In the Circumstances

As regular readers (if any) will know, one of my perennial complaints is that the English season does not have a proper starting point (at least since the translation of the MCC v Champion County fixture to Dubai), but tends to peter in, to the point where it can be difficult to say whether it has started or not.  In recent years, Leicestershire’s first fixture has usually been against Loughborough MCCU, a game that sometimes has first-class status, sometimes not, but that is sometimes preceded by an intra-squad game, or a friendly game against some other side unlucky enough not to be taking their pre-season in a warmer climate.  In a year when it initially seemed unlikely that the season would be starting at all, it would be churlish of me to make the same complaint, and, I concede, inaccurate : the season began on 8^th July in Southampton ; some people’s season will have begun the following Saturday ; my season began on Saturday 18th, in Whitby.

It would not feel like an English season if it did not begin in a state of muddle, bedevilled and bedraggled by rain, and, as I observed of Terence Prittie’s account of the first season after the war, the sure sign that some kind of normality has returned is not that one experiences some huge flood of emotion, but that one forgets to be grateful that anything is happening at all and resumes the everyday grumbling that makes up a large part of any cricket-follower’s usual discourse.  The feeling of gratitude and relief lasted throughout the first morning of the Test, as I listened to Jon Agnew and Phil Tufnell wittering pleasantly while it rained.  A lengthy and indirectly COVID-related telephone call caused me to miss the commentary on the knee-taking, the silence, something (I think) involving Major Tom, and presumably the Jerusalem (a very heavy weight of significance with which to freight such a frail vessel as a game of cricket), but quite soon after the start of play I had returned to my habitual carping about the state of TMS.  I freely admit that is churlish in the extreme, but at the same time, perversely reassuring.

I had originally had some idea about trying to write about the game based on the radio commentary, but after about twenty minutes of closing my eyes and attempting to visualise what was occurring on the pitch I was forced to abandon this futile ambition.  It is true that I came away with some vivid mental images : Jon Agnew flying his light aircraft with his pet dog in the passenger seat ; Isa Guha sprinting to the Post Office to collect some World Cup tickets for her Dad ; Alison Mitchell caught up in some imbroglio involving a pigeon in her bedroom.  These would all have been diverting enough anecdotes if related at a dinner party (which TMS increasingly resembles) ; the trouble being that they came not during an interruption for rain (or a sanitiser break), but in the middle of overs (a not untypical slice of commentary being ‘Bengali cookery uses a lot of fish, as Broad comes in to bowl to Holder)’. 

Now, I am not expecting pretty waitresses and walking sticks, but I would like to have some idea of what the players look like, beyond a brief assessment of their height (Holder, Gabriel and Cornwall, I gathered, are tall ; Dowrich and Blackwood are short ;  beyond that, only that Joseph is ‘wiry’).  This is particularly important, given how few of the West Indians play regularly in English cricket.  The presumption seems to be that the listener will know what they look like from having seen them on the television, but if the listener had a Sky subscription they would probably be a viewer instead.  It cannot help that the radio commentators have (as I understand it) to switch between TV and radio commentary. 

Watching a few of the highlights packages on the TV made the strangeness of the situation more evident than it had been listening to the radio : TMS, if they had chosen to, could (thanks to ‘the hum’) have just about have brought off the illusion that normality had resumed entirely ; the empty stands visible on the TV pointed up the post-apocalyptic aspect of the thing (even to one used to watching cricket at Grace Road).  No doubt, the situation felt even stranger to those actively involved.  Cricket’s elite (players, broadcasters, senior officials) are sometimes accused on living in ‘a bubble’ : to find themselves occluded for weeks in an almost literal bubble, unable to leave, is a scenario that might have appealed to Luis Bunuel.

It goes without saying, of course, that I am grateful that the series took place, and particularly to the West Indies for making it possible.  Not only was the cricket diverting, the participants’ pioneer efforts have made it possible for the lower levels of the game to resume in due course, and, of course, the revenue generated makes it more likely that there will be professional cricket for me to watch if ever the old normal returns.  I am also, in spite of my complaints, grateful for the continued existence of TMS, which at least gives me a chance to complain about something that does not really matter at all, after months of complaining about things that are only too serious.  (The nadir, while I am carping, came when Michael Vaughan seemed not only to have never heard of A.N. ‘Monkey’ Hornby, but to find the very idea of his existence absurd. O my …)

While I would never have foreseen seeing my first live game of the season at Whitby (not a ground or, indeed, a town I have visited before), there are many worse places to do so.  If my first game had been at one of my usual haunts, I imagine that I would have felt more intensely conscious of the peculiarity of the situation : at a strange ground I was less aware of the strangeness of it all. In any case, compared to the febrile atmosphere in the rest of the town, the cricket ground was a haven of normality.  It was not so much that anyone in town was doing anything that they would not normally do at the seaside (drink, eat fish and chips, sunbathe, argue), as that they seemed to be attempting to cram about four months’ worth of each into a weekend.

The ground itself is pleasant, if not outstandingly beautiful, overshadowed on one side by the Towbar Express Stadium (home of Whitby Town FC), although it stands close enough to the sea for those with a nose for it to sense its proximity.  The only obvious signs of the times were some (presumably obsolete) notices that the ground had not yet opened, and a polite request to leave my contact details. I took a while to quite adjust, at first seeing the figures in white as trees walking, but, as I began to grasp the argument of the game (in progress when I arrived), my sight was restored.  Whitby, I gathered from listening to other spectators, were bowling ; Great Ayton 2^nd XI batting, and making reasonable progress when I arrived, with two finger spinners operating in tandem, but the return (presumably) of a brisk opening bowler and a run out provoked a collapse, shored up slightly by a last wicket stand, finishing on 168 (reassuring to be able to bring these comfy old clichés out of the wardrobe after so many months).

Not feeling that I could justify spending all day of a family holiday watching cricket, I left shortly after Whitby had begun their reply.  Some of the home crowd seemed pessimistic about their prospects, and they started badly, losing two cheap wickets, though apparently they later recovered to win with overs to spare.  As I left, Charlie (a keen-looking youngster) and Marshy (a burly older man with a shaved head) were opening the bowling, as I imagine any number of Charlies and Marshies were all over the country, in what, in other circumstances, would have been similarly unremarkable games. It was hardly Cardus’s ‘vision of all the cricket fields in England’ from the Mound Stand on Midsummer morning, but it almost did the trick of making me feel that if normality had not yet returned, it was not impossible that it might one day do so.

On the way to the ground I had over-trustingly relied on directions from Google Maps, which had led me through streets of boarding houses (not aided by what seems to be a Whitby custom of streets changing their names half way along their length).  On the way back I followed my nose, which led me along the clifftop, in late-afternoon marine sunshine and a stiff breeze which felt strong enough to blow any lurking coronaviruses harmlessly off into the aether.  Later that evening, a rainbow added colour to an already luminous sunset : the rainbow is another sign that has been over-freighted with symbolic weight recently, but it felt hopeful, as well as beautiful.

Trying to find if any cricket is being played in Leicestershire has been rather like the heyday of rave culture, when would-be ravers would (I’m told) drive hopefully around the M25, waiting to be tipped-off about that night’s location.  The Saturday after Whitby I eventually tracked down a friendly at Kibworth, against Oakham.  Normality in cricket (which, given the quality in Leicestershire recently, is an odd thing to be hankering after) normally involves rain, and this was a lively, but sporadic, on-off affair, which was terminated after 31 overs with Kibworth on 179-2.  A slightly melancholy note was struck by the sight of Rob Taylor, who has fetched up at Oakham, whom I remember, what seems like only last week, as a lively teenage opening bowler, bowling off about five paces and not being treated with a great deal of respect. Time waits for no man, or virus.

All of this had felt like a preamble, or overture, to the start of the season proper, on the 1^st August (which was rather late for me, or anyone else), with the first games in the truncated quasi-leagues for both Leicestershire and Market Harborough (my home club).   I felt that watching both had the quality of the subtler sort of surrealism, where everything is at first sight normal, but some details are sufficiently skewed for the experience to be subtly disorientating.  I spent most of Harborough’s game with a couple of old cricket-watching companions, catching up with the news since the end of last season (most of it, I am afraid, bad).  So there was little opportunity to forget about the circumstances, even for an afternoon.

In other circumstances, I would have felt heartened, even mildly elated, about the club’s prospects for the season.  To put this into context, Harborough have only won one game in the last two years, and have suffered successive relegations.  Last season, I tended to make alternative plans for the second half of the afternoon, given that, if Harborough batted first, the game was unlikely to last past 3’o’clock.  After a promising start (we seem to have acquired a hostile opening bowler), the pattern of the game began to revert to type when the change bowlers came on.  Uppingham’s Eddie Tucker (who finished on 153) had officials consulting the regulations to see whether regularly propelling the notorious vector of disease into the road and neighbouring gardens constituted a health hazard (beyond the obvious risk of concussion).  Uppingham finished on 277-6 from their 40 overs, without even the prospect of a decent tea to encourage the home side.

Not unusually, Harborough began well (we tend to top load our batting), but, most unusually, having apparently also acquired some useful middle-order batsmen, they continued well, Uppingham visibly anxious as a fairly ignominious defeat became decreasingly inconceivable.  In the end, it was not quite to be, Harborough falling 31 runs short, but this August could prove to be a short, but (in the circumstances) merry season.

