Series of Dreams

I generally sleep well these days.  When I don’t, perhaps through an excess of wine or cheese, I sleep fitfully, slipping in and out of a series of dreams, caught up in narratives which cohere until I stir, when they dissolve, to be replaced by a succession of similar fragments, until I wake, when these mini-dramas, which temporarily compelled my attention, vanish from my memory.  I mention this not to be gratuitously boring, but because following this year’s cricket season has seemed rather like that.

After months without cricket, it has felt like opening an overstuffed high cupboard in search of something lost, and having its contents fall out on to your head.  Since I last wrote, I have followed (by various means), at a rough estimate, five Test Matches, four of Leicestershire’s Bob Willis Trophy games, three club matches at Market Harborough, four at Kibworth, one in Great Bowden, one on the Recreation Ground behind my home, and the closing stages of a junior game which I came across by accident on a walk.   

Of these, I only saw one in its entirety, and in many cases that entirety was rendered less than entire by rain. At times, I have listened to one game in the morning and watched another in the afternoon ; at others, watched a County game online while listening to the Test on the radio.  It is not surprising that most of them have, along with my fitful dreams, vanished from my memory.  I suppose it is salutary to be reminded, by seeing a whole season concertinaed into a couple of months, how much of the average season is, far from the Platonic ideal as imagined by Neville Cardus, or me in the depths of Winter, spent in disappointment and wet frustration.

The structure of English cricket resembles a human pyramid : amazing feats are performed at its apex, while no-one notices that the bottom row are beginning to stagger, and that ill-wishers are attempting to kick their legs out from under them.  To begin at the top of that pyramid, most of my memories of 2020’s international cricket will be of Test Match Special itself, rather than any of the games that they were reporting on.  The interminable saga of what the presenters were planning to have for their dinner will be as redolent of the immediate post-lockdown period as the alcopop reek of hand-sanitiser, or wind-blown blue masks mingling with the early Autumn leaves.

TMS has been as much about itself as the cricket for years, and, in fairness, the numerous interruptions for rain did not leave much choice but to fall back on their own resources.  Predictably, I found the dips into the archives the most memorable.  What struck me (apart from how the presenters’ voices had deepened over the years), is how various those voices used to be : Arlott’s Hampshire ; Johnston and Blofeld’s music hall toff ; CMJ’s exaggerated RP ; Lewis’s Welsh ; Trueman and Mosey’s Yorkshire.  With the departure of Boycott and Blofeld (who represented that tradition in, latterly, self-parodic fashion), we now hear, apart from Agnew (who will eventually turn into Johnston), and Vaughan’s trans-Pennine caw, the tones of Herne Hill, High Wycombe, Barnet, Dulwich and (with the addition of Mark Ramprakash), Bushey.

Perhaps cricket is now a less various game, perhaps we are a less variously-voiced nation (that portion of it that is allowed on the BBC, anyway), and TMS may well be the best programme that it is possible to produce in England in 2020.  (I would not claim, incidentally, that my own tones, like Derek Nimmo on Mandrax*, would do anything to improve the situation). It goes without saying that I should miss TMS if it went, and that we should be grateful to the ECB, the West Indies and Pakistan for arranging two entertaining and coffer-replenishing series.  So I shalln’t say it.

I am not the only one to have been dreaming.  At first, I thought that naming this year’s County competition the ‘Bob Willis Trophy’ was a nicely sentimental tribute to the recently deceased great, if a little incongruous, given his reputed lack of enthusiasm for representing Warwickshire.  But then I recalled his contribution to the symposium in the ‘Wisden Cricketer’ in October 1999, which I discussed at (probably excessive) length a short while ago.

In it, Willis, having accused the County members of having made ‘a terrible mess’ of running the game, and the players of being a ‘clapped-out army’, goes on to propose that we should ‘split our current 18 teams into three divisions of six and play ten first-class matches a season’.  This is not quite what we have had this season, but, if various people who ought to know are to be believed, it is likely that we will be getting something along those lines next year.  It is not obvious to me why this would be an improvement on previous arrangements, but, as most of the alternative proposals seem to involve Leicestershire ceasing to exist (as advanced by that frightful old ghoul Graves), or only playing limited overs cricket, it should not be much worse, given that it promises no reduction in first-class matches (thanks to some kind of subsidiary competition tacked on to the end of the main one).

Leicestershire’s results in the BWT have been a bonsai of one of their typical seasons : after their encouraging win against Lancashire in the first game, they lost by nine wickets to Derbyshire (having been forced to follow on, and – as the club’s Twitter put it – taken a slender 11 run lead) ; been denied by rain against Durham, in a contrived run chase they were favourites to win ; in their turn, denied Nottinghamshire a win in another game spavined by bad light and showers ; and, finally, a hugely discouraging ten wicket defeat by Yorkshire.   I would like to say that I have followed all these faithfully on the streaming service, but it has been more a matter of a few afternoon sessions.

As compared to Lancashire’s coverage of the first game, which had fairly high production values, that from Grace Road has been a throwback to the earliest days of cricket broadcasting with a fixed camera at both ends (unless it was one bloke haring from end to end between overs on his bike).  At times, the (fine) commentary has been a little ahead of the pictures, which at least alerts the viewer whose attention is wandering that a ball will be worth watching, and at others they have seemed to be employing some of the primitive psychedelic effects that used to feature on Top of the Pops in the early 1970s (though that was probably attributable to some inadequacy in my wi-fi connection).  Given the rain we have had I seem to have spent a lot of the last months squinting at what appeared to be CCTV footage of the ground staff going about their business.  At least we have been spared the vast boredom of replays and DRS reviews.

When play was possible, the fixed camera puts the viewer in the position of one who remains clamped to his seat behind the bowler’s arm, binoculars trained on the square.  There are spectators of this kind in real life (what you might call the Ted Chippington tendency) and, no doubt, their diligence is rewarded by technical insights that those who, like me, prefer to roam around are denied.  On the other hand, they miss a large part of what, for me, makes a day at Grace Road enjoyable : the susurrus overhead as the wind ruffles the limes, the creeping advance of the shade across the cheap seats parallel to the wicket as the afternoon draws on, the cheering sight of the lunchtime special being paraded from the kitchens to The Meet, the heady whiff of old socks and disinfectant issuing from the air conditioning in the indoor schools at the Bennett End.  But I am becoming sentimental.

At least, except when they were having trouble focusing, the fixed cameras spared me the painful sight of what I was being denied.  I have given up attempting to discern the logic behind the ever-changing restrictions, but I cannot understand why lower division football clubs are allowed to admit 10% of their capacity (the other evening I attended a game where the attendance was 230), when County cricket clubs are not allowed to admit any spectators at all, at grounds where the capacity is considerably larger.  I would estimate the capacity of Grace Road to be about 10,000, so application of the same principle would mean that the number permitted to attend would be considerably in excess of any crowd we achieved for a Championship game last season.  There do seem to have been some attempts to circumvent the lockout, including a suffragette-style chaining to the railings on the Milligan Road side, and an occupation of the balcony of the ‘Cricketers’ pub, which offers an unobstructed view of the pitch.  At times the commentary could just pick up the plangent dying fall of Stench’s vuvuzela, summoning up remembrance of things past.  But I am becoming sentimental again.

To look on the bright side, the freakish nature of the season has meant that none of the players has lost out too badly.  Those who have been successful have advanced their cases, while those who have not can write their figures off as being too small a sample to be significant.  Colin Ackermann has made a success of the captaincy, and has largely carried the batting.  Harry Swindells has probably established himself as the first choice ‘keeper in red ball cricket.  Sam Evans, with the bat, and Ben Mike, (mostly) with the ball, have done enough to remain ‘promising’ (though the latter promises more in the shorter forms).  Harry Dearden is inching closer to averaging thirty in a season, has looked good when permitted to cut loose, and should be allowed to try it more often.  Without doing anything startling, Tom Taylor has confirmed that the side is more balanced with him in it**.  Callum Parkinson narrowly missed being our leading wicket-taker, and ought to play for often.

Heading the list of those who might prefer to write 2020 off as a bad dream is Hassan Azad, who, having made 58 in his first innings, made only another 86 in his next seven outings, averaging 18.  Last September I expressed the fear that he could be in for a ‘a testing time next season’ : I could not have predicted quite how testing it would be for all of us, but I hope the cricket gods will accept this as his ‘difficult second season’.  The rot set in against Derbyshire, with a couple of freakish dismissals : in the first he was stumped off a seamer, perhaps having already set off on his post-delivery stroll half way to square leg ; in the second, his logical scientific mind was unable to cope with the nonsensical questions (‘why is a hat stand an otter?’) posed by Leus du Plooy, a bowler whose stock delivery seemed to be the waist-high full toss.  To add a comical irony to injury, he took a wicket, having been brought on as a joke bowler with the aim of gifting Durham runs to expedite a declaration, and nearly finished top of the bowling averages.

Hassan has signed a two year extension to his contract, which requires something of a leap of faith on both sides : on Leicestershire’s that he can overcome the limitations of his game and prove that his first season was more typical than his second, and on his that Leicestershire are going to be able to pay a living wage to a player who is unlikely ever to feature in white ball cricket.  With his qualifications, he cannot, even in the current climate, be short of other options.  Alternatively, another of Willis’s recommendations – that there should only be 24 full-time professionals, with the rest playing as amateurs – might suit his case. 

As usual, various ex-Foxes have come back to haunt us (though we were spared a visitation by Darren Stevens) : one of the more dreamlike images, enhanced by the psychedelic effects on CCTV, was the sight of Ben Raine and Ned Eckersley batting together against us for Durham.  Zak Chappell, too, was back with Nottinghamshire, having undergone a transformation from the slim-gilt youth who used to turn out for Market Harborough into a hulking brute whom you might expect to see appearing under some macabre alias in a professional wrestling bout.  He seemed to have sacrificed a little speed for accuracy (Tom Barber, at the other end, supplied the woolly wildness) : although I feel contractually obliged to wish him ill, I am pleased to see that he took 15 wickets (15 more than last season) and – as significantly – played four consecutive games.  I wish him well.

