Dog Days Afternoons

 

Leicestershire (180-9) v Nottinghamshire (199), Grace Road, T20, 8th July 2018

England Women (219) v New Zealand Women (224-6), Grace Road, ODI, 13th July 2018

Derbyshire v Northamptonshire, Chesterfield, County Championship, 23rd July 2018 (day 2 of 4)

The last few weeks have been very quiet, in my world of cricket, at least.

Elsewhere, contemporary English readers will be well aware of what has been happening. For the benefit of any future historians who may be reading, though, a brief resumé :

– we have been enjoying, or enduring, a heatwave and drought of such duration and intensity that there have been frequent sightings of the traces of ancient settlements reappearing in the parched soil (something similar has been visible at our cricket grounds).

– the England football team reached the semi-finals of the World Cup, before being beaten by Croatia. Many commentators, particularly those with only a passing previous interest in football, have expressed the view that the team have ‘united a divided nation’ and embodied the hope of a new and better England. Gareth Southgate, the manager, has been elevated to the status of a waistcoated Confucius, and has been much praised for his ‘decency’, as opposed to the indecency of, for instance, Roy Hodgson.

– there have been developments relating to the United Kingdom’s exit from the European Union. How momentous these turned out to be will be clearer to you, O future historian, than they are at present, but it is currently hard to see how things can end well : combining with the heat and the football, they have created an atmosphere it would be fair to describe as ‘febrile’.

I would not describe the atmosphere at any of the three games I have attended as ‘febrile’ : as the heat has intensified, discouraging exertion of any kind, the temper of the crowds has moved from the merely sedate to apparently sedated.  In a topsy-turvy way, I have been shunning the sun-traps I normally seek out, in favour of the shady spots I usually shun.

My annual T20 game (the only one to take place in an afternoon) came when hopes for the World Cup were at their highest (England had won their quarter final the day before). The official attendance at Grace Road was given as 6,774, which is close to a full house. Certainly, having abandoned my seat in the sun in search of some refreshment and shade, I found it hard to find another, and spent most of the afternoon flitting between sunlight and shadow, propped up against various walls.

I was more aware of the crowd than anything that was occurring on the pitch, but then attending a live T20 for the ‘skills’ is rather like, to use a comparison that probably hasn’t been made for about 30 years, reading Playboy for the articles. Those 6,774 were in genial mood, clearly enjoying their beer, ice cream, chips and the various amusements on offer around the ground. The fact that there was a game of cricket taking place seemed incidental to the fun : the whole scene could have been translated to Blackpool beach with no great incongruity.

A reason often given why T20 should be played in a block is that the players find it hard to adjust between different formats. This spectator, as one habituated to four-day cricket, found he had the same problem, with everything appearing to happen at an absurdly accelerated pace, like the closing scenes of ‘The Benny Hill Show’. In the time it took me to buy a pint of Pedigree (that biscuity, slightly soapy, brew that always reminds me of watching cricket), find some shade, drink the pint and collect the deposit on my plastic glass, Samit Patel had made a half century. In the time it took to make a circuit of the pitch in search of a seat, Dan Christian had fallen just short of another.

No sooner had I found a tolerable place to sit, than the Nottinghamshire innings ended on 199, having, without any obviously spectacular hitting, scored at ten an over ; as a neophyte, I was unsure whether this was a good total or not. I had only really been impressed by Chappell’s bowling : he had taken 3-25, with two bowled in his last over (both batsmen attempting dreadful head-up yahoos), although the T20 aficionado might have been more struck by his 14 ‘dot balls’. He also ran a long way to parry a catch upwards from the boundary to be caught by a colleague, which seemed to excite the crowd more than anything achieved with bat or ball.

A combination of the heat, the Pedigree, and having been forced into a spot a long way from the action, meant that Leicestershire’s reply rather passed me by, although I was aware of a lot of scuffed, mistimed shots, and the required run rate creeping rapidly upwards from the merely challenging to the frankly impossible. Again, the only really memorable moment was a piece of fielding, when a strongarm pull from Mark Cosgrove to his second ball was plucked from the air by Steven Mullaney, like a chameleon flicking its tongue out to catch a fly. They fell short by 19 runs, which, in 4-day cricket would have been a close result, but, in the small margins world of T20, felt like a drubbing.

I rather felt that by getting mildly pissed, briefly donning a furry red halo,

and not paying too much attention to the game, I was entering into the spirit of the live T20 experience. Anyone with a genuine interest in the finer points (and I am aware that there are many good and learned arguments that they exist) might be better advised to watch it on the television. The same might apply to the ECB’s proposed ‘Hundred’ : I am not convinced that everyone in the crowd would have noticed if they had slipped in a ten ball over, and I don’t think anyone would have wished the day any shorter.

