The Picador Book of Cricket

by Ramachandra Guha

  Robin Marlar says that he can still remember the whizz of a ball which a West Indian hit off his bowling out of the ground at Hove, and, for all his many great bowling performances, he considers that his ‘proudest cricket achievement’ was when he hit a ball from Lock into the distant Vauxhall stands at the Oval.

  It is then no wonder that the six-hit has such glamour, and the element of risk adds to it. In 1928–9 Australia lost a Test match to England by a handful of runs when Blackie was caught on the edge of the boundary. ‘I was going to make a six to give the boys something to remember,’ he said regretfully. ‘It did look such an easy one.’ Sometimes batsmen have been egged on by promises of reward for sixes hit in Test matches, and when cricket was resumed in 1946 it was suggested that there be an annual prize for the batsman who hit the greatest number of sixes in a season. Though other annual awards are now made, nothing has yet been given for six-hitters. I do not think there would be anything unseemly in encouraging batsmen to go out for hits which produce such lasting pleasure, for the pleasure does linger on. Consider this story of Charles Bannerman, the great Australian batsman, who in 1878, when his team played Cambridge University at Lord’s, made a great off drive which had pitched somewhere near where the new Warner Stand is and bounded on to the wall beyond. Twenty-five years later Sir Pelham Warner met Bannerman in New Zealand, and reminded him of this hit. Bannerman had no difficulty at all in recollecting it: ‘Lord bless you, sir, I can feel her on the bat now!’

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  What if a big hit goes awry? Then the ball swirls high in the air, and takes its time coming down. It will land in the field of play, but who will arrest its fall to the ground? There is nothing, not even the act of going out to bat, that frays more nerves than waiting for a ballooner in the field. The eyes of your team members, and of all the crowd too, are fixed upon you. To drop the catch after the long wait is even more painful, perhaps, than a first-ball duck. Ian Peebles writes here about skiers famous and obscure.

  IAN PEEBLES

  Ballooners (1958)

  It is one of the canons of good cricket that the ball is kept on the ground. But see the most puritanical spectator hug himself in his joy when No 11, lacerating every other canon, lambasts the ball into the mountain air over square leg’s head.

  If square leg is Denis Compton he will enjoy this too. On the other hand, if he is extremely young or extremely old or suffering from astigmatism, his mind may be filled with painful doubt. Memories of the three sitters he has already grassed this season will mingle with thoughts of the derision which must arise if he gets it wrong again. Though his hands be numb, his brain will operate with the piercing clarity of a drowning man.

  Sometimes spectators are inclined to be unhelpful. Was it not the great A. C. MacLaren who stood before the Hill at Sydney awaiting the descent of a towering drive? As the ball plunged to earth a voice of brass at his elbow sought to wean him from his duty with a bribe at once baronial and unsuitable – unsuitable as it involved the honour of the speaker’s absent sister.

  Other spectators are helpful. Legend says that the highest hit ever was made by the gigantic Australian Bonnor, and caught by G. F. Grace in a Test match at the Oval. Lesser-known legend has it that a clergyman, seeing the ascent of this stupendous crack, tried to comfort the fielder and himself with a few silent words. He afterwards confessed that in his excitement the only words which came to mind were of a prayer for those in peril on the sea. These he had completed thrice by the time the ball was safely held. Might it not be possible for mathematicians to compute from this data the exact height the ball did in fact reach?

  One of the highest hits I ever saw was struck by Ian Cromb, the New Zealander, off my bowling at Lord’s. It was so perpendicular that it never got beyond the infield, and a terrific debate broke out between mid-on, mid-off and myself. The air was filled with cries of ‘yours’, but strangely not one of ‘mine’ was to be heard anywhere. Eventually Douglas Jardine called out for wicketkeeper Ames, who had been standing by awaiting developments. He ambled the length of the pitch and caught it standing beside me at the bowler’s end.

  Many a ballooner has come to a less happy end. There was one which many years ago was struck to long on, where stood a famous professional, the safest catch in all the North Country. His colleagues were dismayed when he seemed to lose all interest in the proceedings and let the ball fall heavily at his feet. At the fall of the next wicket his captain testily demanded an explanation.

