Herding Cats Page 7

  Occasionally I long for a return to more patriarchal times, when I could tithe my players, forcing them to contribute a tenth of their income to the club. Jonathan once announced that he was leaving a decent sum of money to the team in his will. None of us has actually seen his last testament but this masterly strategy ensured his place in the side for the rest of the season and that he sometimes gets a bat and a bowl. Every game, he invariably turns up suffering from something we’ve never heard of – usually the sort of muscle twinge experienced by professional athletes – but will play through the pain. On the rare occasions when he’s not already injured, he will hurt himself almost immediately diving for the ball. He then spends the rest of the game telling us about his physical state, as if he’s about to die, while the rest of us wonder what we’ll do with the proceeds.

  Ought we to want to win so much?

  Under Mike Brearley’s captaincy, Middlesex signed Jeff Thomson for the 1981 season, to replace Vintcent van der Bijl. The club already had the West Indian quick Wayne Daniel in their attack and certain members felt that not only would this hold back the development of the younger Middlesex bowlers but also that it showed an excessive desire to win at all costs. (Though, of course, one should never ignore the county member’s innate dislike for anything unfamiliar.) Even the first-class game had to face the thorny issue of the newcomer who is that little bit too good.

  In amateur cricket, the ringer is a key figure. There are many ways by which you shall know him – he’ll walk into the changing room with a huge cricket bag, bristling with bat handles, with the confidence of a minor Greek god, down for the day from Olympus. He will usually play several levels of cricket above yours, with at least a fleeting experience of the first-class game. What a man with so many runs and wickets to his name is doing playing with you is never entirely clear. Usually one of the captains will have some personal connection to him and has exploited it, to get one over the opposition. Because fielding a ringer is the cardinal sin of Sunday cricket. He has been recruited solely to ensure that his side cannot lose. It is as if a shadowy fixer with four mobile phones has started watching your game from his hotel room.

  In league cricket, of course, it is perfectly usual to encounter professionals and quite often both sides will have them. They will do the bulk of the bowling and batting and earn their match fees twice over. In charity matches the appearance of professionals is a frequent occurrence. The greats of yesteryear turn out regularly all round the country, bowling good-naturedly at club batsmen who want to say they’ve hit Devon Malcolm for four (a streaky edge through the slips, in my case) and then have a bowl at him. Many cricketers have stories of this kind and they provide a mechanism in which former pros mingle with the players whom they inspired. It is part of cricket’s greatness that this can happen.

  But in a Sunday match their presence is a different matter. I once played a match in the Berkshire country­side against a side that stepped straight from the pages of a P. G. Wodehouse novel. Their XI was drawn from “the oldest and most important of all Conservative clubs”. Being old and important is great in Pall Mall but not much use on the cricket field and so they had a whip-round to pay for a pro. They clearly weren’t paying him enough, however, since he was not there for the start of their innings. After 15 overs, he pulled up in his Mercedes. I’d seen him before – he was a bowler who’d played for a number of counties, mostly second-team cricket, and he coached from time to time at The Oval.

  The wickets fell and the pro came out to bat at number nine. It was immediately apparent from the way he coolly took guard and looked around the field that he was a class apart. This cool also extended to his team-mates. He had probably agreed to play some months ago and, now Sunday had arrived, could think of nowhere he’d rather be less than with these swivel-eyed loons twice his age. As a pro, he knew where all the major grounds are. Finding his way down tiny roads to this pretty but unremarkable club ground in Berkshire was not what he’d signed up for. His first shot was a perfectly timed glance off his legs and he sauntered down to the other end, as we focused on dismissing the other batsman. There are some players you despair of getting out but, having showed us what he could do, the pro then played around a straight one and it was tea. The bowler couldn’t believe his luck – had he got out deliberately, not wanting this game to go on any longer than necessary? I faced a few balls from him in our innings and he was almost unplayable – quick, darting the ball off the seam both ways, the last delivery thudding into my pad and sending me back to the pavilion. But he wasn’t planning to win the match single-handedly for a club he’d never be allowed to belong to. I wondered what was going through the mind of his captain, who had not got the result or performance he’d wanted from his pro.

  I had a similar experience at one of the most scenic pitches in England. A throwback to Regency-style cricket, the owner has been inviting teams to his beautiful house and ground for years, with the unspoken understanding that they lose horribly to his crack team, which will include at least one former international player, and that he will be very attentive to any opposition wives during the tea interval. I still remember my first game there. I hit my first ball confidently into the off side and set out for a run, only to be sent back by my partner. He had correctly identified the fielder as the former pro, who was feared even on the county circuit for his prowess in the covers. I had only taken a few steps down the wicket but that was enough. He dived to his right, threw the ball in to the stumps at my end and I turned to see the keeper taking the bails off and set up back to the pavilion, murder in my heart. The rest of the team fared little better, as we were skittled by the latter-day Maharaja of Porbandar’s side. Their captain took almost no part in the game, neither batting nor bowling. At no point did he lift the pressure – the foot stayed on our throat throughout as we were soundly thrashed. The only consolation was that thousands of guineas weren’t riding on the result.