For slightly different reasons, the women’s match against New Zealand might also have been better viewed on TV. (As it was a televised game, I found the cameramen’s habit of picking out individual members of the crowd to show on the big screen a strong disincentive to dropping off, or reading a newspaper during the occasional longeur.)

My palate may have become desensitised by watching too much limited overs cricket recently, but there was little in the game that was obviously spectacular (between them the two sides managed two sixes, both by New Zealand opener Sophie Devine, as compared to the ten the men had hit in the T20), and the subtleties of the women’s game are a little lost in the vastness of Grace Road, like Joni Mitchell doing an acoustic set in a sports stadium. My impression was that the boundaries had not been brought in as far as they were for last year’s World Cup games, but the fielders, let alone the square, still seemed a very long way away.

England began well, though at a pace that seemed Deardenesque, after some of the run debauches I have witnessed recently. By the 20th over, openers Amy Jones and Tammy Beaumont had put on 100 without loss (by which point, you may remember, India A had made 200), before Beaumont was out, fluffing a reverse sweep. Against an attack mostly comprising spin, the run rate progressively slumped and the innings wilted, like an unwatered plant. Once Jones was stumped, charging off-spinner Jenkin, the last seven wickets fell for 53 runs, and the innings ended on 219 in the 47th over. ‘Gun bat’ Nat Sciver had been run out for 11, after a review that took so long I thought ‘Should I Stay?’ was about to segue into ‘Rock the Casbah’.

I didn’t stay for New Zealand’s reply (they won, thanks mostly to a century by Devine), not because I was particularly bored, but because the game was another day-nighter, and I needed to get home. This might help to explain the modest crowd, which was about the same as one of our better-attended Championship matches. It didn’t help that England had already won the series, that Leicestershire had their own T20 game at Edgbaston, and that it was the last day of term in Leicestershire, meaning that there were none of the usual parties of schoolchildren to inflate the crowd.

Women’s cricket had its own World Cup moment last year, of course, albeit on a smaller scale, creating the impression, in the minds of some commentators, that the women’s game was close to gaining parity with the men’s. That kind of euphoria is difficult to sustain (as Gareth Southgate will probably find out soon enough) : although I think women’s cricket has a bright, if not necessarily permanent, future as a participatory, recreational sport, it is less clear how much of one it has as a professional spectator sport, without continuing, generous, subsidy from the ECB (the same, as I am only too aware, being true of County cricket).

This was the last Women’s International of an undramatic domestic season : it will be interesting to see whether the Editor of Wisden thinks that any of the women have done enough to justify being chosen as a Player of the Year (I thought choosing three last year was rather offering a hostage to fortune, in that, if he chooses none this year, last year’s choice may seem like a flash in the pan, but, if he chooses a woman who has not performed spectacularly, he might be accused of tokenism).

In truth, I had felt a little out of place at both games : both forms have their own audience, without, I suspect, much overlap between the two, or with the habitual followers of County cricket. At Chesterfield, for the second day of a four-day fixture, I felt I had met up with my tribe. As I have often written about Queen’s Park before, it is a ground ideally suited to Championship cricket, and I was pleased to find that it had not changed at all since my last visit. Frederick’s ice-cream (a single cone a meal in itself) was available from more than one outlet, and the miniature railway was running again.

The heatwave had reached its peak (I hope) by then, and the official advice was to stay out of the sun. The crowd had mostly followed this, setting their chairs up in the shade of the trees that line the ground,

but the players had not (although it might have accounted for one or two of the dismissals). The Derbyshire seamer ‘Hardus’ Viljoen, who bowled some very long spells for little reward, earned my particular admiration for his indefatigability.

It was a game that unfolded absorbingly over the four days : I caught only the slow second movement. By the end of the day, Northants had made 289, in reply to Derbyshire’s 260, with most of those runs coming from Wakely (106) and Crook (60) ; their stand of 120, spanning the hottest part of the day, was received with the gentlest of murmurs from the home crowd, punctuated by occasional whoops and whistling from the miniature railway.  Their greatest enthusiasm was reserved for Ben Cotton, the popular seamer who was released last year, when he came on as a substitute fieldsman for Northants.

Wakely was responsible for the day’s only extravagant expenditures of energy : hitting Hamidullah Qadri back over his head for two sixes when he was first brought on to bowl, one of which was high enough to risk going over the protective netting and endanger the children’s playground next door, and his century celebration, which suggested he had either been driven mad by the heat, or trodden on a scorpion.