  ‘D’ye see yon black patch?’ queried the culprit, indicating a cloud of soot, smoke and rain overhanging the pavilion. ‘Well I didn’t see ball coom off bat, but I sees it when it gets aboove stand. Then it gets in’t black patch, and I loses it. Then it gets in’t sky and I sees it again. Then it’s cooming down, and it gets in’t black patch and I loses it. So I says bother and leaves it.’

  But a sadder thing befell an elderly and deaf member of a famous club who found himself, by some mismanagement, in the same part of the field while playing against an equally famous school. He had never in his life caught anything high enough to clear the umpire’s head, so that when, by a titanic fluke, he froze on to a lofty on drive his jubilation knew no bounds. He tossed the ball from hand to hand, caressed it, threw it up in the air, and finally pocketed it as he lay down luxuriously to await the next batsman’s arrival. The shouts which greeted his feat were to him but distant whispers, but his beautiful reverie was disrupted by the arrival of a breathless mid-on.

  ‘Throw it in, you old fool,’ bellowed this emissary. ‘It’s a no-ball, and they’ve already run seven.’

  Many may know this story in some shape or form, but this is, I believe, the true and original version. Essex were in the field late in the afternoon when a batsman hit a full toss right out of the meat of a well-swung bat. The ball sang down on square leg out of the low sun like a jet fighter going into the attack and, taking him smack dab on the cap badge, knocked him flat on his back. While the rest of the field rushed to the rescue, that incomparable man Charlie McGahey went up to the remorseful striker and said in conversational tones, ‘Cigar or coconut, sir?’

  One of the most spectacular misses it has been my lot to see was made by ‘Hopper’ Levett of Kent, who essayed to catch Jim Smith. The stroke was a prodigious one, and so faultlessly vertical that it was really unnecessary for the wicketkeeper to claim it as his as he set about his task. This he did by revolving round and round the wicket in taut circles. With arched back and imploring hands held before his painfully upturned face, it only wanted a voodoo drum to complete the scene. He had gone round about five times when his cap fell off, and several times more when he suddenly realized that the ball was about to arrive at the opposite side of the circle. Seeking a short cut to this point, he lurched into the castle and went down with a crash of bails, pads and stumps, closely followed, by way of an emphatic full stop, by the thud of the arriving ball.

  It took quite some time to restore order. Someone then callously suggested that if ‘Hopper’ hadn’t interfered, the ball would have descended on top of the middle stump and the batsman would have been out ‘played on’.

  Ponder these things next time the ball is a pinprick in the sky and the cry is raised, ‘Yours, Reader!’

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  Like the wicketkeeper, the umpire must be in the game at all times. Like the wicketkeeper again, he is a man who is noticed only when he errs. Unlike the wicketkeeper, however, he is on the field when both sides bat. Given the stress and the strain, it is a wonder that there are so many volunteers. The prince of cricket writers celebrates the rarely celebrated adjudicators of the game.

  NEVILLE CARDUS

  The Umpire (1934)

  The umpire at cricket is like the geyser in the bathroom: we cannot do without it, yet we notice it only when it is out of order. The solemn truth is that the umpire is the most important man on the field; he is like the conductor of an orchestra. If first slip misses a catch, the error involves only a pers
onal fallibility; we say ‘Hard luck!’ and first slip begins again. If the umpire falters, everybody in the game is drawn into the range of mortal frailty; we do not say ‘Hard luck!’ to the miserable man in the white coat; we even add to our gloating over his fallibility the imputation of stupidity or of malice prepense. If a batsman misses a half-volley and is bowled, the crowd laughs or, at the worst, calls the guilty one an ass. But the umpire who errs as obviously as that is likely to be regarded as unfit for his job. His fallibility can be reported at Lord’s; nobody reports to Lord’s the cricketer who in the excitement of the moment runs his partner out.

