Cricket and Psychogeography

Above, a cricket match is played at Millom, where the Duddon finds the sea.

At Brian Carpenter’s very fine A Different Shade of Green there is a stunning photograph of a cricket match being played at the Oval overlooked by the famous gasholder.

He writes of Tom Shaw’s photograph that ‘the quality of the light, the fact that the gasholder is so perfectly framed and the precise moment that’s captured make it one of the best cricket pictures of all time.’

One of the joys of playing consistently at one ground, especially one that has a significant natural or manmade feature dominating the view is the way that the landscape is taken into the mind and becomes an unconscious orientation of all that takes place there.

Worcester and Taunton have their ecclesiastic landmarks, as of course does Muggleton below. 

The Old Cricket Ground West Malling belived to be the model for the ground where All- Muggleton took on Dingley Dell; steeple prominent.

Sedbergh has its sublime fells.  Arundel its castle peeking through the trees. And those who play their cricket in sight of Glastonbury have the Tor.

On the playing field these features are soon lost from view in the focus of concentration, but they are always there and exert their special subconscious, peripheral influence.

Cricket at Sedbergh - Orienteering by the Howgill Fells?

Good batsmen and good fielders have a developed sense of angles, of positions, of distance and depth of field.  They may even be better than most at parking cars, though this seldom extends to packing cricket bags which are always too small for the essential equipment favoured by the cricketer.

Running at pace, watching the ball like a hawk, the fielder swoops, finds the ball in their hands turns towards one of the two wickets, sets himself and hurls the ball to throw down the stump. 

Watching a ball leave the hand at 80 miles an hour or more the batsman does not need to look away to the gap in the field before aiming the shot with unerring precision.  His eye watches bowler’s body, his hand and then the predicted pitching point yet he can see with some internalized sense the spot through the field that he’s aiming for.

Even lanky uncoordinated bowlers who walk out to the middle like Bambi on ice are able to run in at pace for thirty yards and place their landing foot to within a centimetre of the spot it needs to find behind the bowling crease.  They don’t look at that spot. 

If they did the whole action would disintegrate.  They use countless visual clues and co-ordinates, again internalised.

The Tor has watched over every cricketer who has played at Millfield

Like a bee returning to the hive, cricketers have a special knowledge in their heads which is most pronounced when playing at home.  And knowledge is a product of learning.

Rain Prevented Play at Morecombe Yesterday

Do not adjust your computer screen.  The distortions are produced by a thick film of rainwater on the windscreen.

‘Rain Stopped Play’.  Are these the three worst words in cricket, closely followed by ‘Match Abandoned – Rain’ and ‘Match Cancelled – Rain’?

We have had a very good start to the cricket season with barely a day lost to the dreaded wet stuff, but now a depression has settled across the country metaphorically and literally.

Yesterday, Third Man and Son drove north via the M6 towards Lancaster on their way to a fixture at Morecombe Bay.  

Forlorn, Forlorn.

Not only was it raining but, before they had been on the motorway for more than a mile, an electric notice board kindly informed them that their exit at Junction 34 – the turn-off to Heysham and Morecombe – was closed.

A hasty recalculation of the route – no satellite assistance for them – resulted in a decision to leave the motorway at Junction 33 and use the old A6.

After the 25 mile walks of C18th cricketers and the train journeys of their successors, but before Motorways, ‘A’ roads had been the main way that cricketers reached away grounds. 

And before Bypasses, this meant driving or crawling along single carriageway roads, behind lorries and caravans, through depressing ribbon developments and shop filled towns that could have done without our intrusion, stopping at every traffic light – all too often to the accompanying metronomic sound of windscreen wipers filling the car with their mournful squeegy rhythm.

When seen through a lead-like film of water on the windscreen, limestone-built urbanity, that is charming and interesting in sunshine, in constant rain takes on the dull minimalist colour of sludge .

Rothko: Black on Grey. So good he had to paint it twice.

Why do we, who live in a temperate rain-drenched clime, love a game that is so weather dependent?  What did our bucolic predecessors do when the rains fell on the sheep fields of Kent and Sussex long ago?  Repair to the Tavern?  Play cards in the Bothy?  Listen to the patter of rain on the Dressing Tent?  Irritate each other ‘til it came to blows?

