Herding Cats Page 14

The art of the quick single is a key part of the batsman’s arsenal, whatever the standard of the game. There are some players who come to the crease and size all of us up instantly. The best know that if they set off immediately, there’s a run there. Dean Jones did it to Tufnell and I’ve had it done to me far too often. Duncan Fletcher instructed his Ashes-winning team of 2005 that he wanted two run-outs a match, meaning the bowlers only needed to take 18 wickets. Few things lift a team like a run-out, particularly if the batsmen are taking the game away from you. But we are lucky to get two run-outs a season. Not only does the fielder need to pick the ball up cleanly and throw it accurately but then another has to gather it and break the stumps. It is rare that these four things happen in unison. Any run-out usually involves incompetence from the batting side. Occasionally outright malice, with an unpopular player. Your opposition is unlikely to have done much research before playing you. Weak cricketers tend to assume others are better than them. They won’t know that extra cover can only throw underarm, that mid-on is afraid of the ball and that square leg is in a fugue-like state, after his third golden duck in a row. The stronger batsmen will assess each fielder in turn. Once they realise there’s a single to almost every one of you, that’s when you’re in trouble.

  Bowlers get incredibly frustrated when batsmen drop their bats on good balls into a gap, and steal a run. Even the gentlest natured have scowled at fielders who let the batsman rotate the strike in this way. But spatial awareness is not something that every fielder possesses. They can’t all calculate the speed and angle at which the ball will come to them. Nor do they all walk in together as you’d like. When the fielders get it right, these singles shouldn’t be there. There is a beautiful passage in Joseph O’Neill’s novel Netherland in which he describes “the white-clad ring of infielders, swanning figures on the vast oval, again and again converge in unison towards the batsman and again and again scatter back to their starting points, a repletion of pulmonary rhythm, as if the field breathed through its luminous visitors”.

  It isn’t like that in our team. Some of our players don’t seem to wash their whites. Luminous they’re not. And our pulmonary rhythm is stertorous, if not actually symptomatic of a punctured lung. At least one fielder will stay where he is, another is kneeling to do up his shoelace and a third has left the field to empty his bladder. Many players struggle with this in cricket. As with small children before a long car journey, you may need to ask them if they’ve been to the bathroom. In one match a fielder left and rejoined the game without notifying the umpire, as many players often do. He then stopped the ball on the boundary as the batsmen ran a single. Had he not prevented a boundary the same batsman would have kept the strike. His partner was out off the next ball. It was only now that the square-leg umpire made his presence known. Many umpires are delightful people – this one wasn’t. He might have been technically correct but we all know people who manage to be right in the wrong way. He called the batsman back and restarted the over, placing the other batsman on strike. Our fielder’s full bladder had cost us a wicket.

  What sort of response is called for by the authorities to such displays of bad temper?

  Umpiring is one of the hardest jobs in cricket. It’s all very well being infallible but that requires serious concentration. A batsman needs to concentrate for the length of his innings. The moment he loses focus he’ll hear the death rattle as the ball clatters into the stumps behind him. The moment an umpire switches off, he’ll find he’s surrounded by a number of very angry people. The simple act of raising or not raising a finger can enrage some of the most amenable people I know. Player conduct, particularly towards the umpire, is one of the great issues that faces league cricket and one reason that many of us prefer the gentler Sunday option.

  We know that we are supposed to accept the umpire’s decision as final but there are times when it’s impossible not to question it. When choosing the end from which you want to bowl, bowlers sometimes factor in the official, as well as the wind and slope. There are some who just have to be part of the game, who are never happier than when they’re giving front-foot lbw decisions. An inexperienced umpire will usually give far too many decisions or none at all. One team sent out their French player to officiate and my every appeal met with a firm “non”.

  Home umpires are as contentious figures as they used to be in the professional game. After a number of unsavoury incidents, including Mike Gatting’s furious set-to with Shakoor Rana, neutral umpires were introduced to Test cricket. They have yet to reach the Sunday game. The amateur captain should beware the umpire who is related to the opposition. I was once given out lbw by my opposite number’s father. These decisions are always contentious. I was convinced the ball was going down leg but that’s a matter of opinion and his overruled mine. What was harder to take was that it was off the seventh delivery in the over. In the pub after the game, we learnt that he ruined people’s afternoons in this way on a regular basis.