  All day long, ball after ball, the umpire must keep his mind intensely on the game. The players are free to enjoy relaxations. Some of them indulge in a good sleep while their side is batting. When rain falls and stops play, the cricketers can forget the match for a while. The umpire enjoys no release from responsibility; until the match is over, or until weather causes an abandonment, he is obliged to watch, watch, watch – either the play or the pitch or the groundsman. The amount of concentration he is expected to perform every day is almost an abuse of human endurance. What a great country this would be if every man, whatever his station, concentrated half as much on the smallest detail of his work as an umpire is compelled to do, from high noon to dewy evening of a cricket match!

  The umpires are the Dogberrys of the game. We see them as essentially comic characters. Whenever a batsman swipes to leg, and hits the umpire in the small of the back, how the crowd roars! If the wind blows the hat off the umpire’s head, laughter holds sides. The reason for the humour which comes out of the activities of the umpires is a matter of deep psychology. For the simple fact is that no man can sustain with dignity the semblance of infallible judgement. Man is born to sin and error; and when he wears the robes of virtue and wisdom and law and infallibility all rolled into one, the gods infect us with their merriment.

  ‘How’s that?’ shrieked the whole field when a batsman was brilliantly thrown out. ‘Wait a minute,’ answered the umpire. ‘Who did it?’

  It is, of course, to country cricket that we must look for the really comical Dogberry of the crease. I remember Old George, in the days when we used to go on a jolly tour through Shropshire. The custom was for each side to bring its own umpire, and at the beginning of every match old George made a point of meeting the other team’s umpire, over a glass of ale in the pavilion.

  ‘Now, look’ ’ee ’ere,’ he would say, ‘it is for yew to luke after yewre business, and oi’ll luke after mine!’

  Once on a time a cricket match was about to be played between two village clubs of long and vehement rivalry. An hour before the pitching of stumps a visitor to the district walked on to the ground and inspected the wicket. He was greeted by an old man, a very old man. The visitor asked for information about the impending battle, and the ancient monument told him.

  ‘Is your team strong in bowling?’ asked the visitor.

  ‘Ay sir, not so bad,’ was the answer.

  ‘And who gets most of your wickets?’ asked the visitor.

  ‘Why sir, oi do,’ was the reply.

  ‘Heaven,’ said the visitor, ‘surely you don’t bowl at your time of life?’

  ‘No, sir, oi be the umpire.’

  But in the highest realms of county and Test cricket the umpire, though frequently the source of humour, is seldom allowed to share in it. A crucial blunder might mean an end to his livelihood. He deserves all the help he can possibly be given. Is not his job difficult enough in itself without the addition of embarrassments which are the consequence of our hastiness and temper? I appeal to every lover of the game to think of the umpire always, to bear always in mind that, like the backwoods’ pianist, he is doing his best – in threatening circumstances.

  English cricket today is fortunate to be under the supervision of umpires as fine and courageous and clever as Arthur Morton (a rich character), Frank Chester, Hardstaff – to name but a few. Chester is a joy to watch; he delivers his decisions sometimes with immense irony. I have seen him signal a snicked boundary by means of a gesture of regal disdain, as though to say, ‘What a stroke! I am compelled by the law to rule it worth four; but I reserve the right to say what I think about it.’

  I have seen Chester give a batsman out with a finger suddenly pointed to heaven, dramatic in its announcement of ruthless finality. And I have seen him turn his back on a bowler’s manifestly absurd appeal for leg-before-wicket – turn his back with the air of a man consigning another to some place outside the pale of all sense and decency.

  Arthur Morton is not so spectacular; he believes in the conservation of energy. But county cricketers know well, and revel in, his comments at the wicket, many of them delivered out of the corner of the mouth. ‘I wish you’d keep quiet,’ he once said at the agony of a Lancashire and Yorkshire match; ‘it’s like umpiring in a parrot house.’

  Parry is the umpire who bends himself into a right angle for every ball when he is standing at the bowler’s end; he takes on this terrible burden of physical discomfort so that, as he thinks, he can get a better sight of the ball in a leg-before-wicket mix-up. Merely to look at him for an hour is to go home suffering from lumbago. They all of them are worthy of our applause, the men who serve the game by standing – and waiting for the end of the long, long day.