At Morecombe, two officials walked half way to the square, turned and walked back to the pavilion.  The only action on the field that day.  Match Abandoned.

The queues through Lancaster going south were only marginally shorter than those encountered travelling north an hour before.

Why didn’t they call it off before we set out?

Because they never do.

Dead headed soggy roses, picked mushy raspberries, dozed depressingly and so so needed a dramatic finish to the Open.

How is it that rhythm is so important when striking a stationery ball?

Ask the windscreen wipers.

Compare the Drives No7 – A Glimpse into the Origins of Cricket

 

This Afghani enjoying cricket today and this Stonyhurst Cricketer from earlier times are linked by more than just a stone ‘wicket’.  Both are having enormous fun (craic) trying to stop a ball hitting a target and ‘whacking’ it as far as ever they can.

In 1593 the Jesuit, Fr Robert Persons, set up a school in St Omers for the education of English Catholics who were unable to receive such an education in Elizabethan England. 

The College of St Omers operated until 1762 when, forced to leave what was by that time part of France, it moved first to Bruges, then, Liege (1773) and finally to a supportive and out of the way estate in Lancashire (1794).

The school boys and their teachers who returned to England and made their way up the Avenue to Stonyhurst Hall, brought with them their own games including that of cricket.  But it was a form of the game preserved by geographical and cultural distance from the evolution of the game in England.  It was a form of the game probably dating back as far as the College’s foundation in 1593, if not beyond. 

This was similar if not identical to cricket played in the villages at the time of Cromwell’s  Commonwealth.  A form of the game seen and played by Cavaliers exiled to their country estates and eventually brought back by them to the Capital at the time of the Restoration.

The photograph of the Stonyhurst Cricketer dates from the 1880s and may have been a ‘set up’.  The uniform worn by the player had disappeared by the 1850s when the game was still unrivaled.  It could however be an act of schoolboy defiance.

At that time the College authorities, already worried about the institution’s relative isolation from the Public Schools movement, cracked down on its traditional games and forced its pupils to play (you can hear the sneers) London Cricket so that it could play against other schools.  Someone was actually sent off to purchase a London Cricket Set.   This was not a popular innovation and one can imagine the resistance put up by the boys.

The Stonyhurst Cricket season was played between Easter and Whitsun and followed  the rather similar game of ‘Cat’ which was played between Shrovetide and Easter.  ‘Cat’ could be the common ancestor of cricket and baseball and it’s presence with cricket in the College calendar is a signpost back to the moment of separation with each game persisting side by side for a time.

The following is an extract from T.E. Muir’s Stonyhurst, “ On the eve of Ash Wednesday ‘Matches’ boys, subdivided into teams of five, were organised and assigned to their respective cricket stones ranged in a line twenty yards from the back of the garden wall.

Bats, three feet in length tapering to an oval head 4 ½ inches in width, were made by villagers in the winter months.  Some consisted entirely of ash, but most had an alder-head spliced on to an ash-handle. 

Balls which had a core of cork – sometimes with india rubber at the centre – were covered with worsted, soaked in glue and baked before the fire by the boys.  They were then taken to the shoemakers for casing with two hemispheres of hard leather sewn to form a thick seam around the ball. 

Pitches were dominated by the single wicket stone; 27 yards away stood the ‘running in’ stone, placed at a slightly oblique angle to give a clear path for the striker.  The ‘running mark’, from which the bowler released the ball underarm and with the seam, was a further three yards away.

‘Play’ was called for the first ball, but thereafter ‘the bowler is at perfect liberty to bowl as quickly as he likes, and if the batsman be not ready, need allow no time’.  At the wicket he was assisted by a ‘second bowler’ and three ‘faggers’ or fielders.

Amongst other things the second bowler was required ‘to have the cricket-stone free from all books, bats etc, which may in any way prevent him striking the stone with the ball’. 

The batsman, who retired after 21 balls, was obliged, from the nature of his implement to slog.  The hard surface of the Playground was well adapted for this and ‘greeners’ could be dispatched 100 yards across its length into the gardens beyond the Penance Walk. 

Runs were scored by racing to and from the running-in stone and, on the final ball, counted double.”

