Herding Cats Read online

  The Tour

  Every amateur cricketer dreams of going on a cricket tour. You don’t have to go abroad for this. Two games with an overnight stay in Leicester constitutes a tour, and that was one of our most enjoyable. But to really appreciate the marvels of cricket, you should head further afield. The professionals may resent the endless nights they spend in foreign hotels, away from their families, clutching their Xboxes. But we can think of nothing better. It is our equivalent of the aristocratic Grand Tour but instead of the galleries and piazzas of Rome and Venice we flock to the subcontinent. The first time I arrived in India to play cricket, I found myself on the Oval Maidan in Mumbai, just hours after landing, bleary-eyed but feeling thrillingly alive. Half a dozen matches were taking place, on pitches so close together that the fielding circles interlocked like Venn diagrams. As a player, it was everything I could have hoped for. Sachin Tendulkar’s son was apparently playing in one of the games and we practised in the nets at the far end, while a few footballers had a desultory kick about in the corner, waiting for their turn. In India cricket comes first. In India being captain of your team meant something, even if you lost to every single side you faced. It was heaven.

  How homesick does an individual become? And how well can he adapt to the local conditions?

  A tour might be heaven but it will give the amateur captain more trouble than any other aspect of running a team. All the usual factors are at play, just magnified a hundred times. Family pressure is greater than ever – understandably so. If a player drops out beforehand, it is that much harder to find a replacement at short notice. Extreme measures are required. You may find yourself having to make financial concessions to someone, subsidising their holiday just so you can tour with 11. You will also have to take on more administrative duties than ever before. Our heroic scorer, Laura, is also a travel agent, and she and I found ourselves overwhelmed with questions about laundry, currency and local sights.

  Injury is a constant worry – it is almost inevitable that a player will pull a muscle in the 24 hours before leaving. On our first tour, Tony limped through five games with a torn hamstring, sustained in a net session, as he practised his occasional off-spin. It is rare that Jonathan has fewer than two muscle strains at any one time. Most recently we travelled to Sri Lanka with a sexagenarian booked in for a double knee replacement on his return and rarely has he played with more freedom. He batted brilliantly and dived for the ball in the field, in the knowledge that his protesting cartilage would be scraped off by the surgeon in a couple of months and replaced with sophisticated polymers.

  As well as injury, there is illness – as much a crucial factor of the local conditions as the weather or pitches. We all know to wash our hands when on the subcontinent, and not to bring them to our mouth, in a bid to avoid Delhi Belly. But a cricketer can forget this in the heat of a match. He is shining the ball desperately with saliva and sweat, looking for swing as his bowling is being assaulted by a batsman on the fringes of the IPL. Who knows what the ball has touched, despatched time and again into the waste ground beyond the boundary? Bowling puts a great deal of stress on the body, as thousands of retired pros can testify. It is not what you want to be doing when you think your insides will explode, and you fear that your whites will bear witness to the ultimate humiliation.

  Then there are the inevitable disagreements that come from close confinement. You aren’t sickening for home so much as for some time away from your team-mates. Resentments build up on tour, particularly when you’re losing on the pitch. When tempers fray during a match, you have to find a way to restore peace, and you don’t all have a week to cool off before the next match. Selection has never been so important. The player who is mildly irritating after a match in England becomes intolerable when you’re spending a week together and God help you if you take a difficult tourist. Even Test cricketers find this, as the Kevin Pietersen saga showed. You will be sharing rooms together, short on sleep and exhausted by the heat and strains of battle. And you cannot rely on victory to patch up the differences.

  Defeat is almost inevitable, as the heat and unfa­miliar conditions make even the best player vulnerable. The fitness needed to play cricket at home will not get you far in 35° heat. Sam makes hundreds at will on English pitches but has never reached 40 for us abroad, as exhaustion overwhelms him. The rest of us lack the technique and composure to cope with the ball turning square. There have been few overseas games in which we did not all bat. Hundreds are made against us, not for us. A fifty is cause for celebration. But we rarely bat first, instead exhausting ourselves in the field as the opposition makes hay. Our seamers are denied the swing and green pitches that make them effective in England and our slow bowlers don’t have the control and skill to exploit the favourable conditions. And the opposition … Well, they are unlike any you will have faced before. As becomes painfully apparent, village cricket doesn’t really exist in the rest of the world. India may be the beating heart of the global game but the majority of its population never gets to play formal cricket. Only the best get selected.

  In England former Test stars tend to play in charity games or to celebrate Piers Morgan’s birthday. In India they turn out regularly to trounce visiting sides. At the Cricket Club of India, in front of 20,000 empty seats, I ran in to bowl the first over to a batsman who had recently retired from Ranji Trophy cricket. We had been told we were facing the CCI Over 40s side. The batting averages were over 40 but their players weren’t. It was the most one-sided match we’ve ever taken part in. I bowled just the one over. Against a Rajasthan Royals XI two years previously, I rode onto the pitch on a camel for the toss with my opposite number, Sreesanth. He may have been hoping to play against England that day but he concealed his disappointment well as he dismantled my bowling, and hit me all over the park. This incredible mismatch had been organised as part of the Jaipur Literature Festival but the Royals scouted our team beforehand and abandoned plans to fly Shaun Tait in – at that time the fastest bowler in the world.

