The Picador Book of Cricket

by Ramachandra Guha

  But now Jimmy Adams is gone, caught by Steve Waugh, who else? And now it becomes even more difficult to imagine defeat being avoided, or even making them bat again. And Waugh will be man of the series and salt in the wounds. But wait! What is this? Lunch has just ended, television coverage just resumed, and Hooper and Benjamin are both out? Already? Keith Arthurton and Courtney Brown batting? 145 for 6?

  The last time I watched the West Indies take licks like this was in 1991, I think, when England won at Leeds. Fifteen years of championship go with defeat but I actually feel better today. At least I’m watching this in St Ann’s, on TTT, instead of South London, on BBC1, where every accent I heard was a taunt. And now Keith Arthurton is out for 14 runs, and the bowlers have to make 100 runs to make the Aussies bat again. Arthurton was lbw to a ball that Michael Holding doubted would hit the wicket. It’s more like he was out TFW: Time For another Wicket.

  And Curtly is the man to come in. I love to see him on TV, but not today. What are these guys going to feel like? Many of them have been on the winningest team in modern cricket. Now they’re going to be on the West Indies team that lost. And it’s Shane Warne who gets Curtly out stupidly, chipping down the wicket and being stumped. Good thing Shane Warne won’t have to bat again. Curtly would be vexed.

  And now Courtney Walsh, the man who least deserves to be on a losing West Indies team, comes in to bat. Ah, he’s got a run. Thank Heaven’s Small Mercies Department for that. And a four, too! Well, if he follows Arthurton’s lead, he should hit a six and then be out.

  I’ve just realized that there are two Courtneys at the wicket. Very good, but it would have been better to have a single Brian. It is hard to take this licks. I know there are West Indians who are untroubled today because they don’t follow cricket. They’re like people who don’t like chocolate – I don’t know whether I should feel sorry or glad for them. Chocolate and West Indies cricket can make me fat and totally depressed, respectively, but I don’t care. Nothing is as sweet as chocolate or West Indies cricket, and I would not want to live without either.

  And now Ian Healy has dropped an even easier catch. It’s like he doesn’t want to leave the ground too early for some reason. Wouldn’t it be lovely if Courtney went on to score a century? Oh, this thing called hope that this West Indies team has given us for the last fifteen years that makes me think Courtney Walsh could make a century.

  Ah. Courtney’s out. So there’s just the formality of Kenny Benjamin and the agony of defeat should start. This is what people in Trinidad call a ‘whiteman’ – where you cut yourself so deeply that you don’t even see blood for a while, just the white of your flesh, and then the blood seeps in before your eyes.

  OK, there it is, it’s over. An ecstatic Mark Taylor lifts the trophy and Richie Richardson comes on TV to say this is the worst Aussie team he’s ever played. Why didn’t he congratulate the Aussies and warn them that their best team in decades was playing a team in transition, and they ought to enjoy the Frank Worrell trophy while they have it, because we’ll have it back for ever next time? Poor Richie. He’s Antiguan, you know. Their hearts are in the right place but they usually have their feet in their mouths.

  And now I know the reason I’ve subjected myself to watching the tightening of the coils. It is right that I should watch, that we all should. We’ve cheered so often in the past. We should take our one blow and shed our tears without blaming anyone. But you know cricket goes to the heart in these parts. I expect many will call the names of Stuart Williams, Sherwin Campbell and David Holford, while invoking those of Dessie Haynes and Phil Simmons. I wish they wouldn’t. I’d feel better about the West Indies if we could take this one on our chests, instead of pointing fingers.

  ⋆ ⋆ ⋆

  From 1960 to 1995 the great rivalry in international cricket was Australia v. the West Indies. For decades previously it was England v. Australia. In 1977, on the occasion of the Centenary Test, a distinguished British journalist asked two great players to choose their All-Time XIs. That was the year Ian Botham first played Test cricket; Shane Warne’s debut lay a dozen years into the future. Both men would surely figure in a revision of the exercise.

  IAN WOOLDRIDGE

  Ashes Dream Teams (1977)

  One hundred years ago on 15 March, at one o’clock Australian time in the afternoon, a bearded Englishman named Alfred Shaw turned his back on the ornate pavilions of Melbourne Cricket Ground and ran in to bowl at a moustachioed Australian named Charles Bannerman.