Watching Harborough caused me to miss the first day of Leicestershire’s game against Lancashire, which was being live-streamed (with some admirably cricket-orientated commentary).  Were I truly conscientious, I could have reported on the game in the same way that I usually report the live home games, except that, to employ the Woodcock/Gibson distinction, this was ‘the cricket’ without ‘the day at the cricket’ (how, I suppose, most of its audience usually watches cricket anyway).  It reminded me of one of those ‘What is wrong with this picture?’ puzzles that you used to find in children’s magazines, which offered a picture that, at first sight, appeared perfectly realistic, but, on closer inspection, was revealed to contain a number of incongruities and impossibilities.

The first thing wrong with the picture was that Leicestershire and Lancashire were playing at Worcester (instantly recognisable by the cathedral), another that the artist had erased all the spectators.  There seemed to be no cakes on sale in the Ladies’ Pavilion, and Leicestershire seemed to be using one of the cafes as a changing room.  A four-day game was being played in August.  Most incongruous of all, Leicestershire were much the better of the two sides, and completed a thrilling run chase against the odds to take 22 points.

It should be noted that Lancashire were seriously depleted (all but one of their bowlers would normally be in the 2^nd XI), and that 172 of Leicestershire’s first innings total of 409-8 dec. were made by Ben Slater, now of Nottinghamshire (another deliberate mistake).  However, Leicestershire looked to be a well-balanced and competitive side : Hassan Azad continued as he had left off ; Callum Parkinson looked a much better bowler than he sometimes has in real life ; Colin Ackermann made a fine start as four-day Captain, and close observation revealed the detail of his abilities as a batsman.  The unlikely hero of the heroic final hour (when Leicestershire chased down 150 in 17 overs) was Harry Dearden, who had made a stereotypical duck in the first innings, but at the crucial moment in the second burst out of his tortoise-shell to hit 33 from 18 balls, including three sixes (to add to the two he had hit in his previous 37 games).  At this rate we will be losing him to the IPL.

The game supported the theory that, if everyone is fit and in form, Leicestershire are only a couple of high quality players away from being a successful side : it is a lot easier to keep everyone fit and in form over a month than a full season, so we may find ourselves achieving some success in an anomalous competition which, in a sense, does not matter very much, while thinking wistfully of what might have been.  I would love to say, incidentally, that the last hour was so enthralling that I forgot about the current difficulties entirely, but I am afraid that I was called away to deal with a ‘phone call involving an indirectly Covid-related crisis, so missed it completely.  

So, not such a bad start, in the circumstances.

.   

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Glad to be Alive

And then I woke up, and it was all a dream …

Leicestershire (390-3 dec. & 245-0) drew with Loughborough MCCU (152), Grace Road, 2-4^th April 2020

I seem to find it harder each year to find something new to say at the start of the season, but then, perhaps, novelty is beside the point.  There, is, of course, the promise of a new start, a clean slate, a blank piece of paper on which any story could be written, but the essence of it lies in the rediscovery of the familiar, of finding that those familiar scenes are still there.  Winter has passed, Spring has returned, as it sometimes felt during the Winter that it might not, and, with it, the cricket.

The first game at Grace Road seldom lives up to our wintry day-dreams of the platonic spring day, if only because it is always against Loughborough University, and the ground is only half-awake.  We enter not through the usual, welcoming, gates, but through a gap in the wall at the end of a bottle-strewn alley, but the first sight of the ground, even if it is yet to cast off its winter weeds, its parasols unfurled, still feels like a release : in our minds’ eyes, we see it, not under grey skies and sparsely populated, but bathed in mid-summer light and humming with life.  It is not the first day itself, but the sure and certain knowledge of the six months still to come that makes us feel newly glad to be alive.

Given the age of many of our members, and most of those who turned up for the first day, ‘glad to be alive’ is not an idle figure of speech : it is always a relief to find that familiar faces have survived the Winter.  Although the general bonhomie may not survive far into the season, its beginning is celebrated with handshakes, backslapping and even the occasional hug, as friends, reunited, congregate in convivial groups, or share their winter-news over a drink in the bar.  I am afraid that we sometimes take these pleasures and liberties, however small in themselves, too much for granted, and the start of the season makes us feel it.

Leicestershire, as is the convention in these games, batted, and the first ball of the season was faced by Paul Horton, who has now been relieved, or possibly relieved himself, of the captaincy.  Unfortunately, perhaps due to the dim light, or the remnants of dew in the pitch, he played down the wrong line to a full, straight, delivery and was bowled.  This was less unpropitious than it might seem, given that the bowler was Alex Evans, who is contracted to Leicestershire and will be available to strengthen the bowling later in the season.

After taking a few overs to acclimatise (Evans’ first three overs were all maidens), the incoming Colin Ackermann then played the hare to opener Hassan Azad’s tortoise, scoring freely on the off-side, in particular, to reach his fifty shortly before lunch, by, rather gratuitously, lofting Leicestershire academician Don Butchart, who had been brought on for the last over, over long on and into the, mercifully underpopulated, car park.  Azad, who had not departed from his trusted techniques of patient accumulation, had then made 17.

During the lunch hour, I dropped into the office (buzzing with anticipation) to renew my membership (excellent value at £99, given the number of days of cricket, particularly in the coming two months, it will entitle me to see), then dropped into the Meet, busy despite its limited menu, and picked up my ‘Playfair’ from the Friends of Grace Road shop, providing its usual reassurance, so little does it change, that, whatever else may be wrong in the world, the cricket season will inevitably return in the Spring.

Shortly after lunch, in a stroke that might have been an act of deliberate self-sacrifice, Ackermann chipped a half volley from Evans straight to cover point.  The manner in which the next man in, Mark Cosgrove, emerged from the pavilion suggested that he felt in the form of his life, but also that he was feeling the cold.  The first two deliveries he ostentatiously left alone, the third tested his powers of abstinence too far, and he was dropped at second slip (the edge was audible to all in the ground, except, if his body language were to be believed, the batsman himself).

After reaching twenty more by luck than judgement, Cosgrove’s co-ordination seemed to return, if not his self-control, and three good balls were stroked, with his usual incongruous delicacy, through the covers for four.  The next ball must have hit some foreign object on the pitch, or perhaps he was unsighted by light reflected off a car windscreen, because it removed his off stump.  He appeared as incredulous at this turn of events as ever, though, given the cold, less reluctant to leave the field.  Cosgrove is no longer quite the batsman he was, but he is still a joy to watch, and we are lucky to have the prospect of at least one last full season in which to watch him.

Harry Dearden came to the crease shortly before 2.15, with the total on 129-3, and Hassan Azad three short of his half-century.  Dearden, who does not have the credit at the bank that Ackermann and Cosgrove enjoy, is in no position to spurn a chance to make a substantial score, and, reverting to his earliest manner, scored at a rate that made his partner look like a chancer : by tea, the pair had crept surreptitiously to 210-3.  With the evening chill creeping in, I crept off too at 5.00, by which time the score was approaching 300, in the stealthy manner of a game of grandmother’s footsteps.  Unfortunately, my departure coincided with the rush hour, and I spent the journey home pressed against a window by a large man with little conception of personal space and a nasty cough.

I arrived a little late for the second day, having stopped off at my favourite Café Roma (cash only!) for a macchiato and a brace of cannoli.  The warmer weather had brought some of the more elderly element of Leicester’s café society out, and we were packed together cosily, like anchovies in a tin.  As I was not expecting any dramatic developments at Grace Road, I passed some time strolling through the crowded lanes, browsing aimlessly.  How pleasant it can be to wander at will through a crowded city, when the weather is fine and the mood relaxed!

When I finally arrived at the ground, Azad and Dearden were, as I had suspected, still at the crease.  The scoring rate had increased slightly, but only in the manner of an elderly and overworked donkey goaded into a jog-trot.  By lunch, the score had advanced to 390 : Azad had made his century at some point in the morning, and  Dearden was closing in on his (assuming the game was first class, his maiden century).  The students must have been wondering whether their turn to bat would ever come, like a younger brother in the back garden.

There had, incidentally, been an amusing incident just before lunch.  You may remember that, in the corresponding fixture a few years ago, when Hassan Azad was still playing for Loughborough, Charlie Shreck, frustrated by his obdurate batting and Loughborough’s failure to declare, had directed a few unfriendly remarks at him (‘The Times’ alleged that he had threatened to kill him).  Umpire O’Shaughnessy reported the incident, Shreck was suspended and Leicestershire were subjected to a points deduction.  Alex Evans (who obviously knows Azad) pantomimed a repetition of the incident : the batsman seemed highly amused, Umpire O’Shaughnessy, perhaps, less so.

To the surprise of most, it emerged that Leicestershire had declared at lunch.  Although I can see why they would have wanted the bowlers to have a run out, it did seem hard on Dearden, who was left on 94*.  It is true that he had every opportunity to make his century over the previous six hours, but we will have to hope that the disappointment will not have the same effect on his psyche as it did on Graeme Hick’s, in similar circumstances.  It was noticeable that he spent his time in the field with hands in pockets, and dropped a couple of catches (though not, perhaps, ones he would normally have caught).

The Leicestershire bowlers did not have the time to put in quite as many overs as they had hoped, although Wright, Griffiths and Taylor (apparently now fit) all claimed three wickets, and Mike (a little loose) one.  Only Joe Kendall, of the batsmen, made more than a start, falling two short of his fifty while trying to reverse sweep a full delivery from Taylor off his stumps.  The innings ended shortly after 5.30, with the score on 152, leaving Azad and Horton to play out the remaining overs (Horton surviving a couple of persuasive shouts). 