  We left, swearing never, ever to play there again, and I’ve met others who tell the same story. Sometimes it was the same England player. Another faced Chris Cairns and Hamish Marshall. Each time the result was the same. We could have returned with our own pro, precipitating an arms race as he then recruited others, but what would be the point? Cricket like that already exists and it’s not what we want to play. For once I found myself on the same side as the Middlesex members. This wasn’t cricket.

  Is there a tendency to complacency?

  Looking round the dressing-room recently, I realised something, which was that day I was the only player there who thought he might be getting better at cricket. The rest are just managing a decline. In a better team, this could be read as complacency. In a Sunday side, it’s more like recognition and acceptance. Part of this is down to age, but it is mostly due to the fact that many of my team-mates actually were good once. Two of them played at county junior level, two others played good club cricket in their youth and one, somewhat improbably, played for a national side. Not his national side obviously, just somewhere he happened to be living at the time. But he’s played cricket for Brazil and I haven’t. Yet.

  The big question about sport is, why do we play? For the fun of it? To improve? To win? We are all different in what we need to get out of the game. For some it is enough to turn up and enjoy an afternoon with their friends. Any runs and wickets are a bonus. These are the well-balanced types who approach cricket as they do everything else in life. You won’t encounter them on the pitch as often as you’d think. They enjoy the rest of their life and don’t need to escape from it. Cricket attracts a different type, given to obsession.

  Then there are the best players. It’s obvious why they play the game. They’re good at it. They didn’t choose cricket; it chose them. But they usually need to excel to get any satisfaction out of the day. They play to make runs and take wickets. If that takes you to victory then great, but for them cricket isn’t really a team sport. It’s about them and their performance. You’re just there as a backdrop an
d you come into prominence when you fail, by dropping catches or running them out. In league cricket you are desperate for these players, as you strive to put out as strong a side as you can. In Sunday cricket you want as few of them as possible, even though that deprives you of talent. They are the hardest to manage, since they expect to be involved in almost every aspect of the game. If you are playing a 40-over game, there will be 480 deliveries over the two innings (not including any extras). If you split this up between the team, so each player is equally involved, everyone would hope either to bowl or face 43.6 of them. An all-rounder who opens the bowling could get his full allocation of overs, before settling down to a good, long innings in the top order. He might well find himself involved in over a hundred of them, leaving that bit less for everyone else. With two such players, suddenly the game is very different and others are reduced to the status of specialist fielders, where they will be berated by the stars for not being good enough. The catch-22 is that the good Sunday cricketer will expect high standards from everyone around them, and yet will have his nose put out of joint by anyone who is remotely as good.

  Then there are those who have a more complicated relationship with cricket. As we know, the game can drag from time to time. The captain isn’t allowed to be bored after 15 overs in the field but a decent proportion of his fielders will be. And some matches are more fun than others. All of us have the occasional day when we hate the sport. Some have more days like that than good ones. Much of the time, they’re not enjoying playing at all. Sometimes they’re positively miserable. The rest of us joke about it, because we don’t want to face the truth. It would make us uncomfortable. We’re doing this for fun, aren’t we? Cricket isn’t a zero-sum game like poker. The batsman who makes a hundred will enjoy the afternoon more than the bowler who concedes the same number. But there should be enough runs and wickets to go around.

  It is a bit of a mystery why these players are there at all. Somehow cricket has hooked them and they return each week for further punishment. But just when they are most disheartened, the game gives them something to keep them going. Whereas the stronger players look at the season as a whole, the weaker players are content with a couple of achievements a summer – an economical spell of bowling here, a couple of wickets there, a good catch and an unbeaten 14 might be enough to make them want to play another year. You desperately want this to happen since you cannot have 11 principals in a team, all wanting to play a major part with bat and ball. Some are needed to make up the numbers and so you need to ensure that they get what they want from the day.

  Alex was one of the first to join the team. He’s young, fit and probably our best and keenest fielder, able to cover a huge amount of ground and cut off dozens of runs each game. We are considerably more likely to win with him in the side. Players don’t always realise the value they bring to the side and often obsess about their weakest suit. He hasn’t always had the success with the bat that he craves, with a single-figure average one season. He is obsessed with mastering this game. He has spent hours on one-to-one coaching at Lord’s and has subsequently built his own cricket net in his garden in Kent. Last season he made his first fifty for us and this year he’s started to bowl. He recently wrote that when cricket goes well it was “bliss”. But much of the time it’s agony.

  Those who enjoy cricket the least are not necessarily the worst players. The miserable ones are those with no real sense of themselves as cricketers. We all delude ourselves to a certain extent. Most of us like to think we cut a more heroic figure on the pitch than is the case. Those who cling to past – possibly even imaginary – glories will generally be disappointed. Many of the pros never pick up a bat again after they retire. They know they’re only going to get worse as they age. Why not take up a pastime at which they could improve? Hence the drift towards the golf course or the poker table. A couple of my team-mates are not so sensible, still chasing youthful dreams. But your game changes over 30 years and cricket is all about knowing your own game. My team-mate Sebastian has been playing longer than most of us and he knows his game inside out. Over the years he’s retired a few times and then come back. He still has the eye, footwork and temperament, and is probably the best player of spin in the side, capable of hitting a good slow bowler out of the attack.

