January 2009 Archives

When Warwickshire visited Taunton in the county championship in 1979 and Somerset batted first, Steve Perryman's new-ball burst lasted 35 overs.

It was Colin Dredge, however, who towered over the contest. First he lent Peter Roebuck sterling support in an eighth-wicket partnership of 95, then he nipped out Amiss, Whitehouse and nightwatchman Hopkins before the close. The redoubtable seamer then followed his first-innings four for 40 with four for 51 in the second innings, including the crucial wicket of Amiss, lbw for a skilful 79 on a juicy track in humid conditions, as Somerset won by 153 runs.

It was not the last lbw decision to be won by Dredge during his life.

Twenty-six years later, now aged 51 and playing for Frome 3rds against a touring team from south Warwickshire, The Demon of Frome came on to bowl late in the innings, ostensibly to give the struggling, hungover tourists some cheap runs to make it a game. A lovely man and so modest - you would never have imagined he had been a major component in a Somerest team including Botham, Richards and Garner - Colin had not bowled seriously for years but sent down a few donkey-drops.

A wicket fell at the other end and I went into bat.

Colin's first ball to me floated down on a good length. I waited patiently for it to manage the best part of 22 yards then had a huge mow at it - and missed, straight in front. Colin, with some reluctance, appealed to an umpire who was another long-time member of Frome CC and another lovely fellow who truly did not want to award any lbw decisions against these hapless, lager-soaked tourists. But this really was plum.

Up, to great mirth all round, went the finger of fate. "The only thing I had to decide," confessed the ump as I walked past, "was whether the ball would have reached the stumps."

Amiss lbw Dredge 79. Halford lbw Dredge 0.

Same thing really.

Good news for those people intending to attend county championship matches at Edgbaston next season. Steve Rouse will not be instructed to prepare the lifeless porridges (not my description, a Warwickshire bowler's) on which four-day cricket was played there for most of last season.

Just occasionally in the course of a workmanlike sporting year you witness a flash of genius, a display of virtuoso brilliance, that makes all the drudgery and 25-hour working days worthwhile. I have just encountered such a moment. Some truly sensational jobsworthing.

Swindon Town's car park has, at a rough estimate, about 800 spaces. When I arrived this afternoon around 780 of them were empty.

I was relieved of a ten-pound note by a gentleman in an orange jacket and told to report to his colleague in the distance for instructions. This latter gentleman is the genius.

Across the cavernous empty tarmac I drove, right up to him. "Park next to that one in the corner," he said. So I did.

He followed me over. "Can you get a bit closer?" Fair enough. So I did.

"Closer, closer," he insisted.

I was pretty close at this stage. To my right, it would have been just about possible for me to squeeze out of my car or the other driver to squeeze into his. To my left stretched a gargantuan expanse of empty car-park.

"Closer, closer."

"Bit more."

By the time he was satisfied you could just about get a fag paper between the two cars. He looked well-pleased with this state of affairs. He'll be less smug if I catch up with him in the event of the other driver returning to his car and thinking "what prat parked that close?" and depositing a large scratch on the paintwork?

True genius. You can't buy jobsworthing talent like that.

England players wanting more pay? Nothing new.

This is former Warwickshire and England wicket-keeper Dick Lilley's account of some discord amongst England's players of 1896. They were not happy with the amount they were paid to represent their country - a grievance that they laid before the MCC and Surrey CCC (in those day the players were paid part by the MCC and part by the club hosting the Test) on the eve of a crucial Ashes match at The Oval!

"On the eve of the last match, a demand was made by a certain number of players for an increase of pay: the demand being for £20 instead of £10 as was usual. The Surrey club naturally resented such a proceeding, and declined to entertain it.

"While I was quite in sympathy with my brother professionals with the end they had in view - if a man is good enough to play in a Test match, £20 is not too much to requite him for the tremendous strain that he undergoes and the care he must exercise to keep himself in perfect form - I strongly disapproved of the methods they employed to attain it. The moment, I consider, was most inopportune: it looked too much as if they wanted to take advantage of the imminence of the match."

There was no need for the ECB to recruit Mushtaq Ahmed. They don't need advice from anybody on the art of spin.

On Thursday out came a media release under the momentous headline: "2008 saw highest domestic attendances in ECB's history".

Here is it's main substance.

