The Picador Book of Cricket

by Ramachandra Guha

  I talked, only a few days ago, with C. J. Kortright, who is often said to have been the fastest of all bowlers. In my innocence I said to him, ‘How often did you bowl a bumper?’ ‘Oh, never,’ he said, ‘never – we didn’t need to; you see batsmen in my day would always play the balls we bowled outside the off stump except wides, we didn’t need to make ’em play.’ That batting, of course, was the classic reply to classic fast bowling. The bowler bowled on or outside the off stump – daring the batsman to pit his off-side strokes, which are the most handsome strokes in the game, against the bowler’s pace. But modern batsmen have plumped for utilitarian methods and fast bowling has become less glorious than of old.

  So there is little profit, either in cash or glory, in fast bowling today. Again, food shortages do not tend to produce bowlers with the bonus energy demanded by fast bowling. The war restricted coaching and the development of young cricketers. Many young men of the good physique and good heart essential in a fast bowler gave their lives in a contest grimmer than a Test match. So England is short of fast bowlers who might bowl out the Australians or even give English batsmen practice against speed such as that of Ray Lindwall.

  But, as Ray Lindwall moved in silky momentum to the crease and swept away the English batting at Lord’s, he set foot in England an idea which cannot but prove heady to youth.

  Up and down the country small boys at cricket on school playing fields, odd grass patches, or side streets, gripped a ball, struck poses and said, ‘I’m Lindwall.’ Then they propelled the ball wildly towards a nervous batsman at the other end. This virus in the young will undoubtedly lead to broken windows, probably to bruised shins, even to black eyes. It may also produce in England a great fast bowler of the class of Ray Lindwall. There may be a gap of a few years before that bowler, in his turn, runs up to bowl in a Test at Lord’s, but in him the tradition will remain unbroken.

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  Fast bowlers hunt in pairs, it is said; but so do opening batsmen. There have been many famous partnerships, and in my opinion the best of them all was the Bajan firm of Gordon Greenidge and Desmond Haynes. This essay by Ian Peebles recalls some older openers.

  IAN PEEBLES

  Opening Batsmen (1958)

  ‘Opening batsmen,’ said my friend, a man of judgement in sporting matters. ‘A couple of dull dogs, sent in to discourage the opposition.’

  This was a surprising pronouncement to me, as I have always regarded opening pairs as the glamour boys of cricket. Not for them the long, anxious wait followed by the solitary walk to meet an already established bowler. They enter the freshly cleared area shoulder to shoulder like royalty, with eleven retainers going before to make arrangements for their welcome. When famous, their names become linked together as closely as Rolls and Royce or Negretti and Zambra, lending them all the stability and grandeur of an old-established firm of lawyers. Think of a few of the ‘old firms’ – Gunn and Shrewsbury, Tunnicliffe and Brown, Hobbs and Sutcliffe, Woodfull and Ponsford. Could any commercial venture have flopped with a title such as one of these?

  But opening the innings is not all a bed of roses, or should we say Nottingham marl? It calls for special qualities of technique and judgement rather beyond those of the rest of the batting order, for the first partnership is the keystone on which will largely depend the pattern of things to come.

  The opening batsman need never be dull, but he must be sound. The new ball in the hands of the expert can be made to do strange and diabolical things and, while every batsman will sometime meet it, shine and swing are the opener’s stock in trade. If there are any shortcomings in the mechanics of his craft they will be exposed in no time, for the new ball moves fast and late, calling for special vigilance and treatment. Not the least important refinement is the art of leaving it alone. You may have seen Hobbs or Hutton pull the bat away so late in the stroke that it looks as if they had been beaten. They haven’t, but practice and reflex have detected a last-second deviation from the pitch.