If it had not been for the balmy weather, and the general feeling that we were glad just to be there, Leicestershire’s tactics on the Saturday morning might have attracted adverse comment.  Azad was only marginally more fluent than he had been in the first innings, and Horton defended his wicket as if it were his life, against some tired bowling of moderate quality.  In the second hour, Evans, knowing the chink in Azad’s armour, posted two short legs and a leg slip, and bowled short from around the wicket.  Clearly discomfited, Azad fended one delivery just over one of the short legs, another just wide, and then, attempting a pull, deflected the ball hard on to his helmet.  Although he was able to leave the field unaided, he appeared disorientated.

After lunch, Tom Taylor, who had replaced Azad, livened proceedings with some firmly driven boundaries until, bending to tie a loose shoelace, he appeared to put his back out, and had to be helped from the field.  Surprisingly, it was Harry Dearden who replaced him.  As the afternoon wore on, it was clear that he was not inclined to miss another chance of a maiden hundred, and, reverting to his one-day style, hit the bowling to all (or most) parts of the ground.  Justifiably suspicious that Ackermann might be inclined to shake hands on a draw at 5.00, he accelerated further as that hour approached, passing his hundred at 4.50, to wild, and only half-ironical, applause from the few spectators who remained.  The end of play was postponed to 5.10 to allow Horton to catch up and make his century as well.  

There were some worrying pieces of news in the aftermath of the game.  Taylor has apparently suffered a recurrence of the back problem that kept him out for most of last season, and Hassan Azad will have to miss at least the first two Championship games under the concussion protocol.  Alex Evans had been reported to the ECB by Steve O’Shaughnessy, and it is possible that any suspension will mean that he will be unavailable for Leicestershire when term is finished (as it only affects first-class fixtures).  The report in ‘The Times’, which alleged that Evans had kneed Azad in the groin, and threatened to tear him limb from limb and dump the pieces in the Soar, cannot have helped matters.

One or two of the members were also a little perturbed by newspaper reports of a new flu-like virus that had emerged in China in the last weeks of March, apparently caused by someone in Wuhan Province thinking that it would be a good idea to eat a bat.  But I’m sure that it will take more than that to spoil the prospect of a new cricket season.

And then I woke up …

Darkness Visible

Leicestershire (120 & 168) v Derbyshire (139 & 214), Grace Road, County Championship, 27-30 May 2019

Derbyshire won by 65 runs

If a marketing department, charged with devising a new cricket-flavoured product that would appeal to a wider audience, were asked to describe the antithesis of what they were after, this match would have had most of the essential elements. A four day game that would have been over in three, had it not been stretched by frequent breaks for rain, played mostly under lights because of low-lying cloud ; one fifty, and only three other innings of over forty (all compiled methodically by the same two batsmen) ; only one total of over 200 ; no sixes – a scorecard from a past era.  So, I should have enjoyed it.

I would have enjoyed it more had Leicestershire ever seemed likely to approach close enough to their fourth innings target of 234 to provide some element of dramatic tension (or ‘jeopardy’, as the moderns have it) ; instead, they fell short by 65 runs, leaving me to thumb through the thesaurus in search of synonyms for ‘weary sense of inevitability’, and look for something else to do, with what, frustratingly, was a perfect afternoon for cricket, after three days of darkness and showers.

Leicestershire spirits were at their highest, perhaps, at the end of Derbyshire’s first innings ; having chosen to bat, the visitors were bowled out for 139, which seemed, at the time, to be a testament to the (undeniable) strength of our seam bowling. By the end of the day, with Leicestershire on 55-4, and Ackermann already dismissed, it seemed more a tribute to the inability of batsmen on both sides to cope with some good, but not truly outstanding, fast-medium seam bowling in what were helpful, but not unusual, conditions for England in May. It would be a low-scoring game.

When play resumed the next day, there was some hope that Leicestershire might achieve a first innings lead, but only if Hassan Azad and Harry Dearden could stay in. The ability to stay in has, until recently, been Dearden’s most obvious talent, but on this occasion it deserted him with the score on 82 (perhaps he should now be classed as a ‘one-day specialist’). With Tom Taylor missing through injury, and Dieter Klein (a hit or miss batsman) unusually high in the order at eight, this exposed a last five who managed thirteen runs between them. Hassan Azad, in his fourth Championship match, was forced to play the elder statesman, and must have been tactfully exasperated to be left stranded on 46 not out, having as good as carried his bat. The total was 120.

The bowlers whom Leicestershire had found so hard to play were Antonio ‘Tony’ Palladino (5-29) and Logan van Beek (3-20). Palladino is nearly thirty-six and an archetype of the kind of English seam bowler who is expected to take wickets in the English early season ; although I appreciate that it is easier said than done, you would have thought that anyone with aspirations to play County cricket would have evolved some strategy to play bowlers of his type. Hassan Azad’s seems to have been to listen to all the favourite truisms of junior coaches of the old school – ‘keep your head still’, ‘watch the ball on to the bat’, ‘straight bat’, ‘wait for the bad ball’ … but if I carry on too far down that route I shall find myself saying ‘it’s not rocket science’ (and smoking a pipe).

Another heavy shower (in real time this narrative would have been punctuated by them) after tea prompted me to leave for home : the prospect of play resuming, if it ever did, seemed likely to promise only a few hours in near-drizzle, watching Derbyshire, having been let off the hook, wriggle off to swim to a comfortable lead (they reached 106-2). In fact, as usually happens in these circumstances, Leicestershire offered enough hope to make returning the next day seem worthwhile by taking six quick wickets in a final session that extended well into the early evening (ah, the roller-coaster of emotions!). I would not, though, in all honesty, say that I regretted my decision.

As sure as night follows day, a successful evening session was followed, the next morning, by the Derbyshire tail-enders being allowed to stretch the target for victory from 179 to 234 (Palladino and van Been – those maverick NYC crime-fighters – again being the culprits).

The most memorable aspect of Leicestershire’s reply were two – in the circumstances – culpably unnecessary strokes from Horton and Cosgrove that must have had Hassan Azad, who was again forced to watch helplessly from the other end, averting his eyes to avoid embarrassing his seniors.  In fairness, Horton’s shot seemed marginally more explicable in the replay than it had from the mid-wicket boundary ; from there he had looked to have been bowled trying to smash a straight delivery over long off, missed and been bowled (in fact, it had pitched outside off and he had edged it on to his stumps).

Cosgrove’s looked poor from any angle. He had taken the lead in putting on 58 with Azad, negotiating the seam in a composed and responsible fashion, when Derbyshire invited Wayne Madsen to bowl a few overs of his net-quality off-breaks (four overs of which comprised the only spin of the game). Setting a trap, so ill-disguised that it should not have snared a partially sighted heffalump, Madsen allowed Cosgrove to loft one drive into the sight screen, in the sure and certain hope that he would try to repeat the stroke two balls later and be caught at long on. When precisely this occurred, even Cosgrove did not have the effrontery to perform his usual dumbshow of disbelief, but traipsed off shame-faced, while his young partner took a keen interest in the buckling of his pads. Cosgrove ought to be – and generally is – a better batsman than that.

Even so, and even when Ackermann was bowled by a genuinely fine swinging delivery from the mellifluous Luis Reece, a disinterested observer would still have backed Leicestershire, on 110-4 at the close of play, to overhaul the target of 234 on the final day. Not being disinterested, I would have settled for a couple of sessions in the sun (and, at last, there was sun) watching my side make a valiant attempt at the total, even if they were to fall slightly short. But, in place of hope, there was that ‘weary sense of inevitability’ I mentioned earlier (or perhaps ‘fatigued feeling of inescapability’, by way of variation).

Hassan Azad and Harry Dearden, who again bore the burden of reviving the innings on their youthful shoulders, offered a brief respite from the sense of hopelessness by still occupying the crease at 11.30, but both fell to Reece shortly afterwards (the lifting of the cloud cover did not seem to have inhibited his ability to swing the ball). None of the later batsmen had anything to offer, and the game ground to a halt at 12.30, leaving me time to catch the second half of the 2nd XI game at Kibworth on the way home, so at least I had my afternoon in the sun. Many of the spectators had cut their losses by going straight there.

This game was the first of six Championship games in seven weeks, three of them at home and one at Northampton, before we are thrown out of the T20 window. They find us in the odd position of having two sets of good seam bowlers (Gavin Griffiths, bowling well in the Toose, must be champing on the bit), but very little batting, which is like having two nice shirts, but no trousers.

As I write, we are battling (not unvaliantly, in fairness) to avoid an innings defeat against Lancashire : I see we have abandoned the experiment of opening with Ateeq Javid (I hope he can find some other role), and adopted my pre-season suggestion of substituting Swindells for Hill in four-day cricket. There have been hints of revival from Horton and Cosgrove, and we must hope for a long, hot Indian Summer from both, and the returning Dexter, otherwise, barring some shrewd activity in the loan market, I may find the prospect of not returning to Grace Road until late September (or at all) more of a relief than I would wish.

See you on the other side (probably).

