the small reference library that should accompany him or her to the game. And it’s led to the cacophony that is an ODI at the Cake Tin, and elsewhere.

They should have paid heed to Fingleton, over that, and much else.

Kent v Loughborough University, St Lawrence Ground, Canterbury, 10, 11 and 12 April 2010

http://www.cricketarchive.com/Archive/Scorecards/262/262586.html

I’m just back from a quick visit to the UK which, surprisingly for early-to-mid-April, offered a first opportunity for eight years to watch cricket at Canterbury, even if only for a (slightly) glorified practice match.

I was apprehensive as I drove onto the St Lawrence Ground. It was like meeting an old girlfriend, many years later. Would the years have been kind to her? Had she forgiven me for leaving? Would it be awkward? Obviously, the concomitant dangers of such an encounter were absent. A cricket ground could not remark on how much weight I had put on, or ask if that wasn’t the same sweater that I used to wear in 1984.

There was no need for concern. The ground was comfortingly familiar, though the lime tree that had stood on the boundary’s edge for as long as the ground has existed is gone, its absence less obvious than could have been imagined when it was there. A replacement is in place, no more than ten feet high yet.

Neither was St Lawrence in quite the rundown state that some reports had led me to expect. The club is in dire financial straits, made worse by a disastrous foray into pop concert promotion. James Morrison broke even, but the Sugababes went down as well as a county championship game at a Metallica concert. The club chairman, apparently with a straight face, reproved members for not supporting the event, which conjured a  image of an audience consisting of stonyfaced people in jackets and club ties, eating sandwiches from Tupperware boxes during Get Sexy*.

The cricket was pleasing, but untaxing. In other circumstances I would be exercised about the granting of first-class status to a match against a university side but it was so nice watching cricket at Canterbury that I didn’t care. Remarkably for the time of year it was a nice day, as long as you stayed in the sun.

Kent won the toss and batted. I was hoping for big scores from Joe Denly and Sam Northeast, neither of whom I had seen before, but Denly went in the first over, and Northeast managed only a painstaking ten. It was Rob Key and Geraint Jones who scored the runs in the first half of the day, both completing centuries by early afternoon. Jones (to whom I was well-disposed from the start, having enjoyed an excellent bacon roll before play in the bar he runs in the indoor school; the pigs are his own, I understand) looked particularly good from the first ball he received, which he cover drove for four.

Key reached 140 before retiring, without pretending to be injured or ill, so being recorded “retired out” on the scorecard, the first time my Blean correspondent or myself had seen such a thing. It brought the first-class status of the proceedings into further disrepute, of course. This is not to say that the students did not look and act like a first-class side in many respects; there was much clapping of hands and mutual encouragement (Rose being particularly vocal from fine leg), and they could no doubt have talked about “areas” and “zones” all day, given the opportunity. It was only in that brief but crucial period that starts with the ball leaving the bowler’s hand and ends with it reaching the batsman that they looked several days’ walk away from living up to their description as a “centre of cricketing excellence”. But they did have a Tavaré, William, a nephew of the great CJ.

One thing was odd. Loughborough’s slow left-armer, Welsh, came on at the Nackington Road End, from where such bowlers rarely bowl in my experience, because of the significant slope from the hospital to the Old Dover Road sides of the ground. I doubt that I saw Derek Underwood bowl half a dozen overs from that end in twenty years. I thought that this was no more than youthful inexperience (though Graham Dilley, the Loughborough coach, should know better). However, on my brief visit to the ground on the second day, James Tredwell was bowling his off spin from the Pavilion End. A short boundary on the legside (I have never seen cricket on a pitch so far towards the southern side of the ground) made this all the more mysterious.

There was a brief glimpse of Martin van Jaarsveld later in the afternoon, enough to understand why he has scored so heavily in recent years. He has an efficient technique, and hits the bad ball where it deserves to go. He reached his century towards the end of the day, but by that time my Blean correspondent and myself had retired to the Pheonix (happily reopened after a period of closure) where we put bad records on the juke box, just as we did when we were young.