Even by the time of the mid-C18th and the great matches played on the Artillery Ground, Finsbury, we can see that although there are similarities with the equipment used, the game in England had moved forward.  

Here, then, lies an almost fully preserved fossil of a something that was itself an even older survival.  It has the survivor’s advantage of descriptions and relics that would allow us to walk up to that ‘Playground’ today and play a game that is probably at least 400 years old if not more … well, if it wasn’t chucking it down!

Michael Parkinson Played His Cricket Here

Lancashire Under 17s have gone to Barnsley Cricket Club to play their two day Match of the Roses but there is as yet no play on the second day.

Day One had seen 15 wickets falling at regular intervals.  This is not typical for this format of the game.  Yorkshire were bowled out for 112 and Lancashire battled to 79 for 5 at close of play and the suitability of this wicket for cricketers of this calibre must be questioned.

Bonus points are heavily weighted towards first innings performances, so one side at least is anxious to get back on to the field of play.

Organised cricket has been played in Barnsley since 1834 and the Shaw Lane ground has a wonderful history having been opened on 14th June 1859, when the original home side the Clarence Club played and defeated their visitors the Holbeck Club.

The All-England Eleven first visited the ground in 1860 and in May 1862 they returned to play a team described as “20 of Yorkshire”.  Later that summer they returned again to play “14 of Yorkshire” in a three day match on August 25^th, 26^th and 27^th.  The score card can be viewed at Cricket Archive.

The All-England Eleven in 1847 with George Parr, The Lion of the North, second from left. Fifteen years later he was in the side playing at Shaw Lane.

All England won the toss and elected to bat but were soon in trouble with Hodgson and Slinn skittling them out for 47 with Clarke the only batsman to reach double figures.  

In front of a crowd described as ‘numerous’, Yorkshire went out to bat.  They too were soon losing wickets.  Third Man hopes this fact might bring comfort to the fifteen 17 year olds who lost their wickets yesterday, but he doubts it.

Yorkshire’s reputation for dour defence and slow scoring could have its ancestry in this innings as their 136 (for 13 all out) was scored off 97 four ball overs with Tinley taking 6 for 45 in 68 deliveries.

With their reputations and not inconsiderable wagers at stake the All England Team must have flinched when their first four batsmen could gather in only 8 runs, but 29 from Rowbotham, 60 and 60 from the two Georges, Parr and Tarrant, and 22 from Hayward saw them post 205. Hodgson claimed a further 3 wickets and Greenwood took 4 for 49.

This left Yorkshire with 116 to win, but batting conditions were most unlikely to have improved and wickets were soon falling to Wootton, 4 for 33, and Tarrant, 7 for 26, leaving the 14 of Yorkshire 30 runs short.

Top class cricket did not return to Barnsley for 100 years.  It may be cruel to wonder why, but the club would counter by pointing to its record of having produced, as young players, Geoff Boycott, Martyn Moxon, Arnie Sidebottom, Graham Stevenson and Garren Gough – not to mention Dickie Bird, Michael Parkinson and Steve Oldham whose brooding presence on a chair by the sight screen will yesterday have watched the Yorkshire bowlers with a furrowed brow.

The one day match between the two sides is being moved to Leeds University but this is probably because the England Ladies are playing here at the weekend and there may just be more chance of the Under 17s one-dayer going ahead at the University.

Match Abandoned 5pm.

King Cotton and Prince Cricket

The Town of Heywood lies on the A58 between Bury and Rochdale.  In a fold in the Pennines the brooks ran fast enough to power early watermills.  The presence of coal made the location ideal for industralized cotton production.

By the mid C19th the hand weavers and the farmers had given way to the 2,000 or so ‘strangers’ brought in to run the larger and larger cotton mills.  Sir Robert Peel’s father was an early industrialist who introduced new technology and expanded Makin Mill.

Wikipedia tells us that in 1881, the newly created Municipal Borough of Heywood included 67 cotton mills and weaving sheds, 67 machine works and other workshops, 75 cotton waste and other warehouses and 5,877 dwelling houses. It had 22 churches and chapels and 24 Sunday and day schools. The population was by then estimated at 25,000.

This otherwise comprehensive list fails to mention a cricket field, but at this time cricket must have been played and a club side was in development. 