One positive side to the drought might be that spin bowlers find themselves in their proper element at last : certainly, the match was won by Derbyshire, on the last day, by the legspinner Critchley, who took ten wickets in the match and Hamiddulah, recovering from his harsh treatment in the first innings.

The day’s only other excitement was when, during the tea interval, a cloud that might have been dark enough to contain rain passed briefly over the sun, but that soon passed.

The real action, which I missed, was taking place at Canterbury, where Leicestershire defeated Kent inside two days. My central narrative is due to resume, after these distractions, when they meet again at Grace Road on 19th August, if, that is, civilisation has not ended before then.

An outfield, last week

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“Time to Join the Real World”?

England v Pakistan, Women’s Limited Overs International, Grace Road, 19-20 June 2016

 

Welcome to the Real World!

This was the fourth day of women’s international cricket that I have seen in the last ten years : in that time I’ve seen two days of the international men’s game.  I wouldn’t say that I prefer women’s cricket (their games were played locally, and were affordable), but there are aspects of it that I do prefer : it makes a pleasant change, for instance, to see batting that is based on technique, rather than the cult of upper-body strength, and a relief not to have to endure too much of the monotonous thud of leather on  upper-tier seating.

More importantly, the women’s game has, until now, avoided the significance-bloat that blights most elite professional sport : the hype, the hysteria, the Twitter-storms, the vicariously enjoyed psychodramas, the angst.  It was small-scale, proportionate and communicated that sense of fun that sport can provide for those who play it as a diversion from the anxieties of daily life.  In short, it revived the best of that unfashionable phantom, the amateur spirit.

Now, however, we are led to believe, all that has changed.  The England side are full-time professionals.  The ECB has invested large sums in the women’s game, and it will expect some return on its investment. At the recreational level, the women’s game is thriving where male cricket is wavering, helped by the very considerable cash inducements made available to clubs who promote women’s cricket.  Sky are (I’m told) increasing their coverage and the BBC sometimes manages to convey the impression that cricket is, in this country, a game played principally by women.

England have a new coach (the old Northants seamer and rabbit, Mark Robinson) who has decided that the England team “aren’t fit enough” and need to “toughen up“.  We have had a grim “presser” (dread word!), where tough-talking boss Robinson rapped ashen-faced Captain Charlotte Edwards before “axing” her, thus earning himself, apparently some “abuse on social media“.  Wicket-keeper Sarah Taylor has now followed Jonathan Trott and others by taking some time out from cricket, due to “anxiety issues” and Lydia Greenaway has also chosen to bow out gracefully before her time.

So, what of the future? Having described the past of the women’s game as “cosy” and the era of culottes as “twee” (two cardinal sins), Mike Selvey (in the Guardian) went on to say:

“More miles into legs; better beep-test scores demanded; dietary programmes alongside strength and conditioning. He will drive them hard and cast the net wider. Some will go but that goes with the territory of being a modern, professional cricketer. It is time to join the real world.”

This week’s game at Grace Rd. (the first of this season’s limited over internationals) offered an early opportunity to test how this migration to the “real world” of professional sport is progressing : rather neatly, as no play was possible on the Monday, and the game was played on the reserve day, the first day represented the hype, and the second the reality.

I’m not sure that I’ve ever felt quite as out of place at Grace Road as I did on Monday, chiefly because it was filled, for the most part, with parties of schoolgirls : it was rather like being at a Taylor Swift gig, except that I don’t suppose you would find Jackie Birkenshaw having his lunch at one of those.  The Loughborough Lightning (the new women’s T20 franchise) were there, as were numerous people of uncertain purpose with Waitrose written all over them (Waitrose also had a stall where you could make your own fruit smoothie)

As with any event involving England, the ECB were out in force, in the shape of an army of young men in chinos with lanyards round their necks, as were Sky, the BBC and the press (not always easy to tell from the ECB).  Laura Wright (“the sporting soprano“) gave us her sweet-toned rendition of “Jerusalem” and a number she had written especially for the England women called “Heroes” (not, unfortunately, the old Bowie tune with new words).

There was a big screen and a DJ who seemed to have brought a “Now That’s What I Call Music” from 2006 (roughly when most of the crowd were born) and, disconcertingly, “Love Will Tear Us Apart” (and if you had told me, at the time of that tune’s release, that I would one day hear it played over the Tannoy at Grace Road, while a crocodile of Muslim schoolgirls filed into the Multi-faith Prayer Room, I would have suggested that it was time to lay off the old jazz woodbines for a bit).

There was all of that, a whole brave new world, but, unfortunately there wasn’t any cricket.  In a sign, I suppose, that they are attracting a new audience, many in the crowd seemed genuinely surprised that the match was called off after a second inspection at 5.00 (the game was meant to be a day-night affair, ending well after most in the crowd’s bedtime), but I was pleasantly surprised to find that the next day had been set aside as that old-fashioned thing, a reserve day.

