Cricket - More Observations and Reminiscences

I recently completed an essay on Village Cricket, which was intended as a serious study of the game and how it should be played. Someone then said that in all my years as a cricket lover, I must have come across situations, both serious and comic, which might be worth recalling. Well, I don't know about that, but here goes. First of all I should state that, in spite of rumours to the contrary, I never actually met W.G. Grace!

 Nowadays village cricket is an enjoyable, civilised pursuit, played generally in a friendly atmosphere of bonhomie, in conditions as good as modern technology can make them. But it was not always so! And remember I am talking here of well before the war, when no-one had ever heard of a bloke called Adolf Hitler. You may have heard the story of a match between two neighbouring villages. To call them keen rivals would be to understate the position - sworn enemies would be nearer the mark! The visiting captain won the toss and chose to bat on a pitch that - to be charitable - might be described as somewhat less than perfect. The first ball hit an imperfection about two feet outside the leg stump, and shot along the ground, just missing the off stump and causing the captain to ejaculate, "Well, I declare!" Upon which the fielding captain marched his men off the field, saying, "As you have declared, we want just one run to win!" So the teams change places, and the captain gives the ball to his bowler who runs up to the wicket, but instead of delivering the ball, veers off towards the boundary and continues to run around the boundary line. After he had completed a couple of laps, the batting captain asked, not unreasonably, what the hell was going on. The fielding captain said, "There is nothing in the rules to limit a bowler's run-up, and this bowler takes a longer run up than most, and he is only just beginning to get into his stride!" This is, of course, fiction, and exaggerates the will to win in the early days of village cricket. But only slightly!

 Let us start with the pitches. While the square was kept reasonably short with a hand mower, the outfield was something else again. I don't think gang mowers had been invented, and the only way for a batsman to propel the ball for any distance was in the air. In my view, the sweetest of all the cricket shots is the cover drive - all along the ground, and the finest exponent of the shot I ever saw - Wally Hammond ­would have made far fewer runs on those outfields. On the ground where I first played, I can recall one fielder telling another that he had found a skylark's nest! To show how long the grass was, "Lost Ball" was quite a common shout. To present-day village cricketers it is incomprehensible that a ball can be lost on the field of play, causing a fielder to call, "Lost Ball!" to limit the score to six runs from that ball. Knowing the state of grounds today made me wonder if such an archaic rule had been repealed as irrelevant, and so I looked it up. But it is still there - Law 20 - although I can't think of any ground today where it is ever likely to apply.

 In the days I am talking about, the batsmen had to guard against a double bluff - that the fielders were only pretending to look for the ball to lure them into an injudicious run, because practically without exception the fielders were all capable of throwing down the stumps nine times out of ten. Many were in the habit of carrying a stone in their pocket when walking across the fields in case they encountered a dozy rabbit which would become tomorrow's dinner. These fielders were known as "rabbit throwers".

 In those days the bowlers came in only two speeds - quick and very quick, and with no sightscreen, a daunting prospect. It was said of one village team that a slow bowler was once put on and hit for over 20 runs in an over. This lingered in the memory so long that it was 30 years before the team used another slow bowler! No, strength was definitely the "In" thing - subtlety was a non-starter.

 The umpiring had to be seen to be believed, but balanced itself out because the bad decisions suffered by one team through lack of knowledge of the Laws and downright partisanship would be cancelled by the other umpire when the roles were reversed. But in spite of all the tales, I never heard of an authenticated case of an umpire being thrown into a duck-pond, but perhaps that was because he was slightly more fleet of foot than his pursuers!

But if the conduct between opponents leaves something to be desired, I can remember an incident within a team which takes some beating. Most of the team travelled to an away match in an open lorry which had seen better days, but provided it had a following wind, would probably reach" its destination, although its lights didn't work too well. The other member of the team was the village policeman who travelled in his own Austin 7. After the match, the policeman dashed home, changed from his cricket gear into his uniform, and went back to meet the driver of the lorry and booked him for having no lights! As he was not only the village policeman, but also the village adulterer, his popularity rating was not very high to start with. After this episode it sunk to an all-time low!