From the A58, close to the centre of Town, Aspinall Street descends northwards towards and besides the Grade II listed Mutual Mills complex pictured below.  

Building of this Palace for King Cotton begun in 1914 but was not completed until 1923.  As the photograph at the top of the page illustrates, it dominates the skyline of Heywood Cricket Ground just as dramatically as the Cathedral dominates New Road, Worcester.  Idle since 1986 the building’s lower and huge windows are boarded up and the whole set of buildings awaits the revival of the housing market in the hope of a further round of apartment speculation.

Heywood CC is one of the founder clubs of the Central Lancashire League and has been in existence since before 1897.  Cricketers with a sense of vision sought out this spot and carefully leveled a precisely circular ground with an exact diameter of 180 yards – a fitting and adjacent home for Prince Cricket. 

It lies next to Queens Park opened in 1879 and designed by Queen Victoria’s gardeners (including circular bandstand, café and fountain) following the death intestate of one of the Town’s merchants. 

Yesterday, a Sunday, spectators of the Lancashire Under 17s v Durham Under 17s 50-overs-a-side match could enjoy the sounds of Pomp and Circumstance and other favourites drifting across the ground from the Park. 

To the west beyond the ground’s perimeter wall they could see glimpses of BMX-ers  rising into the air as they enjoyed a track first built in the 1980s but recently renovated by Hudu (Huhe?) with a £18,000 grant from the Community Cash Back Fund.

Back on the cricket ground the wicket was lovingly prepared.  A heavy hammer was needed to thump in the gadget that creates the stump holes, but the wicket played slower than it looked and lower than the ‘quicks’ would have hoped for except when the odd ball leaped and jagged disconcertingly.

Lancashire in this age group have a wealth of spinners and Durham side that included a number of trialists could muster only 150.  Slowly, as the bounce vanished further, just three Lancashire batsmen were required to knock off those runs.

Even Curtley Ambrose, who was a former professional here, might have found it difficult yesterday to get the ball above stump height.  

Andy Flower, another ex-professional called back recently when England were playing Bangladesh at Old Trafford.  An indication of just how meaningful are the bonds created by these relationships.

The history of the club is on its walls with photographs and ‘figures’ for many of the club’s professionals including John Reid pictured with a vast array of trophies.

An old pro that Third Man was told to look out for was the little known Australian, Stephen Wundke who Cricinfo say played only 6 first class and 11 List A matches, including some for Cheshire as well as his native South Australia but who in three years netted countless runs and wickets for the club.

This strong Lancashire side meet at Old Trafford tonight before going across the Pennines to Barnsley to play the old enemy in a two day and a one day match on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

The Tiger Who Bowled Like a Mouse and The Mouse that Kicked Like a Mule

The general consensus is that Bill O’Reilly bowled quickish leg breaks, googlies (bosies) and top spinners.  In fact he himself describes his bowling as ‘medium slow’.  He bowled from a thirteen pace run-up and the above photograph shows that he had a very long delivery stride suggesting that he came in more quickly than many spinners who use a short delivery stride to help them get height and a pivot over the front leg.  In his time, O’Reilly, opened the bowling for the Australians in a number of innings.

Today’s photograph above and yesterday’s here confirms much of this, with the front foot appearing to land on or over the popping crease (at a time when to be a legitimate ball the back foot had to land behind the bowling crease) giving a four or five foot stride.  His collapsed front leg suggests that he didn’t have an action that went ‘over’ the front leg.  At 6ft 3in he seems to have been less concerned with a high action.

But the really interesting thing is that Hammond in Cricket My World has a different interpretation of what was going on and Hammond, of course had the benefit of actually facing him.

“’The Tiger’, as they call him in Australia, took a long run to the wicket, and it was rather uncanny at first to watch this 6-ft 3-in. athlete gallop to the wicket, snarling with all his teeth, whirl his long powerful arms – and produce a slow ball that only ‘fired’ when it left the pitch.  The mountain laboured and brought forward a mouse – but the mouse tweaked under the bat and knocked down the wicket!”

O’Reilly admits that his googly was slower.  “Yes, it was quite a bit slower, but I hid the reason for it, and this was the substance or the basis of the success of the whole thing in that I was able to disguise the pace of it. It was very much slower and it bounced higher.”