By Tuesday the schoolgirls were gone, the lanyard-men, the big screen, the music, the sporting soprano and most of the cameras had gone too, but there was a full day’s play.  If the previous day had something of a Gulliver-in-Lilliput quality for me, it lingered on into the second day.  Grace Road has a huge playing area, and the boundaries had been brought in so far that, from some vantage points, you needed binoculars to see as far as the rope, let alone the players:

Most of the Pakistan team, too, seemed exceptionally small, roughly the size of an Under-14 boys’ team,

and I’m afraid they played at roughly that level too, whereas England resembled an exceptionally talented County Academy side.  If Geoffrey Boycott had been watching, no doubt he would have said “It’s women against girls out there“.

I might have expected Pakistan (who batted first) to be most troubled by the opening bowlers Anya Shrubsole and “Barnsley Bombshell” Katherine Blunt, who are fast by women’s standards, but they coped with them well enough, mostly by means of some textbook forward defensive shots, though there were also some decent straight drives and some more agricultural shovelling, mostly from opener Sidra Ameen, who finished on 52 out of a total of 165.

In fact, the damage was mostly done by the slow, looping off-breaks of new Captain Heather Knight.  Her figures of 5-26 flatter her slightly (the last two came when tail-enders tried to give her whatever the Urdu is for “some tap” and succeeded only in looping some fairly gentle catches to fielders about half way from that Lilliputian boundary) ;  it might, though, be some indication of a new spirit in the England camp that she had shrewdly deviated from the plan to bowl Shrubsole at the death and had reintroduced herself.

If women’s cricket were subject to the same level of scrutiny as male Test cricket we would still be hearing about the first ball of England’s reply.  New opener Lauren Whitfield edged a ball to slip, where Nain Abidi claimed a catch.  Whitfield walked off, but stopped half way when Kathy Brunt, supported by her colleagues from the England balcony, very audibly shouted “Go back! She’s dropped it and picked it up!”. 

Whitfield turned on her heel and walked back to the crease, where the huddling Pakistanis gave her some Hard Stares and a display of double-teapotting.  Presumably acting on advice from the Umpires, she moped off again, with the demeanour of Daddles the Duck, in the face of continuing contrary advice from the balcony.  Substitute Hales and Anderson for Whitfield and Brunt in this scenario in the next Lord’s Test against Pakistan, and imagine the reaction.

After that brief setback, Tammy Beaumont and Heather Knight had little difficulty in overhauling Pakistan’s total, against some innocuous bowling.  Pakistan have overcome many obstacles to be here at all, and should be congratulated for that, but I’d be wary of hailing any kind of “new era” on the basis of a performance against such a weak side.

Tammy Beaumont (who is clearly very talented) has been playing for Hinckley in the Leicestershire Premier League this season.  When she played against my club I happened to be sitting near the boundary where she was fielding and she asked me whether I had come to watch my son play.  At the time I was a little miffed that she hadn’t assumed I was our much-feared strike bowler sidelined with a niggle, but I now realise that she is used to playing, even for England, to a crowd that is largely composed of the players’ friends and family (you can work out whose families is whose by the cheering whenever they touch the ball in the field).

Apart from that, the crowd (which might have reached 200) was made up of a smattering of the regulars and other connoisseurs, a few parties from women’s clubs, pairs of what looked like retired games mistresses and a few of those amiable eccentrics who always attach themselves to cricket.  (This pair, for instance, seemed to be a kind of two-woman Rainbow Alliance, and made a point of beerily embracing the most visibly Muslim of the visiting support in a heartening display of inter-community solidarity)

I have no doubt that many of the girls who were there on the first day will have formed the impression that cricket is a game that they can and should be playing (even if they didn’t get to see the game played) and that women’s cricket will continue to thrive as a recreational sport (provided the ECB don’t switch off the money supply).  It is not too far-fetched to suggest that cricket might even, one day, become a game principally played by women.

I shall continue to watch it when I get the chance, but I have to say that what I appreciated most about this game was much the same small-scale and even (whisper who dares) amateur quality that I first enjoyed ten years ago.  Whether it has a future as a mass spectator sport at a time when cricket is increasingly marketed on the basis of naked aggression and brute force (a quality that, barring some serious funny business in the chemistry department, is always likely to be in short supply) is questionable.  I wonder, too, whether all of the players, even, are entirely convinced by the idea that playing with bats and balls should make up a mature human being’s “real world“, rather than an escape from it?

(Though I suppose there are the sponsored cars to take into account …)