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.

The Art of Falling Apart

Leicestershire CCC  (100 & 196) v Warwickshire CCC (400-9 dec.), Grace Road, 10-12 September 2018 (Warwickshire won by an innings and 104 runs) 

Leicestershire CCC (321) v Durham CCC (61 & 66), Grace Road, 18-19 September 2018 (Leicestershire won by an innings and 194 runs)

I ended my last post by expressing the hope (hope against hope) that neither Leicestershire’s season, nor the team, would fall apart in September. The first has certainly happened : having lost only two games, both very narrowly, in the first half of the season, since the defeat against Kent we have lost five times, by margins varying from 132 to 328 runs. It is some compensation that we are not alone in having made a succession of low totals. The last month of the season increasingly resembles the climax to an episode of ‘Wacky Races’, filled with spectacular crashes, bits falling off the competitors and some improbable leaps. Predictably so, some would say, if that month is September.

The defeat against Warwickshire was nothing if not predictable. The soon-to-be Champions featured five players with Test experience, and the Division’s three leading run-scorers (three of only four to have averaged over 40). Leicestershire’s cobbled-together side featured two bowlers brought in from Minor Counties, to replace the soon-to-be permanently absent Raine and Chappell, and the injured Griffiths (the regular 2nd XI seamers, too, were injured). Unsurprisingly, Warwickshire exercised their prerogative to bowl first (the game was to be largely played under lights), and, to no-one’s surprise, Leicestershire were bowled out for exactly 100. Barker and Woakes were too swinging for the top order, and Stone, though sparingly used, was too fast for the tail.

There was, at least, an element of comedy to the dismissal of Mark Cosgrove (for the spectators, if not the batsman). Neil Dexter had looked to get off the mark with a single that would have been ambitious had his partner been Speedy Gonzales. Cosgrove is capable of a surprising turn of speed, but it takes him a while to achieve terminal velocity, achieving it, in this case, roughly as he entered the pavilion, the wicket having long since been broken by Woakes in his follow through. If Woakes had really been ‘the nicest man in cricket’, he might have taken pity and deliberately thrown wide.

I left early, having been called away (I have been called away a lot recently, for one reason or another), but stayed long enough to see opener Dominic Sibley (who seems to have grown since I last saw him play for Surrey) make 50 off 49 balls (mostly off one of our Minor Counties seamers, who was quickly removed from the attack). By the end of the day, Sibley had made more runs than Leicestershire on his own, and Warwickshire had nearly doubled our total for the loss of three wickets.

It rained overnight, and for most of the morning. When play began at 2.00, in front of an understandably sparse crowd, the conditions, with the wicket freshly-spritzed, were ideally suited to the seam of Dexter and Abbas. Jonathan Trott resumed on 34, and took forty minutes to make another eight, before mis-timing a pull. This would be the last time that any of us would see Trott in action at Grace Road, and it seemed an appropriate way for him to take his leave, mostly unapplauded, but having seen off the (slight) threat to his side. As conditions eased and Leicestershire’s bowling resources were stretched too thin, Ambrose, Hain and Woakes moved easily to within sight of 400, a target that was reached first thing the next morning, followed by a declaration.

Although Leicestershire offered slightly more resistance in their second innings, the result seemed a formality, and most of the day was spent speculating about comings and goings : amongst other things, I was told that Chappell was definitely moving to Nottinghamshire, which turned out to be true, and that Keith Barker, who had taken eight wickets, would be joining us at Leicestershire, which, unfortunately, turned out not to be.

A ray of light in the gloom

was the performance of Ben Mike, in his second game, who stuck to his task with the ball to take three wickets, and was the top scorer in both innings. Having struck Patel, in a feather-ruffling act of lèse-majesté, for two straight sixes, his was the last wicket to fall, attempting bravely to pull Stone for another six. Like Ben Raine, for whom he looks a plausible replacement, he strikes me as someone who can always be counted upon to go down fighting, which is a useful characteristic for a Leicestershire player to possess.

In contrast to Trott, who had slipped out unnoticed by the back door, as it were, Paul Collingwood’s every move, in his last appearance at Grace Road, was greeted with a standing ovation, to the point where, given his performance, it might, though motivated by genuine affection, have become a slight embarrassment to him. The first ovation came when he led his side on to the field, having, not unreasonably, chosen to field.

Leicestershire opened with the novel pairing of Sam Evans and Atiq Javid : at first, I assumed that regular opener Harry Dearden must have missed his bus, but it was revealed to be a deliberate tactical switch, and a successful one, with Atiq, whose average in the Championship prior to this game was in single figures, allowed to give free rein to his defensive instincts to make a maiden fifty at Grace Road. Dearden too, when he batted at five, appeared more at ease, as if the move had allowed him to loosen his stays a little.