 

 

Shades of the Prison House

Leicestershire CCC (312-8) lost to Derbyshire CCC (266-3) by DLS

Leicestershire CCC (261-9) lost to Northamptonshire CCC (290-6) by 29 runs

Leicestershire CCC (340) beat Warwickshire CCC (304) by 36 runs

All at Grace Road in the RL50, 24th April, 4th May & 6th May 2019

I was originally expecting to miss most of this competition through enforced attendance at Leicester Crown Court (I shall tell you about my secret life as a criminal mastermind another time)*, so that I managed to catch the majority of the home games lent a pleasing feeling of stolen pleasures to what might otherwise have been a forgettable and soon-forgotten series of games. Being among people who would not wish to be anywhere other than where they are is a mood-enhancing aspect of days at the cricket, but having something to contrast them with accentuates it : work used to do the job nicely, a few days in court worked well too.

I felt that there should have seemed something momentous about what were, it appears, likely to be the last series of one-day games to be contested by full county sides : the shades of Ted Dexter, David Hughes, Brian Langford and other luminaries should have hovered mournfully over the ground, softly lamenting golden days gone by – but not so.

The format of the one-day competition has been mucked about with so frequently over the last twenty or so years that there is now no sense of continuity about it. Supporters of the winning team in the County Championship are at least dimly aware that they are part of a line that stretches back to 1890 (or 1873, if you prefer) :  if Somerset were to win it this year, their supporters would know that it would be for the first time. It is hard to say whether the RL50 is the inheritor of the old Gillette Cup, or the John Player League (or even the superfluous Benson and Hedges Cup, the one it most resembles in terms of format, and – this year – its iceland slot in April). Any fule kno that Yorkshire has won the most Championships : I doubt whether the most persistent badger could tell you who has won the most one-day trophies**.

The current format also meant that none of the competitors in Leicestershire’s last two home games had any chance of qualifying for the next round : not only was there a lack of dramatic tension, but Warwickshire, at least, jumped the gun on fielding a ‘development’ team by omitting most of their senior players.

I am not certain, in any case, how many of those who turned up for the ‘Family Fun Day’ on the Saturday, or even the Bank Holiday Monday game, would have been aware of the ECB’s plans for next season, or that they were witnessing a mildly historic occasion. They were trying bravely, in the face of mild hostility from the weather (the most consistent performer in this year’s competition was N.E. Wind), to have a good day out for a pound, and I imagine they’ll be back next year too, ‘development competition’ or not, as long as one side is billed as ‘Leicestershire’, there are enough juvenile distractions, and Towcester cheesecake still for tea. We all dream of the platonic day at the cricket (in whatever form), and we are not that easily discouraged.

Leicestershire saved their really abject defeats for the away games, so a purely home supporter’s impression of their performance would not have been be too unfavourable : two wins, two defeats (and neither by shameful margins). The Derbyshire game was one that I was expecting to miss in its entirety, but managed to catch the Leicestershire innings : given the confidence with which the forecasters had predicted rain, I was not expecting there to be a Derbyshire innings, and I’m not sure they did either. When I had to leave, they seemed to be taking care to keep slightly ahead of the DLS target (helpfully displayed on the scoreboard) : in the event, I believe, the rain did arrive, but cleared unexpectedly, and Derbyshire were left to scramble for their win off the last ball, as if they had arrived early for a train, but had lingered too long in the café. They had lost only three wickets, and only one to a Leicestershire bowler.

In the innings I did see, Leicestershire had made 312-8, 119 of them by Colin Ackermann, who currently looks to belong in a different class to his colleagues (perhaps the one that will be drafted into ‘The Hundred’). Harry Dearden will have been disappointed to make only 36 (not a sentence I could have imagined writing a year ago), and Aaron Lilley hit two successive sixes, in an innings of 23 that would have been better suited to a T20, before knocking down his own wicket. Otherwise, Leicestershire’s batsmen mostly brought their own demise against a motley attack, which began with Wayne Madsen’s sluggish part-time off-spin, joined by two teenage seamers and some more batting than bowling all-rounders, whom Captain Godelman shuffled almost by the over, perhaps to create the impression that he had more bowlers than there really were.

The Northamptonshire game (which had been chosen for the Family Fun Day) saw the reappearance of Mohammad Abbas, whose return has been awaited with the fervour that messianic sects reserve for the return of their saviour. He bowled well enough, if a little in need of a squirt of WK40. It also saw the disappearance of Paul Horton, replaced as Captain by Colin Ackermann : I have not dwelled on Horton’s form, but, although he may still have a few fifties left in him, I would not be surprised if the replacement became permanent in other forms of the game in due course.

Northants, who batted first, fielded a potentially explosive top three in Vasconcelos, Levi and Cobb (no longer in the Mr. Creosote sense, in Levi’s case, as he seems to have slimmed down a little). Dieter Klein, whose effectiveness can decline the longer he bowls, bowled Vasconcelos in his first over, and Levi, rumbling like Vesuvius, drove Abbas straight to mid-off. Josh Cobb, in the ‘it’s-the-way-I-play’ style we remember well from his days at Grace Road, tried to silence Stench’s airhorn with a massive hack at Klein, when on one : unfortunately, the only sunlight of the day happened to be in Harry Dearden’s eyes, and he was dropped, as he was in similar fashion by Mike when he had made two.

Having been dropped twice, Cobb continued to menace low-flying birds, with some success, until a firmly hit drive was plucked from the air by Harry Munsey, the young Scotsman who had been drafted in to replace Paul Horton (his most significant achievement in the two games he was to play). Captain Wakely, who had steadied his ship after the early turbulence, was LBW to Callum Parkinson, who was flighting the ball nicely, and must have been relieved to bowl so economically, after some of the pastings he took last year.

During the most significant partnership of the day, of 156 between Keogh and Tom Curran, more of the crowd were inside than out, coinciding, as it did, with a hail storm, and the height of the ‘fun’ (including a display of exotic animals in the Bennett End bar, to rival the usual one in the Fox Bar). It also coincided with lunch time, and I am not ashamed to say that I spent most of it in The Meet enjoying another Lewis Hill Burger. My view of the action was largely obscured, but whatever Keogh and Curran were doing on the field was obviously effective.

By the time Leicestershire began their reply, the hail had cleared, the temperature was merely uncomfortably chilly, and the families, beginning to tire of the ‘fun’, were drifting home for tea : by the fifth over, with only 15 runs on the board and both openers gone, anyone desperate for a home win must have been tempted to follow them. There are sides, packed with middle-order ‘gun bats’, who would have been capable of simultaneously consolidating and accelerating from such a poor start, but ours are low-calibre, and, in spite of some worthy contributions from Ackermann, Taylor and Mike, the total traipsed along behind the required run-rate, at a respectful distance, to a 29 run defeat.

The final game, against Warwickshire felt more like a foretaste of things to come than a fitting end to the one-day era. Warwickshire were lacking Bell, Ambrose, Hain, Brookes, Sidebottom, Norwell, Stone and Woakes (some through injury) : Leicestershire, mindful that another defeat would be a blow to morale, fielded their first choice team. The crowd was meagre for a Bank Holiday : some, no doubt, deterred by the deadness of the rubber and the absence of stars, but most, I’d guess, by the greyness of the skies and the lack of sun.

The bulk of Leicestershire’s 340 runs came from the three batsmen who have most impressed this year. The word ‘imperious’ does not naturally attached itself to Harry Dearden, but there was something of that quality about his handling of the seamers, whom he punched blithely through the covers on his way to 69. He is, understandably, more wary of spin, and was characteristically unlucky to receive the ball of the tournament from Jeetan Patel, one which Dearden quite reasonably expected to hit leg stump (if that) but straightened to removed his off peg instead.

Ackermann’s 74 came as no surprise, and it took Patel himself to remove him. I had no idea that Tom Taylor was such an accomplished batsman (I’ll refrain from saying the same about Dearden), and it was only a piece of low comedy that prevented him making a maiden century. A straight drive to take him from 98 to 100 was deflected by the bowler on to non-striker Parkinson’s stumps, bringing last man Mohammad Abbas to the crease in the last over. Abbas may be one of the world’s ten best bowlers, but he is also one of the ten worst batsman, and was bowled before he could return the strike to Taylor.

Warwickshire opened with Sibley and Pollock, like a greengrocer putting his best fruit at the top of the pile to conceal the lower quality produce beneath (not that the batsmen to follow were rotten, just mostly unripe). Unusually, it was not clear until about the twentieth over who was going to win. The openers began fluently, but Sibley was cut off in full flow by a toe-crusher from Klein, and Pollock, the man most likely to accelerate the scoring above the required rate, was bowled by a ball from Parkinson that Jeetan Patel might, in other circumstances, have appreciated .

Rob Yates, however, an auspicious 19-year-old debutant, seemed worryingly at ease with the bowling, and was only removed by fellow youth Ben Mike inadvertently obstructing him as he turned for a second run, when on 66. After that, the innings began to run down like a clockwork rabbit powered by cheap batteries, and with it the match, and the competition.

Given that Leicestershire had narrowly shaded Northants for the wooden spoon, that ending felt surprisingly hopeful. Morale will not have been broken, as we turn gratefully to an extended period of Championship cricket : apart from Ackermann, Dearden and Taylor, Klein finished as the leading wicket-taker, Lewis Hill made a century, Ben Mike had a few good moments and Parkinson bowled well enough to have had a better return. Mark Cosgrove’s form is the major concern : that opening salvo against Worcestershire now looks less like a man in the form of his life than one trying to bluff his way out of a slump.