  In another match, the home umpire had recently come out of hospital after illness. It was heart-warming to see him back on the cricket field but it was possible that he had come back too soon. He kept miscounting the number of balls in the over. Both teams were happy to overlook this but, in the tense last overs, he suddenly made a series of close calls, all in his team’s favour. One was overruled by the home captain but a stumping, when the batsman might just have raised his foot for a fraction might have rankled with a few afterwards.

  The introduction of DRS in the professional game has seen a great many more lbw decisions given than previously and this is, I suspect, slowly trickling down to the amateur game, though many still adhere to the rule that you’re not out unless you go back and get trapped right in front of middle. One of the worst parts of cricket is when you find yourself umpiring and have to give your own team-mates out. I still remember a terrible call I made six years ago, giving out a very good batsman to a ball that I now realise was quite clearly missing leg stump. Square leg, midwicket, point and cover went up but the bowler didn’t join them. I still apologise to the batter and it took me five years to persuade him to play again. In his comeback match, he made one run, sustained two injuries and dropped three catches. I fear we won’t see him again.

  Most of us have made similar mistakes and the dressing-room is full of the ensuing feuds and debates. Most are good-humoured but there is the odd cricketer who will never, ever forget. The hardest decisions are always the thin edges. Did the batsman nick it or was it the sound of his bat clipping the pad? Players divide into those who walk, and save the umpire a decision, those who don’t walk and, worst of all, those who say they walk but don’t. We encountered one of the last kind recently. He was an Oxbridge rugby blue and seemed to nick off early on, off the bowling of a 12-year-old who’d received a late call-up. The batsman stood his ground, insisting he hadn’t hit it and that he would have walked if he had. His partner acted as a character witness and the game went on, only for the same player to thick-edge one behind. The second time it was so obvious and yet he continued to protest that he hadn’t hit it. The finger went up. Strangely we were far more shocked by this than any display of anger or bad temper. This felt as if we were seeing someone as they really were.

  Just occasionally a dispute will break out. We’ve been lucky in our opposition. The worst disputes I’ve seen have all been in Saturday league cricket. But Sunday games are not immune to unpleasantness. One incident centred around an ageing and abrasive batsman. He liked to needle the opposition and did so pretty effectively. I imagine he irritated his own team-mates too. In one game he went that bit further. Having made 20-odd he top-edged a pull to midwicket and set off for the run. As he jogged down to the other end, he started shouting at our fielder, Jon, in the hope of putting him off. We’ve all seen this happen to an extent but rarely so blatant. I can think of numerous keepers who shout “yes” as loudly as possible, to trigger one of the batsmen into setting out for a run. They’ll tell you that they’re shouting at the
ir fielder to return the ball to them, but we all know what’s going on. It’s borderline at best. This was worse – “don’t drop that, it’s going to be embarrassing if you do”. Jon pouched the catch and the batsman kept running, to the pavilion and beyond. We didn’t see him for three years – he leapt into his car and drove off and wasn’t selected until this year, when we were able to patch things up.

  Cricket has seen many worse infractions. This was tiny but could have been resolved in the pub afterwards, had the player stayed around to do so. The final field position is at the bar. It isn’t always possible to have a drink with the opposition afterwards but the day is immeasurably better when you can. They probably have their own issues with their player, just as you might do with the one they most object to in your side.