I paid a brief visit on the second day, but the sun had gone in, the nor’easter had got up and it was most unpleasant. Some of the Kent players were wearing beanies to keep warm and went about their task with all the enthusiasm of a meeting of the Kent branch of the Geoffrey Boycott Appreciation Society. Meanwhile, Loughborough were grinding away at about two an over. After a trudge around the ground I left, to return who knows when.

*I had to look that up on Wikipedia, obviously.

New Zealand v Australia, 1st Test, Basin Reserve, 2nd day, 21 March 2010

http://www.cricinfo.com/nzvaus2010/engine/current/match/423789.html

Today’s New Zealand collapse came in the first hour, while the churches were still open to pray for them. Six wickets were lost for 49 runs in 13 overs.

Doug Bollinger was the main destroyer, with five for 28, his best test figures. Vettori and McCullum were both out playing attacking shots. It’s the way both play, and people love it when it works, but today the situation demanded more circumspection. Guptill got the ball of the morning from Bollinger, one that lifted and left him to be caught behind for a fine against-type 122-ball 30.

Daryl Tuffey’s dismissal best illustrated the disparity between the two sides in attitude and ambition. He pushed a ball into the offside and set off for a single, which he regarded as safe. He didn’t run at full speed and failed to extend the bat into the crease as he neared the other end. Nathan Hauritz at cover saw not a safe run, but a wicket-taking opportunity. He swooped on the ball and threw down the stumps, running Tuffey out by a couple of centimetres.

Inept use of the referral technology finished the innings. Tim Southee attempted to hit the cover off a ball from Mitch Johnson (a reasonable approach with Chris Martin at the other end). The Australians appealed for caught behind and umpire Ian Gould concurred. Southee asked for a referral. Endless replays from all angles and Hotspot were scrutinised by third umpire Aleem Dar (they were shown on the big screen too, a commendable change of policy which probably won’t last when it reveals the official to be blundering, as it did here). It soon became clear that:
i. there was air between the edge of the bat and the ball and
ii. there was no sign of contact on Hotspot.
Yet the decision was confirmed, apparently because of a rogue noise which sounded like an edge. Aleem Dar is agreed to be one of the best umpires in the world on the field of play which, on this evidence, is where he should stay.

The referral system also confirmed the first wicket of New Zealand’s second innings (the follow-on was enforced) with Watling out lbw to Bollinger for the second time in the game. The decision was correct, but reached only after interminable viewings of the evidence by Aleem Dar, whose preference appeared to be to adjourn proceedings for a day or two. The good news for home supporters was that the wicket fell with the score on 70, the most resolute opening partnership we have seen for some time.

Progress during the afternoon session was sedate, the run rate hovering around two an over, but nobody seemed to mind. The enthusiasts were engrossed in some good, tight test cricket, while the rest enjoyed a balmy afternoon in the sun.

Tim McIntosh was playing his finest test innings. He reached his 50 from 167 balls, but no criticism about slow scoring was merited today. New Zealand needed crease occupancy, and that is what he provided. His confidence and scoring rate improved after tea. He took ten from three balls from Johnson in the over before he was out, an inside edge onto the pad taken by Katich at short leg off Hauritz. McIntosh was disappointed to be out for 83, but he has secured his place in the test team for some time to come.

The day finished with New Zealand 115 behind with five wickets remaining. Not even the Wellington weather, a doughty and consistent performer over the years, can save them.

New Zealand v Australia, 1st Test, Basin Reserve, 20 March 2010 (2nd day)

http://www.cricinfo.com/nzvaus2010/engine/current/match/423789.html

Here’s something different; a free book for the first 3,000 spectators into the ground today. A good book too, The First 50 Tests, a history of test cricket at the Basin, by New Zealand’s foremost cricket historian Don Neely. It contains some wonderful photographs of the ground through the years, mostly from Neely’s own collection (many featured previously in his history of the ground, but it is still a treat to see them again). Some of the player profiles are a little pedestrian, and could have been run through a fact check (Ian Botham was a specialist second – not first – slip, and many in the hop county would dispute the contention that John Wright was a successful coach of Kent), but it’s a splendid addition to the New Zealand cricket library.