"Attendances at domestic cricket matches in 2008 rose by 23% from 2007, reaching a record 1.5million. Attendances at domestic and international matches rose by 10%, with 2,243,496 fans attending matches in 2008 - the highest figure ever.
"The LV County Championship has seen attendances top half a million for the first time since 2003 and records a 30% rise on the previous year. Total attendance for the championship was 558,950.
"The Twenty20 Cup also enjoyed record attendances and was the most watched competition, with over half a million people attending group, quarter-finals and Finals Day matches. The expanded group match phase saw a 25% increase in the number of matches with the total audience for 2008 recorded as 593,717; a 36% rise.
"The NatWest Pro40 attendance recorded a rise of 4% from last year with The Friends Provident Trophy recording a 7% decline from 2007. However, the Trophy still records attendances in 2008 which double those of 2005 when the new format for the competition was introduced."

So there we have it. Great news all round? Well, sort of. Re. the phrase - "the highest figure ever". Only at the bottom of the release does the board add, somewhat sheepishly: "The ECB was formed in 1997 and the figures relate to attendances recorded during 1997-2008." So it's the highest figure ever - since 1997.

With more Twenty20 group games than ever before, anything other than more spectators would have been rather odd, of course. And I'm not sure that last point about the FPT is one to trigger riotous celebrations.

A crumb of genuine good news does lurk in there. A rise in championship crowds augurs well. Let's hope that continues - and applies at Edgbaston - in 2009.

But there is one figure that the ECB does not mention, of course - and cannot possibly know. That is the number of young people who never saw a ball bowled last season, so were denied the temptation to fall in love with and take up cricket, due to the total absence of live cricket on terrestrial telly, a shameful state of affairs which will remain in place until at least 2014.

In no particular order...

1. Giles Clarke to cease to be chairman of the ECB.

2. Ian Bell to silence his critics in the national media by scoring loads of runs as England regain the Ashes.

3. In the first Test in the West Indies, Kevin Pietersen to go for a switch-hit and top-edge it into his nose, causing no long-term distress or damage but ruling him out of cricket for the rest of 2009.

4. The ECB to set up an 18-county, one-division, 40-over Sunday League for 2010 and beyond.

5. British Telecom to issue a pubic apology to the nation for being such an inept, crass, over-priced, customer-unfriendly, bungling shambles.

6. Leg-byes to be abolished.

7. British troops to be pulled out of Afghanistan.

8. A terrestrial TV channel to show every episode of The Waltons.

9. The Bears to offer free admission to championship matches on Saturdays.

10. Lee Daggett to have a very good season at Northamptonshire.

11. Racing Club Warwick to win a game. Maybe even two.

12. The national and regional media to resist the football-type only-the-very-top-matters philosophy and keep covering cricket properly.

13. Warwickshire to commit to at least two outgrounds for 2010.

14. The library service - one of this country's true treasures - to be protected, nurtured and supported by serious investment.

15. Better cricket wickets for championship matches at Edgbaston.

16. Warwickshire to reach one more Lord's final - just in case the ECB lose the plot completely with domestic one-day cricket and such a showpiece ceases to exist.

17. Bird-tables to be made compulsory in all new-built houses with gardens measuring 250 square feet or more.

18. Mary to agree to marry me. Surely, 19 years is enough to think about it.

19. The sun to shine on the cricket season. Oh please, after the last two "summers"...

Apart from a minor knee niggle for Calum MacLeod, Warwickshire's players are all fit as butchers' dogs as they begin to step up preparation for the 2009 season.

Naqaash Tahir is fit.

It's his year this year y'know.

Warwickshire will face Leicestershire and Oxford UCCE in warm-up friendlies before next season.

The Bears will play a one-day game at Grace Road on Friday April 3 and a two-day friendly at The Parks on the following Monday and Tuesday. The birds of Oxford have already noted the latter fixture and are understood to have drawn up plans to occupy that tree in the tiny little Parks car park in shifts on those dates and drop their loads as vigorously as possible on any vehicles thereunder.

A friendly against Somerset had been discussed but it was agreed to drop the idea after the teams were paired to face each other in the first champo game of the season.

It occurs to me, admittedly from a distance, that Kevin Pietersen and Peaches Geldof would make an absolutely perfect match for each other.

Loved Pietersen's revelation, by the way, that he has lost the job that was his "childhood dream". Er, hold on a minute...