  Apart from physical ability, the start of an innings calls for sound assessment of a number of points. State of the wicket, time factor, and the type and extent of the bowling resources will determine whether to be a ‘dull dog’ and dig in or to launch a blitzkrieg and seize the initiative right away. The crafty campaigner may nurse one bowler in order to keep another off or shield a partner vulnerable to some particular form of attack. The unselfish Bill Woodfull, affectionately called ‘the worm killer’ in his own country, would sniff around for the chief danger of the day, and then manoeuvre to stay opposite it until his less certain but more brilliant colleagues were well in. Some of us can remember the superb bluff of Jack Hobbs, which in 1926 succeeded in convincing the Australians, and everyone else, that a sticky Oval wicket was really an ordinary slow one.

  The first-wicket man must also have physical courage. Nothing is more stimulating to the nervous system than a bright hard new ball received on thumb or thigh from a fresh Larwood or Lindwall off a fresh green wicket. With the increase of discretion and the decrease of vision, this quality has occasionally been known to wane. One distinguished and mature county No. 1 made no bones about it. If the name of Larwood or Macdonald appeared on the scoresheet he had a three-day attack of flu, which he doctored on the local golf course. And Bobby Abel, on being taxed with a slight reluctance in facing the fearsome Kortright, sensibly replied that he was a married man with a family, and there were lots of other bowlers in England.

  With the destinies of their side so heavily depending upon them, it is logical that Nos. 1 and 2 have produced many picturesque characters. My own favourite opening batsman will ever be George Gunn, whose talents as a musician were reflected in his loftily detached attitude at the crease. One feels that he and his fellow pianist Pachman would have made most amiable companions. What records he would hold had he been mathematically instead of musically minded no man can say. Some years ago at Edgbaston he mentioned to Bob Wyatt as he took guard that his committee thought he might make some more runs, so he was going to make a hundred, which he did at his leisure. Second innings he casually observed that there had been some criticism of his century as being too slow, so this one was going to be a bit quicker. It took an hour and a half. I myself remember the evening at Lord’s when he abruptly terminated a dazzling innings at 95 on the grounds that his side were now all right and he would rather like to sit and watch the game with his wife. When Leicestershire, in an experiment with time, advanced the lunch hour to two o’clock he deposited the ball neatly into a delighted bowler’s hands at precisely one-thirty, remarking that this was his accustomed lunchtime.

  In broader vein were the eccentricities of the impish George Brown of Hampshire, who once advanced to attack Larwood and Voce with a crash helmet surmounting his majestic stature. Alan Fairfax likes to tell of him opening the innings for his county against the Australians when he received the raconteur’s first ball, of adequate pace and length, with a blow of such unorthodox violence that it narrowly missed a tram some distance outside the square-leg boundary. Knowing the striker, I’d wager that this gesture was prompted by a motorcyclist’s deep-rooted aversion to trams rather than the solemnity of the occasion, of which he was probably quite oblivious.

  There is also Charlie Harris, who when absorbed in his play seems transported far from his immediate surroundings. His partner of many years’ standing complained mildly one morning at Lord’s that for two hours he had been addressed from the further end by a rich variety of English Christian names, not one of which bore any resemblance to his own, which happens to be Walter.

  There was Victor Trumper, perhaps the greatest legendary figure in cricket, whose gentle unselfish character contrasted so strongly with the ruthless brilliance of his play. Herbie Taylor, master of the mat and full of mercurial and unexpected theory, is remembered among the truly great, over all of whom presides the mighty figure of ‘W. G.’ himself. They say that when he had written Grace at No. 1 he would make known his further wishes by te
lling the rest of the side at what number they would COME in.

  But most moderns would unhesitatingly point to Jack Hobbs as the greatest opening batsman of their times, with Hobbs and Sutcliffe as the greatest pair. Of the immortals, Hobbs is perhaps the only one of the moderns whom it is not possible to fault in certain circumstances. His astonishing technique was adaptable to every variety of wicket, and the more trying the conditions the greater the disparity between his performance and the next best. The extreme pace of Cotter, Gregory and Macdonald he met with serene confidence and, as he bowled rather good swingers and googlies himself, these held no mystery for him.