  So began a relationship unique in the history of sport. One century later England and Australia are still periodically playing cricket Test matches against one another in the same atmosphere of uncompromising hostility and inherent mutual respect.

  Only Armageddon or nuclear holocaust, should there be any difference, will terminate a continuing contest incomprehensible to the outside world in its intensity.

  You have to be born either English or Australian to understand that any weakening in the resolve to win would render the whole exercise as pointless as perpetuating a grudge in the wake of defeat.

  The mere first 100 years of this special relationship will be celebrated with a single Test between England and Australia starting tomorrow week in Melbourne Cricket Ground.

  It is now a vast tiered concrete colosseum, cruel of aspect and devoid of hiding places. The Olympic Games were staged there in 1956 and it is now capable of holding 100,000 spectators, which makes it three times the size of the average Test arena.

  To commemorate this genuine Match of the Century we invited two of the most eminent contestants of the first 100 years – Sir Leonard Hutton of England and Keith Miller of Australia – to choose their strongest All-Time XIs to represent their respective countries in a mythical Test. Each was asked to select himself.

  Hutton had 318 players to choose from, Miller 250. Neither sought to confuse the issue by considering William Midwinter, the only man who played for each country against the other.

  One thing is certain: their choices will generate many heated discussions on such eternal questions as how would Donald Bradman have fared against Wilfred Rhodes, and how is the 125-year-old Charles Bannerman likely to cope with the pace of the 72-year-old Harold Larwood?

  Serious students of cricket will be intrigued and possibly alarmed by one fact. Hutton and Miller chose their respective All-Time XIs independently. Neither man chose a single cricketer currently playing the game.

  ENGLAND

  Sir Leonard Hutton announced his all-time England team with the portentous deliberation of some Bradford electoral returning officer. Then he stayed silent, counting the seconds it took you to spot that five of the eleven were Yorkshiremen.

  It wasn’t long, but experience warns you against engaging Hutton in the intricate swordplay of cricket theory.

  In any case, only one was a contentious selection and Hutton, sensitive to accusations of northern chauvinism, already had the gloves on waiting to defend his choice of Maurice Leyland ahead of Denis Compton, Peter May or the early-or-mid-career Colin Cowdrey.

  ‘Since it’s inconceivable that any all-time Australian team would go into the field without Bill O’Reilly,’ he said, ‘I’ve picked Leyland as the horse for the course.

  ‘O’Reilly was the best bowler Australia ever had: aggressive, unbelievably accurate to the right-handers. Well, Leyland was a left-hander and he also had the jinx on O’Reilly.

  ‘I remember him saying: ‘‘I’ve got that O’Reilly in my pocket and, what’s more, he knows it.’’ I’ve never heard another England batsman tempt fate by saying anything like that. But it was true and that’s why Leyland is in.’

  Hutton’s de rigueur inclusion gave him the initial problem of where to bat himself. ‘It wasn’t a big one,’ he said. ‘Hobbs and Sutcliffe were not only great players of fast bowling but had a magnificent understanding running between wickets.

  ‘I’d be quite happy to go in No. 5, particularly in Melbourne, where opening an innings can be a lite
rally frightening experience.’

  After explaining Leyland’s presence, he knew that no justification of Walter Hammond’s inclusion was required. ‘He was simply the best cricketer I ever played with.’

  Woolley, towering, commanding and also left-handed to challenge O’Reilly, was a natural. And although there was sorrow that he could not include Godfrey Evans – ‘a friend, a marvellous team man and great reader of batsmen’s weaknesses’ – he chose Leslie Ames as wicketkeeper.

  Much of Hutton’s own character was revealed by his selection of bowlers. Not only did he require wickets, but he also wanted men who could bat.

  ‘George Hirst was fantastically accurate and could also swing an old ball. What’s more, he was a very aggressive batsman.

  ‘It’s also impossible to leave out either Wilfred Rhodes or Syd Barnes. They represent genius. Barnes could bowl anything.

  ‘Rhodes was the complete cricketer, a very great bowler who began batting No. 11 for England and finished up opening the innings.’

  It was only after much analysis that Hutton chose Harold Larwood as his spearhead fast bowler. Tyson, phenomenally fast, had won him a series in real-life cricket against Australia but Hutton said: ‘I think Larwood just had the edge over Tyson for speed. He had the finest action I’ve ever seen.’

  It was obvious that Sir Leonard Hutton had given many hours to his selections.

