Herding Cats Page 10
The next year, I drove down after Sam’s wedding – the star batsman of our first year having thoughtlessly got married in the middle of the cricket season. To make it worse, he chose to do so in Scotland, the day before we were due to play Hambledon, some 400 miles away. I wasn’t deterred and travelled back overnight, only for rain to fall and wash out the game. The following August we found ourselves batting second yet again, chasing a challenging 207 in 40 overs. Our opener Richard made a fine fifty but wickets fell regularly as the Hambledon pro ran through our strengthened middle order. I had asked our wicketkeeper Daniel to bat at ten and was surprised to see him stride out at the fall of the seventh wicket. A good defensive batsman, he was not known for taking risks, in life or on the cricket field. He is a man who showers in sandals, to avoid catching a verruca, and tends to carry hand sanitiser with him at all times. Barring a miracle from Nick at the other end, I thought defeat inevitable. Daniel swiped and mostly missed, scoring six off his first nine balls. With 16 balls left, we required 39 runs. Players drifted into the showers, keen to wash off the feeling of defeat. But Daniel struck a couple of fours, with 12 coming from the over. This left 27 to make off two overs. More booming shots over square leg and midwicket kept us on target. With one over left, we needed 13 runs.
By this time the whole team was watching tensely from the pavilion. Botham might have emptied the bars – Daniel’s hitting had dragged his team-mates out of the changing room and us back into this game. It was now that the Hambledon skipper showed us all how Sunday cricket should be played. He took off their pro and, with overs remaining from their openers, decided to roll the dice and bring a new bowler on. This player had made fifty already that day and now had the opportunity to set the seal on their victory. Daniel was on strike and played and missed at the first two deliveries. We now needed 13 in four balls. In the IPL this is a perfectly achievable target but I’d only ever once seen it done at our level. So we were stunned to see our usually circumspect keeper hit the next three balls for four, two and six. With just a single needed, he turned the last ball to the on-side for the winning run. He finished unbeaten with 44 off 25 balls and his innings looked like this – ..4..1.1.4.4.26.243..4261
Daniel probably surprised himself as much as he did us with that astonishing innings and showed that sometimes things just happen irrespective of a captain’s decisions. If he’d gone out at ten we would, most likely, have lost. That day he had a moment on the cricket field that few of us ever will, dominating better players and dragging his team to victory single-handedly. It was a truly heroic moment and I like to think it will sustain him into old age. The next game he reverted to type. This time he was playing against the Authors, showcasing that excellent defensive technique, frustrating the bowlers and just maybe a team-mate or two.
There are many things that provoke dissent within a team but scoring rate must rank high among them. It is quite normal to field an amateur side in which the standard of batting is almost uniform from one to 11. No one is significantly better than anyone else and the order is done on other considerations – who bowled, who didn’t bat last game, who you are encouraging not to play any more. When everyone wants to bat, there is no pain like that of watching batsmen treat bowling with excessive caution. Equally, when you’re out in the middle, facing good bowling in testing conditions, you resent the frustration of your team-mates – particularly that of your captain, who, after all, is a bowler. They don’t know what it’s like out there, how difficult it is. This is the lot of the top-order batsman, of knowing when to push and when to hang in there.
When someone is bowling badly you can haul them off. There’s nothing you can do about a batsman scratching around for runs. If you’re really unlucky, the opposition will have cottoned on to your predicament. The captain will have a quick word with his bowler to keep the ball outside off stump and gesture discreetly for his fielders to drop back a little. The last thing anyone wants to do is get this batsman out. Every over he’s in takes the game further away from his team. There’s probably a reason he’s batting where he is – and it won’t be a cricketing one. Perhaps he’s the club chairman playing his one and only game of the season. No one is going to run him out – he raised the money for the new pavilion after all. Botham famously ran his captain Boycott out against New Zealand in 1978 but the fallout lasted for years.
So how do you handle this situation? Ideally, it will resolve itself – the batsman will become increasingly aware that his slow scoring is costing his side dearly. But when everything is going wrong for a batsman, it isn’t that easy to get out either. One approach is to send out new umpires, including the nicest member of your team, the one who finds it hardest to say no to 11 angry men. By the third huge appeal, he will have raised his finger.
But it is not just defensive batsmen who cause the captain problems. A big hitter can be equally problematic, when he has the same lack of understanding of a match situation. He will swipe wildly at everything until he’s bowled. Batting for him is all about hitting boundaries – he’ll leave singles to lesser men. This attitude is fine until he lets you down in a tight run chase, giving his wicket away when he just needs to work the ball around and not get out. I played for a few years with a player who approached every innings like this. He had been a fiery fast bowler but, as he got older, he slowed down and turned to batting. Going in at the top of the order, he swished angrily at every single ball until he got out. I never saw him play a defensive shot. Not once. Thankfully I never had to captain him.
We have faced entire teams who approach cricket at a similar pace. One side of young Afghans plays at 100mph, bowling fast, hitting sixes and taking astonishing catches. As they get older and play more, they will understand how you can lose to lesser teams who don’t blaze away. In our first match against them they needed 24 in four overs, with two wickets remaining. The batsmen went for glory, trying to do this in four shots and failed. Although we won we envied them their style of play and wished we could play with such glorious freedom.