 I will take a diversion here to talk for a moment about watching the first class game, to illustrate cricket's unique un-predictability, and how you can never forecast whether you will be pleasantly surprised or disappointed. A few examples. Just after the war I was in the Army and stationed at Colchester. When there was a County match on at the Castle Park, I was in the habit of jumping on an army bike and dashing down to see the last couple of hours of play. One evening I arrived just as Ray Smith, one of the Essex Smiths, was walking to the wicket, and when stumps were drawn he had completed a magnificent hundred. Another time I took my son to Lords to broaden his cricket education. It was a Middlesex-Surrey game, in which the country's three in-form batsmen, Denis Compton, Bill Edrich and Peter May were all playing. You would have got good odds on them all batting on the same day, and astronomical odds on them all getting a duck. Yet that is what happened. I went to the Oval for my favourite player's benefit against Yorkshire. He was Ken Barrington - not only a fine batsman, but unequalled as a sportsman, and said to have been the only batsman to have "walked" on an L.B.W. appeal without waiting for the umpire. He started well, and everyone in the ground was hoping for a century, when he played a ball to short leg which was dived upon by Fred Trueman. Nobody, including the umpires, could see what had happened, but Barrington asked his England team-mate, "Did you catch it, Fred 7" When he replied that he had, Ken walked off immediately. A photograph in the next day's paper showed the ball on the ground. I've been very cool on the subject of Fred Trueman from that day on.

 I went to Lords to see Lindsay Hassett's Australians, and play began after lunch with the sun shining. A few overs later the most violent and frightening thunderstorm I have ever experienced struck St. John's Wood and in no time at all Lords was under water, with seagulls settled on it. No, when you go to watch cricket you never know what to expect. Back to the local game. Of course, rain brings all types of cricket to a halt, but have: you ever thought about how the other reasons for a hold up vary between village cricket and the first class game 7 I have never heard of a test match being held up because the ball has been hit on to a householders property and he refuses to allow anyone in to retrieve it. Nor does a near-by gardener burn his wet garden rubbish at the week-end and cover the ground with a pall of foul smoke which makes play impossible. On the other hand, test matches are often interrupted by a streaker, which is something I have never heard of in village cricket. This is most unfair! Practically every red-blooded village cricketer of my acquaintance would willingly sacrifice five minutes playing time to watch a shapely streaker run from one side of the ground to the other.

 But the most frequent cause of hold ups in village cricket is movement behind the bowler's arm. There is only one foolproof way to stop this, but positioning a sniper with a high-velocity rifle in a strategic spot is thought to be a little too ruthless. Children on bicycles can perhaps be excused because of their tender years, but what about the idiot who thinks that someone has thoughtfully provided a big white board for him to lean against while watching the game. He will still not understand when half a dozen fielders shout, "Female genital organ!" at him. That does not sound right! In the interests of good taste I expanded the original one syllable to seven, but it seems to have lost something in the translation. Not that it would make any difference to the idiot by the sightscreen. He would merely look surprised and ask, "Who? Me?" And then he, or another of his ilk, will do exactly the same thing next weekend.

 But, you may ask, surely they don't have this trouble at the test matches? Surely they would have a steward on duty to prevent it? Don't you believe it! It still happens at every test ground in the country, and nowhere more so than the Vauxhall End at the Oval. I have known a game held up by a swarm of bees, with everyone dashing for cover. Another annoying cause of a hold up is the dog who has slipped his lead, and discovers that his master is one of the fielders it and refuses to be caught.

 The longest over I have ever witnessed lasted almost a quarter of an hour! The over-keen fielding captain had his bowler bowling over and round the wicket for alternate balls, and the batsman - a stubborn left-hander - insisted on the sightscreen being moved each time. The sightscreen was heavy, and the wheels had never seen a drop of oil, and it required at least four men before it would move - and then only very reluctantly. The over started in poor light and finished in semi-darkness. What about this for a coincidence? During the war we were waiting to start a match and were bowling the ball to each other. One player had his cigarettes and Swan Vestas in the pocket of his flannels, and the ball hit it and set the box of matches alight, much to his discomfiture. Many years later I saw a player put a box of Swan Vestas in his pocket, and recounted the incident to him. You've guessed what happened! They say lightning never strikes twice in the same place, but Swan Vestas do! The oddest scoreboard I have ever seen was the one in a village match, which read 0-7-0. And I have never met anyone who has seen anything to match it. It seems incredible that seven wickets could fall without a single bye, wide, no-ball or lucky snick. But it only goes to emphasise that the one thing you can expect in cricket is the unexpected!