One of the more attractive features of the BWT is that the format stimulated the teams to make greater efforts than usual to achieve a win.  One memorable image is of Chappell, desperate to continue chipping away at some admirably obdurate last ditch resistance by Leicestershire on the last day, replacing the stumps that Nick Cook (who seemed more inclined to warm his toes in the Umpire’s room) had recently uprooted (and getting a ticking-off for his Lèse-majesté).  Chappell’s urgency may have stemmed from a desire to end Nottinghamshire’s lengthy stretch without a win, which now dates back to June 2018 (having probably had enough of that at Leicestershire, not to mention Market Harborough).

Harborough too had not won since June 2018, until, unlike Notts, they won the last game of the season, against Thorpe Arnold. This was only the 1^st XI’s second home game of the season, the scheduled second, against Electricity Sports, having fallen foul of the Leicester lockdown (an additional source of pain in this area).  After an hour, Harborough were 30-odd for 6, with clouds gathering and rain in the air.  I am afraid to say, dear reader, that I decided to cut my losses and caught a bus to the other end of town to watch the football (where Harborough Town won 6-0).  It had been so cold and wet at the game that I assumed the only question was whether Thorpe Arnold had had time to finish us off before the game was abandoned.  In fact, we had, God knows how, made 80 and bowled them out for 67.  You would think that, given that I had been present for most of their home defeats, I might have been entitled to witness their victory, but I suppose it serves me right (O me of little faith!).

My season is, I think, over now, but the season is not : if you happen to be a follower of T20, Somerset or Essex it is approaching its climax, and if you follow the England Women’s team it is just beginning.  September is a poignant time for cricketers (I know this must be true, because I say it every year).  That poignancy usually stems from an atavistic awareness of a long Summer season approaching its end, and is softened by the sure and certain hope that it will return again in the Spring.  This year there has been no long Summer season, the emotions are more mixed, and less simply nameable, and my hope that the season will return is less sure and far from certain.  However, Winter well, as far as you are able.  

*For younger readers, Nimmo was an actor of the ‘60s and ‘70s, who specialised in playing clergymen, and also advertised Penguin biscuits.  Mandrax was a hypnotic sedative, popular as a recreational drug in the counterculture. 

**Since I wrote this, Taylor has signed for Northamptonshire.  It’s enough to unbalance anyone, never mind the team.   

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.

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

Reasons to be Rueful

Leicestershire (427 & 186) v Middlesex (233 & 383-9), Grace Road, County Championship, 20-23 June 2018

Middlesex won by 1 wicket

I have never been very sympathetic to the perpetual complaints from cricketers that there is too much cricket. I have no doubt that accountants feel that there is too much accountancy, and that, if they only had to work alternate weeks, they would approach their spreadsheets with greater freshness and enthusiasm. I am, however, beginning to see their point.

It is not so much that there is too much cricket, but that the cricket of the type that I want to watch is condensed into too short a space of time, with too long a period when there is only the type that I don’t much want to watch. I will shortly be withdrawing to the backwaters to watch Second XI cricket for six or seven weeks, while the professionals (or most of them) are occupied with the most intense part of their season, the “Vitality Blast” (not some dubious herbal remedy for erectile dysfunction, but the new name for the T20 competition).

Leicestershire aren’t helping. No sooner have I reported on a defeat, than I find they have won. No sooner have I have reported on a victory, than I find they have lost. As soon as I began to write about their defeat by Middlesex, I found they had beaten Derbyshire in three days (a match I would have attended, had it not been a day-night fixture – £40 (including the train fare) being too high a price to pay for half a day’s cricket).

After two days, Leicestershire had been in a winning position against Middlesex too, and still contrived to lose : it was the second time this season that they have been in a position to enforce the follow on, but lost. The natural cliché in these circumstances is that Leicestershire “must be rueing those eight dropped catches” (I only counted six, but Captain Horton, who was responsible for a couple of them, thought there were eight), but, although they looked a little sheepish as they left the field, they clearly didn’t waste much time feeling rueful, preferring to make amends by beating Derbyshire.

Leicestershire’s supporters, though, may be forgiven a smidgeon of ruefulness. On the one hand, we have now played all but three of the Counties in our division, and competed on at least equal terms with all of them. For two days we were the superior side against a team who had won the Championship in 2016. But one more wicket against Middlesex and a second innings total of 147 against Durham would have meant that we would now have been leading the table, with promotion a realistic prospect. The time for ruefulness may come at the end of the season.

The game seemed haunted by a spectre that only occasionally showed itself – ‘the one that kept low’. I was a little surprised that Middlesex opted to have a toss, and that Leicestershire, having won it, chose to bat. The first morning was the only part of the game that was played under cloud, before the heatwave set in, and Middlesex’s bowling included Finn, Harris and Murtagh. The decision may have been influenced by the fact that the same pitch had been used the previous day for a one-day game against India A, when the odd one had appeared to keep low, and the suspicion that the demons of lowness would emerge on what would effectively be the fifth day of use.

The same fear, I think, underlay the decision not to enforce the follow on, and dictated the general tone of straight-batted watchfulness adopted by both sides’ batsmen. Unexpectedly, although the bounce was a little low at times on the last day, it was mostly an even and predictable lowness that could easily be catered for. A win of the toss does not abolish chance, as Mallarmé perhaps meant to write.

The bulk of Leicestershire’s total of 427 came from an epically watchful, but refined, unbeaten innings of 197 by Colin Ackermann, who came to the wicket early and was only denied a deserved double century when his last escort, Mohammad Abbas, to his evident remorse, was not quite able to keep him company to the end of his journey. He had earlier received useful support from Dexter, Raine, and, to his obvious pride, Gavin Griffiths, who had batted for close to two hours for his career-best 40.

With the exception of Murtagh, who bowled 11 maidens and took five wickets, and lacking Roland-Jones, the Middlesex bowling was surprisingly ineffectual. Finn looked, frankly, bored, and took longer to traipse back to the start of his shortened run-up than he used to when he came in off 20 paces. It has always been something of a mystery to me why Murtagh had to wait for Ireland’s recent elevation to play Test cricket : perhaps it is because, however often he outperforms Finn, he does not look, to the naked eye, as much like our idea of what a Test match bowler ought to be.

The only part of what seemed like a very long match that I missed was the last hour on the second day. Unfortunately, this was the most dramatic passage of the game, as Middlesex collapsed from 200-3 to 233 all out, with Chappell taking another three wickets to add to an early rearrangement of Eskinazi’s stumps that had the batsman looking back, seemingly unable to comprehend what could have happened. Having taken three early wickets, Leicestershire had been frustrated by Dawid Malan, Paul Stirling (an Irishman whose full red beard makes him look as if he is auditioning for the role of a leprechaun on a fruit machine), and Australian utility player Hilton Cartwright ; they were also frustrated by their own inability to take catches (Gavin Griffiths, off whose bowling two were missed, seemed to be suffering the torments of the damned).

Overnight, Middlesex were, apparently, told a few home truths by their coach. It might have been that which accounted for Leicestershire’s low second innings total of 186, though the batsmen’s fear of the pitch (and the Ones That Keep Low) seemed a factor as well. Paul Horton (whose shirt, in a nod to his Australian roots, now reads ‘Hoon’) was bowled fifth ball by a delivery from Harris that was suspected of keeping low. Ackermann carried on where he had left off, making three to bring up his double century, before, again, being bowled by Harris. Harry Dearden, meanwhile, retreated into his tortoise-shell, making six in a little short of an hour and a half, before being caught behind.

Mark Cosgrove, who has been uncharacteristically unproductive recently, was LBW to an occasional off-break from Max Holden (Cosgrove always reacts to being given out as if he has been the victim of a baffling conjuring trick, but this time his surprise seemed genuine). Neil Dexter, in a rare display of absent-mindedness, strolled out of his crease to a delivery from Murtagh, and was stumped by a lob from behind the stumps : he, too, looked surprised. Raine (aggressively) and Chappell (more diffidently) combined, with some useful assistance from Griffiths, to take the total to 186.

In itself, this was a disappointing total, but raised hopes that Middlesex might find batting equally hard in pursuit of a fourth innings target of 381 on a pitch that was expected to disintegrate at any minute. On the subject of the pitch, Sam Robson, at one point, had plonked himself down a few seats away from me to fiddle with the strapping on his finger. His view was that ‘one or two are doing a bit’, which might have been laconic Australian understatement, but was probably an accurate statement of fact. When Malan was caught behind in the dying minutes of the day, to leave Middlesex on 79-3, the Foxes could head off into the still sultry evening, bright-eyed, bushy-brushed, and incautiously optimistic.

As final days on which the batting side overhaul a total of 381, with one wicket and five overs remaining, go, the last day was undramatic (after the Glamorgan game, we at Grace Road have grown blasé about dramatic finishes). The pitch, like an attack dog that rolls over to have its tummy tickled, failed to live up to its reputation. There were no de Lange-style heroics, only a couple of surprising twists, and there was nothing obvious that Leicestershire could have done to achieve a different result.

Until mid-afternoon, the worst prospect was that Middlesex would hold on for a draw (throughout the day, the likelihood of the four results shuffled their order like the teams in a World Cup qualifying group graphic). Steven ‘Vladimir’ Askenazi and the useful utility player Cartwright had made slow but sure progress to 197-5, with the former himself on 97. The seam bowling had been parsimonious, but suggested little prospect of producing five wickets. Some of the more vocal elements in the crowd had been agitating loudly for the introduction of the spinner Parkinson, and when Captain Hoon took their advice, the results were immediate. The batsmen (Cartwright seemingly more at fault) made the mistake of underestimating Ben Raine by running for a misfield by him, and(shying, for once, at the stumps rather than the batsman), Raine ran Askenazi out.

At tea, Middlesex required 105 from 33 overs, with four wickets remaining. With Horton apparently reluctant to bowl Parkinson (perhaps haunted by thoughts of the pasting he had taken against Glamorgan), a last throw of the dice was required. Chappell had not bowled all day, but, during the interval, the bowling coach, Matt Mason, went on to the pitch to torment him with a giant elastic band and a small beach ball. Chappell seemed to be trying to convey, through a dumb show of grimacing and wincing, that he did not think he was fit to bowl, whereas Mason, an Australian, who, as P. G. Wodehouse said in another context, looks as if he might kill rats with his teeth and gargle with broken glass, remained unmoved.