Though Atiq’s was the only fifty of the innings, all of Leicestershire’s batsmen reached double figures, to finish the day on a hopeful 316-8. Most creditably, Mark Cosgrove, who is struggling through an unprecedented loss of form, managed to gouge out 38 painfully acquired runs, persistently attempting to play his favourite off-side strokes to balls that didn’t really invite them. If a slimmer batsmen, or one who has less hope of recovering his form, was struggling so to do what had been used to doing effortlessly, the effect would be more tragical.

Leicestershire’s total would have been smaller had Collingwood not dropped two catches in the slips (though, needless to say, he received a standing ovation as he left the field).

Of the bowlers, the mountainous Rushworth

deserved more than his two wickets. Mark Wood, though apparently pained by his ankles, was treated respectfully, watched by James Taylor, presumably there with his scout’s cap on (unless he, too, was there to say goodbye to Collingwood).

Whatever else you can say about this season at Grace Road, it has rarely been dull, and what turned out to be the last day there this year coincided with the arrival of Storm Ali. At the storm’s height, the players paused to gaze anxiously at one of the floodlights, which had begun to sway alarmingly : the only way that the season could have ended any more dramatically would have been if it had blown over and demolished the Meet.

The day had begun with a slight disappointment for Leicestershire, their last two wickets falling with the total still short of the 350 required for another bonus point (Mohammad Abbas later apologised for having played a “lazy shot”). It was at this point that the wind really began to get up (particularly the Durham batsmen). With his fourth delivery, Abbas, bowling with the swelling gale behind him, a rider on the storm, took the wicket of Cameron Steel (who had scored a double century in the same fixture last year) ; by the end of the eleventh over he had taken five wickets, with the score on 18. Bowling into the gale, Neil Dexter had bowled five consecutive maidens.

Abbas’s last victim had been that of Paul Collingwood, who was cheered to the wicket, and cheered back again one ball later.

On another day, I would have expected the visitors to have found some way to recover a little ground, even if only through the thrashing of the tail, but, as the gale reached its peak, the batsmen seemed as spooked as cats in a thunderstorm. Though efforts were made to tether it, the bell that is rung to signal the start of play began to ring of its own accord, like the ghostly church bells of a drowned village, tolling the knell for each departing batsman, and, at times, it seemed as if the sightscreen might blow over, flattening them before they could reach the wicket.

Like jackals finishing off a lion’s kill, Dexter (whose figures were 7-6-1-1), Griffiths and Mike polished off the remaining batsmen. Alex Lees, who had, at least, battened down the hatches while others abandoned ship, narrowly missed carrying his bat for a single figure score. Research soon revealed that the total of 61 was Durham’s lowest first-class score, a record that was in danger of being broken when they batted again, until a last wicket stand of seven between Rushworth and Wood enabled them to reach the comparative respectability of 66.

Mohammad Abbas, who may not have been quite unplayable, but was certainly largely unplayed, had taken another five wickets (his powers perhaps enhanced by his newly awarded “gold fox“),

to give him 10-52 in the match. Collingwood received his final ovation, about two hours after his previous one (including the lunch interval), as he left the field for the last time, having been bowled by Abbas for five. His expression as he left the field was hard to read, but I don’t think it signalled unmixed delight.

 

There was further applause as Collingwood was the first to congratulate Abbas, as he (modest to the last) had to be pushed into leading the Leicestershire players from the pitch.

From the Leicestershire dressing room soon came the merry, if unmelodious, sound of Paul Nixon leading the community singing, and the prising off of beer bottle tops : from the Durham side, a silence so deep and ominous that it could be felt half way down Milligan Road.

The last few games of a season, as departing players are left out and new players introduced, sometimes reminds me of the publishing fad of printing the first chapter of its sequel at the end of a novel, as an inducement to buy. The sequel to Leicestershire’s season seems a lot more enticing if it will feature Mohammad Abbas (as, happily, it should), rather than the Abbas-less sequel suggested by the last game of the season (a defeat away to, of all people, Glamorgan).

Although the endless love-smothering of Collingwood felt a little incongruous in the circumstances, it does suggest an understandable desire not to allow players to slip from sight without some appropriate farewell. It seems a pity that Ned Eckersley, whose release was announced shortly before the Durham game, was not allowed one last home game. Rather as when someone has died unexpectedly, I tried to recall my final sight of him in Leicestershire colours, which must have been of him being bowled by Keith Barker for a perfectly honourable 77-minute 23. If I’d known at the time, I would have clapped a lot longer and harder.