The second day of the Basin’s 51st test began and ended with Australia in control. Things had run away from New Zealand in the last session when 163 were scored for the loss of Katich. Today Michael Clarke and Marcus North extended their fifth-wicket partnership to 253, a record for Australia against New Zealand. It is difficult to recall a false shot, let alone a chance, until Clarke was stumped by McCullum off Vettori for 168.

For Clarke, this was a triumphant end to a difficult fortnight during which he left the ODI series to end his relationship with his girlfriend Lara Bingle (little is known of her less attractive sisters Hooper and Richardson). These events have been forensically, intrusively and tediously chronicled by the Australasian media, and it was pleasing to see such a fine innings in adversity from a decent bloke. It was also gratifying that the promised onslaught of abuse and ridicule from the crowd was almost totally absent. The atmosphere at the Basin was serene and benevolent, a satisfying contrast to the raucous parochialism of the Cake Tin. Perhaps a calming book would be worth a try there, though a colouring crayon might have to be supplied with it.

North became the latest in a long series of batsmen to have their careers saved by the New Zealand attack. How different the Ashes might have been had Andrew Strauss not had the good fortune to come across them at Napier two years ago. As Trevor Bailey used to say of the England attack in the late eighties and early nineties, “they can change the bowler, but not the bowling”. Vettori apart (and he is not the force in tests that he is in shorter forms) it is right-arm military medium fast all the way.

An early declaration left New Zealand facing half a day’s batting. The trepidation felt by many of the home supporters at this prospect was justified when BJ Watling was out first ball, lbw to Bollinger. This left Tim McIntosh and Peter Ingram to see off the new ball, neither with the record or technique for the task.

For 11 overs they did well, scoring sparsely, but batting with purpose and discipline, leaving alone what did not need playing. Then McIntosh blocked the ball in the crease and called Ingram for a quick single. The bowler, Johnson, followed through, but did not have the time to pick up the ball and throw it at the stumps. So instead he kicked it. I have seen this attempted dozens of times, but cannot recall it being successful, as it was here (and from a narrow angle with his – I assume, as he is left-handed – unfavoured right foot). Bad luck for Ingram, who batted well enough to assuage at least a few of the doubts about his calibre as a test batsman.

McIntosh (a 58-ball nine – one of his faster efforts) and Taylor followed, bringing together Guptill and Vettori at 43 for 4. They saw out the day with an unbroken partnership of 65. Guptill was very impressive, restraining his natural aggression and displaying good technique against better bowling than he has faced before.

Vettori was an only mildly restrained version of his one-day batting self. There is less crease-wandering, but he plays a completely defensive shot, one that brings no possibility of runs being conjured from it, only when absolutely necessary for survival, much as a Methodist might resort to a sip of whisky when lost in the desert.

Protected from the northerly by the RA Vance Stand, it was a perfect day for watching at the Basin. It also brought good news. There is to be a Boxing Day test here this year, against Pakistan. This throws into disarray my plans to travel to Melbourne for the Ashes at that time, but there is always Sydney the following week, and leaving Wellington while there is a test on is close to unthinkable.

New Zealand v Australia, ODI (50 overs), the Cake Tin, 13 March 2010

http://www.cricketarchive.com/Archive/Scorecards/256/256466.html

My reputation as a human four-leaf clover is intact: I have never seen New Zealand lose an ODI at the Cake Tin (four wins and a washout against India).

It looked shaky for a while. Few thought that New Zealand’s 241 would be enough, and if the series had not been already decided (or a review system had negated a couple of umpiring howlers), it might not have been.

Things have not gone well for the home side since I last wrote on this subject, mainly thanks to New Zealand’s deckchair batting (it collapses in a moment). The second game was close, with Daniel Vettori getting his team far nearer to victory than they deserved with a typical crease-roaming 70 from No 8. But the third and fourth were cakewalks for Australia, so when it was announced that Australia had won the toss (for the fifth time out of five, a lucky streak that might encourage Punter Ponting to increase his current investments) and put New Zealand in, I was tempted to text my son to say that I would be home around eight.