  It is at times like these that I wonder (again) why I am captain. When your best bowler is hit over extra cover for six off the first ball of the innings, as happened on our first tour, you know you are a little out of your comfort zone. Our first-ever game abroad took place at Bombay Gymkhana. This ground has an illustrious history, being the first to host a Test match in India. In December 1933 Douglas Jardine captained England to a nine-wicket win over India. I doubt he was greeted, as I was, by the sight of a dead rat at mid-off. A buzzard snatched it up, picking at it hungrily by the boundary. Tom, our team sage, pronounced that you didn’t need to have studied ancient history as he had to know this augured badly for our tour.

  At first it seemed that he was wrong. Our opening attack quickly reduced the Gymkhana team to 29 for five and I brought on our first- and second-change bowlers, not wanting to kill the game there and then. I could not have misread things more – and I have learned again and again that taking five or six early wickets abroad is no cause for complacency. The opposition had held back their two best batsmen precisely for this situation, showing a courtesy that Jardine would never have countenanced. These two put on a hundred runs and soon took the game away from us. Shattered from our efforts in the field, we struggled to make a quarter of their total.

  Our next games saw us lose in a variety of ways, as we played against Osian’s CC under lights in Mumbai and against a Maharaja’s XI in Jodhpur. But it was after our fourth match that the wheels truly came off. We drove out into the Rajasthan desert where we were greeted by a magical scene. Our hosts had cleared a large area of scrub, brought in a matting pitch and marked out the boundary with white rocks. We were greeted with drums and garlands of flowers. Crowds of children thronged around, giggling at the sight of us, as if they knew all about our cricketing woes. The whole scene felt like an outtake from the film Lagaan, in which plucky villagers defeat their colonial overlords. Afterwards we stayed in a beautiful camp, where we could hear the sounds of the desert
at night through the tent walls.

  The calm of the desert was disturbed by other noises. Our top three sat up late into the night, drinking and talking through the previous four matches. Having played cricket at a higher level than the rest of us, they were particularly disappointed to have lost all our games. They were used to being part of a well-drilled side, in which everyone did their job. Batsmen made runs, bowlers took wickets and the fielders put constant pressure on the opposition. These three weren’t used to playing with team-mates who couldn’t catch, let alone throw down the stumps from 20 yards. They expected their captain to set the tone on the field, rather than being frequently at a complete loss. I can’t say I blamed them for the 20-point plan they made for my captaincy. But the first rule of complaining is to make sure you’re not overheard. I was fast asleep but others weren’t, including our wicketkeeper Alex, who had given his absolute all on the tour. He rightly objected to being kept up by criticism of his glovework and was not slow to say so at breakfast. Scars still remain from the tongue lashing he administered.

  Another tour illustrated the importance of room sharing. I had let the hotel know in advance which players would be together but I landed in Mumbai and arrived to find exactly the arrangements I was trying to avoid. The first player on the scene had been shown his room, with a double bed he was expected to share with another player. He’d kicked up a fuss and was given a room on his own. So everything shifted round. Now those who liked to go to bed early were sharing with those who would crash in drunkenly at 4am. The insomniac was in with the snorer. The tour had begun less than perfectly. The insomniac (who had been up all night, sharing his plans to kill his room-mate on social media) came on to bowl and, within a few balls, had a shouting match with third man about where he should be standing. No one likes being shouted at by a bowler but what you’d grudgingly accept from Anderson or Swann, you don’t take from a part-timer who sends down three wides in his first over.

  Snoring takes its toll on cricketers, just as it does on marriages. I have seen our best fielder drop two sitters while on tour in Yorkshire. It later turned out that he’d spent much of the night in the bath, so loudly did our opening bowler snore. Who should share with these people? Not the best players certainly. Maybe it should be a way of punishing the worst behaviour. But snoring is just one of the issues that will plague the tour. Your team will handicap itself in a variety of ways. You don’t need to be Alex Ferguson to realise that amateur cricket has a drinking culture. Drinking after cricket is one of the joys of the game – and some like to start before, too. But while the likes of Denis Compton made languid centuries while working off the previous night’s champagne, your players won’t find runs as easy to come by when hung-over. Your best chance to win on tour is in the first game. After that, your chances halve. It’s not just alcohol you’re contending with. No one will have played consecutive games of cricket since the previous summer. So prepare for at least one of your bowlers to break down – while your fielders will resemble a robot junk yard, still reaching down to the ball as it speeds off to the boundary. There are limits to what the amateur captain can hope to achieve. I have never sought to impose sobriety upon my team-mates. If you’re going to have a drinking culture, you might as well be part of it. That way, they aren’t talking about your limitations as skipper late into the night.

  You don’t want to go all the way out there again, do you?

  Many of us return from these overseas tours vowing not to do it ever again. Jonathan has tapped out – no more punishment at the hands of vastly superior players, abroad at least. Few of us are really good enough to compete in alien conditions against better cricketers and it’s only going to get harder as we get older. But then the opportunity to play cricket in the winter presents itself again and we forget the shame, humiliation, defeat and disagreements and remember only the joys. And what joys they have been.