Tiger, Mouse or Mule?

Indeed in the same interview  he admits bowling googlies at Hammond in particular at least twice an over, commenting that, “There was an old saying that you only bowled your bosey occasionally and kept it more or less as a secret weapon. That never entered my head. If I thought that I should bowl the bosey five times an over, I bowled it, because it depended entirely on the bloke I was bowling at. The thing that I was keen to see about a batsman was how quick he was on his feet and how good his eyes were to pick up where the point of contact had to be. If he made his mind up that the point of contact was to be a certain spot, then it was your job to make the ball fall short of that spot or to get to that spot quicker than he thought, and therefore you would have spoiled his shot altogether.”

This reference to ‘the point of contact’ is O’Reilly’s great legacy to the game and the art of spin.  The view that batsmen bat by reference to a chosen point of contact and that spin bowling is about either getting the ball to that point earlier than the batsman has predicted and so to bowl or trap him LBW or to get there later and so to induce a lifted shot is a really useful concept.

It is also a consensus that O’Reilly did not turn the ball a great deal.  It seems to Third Man that from the photographs of the grip yesterday he produced his revolutions by flicking the ring finger upwards with the palm facing the batsman for the leg-break.  He thus may have sacrificed the extra revolutions imparted by a flick of the wrist. 

With this method, turning the hand with palm to midwicket produces the top-spinner and moving the hand slightly further round with the palm facing back to mid-on for the right hander produces the googly.

The unorthodox grip might also have produced less obvious changes in orientation to effect the three deliveries described above.  The difference between leg break, top spin and googly could have been minimum, helping with disguise but reducing turn.  In fact the energy of the rotations would have brought the ball down and forwards in a preponderance of topspin.

The direction of the seam for the leg break would have been just off-straight (say towards first slip rather than gully) and just finely to leg rather than to backward shot leg for the googly.  This topspin would have produced a relatively high degree of ‘dip’ thanks to the Magnus Effect and therefore would have produced a relatively high bounce or ‘kick’ as described by Hammond and others.

Hammond thought that the mountain laboured and brought forth a mouse.  Well, the mouse had a kick like a mule’s.

Gripping Yarns 2 – ‘O’Reilly, you’ll never control it that way’

Here it is: a photograph of Bill Reilly’s grip, described by Wisden in 1937 as ‘the first two fingers round the ball and the others folded on to the palm of his hand’.

O’Reilly was already 23 when he played his first ‘big cricket’ match.  He played in only 133 first-class matches, bowled 37,246 balls took 774 wickets at 16.6 runs each. 

In his 27 Tests he took 144 wickets (102 of them in 19 appearances against England) for 22.59 runs.

When Bradman was changing the balance of power between the two countries with his bat, O’Reilly was doing the same with the ball.

Yet O’Reilly very nearly had one of the shortest first-class careers in the history of the game.

He was taught in a country school near Wingello in the Southern Highlands of New South Wales.  Once, playing for Wingello at Bowral he came up against a seventeen year old called Bradman who proceeded to score 234, 48 of the last 50 with four 6s and six 4s.  Continuing his innings the following Saturday at Wingello, Bradman was bowled first ball by O’Reilly.

Hammond in ‘My Cricket World’ describes how at the age of twenty and taking wickets in the ‘Big City’ of Sydney O’Reilly was invited to some trial nets under the supervision of Arthur Mailey.

The first thing Mailey said was, ‘You’re holding the ball all wrong.  You’ll never control it holding it like that.’

After trying to hold the ball Mailey’s way, O’Reilly went back to his original grip.  Mailey described him as ‘unteachable’ and passed him over.

Later in life O’Reilly would give this advice to any young cricketer, ‘If they tell you you’re bowling too quickly, thank them for their advice and forget it.’

You can just make out the grip in this photograph which also shows that O'Reilly sacrificed much of his 6ft 3in of height perhaps in favour of loop and accentuated drop that gave the steep bounce to his bowling

But all was not lost, O’Reilly had attracted the eye of Dr. Reg Bettington, then a power in NSW cricket.  Two years later Bettington sent for him and gave him a trial in the State side.  Over anxious and gripping the ball too tightly, O’Reilly bowled 12 weak and costly overs and again experienced failure and rejection.