  In cricket, as in life, most of us tend to fail the same way that we always have. Then the physical decline begins and we find new ways to get out. Those who have long relied on strength over technique will need to rethink. No longer can you muscle the ball over the ring for four. Instead, that strong bottom hand will see you caught there. Without that extra zip in your bowling, the ball is there for the batsman to hit. There is less room for error as youth’s vigour deserts you. But what do you do? Most of us struggled to master the correct technique at the outset. Is now really the time to try to change? Is it worth it? Is this the best way to manage the long, inevitable decline? Would it not be better to give up now?

  Did he want to continue with his method and remain at his present level? Or was he willing to work on his technique to give himself more of a chance?

  How do you improve in middle age? What are you looking to achieve? It’s probably too late to become a good player but there are things you can do, particularly if you focus on particular areas of your game. I’d like not to be bowled between bat and pad quite so often, trying to hit the ball back where it came from, nor stumped against spin. I tend to bat down the order and I firmly believe that if you bat at eight, you bat like an eight. If I were opening, I tell myself it would be different. With the ball, I know that a yard more pace is not going to happen at my age, so I am working on the odd variation. One works well enough, the other I save for nets, or when we cannot lose.

  Looking around the field, there are improvements I’d like to make to the rest of the team. But it’s hard enough to sort out your own game, let alone that of others. But cricket is like that, it has an evangelical side. If you manage to fix something in your own game, you want to do it to others. Starting with the batsman with the brilliant hand-eye coordination who chooses defence over attack. Or the strokeplayer who backs away further and further before being clean bowled. The seamer whose stuttering run-up or roundarm style makes it almost impossible to put two balls in the same place. We’ve all wanted to say something to these players. I even dream that the three players in the squad who have experienced the yips will one day throw off that nervous affliction and enjoy cricket again.

  Two of our squad actually have coaching qualifi­cations but all of us act as though we do. Tony has recently acquired the nickname “Coach”, so free is he with his advice. He earned it when a visitor from Australia took six wickets in a match we played on the summer solstice at Avebury. In one of the celebratory huddles, Tony started telling the bowler how he could have knocked the stumps over more effectively. The changing room, like any other, is full of gossip, mischief and a genuine desire to help others with their game. We can talk for hours about the shots that we all get out to, the balls that certain bowlers should never, ever bowl again and the idiosyncrasies that each of us possesses. And yet we go on as we always have. The fielder who takes five steps before throwing the ball in, allowing the batsmen to turn for a second; the man in the deep who is talking to passers-by and doesn’t see the skier heading towards him, and the gully who never finds that perfect distance from the bat, where the ball won’t squirm under him, nor the batsmen take a single. It’s not as if we haven’t raised these things. They just keep happening. Too many cricketers rely on having done something in the past. But 10,000 hours of practice in the 1980s counts for little 30 years later. Muscles only have so much memory.

  Selection

  First, who would captain the side if I were injured before the match? And, second, who would take charge if I were off the field during it?

  There will always be people in your team who would do certain aspects of your job better than you would. My vice-captain Nick, with whom I set up the team, knows more a
bout cricket than I ever will, as well as being a much better player. But Nick didn’t want to be captain and so I had to ask someone else if they would take over the role from me once the team was up and running. In that first summer Sam made more runs than anyone else and has played more cricket than anyone I know. I spent much of our first two seasons scurrying over to point to get his thoughts. But he had commitments to other teams and was passing through (but we hope he will return again). So I took the role. In our middle order, Jon has a brilliant cricket brain and is calmer, less combustible; Tony is a much nicer person, always aware of whose feelings I’ve just hurt; Matt more competent and organised. I could go on – my point is that you will never be the best person on the pitch at everything. No one is. You just have to hope that your overall package is sufficient so that no one questions just why it is that you are in charge each week.

  I’ve been on the field for almost every single minute of cricket we’ve played as a team, with a couple of exceptions. The first was at the Valley of Rocks, which is as spectacular as one might guess from its name. On the north coast of Devon, a pitch has been carved out of the wilderness a mile or so outside Lynton & Lynmouth. The pavilion is built from the same rocks that adorn the peaks around the ground and is the only man-made structure to be seen. A sea breeze blows up the valley, scattering the low-hanging clouds, while goats and sheep graze amongst the bracken above. When the sun shines, you could be forgiven for thinking you were in Avalon. Unsurprisingly, the fixture list is filled with touring teams who will travel for hours for this near-mystical experience. It is easy to drift off into a reverie when fielding, so atmospheric is it. It would be no surprise to learn that a hermit lived nearby. Or that King Arthur lay in a cave above you, waiting for the call to rouse him from his sleep.