  Being presented with garlands of flowers before every match undoubtedly softens the blow of defeat. Crowds of giggling children have watched us lose time and again but the laughter never felt cruel. Other glorious experiences include beating a side of tea planters in the highlands of Sri Lanka. Nick took seven wickets that day and we fought for every single run. A couple of days later we faced a side of prison guards who promised to lock us up if we lost. (We did and they didn’t.) Another year, I handed over a brown envelope bulging with banknotes to a school headmaster before losing a suspiciously close game to their First XI on the pitch we’d got them on our last visit. The strangest experience was undoubtedly when I was asked after another match if our team would like massages from the opposition. We’d played a mixed team of male veterans and women. I didn’t ask which masseurs we’d be getting and said no as politely as possible, wondering how Brearley would have extricated himself from this situation.

  Wherever we have been we’ve been greeted with extraordinary kindness and courtesy, as well as mild curiosity. Why would such moderate cricketers cross the world to play their sport so badly? I have had my kitbag carried through airports by baggage handlers convinced I was here for the IPL. Why else would I have all this kit? We have on two occasions been briefly mistaken for the England team, but any confusion is immediately dispelled the moment we take the field. I mentioned earlier that there is an evangelical side to cricket and there is. National teams go on tour and spread the sport widely. Why should we not do the same with the Sunday game?

  Nine months after our game against St Peter’s CC, we travelled to Rome for a rematch on a ground off the Appian Way. We lost our first game against Roma Capannelle CC, the champions of Italy. The next day we prepared for our Vatican game with a cricket-themed mass in the crypt of St Peter’s, as well as a warm-up in the piazza outside. The carabinieri watched curiously as these Englishmen in their cricket whites put up plastic stumps on the cobbles and then shuffled back into the cordon. Dennis Lillee probably never bowled to a field as attacking as this. My first ball was suitably short and wide and Tom played probably his best shot of the tour, cutting it over the cobbles and past gully. The game ended soon after that as Italian officialdom encircled us and we were fortunate to take the field later with all 11 players. Without Peter’s fluent explanation, we too could have been prosecuted for playing cricket when we should have been in church, as those two nameless men were four centuries previously. We may have dodged prison but we couldn’t avoid defeat. That afternoon, the youthful seminarians from Sri Lanka, Pakistan and India put us to the sword before heading off happily to vespers.

  Who is ­Ultimately in Charge?

  If cricket really is a religion, then there would be a supreme being overseeing it all. It’s not the captain, that’s for sure. Not even the incomparable Brearley. The skipper is struggling down there with the rest of the players. He can only do so much. Nor is it the non-playing administrators. Once you step off the pitch and leave the dressing-room, you leave something of yourself behind. Hence those who retire and keep coming back. Really the game is in charge, like some futuristic power system just beyond the comprehension of the player. Cricket may give you what you need to keep going, that glimpse of hope that means you pack away your kit at the end of the season, thinking you’ll need it again. But it reminds you, too, that you’re fallible, that your stay at the crease is a limited one. Sooner or later it’s time to go.

  The professionals retire first, in their thirties usually. Their bodies tell them they’ve given enough in the service of the game and that it’s time to drift towards the safety of the golf course. Some pros and many more amateurs keep going. They pass fifty, raise their bat briefly and push on, knowing a hundred is probably out of reach. But the die-hards are still playing into their seventies and beyond. On our first tour, an 80-year-old came out to bat. Once he’d represented Rajasthan. That day he showed us that age should be no impediment. He didn’t need whites to look like a cricketer. The way he held the bat at the crease was enough.

  We don’t know when our time will come. It may not b
e our bodies that tell us that we’ve had enough. It could be family or work that come between us and our weekend sport. Several of my team-mates have been given ultimatums by their partners about the amount of cricket they play. Each game involves complex negotiations before they can even take the field. (Another had, as his sole condition in his prenup, that he could play as often as he liked.) But often the game intimates that our time is up. When you just can’t see the ball like you used to, and the low scores start to build up, you wonder if this is it. Why are you spending whole afternoons failing at something you used to love? The company of your team-mates can pall when you’re struggling with the game. You might change clubs, dropping down in search of a level of cricket that will welcome you again, like an ageing roué looking for his lost youth. There for another year or two, you can enjoy the game again and bask in the respect of your team-mates. But soon it’s time to move on again.

  Some players find this decline harder than others. Good cricketers will struggle most of all. Bad ones have always known this feeling. A few will take up umpiring or scoring as a way of staying in touch with the game. Others start to contribute more off the pitch than they do with bat or ball. They know that a player who helps with tea and the washing-up is always going to edge the marginal selection calls. Some cricketers approach every game as if it could be their last. I remember one match when we were chasing a small target and the openers had got us most of the way there. Then a wicket fell. The captain asked the next batsman if he would mind very much if the young number four could go in next. This suggestion was met with the firmest of refusals. “He’s got years of cricket ahead of him. I don’t,” he called out as he walked out to bat.