Then, in 1931, when NSW was about to leave to play Victoria one of their bowlers had to pull out and Bettington sent for O’Reilly.  But misfortune stalked him still. Early in the game O’Reilly tore a finger on the seam of a newish ball.  So he failed again and Bettington would have heard the mutterings and  ‘I told you so’s of the doubters.

O’Reilly prepared to go home, but Bettington said, ‘Have another go.’ And in the next game he took 5 for 22 in 73 balls including the scalps of Woodfull and Ponsford. – with his special grip!

This is how O’Reilly expressed things years later, “My opinion is this: coaches are the biggest curse that the game has got. They spoil more kids than ever they help. If you get a talented boy, say 10, 11 or 12, who knows what he is doing – and you can pick it straightaway from a mile off whether a kid has got it or not – tell him that the ball that is spinning in the air clockwise will swing away from the bat, it will go the other way in the air before it hits the ground. It is impossible to throw a new ball straight with its seam because the seam will make it move. Now if you can control swing by knowing that the offspinner is an outswinger and a legspinner is an inswinger – well you can tell that to a boy and say, “Spend an extra half hour on the dunny each day and make yourself into a good bowler. Think about it.”

Gripping Yarns 1 – Ponsford

As the Australians prepare to take on England at Lord’s in the last ODI of the series, Third Man takes a look at two famous cricketers from Down Under who defied the coaching manuals, one with his grip on the bat, the other with his grip on the ball and asks Bill Ponsford  and Bill ‘Tiger’ O’Reilly   “how did you do that?”

A week or so ago Third Man took a close look at the Ponsford grip.  As the photograph above of Ponsford in the nets further illustrates he held his the top hand with the back of the hand round the top of the bat, facing straight down the wicket. 

Famously he also used a very heavy and much treasured bat, ‘Big Bertha’.  On one morning in Sydney, as he prepared to bat, an umpire decided to put a gauge on ‘Bertha’ and found it to be over sized.

In these days of lightly pressed bats it seems odd that a batsman should cling onto a piece of willow that had been so battered and its spring so exhausted that it had actually been flattened by repeated impacts until its breadth had been discernibly widened.  Did he discard old Bertha or get out a plane?

The photograph also shows good balance and a perfect sideways position.  The back foot points out to (well yes …) point bringing the hips and shoulders into line at the moment of impact.

Contemporaries describe how he used a short arm jab that he’d brought from baseball to hit the ball over mid-on’s head. Was it that the grip made it harder for him to get his hands above a more steeply rising ball but helped him bunt the ball powerfully?

In the Sydney Test of December 1928 he turned his back on a short ball (not a bouncer) and was struck on the back of the left hand. This resulted in a fracture of a small bone and he took no further part in the series.

It was also said that his onside play was faultless and the photograph does suggest the solid balanced base from which all shots are best played.  Yet when Larwood arrived on the scene his tendency to move across and leave the leg stump unguarded became a liability.

Of 1932/33 Jardine said, “Ponsford was inclined to move too far on to the off-side, leaving his wicket uncovered.  Indeed we got Ponsford out round his legs three or four times during the course of the tour.”

Just a quick look through the scorecards of 1930 and 1932/33 reveal a high percentage of dismissals in which he was bowled and not just by Larwood and Voce. 

Double Bill - Bill Voce to Bill Ponsford. Doesn't that leg-stump look inviting to the left arm over Voce?

In the 1930 series he played four matches and averaged 55 but he was bowled twice by Tate in the first Test, by Robins in the second Test, by Hammond in the fourth and by Peebles in the Fifth, even though he had scored 110.

Tate had bowled him three times in the 1924/25 series including twice in his first Test when he had started his Test career with an innings of 128 at the start of which he had been shielded from Tate by the selflessness of his captain, Herbie Collins.

Two questions arise, why was he bowled so often – he was rarely dismissed LBW – and why did he fail in the way he did against Bodyline?

The above photograph reveals a very modern wide footed stance for the period.  Did he also habitually clear his front leg out of the way to favour the drive?  This would have facilitated that baseballer’s technique.  Baseballers call it ‘stepping into the bucket’.  If so, did he also clear the front foot to club fuller pitched balls and yorkers down the ground as modern batsmen are again perfecting? 