It seems churlish to complain about an excess of excitement, but I do sometimes yearn for the kind of season’s end we used to have in the days of a one division Championship, when sides with nothing to play for would drift off into the close season through somnolent draws, as if in a mildly opiated haze (which, at least, allowed some space for reflection).

With Leicestershire down in the valleys, I tried a day at Northampton, where Northants, who have had a season that has been poor even by Leicestershire’s recent standards, were taking on Sussex, badly deflated by having been overtaken at the last minute by Kent, but even here there was no peace to be found : again, twenty wickets fell in the day, though, on this occasion, ten from each side, and both sides managed to creep into three figures.

Bye!

The very last day of the season took me to Trent Bridge, where Nottinghamshire were due to resume their second innings needing another 215 to avoid an innings defeat, with seven wickets remaining. Clearly, there was little chance of Nottinghamshire saving the match, but I hoped they might spin things out for long enough for me to see some of those long shadows on the County Ground.

As I was contemplating where to sit, Ben Slater was caught behind by Trescothick from the bowling of Craig Overton. As I took my seat, Samit Patel was out in the same way to his first ball (prompting an unimpressed Nottinghamshire supporter to shout “Why not give him a standing ovation?”). Overton’s first ball to Wessels was identical to the previous two, and there seemed nothing the batsman could do other than nick it to Trescothick. It was a good job that Trescothick had announced that he wouldn’t be retiring for another year, or we would never have got home for all the ovations.

My season ended shortly before lunch, with the sun still high in the sky, and the shadows only slightly lengthening.

A Win is a Win is a Win

Leicestershire v Worcestershire, Grace Road, 30 April 2017

Leicestershire v Warwickshire, Grace Road, 2 May 2017

Leicestershire v Northamptonshire, Grace Road, 12 May 2017

Leicestershire v Derbyshire, Grace Road, 14 May 2017

As you may have noticed, although I’m pretty good at taking photos of empty stands, action photography is not really my forte, but Charlie Dryden has been kind enough to allow me to reproduce some of his excellent photographs from the games against Worcestershire and Warwickshire.  The full selection can be found at https://www.flickr.com/photos/56864674@N02/albums/with/72157683321347786

(and now from the Northants and Derbyshire games at https://chasdryden.myportfolio.com/projects)

As any football manager will tell you, “A win is a win”. Or even, as Gertrude Stein liked to say during her brief spell in the hot seat at Turf Moor “A win is a win is a win”. So, my lasting memory of Leicestershire’s campaign in this year’s Royal London One-Day Cup will be that we won the last home game (against Derbyshire) and that I was there to see it (the first of these is less rare than the second) ; the resulting euphoria is enough to cast a retrospective endorphin glow over what was, in any case, an encouraging set of performances.

In case anyone is unfamiliar with it, it is easier to explain what the RLDOC is than quite why it is what it is. The only one day competition in this year’s County calendar, it is played over 50 overs a side. The Counties are divided into two groups, on roughly geographical lines (Leicestershire are in the North group) and play each other once. The sides finishing top of these groups proceed to a home semi-final, whereas the sides finishing second and third play what is either a quarter-final or a play-off, depending on how you look at it, before proceeding to an away semi-final and then a final at Lord’s. The group stages (and this is fairly crucial) are played in a “block” during the last week of April and the first two weeks of May.

(I wouldn’t bother trying to memorise any of this, by the way. It will all be completely different next year.)

The tournament is apparently played in a “block” because the players dislike having to switch between formats, and over 50 overs because that is the format in international cricket. The timing is because the whole of July and August is reserved for T20 and June for the Champions’ Trophy (not to mention the Womens’ World Cup, which will be occupying four County grounds, including Grace Road, for three weeks from June to July).

What seems not to be remotely a consideration here is the opinion of people who enjoy watching one-day cricket, who would, I would suggest (it’s been suggested to me often enough), fairly universally, prefer a 40-over league played throughout the season on Sunday afternoons, with, if possible, a 50-over knock-out cup thrown in.

Two of Leicestershire’s home games (the ones against Worcestershire and Derbyshire) were played during daylight hours (11.00-6.45) on Sundays, and attracted respectable numbers of the kinds of people who used to watch the Sunday leagues (multi-generational, amiable, unfanatical, though without the hardcore piss artists, who are presumably saving themselves for the T20). The other two games (against Warwickshire and Northants), played on Tuesday and Friday respectively, were blighted by the ECB’s latest craze – day-night cricket.