Looking forward to next year, I am not sure that the prospects for one-day cricket are too bleak, from a purely selfish point of view (I understand why supporters of the larger counties would not agree) . Although, in the long term, I think the advent of ‘The Hundred’ can only damage the smaller counties (indeed, that may be one of its primary purposes), in the short term, a competition stripped of its stars will, at least, improve Leicestershire’s chances of winning. It will also be nice for T20 deniers to have some cricket to watch at the height of Summer, when the prospects of a wind-free day of ‘Family Fun’ will also be increased.

Anyway, I am sure it will be a lot more enjoyable than being in prison.

* Actually, jury service.

** For the record, it’s Lancashire, with 16.

Apocalypse Postponed

Leicestershire CCC (302 & 233) v Worcestershire CCC (553-6 dec.), County Championship, Grace Road, 11-14 April 2019 Worcestershire won by an innings & 18 runs

Leicestershire CCC (377-4) v Worcestershire CCC (339 all out), RL50, Grace Road, 21st April, 2019 Leicestershire won by 38 runs

Strolling around Grace Road before the Championship game began, I happened to observe a tabby cat having a rather elaborate crap in the Milligan Road flowerbeds (I bet you don’t get that quality of pre-match entertainment at the IPL). It is a pity that Leicestershire’s management team did not have an augur on hand to interpret this omen before choosing to bat (I had been expecting to see Worcestershire bowl, but a game of after-you-Cecil-no-after-you-Claude had led to a toss, which Leicestershire had won). Apparently coach Nixon and captain Horton had wanted to bat, bowling coach Mason to bowl : I accept that you would not generally want to pick an argument with Matt Mason, but, in retrospect, it was a pity Nixon and Horton did not press their case harder.

For the first few overs, the point had seemed moot. Fresh from his success against Sussex, Tom Taylor seemed to finding a little movement out of the air, and openers Mitchell and Fell were appropriately respectful. The first changes in the bowling brought apparent vindication for Mason : Fell seemed to be beaten for pace by Davis and Ben Mike had his replacement, D’Oliveira, caught in the slips. Mike is still at the new puppy stage where every new experience is a joy and he expects everything he attempts to succeed. This belief must have been sorely tested throughout a long morning and afternoon of bowling at Daryl Mitchell and Hamish Rutherford, who put on 166 between them.

In my preview of the season, without the aid of augurs, I feared that, in the absence of Mohammad Abbas, a batsman who could play one of our seamers could play all of them, and that man was Daryl Mitchell. A pack of English seamers pursuing Mitchell across the wastes of Grace Road has the quality of a pack of wild dogs pursuing a wildebeest for hours across the Serengeti, with the difference that the unfortunate ruminant will eventually tire, whereas, in Mitchell’s case, it tends to be the bowlers. His centuries (this was the 36th of his career) resemble a volley from a firing squad, in that, although none of the individual shots may stick in the mind, the over all effect is devastating. His innings ended with the third ball after tea, when he absent-mindedly (perhaps still savouring the after-taste of one of Mr. Stew’s macaroons) flicked an off-break from Ackermann to slip.

By now, the newly-laid pitch, enigmatic at the start, had revealed its true character as a bit of a pudding, and the Worcestershire batsman queued up, as tray-bearers at a cafeteria, to eat their fill. Rutherford completed his own century, and Wessels made 43. There was a second moment of triumph for Ben Mike as he had Whitely tripping over his own feet in being trapped lbw on 49 : the exuberance of his celebration gave reassurance that his spirit had not been entirely crushed. As the game entered far into the second day, and a nasty, insinuating north wind crept into every corner of the ground, penetrating the stoutest of anoraks, Worcestershire’s acting Captain Ben Cox deferred declaring until he had made a century of his own : this having been duly completed, the innings closed on 553-6, leaving Leicestershire needing 403 to avoid the follow-on.

With the options being an innings defeat, or dying from a lampreyish surfeit of runs of the kind that was being served up at Sophia Gardens, the postponed Brexitapocalypse that had been scheduled for Friday evening might have provided a welcome distraction. As it was, Leicestershire without batting especially badly in either innings, never looked capable of accumulating enough runs to avoid defeat, which was postponed for just long enough to allow the crowd to enjoy their Sunday lunches.

With the exception of Captain Paul Horton, all of the top five batsmen made one half century and one single figure score. In the first innings, Ateeq Javid showed a good grasp of what was required by taking close to five hours to score 67 : a nervy character, who never looks entirely comfortable at the crease, he has adapted to his new role as an opener by adopting (or exaggerating) a square-on, bottom-handed gouging style of batting, that will be forgiven for as long as it is effective. Apart from his century against Loughborough, this was only his second half century for the Foxes, and, in the second innings, Morris found a way through his determined defence to bowl him for five.

Hassan Azad, on the other hand, makes a virtue of his limited range of strokes (his Twitter handle is ‘Bat pad man’) : in the first innings he had little opportunity to show what is incapable of, falling lbw to Morris off his fifth ball, but in the second he accumulated with a prudence that would have impressed Mr. Dawes Junior to make a second Championship half-century. As Charlie Shreck will attest, his chaste resistance to temptation brings out the devil in fast bowlers, and Tongue subjected him to a succession of unusually threatening bouncers, all of which he prudently swayed away from, until the nastiest of the lot struck him on the glove on its way to the gully.

Leicestershire have two batsmen of genuine quality – Cosgrove and Ackermann – who rarely seem to make substantial scores in the same innings : Cosgrove managed 67 and 0, Ackermann 5 and 69. If the scoring rate had been recorded by a heart monitor, the spike at the start of Cosgrove’s innings would have brought the medics running, as he hit Wayne Parnell for eight boundaries off nine balls. Giving the impression that he feels he is in the form of his life, he attempted something similar off his fifth ball of the second innings, but saw it ping straight to the cover fieldsman.

Cosgrove and Ackermann display contrasting attitudes to dismissal : whereas Ackermann exhibits an indifference to the vicissitudes of fortune that Marcus Aurelius might have considered excessive, Cosgrove moves from denial (remaining immobile at the crease for as long as decently possible) to rage, cursing his way back to the pavilion, while the younger players make themselves scarce on the balcony, like children forewarned that their Dad has pranged his car on the way home.

Of the others, poor Harry Dearden was relegated to no. 7 in both innings by the insertion of a nightwatchman, and seems to be getting the worse of the swap with Ateeq Javid. Lewis Hill now has the honour of a burger in the Meet named after him (containing chorizo)

: I was tempted to say you could at least guarantee that it wouldn’t give you the runs, but that would be too much scatology for one post, and anyway he did make a few.

Leicestershire can sometimes use the term ‘all-rounder’ too loosely, but Tom Taylor batted well enough to justify it. His rival for the title ‘New Ben Raine’ (as eagerly awaited as once was the ‘New Botham‘), Ben Mike’s sense of youthful invincibility led him to aim a great hoick at a ball when he was on one that attained more height than distance, and was caught. He was more circumspect in the second : he had, perhaps, been reminded of his responsibilities, or had his e-numbers monitored.

Worcestershire’s bowling, even in the absence of captain-talisman Joe Leach, was good enough to make me relieved that, thanks to the daft schedule for this competition, we only have to play them once. The last time I saw Josh Tongue he was tall but spindly, and didn’t look terribly threatening : he has now, as all grand-parents like to say, grown into ever such a big boy and bowled with considerable pace. James Taylor was at the ground, perhaps to cast an eye over him (unless he was just there to collect the unsold copies of his book). He would also have witnessed Charlie Morris, a name previously unknown to me, and possibly him, and not a regular in the side, take 7-45, whose ‘whippy’, dog-thrower, pace had been too much for our tail, openers and Mark Cosgrove.

Still, to slip on the gaffer’s sheepskin (or El Cap’s natty crew neck), if we had been offered 25 points after the first two games at the start of the season, we would have taken that. The very welcome news that Mohammad Abbas should be available, as far as we know, for the rest of the season, gives me confidence that the win over Sussex will not be the last, although, given the strength of our batting, I should expect them to be in low scoring games, even on this pitch.

The Championship game was followed, with the intervention of a couple of one-day defeats for Leicestershire, by a 50-over game between the same two sides, as a satyr play would sometimes follow a tragedy.  I was only able to watch the first couple of hours, which was a pity, because Leicestershire victories are not so common that I can afford to shun the opportunity to witness one.

Initially, with Leicestershire on 5-2, the second game seemed likely to be a continuation of the first ; in the stands there was disquiet that the planned day out in the sun might be prematurely terminated.  Then, as the unseasonable sun shone on a pitch which might euphemistically be described as ‘true’, the world was turned upside down : the Worcestershire seamers, irresistible lords of creation one Sunday, the next became the helpless playthings of the batsmen they had once disdained.

Ackermann, unsurprisingly, made 152* (though it seems curmudgeonly to say so, it might have been more useful if he could have done so in the first game) ; Lewis Hill, perhaps buoyed by the popularity of his burgers, made a maiden limited overs century, and Harry Dearden, who had led the way in turning the tide, was, at last, able to demonstrate why Leicestershire have thought it worthwhile persisting with him (it was a shame that he could not quite complete his own hundred).

On the face of it, it would be a shame, too, if players like Dearden and Hill, and the side as a whole, began to flower in this form of cricket at the exact point when it is about to be devalued.  On the other hand, if ‘development competition‘ turns out to mean only that the players chosen for the ‘Hundred’ will not be available in the RL50, then the outcome may be that Leicestershire wins, and runs for Dearden, might become less of a rarity.