Just occasionally you wish your batsmen wouldn’t score quite so quickly. In the last game of one season we were chasing 143, with all the time in the world to get there. It looked like the perfect opportunity for certain batsmen to spend time at the crease, and hit some runs that they’d remember over the winter. But our opener Joe reached his fifty in no time and suddenly it looked as if our middle order wouldn’t get a bat. As he ran hard for byes and overthrows I found myself wanting him to hang back, let someone else get these runs. Thankfully the tea interval allowed me to intervene and appeal to his better nature. When play resumed he unfurled a series of high-risk shots until he was out. We clapped him in that little bit harder than usual and the next batsman made his highest score of the season, as Jon, who had already passed 700 runs for the season, gave him the strike whenever possible.
Who’s going to get these runs for us, then?
There is an anecdote in The Art of Captaincy that makes one think the gap between professional and amateur cricket is not quite as wide as you’d believe. Brearley tells how in a 40-over match against Middlesex, Northampton needed 77 on a very wet pitch. A newcomer to the batting side, puzzled by the dressing-room gloom, asked what the matter was. His team-mates responded: “Who’s going to get these runs for us, then?” And Northants duly struggled to make them. This attitude is far more prevalent in Sunday cricket, where few of us walk to the crease in the expectation of staying there long.
There is a stage in an innings when the fielding side knows that someone is going to have to do something remarkable if they are to reach that total. This usually means a century from one of the top order. In first-class cricket you know that your top eight are capable of that. In Sunday cricket, you might take the field without a single batsman with a hundred in your colours. One or two of them may have made centuries in the distant past but you know those days are gone. Hundreds are a sufficient rarity that, when they happen, they are celebrated. Hard, sometimes. One sid
e we play has a tradition that the centurion must drink a “Dirty Boot”. This is a leg-shaped glass filled with two and a half pints of beer and spirits. After a hard day in the field, it is surprisingly scant consolation to see your principal tormentor vomiting his guts out on the pitch. Not every player takes up this challenge, however. In a previous game there, their batsman thick-edged a ball to the keeper early on. Even our doziest players went up for the appeal but the umpire was the only one not to hear the distinctive sound that an edge makes. The batsman went on to make a century and win the game.
Over the years more players have made tons against us than for us. For a side mostly in their forties, fond of touring abroad and playing stronger teams, this probably isn’t a great surprise. In our first season we tended to do better when we batted second. And we batted second a lot. With a new and inexperienced captain and Sam, who preferred to chase, we usually rolled over and let the opposition have first go. Having not played together a great deal we were weak in the field, and failed to defend totals on the occasions we batted first. In 15 games that season we won six, lost seven and drew two. Five of those victories came when we chased. We relied extensively on Sam, who averaged over fifty that year. He preferred to bat when he knew exactly what was required of him and he was sufficiently match fit that batting after 40 overs in the field didn’t tax him unduly.
Not all cricketers operate on the same level of fitness. I remember a timed game which bore out the theory that cricket is a weak-link sport. The opposition had one superb batsman a class above anyone in our side. But they also had two of the worst cricketers I’ve ever played against. Their chances of victory relied almost entirely on batting second and their star making a century. Their skipper won the toss and, though half his side had yet to arrive, decided to bowl. (He wasn’t sending a message to the late-comers, he just didn’t want to lose.) We batted well and I declared on 220. My thinking was that their batsman would most likely make a ton but I thought he lacked the fitness to push on much further. There was no way the rest of them would muster 120, so I thought we’d be safe. He duly retired hurt shortly after making his century and the match petered out, with the batting side applauding every defensive prod as the draw came ever closer. This is the risk of the timed game and that is why many prefer not to play them. If both captains work together, then an exciting finish can be reached. If one just wants to avoid defeat at all costs, this is the format for them.
In a timed game, choosing when to declare is key. My team-mate Tim has a theory that a captain should do so a few overs before he wants to. The moment he relaxes when his side is batting the game is gone, as an exciting spectacle at least. If you are to take ten wickets, often with the ball used in the first innings, you need the other team to be going for their shots, not playing for the draw. Marcus Berkmann’s Rain Men mostly play this type of cricket and he told me that over the years they have learned not to chase any score in excess of 175. Once your batsmen pass that, there goes any chance of an exciting finish. Instead, you will see an innings much like South Africa’s fourth in Delhi in 2015, when they made 143 in 143.1 overs. Two of the world’s finest batsmen faced most of these balls. Hashim Amla made 25 off 244 balls and A. B. de Villiers 43 off 297. Had I captained India that day I would have brought on my very worst bowling. There is something about a slow, looping delivery that can cause a temporary derangement of the senses in any batsman. Consciously he knows he must defend; unconsciously he readies himself to swing himself off his feet.
Are we still going for the target?
