November 2008 Archives

At the start of June, 1977, Joel Garner made his county championship debut for Somerset against Warwickshire at Taunton.

Opening the batting for the Bears with R.N.Abberley was K.D.Smith. He found the newcomer a handful.

Smith lbw Garner 0 and b Garner 0.

Garner's match figures: 44-14-100-8. In Somerset's second innings, I.V.A.Richards scored 118.

Despite Eddie Hemmings' fine bowling, for match figures of 70.5-26-165-11, and an attractive century by John Whitehouse, Somerset celebrated Garner's arrival with victory by 79 runs.

There were 19 leg-byes (execrables carbuncles on the face of cricket) in the match. To their enormous credit, Warwickshire's share was just one.

Delfino Borroni, who has died aged 110 and was the last Italian survivor of the First World War, was called up into the army, aged 18, in January 1917, and enrolled as an infantryman in the bicycle section of the 6th Bersaglieri.

Never knew infantry regiments had bicycle sections! Poor fellas must have been a bit vulnerable against, say, tanks.

When England and Australia met at Old Trafford in 1921, in England's first innings the umpires, distracted by an interval in play, allowed Warwick Armstrong to deliver two successive overs.

Our emergency service personnel are wonderful and do magnificent, life-preserving work and I would never, in any way, seek to under-value or criticise them but I do wonder if, just occasionally, the drivers amongst them do large it a bit on the old siren front.

For example, at about three o'clock one morning recently, an emergency vehicle came tear-arsing along the main street with sirens on full blast. I'm not entirely convinced that, at that time of day, there were too many other vehicles on the road that required such a deafening indication of what was occurring. Instead, the vehicle's passage simply shattered the repose of a number of residents in the vicinity and sentenced them to spend the rest of the night, awake, uneasy, tossing and turning and tormented by images of sinister BBC weatherman Daniel Corbett.

With cricket, all soiled and diminished, still hosing itself down after the Stanford debacle, it's tempting to think that the sport has lost it completely. Terminally damaged and heading inexorably along the lucre-mined road of ruin down which football travelled 16 years ago.

But it's not so, of course. Cricket still is and always will be, in essence, a beautiful game. Populated by some beautiful people. In some beautiful places.

I used to play in one such place for a village team in south Warwickshire. What a location. Stately home on one boundary. River flowing past another. Meadows and trees around the rest of a ground which sloped eccentrically on one side so that any ball that got through the ring was four for sure. A tiny, rustic pavilion nestled straight behind the stumps. No sight screens. Scoreboard of rusty nails (still more use than the Edgbaston model circa 2008!). No power. Early and late in the season we changed amid shadows sent flickering round the tiny changing-rooms by the flame of a fag-lighter.

Just gorgeous. Like so many little cricket club grounds all over the country. We didn't much care whether we won or lost. It was just a privilege to spend a few hours of our week in such magnificent, peaceful surroundings. Having a bit of a bat and a bowl. Oh the joy if you scored a few or got among the wickets or managed to hold on to a screamer. Actually, there was just as much joy in the teasing if you copped a blob, got hit over the pavilion or shelled a sitter. Playing a great sport in a great location, the details were incidental.

Among our ranks was a chap called Phil. Not in the first flush of youth, Phil was a regular for the Old 'Uns when they took on the Young 'Uns at the end of the season. And he was the biggest asset any cricket team could possess. Decent sharp slip-fielder. Tidy medium-pacer, though vulnerable if the ball wasn't doing much. Batsman of number nine or ten ilk. But just a great bloke. Gentle, strong, wise, witty, intelligent, balanced, kind. When I was getting changed before a game if I saw Phil lumbering across the field, holdall in hand, I knew it was going to be a good day. Didn't matter in the slightest how the game went. It would be fun.

Phil has gone now, bless him. A wonderful man taken from us far too soon. But anyone fortunate enough to share any time with him on a cricket field or in the pub afterwards or on tour or at his beloved Highfield Road will cherish memories of him. He stood for everything that cricket, historically, has represented in the broad, often feverish, sometimes tacky spectrum of the sporting world. And it is the likes of Phil - you probably know one or two from your local club - who will safeguard the future of the sport because, although world cricket and English cricket are currently in alarmingly feckless hands, the dear old game in essence will always thrive due to the people who matter most - those who are not necessarily much good at it and don't care if they never make a penny from it, but just love it dearly.

Thoughts on the Stanford Grotesque.

Peter Moores...
"The whole issue of money was in people's heads. Maybe that didn't hit some of the guys really until after the game was played. People talk about focus in sport and I don't know if we were as absolutely clear as we could have been."

Why not?

Giles Clarke...
"I have no intention of resigning. There will not be resignations,"

Why not?

David Collier...
"I think we need to go through the review to address that [the issue of an official England team playing in a squalid corporate event]. We do need to discuss that with the Stanford team and the broadcasters.

A bit late in the day?

And finally, the last word, appropriately, to that giant of compassion, loyalty, humility and dignity, Mr Kevin Pietersen...
"To see a guy fall over in front of me at the end of the game, crying, with a million dollars in his bank account, was absolutely fantastic. I am a human being and these guys are fellow professionals - quite a few of them are a lot less privileged than I am - and to see them so happy was wonderful."

Can you believe how patronising and disingenuous this guy is?

Chilling to think that cricket - our great sport, our wonderful, precious, historic, beautiful sport - is, at the top level, in the hands of these people.

See you on the village green!