  It does occasionally happen that 21 players are united against the 22nd. In one match, we were facing a remarkably consistent opening bowler. He sliced through our top order, taking eight wickets with the sort of line and length that we were entirely unused to. Waiting for a bad ball just wasn’t an option. There weren’t any. Every single one was short of a length on fourth stump and there was plentiful assistance from a green pitch. Somehow we groped our way to 170-odd and when their openers put on a hundred for the first wicket the game looked as good as over. But in cricket things are seldom quite as they seem. A wicket might bring two at the top level. The way we play, one can bring five, such is our mental frailty. Their opener retired with a light muscle strain, thinking his job was done and that he’d put his feet up. And suddenly the game turned. Wickets fell cheaply and their strike bowler had to pad up. He walked out at the fall of the seventh wicket telling his team-mates that they’d let him down. Now he was going to have to do it all. When he holed out to mid-off three balls later, both teams danced with delight.

  It is mostly impossible to play cricket competitively and always to be likeable. Bowlers curse themselves and everyone else around them. Batsmen are vile in the ten minutes after their dismissal. But none of this lasts and all should be resolved afterwards.

  Excellent advice – but was this the moment for it?

  The best time to dispense advice is probably after the match, in the bar. But all too often it is done at the wrong time. This mostly happens when we are at the crease with someone, either the other batsman or even the umpire. We’re taught that the man in the white coat is always right, even when he’s telling you to get a good stride in against the left-arm bowler bowling over the wicket into your pads. At the crease, I’ve been coached about running my bat in, my on-drive (probably responsible for more dismissals than any other shot in my locker) and that chasm between bat and pad. As a bowler I’ve often been told off for running on the wicket or when I am getting dangerously close to no-balling. Sometimes this advice is offered in a well-meaning way, sometimes it reveals partiality from the umpire who is seeking to unman the bowler.

  The worst time for advice as we all know is just after a dismissal. The incoming batsman is best off not asking the departing one for his thoughts. He’s either likely to overstate the menace of the bowler or completely fail to mention his key threat. When we’re out most of us go through a dark period, raging at the injustice of being out. No cricketer has worked out just what to say to a batsman whose face is turning puce with fury having been clean bowled. Your status as captain may protect you from assault but do not rely on it. A fine example of this happened at a match at Eton, when Sam was out unusually early. He is best avoided as he stomps back to the changing room. There is nothing worse than being out at the best of times but when you’re playing a lower level of cricket than usual, it is particularly frustrating. Sam had been playing the day before with Inzamam-ul-Haq and Brian Lara and today he was out to some Sunday dobber, the kind of bowler he most hates facing. As he crossed the rope he was stopped by a gaggle of Japanese tourists, keen to get directions to the chapel. They then demanded a photo of themselves with the angry man. I just wish we’d taken one, too.

  Who would the new batsman least like to face?

  I was watching the third match in the series between the teams that Shane Warne and Sachin Tendulkar took to America in 2015. It didn’t look like any professional cricket that I’ve ever watched. It was much more like the Sunday version of the game that I play. Albeit with a crowd. The series featured many of the greatest players to have taken the field in the last 20 years and yet the standard was so varied. They were not all the same age and that made all the difference, particularly with the bowlers. Allan Donald, Courtney Walsh, Wasim Akram, Glenn McGrath and Curtly Ambrose are five of the greatest pacemen of all time and yet all looked innocuous. The only one who didn’t was Shoaib Akhtar, who surprised Kumar Sangakkara with his pace in the first match. But not only has Akhtar bowled the fastest-ever recorded delivery in the history of cricket, he was a good deal younger than the others. At 40, he had five years on McGrath, nine on Donald and Wasim and 12 and 13 on Ambrose and Walsh respectively. Watching these legends being carted around a baseball stadium was painful.

  In the second innings Curtly Ambrose, sporting an amazing tassel on the top of his head, dismissed Michael Vaughan first ball. The crowd went wild but I just thought, “you should have kept him in”. Vaughan had dropped a pretty simple catch in the first innings and was never the biggest hitter in his prime. By getting him out, Ambrose brought Andrew Symonds to the crease who promptly started hitting sixes in all directions. With Sangakkara and Ricky Ponting still to come, you wanted to take advantage of the stodgy England opener’s presence at the top of the order. Bowling full outside off stump to him would have been the best option. But these former greats don’t play like that. They’ve never kept a player in in their life. It doesn’t work like that.