  In the iron determination and tireless concentration of Herbert Sutcliffe he found an ideal foil, and the understanding between the two seemed to be almost telepathic. Do you remember the singles they used to trot which would have strained most legs and nerves to bursting point?

  Since the war there have been many good pairs, but none seem to have been associated long enough to become crystallized into a family business, though the early dissolution of Messrs Barnes and Morris was probably a mercy for visiting firemen. In this country post-war county cricket has so far been too transient and short-lived to produce anything so established as Makepeace and Hallows – but the names of Hutton and Lowson scan very nicely.

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  Cover has always been a vital fielding position, its importance further enhanced in one-day cricket. John Arlott writes of the famous cover fielders in the history of the game; characteristically, he ranges across the globe in search of candidates. Would that he had lived long enough to watch and write about Jonty Rhodes!

  JOHN ARLOTT

  Not One to Cover (1970s)

  ‘Not one to cover’ is a seriously cautionary comment in more circles than one. In cricket it is the batsman’s warning to his partner that the fieldsman at cover point is too good for them to expect a single from a stroke in that direction. Cover is potentially the villain or the hero of any fielding story. His specific task is to nullify the most romantic of all strokes, the cover drive: on the other hand, he has the opportunity to be the most spectacularly graceful fieldsman in the game.

  Strictly speaking – certainly in the firm opinion of any captain who does not himself field in that position – there should never be one run from a stroke to cover. Yet, in practice, there often is. Jack Hobbs – who understood the tactic so well because he fielded there himself – used to ‘bait’ the opposing cover point. First he would play a series of checked strokes to him: hit hard the ball would reach the fieldsman too quickly to allow a single: but ‘checked’ – played gently – there was time for the batsmen to run one while it was travelling to him. Then, having lured him in too close, Hobbs would unleash the fully powered stroke, placed wide of him and too fast to be stopped, for four runs. It was a joke Jack always appreciated, but cover points never did.

  Cover does, of course, make catches – skiers and horribly awkward swirlers from mishits, and stinging skimmers from full-blooded drives only fractionally mistimed – but he is predominantly a run-saver. Nyren, speaking from the wisdom of the Hambledon cricket of almost 200 years ago, wrote that the fieldsman posted ‘to cover the middle wicket and point’ needed to know ‘the exact spot where the two runs may be saved, and that where the one run may be prevented’ – the perfect posing of a problem no one has ever managed to solve all the time.

  Nevertheless, for the man eager in temperament and fast on his feet, it is the most exciting of all positions: he could probably excel in the deep but, at cover, the challenge is not to save the four or the two, but to save the one: he is as deeply involved with every ball bowled as any close catcher, for even the defensive stroke which trickles the ball out on the off side may give the chance of a quick single in his direction.

  Nyren says he must ‘play from the pitch of the ball, and the motion of the batsman so as to get the start of the ball’ and ‘learn to judge the direction in which the batter, by his position and motion, will strike the ball, and whether high or low, hard or gently, and before it is struck, he should be off to meet it’.

  There is never ‘one to cover’ against a man who meets that demand. The first of them was Vernon Royle, good enough to play for Lancashire in 1873 straight from school while, as an attacking bat, he once finished second in the Lancashire averages: but his great fame was as a cover point. He was ambidextrous, vitally important there since the right-hander’s cover drive always tends to curl to the left. The enduring tribute to him was reported from a Roses match. Tom Emmett, that shrewd Yorkshire character, was batting when his partner pushed a ball out to cover and called for a run. ‘Nay, nay’, said Tom, indicating Royle. ‘Woa, now, there’s a policeman theer.’