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  There comes a time when all players must leave the stage. Some choose their moment of departure, going when the fans ask ‘Why?’ rather than ‘Why not?’ Others are forced out, the failure of form or the advance of age leading to non-selection. Whatever the manner of exit, it is always a deeply poignant moment for player and follower. This essay by an Australian about three departing Englishmen is one of my favourites.

  J. H. FINGLETON

  Cricket Farewells (1955)

  Twiddling the peak of his cap, as is his wont, Len Hutton walked from the Sydney ground and into the pavilion depths just as the workman on the balcony above hauled down the MCC flag for the last time.

  Behind Hutton came Compton, surrounded, as he invariably was in Australia when play ended, by a doting band of the British merchant service who unfailingly convoyed him from the field and then, after depositing him at the dressing-room door, just as unfailingly convoyed themselves in the general surge to the members’ bar. And behind Compton came Evans, his red-faced gloves tucked under his right arm and his left consolingly about a small boy who, like his ilk, thinks time and place of no autograph consequence.

  In short time the pavilion had swallowed them all up and the sad thought grew that possibly no Australian ground will see again Hutton, Compton and Evans. In such a way did Grace, Trumper, Ranjitsinhji, the Gregorys and all the brilliant rest pass from cricketing sight. There is a moment in every cricketer’s life when he’s seen; another moment and he’s no more, nor ever will be again.

  Lord’s could not comprehend in 1948 that it had seen Bradman for the last time. Thousands stood on the grass in front of the pavilion and called for their hero. They found it hard to leave a sunlit scene where so often he had made the hours immortal; they found it harder to believe that he had gone from their sight for ever. So also with Hobbs in Australia in 1929. On his last day in Sydney he walked the full circuit of the ground with Noble while the crowd rose to him, singing ‘Auld Lang Syne’, and the Hill presented him with a birthday fund.

  Hutton and Compton for a surety won’t be seen again in Australia. Evans might be, because keepers go till their knuckles grow callous, and Strudwick and Duckworth became as familiar on the ship’s run to Australia as the Galle Face at Colombo.

  Those who thrive on statistics will say that Hutton did this and that on our various grounds; that Compton once got two Test centuries in an Adelaide game, and that Evans knew peerless stumping days in addition to batting often with pronounced entertainment and success.

  Others, however, will have richer memories.

  Of Hutton here I will always recall the sheer brilliance of
the perfect innings he played in Sydney nine years ago. It didn’t pass 40 but it ran the gamut of the whole batting art. I see him again in his own elegant manner driving Lindwall straight and to the off; glancing – and he knew no peer in glancing – and forcing Miller, and all the time fiddling with his cap just before he settled down to the crease or cradling his bat as he ran. Those movements were part of Hutton. That classical innings gave me an imperishable memory.

  Compton, like the majestic Hammond before him, has known some of his greatest and some of his poorest days in Australia. The latter are soon forgotten. Those who know genius will always carry the mental picture of Compton smacking the ball fine to leg as only Compton could; of the sheer beauty and thrill of his cover drive and hook; of his impish run out before the ball was bowled and, sometimes, his scamper back like a schoolboy caught helping himself to jam.

  In Melbourne, once, when that weird bowler ‘Wrong Grip’ Iverson (who flicked off breaks off his second finger with a leg-break action) was befuddling the Englishmen at their first meeting, Sheppard, who had been doing best of all, walked down the pitch and asked skipper Compton whether he (Sheppard) shouldn’t change from defence to attack. ‘Go on as you are, David,’ said Compton, who had been in the most abject bother. ‘Leave the antics to me.’

  Evans, always tremendously vital, will live as the man who stood undaunted over the stumps to Bedser – as Strudwick did before him to Tate at his greatest.

  Rich characters, all of them, fading from the scene, but their memories will remain. There is poignancy in thinking we will see them no more, poignancy and regret. When the last flag had long been furled I looked up from my press work and saw in the gloaming a man in civilian clothes treading the pitch as if a pilgrim in Mecca. He walked, at last, towards the pavilion and then turned ‘and took one long and lingering look, and took a last farewell’ before he, too, went into the pavilion for the last time. It was Alec Bedser.