Though the ground was far from full, there was a very reasonable turnout for the one-day game (certainly as compared to the Saturday and Sunday of the four-day game, when I have seen bigger crowds gathered at the sites of minor road traffic accidents).  I wonder, again, whether it would have been any smaller if Dearden and Hill had been making merry against a Worcestershire side trimmed of its stars, given the sun, the Bank Holiday mood, and the quality of the catering.

 

 

 

 

Back in the Groove

Leicestershire v Kent, County Championship, Grace Road, 19-22 August 2018

It had been so long since the last Championship match at Grace Road, which had begun on the 20th of June, that, when the regulars reconvened at last, it had the feeling of the start of a season, with all its pleasures of rediscovery and recognition. By the time it had finished, it felt like the beginning of the season’s end.

The progress of the game was largely determined by the weather, the first two days having been played under floodlights from beginning to end. The leaves (apart from some twirling samaras from the sycamores)

and temperature suggested Summer, but the light and the low cloud hinted at early Spring, or late Autumn. The weather brightened a little on the third morning, and, at lunch, the clouds dispersed altogether to uncover a blue sky suggesting flaming June.

The first two, damp and artificially illuminated, days produced totals of 220, 195 and 227. Chasing what had seemed an ambitious target of 253 on the third, sunlit, afternoon, Kent’s Dickson and Kuhn put on an unbeaten partnership of 215 between them for the third wicket. On the first two days, a wicket seemed always on the verge of falling ; on the last afternoon there seemed no reason why the pair should not continue batting indefinitely.

On the first morning, the eternal verities of Championship cricket seemed to have reasserted themselves as Darren Stevens took the new ball in light drizzle, particularly when he switched to the Bennett End, where some quirk of the air conditioning in the indoor school meant that he came in accompanied by an evocative gust of disinfectant and old socks.

It is one of the minor tragedies of Leicestershire cricket that Stevens, the quintessential Leicestershire cricketer, son of Hinckley, the natural heir to George Geary, should have played most of his career for Kent. I cannot remember much lamentation when he left (at the time he seemed a stodgy middle-order batsman who bowled a bit of occasional medium pace), but he has given us plenty of cause to lament since (as late as last season he took a career-best 8-75 against us in Canterbury).

There have been few signs this season, at the age of 42, of his strong enchantments failing : his 26 wickets have cost him a little over 20 runs apiece, and just over a quarter of his overs have been maidens. The abolition of the toss, which was intended specifically to disempower the likes of Stevens, meant, here, that he was in his natural element (inevitably, Kent chose to bowl). In he came through the friendly murk, setting off at a gentle jog, then slowing almost to a stroll, steadying himself, cocking his wrist and then with a flick of it sending down ball after ball that pitched on off and moved away in the direction of the slips, with the grooved smoothness of a skilled framework knitter.

His first victim was young Harry Dearden, born in the year that Stevens first played for Leicestershire. Like a child venturing into a dark wood, he must have been warned of the enchanter’s wiles, but after some brave flourishes (he continues to emerge tentatively from his tortoise-shell), the left-hander was lured to his doom by a ball that moved into him (perhaps more sharply than usual, perhaps not, perhaps not at all).

Stevens’ new ball partner was Podmore, fleetingly creating the illusion that the archetypal English bits-and-pieces player was bowling with his parodic doppelganger. This Podmore (Harry, late of Middlesex), was clean-cut and svelte, but still a frank medium pacer, who I would not expect to see taking the new ball in normal conditions, but then these were not normal conditions. Without the lights I doubt they would have been playing at all, which was good news for the spectators and seamers, but less so for the batsmen, who must have been pining for the bright lights of the pavilion, winking in the distance.

Although progress was slow (opener Horton took ten overs to make two runs), on the cusp of the twentieth Horton and the prolific Ackermann had seen off both the sorcerer and his apprentice, and had inched gingerly across the minefield to 47, when Ackermann fell LBW to first change bowler Grant Stewart, a muscular Australian with an Italian mother.

Mark Cosgrove, who, like many out-of-form batsmen, manages to find ever more inventive ways to get out, then attempted to cut a ball from Ivan Thomas that appeared to be moving in at him and played on. Thomas, whom I vaguely remember as a fresh-faced youth bowling for Leeds/Bradford MCCU, has now grown a full red beard that ought be accessorised with a coonskin cap. He is 6’4” and seemed to put on pace as his spell progressed : although the pitch (a used one that had been substituted at the last minute for one deemed excessively green) might not quite have attracted the attention of late Princess of Wales’ excellent charity, the unpredictability of its bounce exaggerated the already considerable threat from his persistently short-pitched bowling.

In about the only sighting of spin before the last day, Joe Denly was given the last over before lunch. Ateeq Javid, who is yet to make much of a positive impression since his move from Warwickshire, edged one of his deceptively harmless looking leg breaks to slip, a sucker punch that sent Leicestershire into lunch on 79-4, although that didn’t seem too bad in the circumstances.

After lunch, with the gloom, if anything, deepening, Ned Eckersley briefly released his inner cavalier to hit three fours before young Podmore, who had looked the least threatening of the bowlers, trapped him LBW playing back to a ball that nibbled in a way that must have made Stevens’ heart glad. A similar delivery next ball resulted in the loss of Ben Raine’s middle stump and, in his next over, Horton played on, one short of a hard-won half century.

At the other end, Thomas was bowling with enough pace to make being nibbled to death by Darren Stevens seem an attractive prospect. Parkinson, who is capable of brave defiance, edged him to the wicket-keeper, leaving Chappell, whose height, hair, and upright stance remind me a little of Tony Grieg, to attempt a counter-attack. When he had reached 31, a leaping ball from Thomas was met with the reassuring sound of the ball hitting the meat of the bat : this, unfortunately turned out to have come from his head. Ten minutes of rubbing and shaking, and a few drinks of water, failed to restore him, and he left the field.

In the past, he would probably have returned, if necessary, and plotted revenge on Thomas when his turn came to bowl. In these more enlightened days, it was decided that he might have suffered concussion, and that Dieter Klein would replace him for the remainder of the match. The loss of Chappell’s batting was a blow, that of his bowling would prove to be a more serious one.

That the tail-enders, who went on a measured offensive, managed to extend the score to 220 seemed a minor triumph (it was the sort of game where every run seemed a victory over the odds), and Leicestershire hastened to let Mohammad Abbas, who seemed likely to be unplayable, at the openers, while the light was still barely playable. By the close, three wickets had fallen for 53, with two for Abbas and one for Raine : if play had not been curtailed by what felt like the premature arrival of an October evening, it might have been significantly more.

Leicestershire were pleased to find that the conditions had not improved on the second morning. By early afternoon Kent had been dismissed for 197, with six wickets for Abbas and four for Raine. The only significant resistance had come from Denly, who made 62, and who had, ominously, shared in a sixth wicket stand of 57, when the change bowlers, Griffiths and Klein, had relieved Abbas and Raine, and, unfortunately, the pressure. Griffiths has a tendency to bowl loosely when he first comes on, and conceded four fours in his first over ; at his best, particularly if roused by a blow to the bonce, Chappell would not have been so lightly treated. Five of the wickets to fall had been caught by Eckerlsey, the balletic elegance of whose wicket-keeping has not always been matched by its reliability.

By the close of the day, the match seemed to be hurtling towards an early conclusion, Leicestershire having collapsed from 82-1 to 126-5, in the face of renewed hostility from Thomas, who took four wickets in light that was not detectably better than that of the previous evening.  It would have been very much to Leicestershire’s advantage to have come off at the same time as on the first day.

The third day dawned ominously bright, with some cloud, but not enough for the floodlights to have been turned on. Harry Dearden, who had resumed on 61, seemed to be on course for his first first-class century, and the laurels of a tortoiseshell hero, when he aimed an uncharacteristic, and unbusinesslike, cut at a delivery from Stevens and top-edged to slip, for a 74 which had taken him a little over three-and-a-half hours. At the time, it seemed as though this might prove a match-winning innings, which would have been a just reward for the most sustained display of concentration and good judgement of the game. In an, as it turned out, perfidious sign from the Gods that they were on his side, a shy at the stumps had even rebounded from Dearden as he made his ground, and made its way to the boundary for a gratuitous, and welcome, four.

Under the illusion, as we were, that every run was precious, the forty runs that the boldly striking Klein put on with Griffiths and Abbas for the last two wickets, to push the target beyond 250, were greeted with wild enthusiasm (or as close to it as we get at Grace Road), as were the two Kent wickets that quickly fell to Abbas. The first of these was Bell-Drummond, who had looked badly out of sorts in both innings, the second Grant Stewart, who had batted at number ten in the first innings. The thinking behind this unorthodox, but shrewd, promotion became clear in the afternoon, as the last of the cloud vanished, the sun shone benignly on the newly-docile pitch, and Abbas and Raine, who had been treated with decent respect, approached the end of their opening spells.

The afternoon session, as you will see if you re-examine the figures at the beginning of this piece (an unbeaten third wicket stand of 215), seemed to have been cut-and-pasted from another season entirely, both in meteorological terms, and in the sense that we were unwillingly dragged back to one of the too numerous seasons of recent years when Leicestershire went through many a long afternoon with no sniff of a wicket.