Chappell, manfully, if reluctantly, bowled the first three overs after tea, all wicketless, still wincing and grimacing, before he left the field, leaving the three seamers to bowl with creditable accuracy to two batsmen, the contrite Cartwright and James Harris, who, with commendable restraint, blocked the straight balls and pushed away the occasional wider delivery, to stay slightly above the required run rate of four an over. The game seemed to be leaking away slowly, but inexorably, like some valuable oil through a very small crack in an amphora.

Mark Cosgrove, though not obviously injured, had not returned to the field after tea, his place at second slip being taken by Ateeq Javid, who had taken two memorable catches against Northamptonshire. With Harris on 23, having already been put down once, he flashed hard at a wide delivery from Raine. Ateeq did well to get a hand to it, but … it went to earth, and with it, perhaps, the game. Hopes were briefly raised when the One that Kept Low at last showed itself and removed Cartwight, LBW to Raine. With Finn caught behind down the leg side, Harris and last man Murtagh required seven to win, which, until the final flourish of a boundary, they got in singles.

Oddly, the crowd had seemed more excited by the prospect of seeing a tie (which no-one seemed to have seen before), rather than either side winning, which is, I suppose, an indication of how much progress we have made this season. If a side hasn’t won for two years, then a victory is a cause for wild elation, a narrow defeat for despair : a side who expect to win more they lose can accept defeat with greater equanimity. Nevertheless, that dropped catch, that one wicket, those missing points, may come to be a cause of more than the usual ruefulness when the Autumn leaves are falling.

So, as the currently popular saying goes, I am not getting carried away just yet.

Leicestershire (177) v India A (458-4), Grace Road, 19 June

India A won by 281 runs

England Lions (207) v India A (309-6), Grace Road, 26 June

India A won by 102 runs

 

The Middlesex game was preceded and followed by two 50-over games featuring India A. One was against a weakened Leicestershire 2nd XI, featuring four Academy players (at least two of whom I’d never heard of, and one who I only knew because he plays for my club), the other against the England Lions. At times it would have been difficult to tell which was which.

Against Leicestershire, India made what was (for about an hour) the second highest List A total in history (until it was superseded by England later that afternoon). Leicestershire were, clearly, in no position to chase this (they opened with Harry Dearden), and, in the  circumstances, did well to make 177.

Against the Lions, India looked on course to match even their previous total, with the score in the 34th over on 207-1, but the Lions bowlers (who had been made to look very ordinary) got a slight grip, the lower order fell away, and they finished on a more modest 309-6. The Lions, inevitably, did not refuse to get carried away, and lost three early wickets. Kohler-Cadmore and Hain were both bowled, charging fast bowlers in an attempt to hit them into the car park (a trick, which, like limbo dancing with a flaming sambuca on your head, has the potential to make you look very silly, if it doesn’t come off).

In other circumstances, Livingstone might have matched the six-hitting feats of the Indians, but, in these, he had to exercise unnatural restraint, and the Lions only just managed to exceed Leicestershire’s total. Liam Dawson was both the highest scorer and the most economical bowler, which will not have told the England selectors anything that they wanted to hear.

It is hard to say whether the Indian batsmen are quite as good as they were made to look, but, if so, Agarwal (not, I think, the one who played for Oxford a few years ago), Shubman Gil, Vihari and Prithvi Shaw are names to bear in mind. The fast bowling and fielding (under the eye of Rahul Dravid) were tigerish too, which has not always been the case with Indian sides. Most of these names were quite unknown to me, but evidently not so to that half of the crowd who were supporting India (the other half being the inevitable parties of schoolchildren), who, I deduce, would have known them mainly for their recent exploits in the IPL.

Judging by the amount of hair-swishing and giggling going on near the boundary, the younger Indian players are clearly teenage heart-throbs in a way that English players rarely are (Liam Dawson, for instance, failed to provoke the same excitement). A particular favourite appeared to be Rishabh Pant, a 20-year old wicket-keeper/batsman, widely touted as the next M.S. Dhoni. Unfortunately, he made very small scores in both games, so we were only treated to a brief glimpse of Pant.

(Ed. – Am I allowed to say this ‘in the current climate’? Please check.)

Carnivalesque

Leicestershire (243-5) beat Durham (240) by 5 wickets, RLD50, Grace Road, 7th June 

Leicestershire (217 & 217-4) beat Northamptonshire (204 & 229) by 6 wickets, County Championship, County Ground, Northampton, 9-11th June

It is meant to be a comfort in time of trouble to remember that there is always someone who is worse off than you are. This consolation has not always been available to Leicestershire supporters over the last five years or so, because, quite often, there hasn’t been. These two victories, though, both comfortable and well-deserved, came against sides whose supporters have good reason currently to feel disgruntled. I will come to Northamptonshire in due course, but first to Durham.

Having been led on by the ECB to spend money they could not afford on developing a ground fit for Test cricket, Durham had their immediate future wrecked by being relegated and having 48 points deducted by the same body. As a result, they have been ruthlessly asset-stripped of their best players (Stoneman, Jennings, Onions, Borthwick, and even their ewe lamb, the promising all-rounder Paul Coughlin). Last season they would have finished last in the Championship, if it had not been for Leicestershire : this season they would have not won a Championship game, had it not been for Leicestershire.

All that was at stake in this game was to decide who was to finish last in the Northern group, and neither side had put out their strongest XI (I’m not sure what Durham’s strongest one-day side would be, but there was no sign of Collingwood, Steel, Rushworth or Weighell). The players who had made the trip didn’t look as if they particularly wanted to be there, and, unsurprisingly, given that the game was due to finish at 9.45 on a Thursday night, few of their supporters were either.

Durham’s innings at least had the merit that it was not immediately obvious who was going to win after ten overs. A few of their players made starts (sending me flicking through Playfair to find out who they were), but the scoring rate was moderate : at 106-4, the game could have gone either way. With the score on 125, though, four wickets fell for the addition of only 13 runs, first that of the Irish wicket-keeper Poynter, then three to Zak Chappell, returning for a second spell.

I have been predicting that Chappell will one day run through a side for so long now, without it ever quite happening, that I am beginning to feel like a man who has spent twenty years parading Oxford Street with a sandwich board predicting that the end is nigh, but here he combined accuracy and nous with his natural pace. He did not exactly rip the heart out of the batting, but, perhaps, some organs a little lower down, and I had hopes, at 137-8, that I would be able to leave the ground having witnessed a Leicestershire victory (I certainly was not prepared to hang around until a quarter to ten to see it). Almost inevitably, though, Leicestershire’s habitual flaw of being unable to finish sides off allowed Davies and McCarthy, with Chappell bowled out, to prolong the afternoon, by making exactly 100 for the ninth wicket.

It was not a foregone conclusion that Leicestershire would make the modest 241 required to win, though Durham’s general demeanour in the field suggested that they thought it was (and that they weren’t overly bothered). There was an early example of self-sabotage when Raine, coming in at number 3, as non-striker, charged for a quick single, without noticing that the striker Delport had shown no inclination to move, but Delport (who prefers to make his runs in boundaries) went on to play the kind of innings (122 from 128 balls) that Leicestershire had desperately lacked earlier in the tournament. When he was out, in the 37th over, with only 36 to win and seven wickets in hand, the remaining spectators were consulting their bus timetables and collecting the deposits on their glasses. I took the opportunity to dash for the last train, though it took another seven overs and the loss of two wickets for the end to come (Harry Dearden, making his white ball debut, is not the obvious man to finish a game quickly).

 

At the time, this game seemed a frustrating coda to the one-day campaign, suggesting, too late, what might have been. In retrospect, though aspects of it, particularly Chappell’s bowling, made it more of a prologue to what occurred at Wantage Road over the weekend.

If the source of Durham’s troubles is easy to identify, it is harder to say quite what has happened to Northamptonshire, who were only denied promotion last season by a points deduction, but, at the time of writing, have lost four of their five Championship games, with the other being a washout, and only finished above Leicestershire in their 50-over group by virtue of a superior run rate. It is not surprising that a failing team should lack confidence, but what is striking is the contrast with the impression they made in the games at the end of last season (when they beat both Nottinghamshire and Leicestershire), when they seemed to be a side propelled mainly by impregnable self-belief.

No-one exemplifies this better than Ben Duckett, who is having a terrible season (233 runs in 16 innings), and seems so bereft of his old swagger that he has even started to wear his cap the right way round. I now feel lucky to have seen so much of him in 2016 (his annus mirabilis), when the secret to his success seemed that he was prepared to back his unorthodox technique to succeed more often than it failed (even in that season he made plenty of single figure scores). He now seems torn between his instincts and attempting to play in a more conventional way, with the result that, when he does play his strokes, he does so in a half-hearted, inhibited way. He might be well-advised to follow Jos Buttler’s example and write ‘Duckett‘ on the end of his bat handle, in an attempt to recover his true identity as a batsman.

Duckett’s achievements in 2016 were made easier by what seemed to be a deliberate tactic of preparing doped pitches (Northants had not appeared to have much in the way of bowling at the start of the season). Last season, they were livelier, and now the entire pitch has been relaid over the Winter. The outfield has a strange, almost astroturfed, appearance, and the low scoring in this game was partly due to its extraordinary slowness : even firmly hit strokes ran out of steam short of the boundary. The square, while not quite a green top, was favourable to pace, with considerable movement off the seam (as well as in the air), and some variable bounce.

In these conditions, the openers were understandably wary, given his newly acquired reputation, of Mohammad Abbas, but it was Ben Raine who took the first wicket, of a very disconsolate, Daddles-like, Duckett. Newton and Ricardo Vasconcelos (a 20-year-old South African with a Portuguese passport, making his debut) had gingerly fended their way to 51, when Zak Chappell, who had come on first change, bowled him with a full and fast delivery that swung in sharply and late. Chappell has bowled these deliveries before, but they have tended to be isolated incidents, too often followed by a rash of byes to the leg-side boundary. This time he soon followed it with another quick delivery that swung away from Alex Wakely, finding an edge on its way to Mark Cosgrove, who took the catch with a cat-like agility reminiscent of Gordon Banks saving from Pele in the Mexico World Cup.