These games are scheduled to last from 2.00 to 9.45, the idea being to allow spectators to drop in after work. This is, in itself, an admirable aim, but would probably work better in a country with a hot climate (such as Australia), or in a month when there was a reasonable chance of a warm evening (such as August). It might also work in a city which has a system of public transport which operates late enough to allow the spectators to get home (such as London). As it was, both games were poorly attended, mostly by the same people who watch Championship matches, many of whom went home, as usual, at about 5.00. There was certainly no visible after-work influx to replace them although, to be fair, rain had already set in at the Northants game and, at the other, though dry, the cold was purgatorial.

Paradoxically, I suppose, the fact that I am no longer working does allow me, public transport permitting, to watch the whole of games, as opposed to one or two days of a Championship match, or the first half of a one day game. One effect has been to make me more conscious of the narratives of games, rather than individual players and performances, more fixated on the result and, therefore, more partisan, and more inclined to hang on until the bitterly cold end of games in the hope of witnessing a Leicestershire victory.

Playing the games as a block does also lend the competition a degree of narrative coherence and allows an overall assessment of Leicestershire’s performance, which has, given their recent dismal showing in this form of the game, been surprisingly. Two wins, a defeat and an abandonment (plus three defeats and a rain-aided win away from home) may not sound like a triumph, but there have been no outright capitulations, every player has put in at least one outstanding performance and have otherwise performed consistently well.

The first two games followed the pattern of the side batting first (Worcestershire, then Leicestershire against Warwickshire) posting their record scores in List A cricket (361 and 363 respectively), leaving the side batting second (after the first ten overs) bearing the same relationship to the DL target (which now mocks them from the new scoreboard) as a greyhound does to the electric hare.

Worcestershire are currently the romantic’s choice in Division 2 : apart from Moeen Ali, they have a selection of young, locally produced players (mostly sourced from the Public Schools), and, though only Moeen made a really significant score (90), all, with the exception of Kohler-Cadmore, run out by a deft sidestep by Zak Chappell, made runs and any real hope of restricting them to a feasible total vanished when Hastings and Bernard scored 46 off the last 20 balls (Whitely had earlier smashed a hole in the boundary fence with a straight drive, which I thought he should have been billed for – we aren’t made of money).

No real blame attaches to the Leicestershire bowlers for this, on a pitch that was helpful to neither seam nor spin, though only Griffiths managed to maintain a more than respectable economy rate. Apart from his nifty footwork to remove Kohler-Cadmore, Chappell had Moeen caught behind (he hasn’t taken many wickets yet, but they’ve been good ones), but a desperately inexperienced bowler who relies on sheer pace is always likely to be expensive in this form of cricket, and it was probably prudent to omit him from the side for the last two games. What he needs is a full season’s bowling, but it is hard to see how he is going to get that when so much of the calendar is given over to T20, another form of the game in which he is never likely to be the safest option.

Zak does still have some way to go before he is quite the finished article as a nasty fast bowler.  I think I detected a hint of a vulpine lope, but, when a plastic bag (Tesco, I think) blew across his path at the start of his delivery run, he picked it up, trotted back to the pavilion and handed it to a steward. I can’t picture “Terror” Thomson in his prime being quite so public-spirited.

At the break, with Leicestershire set to chase 361, it didn’t seem likely that the major gratifications of watching one day cricket this year were going to come from on the pitch, but, with the weather warm enough to risk an ice-cream, it felt that there were worse ways to spend a Sunday afternoon, a fact brought home when it was announced that there was a serious blockage in the lavatories behind the Meet, and a bloke was summoned to spend the rest of the day trying to unblock it.  Sooner him than me.

Astonishingly (I was astonished, anyway), the Foxes almost matched Worcestershire’s total, the difference being that they were bowled out in the 48^th over, at the point when Worcestershire were about to add the 46 runs that separated the sides. I’m afraid I didn’t have enough faith to hang around to witness the final overs, but baled out in search of a bus when Aadil Ali (who had been given the licence to play with the kind of aggression and fluency that’s always come easily to him in club cricket) was run out for 88.

If Leicestershire couldn’t match Worcestershire’s 361 on the Sunday, they overhauled it on the Tuesday against Warwickshire, making 363 (another club record). This day-night match was played in front of a small crowd for a game against a neighbouring County, though, for the first hour, the atmosphere was enlivened by a party of about 500 schoolchildren. Hopes were raised of an influx of Warwickshire supporters when a fleet of coaches arrived in mid-afternoon, but it turned out they had come to take the schoolchildren away. After that an eerie silence descended on the ground.