  ‘I shall probably be criticized for the fact that it isn’t a great fielding side,’ he said. ‘I know that. Given the choice I would have chosen Peter May or Colin Cowdrey as twelfth man as well. But I gather the idea is to beat Australia in Melbourne. It’s never easy.’

  AUSTRALIA

  Keith Miller, inveterate horse-player, party-goer and probably the most glamorous figure ever to play for Australia at anything, immediately renounced the responsibilities of captaincy. It was almost as though he couldn’t trust himself to get to the ground in time to toss up.

  His team is more controversial than Hutton’s, but it is his voluntary decision to play under the captaincy of Sir Donald Bradman that will cause most comment in Australia. They were always seen as incompatible figures and there are many legends of bad blood between them.

  ‘It is quite true’, admits Miller, ‘that we had a couple of blowups during Test matches. One was at Lord’s, when I flung the ball back and refused to bowl for him. But that never lessened my respect for him as a captain dedicated to winning, and since this match is against England there can be no other choice.’

  Those with some knowledge of cricket may feel that Miller has gambled with his very first selection in his all-time Australian team.

  ‘I probably have,’ confesses Miller, ‘but I’m a bit of a romantic as well. Obviously there’s nobody alive today who ever saw Charlie Bannerman bat, but he faced the very first ball ever bowled in England–Australia Tests and he scored 165 before he had to retire hurt and Australia won by 45 runs. He must have been as tough as nails.

  ‘It’s bloody hard choosing Australia’s opening batsmen because there have been so many great ones: Ponsford, Woodfull, Barnes, Morris and Bobby Simpson, who was also the greatest slip fielder I’ve ever seen. It’s hard to leave any of them out.

  ‘I couldn’t contemplate leaving Ponsford out altogether so I’ve chosen him to bat No. 4. That means Victor Trumper opens the innings with Bannerman. I never saw Trumper either, but the stories can’t all be wrong. Anyway, my father saw him bat and said he was as good as Bradman and that will do me.’

  No one would challenge Miller’s own selection and few that of Stan McCabe at No. 5. It was while McCabe was scoring his 232 at Nottingham in 1938 that Bradman summoned Australia’s players from a dressing-room card game to the pavilion balcony with the words ‘Come and watch this. You may never see anything like it again.’

  Miller delves back to the turn of the century for Monty Noble, a huge first-generation Australian all-rounder who defeated England little short of single-handed in several Tests with either a batting onslaught or a swing-bowling technique which he had developed as a young baseball player.

  His choice of Ray Lindwall, his own new-ball partner and inseparable drinking buddy, as the greatest of all Australian fast bowlers will cause no controversy. Nor will his choice of Bill O’Reilly ‘the greatest bowler of any type the game has ever seen’.

  ‘Also I had no hesitation’, said Miller, ‘about choosing Don Tallon. He was the best batsman–wicketkeeper I’ve ever seen.’

  Miller’s final selection, spin support for O’Reilly, caused him his only lost sleep. ‘It was a straight fight between a very good friend, Richie Benaud, and Clarrie Grimmett. In the end I decided to go entirely on the evidence of the record books: Benaud 248 wickets in 63 Tests, Grimmett 216 wickets in only 37 Tests.’

  ⋆ ⋆ ⋆

  Recall the words ascribed to Frederick Spofforth by Ralph Barker: ‘This thing can be done.’ Five words that constitute the kernel of a cricketing philosophy that is distinctively Australian. Consider a fielder running in to catch a ball forty yards distant and fast dropping to ground; or a batsman at the top of the order, his side following on 200 runs behind on a wearing wicket; or, indeed, a bowler opening the attack with less than 100 to play with, and against a side led by Dr W. G. Grace. The response of the Australian to these rather difficult if commonplace cricketing situations would always be: this thing can be done. John Arlott captures this attitude well. In the forty-five years since he wrote the next piece, the proportion of Tests won against England by Australia has greatly altered in their favour.

  JOHN ARLOTT

  Australianism (1949)

  Why are the Australian cricketers different? Why is a Test match against Australia different from a Test match against any other country? And why do we feel that it is different?

  Now I am sure it is not only, or even basically, because the Australians are our senior Test opponents. If it were, then South African, West Indian and Indian cricket followers would not have this same feeling about the Australians to a greater degree than about English teams – as they have.