At lunch, with the score on 128-3, both sides had reason to be satisfied, or, given the natural propensities of the two sets of supporters, pessimistic : the Northamptonshire supporters were convinced that a collapse was just around the corner, the Foxes’ fans that they would fail to capitalise on their early wickets.

Soon after the afternoon session began, the Northampton Carnival procession began to pass down Wantage Road, on its way to the Racecourse. This used to be a rather sedate affair, but in recent years it has acquired a Caribbean accent and a more authentically carnivalesque air (this year, as announced by the police sirens that followed the floats, it resulted in several stabbings). The afternoon session was played out to the accompaniment of a loud medley of musical exotica, and various curious sights visible through the Wantage Road gates, including, at one point, a giant red patent leather, fetishistic, boot.

Something of the spirit of the carnivalesque, the temporary suspension of normal life, animated the play, particularly Zak, who seemed (perhaps temporarily) transformed into an avenging angel, sculpted by Arno Brecker. Returning for a second spell, he took 3-19 in six overs, with Vasconcelos and Keogh caught behind off deliveries that, on a less enchanted afternoon, they might have played inside. Kleinveldt, who has an ability to wreck bowlers’ figures second only to Mr. Stew’s rhubarb crumble, briefly looked ominous, guiding two balls from Chappell off his hip for four to fine leg, before attempting to repeat the trick and losing his exposed leg stump. Chappell’s sixth wicket came as he clean bowled one of his predecessors as Leicestershire’s fast bowling hope, Nathan Buck. With the help of the tireless Raine, who claimed three victims, Northants were bowled out for 204 in time for tea.

 

As the afternoon approached its end, the Carnival had processed on to its disorderly conclusion, and sombre normality (for Leicestershire fans, anyway) reasserted itself, with the Foxes losing three wickets for 64 by the close. Northamptonshire’s bowling looked better than its batting, even without the injured Gleason, and has been reinforced, temporarily, by Ben ‘Dot’ Cotton (so-called on account of his miserly economy rate). Cotton, who has, rather surprisingly, been released by Derbyshire (he always looked a decent prospect to me), has grown into a very big lad, big enough even to fill Richard Levi’s shirt (which he had borrowed), so he fits in well with the general Northamptonshire aesthetic.

I wasn’t able to be present on the Sunday, so, eager to return on the Monday, I followed the scores in an Augustinian spirit ‘O Lord, make Leicestershire win, but not yet’. I was not surprised that Leicestershire made only 217, that Chappell (still in a state of enchantment) had made 40, or that Cotton was Northamptonshire’s most economical bowler. I was, guiltily, quite relieved when Northants closed the day on 165-3, with a lead of 152.

What occurred on the third day came, I think, as more of a surprise to the Leicestershire supporters present than those of the hosts. From a Leicestershire perspective, they bowled with ruthless efficiency, to bowl Northants out for 229, before cruising serenely to victory with six wickets to spare : from a Northamptonshire one, their side collapsed pathetically, before limply conceding in the field. There was some truth in both interpretations. Mohammad Abbas, Raine and Griffiths all bowled tightly, and made good use of what life was left in the pitch (the spell seemed to have worn off Chappell a little, and he was rubbing his shopping-lifting shoulder in ominous fashion), and the fielding was excellent, (particularly by substitute Ateeq Javid).

It was not surprising that there never seemed much doubt in the minds of the home supporters that Leicestershire would win, but more so that that belief seemed to be shared by their bowlers. The innings had not started well, with Harry Dearden bowled for nought, but Horton and Lewis Hill, who had come in as a kind of lunch-watchman, brought the hundred up with no alarms, and it was pleasant to speculate on the possibility of a nine-wicket victory to compensate for the recent sequence of nine-wicket defeats. Even when Horton fell, with the score on 148, the calm head (and, as it turned out) broken finger, of Colin Ackermann seemed likely to shepherd Hill over the finishing line.

There was a token attempt to cock things up at the last minute : Hill was understandably keen to complete his second first-class hundred, while Ackermann had a fifty in his sights. Hill attempted a misguided sweep against Saif Zaib and, to his obvious disappointment, was LBW for 85. Mark Cosgrove attempted to hit his fifth ball out of the ground, but only succeeded in making the day of the youthful substitute fieldsman (one W. J. Heathfield, who had earlier appealed vociferously for a catch off a bump ball) on the mid-wicket boundary. Ackermann did not quite make his fifty, but he and Dexter ensured that no-one would have to return to Wantage Road in the morning.

The reaction of the few Northamptonshire supporters left at the end surprised me a little (though not a lot, given my long experience of them) : I overheard one say ‘Getting beat by this lot is like Liverpool getting beat by Cobblers’. It is a natural reaction (particularly in Kettering) to assume that a defeat is due to your own team being poor, rather than the quality of the opposition, but, in this case, I’m not so sure. Leicestershire are now third in the table, and that is no fluke (if they had not thrown away the game against Durham they would be second). It is true that they have so far played some of the weaker sides in the division, but the fact that there are so many weaker sides to play is indicative of Leicestershire’s relative strength.

The game set a couple of modest records, it being the first time since 2010 that Leicestershire had either won two Championship games in succession, or beaten Northamptonshire. Looking back, that was in the first game of the season, and Leicestershire won, thanks, in part, to an 88 from James Taylor, who was to go on to have something of an ‘annus mirabilis’ himself that year.  The future seemed brightening, but was clouded by the creeping likelihood that Taylor would soon be poached by a larger County.

Remembering that, it is hard to feel unmixed joy at Chappell’s blooming, given that his contract runs out at the end of the season, and that Warwickshire, Nottinghamshire and Surrey (the usual hyaenas) are already circling him. Leicestershire are, obviously, keen to persuade him to stay, but (I’m told) are being hampered by his agent, who has demanded that they pay £5,000 before they can even speak to him (whether to the agent or the player I’m not sure). Agents have a lot to answer for, I feel.

Another looming cloud is that Michael Carberry is, apparently, considering legal action against the club, on the grounds that his contract specifies that he was appointed to the Captaincy. The loss of Carberry as a player would be a pity, but the prospect of having to pay him substantial compensation would be a more serious blow. Appoint in haste, repent at leisure, as the saying goes.

Still, while the sky is still relatively cloudless, we have two more Championship fixtures, before the competition hibernates (or aestivates) for the T20 interval, a home match against Middlesex, and a day-nighter at Derby (which I don’t think I can face). Middlesex, the ante-post favourites, have been curiously ailing this season, and a third win in succession does not seem out of the question. If we could beat Derby as well, we might even be able to persuade Zak that he should stay on to play First Division cricket next season (even if we have to do it by slipping a note under his door).

 

 

 

Funny, Familiar, Forgotten Feelings

Leicestershire v Nottinghamshire (5-6 April 2018), Yorkshire (9-10 April 2018), Loughborough MCCU (13-15 April 2018)

Ideally, the start of the English cricket season resembles some shy woodland creature, emerging from its burrow after its long Winter hibernation to sniff the soft air of Spring. Too often, though, it sneaks out unobserved, like a rat from its hole.

Like the Renaissance, it can be hard to define quite when and where the English season started. The earliest first-class fixture, between the Champion County and the MCC, was on the 27th March, but, as that was played in Barbados, it can only in the most technical of senses be said to be part of the English season. The first first-class fixtures on English soil, a wave of University matches, were scheduled to be on 1st April and the first round of County Championship games took take place on 13th April. On the other hand, some hardy souls have brought back reports from non first-class University matches at Loughborough in March, when the snows had barely melted.

I had to start it somewhere, and so I started it, predictably, at Grace Road, where Leicestershire were playing a pre-season friendly against Nottinghamshire. A brief stroll around the ground revealed that the only new addition to it over the Winter was this apparently comically unstable structure, which I shall, no doubt, find some metaphorical use for, as the season progresses.

These friendlies are not ‘real games’ and, in the sense that the scores leave no statistical trace, I suppose they might as well not have taken place at all. As the aim is to give as many players as possible some practice, it can be hard to keep track of who is playing at any given time, and player-recognition was made more difficult by many of Leicestershire’s players wearing someone else’s kit : the departed Jason Burke and Angus Robson’s sweaters made appearances, as did Rob Sayers’ sweater and shirt (which, I’m afraid, is more than their owner is likely to do this season).

To compound the sense of unreality, the electronic scoreboard remained blank and its manual partner seemed to have been commandeered by some kind of magic realist (one of the openers began his innings on 300, at one point the score started going backwards). It also seemed unreal that the weather on the first day was warm and sunny : one fine day is about as much as we can generally hope for in the English Summer, and it seemed a cruel trick to have used it up before the season had even started.

I have to say that I missed the first ball to be bowled at Grace Road this season : so keen were the players to get the season underway (a keenness not always to be observed later in the year) that they had begun ahead of schedule, at 10.30. Nottinghamshire batted first and had reached 394-6 by the close of play, a score which I think might convey to their supporters a slightly over-optimistic impression of their batting strength.

Most of the bowlers, on both sides, seemed, at this stage of season, to be in that state most of us are in before we have had our first coffee (or gin, or whatever) of the morning, and a few looked as if they had not yet managed to locate their glasses : some bowled entire spells of looseners. Leicestershire used nine bowlers in all : Klein, Raine, Chappell, Griffiths, Dexter, Ateeq Javid and Parkinson from the named 12, with a few overs from newcomers Tom Taylor and Ben Mike, a young Academy player.

Chappell seemed concerned about his footholds (there was a lot of sawdust about, though not from any underhand use of sandpaper), understandably so, given that he has spent most of his first three seasons on the sidelines with various leg and back ailments. In his first spell, he was characteristically expensive (though not reassuringly so, like Stella Artois) ; his second was more controlled and he reminded me a little of (Chris, not Maurice) Tremlett .

Our most threatening bowlers were Callum Parkinson and Gavin Griffiths. I had rather unkindly put Griffiths down for some ‘donkey-work‘ this season, but in all these games he hinted at more thoroughbred qualities, having put on at least a few inches of pace, and might be preferred to Klein (or even Chappell) when the season proper begins.  Parkinson, too, seems to have acquired guile beyond his years, and may prove to be a higher class of bowler than I had suspected.