If one problem with the Leicestershire bowlers is a lack of experience, the problem with Warwickshire’s (and the team generally) looks to be too much of it. Leicestershire have put their two biggest eggs in one basket by opening with their two one-day specialists, Pettini and Delport. Against Worcestershire Delport had somehow contrived to be stumped early on off the bowling of Joe Leach, but this time the tactic came off triumphantly, the openers making 72 off the first seven overs, allowing them to promote Aadil Ali ahead of retrenchment specialist Eckersley and introduce death-or-glory boy Tom Wells early to lead an assault that brought over 100 off the last ten overs.

Pettini made a club-record 159, playing, unlike Delport or Wells, with the rapier, or possibly sabre, rather than the cudgel. He has been playing like a man possessed this year, having been a marginal figure last season, though whether this is the result, as is popularly supposed, of having been rapped by tough-talking boss De Bruyn in a clear-the-air-session, I couldn’t say. If he carries on like this I might even stop confusing him with Tony Palladino.

Warwickshire’s reply was hobbled at the outset, as was the unfortunate batsman, when a vicious yorker from our secret weapon Dieter Klein hit Porterfield on the instep plumb in front of the wicket. Hain (a batsman I perhaps over-rate because he makes a century every time I see him) and Ambrose made runs, but not quickly enough ; Trott and Bell look increasingly like a band who haven’t made a decent record in years, but have every half-decent effort hailed as a return to form, and the visitors’ last five wickets fell for 14 runs.

So, a famous victory, which, of course, I wasn’t there to see, having left to catch the last bus home (which leaves the city centre soon after 8.00). I’d be surprised if many were : the crowd was already sparse when I left, many of the regulars having left in the interval, and I think the only new arrivals had been a party of polar bears who said they’d come down from the Arctic to cool off.

Such was my determination to see the end of a game that, for the match against Northants (another day-night affair), I splashed out and came by train (the last train home leaves Leicester shortly before 10.00).  The forecast was equivocal about the prospect of rain, but, I thought, even if it came down to a 10-over thrash at 8.00, I could say I was there.

The afternoon started well, in sunshine, and with Klein repeating his trick by bowling Duckett in the first over for 0 (I would normally feel ambivalent about this, because I enjoy watching Duckett bat, but, by now, cup fever was upon me).  It then took on an ominous aspect, as Levi and Newton made half-centuries apiece, and the clouds gathered.  The first rain fell at 3.00, and, apart from a ten-minute reprise at 5.15, that was it.  The game was finally called off at 7.15, which did, at least, give me time to have some of Mr. Stew’s excellent shepherd’s pie for dinner, though I needn’t have bothered with the train ticket.

The crowd for this, by the way, was lower than you would normally expect for a County Championship game.  Admittedly the forecast was unpromising, but it cannot help that, to travel from Northampton to Leicester by train (a distance of about 40 miles) you would have to go via Birmingham or London.

And so to the last game, against Derbyshire (which was well-attended, with a substantial Derbyshire contingent).  I did have a suspicion that the visitors, who looked a depressed side last year, might be much-improved this season : Gary Wilson, Luis Reece and particularly “Hardus” Viljoen sounded like handy signings, and Harvey Hosein, a wicket-keeper batsmen, had impressed me as a useful prospect when he played against us at Derby.  In the event, they looked a poor side throughout. Neither Wilson nor Hosein played (quasi-Kolpak Daryn Smit, listed as an “occ WK” in Playfair, was behind the stumps) and it was only thanks to 98* by Alex Hughes (playing the “anchor role” that I thought was now outmoded) that they reached the total of 219, which would not have been overly impressive in 1976.

Viljoen’s first couple of overs raised the spectre that I might be making it home early, without seeing a Leicestershire win, being rapid enough to have Pettini caught behind and induce Delport and Eckersley (who can be a nervous starter) to play and miss more than once. However, his fire seemed to die down as the innings progressed and the only real threat came from Ben Cotton (a tall, “raw-boned” seamer of the kind that Derbyshire used, apocryphally, to be able to whistle up from the nearest pit, though, in fact, he seems to come from Stoke), who bowled 9 overs for 18 runs and briefly re-summoned that spectre by removing Cosgrove and Aadil Ali with Leicestershire still 100 short.

However, as you may remember from the spoiler at the beginning of this piece, Eckersley, permitted by the circumstances of the match to play an only slightly accelerated version of his preferred game, and Lewis Hill, whose unorthodoxy can sometimes stray into comedy (he has a tendency to fall over), but who is nothing if not determined, steered the ship safely to within one run of the harbour, when Eckersley was run out.