Griffiths, who has improved greatly this season, but may be tiring, again bowled loosely in his first overs, feeding Dickson and Kuhn a succession of deliveries on or outside leg stump, and Parkinson was the victim of a premeditated assault, which did not quite knock him out of the attack, but, judging by the consoling arms placed around his shoulders by a kindly Cosgrove, had dented his confidence. Having been deserted by the elements, and with Abbas apparently slightly niggled (he spent some time just outside the boundary, waving his legs in the air like a dying ant), Horton was eventually reduced to giving Mark Cosgrove his first over of the season. Apart from that, there seemed to be nothing to be done, apart from trying to enjoy the sunshine, while it lasted.  Dickson, who had a head start, completed his century ; Kuhn was left one boundary short.

This defeat (the first of the season by any significant margin) felt like the end of Leicestershire’s promotion hopes : having begun the game on roughly equal terms with Kent, we are now some way behind them, and even further from the leaders. We have two, perhaps three, games (against Gloucestershire, Glamorgan, and Durham) that we should win, two (against leaders Warwickshire and Sussex) that, by the same token, we ought to lose. The hope has to be that our season does not fall apart in the way that it did in 2016, as we enter the silly September season of declarations, contrived finishes, and sporting pitches, as we all scramble after points through the deepening gloom.

Even more urgently, having caught a glimpse of a possible future that looked worryingly like the recent past, we have to hope that the team does not fall apart too. Our success this season had been based on our fast bowling (only Ackermann has been prolific with the bat) : the indications are that Chappell will be leaving, as might Raine (assuming that we are not promoted), and there is no certainty that Abbas will be returning (he is apparently keen to do so, but no terms have been agreed, and, if we are still paying Carberry close to £100,000 for doing nothing, we may not be able to afford him). To lose one fast bowler would be a misfortune, to lose three would be a disaster.

Beer and Balti and Eve Pudding and Gravy

Leicestershire v Durham, County Championship, Grace Road, 6-7 August 2017

Leicestershire v Yorkshire, T20 Blast, Grace Road, 12 August 2017

In my last post, I pictured the stand-alone Championship fixture against Durham, beckoning from the horizon like an oasis in the cricket-desert of mid-Summer. In the event, it turned out to be something of a mirage, or, at best, a roadside burger van that had run out of sauce. The most memorable moment of my two days at Grace Road was witnessing the ‘Leicester Mercury’’s roving reporter insisting on having gravy, instead of custard, on his eve pudding. Having nothing to do but watch cricket all day undoubtedly permits the full expression of one’s eccentricities, but I sometimes cannot help wondering whether that is entirely a good thing.

The match was, as anyone who had read the weather forecast would have known, a priori doomed (as predicted, days three and four were washed out). The same could be said of Durham’s season (even more so than Leicestershire’s) : having been relegated, by order of the ECB, a further imposition of a 36-point penalty means that their chances of promotion are negligible. In addition to having Stokes, Wood and Jennings on loan to England, they have been compelled to release Stoneman and Borthwick (along with Jennings, their leading run-scorers last season). Hoping, at best, to regroup, and find some replacements for their missing stars, they have struggled to the extent that only Leicestershire lie below them in the table.

This might go some way towards explaining their tactics, which seemed to disregard the issue of points altogether, as irrelevant to their situation (or perhaps they simply hadn’t read the weather forecast). If they were in contention for promotion, they would, having chosen to bat, have been well-advised to move smartly enough along to gain maximum batting points, declare, and hope to bowl Leicestershire out, if not twice, then quickly enough to bag three bowling points.

As it was, their openers, Cameron Steel and the New Zealander Tom Latham, batted serenely through the first two sessions, and gave every indication of carrying on in that vein until the rains came. In the event, Latham, who had been the more energetic of the two, tired late on the first day and departed with the score on 234. Steel, however, carried on until, shortly after he reached his double-century, a switch was thrown and Durham began to hit out (not, I think, Steel’s strong point), before declaring, unnecessarily late, on 525-8.

Steel has come to the North-East by a circuitous route (born in California, childhood in Australia, Millfield, Middlesex, Somerset and Durham University). He is clearly run-hungry and risk-averse enough to make a significant score against some undemanding bowling on a predictable pitch, but whether he is capable of doing so regularly is hard to say. He might turn out to be the new Andrew Strauss, or he might find himself relegated to the 2nd XI when Jennings returns. If he turns out to be any good, of course, I suppose he will end up at Surrey.

Leicestershire, weakened further by injuries, gave the impression that they would rather be anywhere other than Grace Road. In the field they were all but silent : Ben Raine, their usual cheerleader and irritant, who has now been out since June, prowled the boundary, looking as though he’d like a few words with someone he suspected of pinching his wallet. Perhaps he might be positioned on the dressing-room balcony, where he could offer encouragement through a loud hailer (though I imagine the ECB might take a dim view of that).

At the beginning of the season, I wondered how Leicestershire would find room in the side for all the seam bowlers we seemed to have acquired. Having lost Shreck (retired in disgust), Burke (returned to Surrey, now released from the game), Jones, Raine and Chappell (long-term injuries), and with McKay and Pillans also nursing ailments, the flagging Klein, who is not suited to being a stock bowler, and the tireless Griffiths (who is), were unexpectedly reinforced by, of all people, Ajmal Shahzad, who has, apparently been released by his third county, Sussex. It must seem a very long time to him since he was playing for England.

With the clouds already beginning to gather, Leicestershire went through the motions of a match-saving reply, with Harry Dearden making 30 from 109 balls. While I was watching him bat, Geoffrey Boycott was on the radio, asking whether there is anyone in county cricket capable of batting two hours to make 30.   I’m not sure Dearden is quite what he had in mind.

A happy feature of the game was that Neil Dexter, who has been out of the side “for personal reasons” was back on the pitch. When Durham came to throw the bat, it was mostly at his bowling, and he picked up 5-71. The gods of cricket, so often accused of cruelty, can also be kind, sometimes.

Part of the reason for Leicestershire’s distracted air against Durham might have been that the game had come as something of a distraction from their T20 campaign, which, although I have not been following it too closely, has been more successful than their efforts in the Championship. They won their first four games, all away from Grace Road, then lost the next four at home, in dismal weather, mostly narrowly, or in vaguely farcical circumstances. The previous evening they had defeated Northamptonshire at Wantage Road.

It was something of a revelation to see them in action in a different context, rather like seeing one’s work colleagues, freed from workaday constraints, out for a night on the town.  Colin Ackermann, whose batting is usually the soul of restraint, gaily flicked the ball over his shoulder, with the air of Maureen from Accounts tripping the light fantastic in fishnets and a feather boa.

In fact, the afternoon was, to a T20 novice, a revelation in a number of respects. Grace Road had been transformed into a cross between a holiday camp and an airport food court. I didn’t notice any eve pudding and gravy on offer, but most sane culinary tastes were catered for : beer and balti, the Spice Bazaar, a burger van, a hog roast and an ice cream van, and, for the more traditional fan, lashings of delicious lager. Various antic young people patrolled the perimeter on stilts, others fired T-shirts advertising Pepsi Max into the crowd from small bazookas (perhaps they should try firing MCC cravats into the pavilion at Lord’s).

Slightly to my surprise, the Yorkshire supporters were heavily outnumbered by Leicestershire fans. It must have helped that Leicester City had played at home the previous evening, whereas most of Yorkshire’s football clubs were playing that afternoon. Another factor may have been that Yorkshire had played and beaten Lancashire the previous evening and some of their supporters may have been in no fit state to make the journey.

Once the match started, I was struck by how negative the tactics were, given that the game is sold on the basis that it consists of all-out attack. It resembled a kind of asymmetrical warfare, whereby a weaker side (Leicestershire) can overcome a stronger enemy (Yorkshire) whom they would have little hope of defeating in an open battle (or a four-day game) by successfully harrying and frustrating them.

Yorkshire batted first, and, though Kohler-Cadmore (who began the season playing for Worcestershire) made the highest score of the day (75 out of a total of 182-5), their innings never quite got going, and none of their more fluent scorers were able to flow. Leicestershire used seven bowlers (3 seamers, 3 spinners, 1 medium pace), swapping them at the end of almost every over. I could see nothing obviously innovative about the bowling, or indeed the batting, just a lot of niggling and nibbling, gouging and scuffing and general frustration.

An effect of Leicestershire’s predominance in the crowd was that, although the small children enjoyed the boundaries (marked by a quick burst of what sounded like “Club hits of 1992”), the real appreciation among the aficionados was reserved for the bowling of a “dot ball”. In this respect Gavin Griffiths, bowling exactly the kind of good honest fast-medium stuff he’d been peddling to so little effect against Durham earlier in the week, was the hero of the hour, as half of his 18 deliveries resulted in no score. If anyone had succeeded in bowling a maiden (no-one did, though Adil Ali nearly managed it with his occasional off-spin), I imagine the expression of collective joy would have been on a par with the fall of the Berlin Wall.

When Leicestershire came to bat, the game was as good as settled in the second over, in which off-spinner Azeem Rafiq served up an entire over of delicious tripe, which have-boots-will-travel Austro-Kiwi Luke Ronchi, pausing only to stuff a napkin down the front of his shirt, tucked into to the tune of (I think) 22 runs. Leicestershire were well ahead of the required run-rate (scoring at over ten an over) until the mid-way stage when, with their three big-hitters gone, Colin Ackerman was left to shepherd the potentially wayward flock home. Renouncing his earlier flamboyance, he seemed to be, with the help of a succession of short-lived assistants, trying to get them in singles, finally overtaking Yorkshire’s total with two balls to spare.