All the Nottinghamshire batsmen made some kind of start, their leading run-makers being the oldish faithful Mullaney (85), and Billy Root, who retired on 81. As one who watches a lot of 2nd XI cricket, Root seems to have been around for a long time, with various counties (including Leicestershire), but he has not yet, at the age of 25, established himself in the Nottinghamshire 1st XI. He does not seek to compete with his brother in terms of style (he is one of those whose bat makes a hollow clonking sound), but he hits the ball hard and would, in normal circumstances, have deserved his century.

My first impression of Carberry as Captain was that he is more active and cerebral than his predecessor : Cosgrove was generally content to plant himself in the slips and offer verbal encouragement, whereas Carberry has a liking for avant-garde field placings (particularly when Parkinson was bowling), insisting on having everyone standing just so before an over could begin, like a fussy wedding photographer.

He seemed to have less of a liking for the old school position third man, with the result that two of Chappell’s first three deliveries were tipped over the slips for four. Given how many analysis-ruining runs he leaks in this fashion, I think, if I were Chappell, I should request one.

Those of you who read my last piece may remember that I had misgivings about Carberry’s appointment, but his performance on the second day, when Leicestershire batted, went some way towards allaying my anxieties. Having the air of a man working hard to make a good impression, he conscientiously avoided the more hazardous balls and, taking full advantage of one child-sized boundary, made 52, putting on an opening stand of 50 with Paul Horton, of which Carberry made 29 and his partner 8 (the other 13 being generously donated in extras by, mostly by Mark Footitt).

Footitt looked heavier than I remember him at Derbyshire (perhaps he has given up smoking), and Ball and Fletcher seemed vaguely somnambulistic, like giants newly woken after a long sleep. Harry Gurney (who bowls in a similar style to Footitt) looked positively lively by comparison, and Luke Wood’s run-up continues to be a thing of beauty.

Horton and Dexter (batting at no. 3, which I’m not sure is the best place for him) had predeceased their Captain, when, shortly after lunch, he was rather unluckily given out LBW to Samit Patel (as I was sheltering in the Meet I could not judge the line, but he was a very long way down the pitch). Mark Cosgrove (the only batsman with nothing to prove) played a couple of twinkle-toed cover drives before sensibly taking refuge in the pavilion (the second day was reasonably fine, but the wind was bitter).

In the afternoon, I had to choose between being too far from the action to have a clear view of what was going on and freezing. I did my duty for as long as I could, but eventually retreated to a sheltered nook, from which I could observe two bearded and muffled figures (one masquerading as Rob Sayer) put on a century stand. I have to take it on trust that they were Ned Eckersley and Lewis Hill. Although Nottinghamshire were, by now, giving their second string bowlers a go with the ball, Hill, who made 82, should have made sure of his place in the side for the opening game alongside, or even instead of, Eckersley (they had earlier shared the wicket-keeping gloves).

Once they had reached their century, they were both recalled to the pavilion (I am not sure why Hill is searching so urgently inside his box, but it might have had something to do with the cold)

to allow the bowlers some ‘time in the middle’.  Zak Chappell was promptly run out without scoring, swiftly followed by Raine and Klein : depending on how you interpret the retirements, this meant that we had lost five wickets for no runs in about ten minutes, at which point, developing a creeping sense of deja vu to go with the hypothermia, I called it a day. In my absence, the last pair, Ateeq Javid and Callum Parkinson (who bagged a 50 to add to his impressive bowling) put on a partnership of 85, though whether this had something to do with the Nottinghamshire bowlers needing more practice I cannot say.

The second friendly, against Yorkshire, was arranged at short notice at their request. Even given the depradations of England and the lure of the white ball, Yorkshire have a strong line-up on paper, but on paper is where they have so far had to remain, owing, I believe to the inadequacy of the drains in Leeds. In the event, only 60 overs of play were possible, or, given the state of the weather, desirable. The idea was that each side would bat for 50 overs on the first day, but this was not 50-over cricket as we generally know it. Leicestershire batted and made 139-8, with Yorkshire making 38 for no wicket before the rain offered a merciful release. Although not too much can be deduced from that total (tail-enders were moved up the order to give them some practice), the struggles of our top order brought back some more unwelcome memories.

It was, perhaps, as well for Yorkshire that the game did not proceed further. David Willey, who was named on the scoresheet, had absconded to the IPL shortly before the game began (to join Plunkett) and Matthew Fisher pulled up with a strain after a couple of overs (joining Coad on the sick list). Most counties would be pleased to be ‘reduced’ to Brooks, Bresnan, Patterson and Shaw as a pace quartet (though none of them are quite in their prime) ; they may have proved too good for Leicestershire, but any further reductions might leave them struggling.

I was not entirely sorry to have an excuse for an afternoon off, but it did mean that I didn’t get to see much of Alex Lees. When I saw him bat in 2014 (particularly for the Lions against Australia) he had greatly impressed me (and many others) : his – at times – drastic loss of form since then, at a time when there is an obvious vacancy for an opener in the England team, has puzzled me. What struck me, from my brief sight of him, is that, whereas, in the past, everything about his stance has been exaggeratedly upright and straight-lined (I once described him as batting inside an invisible sentry box), he has now adopted a strangely slanted, crouching posture at the crease. Whether that is a cause of his decline, or (as I suspect) an attempt to halt it, I am unsure.

The final warm-up game, against Loughborough MCCU, occupied, to the use the fashionable term, a kind of ‘liminal space’ between the unreal world of the friendlies and the real world of the season proper. It was played according to the usual rules, with eleven a side, and Leicestershire wore their own kit. On the other hand, for reasons that elude me, it did not have First Class status, and so the scores made will vanish as if they had never been (and the electronic scoreboard was still not working). Intended to be a three day game, it was halved by rain.

The side picked saw the bright butterfly of the Leicestershire 1st XI first emergence from its chrysalis. As I had predicted (as anyone would have predicted, really) on the basis of the friendlies, Griffiths and Parkinson were selected , with Chappell relegated to Twelfth Man to make way for the debut of Mohammad Abbas. In a reversal of last season’s roles, Eckersley kept wicket, with Lewis Hill playing as a specialist batsman.

The first danger to be avoided was of our bright butterfly flying straight into some flypaper (you may remember that last season’s fixture against Loughborough led to us starting the season with a 16 point deduction). We did not start well, losing our first four wickets for 16 runs (Horton, Eckersley, Ackermann and Carberry all being dismissed for the addition of a single). In fairness, there was some life in the pitch and the bowlers (Sanders of Lancashire and Pereira of Surrey), but lively pitches and bowlers are what top order batsmen are paid to deal with, and I could sense the uncomfortable frisson of collapses past running around the ground.

As predictably as Spring follows Winter (eventually), the collapse was followed by a near-century by Cosgrove (91), with some useful support from Hill (36), Dexter (66*) and Raine (50*). Though he rather threw his wicket away, Hill continued to impress as a batsman, and Dexter looks much happier at six than three. The trouble with that is that Eckersley, who had been promoted to three and was out shouldering arms first ball, also looks happier further down the order. Unless Cosgrove or Ackermann fancy doing it (which they, presumably, do not), the position could present a problem.

When it was their turn to bat, the students showed that they had learned from the professionals by losing their first four wickets (including that of Leicestershire’s Sam Evans) for 17 runs. Our butterfly now fluttered perilously close to the flypaper as Hasan Azad, the adhesive opener who, last year, had survived the alleged assassination attempt by Charlie Shreck, shored up the innings with Adam Tillcock. A couple of histrionic displays of frustration at umpiring decisions from Ben Raine, a lot of unseemly merriment when one of the batsmen sustained a painful blow in the box, and an unnecessarily high level of background chirruping might have been enough to get Steve O’Shaughnessy reaching for his notebook.

Happily, the noise seemed to subside after lunch (perhaps Nick Cook, a sensible Umpire, had had a quiet word). Tillcock had been bowled by Mohammad Abbas shortly before the interval, and, after it, Griffiths and Parkinson (it was those men again), assisted by some intelligent field placings by Carberry, averted the danger of further embarrassment by removing the pesky opener and the remaining batsmen for 155. With no possibility of a result, Carberry seemed keen for some more batting practice, but the rain had other ideas.

Mohammad Abbas seemed to enjoy his first taste of early season English conditions

or, at least, did not hurry  to catch the first ‘plane back to Pakistan. At first sight he did not look devastatingly quick, or a vast swinger of the ball, but he clean bowled two batsmen and did nothing to spoil the expectation that he should be a consistent wicket-taker (when he is available).

While this match was going on, reports were coming in of some ridiculous (in the ordinary sense, not the specialised sense in which modern cricketers tend to use it) scores in the first round of Championship games (for one, Nottinghamshire’s bowlers, other than Footitt, had obviously woken up). These may have helped to put some of the low-scoring at Grace Road into context, but the impression remains that our bowling currently inspires more confidence than our batting. If the sun which has emerged as I write has not burnt the moisture out of the pitch, our first fixture against Sussex may be a short one.

By the way, the crowd on the first, fine, day of our pseudo-season had been surprisingly large for an unreal game, and even on the other days, inhospitable to man and beast as they were, there had been more than the proverbial one man and a dog, though I was pleased to see that they had made an appearance anyway.

 

The Field of Miracles

A few weeks ago, I happened to be in the ‘Piazza [or Campo] dei Miracoli’ in Pisa, when something made me think of the County Championship. What could have reminded me of a competition that is said to be built on inadequate foundations, is not self-supporting, would never have been designed in the same way if it were being set up today, and would have collapsed long ago if a lot of time and money had not been put into keeping it artificially intact? But, perhaps, you are ahead of me :

Given that the Leaning Tower, however misconceived, is widely regarded as being one of the Wonders of the World, this would be a cheering comparison, were it not for the fact that it is under the care of the Opera della Primaziale Pisana (O₽A), rather than the England and Wales Cricket Board (ECB).  Left to their own devices, the ECB would have “rationalised” the tower by straightening it out, or allowed it to collapse, to be replaced by a more “vibrant” structure, better suited to the needs of the 21st Century.