The entire Leicestershire contingent, who had gathered in front of the pavilion to applaud the two heroes off the field, had first to applaud Eckersley off solo,

and then reconvene to celebrate the victory itself, which we did with much jubilation.  Supporters of more successful sides may be blasé about this kind of scene, but I can assure you that it was well worth waiting for.  And, as it had only taken them 40 overs, I was even home in time for dinner.

 

 

 

Live at the Electric Circus

Leicestershire Foxes v “Birmingham Bears”, T20 Northern Division, Grace Road, Friday 24th June

“I’m so tired of working every day / Now the weekend’s come I’m gonna throw my troubles away / If you’ve got the cab fare mister you’ll do all right  / I want to see the bright lights tonight.”

This was the second game of professional T20 I’ve seen  (I admit I went more out of curiosity than in the expectation of enjoyment). The first was a gentle Sunday afternoon affair, which led me to conclude that every social event in English life aspires to the condition of a village fete. A little sweeping, and too optimistic. There is, also, as we have seen, the “good day out”, and then there is the “good night out” which, for that section of the population most likely to enjoy one (men, mostly, between the ages of about 18 and 50) has three key ingredients: a) a beer b) a curry and c) a laugh. All three were available in profusion at Grace Road on Friday evening (the cricket, such as it was, provided the laughs).

Past T20 campaigns at Grace Road have had various outlandish, family orientated themes: a beach theme one year, Hawaiian another. This year the approach is more direct: the slogan is “Bright lights, great nights” (we have floodlights now, you see) and the key offer is “Beer & balti” (“pre-match curry served with rice & naan bread” and “complimentary bar with unlimited draft beer and lager and house wines until the close of play”) and, where beer and balti are, can bantz be far behind?

For patrons who prefer an a la carte approach to getting drunk, the old Geary Stand (named after Leicestershire’s famously “genial” inter-war stalwart George Geary), which once offered a refuge from the elements for the more sensitive spectators

has been transformed into the Geary Bar and the Spice Bazzar, thus, conveniently, allowing spectators to drink, eat curry and shelter from the rain simultaneously.

Using cricket as a pretext to sell large amounts of alcohol has a history in England that stretches back to its eighteenth century origins as a commercial sport, when games were often laid on by inn-keepers as an alternative, or adjunct, to other, even less genteel, entertainments such cock-fighting and shift racing. Often, inevitably, the combination of booze and banter led to outbreaks of violence, such as after the match in Hinckley I described in an earlier post.

This culture of boozing’n’brawling (which never entirely went away) re-emerged and reached its apogee in the Hogarthian days of the old John Player League in the ‘seventies and ‘eighties. Before the reform of the licensing laws the pubs were obliged to shut at 2.00, roughly when the games began : as a result, hardened topers would repair to the cricket, having already put in a couple of hours in the pub, and continue drinking for another five hours, with predictable results. (There is, for example, a description in Jon Agnew’s “8 Days a Week” of the Leicestershire team having to barricade themselves in the dressing room while enraged Glamorgan supporters smashed its windows in their efforts to get at them.)

I have to say that, although there was no shortage of booze, there was no real belligerence to the crowd at Grace Road on Friday. Apart from my feeling that we are simply a less physically violent society than we were in my youth, there is hardly enough time to get fighting drunk in the space of a T20 game, particularly when (unless you really fancy drinking pints of Pimms) the strongest brew on offer was Foster’s.

The other selling point this year is the new floodlighting, which was switched on before it was quite needed. I find there is a certain romance in floodlit football, a sort of Beltane light in the darkness quality (the poetry of the raindrops dancing in the backlit fagsmoke), but having them on this early on what should have been a fine evening in late June served only to highlight the unseasonable murk, to have too much in common with that peculiar English contradiction-in-terms, the patio heater.

As the game took place the day after the Referendum, I suppose I should try to tie the two together in some way, to suggest that the mood of the crowd (a sort of jovially sullen defiance) reflected the mood of the nation, but that would be stretching it a bit.  It is true that the award of some cheques to various “inner-city clubs” was met with total silence, but then so was the lap of honour made by a junior club in the interval (led, of course, by good old Charlie Fox, whose sunny temperament seemed quite unaffected by the day’s momentous events).