  Glenn McGrath bowled the second over. He may be the greatest seam bowler in the history of the game. Ambrose is in the top ten. Both were made to look ordinary by batsmen in their late thirties – admittedly also greats of the game. An experienced amateur captain would have handled this game very differently, using the recently retired bowlers like Daniel Vettori and Graeme Swann to muzzle the best batsmen and pit Walsh and Ambrose against their fellow veterans. But Tendulkar and Shane Warne don’t play Sunday cricket.

  As Sunday captain, not only do you have to husband your resources carefully, but you won’t always be playing to win. Match-fixing – or match management as we prefer to call it – may be the scourge of the professional game, but it is a key aspect of Sunday cricket and perhaps the only thing that amateurs do better than the professionals.

  Although not every captain adheres to these princi­ples, usually both sides want a good, close game. A one-sided match is enjoyable for the dominant players, but when the outcome is so predictable the rest lose heart and interest. They all know how the story ends and that they’re not the hero. So sometimes it pays to take the pressure off for an over or two and let the opposition regroup. After all, you don’t want the game to be over by tea.

  There are various ways of doing this but, however you do it, discretion is key – just as it was for Hansie Cronje or Salman Butt. You shouldn’t be asking anyone to underperform, nor be doing so yourself. I’ve never deliberately bowled a full toss, wide or no-ball – there are many better ways to alter the balance of a game. You give a weaker bowler a couple of overs too many, with an attacking field. Your cannier team-mates may guess what’s going on, but the rest won’t. They’ll be too busy thinking about their own game.

  But this tends to happen after the opposition has lost five quick wickets and is a hundred runs short of a competitive total. What is rare is having to match-manage from the outset. It has only happened to me once. We were playing a team of a similar vintage to us. I walked out with their captain for the toss and we had the standard conversation about the respective strengths of our teams, and agreed a 20-over format. One of cricket’s great joys is that things are not always what they seem. But as I looked at the opposition, I was pretty sure that appearances didn’t mislead and
that we were the stronger side. I called correctly and put them in, foolishly thinking that it would be easier to control the game that way. We had a decent team, with enough bowling and batting to cruise to a sporting win.

  I was already fretting after just two overs. Their score stood at two for no loss as the openers took a circumspect approach to batting. Chris Gayle often plays out a maiden before unleashing hell in the next over. But these two played more like Chris Tavaré and showed no signs of wanting to accelerate. At this rate we would be lucky to be chasing more than 50.

  After four overs, I turned to spin, telling the surprised new bowler that I was keeping myself back for their number three, whom I knew to be their best player. (At our level, few spinners hit the stumps regularly. Each ball comes out of the hand differently. Then there’s the variation the bowler feels it necessary to add, having zealously watched clips of Warne in action. The result is always six very different deliveries, which will include a full toss, a wide and one that bounces twice. It is almost impossible not to score at least five an over off a bowler such as this, particularly if the field includes two slips and a couple of gullies as mine did. Full tosses can be hit to fielders and double bouncers sometimes pass under the bat onto the stumps.) And so the opposition’s score crept up but the wickets fell, too. The number three came and went without living up to the reputation I’d given him. But their number four made a quick-fire 30 and they finished on a respectable 98 in their 20 overs. Meanwhile, our two occasional spinners recorded their best figures of the season.

  Half the match had passed and while I hadn’t been actively trying to lose, nor had I been trying to win. I was giving players opportunities they didn’t always get and they were enjoying it. My competitive instinct with a total to chase would typically have returned by now, but I looked around at my team and I saw various players yet to make a decent score this season. This could be the day they did so, if the opposition’s bowling was anything like their batting. And so I put two of our tailenders at three and four. Both were clean bowled, making five runs between them, but our spin duo played their best innings of the summer, taking us from 30 for three after nine overs to a position where we needed 24 from the last 18 balls. Our youngest batsman, the teenage son of one of our players, hit a few boundaries but couldn’t get the four needed from the last delivery. And so we lost. It felt strange losing like that to a weaker side but I felt we had salvaged something from what could have otherwise been an awful day’s cricket.