I have to say I thoroughly enjoyed the afternoon. The weather was fine, the crowd in amiable mood, I had a delicious chicken curry for lunch and – crucially – Leicestershire won. It was even over in time for me to catch the last bus home.

I would not say, however, that it has done anything to assuage my anxieties about the future of County cricket.  As, say, a once-a-fortnight Saturday afternoon diversion, T20 has its attractions, but if it were ever to become the only form of cricket available, I think that would be the end of my interest in the game.

I also wonder about the future of the new city-based competition.  T-shirts and face-painting will only go so far to attract the new child-centred audience it is intended to attract, and some further tweaking of the rules may be required to ensure a regular supply of the boundaries they have been promised.  The dot-ball enthusiasts, on the other hand, are only enthusiastic because it is Leicestershire delivering them : some amorphous regional entity based in Nottingham is unlikely to attract this faction either.

Still, at the time of writing, Leicestershire are hopeful of qualifying for the quarter-finals and, if they do, I am very tempted to watch them.  Just call me a glory hunter.

 

Not Entirely Pointless

Leicestershire v Glamorgan, LVCC, Grace Road, 21-24 April 2017

A while ago, writing about match-fixing, I wrote the following :
“Any sport consists of an elaborate system of rules that constructs an artificial world within which it is possible to have an authentic experience. As anyone who has watched a lot of County cricket, or lower league football, will attest, that experience is rarely obviously thrilling, or even interesting (it is not spectacular), but, even if it not “real” in the sense that bull-fighting is real, it is and must be known to be authentic. When something genuinely marvellous happens (such as Botham in 1981) it reassures us that miracles can occasionally happen in real life, and not only in fiction.”
I suppose this match was a good example of what I had in mind. Only two of the passages of play (the morning session on the first day and the afternoon and evening sessions on the fourth) were particularly compelling in themselves. In between there were a few interesting moments, some worthy performances and touches of humour, but the main interest was in trying to anticipate the denouement, which, in the event, was never revealed.

Although there were several points when one side seemed to have the advantage, by the end of each day equilibrium had reasserted itself (Leicester ended the first day on 275-5, Glamorgan were 281-4 by the end of the second ; Leicester were 200-3 at the end of the third, Glamorgan 144-4 at the close). (This state of equilibrium may have been the result of the game – as a man in front of me put it – being a case of a resistible force meeting a moveable object.)

A journeyman scriptwriter would have repeated the ending to last season’s match between the two sides, when, in the last game of the season, McKay and Shreck had taken Glamorgan’s last five wickets for ten runs when they required only 36 more to win (not quite Botham in ’81, but a satisfying conclusion). Instead we had a sort of nouveau roman policier, in which, having established numerous suspects, the detective concludes that he cannot work out who the murderer is and simply gives up and goes home for dinner.

The match was unusual, in that the most significant delivery of the four days was one that no-one in the crowd could see, it being the ball in the nets that had (apparently) bruised Zak Chappell’s shoulder and rendered him incapable of bowling in Glamorgan’s first innings. This is not because I would expect him to run through them like a dose of salts (those days may come, but not yet, and probably not, I’m afraid, for Leicestershire), but because it meant that we were left with only three front line bowlers, McKay, Raine and Shreck, who, in benign conditions for batting, were compelled to bowl 27, 30.5 and 29 overs respectively. As a result, I imagine, neither McKay (back) nor Raine (sidestrain) were able to bowl more than a few overs on the last afternoon, though Chappell was able to bowl, alongside the apparently indefatigable Shreck.

The first session of the first day was, as I say, compelling to watch, as the Lancastrian duo of Horton and Dearden opened together for the fourth time this season. Horton was in fragile form at the end of last season and has a highest score this of 20, with four single figure scores. Dearden was averaging 11 and their highest opening partnership against a County had been 10. It might not be true that they were anxious for their places, as, with Robson having absconded, there is no obvious alternative opener, but Horton (at 34) might have been worrying that he is facing something worse than a temporary dip in form and Dearden (19) that he is out of his depth.

Friday was a bitterly cold and overcast morning, and it was something of a test of character simply to stay out on the pitch for the opening session, when there was the option of a warm dressing room to retreat to, but the pair dug in (the phrase implies some of the dogged physical effort that seemed to be involved) and were still together at lunch. The pitch seemed generally true, but with the nasty quirk that balls just short of a length sometimes reared up alarmingly, and Horton was hit painfully more than once. Glamorgan, too, seemed a bowler short (there was no van der Gugten, nor cricket’s answer to Robbie Savage, Graham Wagg), and their opening pair Michael Hogan (a “rangy” Australian who looks somehow under-dressed without a Drizabone) and Lukas Carey (a 19-year old from the same Swansea school as Aneurin Donald) were only intermittently threatening, but the sense of relief when the beleaguered pair returned to the pavilion, with the score on 81-0 was almost tangible.

At lunch, to illustrate my point about anticipating possible futures, a century opening partnership, and an individual century for at least one of the openers seemed on the cards. By about 2.00, with Horton out for 41 (he returned to a standing ovation from the home balcony, indicating that spirit within the team is good, whatever their alleged relationship with the coach), followed swiftly by Dexter first ball and Captain for the day Eckersley for 1, thoughts (my thoughts anyway) had turned to a card-house collapse and how Chappell might be hard to play in the fading light of the final session. (I must, incidentally, get out of the habit of taking pictures of batsman as they return to the pavilion, which makes me feel too much like a tricoteux cackling at the foot of the tumbril.)

In the event, equilibrium was restored by Dearden (who fell 13 frustrating runs short of a maiden century) and Mark Pettini, who has been the least convincing of the “experienced” imports, but who made important runs in both innings here ; the balanced then tipped in favour of Leicestershire as the last five wickets, in what has become something of a pattern, more than doubled the score to finish on 420.

The last 61 of those runs came from a last wicket stand on the second morning between those knights of the long handle McKay and Shreck ; they were clearly enjoying themselves enormously at the time

but might have been less pleased if they had known quite how many overs they would have to bowl over the course of the next two sunny days, on a pitch which had mellowed so much that it might as well have fired up a joint and stuck some James Taylor on the stereo.

Spirits first sank at the sight of Tom Wells taking the field. Not that there is anything wrong with Wells per se, but because it soon dawned that he was fielding as a substitute for Chappell, leaving, as support for the three main bowlers, Dearden (who had not, I think, previously bowled with a red ball even for the 2nd XI), Dexter (whose medium pace surprisingly often breaks partnerships, but is not suited to long spells) and Delport (supposedly on a one day contract, but drafted in here (any Delport in a storm) to purvey his big maximums and little wobblers).

The bulk of Glamorgan’s reply came from young opener Selman (117) and the mature Kolpak Ingram (137). I can remember little of their stand of 161, except being torn between wanting it to stop and being secretly relieved that the game would, at least, outlast the weekend. Once that stand was broken, wickets fell at regular, but widely spaced, intervals and Glamorgan finally crept six runs in front (equilibrium restored again).  Another responsible, as well as stylish, innings by Pettini (a century this time) and a similar effort from Eckersley ensured that defeat was out of the question, but the timing of the declaration, which left Glamorgan 355 to make off a possible 57 overs, meant that something extraordinary would be required for a home victory.

What we saw (the thirty or so who were left by the end) was, in a way, extraordinary, but not in the way required to win. To set the scene, by mid-afternoon the sky was, at its most colourful, battleship grey, and the only things that seemed to be preventing it snowing were the intense cold and the biting wind. If it weren’t for the floodlights we would all have been home by lunchtime.

McKay bowled his first over like a man who is a martyr to lumbago, and it must have been clear to Glamorgan that last year’s bogeyman would not be troubling them again (he only managed one more over).  Raine, a player who would, as the saying goes, run through brick walls for the club (and probably does so for fun on his days off) was forced to leave the field after, heroically, bowling seven overs and taking two wickets.  Which (without a recognised, or recognisable, spinner in the side) left Shreck and Chappell. Shreck, a man closer in age to me than he is to Chappell, managed another 13 overs to go with the 29 he had bowled in the first innings (perhaps his enforced rest period had done him good) but posed no real threat to batsmen who were looking only to survive.

Chappell, though, in light that seemed pretty dim even with the floodlights on, bowled fast enough to endanger the physical safety of the batsmen, even if he did not often enough threaten their wickets (Cooke looked thoroughly uncomfortable, particularly when he was hit somewhere in the region of his solar plexus).  He also posed some threat to his wicket-keeper and slip cordon, and even a St. John Ambulance lady who was sheltering from the wind behind the sightscreen (a bouncer had flown as far over Lewis Hill’s head as a lecture on Hegel and trampolined over the screen off a hoarding angled at 45 degrees).  In fact, for once, the only person he did not look likely to injure was himself.

The more sensible element in the crowd had called it a day when there was a brief interruption for bad light,

but I hung on to the end, in the faint hope that the extraordinary thing, the thing you don’t see every day, might happen, which, in a way, it did.  A ball from Chappell to Rudolph, slightly short of a length, instead of veering harmlessly off towards the slips, cut back viciously and skinned his glove on its way through to Hill.  A whole possible future glimpsed in a single ball.

To maintain the equilibrium, both Leicestershire and Glamorgan have now earned 20 points this season though, after deductions, we only have four left.  So, not entirely pointless, at least.