If I seem to be treating this match as an anthropological exercise, that is because, considered simply as a game of cricket, it was of negligible interest. Warwickshire won the toss and, on a wicket still moist from earlier rain, and under low cloud, chose to bowl. Although Woakes, Rankin, Barker and Wright were missing, they were still able to play Clarke, Hannon-Dolby, Gordon and Adair, four seamers who would be automatic choices for the smaller counties. There was nothing fancy about the bowling, but, in these conditions, it would have been enough (in conventional cricket) to make any sensible batsman batten down the hatches and try to ride the storm out.

As it was, it was sad to see a talented group of batsman reduced to playing the kind of lamentable swipe that would get you slung out of a self-respecting pub team, in a futile attempt to “move the score along” and avoid the dreaded “dot ball” (although it was clear five overs in that they stood no chance of winning). Six of the seven wickets to fall were caught well short of the boundary the shots were intended to clear (the other saw Kevin O’Brien running himself out). If there was any sign of “360 degree batting”, it was mostly unintentional, although Lewis Hill did manage to play a deft slog-sweep for six and a neat scoop over the wicket-keeper’s head for four. Unfortunately, when he tried to repeat the trick a few balls later, the ball plopped tamely into the wicket-keeper’s gloves.

The crowd (apart from one man who shouted “You Bears” every fifteen minutes, like a cuckoo-clock, they were mostly Foxes supporters) greatly enjoyed any Leicestershire boundary, whether it came off the bat, or, better still, as a result of some incompetent wicket-keeping or mishaps in the field. They seemed particularly amused when spinner Jeetan Patel fired in a ball at about 85 miles an hour without, judging by the angry gesticulation that followed, warning ‘keeper Ronchi he was about to do so, but their favourite thing of all seemed to be when a Warwickshire fieldsman narrowly failed to cut off a boundary because he had slipped over on the wet outfield. If only one of them had gone head first into an advertising hoarding, I imagine it would have made their night.

As it was, the highlight of the evening came when Sam Hain claimed a low catch deep in the outfield. The batsmen, as is the convention these days, pretended they hadn’t noticed and stayed put. The Umpires both walked over to Hain and, presumably, asked him earnestly, on Scouts’ Honour, whether he had taken the catch fairly. Whatever the conversation, no wicket resulted.

Unfortunately for Hain, all this had taken place directly in front of the “Stench and Benno Stand”, where the Foxes’ Ultras congregate (yes, we do have some). As a result, whenever the ball came near him he was greeted with boos, catcalls, choruses of “Does your carer know you’re here?” and a persistent chant of “Cheat, cheat, cheat!”. In alternate overs, he tried to take refuge in front of the “Family Stand” (no smoking, no alcohol), but the small children there gleefully took up the chant “Cheat, cheat, cheat ….”.

Cheat?

(I am not implying, by the way, that there was anything malicious about any of this.  It is just how you behave at the football, which is where most of the crowd have learned their sporting etiquette.)

There were almost as many children at Grace Road on Friday as there had been at last week’s Women’s International. One group will remember a squeaky-clean, officially sanctioned celebration of diversity, inclusion and all that is meant to be best in the modern game of cricket, the other a chance to stay up past your bedtime, eat chips, see your Dad get half-pissed and shout abuse at the opposition. I’m not at all sure which of the two groups is the more likely to have formed a lifelong attachment to the game. Whatever the answer, I don’t think they will be seeing me at too many more floodlit matches, at least not until the weather improves, or I become a Grandfather (whichever is the sooner).

Due to the railway timetable (which I won’t bore you with here), I left about five overs into Warwickshire’s reply (they won easily, of course).  Ian Bell opened their batting and I was able to catch a glimpse of his fabled “elegance” before I left, but I couldn’t help feeling  that, in this context, it was a little like watching Glenn Gould being asked to fill in between a stripper and the meat-raffle.

“A couple of drunken nights rolling on the floor / Is just the kind of mess I’m looking for / I want to see the bright lights …”

Skating Away on the Thin Ice of a New Season

Nottinghamshire v Leicestershire, Trent Bridge, 1st April 2016 & Warwickshire v Worcestershire, 5th April 2016 (both pre-season friendlies)

Some lines that have often come to mind, as I have looked around at my companions while watching County cricket, are Larkin’s “I know this is paradise / Everyone old has dreamed of all their lives” (from ‘High Windows’).  Not, as for Larkin, unlimited, guilt-free sexual congress (far from it), but the ability, after too many years tethered to a workplace, to watch cricket every Summer’s day for the rest of their lives.

I now find that I have, not unexpectedly, if a little prematurely, attained that paradise, having retired (or, strictly speaking, having been retired, like David Beckham’s football shirt).  Having reached it, though, I am slightly wary that it will turn out to be something of a fool’s paradise.  Part of the attraction of a day at the cricket for me has always been the feeling that I am on holiday, and, recently in particular, that I am on holiday when I ought to be at work, and now, of course, I have no work.