 Lots of things in cricket can give a player personal satisfaction. Winning a match with a straight six, an unplayable ball, a blinding catch, or a 50-yard direct hit on a single stump must be a great memory for anyone achieving it. But the most satisfying feeling I experienced as a player was when my middle stump was knocked out of the ground just as the umpire shouted, "No Ball". If you have never experienced this feeling of elation, it is worth waiting for. I can only imagine that it is similar to a condemned man standing on the scaffold with the rope round his neck and a messenger dashing up and handing the governor a reprieve!

 ­ I spent many years in the services and played cricket in several parts of the world. In 1936, Mussolini had invaded Abyssinia and as Britain controlled the Suez Canal, he had supply problems, and the possibility existed that he might attempt to invade Egypt from Libya, (then an Italian colony), to link up with Abyssinia through the Sudan. Consequently, I found myself at Mersa Matruh on the Western Desert of Egypt, to stop him doing that. Not on my own, of course - I did have some help! Cricket pitches here were of sand, (not in short supply), watered and rolled with coconut matting on top. We played quite a bit of cricket, except at the time of the full moon. I'm not trying to tell you that we played by moonlight, but our pitch was alongside a salt lake, and although the Mediterranean is less tidal than most seas, it was still enough to put the pitch under water for several days.

 When World War II ended, our unit was at the Ford factory at Cologne, where the Rhine Army's v-a engines were reconditioned. Our parent unit was at Hanover and we knew them from telephone contact, but had never met them personally. One thing that emerged was a common love of cricket, so what more natural than to arrange a challenge match? The Ford Company lent us a coach which did not run on petrol or diesel, but on wood blocks, which was not unusual in wartime. These blocks were pulled on a trailer behind the coach, and the back-up transport was a 15-cwt truck full of beer. We got to Hanover at dawn, and after a bit of sightseeing, etc., started the cricket match after lunch. We batted, and from the fifth ball of the first over, our batsman attempted a cut behind square, but instead of connecting with the ball, he made contact with the wicketkeeper's head! What a mess! Blood on the wicket and all the delays of getting an ambulance on a Sunday. By the time it was all sorted out, further cricket was out of the question. Luckily the wicketkeeper's injury was not as serious as it had first appeared, and we headed back to Cologne - with stops on the autobahn for the coach to take on more wood blocks and the personnel to take on more beer. The funny thing was that no-one considered a 450-mile round trip for 5 balls of cricket a waste of time. Perhaps the beer had something to do with that!

 While I was in Cologne, I was invited to play for a District XI by a lieutenant from H.Q. In this game, the lieutenant, who was the skipper, took 9 catches in the field - a record as far as I can recall. When I next saw his name, he had been de-mobbed, was at Cambridge University, and had made 215 not out against Lancashire in the first match of the following season. He was G.H.G.(Hubert) Doggart, and as well as playing for Sussex, eventually became a big noise at the M.C.C. The last competitive game I ever played was in Singapore, where our unit beat G.H.Q. to win the Garrison Cup. The M.C.C. had recently toured Australia and there had been one of those periodical bouts or bad feeling concerning short-pitched bowling. Our best quickie was the battalion padre, and when he slipped in a couple of short ones, a typical plummy G.H.Q. type voice rang out from the pavilion, "Tell him we're not in Orstraylia now!". The padre didn't catch this, so someone said, "Padre, someone wants to tell you we're not in Australia now". The padre said, "Oh, does he? Well, give him my compliments and tell him, 'Balls'".

 I have never wavered in my opinion that cricket is the finest game in the world. Nothing matches it for high points, low points, and unpredictability's. And it has its humorous points too. When a batsman is doubled up and groaning, and everyone knows that it is because he has omitted a vital item of his equipment, and someone observes, "At Wimbledon the umpire calls out, 'New balls, please'", and everyone except the batsman falls about laughing. At least they did when I said it!

by  Les Powell