I also couldn’t help feeling, as a County member, that I am in a similar position to those tourists who have themselves photographed apparently preventing the tower collapsing, which, with respect to the Championship, we know to be an unconvincing optical illusion.

But enough about my holidays, and on to the prospects for the season.

‘Prospects for the season’ used to imply a consideration of how a chosen side were likely to perform, with the preferred tone being guarded optimism. Now the more pressing questions seem to be what the prospects are of being able to see very much cricket in the coming season, and whether there are likely to be many more seasons after that. In both cases, my feelings are of qualified pessimism.

To take the first question first : Leicestershire have two home Championship games in April, one in May, one in June (by which time it might have stopped snowing), one in August and two in September, which is a slightly more even distribution than last season. There are, though, none between the Middlesex game, which starts on 20th June and the Kent game, beginning 19th August. I have complained about this so often now that I am beginning to bore myself, but there does now seem some faint possibility that the situation may be addressed, given how many have blamed the distribution of fixtures for England’s loss of the Ashes (which is all that a lot of people seem to care about).

On a brighter note, there are various other attractions at Grace Road : a pre-season friendly, a University match, three 50 over games (and one – praise the Lord! – at Oakham), three tourist matches, an England Lions game and a women’s one-dayer. I might even make the Sunday T20 against Nottinghamshire, which promises to be a lively affair, at least off the pitch.

We have revived our reciprocal agreement with Nottinghamshire, so I hope to make at least one trip to Trent Bridge. In fact, I can only see three weeks during the season when there are no games I can plausibly watch ; I really shouldn’t complain, although all three of those are in July and August and, however attractive some of the grounds, I can envisage my attention wandering as I enter my eighth successive week of watching 2nd XI cricket. As with most things, so with cricket – the real enemy is not anger (if you are still angry you still care), but boredom and indifference.

To turn from the short-range forecast to the medium-term, there have been a few encouraging indications recently that the turkeys (in the shape of the Counties) might be reconsidering their votes for Christmas : the problem here being that eight of those turkeys have reasonable hopes of being invited to the Christmas dinner, and the others can see no source of nutrition other than the farmer.

Speaking of which, in a less well-reported development, in November, the club held an SGM to vote on the ECB’s proposed new rules, under which five of the seven Board members currently elected by the Members would be replaced by five nominated by ‘the Nominations Panel’. This is seen by some as meaning the end of Leicestershire as a Members’ Club, and the imposition of a kind of direct rule by the ECB. I could not attend the meeting, but according to a letter sent out to Members, ‘most of those attending … were clearly unhappy’, and no vote was taken. There are two ‘consultation meetings’ scheduled for the Summer and ‘at some point the SGM will be reconvened and a reviewed/revised resolution put to the vote’. If, as I think quite likely, the Members continue to reject the new rules, we have been warned that ‘the makeup of a Board of Directors could impact on funding received by County Cricket Clubs in the future’. So we can’t say that we haven’t been warned.

And so, at last, on to the cricket.

This season Leicestershire will have a new coach, Paul Nixon, and a new Captain, in the shape of Michael Carberry, who has been appointed as such for all formats on a two-year contract. It is fair to say that one of these appointments has been greeted with more enthusiasm than the other.

Nixon has been the Foxes’ Prince over the Water since his retirement in 2011 (the large mural featuring his picture and the quote ‘once a Fox always a Fox’ that appeared on the side of the pavilion last season can hardly have increased his predecessor’s sense of job security). His coaching experience has been limited, but successful (his Jamaica Tallawahs have twice won the Caribbean Premier League), and his enthusiasm, energy and commitment are unquestionable : these may not be sufficient qualifications for a successful coach, but should be enough to instil some of those qualities into a side who have too often given the impression of listlessness and apathy. Whatever the results, his presence at the ground should help to lift the spirits of the crowd, who have had good reason to feel listless and apathetic themselves recently.

I know I am not the only one to find Carberry’s appointment puzzling. In his day, he was, of course, a ‘class act‘, and an exceptionally unlucky cricketer. Class, alas, (however the saying goes) is not permanent ; he is now 37 years old and will be almost 39 when he finishes his contract. In his four matches on loan at the end of last season he scored 59 runs in eight innings (and made another low score in the non first-class Tour Game). The most hopeful interpretation is that he had been expecting to retire at the end of the season before the call to Grace Road came, and had not bothered to keep in any sort of form. If those who signed him have some reason to believe that he has it in him to return to something of his former self, his signing as a batsman makes sense.

More puzzling, though, is the offer of the captaincy – particularly if, as I believe is the case, Mark Cosgrove was reluctant to relinquish it. I am not aware (though I am willing to be contradicted) that Carberry has any previous experience of captaincy. Our recent policy of bringing in experienced players, but inexperienced Captains, from outside to captain the side has not, to put it mildly, brought any great success : Sarwan was hopeless ; Hoggard (though a great man) was predictably eccentric ; Cosgrove might just have been growing into the role when he was relieved of it. If Carberry is struggling with his own form, a potentially mutinous and free-scoring Cosgrove walking out to replace him will be the last thing he needs to see as he returns to the pavilion.

It is also curious that Carberry was appointed between the dismissal of de Bruyn and the appointment of Nixon.  Given the problems we had last season, it would be helpful to be sure that the Captain and Coach will have a harmonious working relationship.  But I’m sure that they will.

Moving on to the rest of the side, it is hard to avoid too-frequent recourse to those fine old cricketing half-euphemisms ‘decent‘ and ‘useful’, not to mention liberal applications of ‘if‘ and ‘potentially‘.

The lack of a ‘strong and stable’ opening partnership has long been a weakness, making it doubly unfortunate when we contrived to lose our most successful opener of recent times, Angus Robson. Given that Harry (‘the Tottington Tortoise’) Dearden is predicted to miss the early part of the season through injury, and the other younger candidate, Sam Evans, will not be available until his term at Loughborough finishes, Carberry is likely to find himself opening with Paul Horton, another who must have glimpsed ‘time’s winged chariot’ in his wing mirror, hurrying a little too near for comfort.

The middle order is potentially a little more than useful and decent. Mark Cosgrove was our only significantly successful batsman last year, and we must hope that the loss of the captaincy has not diminished his enthusiasm. Last season, Colin Ackermann and Ned Eckersley responded to Pierre de Bruyn’s challenge that ‘We can’t be accepting batsmen averaging in the mid-20s any more‘ by averaging 32.52 and 29.83 respectively : both (Ackermann in particular) will know that they can do better. Provided Neil Dexter is in the right frame of mind, he still has much to contribute with bat and ball, and might still, as I expected, prove the most astute of our recent late-career signings.

Ben Raine, fitness permitting, will continue to be Ben Raine (though not a spectacular bowler, he was our leading wicket-taker last season and topped the bowling averages). Lewis Hill proved me wrong by establishing himself as our first-choice wicket-keeper, and shamed some of our specialist batsmen with his run-making. If we play a specialist spinner, it is likely to be Callum Parkinson (brother of the, I suspect, soon-to-be better-known Matt) : he is potentially pretty useful, given more overs than he is likely to get on helpful surfaces..

Long-time readers will know my opinion of Zak Chappell : he is a potential England player in the sense that a glass of water is potential steam, even if he has not yet reached much above 30 degrees C. Over the Winter, he has benefited from the clamour to find an English bowler who can bowl at 90 mph (which he can certainly do) by being sent on a development course and being chosen to play for the North against the South. In the coming season, he will be working with a new bowling coach, Matt Mason, who will, one hopes, enable him to work out what kind of bowler he really wants to be. What he needs, though is unlikely to want or get, is to bowl enough to learn his craft (he is still desperately inexperienced, even in club cricket). This season is unlikely to make or (I hope) break him, but we should have a better idea of where his career is heading by the end of it (even if, as I fear, that takes him away from Grace Road).

Our two new overseas signings, Mohammad Abbas and Sohail Khan look, on paper, to be shrewd acquisitions. Mohammad Abbas is due to play in the first fixture (when he will, presumably, be acclimatising to English conditions), returning after the end of the Test series, when, provided he doesn’t develop some ailment and go home, he should be acclimatised enough to take some wickets in the second half of the season. Sohail, though he’s no Darren Stevens, sounds as though he should be well-suited to England in April and May.

[No sooner had I written this than I discovered that Sohail had dropped out through injury and been replaced by Varun Aaron, the Indian speedster best known for breaking Stuart Broad’s nose. With him bowling in tandem with Zak, there should be some nervous batsmen at Grace Road, not to mention nervous wicket-keepers, fourth slips and St. John Ambulance ladies.]

Looking past the first team, we find ourselves getting deep into the realms of the decent and useful. Dieter Klein, newly a German international, is a dangerous bowler, if not overbowled. I hope to see something of the elusive Richard Jones before he comes to the end of his contract. Mark Pettini, whom I am a little surprised to see is still on the staff (given that he seemed to go AWOL half way through last season), may have a couple of his occasional fine innings left in him, but, like Tom Wells, Aadil Ali, Rob Sayer and new acquisition Ateeq Javid, he is likely to contribute more to the white ball effort (which – especially given that it was always Nixon’s forte – is probably our best hope for success, if not trophies).

Of our other new acquisitions, Tom Taylor from Derbyshire is, as his name seems to imply, an honest-as-the-day-is-long county seamer, who, along with Gavin Griffiths, may have some donkey work to do. I can’t say too much about our two academy products, Sam Evans and wicket-keeper Harry Swindells, except that they look … potentially decent and useful. The player who would have been my One to Watch, Will Fazakerley, has frustrated me by retiring at the age of 19, preserving his – in its way – perfect record of ‘Matches – 1 Innings 2 – Runs 0 – Average 0.00’. He might want to consider appearing on ‘Pointless’.

As I so rarely watch it, I cannot comment on our T20 prospects, though we have signed Mohammad Nabi, of Afghanistan, who is trailed as ‘the best all-rounder in the world’. I suppose it is a sign of how cricket has disintegrated that not only have I never seen him play, I have never heard of him. Nonetheless, I wish him and the team all the best in my absence.