I can assuage this feeling a little by assiduously catching up on the gardening (or, for that matter, by writing this) on the days when I am not at the cricket, and suspect it is probably wise to build up slowly from two or three days a week, but, no doubt, by the end of the season, I shall have attained full badgerhood, and will find myself eagerly scanning the internet for news of one last Notts Academy game at Wellbeck Colliery before the Autumn sets in.

One sign that I haven’t yet fully transitioned is that I’ve passed up the opportunity to watch all but two days of this season’s pre-season friendlies, one at Trent Bridge and one at Edgbaston (the real hardcore will have already put in a solid three weeks cocooned in Gore-Tex and fleece by the time the County Championship begins next week).

Trent Bridge is a venue that I have often visited and have often written about in glowing terms.  Of all the Test-hosting grounds I’ve visited it best pulls off the difficult trick of being both grand and homely, of combining the traditional and the contemporary and of feeling as well-suited to County cricket as the bigger occasions.  It has about the best place I know to watch cricket on a fine day (the Radcliffe Road stand) and one of the best on a cold one – the interior of the Pavilion, which is cosy without being stuffy and has a sense of history, without allowing that history to become too much of a weight.

(While there, I managed inadvertently to photograph, and later made the acquaintance of, Tony Hutton, a stalwart of the Northern circuit and one of the authors of the excellent blog “Cricket History of Calderdale and Kirklees“, which I would advise you to seek out and follow.  He is not the Rastafarian in the foreground, by the way.)

Edgbaston is as near to my home as Nottingham, but I had never been there before Tuesday, and I’m not sure I’m in any great hurry to go back, unless, perhaps, it was for a Test Match.  Whereas Trent Bridge seems to belong to Nottinghamshire CCC, who allow it to be used for Tests, Edgbaston makes no bones about primarily a Test Match stadium, with the Birmingham Bears a close second and Warwickshire a poor third.

Its architect seems to have been a man with one big idea – that you can never have too much reinforced concrete – and that, if you don’t like naked concrete, you can always paint it bright blue.

Whereas Trent Bridge has kept its venerable pavilion and built the ground in harmony around it, Edgbaston seems to have erased any trace of its past, except for its “iconic” score box and, perhaps, this bear, clinging for dear life to its ragged staff to avoid getting swept away by the Winds of Change howling around the ground.

They are, I’m told, in the process of developing the ground (presumably to make it even bigger and more packed with reinforced concrete) and, perhaps as a result of this, the concourse around the ground is currently an extraordinary shantytown of tumbledown bars and fast food outlets, weedy waste ground and, in an unusual touch, a small evangelical church around the back of the R.E.S. Wyatt Stand.  In fact, the whole place is such a mixture of brutalism and edgelands that I wouldn’t have been too surprised to have spotted some earnest young man with a beard and tattoos tapping out a Tumblr about it.

But this is, I confess, a superficial impression, formed in unpropitious circumstances.  County cricket supporters are hardy organisms who, like lichen, can thrive in apparently inhospitable terrain and, if I became used to the ground, I’m sure I could, in time, carve out some homely niche for myself there.   In fact, when the sun came out briefly in the late afternoon I could picture the particular concrete terrace I was sitting in as the surrounds of a seaside lido, and the executive boxes as beach huts, the Members picking their way gingerly down to the pitch in their swimming costumes, shoes and towels in hand.  But that would have to be much later in the Summer, when Gore-Tex and fleece are but a distant memory.

As is usually the case in these games, the cricket itself was fairly negligible (their main purpose seems to be to reacclimatise the players to the English weather after their earlier pre-season warm-ups in Barbados or Dubai).  Both Bell and Trott (whom I had been wanting to see) were out before I arrived at Edgbaston, and it is no news that batsmen of the quality of James Taylor (seen here sizing up the opposition),

Sam Hain or even Laurie Evans are not likely to be troubled by the second string attacks of Second Division Counties. The regulations allowed them to retire when they reached around 55 and they all seized the opportunity with some alacrity.  We should all be so lucky, eh readers?

A feature of Trent Bridge is that the doors to the pavilion have small portholes cut into them, to allow the gatemen to see when a player needs to be let back in.  I thought I would try to record the view through one, but all I seem to have photographed is air and light.

How did that Larkin poem end again?

………………………… and immediately

Rather than words comes the thought of high windows:

The sun-comprehending glass,

And beyond it, the deep blue air, that shows

Nothing, and is nowhere, and is endless.