New Zealand got off to a bright start, thanks mainly to the Australian bowlers. Bollinger sprayed it about in a manner in keeping with his name, going for eight wides from his first over, and Martin Guptill put a free hit off McKay into the crowd at mid-wicket, having hit the no-ball for four. It didn’t last. Brendon McCullum charged at McKay, but was done by a change of pace and hit a tame catch to mid-off. Guptill was slow to respond to a call by Taylor and was run out by a Hopes direct hit.

I still think that McCullum was more effective as a finisher at No 7 than he has been as an opener, and would be happy to see him back there, but this seems unlikely, as he seems to be giving up the gloves and has to justify himself as a specialist. It should be noted that Australia has always reserved one of its best batsman (first Bevan, now Michael Hussey) for this role. However, McCullum seems to like being free of wicketkeeping; he romps around the field like a caged dog let loose in a wood.

Shanan Stewart came in next. I was pleased to see him make his international debut in the fourth game. He was in the New Zealand under-19 against South Africa that I covered in 2001, and I am gratified in an avuncular way when members of that team get on. He follows McCullum, Butler, Ryder, and Taylor into the international game. It was a glimpse only; he was out for six.

Vettori and Styris took New Zealand back into respectability with a bright partnership of 68 at almost a run a ball. Vettori’s dismissal looked awful: he showed Bollinger all three and was bowled off stump. But criticism is pointless. That’s the way he plays, and it is remarkably effective.

It was largely thanks to Daryl Tuffey that the total reached the point it did. Tuffey is determined to re-invent himself as a lower-order all-rounder, and is timing the ball as sweetly as anybody. However, the Australians have worked Bond out: he can’t play anything short.

At 27 without loss the course of the game looked entirely predictable, and many in the crowd will have checked the time of an earlier train. Then Bond hurried Haddin with a bouncer, which was lobbed up to square leg.

Enter Ponting. I have never seen him make a big score, and thought that this might be the day, so watched his first ball from Bond through the binoculars. It was short, Ponting turned away, it clipped his helmet and went through to wicketkeeper Hopkins. I was surprised that the fielders appealed at all, let alone with the conviction that they did. I was more surprised (but not as incredulous as the batsman) to see umpire Gary Baxter raise the finger.

No replay was shown at the stadium, an indication in itself that the umpire was being protected, so I had to wait until I got home to confirm that an appeal for caught was only fractionally more credible than one for lbw would have been. Adam Voges was done later in the innings when Asad Rauf gave him out caught behind off an attempted drive that had air between bat and ball. The case for extending the review system is overwhelming. New Zealand would probably not have bothered even to appeal for either if the possibility of conning the umpire had been eradicated.

It was the batting powerplay that finally undid Australia, just as it did New Zealand in the third game, at Hamilton, when it was taken early and resulted in collapse. The commentators are obsessed with it, and still do not understand that it is not a free token for 30 or 40 runs. An opportunity yes, but one that comes with high risk.

Here, in the first over Michael Hussey played a shot that he would not have attempted in other circumstances, and was bowled behind his legs by Southee. Two wickets fell for only 21 runs in the powerplay and all hope was gone (Hopes was gone too).

Besides the factors mentioned, New Zealand should be complimented on a fine performance with the ball and in the field. Bond and Southee both took four wickets. It was Southee’s second match-winning performance in a couple of weeks, following his effort in the T20 at Christchurch, a remarkable effort for one so young. Of course, he had a couple of poor games in between, but the public and media must exercise patience, for he is our only really convincing bowling prospect at the moment.

Three-two was a fair result, and though New Zealand lost, it was with honour reasonably intact. Only the brightest optimist on this side of the Tasman expects that to be the case in the two-test series, which starts here in Wellington on Friday.

I think Knott

There is a report in the March edition of the Wisden Cricketer on the development of a wicketkeeping ranking system. Developed by Adam Crosthwaite, a wicketkeeper for New South Wales, it is modelled on the baseball system, calculating the percentage of chances taken of those offered, and expressing the result as a decimal.