One reason for early season cheer is that it does not seem possible that we can have a worse start than last year. Provided we behave ourselves in the game against Loughborough, we should start the campaign on no points, rather than minus points. Although our first game is against Sussex (probably the most plausible challengers to Middlesex and Warwickshire for promotion), they will be without our prime nemesis in the last two seasons, Jofra Archer, who will be absent, together with Chris Jordan, on IPL ‘duty’. We then have two home fixtures against fellow-stragglers Derbyshire and Glamorgan, and an away trip to Durham, who have continued to shed quality players like an HGV with an unsecured load. There must, surely, be a chance of a win in there somewhere.

Spring pipe-dreams aside, I’d say it will take something more miraculous than anything I saw in Pisa for us to be promoted this year : a cheerful team, a couple of wins, not finishing last in the Championship, and some kind of showing with the snow-white rambler is probably the most (and least) we can hope for. But that, together, of course, with some decent weather and some more virtuoso displays of the ways of a man with a chicken by Mr. Stew, should be enough to assure the Foxes of my continuing support …

 

Heart Rot and Purple Haze

Kent v Leicestershire, County Championship, Canterbury, 30th August 2017

Leicestershire v West Indies, Grace Road, 2nd September 2017

“You’re very optimistic” the gate-woman at the St. Lawrence Ground observed, laughingly, as she trousered my £20 note in return for a ticket which is now, I imagine, something of a collector’s item (I am reasonably confident that I was the only purchaser). As a general character assessment “fatalistic” might be nearer the mark, but I suspect that she intended it as a euphemism for “silly”, given the prospects for play (and no doubt I am).

According to ‘The Cricket Paper’,

“This three-day county game in leafy Canterbury must have felt like pure joy to those nostalgic followers of championship cricket”

and I suppose it must, if they happened to have been there on one of those three days. On Monday, Leicestershire’s bristly nemesis Darren Stevens had threatened to take all ten of our wickets (he finished with 8-75), before Lewis Hill and Callum Parkinson broke the record for a tenth wicket partnership set by George Geary and Alec Skelding in 1925. On Tuesday, Neil Dexter (who still has time to become the new Darren Stevens) snaffled another five wickets, and, on the Thursday, Mark Cosgrove (for motives that have been much speculated-upon) hit 24 off the first five balls of an over from Matt Coles, before edging to the wicket-keeper off the sixth.

It was one of Leicestershire’s more encouraging performances, there was an innings I should like to have seen from Sam Northeast, and the weather (for two and a half days) was blissful. Unfortunately, the only day on which I could be there was the Wednesday. It started to rain shortly before the start of play (having, briefly, been fine enough in the morning to lure me in), gently at first, then heavily enough for the day and ground to have been abandoned by lunchtime. This not only spoilt my day, but the match, which was hastened to its all-but-inevitable, drawn, conclusion by the return of the rain on the afternoon of the fourth day.

Canterbury, like Worcester and Hove, has the reputation of being one of the more conventionally romantic of the Counties’ headquarters : with a little imagination, I could sense that it was somewhere I should enjoy watching cricket, if there were any cricket to be seen. The majority of the ground is ringed by low banks of seating, and enough trees to justify the soubriquet “leafy”, interspersed with some medium-rise buildings, none of them offensive. The inevitable “redevelopment” – some retirement flats and a branch of Sainsbury’s – struck me as unobtrusive, though whether I would think so if I remembered the ground in its heyday I don’t know.

Another new development, The Lime Tree Cafe, though not a patch, in culinary terms, on our own dear Meet, offered a snug vantage point from which to observe the rain (or cricket, where applicable).

A few of the younger Leicestershire players had taken refuge there too, giving off the vague impression of children keeping out of the way while the grown-ups argued.  Thanks to the rain, I had plenty of opportunity to inspect both the interior and exterior of the Frank Woolley Stand, a two storey concrete structure which is, perhaps, best described as “venerable” or “imposing” rather than “elegant” in the style of its dedicatee. I think it is somewhere I should only choose to sit to escape from the elements (excessive sun, wind or rain), but then so many days at the cricket are afflicted by one of those three. The leaking roof, I thought, only enhanced its discreet charms, but I suspect it will be “redeveloped” as soon as funds allow.

 

The ground’s best-known feature, the lime tree which used to grow inside the boundary, apparently died of “heart rot”, an ailment I imagine as a feeling of profound discouragement brought on by prolonged soaking. Though very wet by the time I returned to the city centre, I think I managed to escape a dose and, having taken a liking to both Canterbury and its cricket ground, I hope we will meet again (though, at present, I don’t know when), preferably on some sunnier day.

This has been quite the season for novelties (or things that, Miranda-like, are new to me), and there was another in the shape of the format for the tour match against the West Indies. It was intended to be a two-day game, with one innings a side ; the first innings to be limited to 100 overs, the second not. The novel twist was that the West Indies were allowed 15 players, Leicestershire only 11. The Leicestershire side, with the exceptions of Ned Eckersley (who was captaining) and Harry Dearden, were the squad members who had not played against Kent, with debuts for teenagers Sam Evans and Harry Swindells, and tentative returns from injury for Zak Chappell (who has, again, spent most of the Summer playing as a batsman for the 2nd XI), and Richard Jones (who has not been seen since April).

The intention was presumably to provide the tourists with some practice between Tests and when, as expected, they won the toss, they chose to bat. Until lunch, however, Leicestershire’s bowlers were uncooperative enough to make a game of it, reducing them, at one point, to 64-5. There had been a September dew in the early morning, and, perhaps, Klein and Chappell were a little sharper than they had been expecting : Klein often surprises batsmen who haven’t faced him before ; Zak was bowling at a little below full pace and, perhaps as a result, was more economical than usual (his first nine overs cost only eighteen runs).

Brathwaite and Hope (K.) were trapped lbw by Klein and Chappell, by balls that swung and dipped in respectively, for single-figure scores ; neither Chase nor Blackwood reached double figures either. I was intrigued by the prospect of seeing Hope (S.) bat, given the records he had set at Headingley, but statistics mean nothing when you play down the wrong line, as he did to a delivery from Richard Jones, edging the ball on to his stumps having made a 28 that had hinted at better things. It was two players who had not made much impression at Headingley, Kieran Powell and the wicket-keeper Dowrich, who returned the game to its expected course, with an initially circumspect sixth wicket partnership of 127.

The exception to that circumspection was provided by a single stroke from Powell which impressed itself on the mind like a clap of thunder on a cloudless day, but might well have impressed itself for different reasons. Zak Chappell had been afflicted by one of his usual trials, a slight tickle down the legside that just evaded the leaping ‘keeper and crashed into the sightscreen. His next delivery, predictably, was a textbook bouncer, which Powell chose not to evade, but hooked off the tip of his nose. The ball travelled horizontally at almost precisely 90 degrees to the wicket, at a tall man’s head height, over a boundary which was as short as I have seen at Grace Road, and had rebounded off the Meet with alarming force before anyone in the vicinity had moved a muscle. It must have passed over the heads of those sitting on the benches in front of the Meet, but if someone, as is usually the case, had been making their way to the ice-cream parlour, lavatories or bar, and the ball had hit them on the head, it might easily have killed them. Fortunately, one of the few things at Grace Road which is more robust than it used to be is the glass in the Meet’s windows (once notoriously frangible, and prone to producing showers of broken glass).

Talking of sore heads, the club, perhaps suspecting that the West Indies would not provide enough of an attraction in themselves, had chosen to combine the match with a real ale festival. I am not sure of the precise distinction between craft beer and real ale, except that the former is fashionable and comes in bottles, whereas the latter is less fashionable and comes on draught. Craft beer is, reputedly, drunk by hipsters with sculpted beards, and real ale is, supposedly, drunk by old hippies with untamed beards (as the names of some of the ales, among them “Tangerine Dream” and “Purple Haze” would suggest). The ale-fanciers made up slightly more of a fair-sized crowd the West Indies supporters, many of whom I recognised from the visit of their women’s team in July.

Powell’s thunderbolt aside, the afternoon was balmy, and meandered on its way in relaxed fashion, until, as tea approached, West Indies stood on 161-7. With only the tail to come, the crowd could have anticipated seeing the Windies bowl before the close of play, but that would be to forget the unusual playing conditions. One or two hardened topers (and I am not speaking from personal experience here, you understand) might have felt that they had been overdoing the “Spin Me Round” (one of Roxy Music’s more underrated tracks) as a number nine, with the frankly improbable name of Shimron Odilon Hetmyer, raised the ghost of old-tyme calypso cricket with a gaily-struck unbeaten 128, featuring 17 fours and 5 sixes (mostly hit too high to be a danger to life and limb). This Hetmyer, you see, normally bats at three, and may have glimpsed, and grasped, an opportunity to supplant the faltering Hope (K.), by laying into a tiring attack.

I didn’t bother turning up for the second day. The forecast was dubious, and I suspected that the West Indians would be less keen on bowling practice in chilly conditions. I believe that the match was abandoned because of bad light shortly before lunch (in spite of the floodlights), though I trust that the beer festival was allowed to continue for rather longer.

(Talking of trimmed and unkempt beards, I feel I would be failing in my duty if I did not report on the latest developments with respect to Ned Eckersley’s grooming. For most of the season he has favoured a long, off-centre-parted style, resembling Richard le Gallienne after a couple of months on a tramp steamer, but, for this game, both hair and beard had been severely cropped (perhaps in acknowledgement of the responsibilities of Captaincy).)

Drift Dodgers

Turn off your mind, relax and float downstream …

Some time on the morning of the first day of Leicestershire’s match against Kent (which, in the event, saw no play at all), Richard Rae of the BBC tweeted a quotation from ‘The Cricketer’ in 1926, to the effect that Leicestershire were “engaged in floating complacently down the streams of Time”. This led me to thinking (there was plenty of time for thought that day) of how the governing principle of County Cricket is drift (a little like Thomas Pynchon’s conception of entropy).

Innings accumulate slowly, grain by grain, flake by flake, imperceptibly, like sand or snow-drifts. Games drift to a conclusion, drift towards a draw. Clubs are said be drifting ; overly passive Captains are accused of letting games drift ; players’ careers start to drift, they drift out of the game. Crowds drift around the ground (particularly when it’s raining) and start to drift away after tea. Clouds drift over and away again. Afternoons, days, games, seasons drift by, and with them the years.