In your side there will always be a batsman or two who is just longing to shut up shop like the South Africans had to that day. Occasionally a match situation removes all pressure to score runs and batting becomes a carefree experience. We’ve all had them and they are wonderful, like an extended, elaborate net. Cricket becomes a one-man sport – you’re batting for yourself without another thought in your head. Run-rates are just something that the previous batsmen had to worry about. They failed and now you can bat as if you’re playing in another game. Those down the order often find themselves in these situations. Either they’re playing for the draw or the run-rate has reached unrealistic levels and the only thing left is pride. I still remember fondly an innings of 47* in Sri Lanka, made when the match had gone. Their captain sportingly brought in the field and invited me to hit over the top. For once I was successful and my team-mates were kind enough to give me the strike as I chased a rare fifty abroad. But runs that don’t edge you towards victory are not quite the same as those that do.
Should the interests of an individual ever take precedence over the needs of a team?
There are famous cases of a batsman being left stranded in the nineties by his captain, who declared before he could reach his century. Mike Atherton called Graeme Hick in when he was on 98 against Australia, and other skippers have incurred the wrath of their batsmen by not delaying the declaration a little while longer. But what could enrage a captain more than a player putting his own landmark ahead of the team’s victory? In Test cricket Hick didn’t live up to the heightened expectations that came with his incredible first-class record and he was undoubtedly badly handled by the England management. He and Mark Ramprakash, two of the most gloriously talented batsmen of their generation, were dropped repeatedly and denied the backroom support that today’s generation of cricketers can rely on. Yet they were still light years closer to today’s professional support set-up than any amateur team.
An amateur captain will rarely face the dilemma of whether to declare before a player reaches his century. Tons are few and far between and most of us play on in the vain hope that one day we will reach three figures. A telegram from the monarch is more likely, particularly when you usually have no more than 40 overs in which to get those runs. I have only once found myself in this predicament. We were up against a team of journalists, who played once a year together. They had two very good cricketers, a few solid players and a number of novices. This was a game that required careful match management if it was not to be completely one-sided. Competition for places was high, from those who were hoping for a completely one-sided game. I had several players who were going through lean patches and was anxious that they should enjoy this day at least. We batted first in glorious sunshine against a three-pronged attack. One player had pulled a calf muscle the previous week and so was bowling spin. Another pulled up with a shoulder injury after six overs, having dismissed our opener early on. Their other seamer faced a long spell. Our numbers two and three put on 140 runs together before lunch against what was left. I only wanted another 60–80 before declaring and was anxious that our next three batsmen got an innings, since none of them would bowl. So I broached the subject of retirement during the interval.
I met with partial success. One batsman was happy to step aside, the other understandably wanted to get to three figures, having never done so before for the team. He assured me he would hit out and get there very quickly. But as the bowling got worse, so did his batting. His resolve went. He realised what I already had known – that reaching the milestone against this attack was not how he wanted to make that first Authors ton. He eventually fell in the eighties to the keeper, who’d come on for a twirl. The next three batsmen came in and scored freely but I wasn’t able to declare as early as I’d hoped, wanting to set a target that appeared within reach – it being so much harder to dismiss batsmen who aren’t playing shots. I brought on our occasional spinners, who were much more effective than the faster and more accurate bowlers. There is a type of bowling that triggers something primal in the batsman’s subconscious. No matter what the match situation, he thinks “I must hit this”, even when he knows that he must stay in. Several batsmen perished this way until the tail restored sanity by blocking the last few overs.
But these situations are rare. Usually the captain is faced with a different dilemma. Should you give someone a bat? Should you let him play at all? You know that this player is unlikely to make ten
runs, let alone a hundred. He could stuff up your whole innings at a crucial stage. But he’s there and so he gets a go. As Woody Allen once said, 80 per cent of success is showing up. The amateur captain is often sending players out in hope more than expectation.
In a recent match for another team I watched the number seven walk to the crease. He held his bat in one hand right at the bottom of the handle, as if he were already acknowledging his fifty. I muttered to the skipper that I would bet my life this player had never played before. For most of us there is no higher praise to say to someone that they looked like a cricketer. My guess was that this man had kindly accepted an invitation to play the night before. He had to bat at seven if he was to get any sort of a game at all, because his skipper couldn’t trust him with the ball. Cleverly, his captain had lent him a Lord’s Taverners’ shirt, hoping to confuse us for a few overs. What was needed was a short ball followed by a full, straight one. Anything outside off stump could go for four off an edge or lucky hit. Which is what happened. He managed to defend the few balls on his stumps and swished successfully at the wider ones. He put on 20 runs with the other player and in the second innings we fell agonisingly short. His contribution was decisive.
It is never easy knowing how to handle the guest player but you just have to throw them in at the deep end. Courtesy dictates it. What is much trickier is when they want to return, despite their abysmal failure in the first game. In every Sunday team there will be at least one player that the captain does not quite know how to handle. Should you play him as a batsman? Could he be turned into a bowler? Or is he really happy to field and not play much part in the game? He turns up every week, comes to every net session and his enthusiasm is undented by each catch that he drops or duck that he makes. Sometimes you worry about what’s going on within.