The thrust of the system and the report is sound: a wicketkeeper should be judged not by how many chances he takes, but by how many he misses. I had no reason to become agitated until I read the final paragraph, which begins thus:

           "We may never know if Alan Knott rated higher than Rod Marsh..."

I can be of assistance here.

Alan Knott was a far better wicketkeeper than Rod Marsh, and any system that concluded otherwise would not be worth the numbers it crunched.

Wellington v Northern Districts, first-class, Basin Reserve, 4-6 March 2010

http://www.cricketarchive.com/Archive/Scorecards/259/259076.html

When I’m in charge, an hour’s daily cricket watching will be compulsory. The social and economic consequences will be dramatic. Productivity will soar, crime rates will plummet, and a breeze of serenity will blow through the nations. It will be four-day cricket, obviously, cricket that flows past the watcher like a river as it nears the sea, inviting immersion or contemplation, according to the state of the water and the spectator’s mind.

Such were, for me, the restoring effects of an hour spent at the Basin Reserve at the end of the first and second days of the match between Wellington and Northern Districts, and the whole of the shortened third day too, shortened because Wellington, near the bottom of the table, were no match for ND, at the top. Injury and international calls meant that no more than five of the Wellington team in this game would be in the strongest possible XI, whereas ND were missing only Daniel Vettori (who has played in only 14 first-class games for ND in his career, despite being loyal to his home province throughout) and Tim Southee.

Having been CricInfo’s man in Northern Districts for a few years at the start of the last decade, I retain loyalties and was pleased that seven of the ND squad of that era were present: Michael Parlane, Hamish and James Marshall, and Graeme Aldridge in the ND team with Bruce Martin as twelfth man, Neal Parlane for Wellington, and Grant Bradburn as ND’s coach.

This retention of experience has helped ND have a good season, but is not good for New Zealand. When I was writing, only seven or eight years ago, there were hardly any players over 30 still playing, except those in, or close to, the national team. Since then, pay has improved and players can earn more by prolonging their careers than by getting a proper job. It is unlikely that any of those named above will play for New Zealand in the future. With only six teams in domestic cricket, the pool from which the national teams are picked is reduced significantly.

The comfortable figure of Michael Parlane was at the crease when I arrived at the ground on Thursday evening, Wellington having already been dismissed for 193, a paltry score by Basin standards. Any number of batsmen no better than the elder Parlane (and a few not as good) have played for New Zealand over the past decade. This may simply be a question of luck, though perhaps he does not comply with the modern coaching vision of the cricketer as all-round athlete (I recall his being dropped for not meeting fitness targets while I was writing on ND; happily these requirements did not extend to the press box). This has never stopped him scoring plenty of runs, and sound method and secure shot selection saw him past fifty again here. His brother Neal used similar methods to score 70 in Wellington’s second innings.

At the other end was Kane Williamson, the latest bright young hope of New Zealand cricket. Just 19, Williamson was player of the year in the 50-over competition, scoring 50 and taking five wickets in ND’s win in the final. After a lean first half of the first-class competition he is now scoring runs for fun in the longer game too. On Thursday he passed fifty while I watched, and went on to 170. Two shots in one over off Jeetan Patel took the eye: a lofted on drive, followed by a cover drive. Like all top-class players, Williamson has time in abundance. He might appear in the New Zealand side before the summer is out.

When I arrived on Friday, Wellington were 35 for one, chasing 207 to make ND bat again. They succeeded, leaving a target of 41, achieved just after four on Saturday, a pleasant day in the sun, if unspectacular on the field. Brent Arnel stood out for ND. Tall and quite quick, by local standards at least, he is another who could be in national colours in the next few weeks, though hurrying up batsmen called up from local club cricket, and doing the same to Ponting, Clarke and co are clearly different things altogether.

I am pleased to say that a couple of thousand people passed through the gates of the Basin on each day of the game. Unfortunately, about 1,970 left by the opposite gates approximately two minutes after arriving. It is not considered worth charging for entry to Plunkett Shield games, so the footpath and cycle way that goes around the boundary remains open throughout. Is there another venue anywhere in which spectators are separated from the playing area by a public thoroughfare?