  No, it is the quality of ‘Australianism’ which makes the difference. Historically, ‘Australianism’ dates from that momentous day at the Oval in 1882 when England twice seemed to have the solitary Test match of that season won, only for Massie, and then Spofforth, to snatch it away – in the face of all cricket probability and eleven great English cricketers. It has gone on through the forty-four Test tours. I remember, as a boy, hearing with steadily growing awe of the two Australian fast bowlers, Gregory and Macdonald of Warwick Armstrong’s 1921 team, and how they passed through English cricket like a scourge. More than human those two men seemed to me – almost devilish in their relentless destruction of English batting.

  This feeling does not come from regular Australian victory – they have but 64 won tests to our 55 – and, indeed, we have won 21 to their 20 in England. The West Indies have beaten us in two consecutive tours there, beaten us by means of crushing batting, yet we are not alarmed.

  How many English cricket followers, I wonder, like me, have anxiously followed Anglo-Australian Test matches by radio or, at vast penny-expenditure, in a series of newspaper ‘stop press’ columns? When England seem to be winning we have dreaded an Australian recovery – for every Australian seems capable of saving his side – and when the Australians have been on top, then we have felt, in our hearts, that they would never relax. Why?

  Australia has had her great players, certainly, but against their Bradman, Ponsford, Woodfull, Miller we can place Hammond, Hobbs, Sutcliffe and Compton. Grimmett and Mailey and O’Reilly took many wickets – but no one of them ever took so many in a single series as Maurice Tate’s 38 in 1924–5 in Australia. The Australian fielding has invariably been superb – but remember Jardine’s sharks at the batsman’s elbow in 1932–3.

  No, the difference does not lie in comparative excellence in any department of the game but in the whole Australian attitude to cricket. Australian c
ricket is not the same game as English cricket. Why should it be? The Australians come from a country at the opposite end of the world, their setting is different, their very atmosphere is different. Certainly their speech, their laws, their cooking, their manners are not the same as ours – why should they be? So it follows that, if Australian cricket were no more than an imitation of the game in England, the Dominion would be less the fine country it is. Australia has its own character and that character is in its cricket, because Australian cricket is part of the life of those people.

  Now this difference, this ‘Australianism’, is not always admitted by those who follow cricket in England. Some try to pretend that there is no difference between the cricket of the two countries. Others, overconscious of the difference, have tried to capitalize it with stories of ‘crises’ and ‘controversies’ which ignore the essential humanity of the difference.

  Let me try to capture that difference for you in one game. On the Saturday of Whit weekend of 1948, the Australians made 721 runs in a day against Essex. On Whit Monday Essex came out to bat: the Australian bowlers were at them like tigers. Miller bowled as fast and as grimly as he had done in all the tour, the fielding was as tight as in a Test match. There was going to be no nonsense about ‘giving Essex a chance’ even in the face of that appalling Australian total. Soon Essex were struggling – before lunch they were more than struggling, they were being smothered. Things were grim indeed when Ray Smith came in. Five Essex wickets were down, one batsman, Bailey, was unable to bat because of injury, and the first fifty was still not on the board. Toshack was bowling from the railway end – medium pace left arm over the wicket. Sydney Barnes at silly mid-on was so close to the batsman that if Ray Smith had held out his hat at full arm’s stretch and Barnes had reached out his hand the two would have touched. Ray Smith has in him a blend of courage and gaiety that cannot be quelled even by a deficit of almost 600 runs and a Test attack against him. Almost at once he drove a ball from Toshack past Barnes’ ear like a bullet for four. Barnes looked at him undisturbed – ‘You cain’t drive me away,’ he said. Square, self-reliant and grim, he put his hands on his knees and glared at the batsman. In Toshack’s next over Ray Smith hit a half-volley straight on to Barnes’ foot – whence it ricocheted to the boundary! Barnes did not say a word. Smith had scored 25 when he received another half-volley from Toshack. Here was his chance to drive away this suicidal fieldsman – whose very presence was like a curb upon a batsman’s play. Ray hit that ball with a swing like a flailsman’s – straight at Barnes. Barnes put up his hands to the ball – it forced them apart and struck against his chest – as it bounced off he darted out his right hand and caught it! Ray Smith, caught Barnes, bowled Toshack – 25. As Ray looked at him unbelievingly Sydney Barnes said, ‘I told you you cain’t drive me away’ and he casually tossed the ball back to Toshack.