  Many of the finest cover points, because of their speed of reaction and certainty of hand, have been translated and posted close to the wicket, like A. O. Jones – who invented the gully position – Percy Chapman, Patsy Hendren and Keith Miller. But Gilbert Jessop, the legendary hitter, who also opened the bowling for England against Australia, fielded there all his life and C. B. Fry, in his analysis of the playing methods of the great, picked him as the pre-eminent fieldsman. Jessop was stockily built and, crouched in anticipation, he was valuably near the ground. As he moved in to pick up, his right arm was in position to swing back and his left foot was lifted so, the instant the ball entered his hand, he was ready to throw in. His throw involved no hint of the ‘wind up’ which gives batsmen the crucial extra moment of running time. He saved the fractions of a second, so often decisive in a run-out, by throwing from the elbow down, largely by a flick of the wrist, so that the running batsman, accustomed to the often laborious mechanics of the throw from the deep, was beaten for speed.

  From the deep, however, Jessop employed a different, more shoulder-powered, but still low, throw. In 1905, the Australians played Surrey at the Oval on the same three days as were allotted to the Middlesex–Gloucestershire match at Lord’s. In the county game Middlesex were soon in trouble on a bad pitch and Gloucester, captained by Jessop, took an advantage by the end of the first day. On the second day the then Prince of Wales – president as well as landlord of the Surrey club – and his two sons arrived to watch play at the Oval in the afternoon, soon after the county began their second innings. It had been arranged that W. G. Grace should sit with His Royal Highness, as well as the chairman, Lord Alverstoke, and, since Surrey were batting, Lord Dalmeny their captain joined the company. Late in the day Hayward struck a ball wide of mid-on to the boundary in the distant – Harleyford Road – corner of the ground, a vastly long hit. Suddenly the ball came back out of the crowd in a fierce, low arc, plumb into the wicketkeeper’s gloves. ‘Middlesex must have lost,’ said ‘W. G’. ‘How do you know that, Doctor?’ asked Dalmeny. ‘Only Jessopus could have thrown that ball,’ answered the ‘Old Man’. He was right. Jessop, unable to bat because of a knee injury, had left the rest of the Gloucestershire side to make the 14 runs they needed to beat Middlesex and gone to take a sight of the Australians. His cab put him down at the Vauxhall corner gate and he walked in just as Hayward’s stroke took the ball into the crowd: and, to W. G. at least, the arc of his throw was unmistakable. We may hope the heir to the throne was suitably impressed by the ‘Old Man’s’ expertise.

  In that match at the Oval, Jack Hobbs opened the innings for Surrey. The critics of the time, though impressed by his batting, criticized his apparent slackness in the field and, always a model professional, he set out to rectify the fault. Quick-footed, neat and controlled in movement, intelligent in approach, within a couple of years he made himself into one of the finest cover points in the history of the game – so that there was never ‘one to cover’ when Jack Hobbs was there. For a time, however, he ‘kidded’ batsmen that there was. He would move in slowly, allow them to take a few runs and then, as they assumed the single, he pounced. In eleven matches of the 1911–12 tour of Australia, he ran out fifteen batsmen from cover. His accuracy was such that, under pres
sure and with only one stump to aim at, he would whip all three out of the ground.

  As a rule, though, he did not take that risk of overthrows: if the minutest margin of time was left to him, he threw not merely to the wicketkeeper, but slap into his gloves. His friend Herbert Strudwick who for years kept wicket in the same Surrey and England sides, said, ‘Jack threw so hard that, if I hadn’t taken it, it would have smashed my ribs: at first I used to be a bit alarmed until I realized that it was always going to hit my gloves just over the stumps.’

  As the years went by Hobbs ran out fewer opponents: one could observe those he did bring off, his catches and his stops; no one could count the number of runs his reputation saved, runs batsmen might have taken but did not dare to attempt because Hobbs was there.

  In the days before bowlers set out to close the off side, when the old masters of slow left-arm tempted batsmen to drive into the covers, the post of cover point was even more highly specialized than now. Indeed, Middlesex thought it worthwhile to include S. H. Saville for his cover fielding alone: and Jim Hutchinson, whose career batting average was under 19, and who was a negligible bowler, held his place in the Derbyshire XI for a decade for his value.