In his innings of 352 against NSW when Victoria scored 1,107 he is said to have scored very few runs behind the wicket which seems further evidence of the baseball influence.

Finally, against the rising ball it is difficult with this grip to get over the ball, but a step across the stumps and a flick could send the better length leg stump ball high to the boundary behind square-leg, which maybe exactly what was going on in the image of Ponsford chipping a ball over Chapman in the previous post on this batsman.  Of course, if he missed, he lost the leg pole.

Once again the innovations coming to the fore in Twenty10 may be merely echoes from the past.  Coaches please note.

Tomorrow Third Man is in the grip of a Tiger.

Learning the Long Form of Cricket – A Day with Lancashire Under 16 and 17s at Ormskirk

Up and down the land the counties’ emerging sixteen year olds are shrugging off the effects of GCSEs and starting to play two day cricket alongside their 17 year old elders.

Opening bowlers are learning the pleasure of returning late in the day for their third spell.  Top order batsmen are finding out how their minds and bodies perform as they move towards 150.  Spinners are seeing how their fingers and stamina stand up to bowling 25 overs in a day, sometimes on the trot.

Numbers 5 and 6, the completer finishers of the one day game, now have to learn the art of building a big innings from a start of 150 for 3 or 190 for 4, and, in a form of the game which lays down a minimum of 105 overs in a day, batsmen 8 and 9, perhaps for the first time at county level, find themselves as the shadows lengthen facing a new ball.

The playing conditions provide for two innings for each side but the points awarded for first innings lead and the batting and bowling points for runs and wickets in first innings encourage both sides to bat for approximately a whole day each.

As the scoreboard above shows, the group of Lancashire players batting on the second day at Ormskirk C.C. had the job of getting 335 runs to win this informal trial match that determines who will play in the Under 17 ECB competitions and who will appear for the County’s Under 16s during the remainder of the summer. 

Their 16 year old opener, 37 at the time the above photograph was taken, batted through the day, building on his overnight score of twenty or so in a chanceless innings of accumulation and steadfastness. 

Time and the game have moved on in this phtograph. The opener has reached three figures and is still pushing on. A stand of nearly a hundred that gave the innings momentum has just been broken and the bowlers are back on the attack with a new ball in fast fading light.

Almost carrying his bat with 141 the opener hauled his side to within 20 runs of the task, batting on a damp, overcast day in contrast to the ideal batting conditions of the day before.

12 or so will be selected to play for the Under 17s on Monday and Tuesday  in an annual fixture against the Under 19s at Andrew Flintoff’s St Anne’s C.C..  This match is likely to confirm the squad that will then play Yorkshire, Durham, Derby and Cheshire in Two Day and One Day competitions over the following five weeks. 

The team that tops the 50 over competition moves on to play in a national knockout competition and the First, Second, Third, Fourth and Fifth sides in the Two Day league play their opposition numbers from another region. (East Midlands last year.)

A typical week for those lucky young men will find them turning up for training at Old Trafford at 6.00 on a Monday evening.  Setting out by coach for a hotel close to their away fixtures, playing a two day match followed by a one day match on different grounds.  Learning the life on the road of a cricketer and the need to rub along with each other through trials and tribulations, injuries and hard won successes.

All such fixtures are (or should be) available on the websites of Counties and their Cricket Boards, and results are recorded at Play-Cricket.  They provide for ‘Speckies’ (as they call them in Ormskirk) a fascinating and rewarding day.

Under 17 sides will contain academy players and some with 2^nd XI experience, as well as those on the ECB’s Emerging Players Programme.   A number will, within a couple of years, receive their scholarships, 2^nd XI initiations, first contracts and First Class debuts. 

It is well worth seeking out these fixtures and enjoying watching young players revelling in the time to play the long form of the game.

1st July 1916

The 1917 edition of Wisden contains a list of Deaths in the War 1916.  July of that year was a time of particularly heavy toll as the British sought to advance on the Somme.  July 1^st , 94 years ago today was the first day of The Battle of Albert.

Suitably at random here is one entry:

2^ND LIEUT. JOHN HUSKISSON PARR-DUDLEY (Royal Fusillers) killed on July 1^st aged 20, was captain of the Eleven whilst at Cranbrook School, Kent.