The Meek Shall Inherit the Earth

Mainly for the benefit of the unfortunates in the northern hemisphere who won’t have seen them, a few remarks on two outstanding games between New Zealand and Australia played here over the past few days, both won by New Zealand.

http://www.cricinfo.com/nzvaus2010/engine/match/423788.html


The T20 at Lancaster Park in Christchurch on Sunday had everything that the game in Wellington did not. At the heart of the home team’s 214 was an extraordinary innings of 116 not out by Brendon McCullum which featured the most outrageous unorthodox hitting that I’ve ever seen. He has his own version of the dilscoop in which he places the bat almost on the ground and, falling away to the offside, flicks the ball over the keeper, ending up on his back as the ball crosses the boundary. Unlike dilscoop mark one (which is so last decade) McCullum’s version does not need the ball to pitch just short of full and so be on its way up on connection. He executed it perfectly from a blockhole ball by Tait at 150 kph. Quite astonishing. If only EW Swanton had lived to see it.

The Australians paced their reply perfectly, with some marvellous, more orthodox, hitting from Cameron White, exploiting Lancaster Park’s rugby-ground geometry perfectly. It looked as if they were going to reach the target with a little to spare when an unlikely hero saved the day: Tim Southee.

Southee has had an up and (more often) down career since coming into the side against England two years ago. He is still only 21, is in the team as an investment, and because the attrition rate of New Zealand’s quicker bowlers is that of industrial Europe at the time of cholera. But in domestic cricket this year he has developed the ability to bowl blockhole balls to order, a quality appreciated by his Northern Districts teammate Daniel Vettori, who entrusted him with two of the last three overs. Result: 11 from 12 perfect yorkers, and a tied game.

And he did it again in the one over bowl off, conceding only six against White, Warner and Clarke. Any bowler would have found this difficult to defend, but Shaun Tait went about the task with a particular lack of nous and nerve. The whole thing was over in three balls, two of which were wides, one being of near-Harmy proportions.

http://www.cricinfo.com/nzvaus2010/engine/match/423791.html

What were left of the nerves of New Zealand cricket fans were shredded in the closing stages of today’s ODI at Maclean Park, Napier. Australia batted first and reached 275, never a poor score, but 30 or 40 below par on New Zealand’s most batsman-friendly pitch.

New Zealand started well, with McCullum and Ingram putting on 75 in good time. At first Ingram looked as hapless as he had in the T20s, but hit himself into a bit of form without raising confidence levels in this quarter.

The key turning points in New Zealand’s innings were the dismissals of McCullum and Taylor to unnecessarily adventurous shots at times when things were going well, though Taylor had batted superbly for 70, and had captained well in the field in Vettori’s absence.

It seemed that the game was drifting away from New Zealand, with almost eight an over wanted with only four wickets remaining, one of which was Oram’s, and he had been carried off with his latest injury (knee) earlier.

But, as in Sunday’s game, a member of the chorus stepped forward to understudy the lead and steal the show. Today it was Scott Styris, only in the team as a late replacement for Vettori, and not trusted with a middle-order spot. Ably supported by Daryl Tuffey and Shane Bond (and less ably by Tim Southee) a series of bold, well-judged strokes, mostly through the offside, brought the asking rate down during the batting powerplay . He also wound up Mitchell Johnson a treat, provoking Johnson to attempt a head butt on the peak of Styris’ helmet. The crowd chanted a pithy and perceptive analysis of Johnson's character.

With two overs to go (the first of which was the last of the powerplay) 12 were required. With the Australians and most others, including Styris, expecting a prod in order to get off strike, Bond sweetly hit two boundaries through the offside. Everybody appeared to have forgotten that Bond has scored a first-class century. The unbroken ninth-wicket partnership was worth 35 from 17 balls.

Styris finished in style, with a big straight six with four balls left, leaving New Zealand where it most likes to be: one-up on Australia.