This drift is seductive (what could be more pleasant that floating effortlessly downstream on a Summer’s afternoon?) as long as you don’t think too hard about where the current is taking you. Resistance is ultimately futile (the greatest players, as the least, are carried away in the end), but temporary victories depend on fighting the drift and swimming upstream against the current.

Leicestershire v Kent, Grace Road, 19-22 May 2017

The first day of the Kent game was, as I say, a washout. It had rained heavily overnight and the rain returned intermittently throughout the day. No-one at the ground (some small parties from Kent and the usual suspects) seriously expected that there would be any play, though there were the usual teasing announcements about inspections and what might happen if there were no further rain. You can (and I have) spent days such as these at Grace Road, drifting aimlessly round the ground, playing spot the wheelbarrow

observing the dark clouds drift over and drift away again, watching the rain fall through the big picture windows of the Fox Bar, barely conscious of the hours, of life, drifting away, not unpleasantly but inexorably, but, for once, I chose to fight the drift and, after a quick lunch, spent the afternoon at an exhibition about the Anglo-Sikh Wars.

The second day was an affair of showers, interrupted by scattered outbreaks of cricket, and, by its end, it already seemed likely that the natural direction of drift was towards a draw. I am not suggesting any element of conscious collusion, but a slow drift to the eventual conclusion (a draw with maximum bonus points each) would not have struck either side as an outcome to be struggled against too determinedly.

Kent are a side I still think of as being, like Worcestershire, made up of young, locally-produced talent, but this is to ignore the slow drift of time. Sam Billings (26 in June) was away with England ; Sam Northeast, now in his 10^th year of first-class cricket, is 27 ; Adam Riley (25), seen by good judges not so long ago as the future of English spin, only made two first-class appearances last season and may be drifting out of the game altogether. Matt Coles (27) has drifted away to Hampshire (apparently adrift on a tide of alcohol) and back again. James Harris (27), ten years after his debut, has unexpectedly drifted in from Middlesex on loan. Daniel Bell-Drummond (24 in August) still fits the description, but, given the competition for the England openers’ berths, may soon find that he’s missed that particular boat. Fabian Cowdrey, apparently, has given it up for music and a free electric band.

Having said that, a side made up of players in their prime who are not quite good, or lucky, enough to play for England (and Kent also have nearly men of a different generation, in Denly, Tredwell and Gidman) is one route to success in County cricket. They should, by rights, have been promoted last season and came into this game having won their first three matches, but may be well advised to catch the tide before the drift catches up with them.

Play began on time, under low cloud and continued, through some light drizzle, until roughly lunchtime. Horton and Dearden opened ; both Lancastrians, they are beginning to forge the kind of safety-first partnership that drove Cardus to lyrical peaks of exasperation when writing about Lancashire’s Hallows and Makepeace in the 1920s. Horton, who was a little more expansive, departed when the score was 58, leaving Dearden to make 34 off 108 balls, having taken 12 overs to reach double figures.

They were permitted to take this approach by Coles, whom I have seen bowl well, but who looked sluggish here, bowling a few showy bouncers, but few balls that did not give the batsmen the option of leaving them, but compelled to do so by Darren Stevens, whose first ten overs resulted in roughly the same number of runs. Stevens, a brazenly nibbly medium pacer, who, at 41, looks like the sort of bloke you’d expect find in B&Q on a Saturday morning, is so much the embodiment of the kind of cricketer who is officially frowned upon that the toss was abolished to discourage him from taking wickets ; he still went into this game as both the leading run-scorer and the leading wicket-taker in Division 2. When he switched to the Bennett End, and came in with a stiff breeze at his back, scented by the familiar whiff of disinfectant and old socks, he was in his element, as threatening in his way as Thommo at the WACA.

A combination of Stevens’ miserliness and the rain that washed out the afternoon, before a brief four over reprise at 5.45 (by which time I’d drifted off home), meant that Leicestershire began the third day on 127-2 with another 63 overs to reach the 400 they needed to achieve maximum batting points. Colin Ackermann played his first innings of any substance at Grace Road, making 89 in a little over four hours (I thought a quick burst of “Sylvia” over the PA might have been in order when he reached 50). A slight, neatly turned out figure, he seems something of a throwback, playing in an unobtrusively stylish, through scrupulously orthodox style, as if he’d learned to play by following the MCC Coaching Manual while observing himself in the mirror. Together with Cosgrove (39) and Eckersley (33) he provided the middle-order solidity that he seemed to promise when he first signed.

However, with those three, plus Pettini (who didn’t look in the mood) and debutant Callum Parkinson out cheaply, the score stood on 278-7 after 91 overs. Although there was no prospect of losing, it seemed unlikely that a fourth, let alone a fifth, batting point would be secured. It occurs to me that an observer unfamiliar with the scoring of bonus points would have been puzzled by what happened next, which was that Tom Wells, Clint McKay and Dieter Klein began to flex their muscles, making 139 off the last 19 overs (a quite reasonable T20 score). Even Darren Stevens was forced to concede 44 off his 21 overs, though Matt Hunn (a tall young seamer with a disappointing lack of nicknames, given the options) bore the brunt, going for 110 off his 22.

Having left soon after 5.00, I missed the one point in the game where it seemed that the drift to a draw might be reversed, that the extraordinary thing might happen, as Dieter Klein took four wickets and Tom Wells one to reduce Kent to 144-5, in a session that did not end until 7.30. The man to re-establish it the next morning was, inevitably, Stevens, who had begun to turn the tide with a counter-attacking 50 the evening before. He went on to make exactly 100 (cheered on by the Ultras in the Stench & Benno Stand, who can’t have been quite wasted enough at that time of the morning to have forgotten that he was now playing for Kent), making the follow-on, and thus a result, unachievable by about lunchtime.

After that, the innings ended with a mirror image of Leicestershire’s, as the Kent lower order secured the fifth bonus point with 20 overs to spare. With the serious business concluded, they continued clubbing the bowling (Coles taking 26 off an over from a visibly shaken Parkinson) long after the point where it had begun to seem merely gratuitous. Leicestershire’s reply, in which Harry Dearden scored 17 in 72 minutes represented an exercise in Zen pointlessness, although young Hunn did have the consolation of returning figures of 1-2.

You may have noticed, incidentally, that this report is uncharacteristically reliant on figures (which I have borrowed from Cricinfo). Even at the distance of little over a week, much of my memory of the game has been erased by the sand-drifts of time : in fact, what I remembered most clearly about it (and this you couldn’t find on Cricinfo) was the remarkable mackerel sky on the Sunday afternoon.

Picture yourself on a boat on a river …

Northamptonshire v Worcestershire, Wantage Road, 26 May 2017

I have not renewed my Membership at Northamptonshire this year. Technically, no-one has, because Membership has been reduced to Season Ticket Holder-ship, and, with the sentimental motive removed, I have chosen not to buy one because three of Northamptonshire’s home matches coincide with Leicestershire’s (a fourth, the one against Leicestershire, is a day-night game, so I am unlikely to see much of that either).

As a result, this single day, the first of a low-scoring contest which Worcestershire won in three days, lacked context, though it drifted by enjoyably enough. What I remember best is, rather ignobly, hoping that the young Worcestershire seamer Josh Tongue would fall over, so that I could make a joke about “a slip of the Tongue” and the stroke of doubtful heritage (perhaps a kind of paddle-pull over his shoulder) that removed Ben Duckett after a watchful 28, caught behind off the said Tongue (and not even by a slip). Last season Duckett would have played this stroke without hesitation and sent it over the boundary ; he is a “confidence player”, if ever there was one, and his misadventures with England over the Winter may have depleted even his considerable reserves of that quantity.

The Memorial Garden looked lovely in the sunshine, I must say.

Derbyshire v Leicestershire, Derby, 27 May 2017

Two Derbyshire supporters

The following day I visited Derby. The ground is not, these days, one that you would choose to visit without some strong motive (even the once adequate tea-room has now been replaced by a burger van). Mine was that there was an outside chance that Leicestershire might win (the extraordinary thing), with the chance of sheet lightning thrown in (which, in the event, might have livened the game up a bit).

On the first two days, Leicestershire had made 619, chiefly because they could (in that unattractive phrase). On a Slumberdown of a pitch, and with Derbyshire lacking Viljoen and Cotton (the two bowlers who had threatened in their RLDOC match), Ackermann, Cosgrove and Eckersley all waxed fat to the tune of a large century apiece. Any chance of a result depended on Derbyshire being made to follow on. When Godelman and Thakor (another couple of drifters) began the day on 154-1 this seemed unlikely ; when, by the early afternoon, they had a century apiece and were collectively on 323-1, the direction of drift was clear.

The promised sheet lightning, which was meant to be sweeping up from the South-West (like the Duke of Monmouth), had failed to materialise during the morning, which was warm, but with a strong wind providing an undertone of unease. After lunch, though, the sky darkened and the wind rose further, coinciding with the arrival of the second new ball. McKay removed Thakor and Madsen ; Klein snared Hughes ; Chappell, who always seems to be bowl best in Wagnerian conditions, finally yorked Godelman in a moment of catharsis that had at least one spectator* leaping to his feet and punching the air. At 384-5, the extraordinary thing still seemed a possibility.

The sheet lightning never arrived, and neither did the extraordinary thing. Although Chappell subjected Smit and Wilson to a fearful battering in Stygian light (breaking Wilson’s bat, to his annoyance), they weathered the storm, which had never quite arrived, and the total drifted on past the 469 required to avert the follow on, thus killing the game late on the third day.

Cricinfo headlined their account of this match “Dull draw ends Derbyshire’s run of defeats”.

And so the season drifts on. Leicestershire stand 8^th in Division 2 (without the points deduction they would be 6^th). Ned Eckersley is the leading run scorer in Division 2, with Cosgrove not far behind ; Ackermann would be third in the averages (if they still had such things), and Leicestershire have more batting points than any side bar leaders Nottinghamshire. Zak has taken his first four wicket haul, which should give him confidence.

On the other hand, we have played five games and have yet to win. Nine to go.

Merrily, merrily, merrily, merrily – Life is but a dream!

* Me.

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.